Truckload of Trouble, fiction by Tom Leins

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Rusty

headerleinsI hear the rat­tle of the tow-truck’s rust­ed chain before I see it roll down the rut­ted track and into view.

The last time I saw the Mul­li­gan broth­ers they hung a guy known as Blood Bub­ble from a hook by the roof of his mouth then beat him with crow­bars until his pale skin burst. They left him hang­ing there when they had fin­ished, and none of us had the nerve to drag him down. I still remem­ber the queasy feel­ing in my gut when the dead weight got too much and his brain­stem cracked. He lay crum­pled in the dirt like an old fast-food wrap­per, flu­ids turn­ing black in the after­noon sun. Not even the dogs went near him.

I nev­er even found out what he had done.

***

The Mul­li­gans climb out of the cab, and squint at me like I’m roadkill–unidentifiable at first glance. James is the old­er of the two by a few years, fleshy and swollen-look­ing. He cracks the knuck­les on his right hand, one at a time, and clears his throat.

“Lomax.”

I nod.

They start to laugh, although no one has said any­thing funny.

“Your broth­er around?”

I look over my shoul­der, half-heartedly.

“Nope.”

My fuckin’ broth­er. I couldn't care less about him and his clogged nee­dles, his brit­tle veins, his junkie scams.

“You gonna pay his debt?”

I glance around the yard at the rust­ed engine blocks and bro­ken-down machin­ery, then look back at James’s blood­shot eyes.

He smirks.

My mouth feels dry, but I spit in the dirt anyway.

“Nope.”

They laugh again. Loud­er than before.

I have no inten­tion of mak­ing good on my brother’s drug debts.

“You know, I was hop­ing you was gonna say that.”

I also have no inten­tion of tak­ing a beat­ing on his fuckin’ behalf.

They edge clos­er to me. Up close, James looks far old­er. Prison was evi­dent­ly bad for his health. He has a small cru­ci­fix dan­gling from his left ear­lobe, and gelled yel­low hair.

He smiles ful­ly, show­ing all of his remain­ing teeth, and fid­dles with his earring.

“Broth­ers, huh?”

***

James Mul­li­gan was incar­cer­at­ed in an adult facil­i­ty at the age of 14, after being found guilty of aggra­vat­ed rape. He cut the girl up pret­ty bad­ly after­ward with a bro­ken beer bot­tle, and left her crawl­ing around the Slop Shop park­ing lot, leak­ing blood.

Every­one in Tes­ta­ment agreed that he was rot­ten from birth, but Peter, his lit­tle brother–he was dif­fer­ent. He was sen­si­tive, or what pass­es for sen­si­tive in this town. A lit­tle slow, maybe, but like­able enough.

He trained along­side me at Shriek Watson’s Ghoul School. Back then we were like crabs in a bar­rel. Every one of us was des­per­ate to be the first boy out of Shriek’s cav­ernous basement.

It was 1987. The hottest sum­mer on record in Tes­ta­ment. Every­one in town want­ed to wres­tle for Fin­ger­fuck Flana­gan, in the Tes­ta­ment Wrestling Alliance, and most of us regret­ted it, one way or another.

Every few weeks Fin­ger­fuck came down to see Shriek and watch us fight. He sat on a fold­ing can­vas chair, smok­ing his cheap cig­ars, watch­ing us boys, slip­pery with sweat, jab­bing thumbs in eyes, rab­bit-punch­ing kid­neys and twist­ing scrotums–anything to get ahead.

I put a boy named Bur­racha­ga in hospital–just to impress Fin­ger­fuck. Tried to bounce him off the greasy brick­work and put a big old dent in his skull. Fin­ger­fuck cack­led with laugh­ter, pat­ted me on the back with a cal­lused hand, and told me I would go far in this town.

True to his word, he gave me my shot. 19-years-old. Mid-card at the ‘Slaugh­ter­house 4’ pay-per-view. Got my ass hand­ed to me by Tiny Dia­monds in a Russ­ian Chain Match. He choked me so hard with the chain that I shat myself, and I had to walk back through the jeer­ing crowd, legs and boots plas­tered with dehy­drat­ed yel­low shit.

It was three years before he offered me anoth­er fight. Bur­racha­ga. Fin­ger­fuck had inject­ed him with so much Metan­dienone he had swelled up like the fuckin’ Miche­lin Man. He beat me so bad I thought I was dead.

Pay­back, as they say, is a motherfucker.

***

Peter Mul­li­gan was at the Ghoul School the day I bust­ed Bur­racha­ga open. I remem­ber him vom­it­ing all over his scuffed blue wrestling boots and pass­ing out. Shriek’s wife revived him with smelling salts. He nev­er did make the grade, but he has evi­dent­ly tough­ened up a lot since.

He is eas­i­ly the larg­er of the two broth­ers. Well-built, but his gut hangs over his greasy jeans like a bag of grain. He cir­cles me, unla­belled work boots leav­ing heavy prints in the dirt.

I hold my hands up.

“Let me just take off my wed­ding ring first. I don’t want to dent it on your teeth.”

He grins ner­vous­ly at his broth­er, and James nods.

Fuck that.

I didn’t even take off my wed­ding ring when I fucked their cousin Nik­ki. She had a slight over­bite, and her pussy was con­stant­ly wet. Man, I would have gone to prison for that girl. Maybe not hard time, but I would have tak­en a jolt in the coun­ty jail for a sniff of her Fri­day night panties.

I make a show of tak­ing off my ring, and turn slow­ly towards my truck.

I have a long-bar­relled .38 under the seat.

I’m not even sure which one of these bas­tards I’m going to shoot, but the oth­er one will be pick­ing brains out of his hair all fuckin’ afternoon.

tomleinsTom Leins is a dis­graced ex-film crit­ic from Paign­ton, UK. His wrestling noir sto­ries have been pub­lished by the likes of Out of the Gut­ter Online, Spelk Fic­tion, Hor­ror Sleaze Trash, Five 2 One Mag­a­zine and Fried Chick­en & Cof­fee. Get your pound of flesh at http://​www​.thingstodoin​de​von​wheny​oure​dead​.word​press​.com.

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Scarecrow, fiction by Hilary Leftwich

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Rusty

Scare­crow

Dol­ly fakes her death by star­va­tion while the oth­ers at the table take sec­onds from the bowl of mashed pota­toes and slices of meat­loaf. Mama announces there’s no pie for dessert, just but­ter cook­ies. She has lit­tle tol­er­ance left after 20 years spent as a Civ­il War reen­act­ment soldier’s wife. Papa nev­er learned to clean his rifle right and blew half his scalp off, leav­ing Mama a wid­ow and me an orphan, in a sense. Mama spent more time crouch­ing her way through the woods with a shot­gun hunt­ing rab­bits than she did teach­ing me my lessons. 

Dol­ly is my only girl and she has grown into two girls. One has eat­en the oth­er. Sun­day sup­pers are usu­al­ly spent with great aunt Lila, cousin Ben­nie and his two boys, and occa­sion­al­ly Uncle Rick and Mort, his deaf and blind cock­er spaniel. I spend most of my time dur­ing the meal har­poon­ing Dol­ly to her seat, slap­ping her hands as they reach for the but­tered bread rolls, the game hens, and the choco­late pud­ding. My hus­band left me four years ago for a truck stop wait­ress who wears ear­rings in the shape of pineap­ples. Mama likes to sneak Dol­ly caramels from her knit­ting bag. Dol­ly stares at her with ador­ing eyes. The kind of stare I nev­er get. You’d think I was starv­ing her. I tell her, you’ll thank me for this when you grow up. That no man alive will mar­ry her in the state she’s in now: swollen and pink like a spoiled lap dog. No decent man, at least.

We nev­er had sweets in the house. Not until Papa blew his brains out all over a Kansas corn field. A month after his funer­al, Mama told me to get in the Chevy and we bounced our way down the grav­el road to the Pick and Save. She filled an entire gro­cery cart with clear­ance sale East­er can­dy. Break­fast was Cad­bury Crème Eggs melt­ed on top of but­ter rich pan­cakes. Lunch was Peeps placed pre­car­i­ous­ly amongst sweet pota­toes, their beaks pok­ing up like tiny moun­tain peaks. Sup­per was bare­ly a slice of meat fol­lowed by huge lumps of ice cream topped with choco­late cov­ered marsh­mal­low bun­nies. After months of eat­ing sug­ar my teeth ached every time I heard a can­dy wrap­per being opened. 

I tell Dol­ly, you would have such a pret­ty face if you just stopped stuff­ing your cake hole.

When every­one hoists them­selves out of their seats and retires to the sit­ting room, Dol­ly runs upstairs to the bath­room while Mama and I clear the table like we do every Sun­day. Sup­per plates and cups are gone in a sin­gle trip. I wait until Mama is bent over the sink, her hands cov­ered in lemon-scent­ed suds, to sneak into the side­board. I grab the bot­tle I hid there ear­li­er, tuck it inside my apron pock­et and step out­side on the porch into the night. I stare at the corn­field where the scare­crow hangs, a messy Christ fig­ure in a straw brimmed hat. The crows like to gath­er on him as a meet­ing place. Their talons grip and tear apart the fad­ed gar­ments that were once Papa’s old but­ton up shirt and trousers. They con­sid­er me a use­less threat as I take a long swig from the flask—Maker’s Mark, some­times Vodka–as they regard me. I hear Dol­ly cry­ing from the open win­dow upstairs and Mama hum­ming as she fin­ish­es up the dish­es. Uncle Rick is argu­ing with Great Aunt Lila over the cost of but­ter beans again. I lean against the side of the porch and take anoth­er swig, eye­ball the crows. They have a fun­ny way of pick­ing at each other’s feath­ers. They have a fun­ny way of caw­ing and squawk­ing at each oth­er also, like they’re hav­ing a squab­ble. Maybe they’re decid­ing to set­tle in for the night. Maybe they’ll decide to fly away, tak­ing that old scare­crow along with them. 

leftwichHillary Left­wich resides in Den­ver with her son. In her day jobs she has worked as a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, maid, and pin­up mod­el. She is the asso­ciate edi­tor for The Coni­um Review and Reader/Marketing Coör­di­na­tor for Vestal Review. Her writ­ing has been nom­i­nat­ed for a Push­cart and appears or is forth­com­ing in Hobart, Mat­ter Press, Whiskey­Pa­per, NANO Fic­tion, Mon­key­bi­cy­cle, Dogz­plot, Cease, Cows, Pure Slush, Flash​Fic​tion​.net, decomP Mag­a­zinE, Smoke­long Quarterly’s “Why Flash Fic­tion?” Series, NANO Fiction's "How I Write" and others.

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Law of the Whippoorwill, fiction by Cecile Dixon

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Rusty

In the dim, neon truck stop light, I stud­ied Gerald’s face. His jaw was clenched tight as he said, "Pharyl, these things are com­pli­cat­ed. It's not like work­ing at fuck­ing McDonald’s,” Ger­ald rolled the words off his tongue giv­ing sound to each let­ter. “You can't just quit."

Look­ing out over the emp­ty park­ing lot, I thought a long minute before I replied. "I nev­er give nobody a time or a date. It was just for a while, until I could get my shit togeth­er. Get the fuckin tax­es paid on my land.” My mouth sud­den­ly filled with bile and I spat it out the side win­dow of the car onto the ground. “Some peo­ple are startin to poke around in my busi­ness. Ask­ing ques­tions. Truth is, I'm get­ting skit­tish." Odds on my walk­ing away were slim.

"You just lay low. If it was me I'd let you walk away, but the man” Ger­ald paused, I guess to give me time to con­jure up the mon­ster-man. “He won't be hap­py. He doesn't like to lose earn­ers. When the man isn't hap­py, peo­ple end up hurt, hurt bad." 

