Monday, June 18, 2018

Tally Ho, by William R. Soldan

Gordon Jurewicz had just pulled into the parking lot of the Fortune Moon, as he did most nights after work, when the rear passenger door of his repurposed Crown Victoria was yanked open and a young woman scrambled in shouting, “Drive, drive!” A black, short cropped bob with platinum streaks framed her narrow features. Her face was battered, her voice frantic, and through the Valley Cab taxi’s Plexiglas divider, she looked to Gordon no more than eighteen, maybe twenty. He was done for the night, wanted nothing more but to eat his Tuesday usual—a General Tso’s combination plate with egg roll and soup—then go home to give his mother her medicine and retire to his basement room to watch a DVD. In fact, on some level, the present scene reminded him of one of his favorite films, but the thought was gone before it could settle into focus. He saw no one pursuing her, but the apprehension on her face made him tense, and he had no desire to find out what had her so scared.

So he drove, heading south toward downtown. “So where is it we’re going?” he asked more than once, to which she always replied, “Just keep driving, okay?” He moved up and down the narrow one-ways off Federal and Commerce. Each time he looked back at her, she was checking her phone, texting, biting her nails. Though he knew she’d been beaten, he couldn’t tell how bad the damage was; in the orange cast of the street lamps illuminating the backseat in swift intervals, it was hard distinguishing bruise from shadow.

“Who did that to you?”

She looked up for the first time to meet his eyes in the mirror, and that’s when her expression of fear became one of indignation. At first he thought it was at the question itself, at the fact that he was prying, which is something he’d learned not to do with passengers. Part of a cabbie’s livelihood in such a small city was dependent on his willingness to turn a blind eye and not ask questions. But she wasn’t a usual fare, so he’d ventured out of character and meddled. Perhaps he’d live to regret it, he thought now.

But when she spoke, she did so openly enough. “I’ll tell you who,” she said, crying a little as she said it. “A nasty bastard who’d still be stripping copper out of houses and boosting car stereos if it wasn’t for me, the limp-dick motherfucker.”

Her phone buzzed and she read something on the screen, its cold, anemic light making her look like some lost spirit. And that was how he would go on to picture her after she jumped out of the cab at a red light and, without another word, vanished like a breath.

***


The next morning, Gordon replaced the poison bait in the cage traps around the perimeter of the two-story farmhouse. Rodents had been getting in the garbage again. Coons, rats. He’d found several of each over the last few months, but they kept coming back. When he was finished, he went inside and gave his mother her insulin before driving to fetch her a half-dozen Boston Creams from the Plaza Donuts. Despite the diabetes and having already lost one foot due to an infected ulcer that had festered for too long, she refused to give up her sweets—the Ho-Ho’s and Little Debbie’s and two-liters of Pepsi. She weighed nearly four-hundred pounds and only got up from the king-sized bed upstairs to hobble with her walker to the bathroom.

As she worked her way through the donuts, Gordon rubbed lotion on the foot that still remained, while the puckered stump of the one she’d lost pointed at him like a shiny, accusatory finger. She was by no means a loving woman, or even the least bit pleasant. There were days when he fantasized about leaving her there without her medicine, going about his day while her blood thickened and she slowly slipped into shock and then a coma, perhaps injecting her with a cocktail of some of his late father’s leftover pain medication. There were Oxycontin and Percocet and Vicodin lining an entire cupboard shelf in the kitchen. But he could never go through with it. She was his own flesh and blood, after all. Besides, he figured she’d do herself in before long.

“Where’s my damn cigarettes?” she barked, her voice like gravel in a tin can from decades of smoking two packs a day.

“I’ll have to go back,” he said. “I musta forgot.”

“‘I musta forgot,’” she mocked. “Christ, boy, you’s about as useless as your father was. Least he had the sense to kill himself and put me out of my damn misery.”

After the construction site accident, in which his father had shattered his pelvis and fractured several vertebrae, the man had slipped into a depressed state, eating his pills and retreating further and further inside himself until one day he took one too many, or perhaps the wrong combination of things, and never woke up. It was during times like this, though, that Gordon wanted to remind his mother that it was the settlement from his father’s injury, and the life insurance policy he’d had the foresight to take out, that had paid off the mortgage and allowed her to sit around here getting fatter and meaner with nothing but her disability check coming in. Of course, most of the money from his father was long gone, and Gordon had to pick up the slack, but that was beside the point.

“Sorry, Ma,” he said, slipping on her compression stockings before getting up. “I’ll go now.”

“Goddamn right you’ll go now,” she said. He was halfway down the stairs when she yelled after him: “And pick up some more damn Pepsi while you’re at it!”

***


The dining room of the Fortune Moon restaurant was deserted. This, along with the dim lighting, was one of the reasons Gordon came here. He felt much less self-conscious than he did under the fluorescents over at the Denny’s on the other side of the highway. Tonight he sat in his usual booth in the back corner with a spread of egg rolls, fried wontons, sweet & sour pork, and chicken lo mein taking up most of the table in front of him. He knew he really shouldn’t be eating so much of this stuff, at least not as often as he did. So far, he hadn’t grown fat, not like his mother, but at thirty, his metabolism wasn’t what it once was, and sitting behind the wheel of the cab all day didn’t help. In the last few years, he’d gone from a fairly lean two-hundred pounds to a soft two-fifty, his once flat stomach hanging over his belt like a bloated udder. The grease was hell on his complexion, too, which was already pocked with acne scars from his unfortunate youth. Still, at least three nights a week, he found himself here, feasting alone in excess and telling himself this was probably as good as it was going to get.

His shift was over for the night, though “shift” wasn’t really the right word for it. He was an independent and worked as much or as little as he wanted, day or night. Each month he paid the Valley Cab dispatch service a fee to use their name and logo and provide him with customers. The car, a decommissioned police cruiser he’d picked up at a salvage yard was his; he owned and maintained it. Someday, he hoped to have enough socked away for a deposit on one of the vacant storefront properties down on Federal, maybe beside the pawn broker. He figured he’d be a one-man operation at first, but in time he’d get a few more cars and a few reliable employees to drive them. He’d only managed to save up about five grand since the idea first struck him, but within a couple years, he might just be able to pull it off. Until then, though, he had little control over the fares he was offered, only whether or not he took them when they came through on the radio, so he took what he could get, mostly drunks leaving bars or people traveling through on business, needing lifts to and from their hotels. But he got his share of crazies, too, people you’d never expect to have money, much less be willing to fork it over for cab fare—bums, crackheads. Now and then, everybody needed a ride, and in a forgotten town like this, the buses weren’t always running.

He hadn’t been fully aware that he’d been thinking about the young woman from two nights earlier until the bell over the restaurant’s front door chimed and he looked up. She approached the cash register, and after exchanging a few words with the gray-haired Asian woman behind the counter, the woman disappeared into the kitchen through a swinging door. The young woman remained standing, and after a moment she sat on a bench between two potted bamboo trees and began playing with her phone.

Now that he saw her outside of the cab’s backseat, Gordon realized just how thin she was. Sickly even, fragile enough to blow away in light wind. She’d been living rough, there was no doubt. Her bangs were pinned back, and even in the subdued light thrown by the gilded lanterns above the tables, he could see the discoloration around her eye and jaw. She looked up and caught him staring. “Can I help you with something?” she asked, not unkindly. She had a slight drawl he hadn’t noticed before. Kentucky maybe, or West Virginia. He’d felt inconspicuous enough in the back corner, but now he felt exposed and awkward, which was more or less his usual state when in the presence of beautiful women, damaged or otherwise. “No, sorry,” he said. “It’s just, I wondered if everything was okay.”

“Fine,” she said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well, you seemed more than a little freaked out the other night.”

She seemed confused, but then there was recognition. “Oh, the cabbie, right? I didn’t recognize you. Shit. Sorry about skipping out without paying, by the way. I was going through some things.” She got up and joined him in the booth.

Finally he shrugged and said, “The meter wasn’t running anyway. I was off duty.”

She was amiable enough, but fidgety. The sleeves of her sweatshirt were pushed up, and he caught sight of several marks on her wrists and forearms, some of them scabbed over, some fresh and ringed with red.

“So anyway,” she said, “thanks for the ride, I guess.”

“Everything worked out then,” he said. “You found somewhere to go?”

“I’m at the Tally Ho next door. Got a lift back after Damien cooled down. He was on the warpath again. Gets like that when he hasn’t slept for a few days, but he tires himself out eventually.”

“Damien,” he echoed after a moment’s hesitation. Here he was prying again. What had gotten into him? He’d never been one not to mind his own damn business. But something about her had him transfixed and wanting to know more. “Is he your pimp or something?”

She laughed so hard at this that it startled him, and he looked around, even though there was no one else in the place to hear her outburst. “Pimp? Jesus, man. Where the hell do you think we are? This is butt-fuck Ohio, not the Big Apple. Pimp. That’s real cute.”

His face grew hot. He’d made an assumption, based on the track marks and the fact that the Tally Ho Motel was a reputed nest of drug activity and prostitution—at least twice a year, he’d see on the news that the DEA or some other agency had done a sweep of the place—and he felt not only presumptuous now, but foolish.

“Sorry, wasn’t my place to ask,” he said.

“No harm, no foul,” she said, and smiled at him. “He’s just my boyfriend.”

“He do that a lot?” Gordon asked, gesturing toward her face.

Her smile faltered, then she brushed it off like it was no big deal. “Just a misunderstanding,” she said. “I shoulda known to let him alone when he was spun out like that.”

He stopped himself before he could interrogate further, as much as he wanted to.

The old woman emerged from the kitchen carrying a takeout order with a receipt attached to it. She looked around when she saw the young woman was gone, and then she spotted her in the booth with Gordon. “Order ready,” she announced.

The young woman got up. “I’m Haley,” she said, but didn’t offer her hand to shake.

“Gordon,” he said, holding out his. She shook it. Her skin felt clammy but delicate in his palm.

“Nice talking with you, Gordon,” she said, then started away, stopping after a few steps. She turned back. “Say, Gordy. You wouldn’t have a few bucks you could spare, would ya?

***


Haley. Ha-ley. The name made him think of comets tearing through space, burning bright and dying fast. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Another three days had gone by since he’d seen her at the restaurant, and he kept seeing her in his mind. The frail, abused figure. And that smile. He’d be driving a fare from the bus station to the Holiday Inn south of the city, or picking someone up from the sticks, and he’d remember that smile. It’s not that women had never smiled at him, just that most of them had felt like pity smiles, those given by schoolteachers to children too dumb to learn. But Haley—there had been warmth in hers, something that expressed an unspoken connection between them.

Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. After picking up a twitchy couple, who’d crammed into the backseat of his cab with a large flat-screen TV, and dropping them at the pawnshop downtown, he drove to the Fortune Moon. He parked and waited to catch a glimpse of her at the motel next door, passing up several calls from dispatch as he did so. After a few hours, however, he gave up, telling himself he was being ridiculous—she was just a junkie who’d needed a ride.

But the next day, he was sitting in his usual booth eating a Beef & Broccoli lunch special when he saw her crossing the parking lot with a plastic grocery bag. She returned to her room on the ground floor of the Tally Ho, and just the sight of her had made his stomach tighten, so he left his unfinished lunch on the table.

Outside, he watched from his cab as a man drove up about ten minutes later and knocked on the door. It opened and he entered, and after a minute had passed, a different man came out. Though he couldn’t be sure, Gordon believed this to be Damien, a lanky guy swimming in an oversized T-shirt, with a shaved head and a scraggly red goatee. Gray tattoos, which from this short distance looked like some sort of contagious infection, patched his arms and neck. He stood with his knee bent, one foot against the brick wall of the building, smoking a cigarette. Then he walked to the edge of the parking lot, paced there for a while, came back. A half hour later, the door to the room opened and the man who’d gone in left. In the doorway, Haley handed something to Damien, after which he hurried up to a room on the second floor. When he returned a few minutes later, he went into the room with Haley. Gordon stayed parked there for some time, waiting, for what exactly he didn’t know. They’d been in there for over an hour when Gordon finally started the cab and drove home to check on his mother.

***


Men came and went, and for days Gordon watched, feeling helpless, as she must have felt helpless, he told himself. It was the same routine, taking place every two or three hours: a man would come, enter the room. Damien would exit. He’d linger, smoking and talking on his phone, now and then crossing to the gas station and returning with a bottle in a paper sack. Thirty minutes would pass, sometimes more. He’d duck into another room after the man left, and he and Haley would remain holed up until the next round.

Call him what she would, Damien was whoring her out. Gordon had no doubt. And despite how nonchalant she’d acted when he’d made the assumption, or when he’d asked her about the bruises on her face, he knew she must want help. Each time the door closed, he pictured her behind it, half naked on a seedy mattress, buried beneath the weight of some sleazy stranger, strung out and afraid. No one would submit to such a life willingly. The drugs, sure. He watched the news, understood that there was an epidemic, especially in the Midwest. He knew there was a lack of funding for treatment centers, certain politicians pushing for stricter laws, more prisons. He knew it wasn’t as easy as just changing the course of your life. But if the right person . . .

The thought broke off. “And I suppose you’re the right person.” He scoffed at himself, a disgusted sound, much like the one his mother made when he forgot something at the store, or when he wasn’t prompt enough with her foot lotion. “You can go just ahead and forget that nonsense,” he said.

***


But he couldn’t forget.

Later that night, he parked at the Fortune Moon and walked over to the Tally Ho while Haley was inside with a large bearded man who’d driven up in a brand new Silverado.

Gordon was nervous, unaccustomed to such shady dealings, never more than a distant, passive observer. But all he had to do was think of her—Haley—and what she must be going through, and that steadied him enough to approach.

“You Damien?” he asked the guy outside.

Up close, he looked even rattier than he had from across the lot through the cab’s windshield.

“Who the fuck’s asking?” he said.

“Just heard you might have a girl. I’ve got cash.”

His ears seemed to prick up at this. A flicker in his beady eyes.

“You sure as hell don’t look like no cop, but who you been talking to?”

“Just a passenger. I drive a cab.”

Damien looked at him skeptically, then said, “Fifty bucks for half an hour, hundred for a whole.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “I guess I’ll take an hour.”

Damien checked his cell phone. “She’s indisposed at the moment. Come back in fifteen.”

Gordon nodded and returned to his cab. He listened to the static of dispatch on the CB and eventually shut it off. It was the longest fifteen minutes of his life. When the bearded man finally came out and left, Damien went inside and Gordon walked back over.

Haley opened the door. She looked exhausted but surprised. “Hey,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Come in and shut the door,” Damien said. Gordon did as he was told. Damien held out his hand, waved his fingers. “Money up front.”

Gordon gave him a hundred dollars and Haley pulled Damien aside, whispering something to him. “It’s cool,” he told her. “Ain’t gonna pass this up, are you?” She didn’t reply, just looked down and shook her head. “Then I’ll be upstairs. You can hold off a little longer, right?” She nodded, then he was gone, and Gordon was alone with her.

“So,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “What’s it gonna be?”

At first, he didn’t know what to say, though he’d rehearsed this moment all afternoon. He thought they’d just talk for a while, get to know each other a little, then he’d ease into it. But his nerves caused him to just blurt it out. “I want to take you somewhere, away from here. Well, not take you away, just . . . I want to help you, I mean.”

Her response was not one he would have predicted. “Man, you watch too many movies.”

It was like a slap. “Huh?” he said.

“You want to help me, let’s do this and get it over with, ‘cause I’m not feeling too great right about now.” She got up and crossed to the small table by the TV, started searching for something among a mess of wrinkled foil squares and empty cellophane wrappers.

“But, I don’t understand,” he said.

“That much is obvious,” she said, and sighed. “Look, man—Gordon, right?—I bet you got some ideas about what life is like, driving around in that cab and all, but let me explain something to you. You probably think I run away from home ‘cause Daddy touched me or something, and maybe Mama let him, right? Probably think that if I only had enough money to get to California or wherever that I could start over, finally go to college, get a nursing degree or some shit.” She laughed. “Look, I’m sure you see yourself as a real noble guy. But this ain’t prime time, Gordy. Get with the fucking program. There ain’t no happy endings, only potentially less shitty ones. People do what people do, and I don’t do shit I don’t want to. Get it?”

“I didn’t mean to . . . I didn’t think that.” Only he had. He’d fantasized about saving her, and she’d somehow reduced his entire sense of what things were like, of how they could be, into a plot summary, then pierced it with holes until it deflated.

“I shouldn’t have come,” he said.

“You paid for the hour,” she said. “Take it or leave it. But we don’t give refunds.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He got back to his cab feeling stupid and hollow. It was nearly 10 p.m. Again he wondered what the hell he’d been thinking. What had ever possessed him to believe he should play savior? Suddenly he pictured his mother at home, a shapeless mound in bed, chain smoking and gorging on cupcakes, her legs swollen, tight with fluid. He started the cab, turned on the CB, and listened to the calls coming through dispatch. He should really go on a few more runs, or just drive out of town and never come back. But she would need her medicine soon, and like always, he would be there.

***


He’d just finished sponging the folds in his mother’s back and was now massaging her shoulders while she shoveled fistfuls of chocolate-covered pretzels into her mouth and watched one of those competitive cooking shows. It was like kneading a slick lump of dough, and when his hands began to ache, he took to digging in with his elbows.

“Ouch!” she yelled. “Not so goddamn hard, you dipshit.”

He’d been thinking about Haley and zoned out. “Sorry, Ma.”

She grunted. “Ah, just get the hell off me if you can’t do it right.”

Normally, he’d apologize again and continue rubbing her down, but tonight he left her and went down to his room to pop in a DVD. He decided on Taxi Driver. He re-watched the film every couple months or so, never grew tired of it. And it seemed particularly appropriate tonight. When it got to the scene where a young Jodi Foster jumps into the cab because she’s trying to flee her pimp, Gordon recalled the night a week previous, when Haley had jumped into his backseat, that sense of familiarity that had come and gone, and he found himself wondering: What would Travis Bickle do? It was laughable, but it seemed to cheer him up a little. What indeed. And the more he thought about it, the more absurd it was. First off, he would arm himself to the teeth. Gordon had owned a gun briefly, a .38 revolver, kept it in the cab for protection. But one night, he was held up at knifepoint while he was parked on a side street waiting on a fare. He’d pissed his pants and never even reached for the piece. The next day he went to firing range, hoping to get a little more comfortable with it. The booming sound of rounds exploding on either side of him made him panicky, though, and his hands wouldn’t stop shaking, so he sold the .38 and got a stun-gun instead. Fortunately, he’d never had cause to use it.

Besides, he thought, Bickle was unhinged, psychotic. He plans to assassinate a presidential candidate because Betsy won’t return his fucking phone calls, for Christ’s sake. “Travis, Travis, what a kook,” Gordon said to the screen. “But in the end? Nah, still a kook.”

By the time the movie was over, he had a new perspective on his own audacity, how utterly dumb he had been. Whatever had driven him to try and interfere in the first place seemed vague and insignificant. She’d been right: this wasn’t some drama in three acts, at the end of which the innocent are vindicated and all the villains slain.

This was the real world. And there were no happy endings.

***


He’d repeated this to himself, and had come to almost fully accept it as the hard truth when he came out of the Fortune Moon three nights later and found her sitting on the curb by his car, sobbing.

“Haley,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him through bloodshot eyes, mascara running down her cheeks. Her lip had been split. A fresh mark had purpled her jaw. At first she didn’t speak, just continued crying. Then she gained some composure and said in a phlegm-thick voice, “Hi Gordy, you got a minute?”

A light rain had begun to fall, so they got into the cab. She sat in the passenger seat, and in the close confines, the scent of her perfume or shampoo—something crisp with a name like Tropical Mist or Ocean Breeze, he thought—made his heart rate rise.

He let her be the first to speak. “I was thinking about before,” she said. “About your offer.”

A sudden rush spread through him, and he had a renewed sense that it had all been for a reason—her jumping in his cab that first night, his inexplicable meddling in things that shouldn’t have concerned him. “I guess you had another misunderstanding?” he said, looking at the gash on her lower lip. She didn’t appear to get his meaning at first, then understood and looked down, as if embarrassed. He said, “How can I help?”

“There’s this place,” she said. “Down by my folks, outside Lexington. A treatment center. There’s a bed available, and . . .well, I just need a little cash for the bus ticket and to pay some up front deposit or something—you know, because I don’t got no insurance?—and I’d ask Mom and Dad, but it’s just Daddy’s been out of work and . . .”

Her ramble trailed off and she looked out the window. The rain had picked up. It drummed on the roof. Fat drops swelled on the glass, broke, and ran down in jagged trails. She hadn’t looked him in the eye the entire time. Of course not, he thought. She was desperate and ashamed. It made more sense to him now, why she’d been so frustrated and quick to refuse his help the first time—she hadn’t been in her right mind. But she’d had a moment of clarity, however brief, and now she was here with him, asking for his help. Finally, her voice almost a whisper, she said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t expect you to . . . you hardly know me, and I was such a bitch.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I want to help you. Just tell me how much you need.”

Now she looked at him, eyes wide, so sad and sincere it made his heart hurt. “I don’t really know,” she said. “The bus ticket might not be that much, but the rest—maybe a few thousand? God, I know it’s a lot. I understand if you can’t.”

