by J. L. Abramo
“’Course I smell like piss, Charlene. You won’t let me go to the bathroom. What you expect?”
“Last time I let you tinkle you tried to run, Bud. Your own fucking fault you gotta sit in a puddle of piss.” Charlene lit a cigarette, took a long drag. Jesus H. Christ, would they stop shooting already? The pop-pop-pop was frying her nerves.
“At least pick up the remote for me. I can’t watch another goddamn infomercial.”
“Pick it up yourself. Seem to think you’re good at picking things up. Me, for instance. Shit, that’s so pathetic, you old fart, hitting on chicks less’n half your age.”
“Half my age, shit. What mirror you looking at, Charlene?”
“Fuck you, Bud. I’m not even thirty.”
Bud’s laughter turned into a choking cough. Charlene stomped across the thick, gray carpet—what color it was originally was anybody’s guess—and slapped Bud, sending one of the empties soaring from the beer helmet. She kept moving, into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Let the fucker stew in his own piss. At least the gunfire was slightly muted in here.
She kicked through the layers of unwashed towels on the linoleum, the empty toilet paper rolls, empty bottles of bargain value vodka, whiskey and tequila. She stooped to snag a towel, then wiped through the accumulation of filth that formed a thick skim over the vanity mirror’s glass. I’m still pretty, aren’t I? Her auburn hair could use a wash, looking a bit stringy. And, Are those gray hairs? Maybe her skin had coarsened a bit. But she was thin, really thin, except where it counted up top. Men liked that. And she still had most of her teeth. She probed around a cuspid with her tongue. Felt a bit loose, but not in danger of falling out anytime soon.
Charlene had seen worse, women hitting the pipe too often, beginning to care about nothing but the gack. She retained her will power. She decided when to indulge, let that exultant heat flow through her. The Speed Demons might think she was just one of their bitches, willing to suck their cocks and serve them eggs and sausage every morning so long as they provided the meth. But that wasn’t the way of it. She made the choices, not the crystal, not the men.
She stubbed her cigarette out in the sink. She took another inspection tour in the mirror before leaving the bathroom. I’ve still got it. Enough to pick up horny old dipshits like Bud Mikovsky anyway.
The gunfire ceased. Charlene entered the kitchen, picking through a maze constructed of Spanish language labeled cartons of cold medicine, boxes of ammunition, motorcycle parts, and stacks of money bound with rubber bands and plastic wrap. She selected one of the half-full bottles of vodka from the litter atop the kitchen table. She found a tolerably clean glass, hesitated, then snatched up a second. She returned to the living room, filling both glasses. She slipped one into the empty cup holder on Bud’s hat and inserted the straw.
“There. Friends again, right, lover?” Charlene raised her glass in a toast.
“Friends? When were we ever friends?” Bud asked, but sipped at the straw anyway.
“How about those first couple of nights? You seemed pretty friendly.”
“Yeah, then you ask if some friends of yours can come over for a party. Next thing I know, the fucking Hell’s Angels invade and I’m taped to my own chair. How’s that friendly?”
“You had a good time,” Charlene said. She finished her drink. She retrieved another cigarette and lit it. The basement door banged open down the hall past the bathroom. “And they’re not Hell’s Angels. Don’t let them hear you say that.”
Down the hall sauntered Boar, one of the Speed Demons. Over his vest, jeans and boots he wore a rubber apron and thick yellow rubber gloves, like Charlene’s mom used to wear when she’d finally sober up and get around to washing dishes. Green tinted goggles rested on Boar’s head, and a painter’s respirator hung around his neck.
“Shut the fuck up, Charlene,” Boar said. “You don’t need to be talking to our host.” He stripped off the gloves, the process sounding like someone stretching a handful of rubber bands. “Go get me a beer. I’m thirsty and I’m probably four or five beers behind already. Shit, Bud, you stink like piss.”
Earl considered calling the cops, the idea not even surviving the walk back to his house. The Stevens did not involve the police in their own affairs, a position Earl wished the cops reciprocated. But the calculation was simple. Shit wasn’t right at the Mikovsky place. Bud was Dad’s friend. More than that, Earl owed Bud. Therefore the shit was Earl’s to clean up. And the topper—fucking bikers. No better than the shit stain that had killed his mom.