"Tell your boss to give me a time, a date or an amount,” I said. “ Ask him how much shit I have to move to buy my free­dom. I climbed out of Gerald’s car car­ry­ing a black duf­fel bag. The same rou­tine we'd done for almost a year. “I want out." 

I threw the bag into the seat beside me as I climbed into the cab of my truck. Instead of pulling onto the high­way I exit­ed on the ser­vice road at the back of the lot. Ger­ald had said to lay low. Didn’t he know I was lay­ing as low as I could? I hadn't been in town for over a month. I didn't have a life. Just mov­ing dope and try­ing to keep the Kudzu from over tak­ing the farm. 

I knew Grand­pa had been strapped for cash the last few years of his life. Just not how bad. When Grand­ma got the can­cer, she hadn't want­ed to go to the nurs­ing home and Grand­pa promised her she could die at home, in the house where she'd raised my mama and then me. Grand­pa kept his word. He'd hired nurs­es from town to come in every day to give her med­i­cine and bathe her body as the can­cer ate it up.

After Grand­ma passed, Grand­pa just give up. Still, he nev­er said a word to me about the hard times he was hav­ing, not a word about debt. Seemed like Grand­ma took all his will to live with her. After I laid him in the ground, between Mama and Grand­ma, I went ram­bling through a shoe box of papers, look­ing for his bur­ial insur­ance pol­i­cy. Then I run across the papers that said Grand­pa owed the bank pert-nigh ten thou­sand dol­lars. To top it off, there were three years of back tax­es. I couldn't raise enough tobac­co to make a dent in the debt. I thought I'd found an easy, quick mon­ey scheme when I met Ger­ald. Grand­pa had been right when he told me noth­ing that's easy is worth having. 

I saw Lon­nie Earl's sher­iff cruis­er before I got to it. He was parked on the old rock quar­ry road at the foot of the moun­tain. Cut­ting my head­lights I pulled in next to him.

"Good evenin', Sher­iff. You wait­ing on me or tak­ing a nap?" I asked.

"Pharyl, don't go to get­tin' smart-assed with me. I got some news for you, Feds has got the road blocked about four mile up." He nod­ded his head toward the wind­ing moun­tain road. "They're loaded for bear. I think they're plan­ning on bring­ing you off the hill tonight."

I shook a cig­a­rette from my pack and lit it. "I appre­ci­ate the infor­ma­tion, but I don't right­ly under­stand why you, of all peo­ple, are telling me."

"Two rea­sons. First, your grand­pa was a good friend to me. I know he raised you right. Sec­ond is, they ain't no love between me and those Fed boys. They come in here act­ing like we're all a bunch of hill­bil­lies that don't know shit. I just decid­ed that I'm gonna throw a few mon­key wrench­es in their path." Lon­nie Earl's chuck­le sound­ed like a don­key bray­ing. "What them city boys don't under­stand is that I could take you in, and might still, but they got no busi­ness inter­fer­ing with ours. They's them and they's us. We take care of our own.” Lon­nie Earl paused and rolled his chew around inside his mouth. “The bitch of it is that they real­ly don't give a shit bout you. You're just small pota­toes. They want names that you can give. Why don’t you make it easy on both of us and sur­ren­der to me right now?" 

I swal­lowed hard and thought, Lord, I wish I could just say Gerald’s name and have this mess over, but I real­ly didn't want to find out what Gerald's boss would do if I sicced the Feds on him. I shook my head not trust­ing that “no” would make it around the lump in my throat. 

“Hell, you’re as mule-head­ed as your Grand­pap. Won’t take help when the hand is held out.” Lon­nie Earl start­ed the cruiser's motor and pulled out onto the road toward town, with­out turn­ing on his head­lights. I fol­lowed suit, with­out head­lights. Head­ing up the moun­tain instead. Toward trouble. 

I was born on this old hunch­backed Ken­tucky moun­tain. Spent all of my twen­ty ‑three years here, walked my first steps here and drank my first sip of water from a spring here. My grandpa's grand­pa set­tled this place with his broth­ers when they weren’t noth­ing much here except Injuns. There's a straight line run­ning across this moun­tain from me to Ire­land. I was the last one left, liv­ing on the land, and I didn't plan on being the Mur­phy that broke the line.

At the back­side of my grandpa's place, there's an old log road. If you didn't know it was there you'd nev­er be able to find it. Twen­ty years of sas­safras bush­es and kudzu have hid­den the open­ing, but I had walked it all my life, first hunt­ing with my grand­pa, and then hunt­ing alone, after he passed a year ago. The Feds thought they had my only route home blocked, but there was too much out­law hill-jack in my heart to ever get boxed in. They didn’t know bout the log road that con­nect­ed High­way Eighty-Nine to Mount Scratchum. Glanc­ing at my black bag co-pilot, I made a sharp left and head­ed up the brush-cov­ered log road. 

Limbs scraped against the win­dows of the truck and at times if it hadn't been for the ruts in in the road left by long ago log trucks, I wouldn't have known where I was. Grip­ping the wheel tight to keep my hands on it, I tried to steer the truck in the ruts, using the full moon as my only light. I had to get to the cave about a half-mile up the hill and stash the black bag before the Feds caught up with me. Get­ting caught with four kilos of coke wasn't going to happen.

The brush on the log road was get­ting thick­er, and some­how I had steered out of the ruts. Still run­ning with no lights I strained my eyes and I searched for some sign of the road. All of a sud­den, there was two giant oak trees smack-dab in front of me. No time to turn the truck away from the trees. I tried to maneu­ver it between them. Not enough space. I locked my elbows and gripped the wheel with all my strength. Met­al crunched as the truck came to a bone-jar­ring halt. The front quar­ter pan­els caved in with a loud metal­lic screech sound as the truck wedged between the trees. "Moth­er­fuckin son of a bitch." 

Jam­ming the gears into reverse I tried to back out. No luck. I shoved the gear, hard into first, jammed the gas ped­al. The truck rocked, but didn’t move. I con­tin­ued to jam the gears for­ward, then reverse, shov­ing the gas ped­al to the floor. Sweat burned my eye­balls. The engine roared, protest­ing my ill treat­ment. Black smoke boiled from the tailpipe. I couldn’t shake loose. If I wasn’t being fol­lowed I could get my chain­saw and whit­tle away at one of the trees, get loose. If they weren’t after me, I wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

I flipped open the glove box and shoved my Glock 19 into the waist of my jeans. As I climbed out of the truck, I grabbed the duf­fel bag and con­tin­ued up the hill on foot. The going was slow­er, but my sense of direc­tion was stronger. From my van­tage point on the hill, I could see a group of faint lights mov­ing around on the hill­side below me. The Feds must be look­ing for me with flash­lights. "Stu­pid ass­holes." Don't they know how far light car­ries on this hill?

I left the log road and stum­bled through the under­growth to the mouth of the cave. Using my cig­a­rette lighter, I searched around the wet lime­stone wall look­ing for a ledge to stash the duf­fel bag. Final­ly find­ing a crevice in the rock. I shoved the bag in as far as it would go.

OK, step one com­plete. Now I just had to fig­ure out what step two was. I lit a cig­a­rette and leaned against the damp cave wall to smoke and think. Lon­nie Earl was right. They's us and they's them. The Feds didn't have any stake in this mess. To them every­thing was black and white, right or wrong. I had to get back to town and turn myself in to Lon­nie Earl. I crushed out the cig­a­rette with my boot. It was going to be a long walk to town.

As I walked out of he mouth of the cave, I heard a loud rustling in the leaves. Drop­ping to a crouch I scanned the woods, look­ing for the source of the sound. After the dark­ness of the cave, the moon­light seemed as bright as day. To my left I caught a brief glimpse of a man just as he raised a pis­tol in his right hand up and fired a round. It hit the rock above my head and a spray of rock and lead frag­ments ripped through my shirt and embed­ded into the skin of my shoul­der. I fum­bled with the pis­tol in my waist­band. Before I could free it the man fired off a sec­ond round. Sparks danced off the rock beside my head.

Final­ly free­ing the pis­tol from my jeans, I aimed and fired two rounds off quick­ly in the man's direc­tion. I guess my night vision or aim was a lit­tle bet­ter than his because he screamed as he crashed into the under­brush. I dived behind a big log and lis­tened. I could hear him breath­ing heav­i­ly. Each exhale was punc­tu­at­ed with a soft moan. He wasn't moving.

I called out, "Don't shoot. I'm com­ing out. If you shoot me, we'll both die here on this hill­side. It's a lose-lose sit­u­a­tion." As I began cau­tious­ly scoot­ing toward the end of the log, I paused, lis­tened, still just the ragged, moan­ing breath­ing. I half-stood and began inch­ing my way toward the sound. The toe of my boot con­nect­ed with some­thing hard in the for­est leaf bed. It was his weapon. I picked up the Sig and shoved it into my pock­et. Once again I strained my eyes, search­ing the under­brush. He was lay­ing about fif­teen feet away, tan­gled in leaves and grapevines. Even with just the moon for light, I could see blood splat­ter on the leaves and in the spot where his kneecap should have been was a big hole that spurt­ed blood in time with his heartbeat.

Keep­ing my pis­tol aimed at his head, I watched as he weak­ly fum­bled in his jack­et pock­et and pulled out a shield. I couldn’t make out the words, but I could see the let­ters DEA engraved on it. "You shoot-hap­py moth­er­fuck­er, you just want­ed me dead. I guess things didn't work out like you planned." 

I tried to hold the Glock steady as I pulled my belt free of its loops. I threw the belt onto his bel­ly. "Put this around your leg, pull it tight, and when I get to town, I'll send some­body for you." I watched as he strug­gled to stop the flow of blood with my belt. "Hang in there. Somebody'll come for you,” I repeat­ed, even though he knew I was lying. We both knew that he'd bleed out before I would get help to him. 

I turned and start­ed mak­ing my way back down the hill. I could hear the man grunt­ing as he strug­gled with the belt. I could no longer see the dim lights. They must have wound on around the hill. That would explain why the man's bud­dies hadn't come run­ning at the sound of gun­fire. The hill must have muf­fled the shots, just like it now muf­fled their lights. I would walk about fifty yards then pause, lis­ten­ing, for the sound of any­one in the brush. 

Occa­sion­al­ly when I'd stop I'd hear the rus­tle of small ani­mals in the leaves, then a Whip­poor­will began his lone­some cry far off in the deep trees. It trilled its sad cry, “Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, “the sound close, but just out of reach. A mem­o­ry flashed in my mind, my grand­pa and me coon hunt­ing, late at night, in almost this exact spot. My Grand­pa told me once that the Injuns said that the Whip­poor­will was the spir­it of the dead call­ing out to the liv­ing. Let­ting them know the dead was watch­ing over them.

I had come up on this hill tonight a dope mule, and I was walk­ing down a mur­der­er. I want­ed to howl at the dark sky, "I ain't no mur­der­er." It sure wasn't what my grand­pa want­ed when he left me this piece of dirt, along with all its debt and back tax­es. Until that bird began to sing, I thought Grand­pa meant for me to hold onto this land any way I could, but now I was begin­ning to under­stand that he want­ed me to not only sur­vive, but to thrive. He left me the land so I'd be ground­ed, to have some­thing to work for. The debt he couldn't help.

I turned around and head­ed back toward the cave, not lis­ten­ing for sound nor try­ing to be qui­et. As I stum­bled through the brush, I real­ized that I was more impor­tant to Grand­pa than a piece of dirt. Just own­ing a piece of land didn't mean noth­ing if you didn't have fam­i­ly around you. It didn't mean noth­ing if you had lost the part of your­self that was a human being. I pulled the two pis­tols out of my jeans and threw them hard as I could into the brush.

When I reached the DEA agent, he was pale and sweaty, but still breathing. 

