Raise a Little Hell

1: Make Room for the Man

They wheeled Jack in just after dusk, when the lights were low and the band had kicked into something rowdy enough to cover the sound of the oxygen tank clinking against the side of his chair. The crowd parted for him—not solemn, not weeping, just loud. Shouting his name. Raising glasses. Someone tossed a handful of glitter like he was a burlesque queen coming back from retirement. Someone else yelled, “He’s here! The old fuck made it!”

Jack raised his hand halfway, bent fingers crooked from arthritis and years of holding the wheel too long. His skin hung loose over muscle gone soft, but his eyes still cut like glass. He was wrapped in a black flannel robe that looked stolen from a retired outlaw and wore boots he hadn’t walked in for a year. His wife had pulled them on over his swollen feet that morning. Just for show.

The air inside the warehouse was thick with sweat, weed smoke, cologne, and cheap perfume. It smelled like his twenties and his fifties and last Tuesday all at once. Someone had rented the space from a cousin who owed a favor. Strings of mismatched lights drooped from scaffolding. Folding chairs were set up in a loose semicircle facing a low platform stage. The stage itself looked like it had been cobbled together by union dropouts with a death wish and a case of beer.

He liked it.

Jack turned to the nurse behind him—no scrubs, just jeans and a white t-shirt under a denim vest covered in band patches. The man was maybe thirty. Strong back, soft eyes. Jack didn’t remember his name and didn’t ask. He’d only be around one more night.

“Get me to the stage,” Jack said, voice like gravel soaked in bourbon.

“Right away.”

They rolled him through cheers and catcalls and clapping that wasn’t quite in sync, like no one wanted to get too coordinated in front of death. That would’ve felt dishonest.