Mama Tried (Crime Fiction Inspired By Outlaw Country Music Book 1)

by J. L. Abramo

She rocked sideways, “Yes, sir,” and waited for whatever was next.

  “Get the fuck out.”

  When she was gone, Aubrey kicked the door closed. “You’re a cartoon.”

  “Explain that.”

  “Cliché. Nothing redeeming about you at all.”

  The man grinned but it was a predator’s face, lips pulled back and teeth shining nicotine-yellow in the dim light. “Whatever. I got the ponies and you wanna ride. Guess that kind’a makes me king, don’t it?”

  “Alpha male.”

  The man’s grin spread like a bloodstain across his face. “Goddamned right. Alpha.”

  “Alpha and omega.”

  “Huh?” The man frowned. “Who you?”

  “Aubrey.”

  The man’s eyes scrunched and his head craned. “Sounds awfully familiar.”

  “We got mutual friends, Larry.”

  Putting himself away, the man sat, leaned back in the chair, and lit a cigarette. The air was hot, saturated with dust that hung like meat in a butcher’s shop. He propped his feet on the desk. Scuffy boots, dirty jeans, a white t-shirt with sweat stains dried yellow beneath his armpits. “Larry? Got the wrong man.”

  Aubrey shrugged, felt the weight of the .45 in his pocket. “Your world, boss. Me? I’m just trying to get me a little ride for tonight.”

  “Like the ponies, do you?”

  “Wouldn’t be standing here otherwise, would I?”

  “The fuck do I know what you’d be doing and not doing?”

  “Fair point. Can I get one?” Aubrey mimed smoking.

  “Ponies and my smokes? You ain’t got enough for a smoke, how you gonna have enough to ride?” But he lit a cigarette with his own and handed it over.

  Aubrey dragged deeply and blew the smoke into the sunlight. “I got what I need. Got me a taste, too...Laurence.”

  The man stood slowly. Aubrey saw him glance over Aubrey’s shoulder, then down to the middle drawer in the desk. His leg moved just a bit beneath the desk.

  “’Cause I’ve never seen that before.” Aubrey went to the door and just as it started to open, he slammed it shut and threw the lock. Someone on the other side grunted and banged a fist against the door.

  “The hell is going on? Boss?”

  Aubrey looked at Larry. “‘Boss?’” He laughed. “Boss is indisposed. We’ll be done directly.”

  Sitting across from Larry, Aubrey said, “I had a girlfriend once. Chrissy. She was a hard-riding woman. Loved being naked, loved having her picture taken, loved being Daddy’s little girl. If you get where I’m drifting.”

  “Drift where ever you want, but you don’t let me outta this room, and I mean now, you’re in for a world of hurt.”

  Aubrey laughed. “Man, you do anything that ain’t a cliché? Talking like that ain’t bad ass rockin’...it’s pussy. Then again, so is beating on women.”

  “Aubrey you said?”

  Aubrey stared at him. Eventually, the understanding came. He skinned the .45 and held it loosely, pointed at the floor. “Yeah, Mariah’s friend.”

  “Easy, friend. I don’t know what you think you know but you’re wrong.”

  “Easy enough to clear up. Did you or did you not take pictures of her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you or did you not beat on her?”

  “Well...yeah...women need to be taught.”

  “Did you or did you not shoot her in the face?”

  “It ain’t like you think.”

  Aubrey pointed the gun directly at Larry’s face. “If you beat her, if you raped her, if you took her picture and posted it online, if you sold her to shitbags, if you put a gun in her face, pulled the trigger, and killed her...then it’s exactly like I think.”

  “Yeah, but it ain’t. I didn’t do it just ’cause I wanted some bloodsport. You kidding me? She was grade A pussy. Bitch made me and my partner a fortune...a fucking mint up that cooter. Why would I—”

  But Aubrey had already fired. The bullet, two hundred and eight grains moving at who even knew how many feet per second, was twisting out of the barrel almost before Aubrey realized he had fired. He wouldn’t take it back, but the quickness of killing this man surprised him.