"This is going to hurt, but I have to stop the bleed­ing,” I said as I pulled with all my might, cinch­ing the belt tight around his wound­ed leg. He cried out with pain, but the bleed­ing slowed to an ooze. I had to get him to help as quick as I could. Damn, if I hadn't got the truck stuck.…..If I hadn't jammed the truck into the trees, I wouldn't be here right now, try­ing to save the man I'd put a bul­let into. I was going to have to car­ry him off the hill. I'd car­ried gut­ted deer down before. I'd car­ry him in the same way, slung over my shoul­ders. If I could car­ry a deer, I could car­ry a man. 

Drop­ping to my knee I tugged his body into my arms. Sticky, thick blood oozed from under the belt and ran onto my hands. The Agent’s eyes were glazed, but he looked direct­ly at me just before I grunt­ed with every­thing in me and hoist­ed him onto my shoulders. 

He groaned weak­ly. A man, a dead-weight man, is a lot heav­ier than a gut­ted deer. The mus­cles in my legs quiv­ered as I strug­gled to rise to stand­ing. He groaned and I grunt­ed as I heaved myself to my feet. Brac­ing his injured leg against my chest, I tried to stop the stream of blood with my body. I stag­gered and stum­bled down the hill. The old log road would be eas­i­er walk­ing, we need­ed to get off the hill fast and the fastest route was straight down, through the underbrush.

With each step I stum­bled, my feet tan­gled in saw bri­ars. I cursed and prayed when I tripped over half-rot­ten tree limbs. "Please, God, don't let me be a mur­der­er." I wasn't pray­ing for the man's life. I was pray­ing for myself. With every blun­der­ing step, I repeat­ed my prayer. My right foot sunk into a deep hole and I crashed for­ward onto my face. As I fell, I dropped the man. He thud­ded to the ground and rolled for­ward about three feet with­out mak­ing a sound. I lay there, suck­ing air into my lungs around the leaves that now filled my mouth. With each breath I tast­ed the earthy-cop­per taste of the agent’s blood. My ankle throbbed. Stand­ing slow­ly I test­ed my weight on it. Painful, but not broken. 

I limped over to the agent and as I searched his neck with my fin­gers for signs of life he opened his eyes and in a weak voice whis­pered, "Thank you."

Now I prayed, "God, don't let this man die."

I once again hoist­ed my bur­den onto my shoul­ders and began strug­gling on down the hill. Just as the lights from the Feds' cars came into view, my boots became tan­gled in vines and leaves and I tripped, once again falling, dump­ing the agent into the tan­gle of kudzu vines.

The agents stand­ing by their parked cars grabbed their lights to see the cause of the noise, the dark­ness was pen­e­trat­ed by beams of light from their high-pow­ered flash­lights. Sud­den­ly the hill was lit up like a city street. I held my hands in front of my eyes to shield them from the blind­ing light as I strug­gled to my feet.

"Down on the ground! Get your fuck­ing hands behind your back! Down on the ground or we'll shoot!" Ten voic­es yelled at the same time. Then the dis­tinct clack­ing of a pump shot­gun being racked. Quick­ly, I dropped to the ground. I didn't want to hear the next sound. 

Before I could get my hands behind me, a boot­ed foot stomped into the mid­dle of my back, forc­ing all the air out of my lungs. I coughed and sput­tered, as hand­cuffs were clamped tight­ly onto my wrists. Prac­ticed hands pat­ted down both sides of my body and tugged my wal­let free of my back pocket.

"We got him! Boys, meet Pharyl Mur­phy,” said the smart-ass with my bill­fold. “In the flesh. He's not a ghost after all." 

Rough hands pulled me to my feet and as I was shoved on down the hill, I saw men gath­ered around the agent. He wasn't dead. They wouldn’t be mov­ing so fast just to haul a body off the hill. Thank the Lord, he wasn’t dead, at least not yet. With­out much cer­e­mo­ny, one of the agents read me my rights and threw me into the back of an unmarked patrol car. He leaned against the side of the car rest­ing his hand on his holster.

"Man, is that guy going to be ok?" I asked.

"Shut the fuck up,” the agent growled. 

I leaned back in the seat and tried to get a glimpse of the man in the unsteady flash­light beams on the hill. I could only see the move­ment of arms and legs. It wasn’t long before I heard the whine of sirens com­ing up the mountain.

When the ambu­lance pulled up to the base of the hill, I was sur­prised to see Lon­nie Earl park his cruis­er behind it. He fol­lowed the para­medics up into the brush, and it seemed like an awful long time passed before he fol­lowed the medics car­ry­ing the cot back down. As they quick­ly loaded the man into the back of the ambu­lance, I caught a par­tial look at his pale face. He appeared to moan as one of the ambu­lance boys stuck a nee­dle in his arm. He was still alive. I might be a shoot­er, but I weren’t no killer. As I leaned back in the seat I became aware of the hand­cuffs dig­ging into my wrists and the throb­bing in my ankle. He was alive, and so was I. 

"Can I have a word with your pris­on­er?" Lon­nie Earl asked the agent who was guard­ing me.

"Guess it won't hurt noth­ing. As long as I'm lis­ten­ing,” the agent replied.

"You hurt?" Lon­nie Earl asked as he stuck his head through the car's front window.

"I’m all right. Is that oth­er fel­low going to make it?"

"Looks like he lost a lot of blood,” Lon­nie Earl nod­ded toward my shirt, which was stiff with the agent's dry­ing blood. “And most of its on you." 

"I guess it’s all on me."

"Son, keep your mouth shut, and I’ll see you in the morn­ing. Nothing’s going to get set­tled on this hill tonight.” Lon­nie Earl stood, rapped the side of the car with his knuck­les and walked slow­ly back to his cruis­er. Some­where far up the hill­side the whip­poor­will wailed a sad song.

 

dixonCecile Dixon is a retired ED nurse, who has returned home, to her beloved Ken­tucky hills to pur­sue her writ­ing. She holds an MFA from Blue­grass Writ­ers Stu­dio and her
work has appeared in Trib­u­taries, The Dead Mule, Pine Moun­tain Sand and Grav­el and KY Her­sto­ry Anthologies.

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Fiend's Last Job, fiction by Matt Phillips

Posted on August 13, 2016 by Rusty

One

You do this job long enough, and you get so you want an audi­ence; it’s not van­i­ty, but a vague notion that you’re not appre­ci­at­ed. If a lit­tle old wife watch­es you smash her hus­band’s hand to pieces with a sledge­ham­mer, then you know it happened—her screams and tears and vom­it make the whole thing real. Oh, there’s always the mon­ey. But I reached a point along about my for­ties when I stopped car­ing for the cash. I need enough for a steak din­ner and a night’s worth of Rolling Rock; sim­ple tastes keep me hap­py; I nev­er did latch onto fan­cy pleasures.

When I got the final call from cor­po­rate, I was lay­ing in a lop­sided motel bed on the out­skirts of Blythe. That’s a lit­tle old Cal­i­for­nia town halfway between Los Ange­les and Phoenix; I still had dirt beneath my fin­ger­nails from the night before, and fresh blis­ters shone plump on my palms. The tem­per­a­ture was 110 degrees—faulty air con­di­tion­er in the room—and my cell­phone stuck to my ear when I answered it. “It’s Fiend here, you got me on a day off.”

“You already fin­ished that oth­er job, huh?”

The voice—I knew this one—had a whis­tle to it, like when a guy gets a few teeth knocked out and has to tell the sto­ry before he’s ready.

I said, “Fin­ished late last night. Already called it in.” What you do is leave a mes­sage when you fin­ish a job. They send you the rest of the mon­ey in the post, or you can pick it up when you’re back in town.

“I just got here,” the voice said. “Hadn’t heard, but—”

“Is Fair­man in?”

“No, not today. You want to leave a mes­sage?”

“Tell him he owes me four hun­dred from the Mon­day night game. I’ll go dou­ble or noth­ing if he wants.”

“You can’t call him?”

“I don’t have his num­ber, in case.”

“Right,” the voice said. “Right. I’ll tell him when I see him. Look, I’m sor­ry about get­ting you so soon after anoth­er job. It’s just, there’s a thing that came up and you’re clos­est.”

I switched the cell­phone to my oth­er ear and let sweat build up on that side. I thought about the blue pool out­side, how it was sur­round­ed by sun-bleached lawn chairs and a few rain­bow-col­ored umbrel­las. A cou­ple beers and a swim, that was next for me. “Some­thing in Phoenix?’

“No, Blythe—that’s where you stayed, right?”

“Out­side of there, but I’m close.”

The voice explained that there was a lady who ran a dry clean­ing ser­vice in the busi­ness dis­trict. This lady need­ed help with a meet­ing, some­thing about a deliv­ery from lit­tle old Mex­i­co. I imag­ined it was car­tel busi­ness, had the drug trade writ­ten all over it, but I guessed I could stand there and look pret­ty (and tough) for twen­ty minutes.

“What time’s she need me?”

“If you could get over there around six, I bet she’d be hap­py. She’ll pay you as soon as it’s done. You want me to put the pay from yes­ter­day in the mail, send it to the PO Box?”

Part of me want­ed to run up to Laugh­lin and spend a few days in one of those riv­er casi­nos; I liked the black­jack tables. “Tell you what: Split it in half and send that. Keep the rest in the bank for me. I may run up to Laugh­lin for a day or two.”

The voice said, “Right, save some cash for when you get back. I’ll get it in the mail, should get to you day after tomor­row.”

“That’s fine.”

“You don’t mind the wait?”

“Fine with me. I like the heat.”

Two

You dri­ve more than any­thing in this pro­fes­sion. That, or you sit in a car and wait for some­thing to hap­pen, or you wait for some­body to call you, or you wait for so-and-so or who­ev­er to walk out of this or that place. What it meant was a pinched nerve in my low­er back; that evening, after my swim, I did some full ham­string stretch­es and a few deep squats before I climbed into the Buick. I didn’t have a long drive—ten min­utes or so—but over the decades I learned that dis­ci­pline kept a habit fresh, and that’s about as much as you can con­trol in this life. Unless you have a gun in your hand; I car­ried a gun myself, but it wasn’t some­thing I used often. Like any­one, I waved it around when I had to, but I nev­er used a gun when my sledge­ham­mer would do. My grandfather—may God rest his eter­nal soul—taught me to use the least of tools for any job; that helps you make sure to put your own grit into it. After all, there’s very lit­tle a bul­let can do that a ham­mer and a few nails can’t. You just have to get clos­er, that’s all.

As I drove, the sun glared eye­like over the high­way, a scalpel-thin strip that ran into knuck­led desert-scape. I’d run that stretch from Blythe to Phoenix more times than I want­ed to count. The way to get through it is sim­ple: You put your sun­glass­es over your eyes and latch one hand onto the steer­ing wheel. I thanked God the voice didn’t ask me to run to Phoenix.

It wasn’t far from my motel to the Blythe busi­ness dis­trict. I got off at the sec­ond exit, turned right, and found park­ing along the street near a bil­liards hall. Out the dusty wind­shield, I marked the dry clean­ing ser­vice at the next inter­sec­tion. It sat on the street cor­ner, a fad­ed blue build­ing with a Native Amer­i­can mur­al on one side; the mur­al showed a war­rior crouched against a slit of moon. In one hand, he held a long wil­low stick that curved at the end. I noticed he was scratch­ing a line in the desert sand and, behind the line, a blue cloud came after it like water. Wrought-iron cov­ered the build­ing’s win­dows like prison bars. I watched for fif­teen min­utes. That was anoth­er thing all the years taught me: Watch before you run into some­thing, even if the cor­po­ra­tion sets the job up for you.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sus­pect some­thing odd with this job. I was get­ting up there; mid-fifties put me on the out­side edge of pro­duc­tive, and I knew that Scrub­ber Joe had been put town before Christ­mas. Nobody knew why, but I had this itch inside me that said it was age.

