by Eric Beetner
The siblings looked at each other and shrugged.
“Look, I’ll send someone to pick them up and dispose of them in an environmentally friendly way. Is that acceptable?” Both of the Starkey children nodded.
“It’s only fair that Mother paid a price for her obsession,” Alice told Edward a few days later. “For the last twenty years, she’s used those Beanies to drive a wedge between us. Playing us off one against the other. Interfering with our relationship.”
Edward nodded. “Watching that man carry the boxes out the door was one of the best moments in my life. That mediator will see to it that they are disposed of correctly. Even if they can’t be burned.”
“Yes, it was nearly as satisfying as watching Mother swallow that cup of tea.” Alice watched as Edward smoothed the wrinkles in her skirt, his hand lingering familiarly. “Every sip was a step on the path to freedom. She could’ve outlived us both on pure vitriol. Evil woman.”
“Speaking of tea, shall we have some. It’s Oolong today,” Edward lifted his cup and Alice tapped it lightly with hers.
Three weeks later five hundred Beanie Babies, their tags cut off by Doris to prevent future hoarding , were on their way to Afghanistan where Elsa’s nephew handed them out to waiting village children. No one considered putting them behind glass.
“My aunt says the people who owned these toys wanted to burn them.” said the soldier.
“Some people should be thrown in jail,” said his companion, watching two little girls wrap their Beanies in keffiyehs. “Look at those smiling faces.”
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CREDITS AND DEBITS
Paul J. Garth
I’d been at work close to an hour and was halfway down straightening the dog food and motor oil aisle when Larnerd shouted through the cash opening over the counter and asked me what was wrong.
“What do you mean?”
He leaned down and pointed his mouth out of the hole in the glass that customers paid cash through. “Just that, usually, you sit back here with me, just texting and looking at dumb shit on your phone until a customer comes in. But today, it’s like you’re actually working. Just wondering what’s up with that.”
I finished zoning the off-brand of wet dog food and walked back to the counter. Eyed the Juicy Fruit and Orbit and packs of Starburst all sitting neatly in their thin cardboard boxes. I could feel him watching me through the glass. Knew if I looked up, I’d see his eyes moving up and down my arms, looking for puncture marks or cigarette burns, or checking my nose for powder. Knew he’d say it was decisions like those that were half the reason I was in the situation I was in—stuck working in a gas station, with no money and no idea how to make more.
“I don’t have my phone,” I said after a long time.
“Why’s that?”
I looked up. “I just don’t have my phone. Or. Actually I do. It’s just it’s turned off.”
“Well, turn it on. We’ve got a charger. I mean, I’m glad you’re actually doing something, but customers don’t like seeing some sad dude mope around the store.”
“I can’t turn it on. It’s the phone company that turned it off. Fucking Sprint.”
We were both quiet for a while. Turned our heads to look out at the gas pumps surrounded by the cracked lot that bled into the county road in front of the station. It was a long time before a car passed. Not that it mattered. The credit card machine was broken anyway, and people always bitched when they had to get out of line and use the ATM in the corner. I turned, headed back to finish my job zoning the aisle I’d been working in, when Larnerd shouted to me, “Damn, Tucker. How does your phone get turned off?”
I tried to keep my temper in check.
It wasn’t that Dan Larnerd was a bad guy. He never rode me about not working hard enough or showing up late. That afternoon actually, he’d told me he’d clock me in on time, whenever the time clock computer got fixed, even though I’d been close to twenty minutes late and had forgotten my shirt. It’s just that he was smart. Too smart to do things like fall behind on bills or blow all his money at the bar on a Wednesday night, buying shots and sharing that last little baggie of crystal with a girl who would bat her eyes then pretend she was suddenly sick after she realized you’re looking to fuck but willing to settle for a quick jerk-off in the parking lot.
Honestly, I had no idea why he stuck around town. He had a college degree from Kearney and could have gone off to Omaha or Lincoln or even Minneapolis or Denver. The idea of him wasting his life as an Assistant Manager at a Shell station made me sad for him. I could only imagine how he felt.
