“Hey, pretty boy!”

The voice was deep and it roared over the din.

“Grab yerself a beer and get the fuck over here”

It was Lee. He knew it without looking but he scanned the crowd and found him. Lee Harper was stout, with a laborer’s build, and he yelled at Rogers from a tight knot of young people clustered in a far corner. His hair was brown and cut short and it framed an honest stalwart face with smooth skin. He wore long sleeves in any season but the cuffs of his western shirt were rolled to the elbow in concession to the heat. The top buttons were left undone to expose a broad hairless chest.

“Get me one too, while you’re at it,” he ordered and he pointed to his can of beer with a thick stumpy finger. “And none of that fuckin’ hipster shit you fairies in Missoula drink, either, you pretentious fucker. Good old American lager. In a can.”

Rogers closed the distance between them, stooping midstride to snatch a can of cheap, mass-produced light beer from a nearby ice chest. Without missing a step, the tall athlete stood and launched the aluminum can at his friend like a missile. Lee caught it with both hands in his midriff like a running back taking a handoff.

“You do know they make beer right here in Montana, right?” Rogers shot at him.

“Ah, yes, the lad speaks much truth,” he said. He popped the top on the fresh can, lifting it quickly to his lips as foam boiled from the opening, cascading over the side and onto his hand. Lee sucked down half of it and nodded at Rogers. “But it’s the principle of the matter. I just can’t bear the air of superiority the nobility assumes over us poor provincial folk just because they’re willing to pay twice as much just to have a pretty picture on the label of their Pussy-Whupped Pale.”

He implicated Rogers with a quick flick of his eyes. Leighland Metcalf Harper was a born orator and a student of polemics. Of all Rogers’ friends, Lee had the most intellectual mind, and his natural ability for dialectic was anchored in a voracious appetite for knowledge. Perpetual cynicism masked a principled soul and, despite his near constant sarcasm, at his core Lee championed a quixotically romantic ideal. Integrity was his maxim.

He entreated the group in a loud and magnanimous voice, like a Roman in the Senate.

“Now, you see, I ain’t got anything against good beer.” Lee rolled his eyes and winked at Rogers. “Hell, I even enjoy Mexican piss water on a hot day. But I ain’t got nuthin’ to prove neither, and I don’t drink the label.”

“Oh, man,” Rogers slowly shook his head from side to side. “This again? What about trucks? Where was I for diesel versus electric?”

“My question exactly,” Lee said, in a tone that implied he had Rogers cornered. “Where were you?”

He shot the faces around them a conspiratorial look. Everyone grinned. Harper smiled.

“That’s the first thing they teach us in journalism school, you know. To get the where, the what, the who.

“Oh, hey, Kristin,” he called over Rogers’ shoulder, waving. “Hi.”

Rogers turned and looked. The girl was just exiting the house. Her hair was still wet but it was brushed and glistened in the glow of the lights that illuminated the patio. She acknowledged Lee’s greeting with a halfhearted wave as she stepped through the door. She paused and looked at Rogers and his friends and then at Josh. Brown and his accomplice were preoccupied with the task of throwing another struggling victim into the pool. The girl landed with a splash and the two laughed and Kristin stood in a circle of light on the patio looking ashamed and lost and Rogers heart went out to her.

He swung back around and found Lee considering him with an analytical eye. One brow raised in a sharp V and he nodded.

“What?” Rogers asked.

“Immediately, and without provocation, the subject becomes defensive,” Lee responded.

He spoke it as if he were performing a television voiceover in some crime drama and his grin widened as he sought to lure Rogers into a verbal joust. Rogers knew better than to rise to the bait. Lee was a pugilist of wit and his jabs hurt. Getting no response, Harper continued undaunted.

“Surely, this can be interpreted as a certain admittance of guilt.”

Rogers took the safest way out of the situation. He threw his hands up in surrender.

“Hey, I’m innocent,” he said. “Go ask her.”

“Might as well,” Lee returned. “Need me another brew anyhoo.”

Lee slugged back the last of his drink and pointed a short stubby finger at Rogers.

“These shitbirds tell me you’re holding out. You ready for a beer?”