He thought again of leaving and never coming back, and he wished he could just take her himself, but he couldn’t leave his mother. This time, the realization filled him with a flood of resentment. He thought about how trapped he was, about the money he’d saved and how he really felt no closer to starting his own company. Five grand was nothing. It would help her a lot more than it would help him. Still, he needed to be reasonable. “I can pull together a couple thousand,” he said. “Will that be enough?”

She straightened up in her seat. “Yeah, yeah that would be great,” she said. “That would be fantastic, really.” She began to ramble on some more about how she’d been wrong to snap at him and how the dope had her so mixed up, something about fate and how he must be some kind of angel. And he, too, had felt something had brought them together, felt it now more than ever.

“How soon can you get in?” he asked.

“Right away,” she said. “I could go tonight.”

He couldn’t get the money until the bank opened in the morning, but he handed her what he had in his wallet to get some food. She looked unwell. It was only forty dollars, and part of him knew she’d buy drugs with it. But maybe she’d at least eat a little. If anything, he hoped it would keep her from having to turn tricks until he could come back for her.

“I’ll be here by nine-thirty tomorrow morning to take you to the bus station,” he told her. “You’re making the right choice. Everything’s going to be okay.”

***


The morning was overcast, but there was a brightness to it, the sky like a blank white slate that seemed to signal to him a new beginning for her, one he’d be a part of in his own small way. When she met him outside the motel, she had only a backpack and a purse, but didn’t seem to be nervous. She said Damien was passed out, so there was nothing to worry about. “He’s been speed-balling for a few days,” she said, “but he finally ran out of steam. He’ll be crashed out for a while.”

“I really wish I could drive you there myself,” he said as he pulled into the station and handed her the envelope containing two grand in twenty-dollar bills. There were people milling about outside the terminal doors, smoking and drinking coffee. A wino in camo pants and a trash bag poncho was yelling at a wall while a security guard chatted up a pair of young women waiting for one of the local buses. “Can I at least come in and wait with you?”

“That’s really not necessary,” she said. “You’ve done so much already.”

He was about to insist that it was no problem when a call came in on the CB. A fare from the Marriott clear out to the Youngstown-Warren regional airport. Being two thousand bucks lighter, he told himself he couldn’t afford to pass up the work. He hesitated for a minute, then answered the call.

“I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you,” Haley said. “But I will someday, Gordy. I promise you I will.”

“You just take care of yourself,” he said. “That’s payback enough.”

She smiled at him, and he drove off, watching as she entered the building. He held onto that image of her leaving for the rest of the morning.

Once the ball had begun rolling, it all happened so quickly. Almost too quickly. She was gone, and he’d probably never see her again. But he was in high spirits, just the same. His fare to the airport, a distinguished, WASPy looking man in a suit that probably cost more than Gordon’s cab, gave him a fat tip, and when he stopped back at the house to check on his mother, even her berating commentary couldn’t bring him down. He was Travis Bickle without the bloodshed. This made Gordon laugh out loud. Sure, Haley had been only one young woman among many pulled into a world of degradation, but they’d found each other, and now she was free. He rolled down his window and whooped at a field of lowing cows on his way back toward civilization. “He was a kook, but they made him a hero!” he shouted, and a solitary bull looked up from munching grass to grace him with a disinterested stare as he passed.

He replayed it all from the beginning and was lost in a sense of redemption, not for her but for himself, of having made up for, in that one act, an unremarkable lifetime of disappointment and regret, of never being or doing enough. Even if no one ever knew what he had done, he would know, and that would be enough. Yes, it would be enough. He floated through this unwavering reverie all afternoon.

But there appeared a schism, like a stress fracture in the surface of his elation, when he was driving home.

“What the?” he muttered, and cut the wheel into the parking lot between the restaurant and the motel, pulling in front of her.

She jumped back, then turned, as if to run, but stopped and stood her ground. “Shit, Gordy, you scared me. I thought you were someone else. I was hoping I’d see you, actually. You’re not gonna believe it.”

He examined her face for truth. He could see her wheels turning behind the mask she wore. And that’s just what it was, he realized—a mask. No. There was an explanation. There had to be.

“There was a mix-up with the bus,” she said. “The next one to Kentucky isn’t until next week.” She rolled her eyes. “Crazy, huh?”

“Crazy,” he agreed.

The door to her motel room swung open and Damien was striding toward them, shirtless and heated, the shadows of his ribs like smears of ash in the gray daylight.

“Well if it ain’t the punk who goes around tryna save people,” Damien said as he approached. He was amped up on something. He looked at Haley. “Get back to the room.”

She looked guilty, caught in something she hadn’t prepared for, then hurried back to motel.

Damien leaned down to Gordon’s level and peered through the passenger window. “Let me ask you something, motherfucker,” he said. “That bitch right there look like she wants saving?” They both looked at Haley as she stood in the doorway watching them.

Gordon tried, but he couldn’t read her. “I just want my money back,” he said. “That’s all.”

Your money?” Damien said. “Motherfucker, you ain’t got no money. You gave it away, tryna be Superman. And it was just too easy.” He laughed at Gordon and backed away from the car. “And before you go thinking something wild, Superman, like calling the cops or some shit, ask yourself what you think they gonna do. You got nothing but your word, and in this world that don’t mean shit with no proof.”

He sat there behind the wheel, stunned as Damien strolled away. He felt like the biggest fool, like every low thing his mother had ever told him he was. Twice now he’d played the fool, it seemed. He tried again to convince himself that it had all been Damien’s idea, that Haley never would have betrayed him like this. She was a good person, just sick. He’d put her up to it. That was it. She’d mentioned his offer, and Damien had devised the entire scheme. But what was it she had said before? People do what people do, and I don’t do shit I don’t want to.

But she wasn’t in her right mind, he told himself, remember?

She played you. They both did. And you walked right into it.

He shook his head, but the more he denied what he knew to be true, the deeper the cracks ran into the picture he’d constructed of her, and of his own role in her story.

He turned the cab around, aimed it for the street, not knowing what else to do but drive. Before he pulled out of the parking lot, he checked his side view. There at the door to the room, Damien scooped her up and spun her. He kissed her and squeezed her ass, and they began to laugh.

***


He couldn’t call it a plan, not exactly. That would imply too much forethought. But he’d gone home and had two shots of bourbon, then a third, a fourth, and the idea had taken shape with all the detail of a wriggling fish in muddy water. And all he knew now was that he was here.

“Boy, you got some balls, dude,” Damien said when he opened the door. He squared up right away, ready to scrap. And though Gordon had plenty of weight on him, he was no fighter, and Damien was a springy little guy who was clearly shy a few screws.

Gordon held up the bottle of 80mg Oxycontin like an offering. Damien’s eyes, which had been half-lidded in spite of his apparent energy, widened. “I just want to talk,” Gordon said. He looked past Damien at Haley, who was unconscious on the bed, slouched on a mound of dirty pillows in ripped blue jeans and a black bra. This was to Gordon’s advantage. “I want to buy her from you,” he added. The phrase almost made him wince, as if she was a piece of property to be bought and sold, but he didn’t know how else to say it.

“You fucking crazy?” Damien said. “Who do you think I am?”

“Pills and money,” Gordon said. “Just let her come with me. She doesn’t deserve this.”

“And what would you know about what she deserves, Superman?”

He snatched the pills from Gordon before he could reply and stepped aside.

Gordon took this as a sign to come in. Damien shut the door and popped the bottle. He looked inside, nodded slowly, and replaced the lid.

“They’re yours,” Gordon said.

“How much?” Damien said.

“All of them.”

“No, the money,” he said. “What you gonna pay?” Gordon reached into his pocket, pulled out a fold of bills, and handed it to him. Five hundred dollars he kept at home for emergencies. Damien counted it. “Man, this ain’t but a day’s work,” he said.

“I can get more. Tomorrow. I’m good for it. Just let me take her. Please.”

After a moment of staring Gordon down, Damien said, “Yeah, sure, all right, Superman. Go on and fly.”

Without thinking, Gordon moved toward Haley, picked up a hooded sweatshirt from the back of a chair and bent down to cover her with it. There was a charred spoon with an array of other paraphernalia on the nightstand, and she had a cigarette, burned clear down to the filter still between her fingers. He was about to pick her up and carry her out when Damien said, “Damn, you really are a stupid motherfucker,” and Gordon saw his shadow move on the wall as he came up behind him.

Gordon had envisioned some version of this going down, which is why he was able to turn in time, hit Damien with the stun-gun right in the armpit before he could break the beer bottle over Gordon’s head. There was a crack and a sizzle, and Damien seized. He dropped to the floor, still clutching the Oxy bottle in one hand. Gordon hit him again and removed the two syringes from his right jacket pocket, leaving the one he’d prepared for Haley in his left. He checked on her. She stirred and moaned but didn’t come to. Whatever she’d taken, it had been a lot. In the whirl of his head, he’d anticipated her being awake, maybe having to stun her, too, stick her with enough of the Oxy he’d dissolved to knock her out and hopefully not kill her while he dealt with Damien. He hadn’t thought much past that point, though. Once the idea of trying to barter for her had entered his mind, he’d been mostly on autopilot. In fact, he’d scarcely been aware he was following through with it until he was knocking on the door to their room, stomach doing flips, heart stuttering in his chest. But fate, or luck, or some force beyond his comprehension had seen fit to work in his favor. The hard part was over, he thought, removing the needle caps and plugging one into each side of Damien’s scraggly neck. He thumbed the plungers, and watched with numb fascination as Damien first convulsed, then began to froth and bleed. The rat poison doing its work. Gordon had seen the aftermath of what the stuff could do plenty of times, but a rodent of this size, up close and personal? It was a sight to behold. Gruesome. Nothing he could have braced himself for.

When Damien finally stopped twitching a few minutes later, red and milky ooze leaking from the various holes in his head, Gordon walked over to the wastebasket and vomited. One quick, burning heave. After that, he felt much better.

He retrieved the money and the pills. He tied up the trash to dispose of later. Through it all, Haley slept.

***
There was a pounding coming from upstairs. When her eyes finally opened, it took her a minute to focus and take in her surroundings, which were new to her. Then she began to scream and struggle against the restraints binding her to the armchair. He tried to get her to quiet down, but when she wouldn’t, he placed a strip of duct tape over her mouth. He hadn’t wanted it to come to this, but had suspected she wouldn’t understand, not yet. It would take a little time before she came to her senses. And once she had? No—he wouldn’t think about that just yet. Best to handle one thing at a time.

“It’s all right now,” he said, and shushed her, brushing one of her platinum strands from her face. “Everything’s going to be okay this time. Are you comfortable enough?”

He thought she looked terrified, naturally. Of course, the situation was not ideal. But she would come to see this was for the best. He only needed her to calm down so he could explain.