Maybe it was time for me? No—I was still gran­ite when it came to dif­fi­cult jobs, and I always came back with what the cor­po­ra­tion want­ed. Here though, the chance for a drug angle made me uneasy. Most times, my gigs had to do with gam­blers. As a heavy gam­bler myself, I knew when a man was lying, when he had the mon­ey, and when he didn’t. I also knew—call it instinct—when a per­son could get the mon­ey. I carved out my niche, as they say.

Care­ful, Fiend, I remind­ed myself, care­ful with this one.

I left the car unlocked and crossed the street toward the blue build­ing. Traf­fic was light and the sun began its low sweep into the moun­tains. Shad­ows ran from the build­ings behind me. I stopped and scanned the street; I was pret­ty sure nobody was watch­ing the build­ing. Maybe the meet was some­where else.

I reached the build­ing and entered. I kept one hand close to my right leg; I had a small pis­tol strapped to my ankle, a pro­fes­sion­al obligation—I said before, I didn’t plan on using the gun. It was cool inside the build­ing. There was a counter and cash machine in front, a spot to hang gar­ments off to one side and, behind that, a snake-look­ing machine that rotat­ed the clothes when you pushed a but­ton. I called to the silence: “Any­body here?”

“Back here.” A woman’s voice—not old—with a smok­er’s edge.

I moved through col­ored dress­es hang­ing in plas­tic bags and walked past the snake-machine. It was full with clothes, all kinds of col­ors: Coats, dress­es, but­ton-downs, slacks, women’s blous­es. “Where are you?”

“Back here.”

I fol­lowed the voice into a dingy office with an old desk. Receipts were pinned to the wall in bunch­es and a square-top com­put­er sat on the desk. A wet soap smell filled the build­ing, but it was strongest in the office. There was a small woman with long dark hair in a chair. She stood and held out her hand.

I shook it. “They call me Fiend.”

“Fiend is pret­ty close to friend,” she said. “I’m Rosa.”

“Hey, Rosa.” She was quite beau­ti­ful with soft brown eyes—man, those eyes!—and a cof­fee com­plex­ion. A mem­o­ry slipped into my head: I saw a young girl with those same eyes hunched in a dark clos­et; I saw my own hands reach for her—I pushed the mem­o­ry back where it belonged. “We doing this here, or some­where else?” I leaned against the door­way and stud­ied my dirty fingernails.

She cleared her throat and sank into the chair. She swiveled to a beige file cab­i­net and opened a bot­tom draw­er; there was an upend­ed lock­box in the draw­er and she dialed in the com­bi­na­tion. “Across the street,” she said, “in the pool hall. Did you see it?”

“Sure, I saw it when I came in.”

The lock­box opened and Rosa scooped fif­teen fat bun­dles of cash into a can­vas shop­ping bag. The bills were well-worn twen­ties; I knew it must be street mon­ey. Okay, so she’s pay­ing some­body for some­thing. A debt, maybe.

Rosa turned to me and scratched one cheek. “Thanks for com­ing, Friend.”

“Is there any­thing I should know before we go in there?”

She lift­ed her eye­brows and I had that same feel­ing as before; those eyes are famil­iar, I thought. Could I have seen her before, on anoth­er job? No, there’s no way in hell. I’d remem­ber a woman like her. I remem­bered most peo­ple. That was part of the job.

“Do you have a gun?”

“A pis­tol,” I said. “I hope not to use it.”

“You won’t. It’s just good to have. They may say angry things to you, but don’t take it as a threat—it’s just the way they are.”

“A car­tel?”

Her shoul­ders bobbed and she lift­ed the mon­ey bag from the desk. “It’s not drugs. I promise. A mon­ey exchange, that’s all.”

I bit a fin­ger­nail, hes­i­tat­ed, turned away from her. “Let’s get this over with. I got a medi­um rare steak wait­ing for me.”

Three

Stan­dard bil­liards hall: Dim light glar­ing over three rows of off-kil­ter, well-worn pool tables. A bar on the east side of the room, and a bro­ken mir­ror behind a row of cheap liquor bot­tles. Rosa nod­ded at the bar­tender and saun­tered through the tables. Against the far wall, I spot­ted a large shad­ow of a man—he’s big­ger than you, Fiend—and a small man with a lop­sided mus­tache and read­ing glass­es. I lin­gered a few feet behind as Rosa approached. Clos­er, I rec­og­nized the shad­ow; he leaned into a shard of light and his gap-toothed grin sur­prised me.

“Fair­man?” I grew con­scious of the pis­tol strapped to my ankle. How long for me to reach it? A sec­ond? Less? “What are you doing here?”

Rosa tossed the mon­ey bag onto a pool table; it dropped like cement mix.

The lit­tle man said, “Is it all there?”

“All fif­teen thou­sand, like we agreed.” Rosa tilt­ed one hip. “You want to count it?’

“What’s Fair­man doing here?” I moved my hand toward my ankle.

Fair­man said, “Don’t pull a gun, Fiend. You’ve made it this far.”

I hes­i­tat­ed, looked to Rosa. Those eyes again; she stared at me like a child. And then I had it. A child. I rec­og­nized those eyes and a mem­o­ry grabbed at my throat: That tiny girl in lit­tle old Gila. It had to be, what, twen­ty years ago? I remem­bered how I pulled her from a clos­et down there; it was in a safe house run by a coy­ote who called him­self Dag­ger, a hard-eyed son-of-a-gun from El Cen­tro. He held peo­ple he brought over hostage, kept them locked in the safe house until their fam­i­lies sent him more mon­ey. Every so often, in this job, a per­son gets what they deserve. Dag­ger got it, and I gave it to him. Nails in the kitchen table and—I’ll admit it—a bul­let for the road. But I found the girl there. I took her to the police sta­tion, dropped her off and, before she turned to look for me, I was doing nine­ty miles-per-hour on I‑8.

Some­times they come back, I thought. Rosa did.

The lit­tle man’s voice broke into my thoughts. “You’re out, Fiend.”

I looked at Fair­man. “Dou­ble or noth­ing next week?”

“Nope,” he said. “I won’t be see­ing you any­more. Not unless you talk.”

“He won’t.” Rosa stared at me, her brown eyes unwa­ver­ing. “Let’s go, Friend. It’s my turn to buy you a steak dinner—I know a place.”

I’m out, I thought. Rosa bought me my retire­ment. Lit­tle old Rosa. “But I got no mon­ey, no sav­ings. Not besides what I have on me, and from the job last night. How am I going to live when—”

“Push it if you want to, Fiend.” Fair­man stepped toward me, dipped a hand into his pock­et. “You’re an old man and there are two ways out. This,” he nod­ded at Rosa, “and the oth­er way.”

The hard way, I thought, and the worse way.

Lit­tle old Rosa. My, oh my.

Four

Out­side the bil­liards hall, beside my car, Rosa stud­ied me with her brown eyes. “What are you doing, friend?”

I popped the Buick’s trunk. “Fair­man owes me mon­ey.” I lift­ed my sledge­ham­mer, propped it on a shoul­der, and slammed the trunk lid. The clang sound­ed against the boule­vard’s light traf­fic. I squint­ed at Rosa and motioned to the bil­liards hall. “I need to go in there and take it from him.” And then, with a half-smile, I said: “I sure could use an audi­ence.”

mattphillipsMatt Phillips lives in San Diego. His books are REDBONE, BAD LUCK CITY, and THREE KINDS OF FOOL ( August 2016, from All Due Respect Books). More infor­ma­tion at: www​.mattphillip​swriter​.com

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Blue Lights, essay by Paul Crenshaw

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Rusty

When the cop pulled us over at close to 4 in the morn­ing, my drunk­en uncle said to let him do the talk­ing. The blue lights lit his face in the rearview mir­ror, and lat­er it would occur to me how much time we spend look­ing behind us, but I was too drunk and sick with wor­ry to won­der about any­thing then. 

He had wok­en me at one by kick­ing the foot of my bed after he’d snuck into my mother’s house. 

“Get up,” he whis­pered, “there’s beer to be drunk.” 

In the dark room he was a greater dark­ness. I was 14 at the time, thin as the light through the open win­dow. My voice was just deep­en­ing and here was my uncle want­i­ng to take me out into the night because he had bor­rowed his boss’s car, a Tur­bo Z that would hit 120 on the long stretch of high­way that took us toward town and some­where close to 140 when we passed the police sta­tion on our way home. 

I did let him do the talk­ing, both when the cop leered out­side the win­dow and when he coaxed me out of the com­fort of my bed. I got dressed in the dark while he stood in the hall hop­ing my moth­er didn’t hear, and we went out whis­per­ing, him telling me how fast the car would go and how much beer he had. He was 27, with a slim black mus­tache like the one I wished I could grow and black hair feath­ered back, my youngest uncle whom I adored because of times like these, because at that age I already had some­thing swim­ming in my blood­stream like the alco­hol I was soon to be suck­ing down, some pre­dis­po­si­tion for the dark hours. I knew where the night was headed. 

My uncle fold­ed him­self into the small car and we screamed up to sev­en­ty before we cleared my street. Near the high­way we hit a small hill so hard we came off the ground and spilled our already-opened beers when we land­ed, swerv­ing, my uncle say­ing shit and fuck before he final­ly right­ed us. When he had the car under con­trol he down­shift­ed and popped the clutch and then we real­ly began to fly. It was a move­ment toward who I would become, a man more like my uncle, dri­ving fast and drink­ing hard and seek­ing sex in the small hours of the night before the woman who would even­tu­al­ly become my wife final­ly set­tled me down. 

We went through town past the dark­ened hous­es and cruised through the park­ing lots of cin­derblock bars. I didn’t know what we were look­ing for, only sus­pect­ed there was some­thing out there in the night we were drawn to. Already I knew there was some­thing wrong with me, some hole I’d try to fill with booze or anger or dis­re­gard. I could tell you what it was now, for I’ve spent many nights look­ing for the same thing under the spin­ning stars and have more often than not found it, but I knew noth­ing then. We drove through near­by towns where the streets har­bored yet a few teenagers and past yel­low-lit bars where the glow of cig­a­rettes in the park­ing lot looked like some pat­tern a per­son might parse to under­stand what it was that drew him out here. In the inte­ri­or light of a Ford pick­up a woman was going down on a man with his eyes rolled back in his head, and my uncle honked the horn to scare them before speed­ing off, but the woman nev­er stopped what she was doing nor did the man look up. It was the first sex I had ever seen and I was already half-drunk from my half-beer and so told my uncle, talk­ing tough, to get us some girls, man. 

At a gas sta­tion in a desert­ed town we ran into two girls who invit­ed us back to their house, where a beard­ed man a few years old­er than me and twice my size wel­comed us in by down­ing a beer in one long drink then throw­ing the can at the wall. He offered his hand, squeez­ing hard. Lat­er, when I was in the bed­room and awk­ward­ly push­ing inside the girl he had thought was his, he would scream at the locked door and tell me he was going to kill me, until my uncle told him to shut the fuck up. When we left he flexed his hands, decid­ing whether or not he could take my uncle and then me. The girl kissed me. She ran her tongue light­ly over my lips and I thought I was dead or in heav­en one. I didn’t want to go back home. I want­ed to live in the Tur­bo Z and lis­ten to REO Speed­wag­on unable to fight this feel­ing any­more, to stay drunk all my life, to nev­er look in the rear view mir­ror. I want­ed to stay inside the girl, her arch­ing her back to my young quick thrusts before she spun me over and climbed on top and licked my left nip­ple. I was numb from booze and sex and when I came I told her I loved her but now I don’t even remem­ber her name. 

