Welcome to Night Vale

Chapter 44

Jackie followed Troy to a bar. She knew what it was because it had a large sign saying BAR outside. It was in a wooden building that it shared with an insurance agency. The building itself looked old and worn but also like it might have been built recently to look old and worn.

Troy went inside, and Jackie followed after.

She couldn’t see him. The long bar was full even though the working day wasn’t quite over. All men, of course. She rolled her eyes. All the booths were full too, all men, all hunched over.

There was the gurgle of a tap. The bartender, whom she couldn’t see over the line of men at the bar, was pouring a beer. Maybe for a newcomer to the bar, one who had just walked in. She headed in that direction.

Her eyes were still grappling with the change from glaring sunlight to dim bar, and so she could not see what was happening when shouting started from the back of the bar.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Say it again.”

There was the thump of a person falling over. The men at the bar were turning with interest, and she noticed something odd about them, but it was lost as the fight in the back became more violent.

“I’ll say it as many times as I want.”

A few punches. A clatter of people running into chairs. More punches. The men were starting to get up and run to the back.

“If you break anything that belongs to the establishment, you will pay,” shouted the bartender. “Cash or jail time, means the same to me.”

But he too started to run to the back.

“Gentlemen, please,” he said.

He was blond.

Blond. That was what she had noticed. All the men in the bar were blond. Her eyes started to focus in on dim shapes. She followed the last of the running men to a small open area with a pool table and jukebox in the back.

There were two men on the floor, wrestling and flailing. Their faces were red. Both of them were Troy.

“Gentlemen, take this outside at once,” said the bartender.

“Ah, let them fight,” said one of the bystanders. “What else do we all have to do out here?”

She recognized both voices. The bartender was Troy. So was the bystander.

Her vision fully adjusted. She was surrounded by an enormous circle of Troys, watching the two Troys fight in the middle. Every person in the bar was Troy.

The crowd around her swayed in empathetic motion with the fighting men. She was jostled in the wave of Troys. As she tried to squeeze herself from the crowd, the group of alike men next to her lurched left and knocked her to the floor.

They were laughing and cheering and attempted but failed to step gingerly around her tender legs.

She grunted and cursed. One of the men made a barely attentive hand gesture toward her, but otherwise they ignored her, so, with great pain and exasperation, she lifted herself to her feet and edged her way behind the moving mass of men back to the exit.

She sagged against the wooden facade of the building. She wished she had Diane again. The pain in her left arm was making it hard to think or move. She worried that pain meds would cloud her mind, and so she paced herself with them. Anyway, the pain meds the hospital had given her were just a bag of wood chips, and so she doubted their effectiveness.

A blond man with a future shiner across his right eye staggered out of the bar. He stopped near Jackie and looked down the street, cursing under his breath.

“Hey,” Jackie said, pushing off the wall with her back in hopes of not looking so weak, although her pain and the shock of meeting Troy after everything she had learned about him made her sag right back against it. Without much practice to this point in her life, she tried, clumsily, to make casual adult conversation: “You smoke?”

“No, sorry,” he said, looking at her without recognition.

“Neither do I. Don’t know why I asked. I’m sorry. My name’s Jackie. What’s your name?”

“Troy.” His eyes narrowed. “How old are you? Your parents know you’re out at a bar?”

“My dad does.”

He looked out over the empty fields and low, brittle-grassed hills to the always busy 101 and the deepening sky of late dusk behind it, rubbing the back of his head vacantly. He looked concussed, but, more than that, he looked like he knew something he didn’t want to know.

“All right, kid. I got clocked and just needed some air. Gonna head back in and—”

“What’s the deal with everyone here? Why do you all look the same? Are you all named Troy? Do you know Diane Crayton?”

She had so much to ask, like when you run into a favorite actor or author. How do you say everything you’ve wanted to say to a person who has been a big part of your life and doesn’t know you at all?

“Diane,” Troy said, frowning nervously.

“Diane Crayton. From Night Vale. She’s raising your boy Josh.”

“Oh. Well.” Troy nodded, edging toward the door. “How is she?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” She let him hear the bitterness in her voice.

“Yeah,” he said, not exactly in response to what she said but just to make a sound.

“There’s dozens of you. Why doesn’t one of you go talk to her? Do you do anything but sit here and drink?”

“This is just who I am… um.”

“Jackie.”

“Jackie. I am who you see. I don’t know how to explain it. How to…” He grunted. “It’s hard, okay. It’s just a thing I deal with.”

The door to the bar opened and another Troy came out. And then several, if not all, of the Troys came out. They all stared sideways at Jackie.

“Whatever, it’s fine,” she said, not afraid of any one of her fathers, but nervous around so many.

“Of course it’s fine,” the Troy with the bruised eye said. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. I don’t know you. How’d you break your arm? Why does your dad let you drink? Why’re you bothering me about Diane?”

The Troys stepped forward. One of them said, “Is this girl bothering you?” Another one said, “Give a guy some room, lady.” And another one said, “Back off, guys.” And another one—and Jackie wondered if she imagined this one, it was so quiet—said, “Jackie?”

The crowd of Troys were all speaking at once to her, to each other. She backed up.

“Listen, man,” she said. “All of you… men. I just… all right. I gotta go.”

Her father was so many, and all of him did not know her. She limped away as quickly as she could. Once out of sight, she fell against the stained stucco wall of a store with a sign that said PLANTS, slumped and aching. None of him called after, and none of him followed her. One by one, all of him drifted back into the bar.