“I knew it couldn’t have been you,” he said. “No, I knew it had to have been him.” She continued to struggle and mumbled something. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about him anymore,” he said. “They’ll find him in the room. It was a mixture. I gave him a lot, wasn’t sure how much was enough, you know? I’m a bit new to these things. But I knew you’d never be free if someone didn’t do something.”

He zoned out for a moment, remembering Damien’s choked and spasming body on the motel room floor, the hemorrhaging eyes. The horror of it turned his stomach again and sent a shudder up his spine. But her movements brought his attention back.

Understanding crept into her pale eyes. She strained harder against the bonds and screamed behind the tape with renewed intensity.

“I’ll need you to be reasonable,” he said.

There was more pounding from upstairs, and he raised his eyes to the ceiling. It was time for his mother’s insulin. “That’s just Ma,” he said. “But don’t worry, she’ll quiet down soon.”

Haley continued to scream and thrash.

“Hey, you like movies, right?” he said, and grabbed the remote from the top of the TV. “Me too.” He started the DVD that was already in the player. It was one of his favorites, after all. Maybe it would be one of hers, too, in time. Maybe she’d even realize she’d been wrong about happy endings. Yes, he thought. She screamed and screamed but soon grew tired. “That’s better,” he said. He bent down and kissed her on the top of the head, then pulled up a chair and sat down beside her.

Monday, June 11, 2018

Day Planner by Matt Mattila


7:28 A.M. The Chef shows up early again. The truck door slams shut heavy behind him. The Kid curled behind the outdoor heat grate might've been startled a long time ago but now he waits in patient silence for the footsteps to crack across the gravel and the kitchen door on the other side of the restaurant to close before he moves. Waits another minute as the Chef starts his prep. Always wait for noises, The Kid reminds himself. A minute of patience beats a whole day spent looking for a new spot. The Kid is careful when he creaks the grate open. Shoes are already on his feet when he steps on cold gravel. The cold air blasts him as he looks around the corner to make sure no one is coming and walks off to start yet another day on this Earth.

7:32 A.M. Jerry's a panhandler who does his thing on the highway off-ramp five minutes away. The Kid stands near him and helps make it look like they're a family or something. Sometimes drivers get all sympathetic and stop and fork a few bucks over. Jerry collects it in his old soda cup and splits the take with him but never shows him how much they both get which is bullshit. Three hours of this for five dollars. The Kid says thanks. They go their separate ways.

10:37 A.M. The coffee shop down the road is chill and doesn't ask any questions as long as he buys. The Kid waits in line with the other regulars. He avoids the looks. They don't mean anything to him anymore. They know what he is and he doesn't care. He is an outside animal trying to adapt to an inside world.

10:39 A.M. Line grows and lets him hide away in the middle of the herd. Let it grow. Let their faces melt into each other for the cameras and the workers behind the counter. Let him hide. The girl is on this morning, too. Her black hair tied back. Silver eyes darting across the coffee filters and cups and order sheets. Don't look at her, he begs himself. Don't catch her eye. Of all people she'd be the first to say something. Give it a minute before you make a break.

10:42 A.M. The bathroom door is locked behind him but The Kid is quick anyway with his cup-and-sink-water shower over the drain in the floor by the wall. Doesn't use too much soap. Keeps his ears open but a round of Q-Tips makes it hard. He brushes his teeth. Slicks his hair back and makes sure it stays under the winter hat. His clothes are from the donate box and don't smell that much after his last laundry session in a different sink last week. Jeans are black and don't stain. The layers he wears are interchangeable. It's cold out which means if anything gets dirty he can hide it till he has to wash it. He only carries what he'll need for the day in the bag and stashes the rest in a few trusted places hidden around the block. At first glance he is a college student without a car. Nothing else. Nothing is wrong. 

He is just in a place in between.

The Kid needs to stop staring in the mirror. Longer he looks the more he'll see wrong and the more paranoid he'll get.

Hurry up and get the fuck out.

10:48 A.M. Man in a suit waiting outside the bathroom door, face in phone.

It's good now, The Kid says to him, sorry I took a while.”

Man looks up at him, grunts, looks back down at phone. Walks through the door. The Kid thinks the man knows what he was looking at or had already tried the door and he simply didn't hear it. The Kid tells himself to calm the fuck down. This is the worst time to get nervous. He moves around the tables in this back hallway where no one ever sits . In fact the only people sitting are up front with its big windows and neo-soul music echoing from the speakers behind the counter. The Kid thinks he knows this song. Might've liked it once. 

Three people in line get shuffled through easily. The Kid orders a large mocha latte, yes on the cream. She is the only one on duty. The Kid keeps his eyes on the back display and the menu and the counter and the stereo set on the nook in the wall.

Anything but her.

10:50 A.M. She stands at the other end with milk screaming in the steamer in front of her and his legs move closer to her while the rest of him follows along paralyzed. He stops himself at the counter, pulls his phone out, pretends to look at it. WiFi here means he can cruise through his social media and remember that there's a world outside of this fucking life. He doesn't have many friends, though, because he knows he could never bring himself to tell anybody. None of them would understand. They would fake their sympathy and look at him with pity for the rest of his life and when he'd man up and ask for help they would all say no. They always say no.

Phone's almost dead but the charger's plugged into the wall over there.

10:52 A.M. “Mocha large.”

She sounds annoyed when she puts it down on the counter. Purple polish and chipped nails stay wrapped around it. He steps up. She hasn't let go. He doesn't go for it. Her other hand is hiding behind the machine. She's probably scared and doesn't want to show it. He's a monster from the forest who's come into town for a drink.

Thanks, he says. Her head and the soft, bright face on it flashes from behind the corner. Her silver eyes are wide. She mumbles you're welcome and stares at him a second and then retreats behind the machine. She knows. Of all people for the love of God she knows. He says nothing else. He should be smart and get out but he grabs the cup and dashes over to the table. Safe. Around the corner. Hidden from prying eyes.

10:54 A.M. His coat still covers the bag and it is all undisturbed. He is alone in this section. He pulls old headphones he'd found on the ground a week ago out of his pocket. Finds the WiFi. Goes on YouTube hoping to find something good. Just a few hours in this place, he reminds himself, and then move on.

11:34 A.M. His legs are getting numb. The Kid needs to get up and stretch or they'll hurt like hell when he's outside again. The cup is half-empty. Lukewarm. He puts the phone back in his pocket and the coat over his bag and the charger under the table and trudges to the bathroom to pretend to piss. It's empty. He coughs again as the door slams shut behind him. His chest has been feeling heavy. His lungs vibrate like they're floating in water. He needs to get it checked out. He's smart enough to know a normal cough doesn't last for two weeks and clog his throat and take everything out of him. He needs to get it checked out. Jerry said it didn't sound good to him either. He needs to get it checked out. No insurance means no doctor but Jerry knows a guy at a shelter he stayed at once. He needs to get it checked out. He walks back to the table breathing in his nose and out his mouth like the medical website told him.

He sits down and takes a drink. It doesn't help.

12:20 P.M. The door chime is loud enough The Kid hears it from around the corner. There's heavy footsteps--boots--that go up to the counter. Kid cranes his neck up and looks through the window. No cop cars. Nothing in uniform waiting for him. He still has his headphones in but he hears the gasps and shushes clearly enough. He stays close to the wall and peeps around the corner. Boots is big. Boots has a mask on. Boots has a gun out on whoever's behind the counter. Another shriek. He retreats behind the wall and shoves his headphones in his pockets. Pulse thuds in his ears. No panicking. Boots is blocking the only way out. The shriek sounded female.

12:22 P.M. The thought clicks in place. She's the only one here. He is shook beyond all hell. If Boots shoots her she is close enough that she will die. Boots will come for him next. Boots shoots The Kid and he somehow fucking survives but has no insurance and he gets stitched up and sent back out on these streets with a bullet wound and a bill he will never be able to pay.

She's worth the risk. He has to do something. Boots hasn't seen him. His head's over the partition and The Kid is in his blind spot.

No point in not trying. He's overstayed his welcome here anyway.

12:24 P.M. The Kid steps towards him. His voice cracks but he hopes it sounds tough enough.

There's nuh'ing in that drawer, man, says The Kid. Not past noon.”

The Kid's voice quivers and time stops. The gun turns towards him--one swift, practiced motion.

Shut the fuck up and get back.”

The Kid stays put.

"Shooting won't help you none," he finds the balls to say. His breath has stopped. His chest spasms and he thinks for a second that he'll never breathe again.

No time no time no time no time.

The fuck you say to me? Boots asks.

Boots charges forward, easy steps. Dark eyes all glossy. Dude's cracked. Desperate. Keeps asking the same question. The Kid throws his hands up and says nothing and never loses eye contact because some movie told him once that he shouldn't. No twitching. No coughing. 

Wait for him to get close and grab the thing.

Boots stops too far away.

12:27 P.M. Boots says the same line again. Behind him the girl is huddled on the counter holding a mop handle and giving The Kid a shhh. She's sly like a fox. Maybe she's seen the movies too. Maybe they could go see one together one of these days.

She moves with class, grace, bravery; all things The Kid knows he will never have. It's hard not to stare because the poor fuck knows he's in love but he also knows that'll tip the man with the gun off. Boots keeps chuckling under his breath, steps echoing on the linoleum. Kid still says nothing. Boots stops and keeps making tough talk.

Kid blinks and Boots takes a single hit to the base of the skull and his eyes roll back and he falls forward and lands with a thud that shakes the building. She puts her hands on her hips all triumphant and looks down at Boots then up at The Kid standing there in total awe.

Thanks, she says, for the help.”

Kid shrugs. Long as he didn't hurt you.”

She smiles soft. Looks down at the body on her coffee shop floor. Stops smiling. Says: Not the first not the last.”

The Kid knows not to press it. He nods and looks down with her. Blue lights pull into the lot and The Kid tries not to panic.

Finished with your coffee? she asks, turning back.

I'm just on my way out. I can take off now if you need me to.”

She scoffs and laughs a little. “I'm asking if you want another one, dumbass. It's on the house.”

Oh.

He shrugs. Sure, ”he says, and she brings the mop to the door with her and lets the cop in.

It'll just be a sec, she says to The Kid with a hint of white teeth. The cop stepping in behind her is all tall and big with a hard face and hands on his belt and The Kid nods at him. The cop nods back. Goes on his radio to call code numbers. Looks at Boots on the floor. The girl leaps over the counter and gets to making his mocha latte . Cop steps up and pulls a pad out and starts asking her questions. Boots stays on the ground with his gun far from his grip and a hand twitching.

The Kid walks back to the table wondering if his phone number still works.