First thing to do was figure out what exactly was going on. He needed to get eyes on the problem.
Earl drove his dad’s late-nineties model Ford F-150 the nine miles into town. He ought to get something newer, something of his own. But the truck still worked. And until he figured out what he was going to do for a living, making a major purchase was off the table.
He’d always assumed he’d follow in his father’s footsteps. Keep the orchard in semi-decent condition. Same with the berries and the tomatoes. Enough to look legitimate. Meanwhile, keep growing the cash crop. He knew his dad’s prime spots in BLM lands. Could raise a few plants under grow lamps down in the basement among the arsenal of long guns his dad and granddad had accumulated over the decades through sources that didn’t generate paper trails. Trick was to manufacture an excuse to be burning that much electricity. Christmas decoration was a good one. Grow during December, have a jillion bulbs and a sleigh on a motorized carousel ready to switch on at the first hint of Federales.
But now? Hell, it was just farming now. Legal farming. What would legalization do to the prices? What sort of hoops would the State make him jump through? Licenses, agriculture inspectors crawling up his ass. Taxes. Would the reward be worth the effort? And, well, shit, it ain’t exactly outlaw anymore, is it?
He drove through the farmland, the fertile fields held by generations of Willamette Valley settlers, the houses modest but in good condition. Then the truck rose and fell as the road meandered through hills newly planted with grapes. Mansions sprawled across the hill tops, the freshly constructed homes of millionaires playing at being vintners. Recent model SUVs shared the road, before turning off left or right to reach the faggoty tasting rooms of Domaine this or Chateau that. Out of the hills, nearing town, he passed through the belt of manufactured homes and trailer parks, the abode of the agricultural poor and the out-of-work.
Hell of a difference a mile can make.
He drove through the bistros, bottle shops, and antiques stores of the quaintly charming, Main Street America tourist blocks, then on to the big box store the other side of town. He tucked a ball cap low over his eyes, noting his hair was getting a bit long and deciding he didn’t care. Twenty minutes later he was driving back, his purchases—paid for with cash, of course—on the seat beside him.
Dusk neared by the time he got home. At the kitchen table he assembled the quad-copter drone and familiarized himself with the manual and remote control. He fitted the tiny, box like video camera to the drone, tested the batteries and the video link to his tablet computer.
Earl wondered what his dad would make of a pot farmer getting a chopper in the air to spy on a biker gang. Tell me I had my priorities ass backward.
Earl had helped launch his infantry company’s Raven UAV a few times in both training and in practice, even got a few minutes at the stick. The quad-copter was less frustrating, more intuitive. A high altitude pass showed the corral as a slaughterhouse kill floor. Alpaca corpses formed little hummocks in the close-cropped grass. One of the bikers clumsily butchered a carcass, hacking away with a boot knife. Another added wood to the fire in a burn barrel, while four others stood around swilling beer. Some half-assed attempt at a barbeque, Earl figured.
He worked the drone close to the house, angling for a look in the windows.
Fuck. You old fool, Mikovsky, what have you gone and done now?
The drone’s camera picked up images of Bud Mikovs
ky, strapped into his armchair, wearing nothing but sweatpants and a T-shirt. That and a cup holder hat. The place looked like shit. He counted two, no three, others inside. One looked female. So, not counting Mr. Mikovsky he was looking at an op force of nine. Better add a fudge factor, in case he’d missed a few. Figure on a dozen Ali Babas.
A pass around the house to count the choppers tended to support his original count, but there could be a few riding bitch.
All right. For the moment, Bud Mikovsky—fucked up soup sandwich of a man or not—was family. Time to teach these asshats not to fuck with the Stevens on Aldershot Road.
Earl could hear the bikers whooping it up as he low crawled through the hemlocks. Dense clouds hid the stars and the thumbnail of a moon. Back of the house the burn barrel lit up a circle of laughing, swearing, drinking bikers. Only the varying brightness of the television from inside provided any illumination out front. But it served Earl’s needs. His old man had taught him a thing or two about booby traps. As had Uncle Sam. And, second-hand, the Ali Babas with their fucking IEDs.
