Helmet Head by Mike Baron Page B

scumbag.
    She’d been with him for four years. Like victims of the Stockholm Syndrome, she regarded his abuse as normal, even a sign of love. She was obviously ambivalent about the baby.
    “How old are you?” Fagan asked.
    “Twenty-six.”
    “You want to think about testifying against him.”
    She gave him that half-guffaw look. “Are you nuts? Do you know how vindictive he is? It’s a way of life with Bill. He’d find me and have me killed.”
    “Not if you went into witness protection.”
    “Oh mannnnn,” she said stopping to drain a glass of water. “Are you for real? Where are you from anyway?”
    “My last job was with the Duke County Sheriff’s Department in Iowa.”
    “What’dja do to end up here? Screw the captain’s wife?”
    Fagan felt the color rising. He turned away and winced.
    “What? Did I strike a nerve? Chainsaw broke a rib, didn’t he? You want to take your shirt off let me have a look?”
    “Do you know what you’re doing?”
    “Two years nursing school. Not much you can do for a cracked rib but tape it up and take pain meds.”
    Fagan peeled off his jacket and shirt revealing a hairy chest with a gold Star of David dangling from a thin gold chain.
    “Raise your arm.”
    Macy examined the purpling bruise where Chainsaw had sunk his Size 10 Doc Marten. “Yup,” she said, poking it. Fagan winced.
    “That’s gotta sting.”
    “Yeah, thanks a lot.”
    Macy giggled. “I’ll be right back.”
    Fagan examined his surroundings. The TV hanging from a bracket above the bar was off but the bar lights were on including several strings of Christmas tree lights which cast a gay glow on the antique mahogany back bar. Fagan figured someone had put them up at Christmas years ago and never bothered to take them down.
    There was a stuffed bobcat above the bar. The pine paneled walls contained a bulletin board advertising odd jobs, baby-sitting, puppies and so forth. There was a dart board at the far end of the room and a cold jukebox beneath a horizontal side window, an old sprung sofa backed into a corner against the front wall where some booths had been ripped out. The unpowered jukebox looked like an Easter Island head. Shelving high up on the south wall held a couple dozen souvenir steins, the kind with the hinged lids and intricate ceramic design. Dusseldorf. Heidelberg. Munich.
    Macy returned with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a spool of tape-backed bandage. She pulled a seat up next to Fagan who guessed that this was not the first time she’d been pressed into service as a nurse.
    Of course the Road Dogs traveled with their own MD and RN but they seemed such an odd group. Doc and Curtis were quiet, self-contained with a certain inner peace that eluded the others.
    Fagan grunted as Macy applied the alcohol to his ribs and to his forehead.
    “Nice goose egg you have here.”
    Fagan craned his neck to look at himself in the mirror behind the bar.
    “What are their real names?”
    “William Hedgecock,” Macy replied without looking up, intent on applying the bandages to minimize rib movement. “Chainsaw is Derek Gunderson, Mad Dog is Sam something, I never did catch that. I don’t like him. Doc is Tom Garrison and Curtis is Curtis Jones.”
    “What are Doc and Curtis doing with this bunch?”
    “You heard Doc. They took a pledge. They take this thing very seriously. Doc and Curtis are original Mad Dogs. They started the club along with Bill’s dad Ed back in the seventies when they got back from Nam. It all goes back to Nam.”
    “Doc, Curtis and Ed Hedgecock were in Vietnam together.”
    “That’s right. Ed died in a motorcycle accident when Bill was fourteen but by then the die was cast, as they say. Bill waited six years to make his move then declared himself president. Some of the other Road Dogs bitched about it but Bill whipped them into line, so to speak. Doc and Curtis didn’t give a shit. They’re not in on the drug running and so forth.”
    “What are they doing