  Killing Bobby Trimble had taken forever. It had taken three shots, each anchored with hesitation and doubt. It had taken hundreds, if not thousands, of heartbeats pounding in Aubrey’s chest before Bobby Trimble was actually dead.

  This was quick. A single shot, a rose blooming on the man’s chest, surprise in his eyes for a split second before he crumpled beneath the desk.

  Shoot and done and he didn’t realized until nearly three hours later what Laurence had said before the blood.

  “He dead?”

  Elena’s blazing eyes were dark and satisfied now, a smirk across her face.

  “That’s what you wanted, right?” He gripped the harmonica tight with his left hand. “Put paid to that long-standing debt?”

  She drank sweet tea while they sat at her kitchen table. Through the kitchen window, they could see the wind had died. The dust that had been swirling was now piled in and around mesquite bushes and rocks and outbuildings.

  “Alpha and omega. The first and the last.”

  “You killed them both. Easier the second time?”

  “Easier every time, I guess. But I made some calls when I was done. Well, after I let Miss Amber take control for a while.”

  “Used up drunk.” Elena shook her head. “Don’t get what she saw in you.”

  “Didn’t see it deeply enough, I guess, did she? Not if she kept on with abusers and pimps and madams.”

  Elena held his stare, gently drinking her tea.

  “Turns out Larry had a partner.”

  “So say the whores and junkies.”

  Aubrey smiled. “I’m better than that; my information is better than that. Turns out that partner was you.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll pass. Turns out not only did Larry marry her, but introduced her to you. Most of your whores married?”

  Elena eyed him over her glass. “Just the ones whose husbands owe me a bank full of money.”

  “So Larry killed her, I’m guessing, because she finally wanted to leave. Because she’d had enough of two users and decided to smack you both in the face with some balls. But why have me kill him?”

  She set the glass down and carefully kept her hands on the table. “You do muscle. Two birds one bullet.”

  “He decided to quit paying, huh? Didn’t want some piece of gash telling him what to do? Likes his women under control but couldn’t control his bookie?”

  “Bookie...dealer...procurer...whatever.”

  “Why not kill him yourself?”

  “’Cause now I got something over you, don’t I?”

  He pulled the .45.

  “Terrible mistake, Aubrey.”

  “Mistakes are my best thing. And the killing does get easier every time. So the lagniappe won’t be no kinda problem.”

  Her eyes were confused. “The what?”

  “The Spanish is la napa.”

  “Okay...the extra. So what? The extra what?”

  “Was a dozen donuts for Christine, but for me? It’s the extra bit paid on the total debt. Alpha...omega...la napa.”

  “Ain’t you the big man? Shooting everyone you come across.”

  “No, just those who hurt Christine.”

  “Shoot yourself, then, ’cause you hurt her worst of all.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  He fired and it happened even quicker than it had with Larry. She was there, grinning contemptuously, then she was dead, blood spilling across the tiled kitchen floor from the hole in her head.

  He looked at the gun for a second, made sure there was at least one more round, pocketed it, and left her house.

  Back to TOC

  JUST ALONG FOR THE RIDE

  Michael Bunker

  The moon is in free fall. I never would have guessed it, o
r thought that, but after hearing my dad talk about it I guess it’s true. The term “free fall” has to do with what force is acting upon a body, not particularly what direction its going. If gravity is the only force working on an object, they say it is in “free fall.” So that’s what’s up with the moon.

  And me too.

  I’m not as smart as my dad by any stretch of the imagination. He’s the theoretical physicist and I’m the one in here. He surely would have never gotten himself into this trouble. I am a product of my own errors, a failure of my own construction, but one way or another his theories got me here.

  And then there’s another construction. Built to end my life. There’s that too.

  I can’t see outside very well, but I can hear them building it. Hammers and hand saws been at it for eight hours, no less. Carpenters and handymen called in from around the county, I reckon. Here in 1884 there would have been a lot of handy folks around, and a job is a job I suppose.