“It’s a competitive business,” Elvin Stevens had told Earl, showing how to rig a spring gun with an old, piece-of-shit twelve gauge. “Ain’t the Feds I worry about out here so much as other growers.”
Earl wrapped a couple loops of wire around the front door, eased down the front steps, checking the tension. He dropped to his belly, sighted along the barrel. Front toward enemy, he thought, remembering the helpful printing on the convex side of a claymore mine. He elevated the shotgun another inch with a hunk of sod ganked from Mikovsky’s lawn.
He turned his attention next to the row of parked motorcycles. A damned shame, Earl thought, getting to work.
A silence momentarily fell upon the party out back. A bleated “emmmm” filled the space. Incredibly an alpaca still lived. Okay then, fuck the bikes.
Charlene woke. Something wasn’t right. A concussive whooomp rattled the bedroom windows. Red flared beyond yellowing curtains. She pushed away from the stinking, unwashed body of the Speed Demon who’d been fucking her that night.
“What the fuck, Charlene?” the biker asked. She couldn’t remember his name and ignored him, walking to the window.
Pushing aside the curtains revealed a tangle of blazing Harley Davidsons, flames leaping and dancing ten feet in the air. The explosion had blown the machines in all directions. The high grass of the front yard steamed and flared about the burning hulk of a hog. Another motorcycle, leaning upside down against the house, gouted flames toward the eaves, its spinning wheels adding a touch of pyrotechnic whimsy to the conflagration.
“Goddamnit!” the biker behind her swore, thrusting himself into his jeans. Charlene heard doors opening, boots hammering down the hallway. She heard the front door open, heard a shotgun blast. Then screaming and more swearing.
The biker tore out of the bedroom, barefoot, shrugging into his vest, a pistol already in hand.
The hell with this. Squatting in Bud’s house had run its course. Time to move on. If she could get out alive. A rival biker gang? The cops? Didn’t matter to her, so long as she escaped.
Charlene pulled a canvas travel bag from beneath the bed. She snatched up a handful of the clothes strewn about the floor and stuffed them in the bag. A twisted baggy of crystal meth lay on the nightstand, next to the clock, the LED display of which read 3:16. Charlene swept the meth into the bag, slipped into a skirt, jacket and shoes and left.
She stopped in the kitchen. An exchange of gunfire outside told her she didn’t have much time. She shoved as many of the stacked bundles of money into the travel bag as it would hold, overstuffing it to the point it wouldn’t zip shut. She slung it over her shoulder and crawled on hands and knees into the living room.
The light of the burning motorcycles showed figures outside, crouching and creeping. Muzzle flares and the cracks of pistol shots indicated only chaos and danger. Maybe not that way, then, not over the sprawled body of one of the Speed Demons, his chest nothing but a red mess of closely spaced craters.
“Charlene, get me out of here,” Bud said. “Please.” His eyes were huge in the flickering glare, terror in his voice. He stank of shit now as well as piss.
Charlene leaned back into the kitchen, snagged a butcher knife from the knife block. Loose ends.
“Fuck you, old man,” she said, and stalked toward him.
Another explosion rocked the house. The front wheel, forks, handlebars, and mangled remains of a fuel tank rocketed through the front window behind a torrent of glass shards.
Charlene staggered, lost her balance, and fell forward across Bud’s lap. The stench rolled over her like a wave. She gagged. She shook her head, trying to shake off the concussive effect of the explosion and the debilitating smell of the man she’d kept marinating in his own filth for days.
She pushed herself to her feet, to find Bud Mikovsky slicing through his restraints. And behind him, from down the hall, marched a roiling onslaught of fire and smoke.
Earl’s position among the rank of hemlock trees farther up toward Aldershot Road provided an excellent angle on the front door. The bikers rushing out the front door fired into the darkness in front of them, assuming a head-on assault, not the oblique attack he employed. The Ruger Mini-14, one of his dad’s collection of disposable, un-traceable, long guns, fit comfortably, cupped against his shoulder. Felt little different than a day at the range, or another patrol in Ramadi gone tits up. The brass sizzled past his ear, joining a growing collection. The minutes he’d spent wiping down the cartridges, along with the rifle itself, might have been wasted. Then again, might not. Fingerprints could be pesky, persistent little shits.