Monday, June 4, 2018

The Third Jump of Frankie Buffalo, by Thomas Pluck

Frank drove the half-ton as fast as he dared up the rutted, snowy road. His breath plumed like a big shot’s cigar in the frozen air. So cold that they had shoved their booted feet into the campfires to keep toes from freezing solid and snapping off. Only thing colder than winter in Chosin was the fear deep in his gut. The two supply trucks sent before him hadn’t made it to the front. Artillery or ambush, no one knew. Frank held it in second gear and swerved around a bend. A moving target’s a hard target. A hard turn came up quick, one foot on the brake and one on the gas…

A horn blast broke Frank out of the reverie.

This wasn’t Korea. He was in a different truck, on a different run.

Nerves.

He didn’t wake up shivering anymore, but in a truck job, Chosin always came back to him.

He was stuck behind a stubby oil truck and a black new BMW at a railroad crossing. The traffic for the car wash and the flashing light ahead always made this a bottleneck, but it was the best way to get where he had to be. The tanker had stopped at the tracks, and the morning commuters were getting antsy.

Frank checked his Timex. Fifteen minutes, plenty of time to get the Mack cement mixer to Rifle Camp Road and hit the power pole. More than enough time to cut the fuel line and spill some diesel, shut down the intersection and keep Paterson’s finest occupied, waiting for the HazMat crew.

Honk.

It was the guy in the black BMW, one car ahead.

“He’s gotta stop,” Frank said to himself. “Law requires it.”

It was his job to know. The CDL in his wallet wasn’t in his name, and his no-work job at the port rarely got him behind the wheel anymore, but he knew all the rules and could drive anything over 10,000 GVW like nobody’s business. It was a safe job. Just another driver heading to the quarry who made the turn too tight. If he got cited it wasn’t even in his name, but the memories of the Frozen Chosin tickled in his gut.

Young Frank had never made it to the front. He could’ve made that turn, nothing for a fearless driver who’d cut his teeth bootlegging for Longy Zwillman, the Jewish giant who ran Newark. The cold inside moved his hands for him. The belly-cold had jerked the steering wheel, made him dive out the door with his rifle. All Frank could do was watch the half-ton spill its load of ammo and survival K-rations as it tumbled down the jagged stone cliffside. He connected with a new unit and told himself the two drivers before him had probably done the same thing.

Honk honk. This time it was the lady in the minivan behind him. Striped uniform, probably a waitress at some diner.

The tanker didn’t need to wait this long. Just pause, really. The fading paint on the back of the stubby little tanker read Hansen Fuel Oil, the kind a small business uses to fill up home tanks. It rumbled forward, then stalled out. Right on the tracks.

Now Frank got antsy, too.

The boys would hit the Loomis armored car in twenty minutes. All pros, longshoremen in name only. They’d stolen the cement mixer off a job site that had lost funding and sat dormant for months. They laughed when he signed on for the job. Old Frankie Buffalo wants in? When he could be collecting his pension?

The pension wasn’t enough. The job was barely enough. The medical plan’s pure gold but Dottie’s cancer cost platinum and diamonds, gutted his stake after putting their three kids through college. Now his grandchildren were near college age, and his kids had married for love, not money. For money there was always Poppy Frank.

To show the boys he could still motor, he got in a little yard hustler and spun it in donuts around their fancy German cars, parking it with a controlled skid. They kept their mouths shut after that.

Still plenty of time. All he had to do was get past the tanker. He checked the mirrors. The minivan was right on his ass. He cut the wheel hard left and eased forward. If the BMW gave him an inch he could squeeze by. He tapped the horn.

The BMW driver gave him the Jersey salute.

A decade ago he would have taken the breaker bar from under the seat and shattered this cafone’s windshield. Maybe taken the little snubbie he used to keep under the dash and rapped the guy on the head.

But he wasn’t what he once was.

The merciless Chosin winter had made his feet dead as bricks if the temperature dropped below fifty, like this morning. He could put on some speed when he wanted, but it looked funny.

Frankie’s gonna shuffle off to Buffalo, the dock boss had said. And it stuck, like those names always do.

Two guys got out of the tanker. Olive skin, clean-shaven. First thing he thought was trouble, then chided himself, remembering his grandfather telling him how the country hated Italians before he was born, because some were anarchists. They even lynched eleven Italians in New Orleans, after a Black Hand hitter whacked the police chief. So he didn’t like to judge. Even though he was Italian, and a crook.

Frank honked again.

The Beemer driver pointed at the tanker with his Starbuck’s cup. “Hello? I can’t go anywhere.”

Frank inched forward. The BMW disappeared under his hood, but he knew these Mack Granites like he’d known his wife Dottie’s body.

“You scratch my paint, I’m gonna—”

The lights of the railroad crossing blinked red. Train coming.

The BMW driver swore, then the car jerked back and forth, making no headway. He had pulled too close to the tanker in front of him, and now he was paying for it. Other drivers piled out of their cars.

They were running.

The Frozen Chosin cold spread through Frank’s belly. Run, it said. That thing’s gonna go off like a five hundred pound bomb.

Across the tracks at the car wash, Latino women stopped drying cars and stared.

Frank set the air brakes and got ready to shuffle. He jerked the door handle. Sorry boys, you’re on your own. They’d probably get cornered and mowed down before they made it five blocks with the money. There was no getting away from a betrayal like that. Frank would just wait for the hitter to come plug him in the head while he was home alone in the recliner, watching Wheeler Dealers.

The cold made a fist in his gut.

Then he saw the drivers, even the BMW jerk, shouldering the rear of the tanker. Like they could move it! If it’s got a full tank, good luck with that.

Then the diner woman pitched in.

Frank jabbed the horn. “Lemme push him,” he hollered. They used these trucks like tugboats in the yard all the time.

“You can’t get around the cars,” one shouted back.

Frank put the Mack in low gear. The cement mixer was spinning on an empty barrel, just for show. With no load, he could push the tanker and the car in front of him, no problem.

Frank the hero, not Frankie Buffalo. The woman in the diner uniform smiled and waved him on. She had a smile that took over her face, like Dottie had.

He eased the pedal down and they moved out of his way.

The BMW driver grimaced as Frank crunched his bumper and mashed the front end into the oil truck. For a second they all gasped, then the brake pins popped and the strange little train of tanker, crushed Beemer, and cement mixer began to inch forward.

The striped railroad gates slammed down on top of the tanker. Just a few more feet…

One of the oil men reached inside the cab and came out with something small and black, like the grease guns Frankie had seen at Chosin. It sounded the same, as a burst tore through the work shirts and the gal’s diner uniform and the BMW guy’s fancy suit.

The train horn drowned out their screams.

Frank ducked and the windshield blew out. Rounds peppered the cab and pocked the seat. What the hell were they doing? Nobody robs trains anymore. This was a commuter train, the double-decker diesel to Secaucus Junction. No freight worth a hijack.

They weren’t stealing. They were killing. Like the anarchists that Frank’s grandfather had told him about. Like the psychos who’d brought the Towers down.

Chosin ice gripped his bowels. Held off by the warmth that the diner girl’s face put in his heart. He’d seen the Towers built floor by floor, and like everyone else at the port that day, had watched helplessly from across the water as they crumbled into cigarette ash.

Nowhere to run, Frankie. Gonna shuffle off to Buffalo?

His feet were numb, but he would die standing on them.

No rifle. Not even the old snubbie. Just a breaker bar, two and a half feet of rusted iron. Blunt as a screwdriver, but sharp enough. He’d seen fights with them on the docks. Ugly ones.

He mashed the pedal to the floor with his elbow. The Mack ground its gears and shuddered. Two more bursts rattled through the engine compartment. Frank curled into himself, the cold moving his body for him again.

Steam hissed from a cut hose with the sweet stink of coolant, but the Mack kept nudging the tanker forward. The Mack’s front end rocked as it rolled over the tracks. Halfway there.

Between the short, imperative blasts of the train horn came shouting, then the clank of a boot on the step by the driver side door. He gripped the breaker bar like a short spear, waiting for a head to pop up.

Four fingers gripped the door. Then the black barrel of the gun, wisping smoke.

Frank stabbed for the root of the middle finger and shouted words his nonno reserved for the anarchisti. Frank rose up for another thrust, but the gunner fell back onto the tracks, blood sprinkling from his hand like a pinhole leak in a garden hose. The train bore down on them skyscraper huge and swallowed the gunman, its brakes in full scream.

Frank jerked the door handle and tumbled out as the world spun and flickered like an old home movie.. The detached barrel of the cement mixer rolled toward the car wash. The rest of the Mack truck was dragged along by the train like a Tonka toy.

The brakes hissed as the train screeched to a crawl. Commuters gawped out the windows. The washers peeked from behind cars.

Frank curled up in the weeds clutching the breaker bar, like he had cradled his rifle in the Korean winter.

The tanker had rolled ahead and butted into a wooden utility pole. Still close enough to the train to destroy it. The other oil man had the door open, bent over something.

Frank used the breaker bar as a cane and shoved himself to one knee. The killer swore to himself and jabbed at a little box behind the truck seat. Frank clubbed him in the knee, then brought the iron bar down until he lost his breath and the car washers covered their faces.

Frank saw what was behind the seat and dropped the bloody crowbar. Wires ran from a lockbox chained to the seat frame, out the door to the oil tank, which surely held something more volatile than heating oil.

Their backup plan.

Frank pulled himself into the cab and turned the ignition. Backed away from the pole and swerved, tires hopping, using the tank’s heavy load as ballast for the turn. Like he was running with Longy Zwillman again.

He would make it to the quarry on Rifle Camp Road in time. He had to.

The boys hitting the Loomis truck would get more distraction than they would ever need.

And Frankie Buffalo would jump one last time.

Monday, May 28, 2018

Ruby Behemoth, by Court Merrigan

an excerpt


Ruby Hix stood outside the gates of the Women’s Penitentiary in Chowchilla, California. Looked up and down the dusty highway for Ivy but Ivy was not there.

She waited an hour outside the gates, as long as the guards would let her, then walked down to the bus stop. Caught the 9303 bus down to Fresno. Fresno hadn’t changed much in these seven years and six months. Eleven city blocks to Gallo Union Pawn Shop, blinking back all the light and life and noise of the hot summer streets. A dull gnawing in her lower belly reminded her she needed tampons, pronto. She stepped into the sudden cool darkness of the shop and walked down an aisle of pawned leather jackets breathing in the scent of thwarted men. A couple other patrons noticed her two hundred and twenty ropy pounds of coiled energy and decided to look elsewhere.

“I help you?” the clerk asked, keeping his hands out of sight.

“That sap there,” Ruby said, throwing the grip bag up on the counter. “It work?”

The clerk slid open the glass, removed the squat extendable baton from the shelf, the kind cops keep strapped to their gun belts. “You tell me,” he said, and handed it across the counter.

