COUNTRY ROADS
“What’d you think?” I asked the bouncer—a gargantuan brother named Pinky; I didn’t ask—on the way out, even as the jukebox began to play and the room began to return to normal, meaning loud.
“Hmph,” he hmphed, staring straight ahead, keeping an eye on the boys in the MAGA hats. “I think you’re lucky to be getting out of here alive.”
“That’s live comedy,” I said—a little dickishly, now that I remember it. “It’s no country for snowflakes. This brother brings it.”
Call it a manic response to the thrill of the kill—because that’s precisely what I’d done, killed it—though not so manic that I didn’t ask him for an escort to my car.
He lingered, seeming pensive, as I got in and started the engine—enough so that I rolled down my window and asked him, “You really didn’t like it,