“It’s pretty easy, Dan,” I said. “You don’t pay the bill.”
Larnerd leaned back in his chair. Straightened his shirt. Adjusted his name tag. “Tuck,” he said. “C’mon man. We’ve talked about this.”
We had. A few months before, when my old piece of shit ’93 Taurus had finally given out, he’d gone on for the better part of an hour, telling me in step by step detail how to get the money together for a car loan. “You can’t let that kind of stuff just slide,” he continued. “You’ve got to start building up a history. Letting people and companies know you’re good for your word when you say you are. And it’s just you right now, man. You’re single. It’s never going to get any cheaper than now. You should be saving. Buying small things with a credit card so you can get some history built up.”
“I know,” I said. “I just. I had some shit come up.”
“Like what?”
“Christ, Dan. Don’t fucking ask me that. Stuff. You know?” I turned and walked back toward the aisle I’d been working, my arms suddenly itching. I tried to ignore it, went back to straightening cans and pulling pouches of cat food forward on their thin metal arms. The radio back by the beer coolers was busted, so all I heard were the sounds of product sliding on the shelves and the squeak of my shoes on the floor until, from behind the glass, I heard Larnerd tell me he was sorry.
A few hours later and I was getting antsy. I was out of cigarettes and cash, but it was another week until payday, and with Larnerd behind the counter, I knew I couldn’t pocket a pack until he left, and he wasn’t giving any indication he was going anywhere until close.
There’d been a few customers in and out, a couple kids, and some adults picking up beer to drink in the parking lot of the high school before the football game started. Larnerd talked to them all, making sure to express his support for the Hastings Tigers as he rang them up, apologizing for the insistence on cash. “Tuck,” he asked. “Can you make sure the coolers are stocked? I’m thinking we’re going to have a rush after the game.”
I stocked beer while Larnerd worked the counter, his portable radio in the cashier cube giving us updates on the Tigers. Near the end of the game, he called me up. “Three minutes left in the fourth. Take your break now, if you want it. Probably gonna be busy for a while.” He held out a pack of Camels, crushed at the top. I knew he’d pulled them out of the returns bin we were supposed to send back to the distributor, but was too grateful to complain. I thanked him and ran outside, around the corner of the building. The sun had dipped almost all the way gone and in the field behind the store I could see old beer bottles and witchgrass and a shopping cart throwing long, intertwining shadows. Out of habit I pulled out my phone, then put it back when I remembered. I wanted to cry then, but wouldn’t let myself. Instead, I thought about Larnerd’s suggestions for getting my life together as I smoked.
There was a rush after the game, just like Larnerd had said. For a solid hour, we ran both registers, the line in front of the cashier cube swelling to twenty or more customers deep, teenagers carrying bottles of soda and candy and twenty somethings my age buying beer and chew. If I saw someone I’d gone to school with, I looked down and made myself shrunken and invisible, my body turning in on itself until I was sure no one had recognized me.
When the rush ended, I hung out in the cashier cube with Larnerd, asking him questions
about how to get my life back in order. He advised quitting smoking, of course, and suggested I stop whatever other shit I was into, but didn’t lean too hard on it. Mostly, he said, I needed to save my money. Get a prepaid credit card. Go to the library and print myself up a nice looking resume. “Eventually you’ll want to find another job,” he said. “And the only way people will look past a gas station job is if you give them something nice to see first.”
“Why are you still here, then?” I asked. “I mean, why are you in Hastings at all? Shouldn’t you be working at the bank or something? Or in another city?”
Larnerd looked away. “I did once,” he said quietly. “Got fired, actually. And probably couldn’t get a job at a different one. But I can’t leave Hastings. I’ve, you know, got family stuff.” He smiled, then went back to me. “Anyway, like I was saying. It wouldn’t take much. Even a thousand dollars could get you started.”