Ruby hefted the sap in her hand. The balance felt right. Snapped her wrist and the baton snicked out to full length with a soft hiss, metal gleaming dull in the light. She took a few experimental swings, cutting the air with a stroke born of the mystery of speed. Another swing, another. She knew just what these cuts could do to soft flesh and brittle bone.

Then she tapped the tip against the heel of her palm. The shaft collapsed inside the handle. She rolled it over in her palm. Someone had scritched “PRATHER” in the leather cover on the handle.

“Who’s Prather?” she asked.

“You serious?”

“I could be.”

The clerk cocked his head. “You’re Ruby Hix, ain’t you?”

Ruby shrugged.

“Linda talks about you. Linda Patrecho. Said you helped her out with the Featherwoods.”

“I did what I said I would.”

“Yeah. She told me that, too.”

“How much for the sap?”

The clerk shook his head. “For you? Free. Linda Patrecho’s my cousin.”

The word “free” washed over Ruby like a benediction. Seven years and six months she worked every shitty trusty job they’d give her back in Chowchilla, swabbing toilets, washing dishes, pressing laundry. Came away with a grand total of $477.18.

“Thank you,” Ruby said.

De nada.” Linda Patrecho’s cousin leaned over the counter, voice gone conspiratorial. “Listen,” he said. “There’s work. If you want it.”

“No,” Ruby says. “No more work.”

“Linda said you wanted to go straight. Won’t last, you know.” The clerk straightened behind the counter, nudged the sap across the counter. “You sure as hell won’t get much done with this stick.”

“You might be surprised,” Ruby said.

***


Ruby walked five blocks down to the Ralph’s. She stood in the cereal aisle a long time. The last time she’d been here in this Ralph’s it was with Ivy, and the store manager had to call out security and a check-out boy with a broom to clean up their mess at the tail end of Ruby’s attempt to coax her big sister down off a two-week bender.

“They’re going to call the cops,” Ruby said desperately, picking herself up from a pile of Honey Nut Cheerios boxes.

“I hope they do!” Ivy screamed. “I hope they fucking cart you away!”

Ruby held out a hand. “Just come on,” she said. “I know you don’t mean that. Come with me. I’m going to help you.”

Ivy’s eyes were so dilated Ruby could see the back of her skull. She was shivering and her T-shirt was dirty. She skittered backward when Ruby grabbed for her wrist.

“You can’t help me,” Ivy said. “You can’t do shit for me.” Turned and galloped for the exit.

“Fuck you too, then!” Ruby shouted at her sister’s retreating back.

Then a sprinting security guard tackled Ruby and by the time she got untangled from his beefy grip and nacho breath Ivy was long gone.

Ruby searched for Ivy for three December days smack in the middle of Fresno’s most frigid cold snap in fifty years, living on Butterfingers and battery-acid gas-station coffee, sleeping in the puke-yellow ‘79 Datsun she hadn’t insured in over a year that featured four bald tires and one working heater vent, haunting Fresno’s back alleys with a sap in her hand.

She didn’t find Ivy. Instead she got harassed by some suit downtown. The suit got a few less teeth and a squashed nut sack, Ruby got arrested, the suit got a lawyer, and Ruby got seven-to-nine. The next time she saw Ivy it was through prison plexiglass, too late for tears.

Ache in her lower belly worsening, Ruby strode the fluorescent aisles of Ralph’s in a daze at the abundance. About seven hundred items to crave . A bag of marshmallows, a five-pound sack of hot dogs, toffee ice cream bars, a pair of leather work boots especially caught her eye. But all she put in her in basket was a pack of off-brand unscented tampons, a jar of dill pickles and a bottle of barbecue sauce. These last two she’d craved endlessly back in Chowchilla. At the check-out she menaced the cashier with a hard stare,. In prison they’d short you on taters and beans if you didn’t keep a careful watch. She’d once seen a trusty cook take a fork in the cheek over a scanty ladle of beans.

Ruby headed straight to the ladies room with her purchases and did her best to get comfortable on her first enclosed privy in seven years and six months. Grunted with pleasure at this first red-tinged piss in the free world, then fumbled around with the slick tampon. Surpassing strange to slip it inside herself. Been a long while. In prison they only issued pads, the thin kind with no adhesive wings, and then only half a dozen at a go. Ruby bled pretty heavily and rationing out those half dozen little pads out was an impossibility. So she’d have to buy extra at the commissary, cursing every dollar they ticked off her meager account. So she sat a moment longer on the toilet, looking at the little string dangling between her big thighs. Felt a whole lot like freedom.

Thirty-one years old and so far life had pinballed Ruby Hix from one institution to the next trailer park. She took her time.

On the way out, Ruby passed by the Play Center. A gaggle of kids surrounded a chubby boy cowering on a Garfield tea cup.

“Fatty McBlatty! Fatty McBlatty!” the kids chanted at the chubby boy, his lip atremble, near tears.

Ruby Hix remembered her own nickname. She shoved the bullies aside, sent them crying for their mommies.

“You all right?” she asked the chubby boy.

The boy looked up and down her bulk. Pulled a face. “Leave me alone, fatso,” he said. Slipped off the Garfield teacup and ran away.

***


In Chowchilla Ruby volunteered for every work detail they had, eventually working her way up to trusty status and the floor-waxing crew. To spend a dime felt like robbing the future so she went without everything she could. A pillow was seven bucks at the commissary (85 hours of labor). An extra blanket, eleven (157 hours). The ticket lady at the Greyhound station had to pry the eighty-three dollars (1185 hours) for a ticket to Barstow out of her palm.

In the waiting room Ruby ran a thick stream of barbecue sauce over a dill pickle, slippery in her fingers. More delicious than she could have believed, starbursts of flavor a supernova on her tongue. She ate half a dozen pickles, barely breathing, then licked her fingers clean. All the while hoping, somehow, that Ivy would show. Ivy did not show. On the TV Bruce Jenner was calling himself “Caitlyn” and the host kept asking why.

“Why the fuck not?” Ruby said out loud. Her fellow passengers looked away.

She went to the bathroom and locked the door and stood in front of the mirror, practicing with the sap. The trick was to get it out of your pocket and extended in one fluid motion, ready to strike. Fifty or so practice flicks in, she started to get the old feel back.

The bus departed Fresno at 10:10PM. Wedged into a seat two sizes too small for her frame, Ruby was plenty glad to pass the lion’s share of California in the dark. Fuck this state and the seven years and six months it’d stolen from her. She sat in the aisle seat, ignoring the window, dipping dill pickles in barbecue sauce. After a time the motion of the bus swayed her to sleep. She dreamed of Ivy and pickle juice swimming pools.

When she woke it was dawn in Barstow and her mouth tasted of salt. Someone had stolen her pickle jar. She filed out of the bus with the other passengers and in the terminal scanned the crowd with no actual hope and Ivy was not there.

She strapped her black sling bag over a shoulder and headed out of the station, ignoring the cabbies. Like she’d spend that kind of dough on a cab, for Chrissakes. All she bought was a bottle of Mountain Dew to wash the salt taste out of her mouth. It was just past nine AM but already sweltering here in the desert.

In the library at Chowchilla Ruby had memorized a map of Barstow. The return address on Ivy’s last letter read #32 at the Coach Lamp Trailer Court and Ruby knew just how to get there. She walked at an unhurried pace. In that last letter Ivy mentioned working steady. Middle of the day like this, maybe nobody would be home. Maybe Ivy occupied a position of some importance somewhere. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t been there at the prison gates, or up for a visit the whole last five years of Ruby’s spit.

Ruby’s feet soon ached on the uneven cement and in the oven of desert heat and she paused to rest in what meager shade the Barstow streets offered. That Shawshank Redemption bullshit was even more bullshit than she’d thought back in Chowchilla. The world hadn’t gone and gotten itself in a big damn hurry. To Ruby it seemed more like everything moved in a gel of slow motion, clear and bright and wondrous, a passing red-and-white Budweiser truck, a little girl on a pink-frilled bike, glazed donuts sweating in a bakery window.

Midday had come and gone by the time Ruby arrived at the Coach Lamp Trailer Court. One of those rural ghettos the news shows ignore, pay-by-the-week trailers, some with the siding ripped away in patches to expose rows of pink insulation, others with plywood nailed over windows, yet others with tires on the roof.. Ruby walked down the hot gravel lanes to #32. A brown-and-white striped singlewide, no car out front, no name on the mailbox, railroad ties reeking of creosote stacked up to the door to form a stairway. A half- collapsed knee-high white plastic fence shielded a patch of dead grass with a hose coiled up in it. She turned on a tap and let the hot water ran out of the hose before slaking her thirst with long gulps, splattering the dust on her boots. Then someone swung the door open. Ruby dropped the hose.

Not Ivy. A little boy.

***


The little boy had dark olive skin and straw-black hair and a snotty nose and a pair of iridescent violet eyes, blinking at her. Ruby had to look deep to believe those eyes were real. They were. Otherworldly, but real. The boy also had Ivy’s hooked nose and bangs that curled a notch above his eyebrows, just so. It required no imagination, none, to know whose child this was.

“Aunt Ruby?” he said, ending any more suspense on the point.

Ruby dropped to one knee to get down to the little boy’s level and also so she wouldn’t lose her balance. “I’m Ruby,” she said, not quite able to append the title of “aunt” to herself.

The boy responded by throwing his arms around her neck, snotty nose pressed against her cheek. The first human being to touch her in affection in seven years and six months and Ruby enveloped the child in her hefty arms and squeezed just as long as the boy would let her.

“You got a name, big guy?” Ruby asked, relinquishing her grip but hanging onto the boy’s shoulders.

“I’m Leo,” the boy said, voice cracking with tiny earnestness.

“Leo the lion, huh?”

Leo’s face brightened with pure pleasure. “Mama says the same thing.”

“I bet she does,” she said. When they were girls, Ivy had toted that stuffed lion doll across half the country. Yellow-maned and snaggle-toothed. Named Leo. Leo the lion. “So is your mama home?”

Before the boy could answer footsteps clattered from the back to answer for him. Ruby stood, runnels of sweat running down the small of her back. Ivy, all right, but shrunk down to an altogether different person. Once upon a time, schoolgirl days, Ivy had been full-figured. A little pudgy, even. Now she was a waif. Wrists like twigs. Hair so thin you could see her ears through the strands. Peachy arm hair blossomed on her forearms and her collarbones beneath a cheap T-shirt looked about to bust through her skin. Perched in the doorway like dandelion fuzz.

Look at the Hix girls. Come to bad ends, the both of them. Just like Mrs. Custer back at Little Lake Agnes School predicted.

But fuck Mrs. Custer. Ruby dropped her grip bag and wrapped her arms around her big sister’s neck.

“Heya, Banana Bean,” she said.

***
Ivy turned on Leo’s cartoons and while the boy sat on the floor clutching a stained pillow the two sisters stood in the kitchen and talked.