  But I’m not from 1884. I’m just visiting, I guess you’d say. Dropped through a wormhole that proved my father correct. And as far as I know, Dad doesn’t even know I came here.

  As far as I know.

  Dad said to travel just right you have to be on a certain spot and you have to free fall at just the right moment. So there are two elements there. Just the exact certain spot...and free falling at the right moment. So where is the perfect spot? It depends. It changes all the time, but according to Dad, it’s predictable.

  He was right.

  “Pressure points” in our reality open up on a regular schedule, if you can do the math and figure it out. Soft spots in the fabric of space-time. “Like when you wear through your jeans, son,” he told me once. “After reality rubs in the right place for long enough a finger (or your knee) could just rip right through the fabric.”

  I can make it more confusing, because my father sure enough did.

  “It’s like a basketball, boy, only turned inside out while you’re watching it happen. Without bursting or ripping in any way. It takes more than three dimensions for that to happen. If you can imagine such a thing...and I figure you can’t.”

  And then there was this...

  “...and inside to outside of the basketball, there are long, dripping cylinders of something like plasma. Like syrup stretching from one pancake to another. And if you are in the right place at the right time, you can travel with the syrup to the same place in another time.”

  “Free fall. That’s the ticket. That’s what makes it work.”

  I suppose I like the fabric comparison the best.

  Only this time the fabric is space-time. The stuff that keeps stuff where it’s supposed to be. According to Dad, a hole would open up and something could pass through. Something...a person, perhaps. It’d only stay open for a few seconds, and then it’d close up again. For exactly one week. Then a week later (to the absolute second) it’d pop open. Again for a few seconds only.

  So I figured that there would be a way to get back. If only you knew where and when and could be there at the exact right moment. And be free falling at the time.

  So it ain’t a little thing. All those parameters would have to be just right.

  He figured it all out with supercomputers and suppositions, and probably quite a few WAGS. Wild-Ass-Guesses he called ’em. Things that should be true, but no one had proved ’em yet. Like that a pressure point was going to open up in the city square of Jessup, Texas on May 4th at 12:01 p.m. local time.

  That’s the WAG that got me here.

  I watched him do all the math. I looked over his shoulder as he plotted where the cylinder would open up. And when he was gone to get coffee with his professor buddies, I stole the map. Made a copy. Put the original back.

  That was the first of my crimes, and the least of them too.

  Jessup, Texas is only ninety-three miles from where we live, so you can imagine how the wheels in my mind started working. To me it was all too simple. Get to Jessup on May 4th. Hang around town until noon. Then I show up at “X-Marks-The-Spot” at exactly 12:01. Right?

  Wrong.

  You forgot the important part (I had to tell myself.) You forgot you have to free fall.

  How far? How fast?

  No clue.

  I remember Dad saying that it was the fact that the body would be in free fall that made it possible for the other forces to work for Time Travel. So I read up on that. Just dropping from a building wouldn’t work. Apparently there is wind resistance which applies an opposing force to gravity, nullifying free fall. Seriously. So when they tell you some parachutist was “in free fall” for X minutes, it ain’t true. Not unless he’s dropping from space. Once he enters our atmosphere it’s not technically a free fall any more.

  But my dad speculated that if the fall was short enough, atmospheric resistance may not add up to enough to matter.

  So again...how far? My father’s friends asked this over and over.

  “Just jumping up and coming back down?” They asked.

  “Probably not enough.”

  “From the top of a tall tree?”

  “Maybe too much.”

  “How about a ladder?”

  “That might work.”

  Wild-Ass-Guesses. Just another WAG.

  So I decided on a ladder.

  There were other questions. Most I couldn’t answer, especially since I’m not a scientist and my father had no idea I was planning on testing his theory myself. Questions like...would the ladder come through with me? Who knows? I had to figure that it wouldn’t, even if it might. I had no idea how big the cylinder would be, or what might happen on my way through time. And if I end up in the past or in the future, will I be able to find a ladder in a week’s time so I can drop back home when the cylinder re-opens? Again...who knows? It’s a crap shoot. Probably suicide. If it works at all. Worst case scenario (or maybe it’s the best case?) I just jump off a ladder in the middle of the Jessup town square and twist my ankle and nothing happens and then have to tell people why I’m a stupid asshole.

