Ned Lud

Israel has an unusual pastime. He likes to provoke fights in bars—specifically with bouncers. Not with patrons in general, not with pool sharks or irate drunks, but full-time bouncers, men carved out of concrete and protein powder, schooled in the art of pain management, i.e.: handing it out.

To the naked eye, it's madness. Israel's not a fighter. He's all elbows and alibis, bony and thin, with a tangled mess of wild hair and a snarl on his lip that announces he knows he'll never have to pay for what he's done. Because Israel's got Sam.

Sam, the cleanup crew. Sam, the storm after the spark.

Look, Israel doesn't give a damn how big the bouncer is. He doesn't care if the guy bench-presses Buicks or if he's got bridge-cable-sized arms. Israel will spill his drink "accidentally" on a muscle-bound man's boots, curse at his mother something obscene, and then—just when the bouncer is getting up—Israel's voice will crack out across the bar:

    "Sam! A little help here, buddy?"

That's the cue.

Sam doesn't scream. He's not dramatic. He doesn't strut, primp. But he moves with that terrible stealth of the old predators and combat soldiers. Sam hasn't come to make a show. He's come to end one.

The bouncer sees Sam, times some deep thing in his stance—perhaps it's the fact that his shoulders don't move at all, or the slow, merciless narrowing of his eyes—and begins to question the choices in his life.

But by this time, it's too late.

In the blink of an eye, Israel is hunched behind the jukebox feigning a limp, and Sam is sweeping the floor with whatever hapless mammoth happened to stand between his friend and the door. Sam does not yell. He does not taunt. He simply clears the way, the way an exterminator clears an overgrown insect infestation.

And when the sirens come, or better yet, the manager, Israel is gone, and Sam is wiping his hands on a bar rag, grinning at the bartender as if he just swapped a keg.

Why does Sam do it? Nobody knows. Maybe they were together in some forgotten war. Maybe Sam made a vow to Israel's dying father. Or maybe Sam just sees something in Israel that the rest of us don't—a flicker of loyalty, or desperation, or that strange, lost-boy thing that makes you want to keep him safe from a world he evidently doesn't understand.

Whatever it is, it's a dark forest ecosystem:

Israel pokes the bear.

    Sam lays the bear down.

    The bar resets.

Until next Friday.

Because Israel is never going to change. And Sam—well, Sam always appears. Israel.

Nobody in the community wants to drink with Sam or Israel anymore, everybody knows how they both are. It is not safe to drink with sociopaths. So it's just Israel and Sam against the whole world, until the wheels fall off and both are buried in Potter's Field. Neither sees any danger in their deep, sociopathic alienation.

Proverbs 26:17
"Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own."

– Proverbs 26:17 (NIV)

Sam and Israel: A Short History of Inciting and Mopping Up