Nor do I remem­ber the house. Or where we were or what town we were in or how long ago, real­ly, that night has been. These are just the par­tic­u­lars of the case. The facts of the mat­ter. They don’t real­ly tell you any­thing. My 27 year old uncle, feel­ing his youth slip­ping away, got his 14 year old nephew drunk and laid and I loved him for it. Just as I would love him the moment when, after the cops final­ly caught up and blue lights bloomed behind us, how for just a sec­ond I thought we might go, and keep going.

crenshawPaul Crenshaw’s sto­ries and essays have appeared or are forth­com­ing in Best Amer­i­can Essays, Best Amer­i­can Non­re­quired Read­ing, The Push­cart Prize, antholo­gies by W.W. Nor­ton and Houghton Mif­flin, Glim­mer Train, Eco­tone, North Amer­i­can Review and Brevi­ty, among oth­ers. He teach­es writ­ing and lit­er­a­ture at Elon University.

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Taking Grandma Home, fiction by Ginger Hamilton

Posted on August 7, 2016 by Rusty

There are two main sec­tions in the fam­i­ly ceme­tery, the unfor­tu­nate "sol­diers of the cause" and the "damned Yan­kees." Fac­tions of my kin­folk still don't speak to one anoth­er due to choic­es made dur­ing the War Between the States. This inabil­i­ty to agree is a clan trait.
The last time any of us from West Vir­ginia had been to the farm some twen­ty-two years before, Grand­ma and her sis­ters had a spat with not a word exchanged since. Two of Grandma's maid­en sis­ters still lived there because they couldn't agree on how to split the prop­er­ty. Israel and Pales­tine could give diplo­ma­cy lessons to our fam­i­ly. Because I loved my grand­ma and because she begged me, I agreed (with great reluc­tance) to take Grand­ma back to her child­hood home the sum­mer of 1985.

When I was a child, my fam­i­ly went to the farm dur­ing my breaks from school and it was heav­en­ly. My younger sis­ters, Sal­ly and Liz, and I twined daisy chains for hours and wore them as proud­ly as Mar­di Gras queens. Sal­ly gob­bled apples from the orchard lim­it­ed only by yel­low jack­ets and tum­my aches.

Even­tu­al­ly I'd tire of my sis­ters. A cool drink from the pump pre­sent­ed an excuse to sit with the women while they gos­siped, deft­ly par­ing away the walls of our neigh­bors' pri­vate lives along with the apple peels that fell from their razor-sharp knives. The few times a vehi­cle came up the dirt road, some­one would look up from her work and make an expla­na­tion for the dis­tur­bance: "That's old man Bryson's grand­son, car­ry­ing the grand­chil­dren in from Roanoke."

As a child I thought these women knew every­thing and every­one and lived an ide­al exis­tence there on that farm. But it had been twen­ty-two years since my last per­fect sum­mer on the farm, and now sev­en of us were trav­el­ing 168 miles crammed togeth­er in a sti­fling Lin­coln Con­ti­nen­tal, like hogs going to slaughter.

To take Grand­ma home.

A lot had changed since the three sis­ters' argu­ment back in 1963. Pres­i­dent Kennedy had been assas­si­nat­ed, man walked on the moon, Pop-Tarts were invent­ed, and the inter­state sys­tem had been com­plet­ed. Grand­pa was the tour guide on every trip to the "coun­try," as we called it and well before the Equal Rights Amend­ment was pro­posed, I had been taught nev­er to ques­tion his word. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, my grand­fa­ther had nev­er dri­ven the inter­state and even worse, I was unaware of this. Both my igno­rance and obe­di­ence proved regretful.

The Scan­di­na­vian region is famous for their saunas, but south­ern West Vir­ginia in July is an immense steam bath. A sauna is hot, but at least it's a dry heat. Late July in south­ern West Vir­ginia feels like a blis­ter­ing bar­ber tow­el on your face. The humid­i­ty takes your breath away with a make-you-wish-for-win­ter kind of hot. We took Grand­ma home dur­ing dog days in August, and August in south­ern West Vir­ginia makes July feel like Christmas.
This par­tic­u­lar August day, six of us were in my Daddy's brand-new Lin­coln Con­ti­nen­tal. It had sleek leather seats and total cli­mate con­trol. The air con­di­tion­er could form ice on the win­dows — prob­a­bly could have snowed inside if you want­ed. That car was bought for total lux­u­ry, for trav­el­ing in com­fort. I couldn't live with­out air con­di­tion­ing, but my grand­par­ents nev­er lived with it. Grand­pa didn't like air con­di­tion­ing — didn't trust it, swore it would lead to his death from pneu­mo­nia — so six of us trav­eled in Dad's new Lin­coln with our legs glued by per­spi­ra­tion to the leather seats so Grand­pa wouldn't die

from pneu­mo­nia.
Well, actu­al­ly, there was a sev­enth occu­pant — Grand­ma Vir­ginia. The heat nev­er did both­er Grandma.

Besides, she was cre­mat­ed three days before.

Grandpa's eye­sight was bad and he couldn't dri­ve any more. I was the only oth­er one in the fam­i­ly with a license, and I vol­un­teered to take Grand­ma home. My par­ents were divorced and I had to move Heav­en to talk Dad­dy into loan­ing me his car. I drove a Mer­cury Lynx and it just would not accom­mo­date six passengers.

Grand­pa was hor­ri­fied when I sug­gest­ed we put Grand­ma in the trunk, and so Grand­ma rode with­out a seat belt, on Sally's lap. I fig­ured no fur­ther harm would befall Grand­ma if we had an acci­dent. As I helped Grand­pa with his seat belt, I noticed a Folger's cof­fee can between his legs.

"You know I have trou­ble with my blad­der," he grumbled.

My joy at work­ing out the seat­ing arrange­ments drib­bled away with the men­tal image of Grand­pa fum­bling with his can and spilling its con­tents inside Daddy's new car.
Our jour­ney start­ed off with a qui­et, pleas­ant mood. It was ear­ly and the sun hadn't risen above the moun­tains yet. Mom, Sal­ly and Liz chat­ted hap­pi­ly and count­ed ani­mals in the fields we passed.  Grand­pa and the baby slept. It was the most peace­ful hour of the trip.

Soon the sun topped the moun­tains and warmth quick­ly added to the dis­com­fort of the already humid air. Mom low­ered her win­dow to allow some air move­ment but Sal­ly whined, "My hair's get­ting mussed and I just had it done!" I turned the cli­mate con­trol on and we got a moment's relief before Grand­pa hollered he was going to catch his death. Men­tion­ing the word "death" set Liz off keen­ing and wail­ing in a cry­ing jag, and Sal­ly glared at me. (Thank good­ness for rear view mir­rors or I nev­er would have known). The baby was mis­er­able and began to cry. Mom was mis­er­able and began to cry. I told Mom it would be all right. (I told the baby that it would be all right but she knew more than the rest of us and con­tin­ued to wail).

Sal­ly start­ed fool­ing with her hair and bumped Grandpa's arm with her elbow, hit­ting his Diet Coke can. Watch­ing Sal­ly glare at me in the rear view mir­ror, I caught a glimpse of the white-and-red can spin­ning wild­ly in mid-air before it fell and Grand­pa yelled "Land-a-Goshen!" Liz turned to see what was going on just as Sal­ly, try­ing to avoid the soda spew­ing from Grandpa's pop can, moved side­ways and caught Liz's eye with her elbow.

I was busy keep­ing the car in its lane at 65 mph and try­ing to watch the events in the back when Grand­pa called out, "Turn around, we've gone too far!" I exit­ed the inter­state at the next exit. As soon as I stopped, the fam­i­ly scram­bled out of that Lin­coln like clowns from a cir­cus car.

Mom checked Liz's eye while Liz wailed Sal­ly had "done it on pur­pose." Sal­ly climbed out, pat­ted her hair, and insist­ed it was Grandpa's fault. Mom declared Liz's eye was swollen and sure to bruise. I took the baby out of her seat and began rock­ing her (she had start­ed cry­ing again). Grand­pa strug­gled to get out of the back of the car and defend him­self against Sally's accusations.

Sud­den­ly it dawned on me the gen­uine­ly impor­tant issue was to clean the spilled soft drink so Dad wouldn't kill me when I returned his new car!

I thrust the baby into Sally's arms and dug furi­ous­ly through the dia­per bag for some­thing to clean the spill. Every­one was bick­er­ing on the left side of the car, so I ran around to the pas­sen­ger side. Real­iz­ing Liz was no longer hold­ing Grandma's ash­es, I peered inside and saw the box had tipped and now rest­ed with its lid open on the trans­mis­sion hump.

Grandma's ash­es spilled over into the well where Grandpa’s feet had been right before he kicked over the Folger’s can. The con­tents of the cof­fee can and the ash­es formed a murky sludge in the well. The Diet Coke can added a sur­re­al­is­tic cher­ry-on-top dash to the appalling scene.

I wasn't sure which was worse — the grue­some mix in the floor, or the rest of the fam­i­ly learn­ing what was in the floor. I hasti­ly right­ed the box.

I knew my father would kill me when I got home. I fig­ured my Grand­pa would keel over with heart fail­ure before we got to Dublin. Three funer­als in one week were two too many for any fam­i­ly, so I devised a plan.

"Why don't you-all go inside that restau­rant and get cleaned up and order some lunch," I sug­gest­ed, know­ing my fam­i­ly would nev­er turn down a chance to eat. "I need to clean the spill back here, and then I'll join you," I added, as they began to walk toward the building.

Sal­ly held the baby just a lit­tle too far away from her body to look nat­ur­al.  I had to smile. She was prob­a­bly con­cerned the baby would mess up her pantsuit some­how. Grand­pa huffed and puffed, try­ing to gain the lead from Sal­ly.  Mom com­fort­ed Liz, who was still hold­ing her eye and crying.

A lot of the ash­es were still in the box but I couldn't help won­der­ing what wasn't.  Shud­der­ing, I real­ized that line of think­ing wasn't ben­e­fi­cial and forced myself to detach and address the task at hand, and I cleaned the mess the best I could. Per­spi­ra­tion trick­led down my back as I entered the restaurant's ladies room.  With a silent apol­o­gy to Grand­ma and God, I rinsed out the Fol­ger cof­fee can, washed my hands thor­ough­ly, rinsed my face and joined the fam­i­ly at the table.

"Did you get it all cleaned up, Gee?" Mom asked.  Sal­ly looked espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in my answer.

"Yes, it's all cleaned up."

I wasn't hun­gry — guess it was the heat — so I sipped ice water while every­one else ate lunch.  When we got back to the car, Liz real­ized I'd left "Grand­ma" in the hot car by her­self and began to weep again.

Sal­ly snapped, "Hush up, Liz! Grand­ma nev­er mind­ed the heat one bit and I doubt she minds it now after being cre­mat­ed, for God's sake!"

Grand­pa pulled a ban­dana out of his pock­et and loud­ly blew his nose. Back to the car we traipsed. Every­one had set­tled down. Full bel­lies have that effect.

"Where's my pee can, Gee?  Don't wan­na for­get that," he added.  I set the cof­fee can between his feet and helped him with his seat belt.  Liz and Sal­ly refused to speak to one anoth­er or even ride beside each oth­er, so Liz and Mom got in the back seat, and Sal­ly climbed up front with the baby (who was hun­gry again by now). I began to nurse the baby and asked Grand­pa if we could turn the air con­di­tion­er on.

"Not unless you want me to catch my death," he told me again.

Con­sid­er­ing the trou­ble I'd gone through to pre­vent that very thing, I fig­ured we could endure with­out air con­di­tion­ing for a while longer.  As soon as the baby was fed, I used the last of the wet wipes to clean her, and we set off for Grandma's home place in Dublin, Virginia.

We hadn't trav­eled too far when I start­ed won­der­ing if we were going the right way.  Grand­pa was sure we'd shot past our exit while all the excite­ment was going on, and he told me to con­tin­ue back­track­ing.  I real­ly couldn't remem­ber so I exit­ed and stopped at a gas sta­tion. The atten­dant told me I need­ed to turn around and head the oth­er way for about thir­ty miles or so, and I'd see the Dublin exit.