We closed at midnight. I cleaned the soda fountains while Larnerd counted down the registers that were filled to the top with cash. About fifteen minutes later some cops rolled by and Larnerd let them in to take what they wanted from the uneaten hotdogs and taquitos. They came every night, mostly because the owner, Mr. Macfee, had worked out a deal with them for free food in exchange for once in a while drive-by, but also because they knew our little store didn’t have any kind of security system. There were cameras, but everyone who worked there knew they didn’t work, and Macfee said if the store ever got robbed, we were to try and take a picture with our phones of the car, so he could at least give the cops a license plate, otherwise, there was no way anyone was ever going to get caught.
While the cops were in the store, I worked the beer cooler, stocking and rotating cans and bottles onto the nearly empty shelves, wondering the whole time if, whenever I got my new life started, I’d still have the urge to hide from the police.
When they left, Larnerd asked if I’d need a ride home, or if I was going to walk. “It’s a nice night,” he said. “But I’d be happy to drive you.”
“It’s cool, man,” I told him, patting the pack in my jeans. “I’d rather walk and smoke, you know?”
He gave me a teasing grin. “Last pack, right?”
“We’ll see,” I said, thinking about what he’d told me, that no one at a real job wanted to hire a smoker because of some bullshit about insurance. I followed him back into the cashier cube and watched as he bent over the safe. “Time computer’s still busted,” he said over his shoulder. “Should be fixed on Monday. Tell you what, I’ll clock you in for an extra hour. Tell Mr. Macfee you came in a bit early. All the cash he made tonight, I doubt he’ll care about nine dollars.”
“He make a lot?”
Larnerd kind of snorted. “After that rush? It was around three and a half grand. No kidding.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah.” He stood. Turned to the front of the cube and grabbed one of the register tills, then turned and crouched to put it all the way in the back of the safe, his head practically disappearing inside. “Hand me that other one would you?”
“Sure thing,” I said, picking up the till. From my year or so working there, I knew exactly how much the till contained, twenty ones, eight fives, and two twenties, plus five dollars in assorted change. After my conversation with Dan, it felt strange to be holding even that small amount of cash. I started thinking about the rest of the money Larnerd said the store had made that night then. About how Mr. Macfee would let it sit, not bothering to fix the busted radio in the back or the cracked lot outside or the goddamn heater in the winter. I thought about how he had all that cash and just let it sit, then realized, if what Larnerd said was true, it was in his bank account, working for him, making him richer. I thought about how Larnerd said a thousand dollars would be enough to get a good start.
Larnerd was twisted half out of the safe. “You going to hand that to me or not?”
The cash stared up at me, and I thought about my apartment. How the ceiling in the bathroom had collapsed over the toilet when the upstairs neighbor’s bathtub had cracked. Thought about my lack of both a car and credit card. How I didn’t even have cable, or a working cell phone. I remembered something I’d seen on TV once. How cops could track people by their phones. Some guy in California who’d killed his mistress had been caught just based on the pings his phone made on the towers as he drove around. But mine was off. It couldn’t be tracked. As far as the cops could tell, I was just another piece of shit who maybe blipped on their radar a few times and then fell off, never to be seen again.
I knew I hadn’t clocked in. That the timecard computer was broken. The only other person would could say I’d been there tonight was Larnerd. Other than that, the cops hadn’t seen me, and there was no way in shit anyone in that line would recognize me from any other asshole they passed on the street. The till balanced in one hand, I reached down and gripped the door of the safe.
“Tucker?”
I thought through it all again. No phone. No time card. No security system. A safe full of cash. A once in a life time circumstance. A chance at starting over, just waiting for me in that cold steel box.
