"Need cash."
Rusty let out a raspy, phlegm-filled laugh, wiping down the bar with a rag that looked substantially dirtier than the counter itself. "You ain't going to find no loans in here tonight, brother. Just bad decisions." He paused, his eyes narrowing as he looked Clayton up and down. He nodded toward the center of the room. "Though, if you're feeling particularly suicidal tonight, there's always the open challenge."
Clayton followed Rusty's gaze through the haze of smoke.
In the center of the makeshift ring—a twenty-by-twenty square of interlocking blue foam mats held together by strips of silver duct tape—stood Trent Larson.
Trent was twenty-four years old, aggressively tanned, and smelled violently of aerosol body spray and unearned arrogance. He wore black grappling board shorts and had his hands tightly wrapped in white athletic tape. He was bouncing lightly on his toes, throwing lightning-fast, snapping jabs at the empty air. A sharp snap-snap echoed over the crowd as his punches broke the stagnant, humid air of the barn.
Trent ran a small martial arts gym two towns over. He held three amateur MMA belts from local promotions, sported a thick tribal tattoo wrapping around his right bicep, and possessed the kind of loud, brash confidence that made Clayton's stomach physically churn. Clayton wasn't nauseated with fear; he was gripped by a bone-deep, spiritual exhaustion. He knew men like Trent. He had seen them break when the world stopped playing by the rules of a referee.
"Three minutes!" Trent shouted to the crowd, his chest puffed out, his voice cracking slightly with the high of adrenaline. "Anyone lasts three minutes, you walk away with five hundred dollars cash! No gloves, submission, or knockout wins!"
Trent wasn't fighting for the money. The wad of bills Rusty held meant nothing to him. Trent was fighting for the dopamine hit, the primal rush of watching someone lesser fold under the speed of his hands. Clayton watched him throw a spinning hook kick. It was technically perfect, a beautiful display of flexibility and kinetic energy. The crowd of mechanics and mill workers collectively oohed in drunken appreciation.
Clayton stared down at Trent's feet. They were clean, pink, uncalloused. They were the feet of a man who fought exclusively on sanitized, padded mats under bright fluorescent lights, with a trained medical professional standing by to ensure nobody actually died.
"Five hundred," Clayton muttered, staring down into the rising bubbles of his club soda.
"Don't do it, James," Rusty warned, his tone dropping the jovial bartender act instantly. His voice grew quiet, serious. "That kid's broken two jaws this month. He's fast as a whip, and worse, he likes hurting people. It ain't worth the hospital bill."
Clayton closed his eyes. The familiar headache at the base of his skull began to throb, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He hated violence. He loathed it with every fiber of his being. He had spent his twenties drowning in an ocean of it. As a Navy SEAL officer, he hadn't just committed violence; he had orchestrated it, studied it, perfected it.
He had sent boys younger than Trent into pitch-black mud-brick compounds where the air smelled of cordite, blood, and voided bowels. He had spent the last eight years of his life trying to scrub that cold, calculating, lethal part of his brain out with backbreaking manual labor and absolute silence.
But the tractor needed an alternator. The wheat needed to be cut.
Clayton set the glass down. It made a dull, heavy thud on the rotting wood of the bar. He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the tight, coiled muscles there, hard as steel cables. He didn't feel heroic. He didn't feel like a champion stepping into the arena. He felt deeply, profoundly tired.
"Hold my drink, Rusty."
The crowd parted with a low murmur of confusion and scattered mocking laughter as Clayton stepped off the sticky floor and approached the edge of the mats. He didn't vault over the makeshift rope barrier. He didn't puff out his chest or glare at his opponent. He awkwardly lifted one stiff leg over the rope, then the other, looking exactly like an exhausted man stepping over a low wire fence to check on a stray, wandering calf.
Trent stopped his frantic shadowboxing. He dropped his taped hands to his hips, a cruel, mocking smirk cutting across his face. He looked Clayton up and down, taking in the muddy boots, the oil-stained Carhartt shirt, the graying hair at Clayton's temples, and the slight, weary stoop in his posture.
"You lost, old man?" Trent asked, his voice dripping with condescension.
The crowd snickered, leaning in closer.
"I heard five hundred," Clayton said. His voice barely carried over the whir of the industrial fans. He didn't look Trent in the eye. Instead, he looked down at the duct tape holding the blue mats together. It was peeling at the corners, gathering dirt and hair.
"You got a death wish, farmer?" Trent laughed, stepping aggressively closer. He invaded Clayton's personal space, trying to physically dominate the area, trying to force eye contact to establish dominance. Up close, Trent smelled overwhelmingly like spearmint chewing gum and raw, vibrating adrenaline. His pupils were blown wide with excitement. "I hit hard. I'm not going to go easy on you just because you got dirt on your jeans."