Grand­pa refused to believe the man, say­ing, "He's just some dumb coun­try cuss, Gee.  He's prob'ly nev­er been ten miles from what­ev­er town it is he grew up in."  I reck­oned Grand­pa had been down to the farm hun­dreds of times, so he had to be right.

We con­tin­ued on our Grand­pa-direct­ed jour­ney until he saw a road sign that indi­cat­ed we were approach­ing the Wytheville/WV Turn­pike exit.

"Turn around, Gee, turn around," he grum­bled. "You're going the wrong way."

I knew bet­ter than to point out he was the one who insist­ed we go this way. We exit­ed at Fort Chiswell and head­ed back toward Dublin.  No one spoke. Even the baby was silent.

It was oppres­sive­ly air­less in the car. Start­ing to feel sick, I eased the win­dows open. Sal­ly didn't com­plain about her hair even though it had wilt­ed and was cling­ing for dear life to her sweaty red face. Mom stared silent­ly out the win­dow.  Liz had fall­en asleep lean­ing on Mom's shoul­der.  Grand­pa watched out his win­dow for a famil­iar land­mark. I start­ed to won­der what the tem­per­a­ture was inside the car, and if the heat could some­how damage

the leather upholstery.
"You've gone too far again, Gee!"  Grand­pa bel­lowed. Star­tled and con­fused at how I could pos­si­bly have missed the Dublin sign, I slowed down and got into the right-hand lane.

"Grand­pa, I didn't see a sign for the Dublin exit."

"You're fly­ing down this free­way so fast, nobody saw it.  But there was a sign say­ing Roanoke, and that's too far!"

In a split sec­ond I real­ized what had hap­pened. Hav­ing nev­er dri­ven the inter­state, when­ev­er Grand­pa saw the sign for Roanoke, he assumed we were about to reach Roanoke, so he thought we'd gone too far! I explained that to Grand­pa (and con­vinced him it was true), and we made pret­ty good time the rest of the way.  A trip that should have tak­en under three hours had turned into near­ly six, and we still had to scat­ter Grandma's ash­es and return home.

Grand­pa eas­i­ly rec­og­nized the right route once we got to Dublin and soon we were out in the coun­try. I pulled onto the wind­ing lane in the fam­i­ly ceme­tery beside the old Methodist church. The church looked just as I remem­bered it — well, maybe it had a fresh coat or two of white paint added since I was a child, and the men's and women's out­hous­es had been chained and pad­locked. The church doors were locked too, some­thing unimag­in­able when I was a child. Essen­tial­ly though, the church's appear­ance remained unchanged. It was as if we had been trans­port­ed back to 1963.

I found my great grand­par­ents' tomb­stones right next to the grav­el road.  We each spoke our part­ing ten­der words about Grand­ma and sang a few hymns.  Grandma's favorite song, "Car­ry Me Back to Old Vir­gin­ny," was sung as we scat­tered her ash­es.  Inter­est­ing­ly enough, this was the offi­cial state song of Vir­ginia until 1997 when it was declared the song emer­i­tus and a new song cho­sen.  I fig­ure the ref­er­ences to "Mas­sa" and "dark­ey" final­ly became too much for even the most tol­er­ant of black folks 130 years after the "War Between the States" end­ed. I imag­ined my great grand­par­ents there to joy­ful­ly greet Grand­ma as we sang the last lines:
"Soon we will meet on that bright and gold­en shore,
There we'll be hap­py and free from all sorrow,
There's where we'll meet and we'll nev­er part no more."

After prayers were said and tears were shed, we word­less­ly climbed back into the car. There were just six of us return­ing to West Vir­ginia. This was Grandma's last trip back home. Ash­es to ash­es, dust to dust, she was once again in the care of her par­ents and the land she'd grown up on and loved so well. I felt a qui­et sat­is­fac­tion for my role in com­plet­ing the cir­cle of her life here on earth.

I also felt a rum­bling in my belly.

And it wasn't a gen­tle rum­ble that nudged me and said "Hey, you for­got to eat," but a not-so-ear­ly warn­ing of impend­ing intesti­nal explo­sion. The hours of oppres­sive heat and pent-up stress hit my gut with the force of a train derail­ing. I had to go to the bath­room — now. Vivid images of pad­locked chains around the out­hous­es and locked church doors taunt­ed me. With star­tling clar­i­ty, I real­ized that we'd have to stop at the farmhouse.

Using rea­son is always point­less once my pig­head­ed rel­a­tives get set on a con­cept, and my futile attempt to use log­ic to sway my grand­fa­ther demon­strates what a state of pan­ic I was in. I blurt­ed "Grand­pa, we got­ta stop at the farm­house and tell Aunt Joyce and Aunt Ellie about Grand­ma before we go" in a des­per­ate bid not to reveal my intesti­nal situation.

"I for­bid you to go there, Gee.  Grand­ma hasn't spo­ken to those women in over twen­ty years, and I won't dis­re­spect her mem­o­ry by start­ing now."

"But Grand­pa," I plead­ed, "They don't have a phone and I can't call them and I have to use the bath­room — and I have to go now!"  When all else fails, tell the truth.

Grand­pa refused to go onto the porch once we got to the farm­house.  Mom, Liz and Sal­ly loy­al­ly remained in the car, and I raced across the spa­cious wrap-around porch and pound­ed on the front door.  After an inter­minable wait (dur­ing which my fear the sis­ters had gone into town for some­thing and I was strand­ed with no relief in sight threat­ened to become the last straw in my abil­i­ty to con­tain myself), two tiny shriv­eled old ladies peeked through a lacy cur­tain and stared at me curiously.

"Hel­lo, Aunt Joyce and Aunt Ellie" — I didn't know which was which.  "I'm Gee, Virginia's grand­daugh­ter from West Vir­ginia — you know, Lilly's daugh­ter?" I prayed they weren't hard of hear­ing so I didn't have to repeat myself. Time was indeed run­ning out. I just prayed noth­ing else did.

The sis­ters turned to look at one anoth­er in per­fect syn­chronic­i­ty like mechan­i­cal toy mice or mir­ror images. No word was spo­ken but some tele­path­ic agree­ment was reached, and the door opened.

"Come in, come in.  You're all grown up now, Gee.  How's Vir­ginia?" the mir­ror image on the left said.

Employ­ing what few diplo­mat­ic skills I pos­sess, I tried to con­vey the urgency I was feel­ing and said, "Oh my gosh, I hate to burst in and ask this, but my tummy's real upset and I need to use the bath­room."  By now I was bent over hold­ing my low­er bel­ly with both hands and squeez­ing my legs together.

"Right this way," said the mir­ror image on the right, indi­cat­ing the room to her left. Excus­ing myself, I dashed past the mir­ror sis­ters, ran through the bed­room and entered the kitchen.  I saw the toi­let through a door­way on the far side of the wall.  Relieved, I entered the bath­room, hur­ried­ly closed the door behind me and pulled the chain to turn on the over­head light. That's when I noticed the tub was full of pota­toes. Dis­be­liev­ing, I saw the sink was filled with apples.  Worst of all, there was no water what­so­ev­er in the toi­let bowl.

Pan­ick­ing and bewil­dered, I turned back to the kitchen. The mir­ror image sis­ters had caught up and were smil­ing at me.

"Um, where can I use the bath­room," I asked, hope­ful they could point to some secret place in the two-room farm­house I hadn't already seen. They looked at each oth­er simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, employ­ing that same secret tele­path­ic tim­ing, and the sis­ter on the left said, "Papa nev­er fin­ished hook­ing up the plumb­ing to the bath­room.  You can use the cham­ber pot," and she point­ed to a bed­side com­mode with a lid on it.  The right side sis­ter removed the cov­er with a grace­ful flour­ish that would put a French chef to shame, reveal­ing a banana peel at the bottom.

Thor­ough­ly defeat­ed, far past dis­com­fort and in actu­al pain now, I could wait no longer.  The mir­ror sis­ters were vir­tu­al strangers — I didn't even know which was Joyce and which was Ellie — but I knew I couldn't delay anoth­er sec­ond. I bare­ly sat down in time. This was tru­ly the worst moment of my life.  Here I sat in the most humil­i­at­ing sit­u­a­tion I'd ever been in, doing the most embar­rass­ing thing I'd ever done in front of anyone.

The mir­ror sis­ters calm­ly looked on as if I were only tying my shoe. "Where is Vir­ginia?" the left mir­ror sis­ter asked.

"Yes, how is she?" the right mir­ror sis­ter inquired.
Min­i­miz­ing my bod­i­ly nois­es, I won­dered what the eti­quette in such a sit­u­a­tion was.

Pant­i­ng, I thought out what to say.
"Well … Grand­ma has been very sick for a long time … and actu­al­ly … she passed away … I'm sor­ry … a few days ago."  The mir­ror sis­ters turned to look at one oth­er as calm­ly as if we were all sit­ting at the kitchen table drink­ing cider and I'd just said Grand­ma was in the car and would be right along directly.

"Where will she be buried?" the one on the left asked.

"Yes, where will she be buried?" the one on the right par­rot­ed. Oh, hell, I thought. It just keeps get­ting better.

They stood, patient­ly wait­ing for an answer.  I sat, patient­ly wait­ing for toi­let paper.

"Um, excuse me but where is the toi­let paper, please?"

"Oh, we keep it in the bed­room and bring it back and forth when we need to," Left Mir­ror Sis­ter answered. Right Mir­ror Sis­ter dis­ap­peared into the oth­er room and returned with the toi­let paper roll.

I had been wrong; that hadn't been the worst moment of my life.  It was get­ting worse. Lack­ing the nerve to ask them to leave at such a cru­cial time in break­ing the news, I per­formed the final humil­i­at­ing paper­work with an audi­ence bland­ly look­ing on, expec­tant­ly wait­ing for an answer.

"Well, Grand­ma want­ed to be cre­mat­ed. She asked me to scat­ter her ash­es on your par­ents' graves, and we just did that before I stopped here to inform you."

Both my jobs were done. Now all I had to do was craft small talk, wash my hands, and make my get-away. Once again, the plan was eas­i­er devel­oped than car­ried out.
The mir­ror sis­ters walked out to the car with me.  Mom and my sis­ters got out and the five women began talk­ing and weep­ing.  Grand­pa took a lit­tle longer to warm up, but even­tu­al­ly he too chat­ted with my great aunts.  He even knew which was Joyce and which was Ellie.

Aunt Ellie (Left Mir­ror Sis­ter) admired the baby and told me how much she looked like my Grand­ma Vir­ginia.  Grand­pa seemed to get along bet­ter with Aunt Joyce, and they moseyed down the lane to con­tin­ue their con­ver­sa­tion. The rest of us walked around the farm, lost in our own memories.

A lit­tle lat­er, we all went inside. Chairs mate­ri­al­ized and we sat around the rough kitchen table and con­tin­ued chat­ting. Every­one ate thick ham sand­wich­es pre­pared by Aunt Ellie while I nursed the baby. Grand­pa helped Aunt Joyce pull an ancient trunk out of the bed­room clos­et and we looked through fam­i­ly pho­tographs dat­ing back to the Civ­il War. Lis­ten­ing to sto­ries about all those dead rel­a­tives made me sad know­ing anoth­er had joined their ranks.

We hugged, kissed, promised to write one anoth­er and vis­it again soon. The West Vir­ginia branch of the fam­i­ly piled back into the car to return home.  Just before I backed down the dri­ve, I asked Aunt Joyce what the sis­ters' dis­agree­ment had been all those years ago.

"You know, Gee, I don't remember."

"Nei­ther do I," Aunt Ellie added.

It was dark by the time I got on the inter­state.  Each of us was exhaust­ed from the trip, the

heat and the emo­tion­al toll, and soon all my pas­sen­gers (except Grand­pa) were sleeping.

"Thank you, Gee, for what you did today."

"You're wel­come, Grand­pa. I was hon­ored to be able to do it."