  Now that I think of it, I did consider worse things. But none as bad as what actually happened.

  I landed in Jessup, Texas, in the middle of the town square in 1884. But then you know that already.

  I’d set up my ladder on the x-marks-the spot and at precisely 12:01 I jumped.

  In the time it took to hit the ground, I went back 132 years. With no ladder.

  I couldn’t tell you what all I felt. I didn’t feel much at all. Just the feeling of dropping, then the ground blurred and I heard a snap...as my feet hit the ground.

  Well, I should tell you that before I jumped, I put on some clothes that I figured were as time-neutral as possible. Nothing fashionable or trendy. A white button-up shirt with black pants, black boots, and suspenders. My hair I cut short. I figured that wouldn’t be too weird, unless I drop into 1970. I bought a tiny can of marking spray paint, too, that I kept in my pocket. I intended to mark the X-marks-the-spot where I land, just in case I get the opportunity to get back home.

  Frankly, at that moment I didn’t care if I ever came back.

  At this moment, I do.

  Bobby Wayne Atkins is my cell mate. He’s a bad dude, so I try not to talk to him unless I have to. He’s in here for murder, too, a bunch of them, but I reckon he did what they’re accusing him of. He doesn’t deny it.

  He doesn’t say much except to mutter threats and promise revenge on all mankind.

  “Revenge for what?” I asked.

  “Because every human of any society that can produce a Bobby Wayne Atkins, deserves to die,” he said. Then he looked at me with stone, cold dead eyes that promised all that he hoped to deliver.

  It was my luck (and probably the only luck I’d experienced since I jumped) that they kept Bobby Wayne Atkins chained to his bunk. He didn’t strain against his shackles or rattle his chains. He’d been a bad dog for a very long time, and he knew the drill.

  Me, they left unchained. Maybe they hop
ed I’d kill Bobby Wayne Atkins and save them the trouble. But not me. I’m not a killer, despite what they say.

  When I landed in Jessup, only two people saw me. One was an old man, half-drunk who was surprised to see me appear but not overly interested one way or another. He took a pull on his bottle and stumbled on the way he was going. The other was Henry Carroll.

  Henry was about my age, slender, and his dark skin and rough hands showed he didn’t avoid work. He smiled and became my friend...and betrayer.

  I was painting the X-marks-the-spot when he walked over. I’d committed myself to painting the X no matter what was going on. It was part of my plan. If I got distracted by trying to figure out where, or when, I was, I’d never find the exact spot again. So when my feet hit the ground and while my footprints were still evident in the brown, dry grass, I quickly sprayed a yellow X on the ground and then put the small can of paint back in my pocket.

  Henry was sauntering over from the feed store when I stood back up.

  He never said a word about the X.

  “Don’t know where you came from, stranger, but welcome to Jessup,” he said through his smile. He was picking his teeth using a splinter as a toothpick and the wrinkles around his eyes as he smiled showed kindness...and not a little amusement to boot.

  “I...uhh...I just got off the bus,” I said.

  “Bus? You mean the stage? You from England or something?”

  “Yes,” I said, “the stage. And I’m from overseas...Finland.”

  “Never heard of it,” Henry said.

  “It’s near England,” I said.

  “Good enough,” Henry said, smiling. “So you’re new to this country. Dressed strangely, and I can only assume you need a friend.”

  And that’s how I met Henry Carroll.

  Henry straightened me out with some second-hand clothes and a hat from the Livery where he worked part time. He was new to town too, he said, and wanted to help others like he’d been helped.

  Henry was staying in the stables and he put me up there, and it was from Henry that I learned that I was in the year 1884. He kept a small notebook in which he wrote things that interested him. He showed me the book my first night in the past. It was small, tan, and leather covered, with a hand-made hemp string tying it closed, and on the front of the book the year was written in Henry’s own hand.