He put a .223 round through another alpaca-murdering biker. Center mass. Earl waited, heard no return fire. Saw no movement. Had he got them all?
The illumination from inside the front door increased. Shit! He hadn’t meant to burn down Mr. Mikovsky’s house. Especially not with Bud inside it. He hated to break cover, but he had to risk it.
He rose to his feet and ran a crouched, zig-zag pattern toward the burning house.
A shadow erupted from the corner of the house, from the direction of the corral. A biker hit Earl in a flying tackle, jarring the rifle from his grip. They fell to the grass, rolling, limbs tangled. The biker emerged on top. He slipped an arm across Earl’s neck, leaned forward, pinning him. His free hand reached down to his boot, then came up with a knife. The boot knife descended. Earl caught the wrist. Fucker’s strong. For the first time that night he felt fear grip him. The blade drew inexorably closer to Earl’s chest, inching steadily downward until it dented his T-shirt. He felt the first prick of pain. The pain banished the fear, leaving only a cold desperation.
Earl bucked his hips, dislodged the biker and rolled him off. As Earl rose to his feet, his gloved hand came in contact with the Mini-14. The biker came at him in a lunge. Earl secured the rifle in both hands and brought the buttstock around, connecting with the man’s forehead. Just like basic training. The biker went down and stayed down.
Inside the house, backlit by a hellscape of fire and smoke, Earl saw Bud Mikovsky struggling with a woman. As he ran into the house he saw a knife blade raised high, then plunge down. The woman screamed.
Earl dropped the rifle next to the overturned easy chair. The woman wasn’t moving. Bud Mikovsky dropped to his hands and knees, coughing. The plastic wrapping of bundles of cash inside a duffle bag reflected the light of the approaching fire.
“Mr. Mikovsky,” Earl said. He slipped an arm beneath the old man and helped him to his feet. With his other hand he snatched up the duffle bag. Bud Mikovsky reeked, even over the smell of smoke, and the smell of something else burning. What was that? It stunk like cat piss. Methamphetamine?
The two men staggered down the front steps and down the driveway, heading for the road.
The bag over Earl’s shoulder was heavy, nearly as burdensome as Bud Mikovsky tottering along, leaning against Earl’s other side. How much money, i
n large-ish denominations, would it take to weigh that much? Enough to get out of the pot business. Is that what he wanted? Did he really want to give up the outlaw lifestyle? The Stevens’ tradition? It was only pot the State had legalized, after all. That left a world of banned, recreational pharmaceuticals for an outlaw to deal in. Hell, judging from this bag alone, these bikers must be pulling in a shit-ton from meth.
Could he do that? Deal with the sort of people who’d do this to Bud Mikovsky? Was that the sort of man he really was?
No. Money like this tempted a man to go legit. He’d stash it in one of his dad’s hidey-holes in the woods, buried deep, and wait for the heat to die down. Then dig it up, spend it on the farm. Hell, maybe he’d grow grapes.
Earl smiled at that thought as they reached the road. He could smell the meth burning down Aldershot Road.
Back to TOC
DRUNKEN POET’S DREAM
Trey R. Barker
“Three months.”
“Three weeks? But I thought you loved me.”
The harmonica tight in her fist, she bashed his nose. Thunder exploded in his head, a crack of cartilage and blood, an extreme burst of pain. Tears sprang in his eyes, nausea in his guts. His legs wobbled and he sank to her kitchen floor.
“Three months, asshole. The fuck took you so long?”
A tower of rage over him, she hit him in the nose again. Her fist came away bloody and warmth drained down over his lips and chin.
But he kept his eyes open, staring at the tarnished harmonica, cobwebs in some of the mouth holes. “The...fuck did...you get...?” She held it out but he didn’t touch it. How could he touch an illusion, a conjured trick? That harmonica had left with Christine when she’d walked out and left him bloody and alone so how could it be here now?