When the shekels spilled onto the liquor soaked hardwood, he got more than the bartender’s attention.
“I hate to flash cash like that, but sometimes a man’s gotta break the ice.”
That amount of money was far from common in towns like this, and the sheer number of shiny coins Clem shoveled back into the burlap sack would have caused a fuss anywhere.
The barkeep offered his apologies to the newly identified high roller before him. Unlocking a cabinet at his knees, invisible to the patrons, he produced a bottle of aged spirits sealed in wax the color of plums. He splashed the precious liquid into a shot glass and pushed it toward the man who might as well be holding all the gold in the world.
“Name’s Denny, friend. That’s quite a purse you’re carrying. Might should be careful ’round here so laden with coin, else the wolves’ll be on your hide in no time.”
Clem snapped the shot back and rapped his fist against the bar, signaling impatiently for another. After three such repetitions, the other saloon-goers gathering gradually around the man drinking whiskey worth more than their homes, Denny ventured another attempt at conversation.
“How’s a fella come to such fortune? You don’t look the type, no offense meant, and wealth ain’t exactly a regular event among these miscreants. I can see you’re a feller of finer tastes, and if you’d like to gander some of our more premium wares… Well there I go shovelin’ compliments before you asked for a hole to be dug.”
Clem relinquished a slow smile and tipped his hat back, giving a slight nod toward the bottle. Denny poured and waited, breath held, for any semblance of explanation. Before Clem could respond, a rough-hewn man with scars raked across his face slid confidently into a vacant stool. Without wasting a word, he offered protection, women, powdered drugs that promised to vivify and invigorate, any pitch for profit he could proffer. The rich man resisted them all.
Clem waved his hand absently at the interrupting, scar marked salesman. Dismissed and belittled, unwilling to intimidate, the man walked tail-tucked back to his table. His seat was quickly overtaken by a replacement raconteur, a woman with aggressively presented breasts and a wad of tobacco in her lip.
“Honey, you’re just wasting your time with these degenerates. We’ve got a place just down the way. You wanna make sure all that money’s well spent, don’t you?”
She leaned in with practiced seduction and Clem put a palm in her face. Dejected, she gathered her crimson skirts and shuffled off toward the poker table at the back of the building, a flock of underlings mimicking her indignation. With a sack of bullion dangling between his knees, Clem laughed and sloshed another shot down his throat.
Again Denny spoke, trying to crack Clem’s carapace of composure.
“Drink alone is hardly satisfaction, my unloquacious compatriot. Anything beneath the sun is at your disposal, if you impart but the word. Perhaps if I understood better the gravity of your circumstance…”
Clem interrupted with a smack of his palm on the bartop. The people edging closer to the sack of riches dangling from his stool all gasped and did their best to look inconspicuous. Clem reached into the bag and removed a stack of eight golden coins. He set them on the mahogany before him, shuffling them into little towers of varying height. His movements mimicked the only men seemingly unbothered by his presence, methodically moving chips and contemplating odds on the far side of the room. Finally, he spoke.
“Dennis, for I’m sure that’s the full moniker for which your abbreviated introduction represents, I am a man of transparency, and I intend to answer your questions over the course of this bottle of impeccable hooch. First, you gotta get rid of the bitch and the freak.”
The chatter of the room fell flat, and Denny drew in a breath for a response he couldn’t quite muster. Clem’s voice filled the pause.
“Take two of these here coins, and put one in each of their mouths. Above or below the tongue, don’t matter, and send them on their way. That ducat’ll buy a few month’s worth of slop around here. Wave your hand, Dennis. I’ll bet they both line up for it.”
The man with the scarred face stood and took a few steps forward. The woman in red appeared from between the tables of astonished observers. With shame etched into their body language, they both stood attentively at the edge of the bar while Denny, his own face filled with hesitance, put a coin in each of their supplicating mouths. Clem sneered.
“Good. Messengers.”
With the tension of spectacle in the air, the patrons of the tavern moved slowly back toward their tables with pretended indifference. Left with the center of attention sitting alone before him, Denny gave a wide eyed look and shrugged. Clem grabbed the bottle and smiled.
“Friend, I’ve been through hell for this stash. And it’s mine, mind you, but every red cent is accounted for. This here gold is more than money. This satchel is god damn carte blanche.”
He took a swig and grinned, teeth blackened at the gums, one incisor missing. No longer waiting for the bartender to pour on his behalf, Clem pulled a flask from his jacket pocket and unscrewed the cap. With a yellowed thumbnail, he peeled the purple wax from around the bottle’s neck, then deftly filled the flask to the brim.
“Six left on the table. Three for you, in addition to what I owe for this fine whiskey. The other three for the families of those gentlemen by the door. They’ll be rightly expired soon, or at least scampered off with a coin under their tongues.”
Denny fidgeted with a towel as he knelt down to the hidden cabinet. Clem whistled and leaned against the bar, swirling the remains of the bottle in his hand. He laughed as the barkeep reemerged, uncorking another expensive vessel from the private stock. Denny sloshed some into Clem’s glass, and took a long, gulping pull for himself. Coughing at the burn in his throat, he looked his customer with a glimmer of fear in his eyes.
“What’s this talk of expiration? Sir, I’ll gladly handle your affairs, but that sounds a might like a threat.”
Clem gently took the bottle from the bartender’s hand and drank from it deeply, the curious crowd again congregating around Denny’s distress. The wealthy stranger stood and put his hands in the air.
“Ain’t none of this my doing. Not any more than being born to this earth may be. Purely circumstance. All part of the wandering path.”
Denny prepared for the worst as more patrons rose from their tables, some grazing their fingers across the pistols carried brazenly on their hips. Clem used his heel to slide his stool back as he wound the cable of twine and reattached the burlap sack to his belt.
Thunder rolled outside as Clem tucked the flask into his pocket and stuffed the cork back into the second bottle on the bar. The sky grew dark as he pushed the two stacks, three coins each, across the mahogany. He removed a final coin from the bag and placed it purposefully among the shavings of wax, the lanterns flickering and shutters beginning to rattle.
On his way out, Clem gave a somber nod to the men at the table near the entrance, then turned back to the bartender. He tipped his hat and laughed with an air of apology, barely audible amidst the furious storm gathering outside the tavern walls.
“That’s the thing about hell, friend. It follows.”