Rogers shrugged indecisively. Unlike other people in rural Montana his age, Rogers largely avoided alcohol. Over the course of some half dozen of these events, while those around him gleefully embraced the depravity, he had only rarely imbibed. But this would be the last of these, and maybe a cold one, as Harper would call it, might help him shake the lowering sense of calamity that had accompanied him all day.

“Yeah, sure.”

Lee’s index finger still pointed at his chest and his thumb was raised, as though his hand was a cocked revolver. He bent the thumb at the first knuckle, pretending to let the hammer fall, and shot Rogers with a wink.

“Good,” he said. “That’s my boy.”

Lee strode past him and made a beeline to the girl. He stood beside her and leaned in close and soon the two were laughing. Rogers saw her gesture at the pool and tug at the nylon basketball shorts she had borrowed from the closet and he noted how nicely her buxom figure filled his faded old sweatshirt. He would have to be sure to let her keep it. By the way she snuggled inside it and smiled at Lee he knew that she would regardless.

They continued their giddy banter for a time and then the two parted and Lee angled back toward the group. He paused to dig in his cooler and when he returned he had a fresh can of beer in one burly paw and a dark brown bottle in the other. He offered the bottle to Rogers.

“Here you go, ya fuckin’ hep cat,” Lee said. He checked his speech then corrected himself. “Sorry. California hep cat.”

Rogers turned the bottle over in his hands. It was cold and wet and water ran down the sides and collected where the top of his hand met the glass. There was no label on the bottle or mark on the cap. Lee took note of his expression.

“Homebrew. This dirty hippie out on the State Line whips it up. Calls it Toad Spit Stout,” Lee said. “Says it’s all organic, local grain, all that highbrow shit you yuppies deem important. Figured it’d be right up your alley.”

“Hey, champ, what was up with you and Kristen?” Scott interrupted. He had a drumstick in his hand and his lips were covered in grease and barbecue sauce and he spoke with a mouthful of chicken. Harper dismissed him with a sneer.

“He didn’t get some of that fine young ass did he?” Scotty continued. He was staring at the young woman. “I mean, damn bro, that girl’s tits are so delicious. Fuck me! Tell me he didn’t.”

“Of course he did, rook,” Lee blasted. “But unlike you, my boy Rogers isn’t some clown, playing for attention. He’s the real fuckin’ deal. But obviously, no girl’s gonna just kiss and tell some jerkoff like me about it for fear he might cut her off. Fuck, greenhorn! That shit’s elementary. Maybe if your dumb ass started payin’ attention to the details you might get off the bench and into the game sometime.”

Eyes in the circle went wide with shock and mouths fell open at the ferociousness of Lee’s retort. There was a collective pause and then everyone broke into nervous laughter. Lee sipped at his beer. Scott roiled at the gibe.

“Who played this shit?” Gunnar asked, changing the subject.

He looked to where the music emanated from speakers tucked beneath the eave and glared at them as if they were purposefully trying to offend him. His freckled face screwed up in a scowl. He considered himself a music aficionado and presumed to have a great deal of knowledge about the subject, which manifested in a shameless sense of superiority about what was good and what wasn’t. He frowned at the pop hit standard playing overhead and scuttled toward the door.

“Fuckin’ rubes,” he muttered. He dragged Brady behind him by a sleeve. “Time for a music lesson, chilluns.”

Rogers nipped nonchalantly at the home brew as he watched the two wind their way through the rollicking crowd. The ale was good but the alcohol content was high. Rogers could feel it working on him almost immediately. When he turned back around he found that Scotty had retreated to the safety of the group gathered around the grill, leaving Lee as his lone companion. Rogers motioned toward an empty patio table. Lee plopped heavily onto its wooden bench and took a swig of beer.

“Whatever it was Kristen told you, nothing happened.”

Lee looked at him and shook his head.

“Thought about it though,” Rogers said.

“Shit, Dunn, you’re so full of bullshit, I should put you in my garden, grow a tomato. Girl like that? With you? Fuck. Never stood a chance. Why even try some horseshit like that with an old hand like me?”

Rogers stared at him bemused.

“What? What?” Lee asked in jest. He had a big teasing grin on his face but it faded and his expression turned somber and he leaned in toward Rogers. “You seriously gonna sit there and try and tell me that you’d actually have sex with that crazy bitch?”

“Well, no.”

“Exactly. So why are you wasting my time pretending like you would?”