"No, I mean bring­ing the fam­i­ly back togeth­er. Thank you for that."

"You're wel­come, Grand­pa. I love you."

"I love you too. I have a favor to ask."

"What's that, Grand­pa," I asked, a lit­tle ner­vous and hop­ing he didn't ask me to take some back coun­try road that I was sure to get lost on.

"When I go, do you promise to scat­ter my ash­es where Grandma's ash­es are?"

"On two conditions."

"What con­di­tions," he asked.

"One, that you don't try to give me any direc­tions on the way down. If you do, I swear my hand to God I'll throw your ash­es out on the interstate."

He laughed and agreed. "What's the oth­er condition?"

"That I can run the air con­di­tion­er and you won't com­plain about it, even if you do catch your death of pneumonia."

Grand­pa chuck­led, then gig­gled, then laughed till he had to wipe away tears with his old ban­dana. He was once again my ornery joke-lov­ing grand­fa­ther for the first time since Grand­ma passed away. Soon, he nod­ded off to sleep. I drove the rest of the way with­out once get­ting lost except in my own thoughts about fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships and how eas­i­ly rifts form for sil­ly reasons.

The next evening, I received an irate phone call from my Dad. He'd found the Diet Coke can under the front seat of the Lincoln.

"Dammit, Gee," he said, "I let you take my new car and I find a soda can under the seat.  The least you could have done was thrown it away! You are so irresponsible!"

Before I took Grand­ma home, I'd have respond­ed with an argu­ment about how respon­si­ble I'd been to clean every­thing else up with­out any­one even know­ing the ash­es had spilled. Before I took Grand­ma home, my right­eous indig­na­tion would've kicked in and I'd be offend­ed at my Dad's com­ments. But since I took Grand­ma home, I drew a deep breath, and sim­ply apologized.

hamiltongingerGin­ger Hamil­ton is a ninth-gen­er­a­tion Appalachi­an writ­ing from a dark hol­low in Cen­tral West Vir­ginia. More than a dozen diverse print antholo­gies fea­ture her work.

Recog­ni­tion for Hamilton's writ­ing includes: Grand Prize in The Bin­na­cle Third Annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Ultra-Short Sto­ry Com­pe­ti­tion, final­ist for the Fif­teenth Glass Woman Prize 2014, select­ed for AHWIR Homer Hickam's Mas­ter Class, and a final­ist in West Vir­ginia Fic­tion Com­pe­ti­tion 2015.

Fun Fact: Gin­ger Hamilton's sto­ry "Bring­ing Home the Bacon" is used in the cur­ricu­lum of a senior lev­el Com­put­er Sci­ence class (CS-475 Game Devel­op­ment) at West Vir­ginia Uni­ver­si­ty. It was also induct­ed into Fair­mont State University's Folk­life Cen­ter as a sto­ry which pre­serves tra­di­tion­al Appalachi­an her­itage (hog butchering).

 

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Bear Takes a Meeting (Trinity Ridge)

Posted on August 4, 2016 by Rusty

Our Com­plaints & Ques­tions Bureau
is based in the bot­tom of a dry well. We will
help you down there if you wish to file
a report on my asso­ciates’ conduct.
Which creek-bed is your favorite?
We’ll mud you in, blame acci­den­tal causes
if ever a fish­er­man snags on an ankle. It’s simple.
There’re zero mur­ders on the books in Trinity,
though dying strange ways trumps the totals we lose
to nat­ur­al old age. We’re the law they’ll call
to solve your mys­te­ri­ous disappearance.
That’s what hap­pens if once we think
you aren’t with the pro­gram. Nod twice
if you track my mean­ing. Promise silence
and the tape comes off. The ropes.
We nev­er had this friend­ly conversation.
Go on with your nor­mal day
and let's not talk again.

toddmercerTODD MERCER won the Dyer-Ives Kent Coun­ty Prize for Poet­ry in 2016, the Nation­al Writ­ers Series Poet­ry Prize for 2016, and the Grand Rapids Fes­ti­val of the Arts Flash Fic­tion Award for 2015. His dig­i­tal chap­book, Life-wish Main­te­nance, appeared at Right Hand Point­ing. Mercer's recent poet­ry and fic­tion appear in: Bartle­by Snopes, Blast Fur­nace, Cheap Pop, Eunoia Review, The Fib Review, Flash Fron­tier Mag­a­zine, Fried Chick­en and Cof­fee, In-flight Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zine, The Lake, The Mag­no­lia Review, Soft­blow Jour­nal, Star 82 Review and Two Cities Review.

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Anna, Whose Last Name Is Covered In Lichens, 1851–1920, poem by Matt Prater

Posted on August 1, 2016 by Rusty

And I was there as well, I saw. My hands, too,
went out and made the world. I did not
only imag­ine the sol­diers, I touched them.

I soothed, with cool rags, the dying John­ny soldier;
I soothed, with cool rags, the dying Michiganite;
I caressed their ten­der knobbed mus­cles, ten­der paunch;

sol­dered, with iron set to the banked blaze, more iron;
slammed the errant wag­on wheel in place;
ham­mered in the things for hammering;

wiped the drool­ing face of the orphaned cow
whose moth­er was stolen by Lincolnites;
and dreamed to caress the ten­der muscle

of one Lin­col­nite who robbed as Robin Hood,
who spied me one whole week from a dis­tant ridge
as I went through my nurse and farm girl chores,

and when he had stolen our sec­ond stolen cow
left me my allot­ted pitch­er of blue cream. Know:
I, too, would have ten­dered my body on the field,

though I was ten­der, ten­der as any boy who could not say it–
who I would’ve killed, or as easily’ve doused,
at the first request, with my amorous wet.

mattpraterMatt Prater is a poet and writer from Saltville, VA. Win­ner of both the George Scar­brough Prize for Poet­ry and the James Still Prize for Short Sto­ry, his work has appeared in a num­ber of jour­nals, includ­ing Appalachi­an Her­itage, The Hon­est Ulster­man, The Moth, and Still. He is cur­rent­ly an MFA can­di­date in poet­ry at Vir­ginia Tech.

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I Hear You Weeping, fiction by Robb T. White

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Rusty

Jim­my Shan­non from She­boy­gan, as he liked to intro­duce him­self to peo­ple who came into his bar, had nev­er been to Wis­con­sin in his life. He’d done time for check forgery in Michi­gan and three years in Penn­syl­va­nia for hus­tling a wid­ow with Alzheimer’s out of twen­ty-eight thou­sand dol­lars. The judge also ordered him to pay resti­tu­tion, but Jim­my had picked up some new tricks in prison; once he’d report­ed to his pro­ba­tion offi­cer after serv­ing eigh­teen months and gain­ing ear­ly release, he was a gone goose—skipping straight across the state line to Ohio. His cel­lie was a career forg­er, and Jim­my admired him. He told Jim­my for three or four thou­sand he could get new papers and a Social Secu­ri­ty card that would stand up to a check. 

A few weeks of booz­ing in bars and mak­ing casu­al con­ver­sa­tion led him to Cleve­land where he found a guy who knew a guy—and so on through a long list of bull­shit­ters, wast­ing a few hun­dred of the widow’s cash on these losers, until he ulti­mate­ly hit pay dirt. It cost him a thou­sand more than his cell mate said it would but Jim­my felt it was worth it because he was going legit from here on out. Although his cel­lie made thou­sands on his scams, and Jim­my believed him, he was obliv­i­ous to some­thing Jim­my real­ized when the bars clanged shut on him once more: he wasn’t going to die young. Doing jail in your for­ties is not like some gang­banger going in where it’s a rite of pas­sage. Jimmy’s hair was turn­ing gray and last week he noticed a bald spot on the back of his head the size of a grapefruit. 

Jim­my was a nat­ur­al talk­er and tend­ing bar was more an avo­ca­tion than a job to him. He’d put up almost all the rest of his cash on this dump of a bar at the end of the Strip in this sec­ond-rate resort town. It had gone through sev­er­al trans­for­ma­tions before Jimmy’s own­er­ship from a psy­che­del­ic lounge in the six­ties with black light­ing through a coun­try-west­ern bar with a mechan­i­cal bull to its cur­rent state as a sleazy tryst­ing spot for cheat­ing spous­es. Its fad­ing red-and-black décor with vel­veteen booths was its final makeover. The bank that owned it as a result of for­fei­ture had giv­en him gen­er­ous points on the loan in the hope of unload­ing it before it gasped its last breath and the doz­ers flat­tened it for a park­ing lot for the restau­rant next door. 

But Jim­my had a plan that involved using the rest of the widow’s mon­ey on an expen­sive sound sys­tem. Jim­my had looked over the bars on the Strip and he came to the con­clu­sion that the twen­ty-some­things were not being served by the rash of shit­kick­er and punk-goth-grunge com­bos every­where else. 

Jimmy’s gam­ble was pay­ing off at the right time: it was the height of the tourist sea­son and all the col­lege kids were look­ing for places to drink and hook up. Jim­my installed a DJ for week­ends and the auto­tracked, fast-beat tech­no music hit the right nerve with this crowd. He’s already hired two more serv­ing girls for week nights because the word was out and Raul’s—Jimmy’s exot­ic-sound­ing brain­storm the day he signed the papers—was tak­ing off. Jim­my took a kick­back from two drug deal­ers ped­dling Ex in his place. What the hell, he thought, they’d be sell­ing it any­way. Jim­my also paid off one of the beat cops to tell him when vice was hang­ing around. Some­times jim­my wished he could talk to his cell mate again. He’d tell him how he had learned from his errors of the past. “Pay the right peo­ple off and don’t whine about it,” Jim­my said into his mir­ror while shav­ing, as if he were talk­ing to Har­ry as they used to do at nights after lights out in the bunks. He nod­ded his head sage­ly at him­self. “Greed will get you right back in the slam­mer with Har­ry,” he added. He winked to his image before leav­ing the rental cot­tage. Jim­my had plans for this aspect of his new life, too: he’d be finan­cial­ly able to return to the bank and apply for a house loan. 

Jim­my had one small prob­lem and he meant to deal with her today. Some old hag of a bar fly had decid­ed to drink in Raul’s and, though this wasn’t affect­ing the bot­tom line (Jim­my was using lots of finan­cial lin­go these days in his swag­ger mode), it was irk­some to see this dis­gust­ing old crone in her frumpy clothes come into his bar to fin­ish up her night­ly boozing. 

Last night, for exam­ple, a cou­ple young girls were chat­ting her up while wait­ing to be served at the bar—just mock­ing her, Jim­my knew—but instead of being offend­ed, the ugly old bitch basked in their flat­tery. She did some­thing that made Jimmy’s stom­ach churn with acid. She popped out her den­tures and gummed the air like an old snap­ping tur­tle. The girls shrieked with laugh­ter, but Jim­my saw a red mist come over his eyes. 

Most of the time, when a new cus­tomer entered Raul’s and looked around, that per­son, male or female, knew right away whether this was the right place. Most of the white-haired tourists who stum­bled into the place by mis­take had the good sense to down their mixed drinks and piss off. Cer­tain­ly, by the time the seri­ous night crowds began to gath­er on the Strip, the old­sters knew bet­ter than to drink in Raul’s. Jim­my had giv­en his bar­tenders and bounc­ers tips on how to dis­cour­age these types from fre­quent­ing his oh-so-trendy place. There were excep­tions: mid­dle-aged-guys on the prowl with cred­it cards and cash to burn in their pock­ets. “You see one of these old­er dudes on a pussy prowl,” Jim­my ordered his staff, “keep the drinks com­ing and get them to buy rounds for the ladies.” He showed them how to mark the receipts so that Jim­my could give them bonus­es in their pay­checks. Las Vegas had its whales; Jim­my had his select group of horny hus­bands who each dropped sev­er­al hun­dred a week in his place. 