“Why didn’t you tell me about him?” Ruby asked.

“I don’t know!” Ivy said. “I don’t know. How you are, I guess. You worry. I didn’t want you to worry.”

“When did this happen? How old is he?”

“Seven. Well, six and a half.”

“So that’s why you didn’t come to see me the last half of my spit.”

“It was bad, Moon Pie. You don’t understand.”

Strange, so strange to hear that pet name again. “You don’t suppose I maybe would’ve like to see him?” Ruby said softly.

Ivy shook her head. “I know that. It ain’t about that.”

“What’s it about, then?”

“You know how it is when you go up there, all them forms you got to fill out. Background check and all. I was worried if I showed up there, they’d. . .take him.”

“As bad as that, huh?”

“It was. For a while.”

“Jesus. What have you been doing since I been gone? Is that why you’re living in fucking Barstow?”

Ivy shook her head. “It’s better than it was.”

“But you still couldn’t come up to see me?”

“By then Brett didn’t want me to. He says he won’t go within a hundred miles of a prison if he can help it and he sure wasn’t going to drive me to one.”

“Tell me this Brett is Leo’s father.”

Ivy looked away. “No. I can’t tell you that.”

“Then I don’t see what say he gets a say in where you go and don’t go.”

“This is his house, Moon Pie. His car. He took us in, me and Leo both. We had to have somewhere to go.”

Ruby looked around the shabby trailer. “Looks like he’s a real prince.”

“Oh, Ruby. You should’ve seen him up there. Singing.”

“Singing.”

“He was a real rock n’ roll singer, Moon Pie. Had a band and toured and everything.”

“Made a real mint at it, I can see.”

“Not everything’s about money, you know.”

“Aren’t rock stars supposed to die young?”

“Ah, Christ, Moon Pie.” She giggled. “You haven’t changed a damn bit.”

“Were you expecting me to?”

“No.”

“All right then. So what happened to you working steady? Like you said in your letter?”

Ivy shrugged. “I was. At the Family Dollar. Now I’m not.”

“This just gets better and better. Let me guess. Your rock star didn’t like you working?”

Ivy shook her head. “No.”

“I knew it. They’re all the same, these assholes. Everywhere you go, they’re all the same.”

“Brett says to in order to get a paycheck you got to let them track you. Social security number and address and all? Even computers and drones, Brett says.”

“So? It’s a job. They got to know something about you.”

“Brett don’t want no one tracking him. He worries about it all the time.” Ivy nibbled her fingers. “He don’t even like me leaving the house.”

“Shit.”

“You should’ve seen the fit he pitched when I even wrote you the one letter telling you we were here in Barstow.”

“Who’s this asshole think he is? CIA?” She looked over at Leo at his cartoons. “So he’s not a rock star anymore?”

“Not really.”

“What’s he do then?”

“Oh, you know. This and that. For people he met on the road, you know.”

“On the road.”

“You know. When he was touring.”

“Right. Fucking drugs, isn’t it. Ivy? Jesus Christ. Don’t tell me he’s running fucking guns.”

“No!”

“Then it’s drugs. He runs drugs.”

“He doesn’t sell them, Moon Pie. He’s just a courier. Back and forth. That’s why we live here. All the interstates. He keeps it to small-time stuff, you know? Keeps us in bread.”

“So what’s his plan? Keep you locked up forever so he can be a piss-ant in the middle of nowhere for the cartels?”

“Not the cartels.”

“Who then?”

“Russians.”

“Boy, Ivy, this story just never stops getting better, does it?”

“I had to go somewhere, Moon Pie. So this is where I went. Anyway, he worries about us.”

“Yeah. I bet. I just bet he’s got you and little Leo’s best interests right at the tippy top of his mind.” Ruby looked out at Leo, sitting cross-legged about three feet from the TV. “So what happened to Leo’s real daddy?”

“Gone.”

“For good?”

“I see him every now and again. I never know when.”

“So after Leo’s daddy took off you you took up with this asshole here.”

“Among others.” Ivy tugged a Red Apple out of the pack, blew a hard wreath of smoke around her face.

“You shouldn’t smoke around him, you know.” Ruby juts a chin toward Leo at the TV.

“You’re right, you’re right.” Ivy stabbed out the smoke after one long last drag. “What’d you want me to do, Ruby? Leave California?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what I mean. I couldn’t leave you behind.”

“Don’t throw that in my face! Don’t.”

“I’m not throwing it. I’m telling you what’s true. I’m telling you why I ended up here. In this shithole. With this asshole.”

Ruby put her hands on her hips. Felt it all flowing out of her.

“Ah, hell, Banana Bean,” she said. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It is so good to see you.”

“I’m just doing what I have to, Ruby.”

“I know.”

“You know how they are.”

“Yeah. I know exactly how they are. I also know you don’t have to do nothing. Not from now on. And I tell you what. I’m going to get you out of here. Away from this asshole. Out of this shithole.”

She hugged her waifish and cigarette-reeking sister, feeling every bone all down Ivy’s back. So delicate she looked built of fish bones.

“Hey,” Ruby said, “at least you stuck with him, huh? More than we can say for mama.”

They released each other. Ivy’s eyes were wet and she wiped at her cheeks. “Do you ever think about her, Moon Pie?” she asked.

“Mama?”

“Yeah.”

Ruby snorted. “You think she ever thinks about us?”

“I like to think so.”

“Why? So you can slap her face if she ever showed it around here?”

“Ruby!”

“I mean it. She never gave a fuck about us, Banana Bean.”

“You don’t know that.”

“How do I not know that? She was out the door five minutes after they snipped my umbilical cord.”

“That’s just what Daddy used to say.”

“Yeah, well, Daddy was there, wasn’t he? Why are we talking about Mama, Banana Bean?”

Ivy smiled. “Maybe she really was a secret agent.”

Ivy used to make up stories to tell Ruby about Mama, back in that house in Wyoming. That she was a secret agent dueling with Chinese, or an adventurer hacking her way on a secret mission through a distant dark jungle, or a cowgirl riding a lonesome range. All the stories with the same origin and ending: Mama had no choice but to go, to save their lives, to keep them safe, to fulfill a grand destiny.

“I got to hit the head,” Ruby said, and pushed past Ivy.

In the bathroom Ruby inserted a fresh tampon, counted how many she had left. Not enough. Then she stuck her face in the crook of her elbow, to stifle the sobs at this squalid homecoming.

***


Ruby sat cross-legged on the floor watching Scooby-Doo with Leo curled up on her lap when the screen door slammed and Leo flinched and Ruby could feel his whole little body tense up.

“Ivy!” yelled the man who stumbled through the doorway. “Ivy!”

Brett stumbled in the door in a stained black leather jacket and floppy hair and a miasma of beer. He toted a sixer of Mickey’s looped around one finger and a battered guitar case. He set both on the counter and cracked himself a beer, narrowed eyes hard on Ruby. Ivy sidled up next to him, fawning-like. Made Ruby want to puke, the way her sister minced up to him like he was some kind of conquering hero when it looked to Ruby like he hadn’t conquered anything more than a few innocent cans of beer.

Same old story. Ivy drew herself to men such as this like a a bad habit. Daddy issues.

Ruby gently slid Leo off her lap and stood. She thought Leo would stay with Scooby-Doo but he followed her instead. Brett wrapped an arm around Ivy and ignored them.

“I’m about to hit it big-time, baby,” he said to Ivy.

“Oh?” Ivy said.

“That’s right.” He drummed his fingers on the old guitar case. “You got no idea, baby.”

“That’s good, honey. That’s real good.”

“You goddamn right it is.” He turned and gave Ruby the old once-over, not all that different from the one the toughs liked to put on back in the yard at Chowchilla. “This the jailbird little sister, huh?”

“This is Ruby,” Ivy said.

“Hi, Brett,” Ruby said, and stuck out a hand.

Brett considered her hand. Took a long pull of Mickey’s, set the can down, and then took Ruby’s hand.

“Be damned, girl,” he said. “You sure you been in lockup and not in the fitness protection program?”

“Brett!” Ivy said.

“What?” Brett said, and slugged more beer. “I’m just saying.”

Ruby didn’t say anything. Leo clung to her substantial leg.

“Leo, honey,” Ivy said. “Go back to your cartoons, huh?”

“But, moooom. . .”

“Just do it, sugar. Please.”

Leo reluctantly tore himself away from his aunt and back to the cartoons. Brett planted himself on a stool. Polished off the Mickey’s. Ivy unringed him another and he popped the tab. Pushed the remainders towards Ruby.

“Beer?” he asked.

“No thanks,” Ruby said.

“Why not? Better than that hooch they got up in the clink.”

“I didn’t drink there, either.”

“Suit yourself. I don’t trust a man who won’t have a drink with me but I guess in your case I’ll make an exception.”

“Jesus Christ, Brett,” Ivy said, pushing away from him.

“What? What? I’m just fucking with her. She’s used to that, ain’t you? Ruby? Ain’t you? Up where you came from they fuck with you all the time, don’t they?”

“Sure.”

“Course, that ain’t all you fuck with, is it.”

“Brett, would you watch your mouth?” Ivy said. “Leo’s right there.”

“Don’t push me, woman,” Brett said. “I got a hundred places I could go.” But as he talked he kept a steady drunken eye on Ruby. “I heard,” he said, “that you all are a bunch of rug munchers up there. Bet it was one a hell of a scene, huh? All you rug munchers up there. Just going at it.” He stuck out his tongue and flicked the naked air to a sloppy flapping sound. “That true? Ruby? That true? You a rug muncher, Ruby?”

“No,” Ruby said.

“Well, you’ll have to pardon me. Ivy here’s never much talked about you. I guess that’s understandable enough.”

“Brett. . .” Ivy said again.

Brett ignored her. “How long were you upstate, little sister?”

“Seven years,” Ruby said. “Seven years and six months.”

“Long stretch. Out on parole?”

“No. I wouldn’t take none of that. I did my full spit. That way I owe 'em nothing.”

“I’d say that was smart except for the fact that you ended up there in the first place.” He tapped the briefcase on the counter with the flat of his hand. “Me, I ain’t been caught at nothing. Ain’t planning on it, neither.” He staggered a little on his stool, caught himself from falling over.

“Good for you.”

“Yeah. Good for me. Well, at least you ain’t one of them bull dykes. One less character defect you got. I suspect you got several you’re not telling me about, though. Hell, if I’d have known my sweet Ivy here had a jailbird for a sister, I might never have took up with her in the first place.” He wrapped an arm back around Ivy. “Man like me can’t afford to keep company with someone who’ll rat on anyone to keep from going back inside.”

“I ain’t a rat,” Ruby said.