“Tucker. Earth to Tucker. You okay, man?” Larnerd asked, still half in the safe. “Are you going to—”
I slammed the safe as hard as I could, dropping the till so I could throw my full weight into it. From between the plates of steel, I heard Larnerd scream, because of the pain or the shock, I’m still not sure. I grabbed the safe door on the rebound and swung it again, using my hips to throw it harder. Saw it catch Larnerd on the side of the head, right on the ear. Saw his skull crack against the side of the safe and bounce back with a jerk. Blood lined the dark steel, spilled out on to the yellow-gray linoleum floor, and, next to me, Larnerd’s feet jerked, kicking against the side of the cashier’s cube.
I swung the safe’s door again. Just to be sure. Once more. Twice.
When I was sure he was dead, I reached past Larnerd, grimacing as my hand touched blood and something soft and squishy, then pushed further back into the safe, where I touched plastic bags. I pulled them out, five of them squeezed in my hand, each full of cash.
“Holy shit.”
On each bag, written in Larnerd’s perfect rounded handwriting, was an amount. A total of almost five thousand dollars.
I stepped out of the cube, trying not to look at Larnerd’s body, suddenly unsure of what I could do with that much money. And then I remembered his advice, his step by step guide to getting my credit back on track. A pre-paid credit card to build trust back up at the bank. A personal relationship with a lender there, who would get to know me. Automatic bill pay for the bastards at Sprint and the electric company.
I stepped back into the cube. Stood over his feet and the body that hung half out the safe. I opened the heavy door and reached back in, careful not to look down, and when I had taken all the cash from the tills, I thanked him for his friendship and advice, then took a fresh pack of Camels from the cigarette rack.
“Last pack,” I said to Larnerd. “Promise.”
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to express my thanks to the authors who contributed stories here. Each and every writer donated their story because they believed in the cause of reasoned and sensible gun legislation. These writers are working professionals and you can find more about them and their work online. Books are easily ordered from your favorite retailer or are available online.
Thank you to Down & Out Books for accepting this project and to Eric Campbell for guidance and support.
Thank you to http://ceasefireusa.org/ for working with us on this project and for your hard work and dedication to finding a solution to gun violence in America.
Thanks to those who can discuss the issue of guns without devolving into a shouting match or name calling. Thanks to those of you who do more than just complain about it. To the volunteers and organizers, to those who write their congresspeople, who speak
out and who won’t stay silent as more and more people die needlessly.
—Eric Beetner
January, 2016
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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
PATRICIA ABBOTT is the author of Concrete Angel and the forthcoming Shot in Detroit (June 2016). More than 150 of her stories have appeared in print or online. She reviews movies for Crimespree Magazine and blogs at pattinase.blogspot.com. She lives outside Detroit.
J. L. ABRAMO was born in the seaside paradise of Brooklyn, New York on Raymond Chandler’s fifty-ninth birthday. Abramo is the author of Catching Water in a Net, winner of the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America prize for Best First Private Eye Novel; the subsequent Jake Diamond novels Clutching at Straws, Counting to Infinity, and Circling the Runway; Chasing Charlie Chan, a prequel to the Jake Diamond series; and the stand-alone, thriller Gravesend. Abramo’s latest work is Brooklyn Justice. http://www.jlabramo.com/
TREY R. BARKER is the author of 2,000 Miles To Open Road, Exit Blood, Death is Not Forever, and Road Gig, all published by Down & Out Books, as well as Slow Bleed, The Cancer Chronicles, and Remembrance and Regrets. He’s published hundreds of short stories, plays, poems, and thousands of articles as a former journalist. Currently, he is a sergeant with the Bureau County Sheriff’s Office, and an investigator with the Illinois Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children task force. http://www.treyrbarker.com/
ERIC BEETNER is the author of more than a dozen novels including Rumrunners, The Devil Doesn’t Want Me, Dig Two Graves,The Year I Died Seven Times. He is co-author (with JB Kohl) of One Too Many Blows To The Head, Borrowed Trouble and Over Their Heads and co-wrote The Backlist and The Short List with author Frank Zafiro. He lives in Los Angeles where he co-hosts the Noir At The Bar reading series. For more visit http://www.ericbeetner.com/.