Lee worked to remove a tin of chewing tobacco from the breast pocket of his western shirt. He opened the can of snuff and wedged a pinch of tobacco between his lip and gum and used his tongue to pack down the wad. He returned the tin to his pocket and washed down some loose grains of tobacco with a long pull from his beer.

“Now me, on the other hand, I’d pour the coal to that little train.”

“You know,” Rogers said. “If you had a little more respect for these girls, you wouldn’t have to be so bitter.”

“Shit, man, what are you talking about? These girls don’t want no respect, least of all from someone like me. Look at ‘em. They ain’t even got any respect for themselves.” Lee indicated the crowd with a sweep of his hand. “Hey bud, I didn’t break these fillies and I don’t make the rules. I’m just an old cowboy trying to keep up with the times.”

“Oh, here we go again,” Rogers said. He looked across the patio at the revelers. “Another treatise on the decline of western civilization.”

“Fuck western. I’m simply talking civilization, amigo. I don’t think anyone even knows what that fucking word means anymore, let alone what it takes to maintain it. Everybody just thinks they got it coming to them.”

“Do they not?”

“Fuck no. That’s the fuckin’ problem with this country. Everybody thinks they deserve the world just for being alive, and it’s fuckin’ bullshit.” He narrowed his eyes and looked at Rogers with grave intent. “You think you’d accomplish all that you have if you were out fuckin’ around with me and Yargus and the rest of these punters all the time? Because I’m here to tell you, you wouldn’t. We ain’t half the men you are, pardner, mostly ‘cause ain’t nobody expecting us to be.”

Rogers stared at his friend. Lee’s manner toward him had certainly changed. Never before would he have made such a comparison. Lee knew he struggled with the knowledge that there was a conspicuous difference between them, that he answered to some higher calling. He had always thought that they would be intimidated by his talent but suddenly Rogers realized that his success meant as just much to his friends as anyone. At least the real ones.

Lee squirmed in his seat and spit a stream of tobacco juice expertly through a crack in the deck’s wooden slats. He had spoken from the heart and shown his hand and now he was vulnerable. Intimacy was a skill his upbringing had not imbued him with.

“So fuck you,” he said, to fill the uneasy silence.

“Thanks, you big stud,” Rogers said. He could barely conceal the sincerity beneath the teasing rejoinder and his eyes sparkled with dew. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Well don’t go and tell any fuckin’ body. I got a hard enough time getting laid as it is without you going around telling everyone I’m fuckin’ sensitive.”

“Are you not?” Rogers grinned. Another sip of home brew numbed his tongue.

“Seriously?”

Rogers shook his head.

“You are completely full of it,” he said. “You know that, right?”

“Fuck pardner, you’re the one actin’ flaky. You feeling okay?” Lee leaned in again and appraised him. His concern was real. “You wanna get the hell out of here, take a booze cruise or something?”

“No, I am alright,” Rogers replied. To emphasize the point, he relaxed, settling back against the table. “Just have an odd feeling today. You hear about anything weird going on, in the news, or anything?”

“I heard Gunnar got laid,” Lee joked. “That’s pretty weird.”

The quip failed to get a response from Rogers. Lee cocked his head to one side and studied his friend for a moment.

“Sorry, bud,” he said. “I get enough of the news at school. Come summertime, I’m just the dumb ignorant hick everyone thinks I am.”

They sat in silence and stared into the darkness. Finally, Rogers broke the repose.

“You see Laura on your way through town?”

Lee didn’t answer. Instead he pulled from his beer until it was gone and set the empty down on the table.

“Beer wench,” he called after a passing girl. She paid him no mind and he turned back to Rogers. “Damn the help here anyway.”

He rose from his seat.

“Yeah, I saw her at the bowling alley, said she was on her way out.”

“You staying here tonight?” Rogers asked.

“Well, I ain’t fuckin’ drivin’. My truck’s too pretty to be some ditch ornament. Plus I just filled her up. Cost me my first born to do it. You seen the price of juice?”

“Yeah. It’s crazy.”

Rogers’ features softened and he rose to his feet as well. Above them, a classic disco beat drifted down from the speakers. Gunnar was moving across the veranda and gyrating madly and he bumped his groin against several unsuspecting girls. Lee bent over his ice chest and availed himself of another beer. Rogers took another sip of home brew, and together they entered the fray.