“Not yet you’re not. But I know you ex-cons will do just about anything from having to pull another stretch. Wait until they pull you over for a busted headlight and start asking you hard questions and talking about sending you back to the cage with the rug munchers and you just think to yourself, what, what, what can I give them.” Brett swigged hard on his beer. “What or who.”

“I’m free. I ain’t got to beg to no one.”

“Sure you are. Bet you were telling yourself right up until they threw you in the back of the police cruiser last time, too, huh?” He squeezed Ivy tighter to his side. “Like I say, the way I see it, the trouble ain’t what you did. It’s that you got caught for it.”

“I got caught because the man I did it to couldn’t walk away from it,” Ruby said.

“Whatever, little sister.” Brett looked back at Ivy. “She can stay one night. That’s it. One night. Then jailbird here hits the fucking bricks. I ain’t having no ex-con hanging around this place.”

“All right, sugar,” Ivy said. “All right.”

“I want her to say longer!” came a squeaky and quavering voice.

No one had noticed how little Leo had sneaked away from Scooby-Doo and back into the adult conversation. But now there he stood, plaintive in his goldfish footie jammies.

“Shut up, shithead,” Brett said. “You’re lucky I don’t toss your ass out with her.”

“Don’t talk to that boy thataway,” Ruby said. She could feel the sap in her pocket hard against her thigh.

“Don’t say nothing, jailbird,” Brett said, tone amiable. “You ain’t got a goddamn word to say about anything I say. Not in my house. Not now or ever.” He swiveled on his stool. “Where were you planning on housing the jailbird, honey?”

“I was going to give her Leo’s room,” Ivy said.

“They can share. I don’t need shithead there crawling up in my bed again, kicking me in the nuts.”

“Fine by me,” Ruby said.

“Good. Now why don’t you get on back to the back before I start slapping some sense into people around here. Both of yous.”

Ruby started to say something but stopped when she saw Ivy’s pleading face. So instead she held Leo’s hand back to Leo’s room. In a singlewide trailer this was not a long walk but it still took all her effort not to squeeze Leo’s hand so hard she hurt the boy.

Leo’s room was close and dark, the more comforting for the fact. Seven years and six months she’d passed in close, dark places. A few more hours wouldn’t hurt. Creaky walls sadly hung with a poster of Ichiro Suzuki and a lion, the kind of creased posters that come out of cereal boxes. These covered most but not all of the holes. For Leo’s bed, a mattress on the floor and for his chest of drawers, a stack of laundry baskets. There were burns in the carpets and aluminum foil hung over on the window. Ruby remembered that trick well enough, the way to keep out the light when you didn’t want to face the day. She knew everything about this room. She’d done all her growing up in places just like it.

Little Leo sat cross-legged on the mattress on the floor and smiled up at her. Ruby set her sling bag down and sat beside him, mattress sagging badly with her weight. She put an arm around the boy who snuggled his tiny frame and mammal heat into her.

“Aunt Ruby,” he said, “do you know any songs?”

“Sure I do,” Ruby said.

“Will you sing them to me?”

From the front of the trailer Ruby could hear Brett and Ivy arguing. Leo seemed unfazed. Ruby supposed it wasn’t anything like his first time.

“You bet. That what your mama does at nights? Sing you songs?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, now. I’ll sing to you. Your Aunt Ruby will sing to you.”

Ruby sang the songs she knew, surprised that “Mama Tried” and “Rainy Day Woman” and “Pancho and Lefty” leapt up from her memory. She could smell Daddy’s whiskey breath with the rhymes, feel his scratchy whiskers on her cheek.

When Leo fell asleep, she laid down next to him on the narrow mattress. A lamp sat on the thin carpet beside the mattress and she flicked it on on and off, on and off. In Chowchilla there were no light switches. It went dark when they said so, light when they said so. Ruby kept on playing with the lamp till the bulb burned out with a soft sizzle.

***


Some time later crashing and screams jarred Ruby from sleep. At first she didn’t know she was in Leo’s room. She didn’t know she was in the trailer. She didn’t know she was in Barstow. She thought she was back in Chowchilla, some guard down the corridor welcoming a new fish to life in prison with some beating and raping. She didn’t move, she didn’t sit up. Number one rule in Chowchilla, never attract attention to yourself. Even when one of those guards came to visit your cell, you never moved. You never said a damn word.

Then she felt Leo’s warm breath on her cheek, his animal warmth against her ribs, Ichiro Suzuki with his bat looking down on them like a wise old god. It all came back to her. Down the hall echoed shattering glass and Ivy screaming. Leo went on slumbering. None of this bothered him a bit. She thought about that a minute, how a boy of his age could sleep through such a ruckus.

Then she cast aside the lingering prison paralysis, snicked out the Prather to full length and barreled down the hall. Sap in hand just like the old days.

The overhead light above the kitchen counter swung on a crazy arc, casting jumping shadows. Brett loomed over Ivy crumpled and covering her face like she knew what was coming. Brett’s fists were clenched and he looked like he sure did, too.

He never got the chance. No, not this time. Ruby swung that sap faster than the bouncing shadows. A crack against Brett’s temple and the man keeled over like a stack of wet lumber, head crunching against the countertop corner and flopping onto a spaghetti sauce stain on the linoleum. The guitar case toppled off the other side of the counter.

Ivy looked out from behind her elbows and up at her little sister, holding out a hand. While she let Ruby help her to her feet Brett quit flopping around, blood pooling over the spaghetti stain, eyes flipped open and rolled back to their whites. The two sisters stood over him till he finally went still.

“Did you. . . ?” Ivy said. “Is he. . . ?”

Ruby knelt by the man though she already knew. Felt for a pulse anyway.

“He’s gone,” she said.

“Ah Christ, Ruby!” Ivy said. “What have you done?”

“You a big goddamn favor, is what,” Ruby said.

Ivy laced her fingers at the back of her head and walked to the front window hung with a Minnesota Vikings blanket for a curtain. Ruby followed her. Noticed she was still gripping the Prather when she reached for her sister so she tried to slip it into her pocket and this was when she noticed that Brett’s guitar case had popped open. There was no guitar inside.

“I knew this was going to happen some day, I just knew it,” Ivy said, still circling the room, ignoring her sister. “This or something goddamn like it.”

“Ivy.”

“I just didn’t think it would be . . . Oh Christ.”

“Ivy.”

“Now what are we going to do?”

“Ivy!”

Ivy turned and the “What?!!?” died on her lips. Instead she said, “Is that?”

“Don’t touch it,” Ruby said.

A dozen identical white bundles wrapped in light blue plastic spilled out of the guitar case onto the floor.

“Oh my God,” Ivy said.

“You said he was small time,” Ruby said.

“He was!” Ivy said.

“This ain’t small-time. This is the kind of shit people come looking for.”

The two sisters stood over the scene, the dead man, the narcotics, the trailer.

“Russians, you said?” Ruby said.

Ivy nodded.

“We got to leave it. Leave it alone and get out of here. Hope to hell they won’t care about us.”

“Sure, sure. Moon Pie, what do you. . . what do you think this is all worth?”

“Don’t go getting any stupid ideas, Banana Bean. Because it’s worth enough for them to come after it. And whatever that number is, it ain’t worth your life. Leo’s life.”

“No,” Ivy said. “No, of course not.”

“We got to think this through. We got to do this right. And if you touch that stuff even once, they’ll never stop coming after us.”

As if on cue the phone in Brett’s pocket went off. The dial tone was “Bulls on Parade,” Rage Against The Machine.

“See what I mean?” Ruby said. “We ain’t got much time.”

“You think they’ll let us go?”

“Not if we’re here when they get here. So we best not be.”

“All right,” Ivy said softly. Looked over Brett again. “Funny, you know. I was just sort of getting to like it here.” She walked around the counter to the kitchen and kicked Brett’s unlaced black boot. “Dickhead,” she said. “I can’t believe you did it again, Moon Pie. Instead of me. Again.”

Ruby put an arm around her sister’s shoulders. “How about you make it so there’s no more ‘again’ for either of us. Ever.” She turned for the back room, cataloguing everywhere she’d been in the trailer. “You got any money?”

Ivy shook her head. “Fifty bucks, maybe. A hundred. You?”

“Three hundred and seventy-seven bucks and eighty cents. Which ain’t going to get us very far down the road.”

“I know where we can get some money.”

“Where?”

“You ain’t going to like it.”

“Where, Ivy?”

Ivy heaved a deep sigh. “The ’End.”

“What?”

“Back in the ’End, Moon Pie.”

“Fucking Wyoming? Are you shitting me?”

“Shhh, shhh,” Ivy said, jutting a chin at the backroom. The sisters listened, but no sound came from Leo’s room. “I’m serious, Moon Pie. I got five grand stashed back there.”

“You’re going to have to explain that to me.”

“I went with Brett on one of his runs. Out to Chicago and back.”

“You went with that sack of shit one of his drug runs?”

Ivy shrugged. “We were smoking a lot of crank.”

“We.”

“I quit now, Moon Pie. Anyway, that’s how I know he works for the Russians.”

“Worked. And all that means is that they know who you are, too.”

“Yeah. God, that’s right.”

“Go on. You were saying something about five grand.”

“Well, on that trip, I told Brett I wanted to stop back home. Haven’t been there in years, I said. He always did get a kick out of me being from Wyoming. What the hell, he said, and drove us there.” She looked at his twisted ankles there on the cheap linoleum. “I could talk him into most anything once he started toking up. He wasn’t all that bad a guy sometimes, you know.”

“Whatever. So you actually went back to the house?”

“Yes we did. Drove right up Burma Road. It’s abandoned now, Moon Pie. No one lives there. The way the place was falling apart, probably no one’s been living there for years. Brett went out back to piss and roll us up a joint, you know out back by the shed?”

“Uh-huh. This is a great story, Banana Bean, but would you come to the point?”

“I’m getting there! I always thought a day like this would come, you know. But what the hell was I supposed to do, try to hide money in this shithole? So I took a cashbox from the car, and hid it in the house.”

“Seriously?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. And it seems like one hell of a good one right now. I walked right in the house and upstairs and back in that crawl space off our old bedroom. The third rafter. You remember, the one I carved a heart in?”

“I remember.”

“I hid it back there. Insurance policy, I figured. Figured someday I might need it.” She put her arms on Ruby’s shoulders. “Today’s that day, Moon Pie.”

“Sure looks like it,” Ruby said. “And Brett never noticed.”

“Oh, he noticed. I convinced him later that someone had stole it out of the car at some gas station back in Iowa. Christ, he was pissed.”

“How much, again?”

“Five grand. Maybe more. Maybe seven.” She rubbed her nose. “Funny thing, you know. That cash box? Kind of reminded me of the one in Mrs. Custer’s office.”

“Ha. No shit.”

“Fuck em, right, little sister?”

“That’s right,” Ruby said. “Fuck em.”