Jimmy’s dream was to expand. There was an old cement-block, hill­bil­ly bar that Jim­my had his eye on. The Strip was crawl­ing with teenaged runaways—girls who would trick for a lit­tle dope mon­ey. He’d have no short­age of gor­geous, hot-look­ing strip­pers. Once Jim­my had the cham­ber of com­merce pres­i­dent, the precinct com­man­der, and the may­or in his pock­et, he was going to seek a change in the city ordi­nances that would per­mit a “gentleman’s club.” Two of the three were reg­u­lars at Raul’s any­way. It was just a mat­ter of get­ting that dim-bulb may­or to go along with it. If he didn’t bite at a bribe, Jim­my thought, he’d go the next route, which was to help his own can­di­date get elect­ed. Jim­my was silent­ly hand-pick­ing poten­tial can­di­dates for that posi­tion from among his clientele. 

But the street hag had to go first. She was a nui­sance and an eye­sore. Tonight was the night he would put his plan into motion.

That night while the music was pump­ing bass gui­tar riffs through the speak­ers, jim­my watched his bar­tender go up to the witch and lean over her. It was too loud to hear a word even if he were sit­ting on the next stool, but he watched the harpy palm the fifty-dol­lar bill Jimmy’s man left. She looked about as if she couldn’t believe her luck, then she swiveled her huge behind off the stool and made for the door.

“Good rid­dance,” Jim­my said watch­ing her go and hoist­ed his drink in the direc­tion of his bar­tender, who winked back at him.

“See, Har­ry,” Jim­my told him­self grandiose­ly, “that’s where you made your mis­take. Pay up and your prob­lems go away like that.” He snapped his fin­gers to put an excla­ma­tion point to his own sagac­i­ty. “Poor Har­ry,” he sighed to him­self. “That’s why he’s in there and I’m out here.”

She was back the next night—and the night after that, and the nights after that. 

The fifty was replaced by a c‑note and a sim­ple but pre­cise expla­na­tion what the mon­ey was for. Jim­my had his bar­tender prac­tice it in front of him. “Make sure the god­damned old sim­ple­ton gets it this time,” Jim­my said with too much heat. 

The woman had an iron gul­let for all the booze she put away. But she knew how to nurse her last drink until almost clos­ing time and the more promi­nent she was, sit­ting alone down there at the end of the bar, the angri­er Jim­my became. He fan­ta­sized smash­ing a bot­tle of Four Ros­es over her skull (Jim­my wouldn’t waste a good brand on her). Some­times it was the bouncer’s fish bil­ly he used in his imag­i­na­tion; he could hear the crack and see the frac­tures like spi­der webs criss­cross­ing the skull bone. 

But there she was again, night after night. Jim­my was get­ting ulcers over it. 

“No more Mis­ter Nice Guy,” he told his bar­tender when he report­ed for work, “I’ll han­dle it myself.”

Jim­my sidled over to her after he’d seen her down her fourth Rum-and-Coke of the night. He set a new drink in front of her and said, “Hi there, I’m Jim­my from Sheboygan.” 

She eyed him and then the drink he was slid­ing toward her. She grunt­ed some­thing and wrapped her thick fist around the glass. Jim­my bare­ly kept his grin in check. The drink was spiked with a tab of acid he’d bought on the street. 

Jim­my stayed near the end of the bar pre­tend­ing to pol­ish glass­es while he watched for a reac­tion. About fif­teen min­utes lat­er, half the drink gone, she start­ed to fid­get. Jim­my had to turn his back so that no one could see him laughing.

The scream that erupt­ed from her throat was loud enough to pierce through the music. The old woman fell off the stool, and hoist­ed her­self to her hands and knees. She looked like a spavined horse hav­ing a seizure. Her mouth hung open and she gasped for breath like a dying fish on the shoreline.

Then, like mag­ic, as if she were a sud­den­ly nim­ble twen­ty-some­thing her­self, she scram­bled to her feet and fled out the door near­ly knock­ing over a young man just entering. 

Jim­my expe­ri­enced a pang of fear. “What if she dies, stum­bled into traf­fic, gets run over …?” Thoughts like these haunt­ed him all night until closing. 

He nev­er saw her again. What­ev­er guilt he felt that night was long gone and he was mov­ing for­ward with his plans to pur­chase Jim­my II, his name for the strip-bar-to-be. Things were going so well that he could afford to lose a few bucks before he had all his chess pieces lined up for the switch to the gentleman’s club.

His reg­u­lar bar­tender didn’t show that night so Jim­my had to fill in to keep the drinks mov­ing back and forth. Jim­my real­ized he loved his work and his life was final­ly in the right place. 

“You see, Har­ry,” he said, sum­mon­ing his ex-cell mate’s famil­iar ghost, to read yet anoth­er les­son learned—or, in Harry’s case—unlearned. “You have to deal with every prob­lem when it aris­es. Don’t treat small prob­lems as insignif­i­cant. That’s how snowflakes accu­mu­late to become avalanch­es.” Jim­my had for­got­ten that it was Har­ry who had lec­tured him about the old sociologist’s max­im of the bro­ken-win­dow the­o­ry. “One bro­ken win­dow, Har­ry, means nine­ty-nine are going to fol­low it soon­er or lat­er,” Jim­my would say when his staff couldn’t overhear. 

Jim­my had an extra shot-and-beer at clos­ing, a reward for pitch­ing in, not hold­ing back like a boss and look­ing for some­one else to fill in. 

He was out as soon as his head hit the pillow. 

Jim­my thought the light pen­e­trat­ing his eye­balls was too much sun­light this ear­ly. He must have for­got­ten to pull the shades near his bed in his exhaust­ed state.

When he opened his eyes ful­ly, he knew it was some­thing else. The old lim­bic brain at the base of his spine was tin­gling a warn­ing sign. This wasn’t ordi­nary sun­light but a flash­light prob­ing his eyes and face.

Jim­my sat straight up in bed as if electrocuted. 

Moth­er of God, Jim­my real­ized as his brain col­lect­ed itself and under­stood the image. Some­one was in his bedroom.

That some­one put on the room lights. That some­one was a very big, beard­ed male in his late thir­ties. He wore den­ims and a vest with—Oh God—out­law bik­er patch­es. Jim­my saw the Mon­gols logo, the one-per­center patch and, worst of all, the dozens of scram­bled tat­toos up and down the man’s mas­sive arms. Jim­my heard men in boots walk­ing around down­stairs. “My friends,” the big bik­er said, “you don’t mind, right?”
“No,” Jim­my said, “help your­self. Take my mon­ey. I think I have a few hun­dred in my wallet.”

The bik­er smirked at him as if that were some­thing funny.

“I can get the night receipts,” Jim­my offered. “There’s at least three thou­sand, all cash, small bills. Please … please take it and go.”

“It’s not your mon­ey we want, Shan­non. It’s your bar. I have a paper for you to sign—” 

He took out a wad of fold­ed papers from his back pock­et and tossed it to Jimmy.

Jim­my real­ized, with a sick­en­ing dread, these were in fact legal papers. He not­ed the pathet­ic fig­ure entered as the sale price.

As if read­ing his mind, the bik­er said, “I know how much cash you have in the house and how much you keep in the bar and I know to the pen­ny how much you have in your bank accounts, per­son­al and busi­ness. You’ll be able to pay tax­es on the sale and then you can skip town with your life.”

“What if I don’t sign?” Jim­my was astound­ed at the courage he mus­tered just to get that out, say it to this brute.

With­out rais­ing his voice, the bik­er said, “Don’t mat­ter. You’ll dis­ap­pear. That’s what them dudes down­stairs is for. Your call. I’ll give you five min­utes to think it over. I’m going for a beer and when I’m done, I’ll be back up to see what your answer is.”

Jim­my watched him go. He noticed his cell phone and wal­let weren’t on the bureau top where he placed them every night after work. He leaned over the side of the bed and noticed that the phone jack was still in the out­let but it had been cut in half.

Time stopped in its tracks; it seemed sec­onds had passed but he heard the heavy tread of the big man com­ing back up.

“What’s it to be?”

“I’ll sign, I’ll sign your paper,” Jim­my said.

Jim­my signed the doc­u­ment and hand­ed it to the bik­er who fold­ed it hap­haz­ard­ly and thrust it inside his grot­ty Levi’s. “Now we got us one more thing to clear up,” he said and reached down where he groped under the bed and came up with the Louisville slug­ger Jim­my had put there when he first moved in and long since for­got­ten about.

He watched the biker’s big fist wrap itself around the meat end of the bat and clean it of the dust that had gath­ered on its sleek var­nished surface.

“What—what are you doing?” Jim­my whis­pered, half-chok­ing on his words. “I signed the paper.”

“Yeah, man, you did.” 

The man didn’t even look at Jim­my as he took a prac­tice swing that made the air rip­ple around Jimmy’s head. “That was busi­ness. This is per­son­al. You’re going to be in the hos­pi­tal for a long time. When you get out, you get out of town. Understand?”

“What—what are you saying?”

“You gave my old moth­er a mick­ey finn. She spent a week in the hos­pi­tal, cry­ing every day. She wrote me about it. When I got paroled at Chill­i­cothe for good behav­ior, I decid­ed to come see the lowlife prick that would do some­thing that shit­ty to a harm­less old lady.”

Jim­my said noth­ing; he wait­ed for the blow with­out tak­ing his eyes off the bik­er. He hoped he’d go uncon­scious right away and not too many bones would be bro­ken when it was over. When the bik­er approached him from the side of the bed where he had more clear­ance for a good swing, Jim­my shut his eyes. He heard Harry’s ghost snick­er­ing in his head: “I told you, Jim­my. I told you always to treat your mark like you’d treat your own mother.”

The bat took Jim­my under the jaw. Before the citadel of his brain could reg­is­ter it and assess the dam­age from nerves shoot­ing from jaw, bro­ken teeth, and blood­ied, impaled lips, he was back in the same pod, the very same cell with Har­ry, who was stand­ing there shak­ing his head in dis­may at Jimmy’s return. Jim­my tried to explain, tried to tell him about that irri­tat­ing old woman, but some­where deep below his feet—below the entire prison tier—a rum­bling, whirling, black vor­tex was suck­ing in all his words and thoughts and, final­ly, the heav­ing sobs pour­ing out of his chest and spilling into the air. 

robbtwhiteRobb White pub­lish­es the Tom Haft­mann pri­vate-eye series, most recent­ly Noc­turne for Mad­ness. He has two noir mys­ter­ies: When You Run with Wolves and Wait­ing on a Bridge of Mag­gots. He has a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries: ‘Out of Breath’ and Oth­er Sto­ries. Spe­cial Col­lec­tions won the Elec­tron­ic Book Com­pe­ti­tion of 2014 by New Rivers Press.

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The Last Thanksgiving, poem by Taylor Collier

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Rusty

first appeared in Tar Riv­er Poet­ry Spring 2010

Dur­ing din­ner my uncle's behind the house
help­ing a heifer through her first delivery.

Inside, dry turkey, hot din­ner rolls.
The heifer's cries bel­low­ing through the house.

Green beans, sweet pota­toes, and cornbread
stuff­ing. All with the tang of

this might be his last.
And who even remembers?

I'm star­ing out the back window
at the heifer's uterus prolapsed

on the mud­dy grass.
The vet and my uncle hose it

with per­ox­ide and shove it back
inside like a beat­ing heart into a wine bottle.

The trees haven't even begun to turn,
and my grand­fa­ther can still speak.

Know­ing we will soon be gone,
he's telling every dirty joke he can remember.
taylorcollierTay­lor Col­lier cur­rent­ly lives in Tal­la­has­see.  Work has appeared or is forth­com­ing in some places like Bird­feast, The Jour­nal of Applied Poet­ics, The Lau­rel Review, Night­block, Rat­tle, Smar­tish Pace, Tar Riv­er, Zone 3, and oth­ers.  More poems and writ­ing about poet­ry at tay​lor​col​lier​.com.

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