The Stranger

"Your name is Marion?! Marion? Idn't that a girl's name?" The yokel's accent was thick. He and his friends smelled like the wrong end of a brewery and looked worse. They were all laughing and nudging each other, and staring fixedly on the newcomer at the end of the bar.

At first the stranger moved not at all. Patsy Cline played softly on the juke box, and the neon lights hummed quietly. His face tightened under his stubble and sunglasses, and for a moment the bartender felt his spidey sense tingling. As bartenders go, this one had seen his fair share of drunken brawls, and he smelled something ugly coming. And then, just like that, the stranger's face softened into a congenial smile, and he took a small sip of his beer. He continued to sit and face straight ahead, looking at nothing and nobody but his beer.

"No sir." was all he said.

"Ha! Well, I'm sure it is. I remember seein' that movie with what's-his-name. You know that Robin Hood Thieving Prince-"

"Prince of Thieves. Kevin Costner." The Stranger supplied.

"Yeah! That's the one! Marian was his lady."

"Mm-hmm."

"Well, so that's you. You're Robin Hood's lady!" He punctuated his joke by howling with laughter.

"No sir." The Stranger only sipped his beer.

The Yokel was beginning to get annoyed at his own lack of ability to ruffle this weirdo. "What do you mean 'no sir.' You've got a sissy name, so I guess that makes you a sissy. Doesn't it, sissy?"

"No sir."

"Oh, and why is that?" The Yokel was starting to get uneasy. This Stranger was kind of eerily calm.

"I've got an 'o.'" was The Stranger's only reply.

The Yokel and his friends were startled and extremely puzzled by that answer. So much so that they almost forgot they were trying to pick a fight. "An 'o?' You've got an 'o.' That means what now?"

"Robin Hood's lady, as you so eloquently put it, had an 'A.' M - A - R - I - A - N. My name has an 'o' instead. Same as John Wayne.

"John Wayne?" Now The Yokel was completely lost. What the hell does John Wayne have to do with it.

"His real name was Marion. With an 'o.' Like me."

"That can't be right. John Wayne wadn't no sissy!" The Yokel was, coincidentally, a fanatical John Wayne fan and had all the man's movies memorized.

With that, the stranger took the last sip of his beer, and slowly lowered his glass. For the first time he removed his sunglasses. He turned and faced The Yokel, with deadly seriousness he spoke quietly "No. He wasn't."

Again, the bartender began to sense a storm brewing. He quickly removed all the glassware from the bar and laid one hand on the phone to call the Sheriff if needed. The Stranger and The Yokel stared each other down for a long moment. The Stranger looked deadly calm, while The Yokel betrayed a little uneasiness on his face. Nobody had ever stood up to him before, and in his favorite bar no less. And then something surprising happened.

The Yokel erupted into squeals of wheezing laughter. He whooped and hollered for a few seconds before his friends finally joined in. "You sure are a weirdo, Mr. Marion. But anybody who's a John Wayne fan, can't be all bad, right? Put 'er there." The Yokel extended a hand to shake.

The Stranger smiled an odd smile that sent the bartender's senses over the edge, but he couldn't move. He was paralyzed like a deer in headlights. The Stranger gripped The Yokel's hand and shook it for a moment. And then lightning fast he yanked The Yokel to him, grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed his face into the bar. He let go and stood unmoving, as The Yokel slid, already unconscious, off the bar and onto the floor.

The Stranger looked a challenge into the eyes of The Yokels cohorts, but they only looked away, afraid and shamed by it. Without so much as another word, The Stranger slapped a fifty dollar bill on the bar, gave the bartender a smile and a nod, and walked out into the night.