The jukebox suddenly went quiet. A man I had never seen before stood loosely next to the jukebox holding the plug in his hand. Theresa jumped and grabbed my hand across the table, bumping my coffee, spilling a little onto the table. We sat in the corner of the bar in the dark, talking softly. I sipped from my coffee and looked at the man.

Snow clung to his boots and had begun to form puddles on the floor as it melted. Carl had both hands on the bar and was watching the man. Patsy Cline had been singing Crazy only minutes ago and now the place was quiet as the woods after a heavy snow. The man’s blue jeans were too big and hung off of his skinny frame like those of a teenager. He shifted from one foot to the other. Ice was visible in his beard. His face had an uneasy look about it, like a dog taking food from a stranger. The man stood there, jukebox plug in one hand, shotgun in the other. His coat buttoned tightly against the cold outside.

He was quiet. Some of the other folks in the place rustled in their places, murmuring to each other. They looked to me. Jake, whose truck was parked outside covered with snow, stood up. Jake’s truck hadn’t moved from its place at Red’s since October when I had given him a DUI for sleeping off his drunk in the truck. The keys had been in the ignition. Now his truck was buried under the first big snow of the season and wouldn’t move for even longer, at least until June.

“Jimmy, you old rattlesnake you,” Jake called nervously to the man. “Can I get you a drink? Carl….”

“Don’t move, Carl,” the man said. Jimmy. The shotgun swayed in his grip. The jukebox plug drooped oddly from his hand, like a fishing line pulled tight by a steelhead you knew would be a fight to land, except there was no fish at the end of Jimmy’s line. “Jake and me have some business to discuss.”

Carl had slowly bent below the bar and grabbed his shotgun. The gun had been Red’s when he was alive and Red never had to use it.

I stood up, my gun clanking on the table as I did. I put both of my hands where Jimmy could see them and called over my shoulder to Carl, “My coffee’s cold. Bring one for Jimmy, too. Black.”

“Sure thing, Sheriff Wheatly,” Carl said. I could hear him pulling two coffee cups from above the coffee pot.