by J. L. Abramo
His hunting knife was much quieter.
Curt tried to run, but Carl was bigger and faster and before he made two paces Carl had kicked his knee hard enough to make it go sideways with a loud crunch. Some people might have screamed at that, but Curt fell quiet and pale. Carl stooped down long enough to drive the hunting blade through the side of his neck and to cut through his trachea. His throat belched blood and air in a wet mess.
Phil came for him and Carl blocked the drunken swing that came for his head. One move to clock, a second to wrench Phil’s arm around and with a little torque dislocate the man’s shoulder. While Phil was screaming, Carl broke his neck.
Les put up the best fight. He nailed Carl once in the stomach and then drove his fist into Carl’s side twice. Carl was a big boy. He could take a few hits. Les let out a groan like a wounded animal and tried to shove Carl backward. Instead he slid himself, his foot catching in Curt’s blood.
One elbow to the face pushed Les back enough for Carl to finish things. The last of the brothers slipped back two steps and the blade came out again. He stabbed Les once in the side and once in the throat. After that Les didn’t make any more noises. Like his brother, he bled all over the floor of the rec room.
Curt had a truck. Carl made use of it. The county line was only three short miles away. It wasn’t even ten at night by the time he got back to his cabin and cleaned up.
Sometimes, the old ways really were better.
Back to TOC
DON’T YOU THINK THIS OUTLAW SHITS DONE GOT OUT OF HAND?
Levi Black
This road was a mistake.
I knew it the second you made the turn off State Road 17, wide rear tires singing as they left asphalt to chew on red dirt and gravel, but I didn’t have the air to say it.
Damn Rodney’s cousin Skeeter and his pissant .380 pistol. That’s the one that got me. All those bullets they threw at us and it was his, the smallest one, that punched me right below the nipple, slipped between two ribs, and began to bounce back and forth inside, chewing my left lung into so much pulp.
So I couldn’t say: Don’t turn on dirt, they can’t catch us on asphalt, not in the Chevelle. I’ve put too much juice under her hood if we just stay on the road.
Dirt’s no good for running. Too twisty. Too narrow. Too rough.
Especially for you.
You were doing fine up on 17, but here? Here you’re off your game.
I usually drive.
You hang in your seat belt like it’s a parachute harness, fighting the wheel, the car under us rocking and bouncing, the ass end slewing left and right trying to wind us in a ditch and you make it stay on the road at this speed by sheer determination and you’re beautiful.
Fucking stunning.
Hair soaked with sweat and pasted to your neck like we just made love on a summer night, outside among the cicadas and the lightning bugs as you are want to prefer. Brow furrowed in concentration, lips pulled in a snarl as you roar back at the motor that revs and ruts under your command. The tendons of your neck stand out like cables and your muscles are spring steel as you wrestle the damn car into submission.
Beautiful.
Fierce.
A goddamn Valkyrie.
On your own, you’d conquer this, leave the road and the car and the driving quivering at your feet as you rise in triumph.
But Rodney and his boys are right behind us, piled up in Skeeter’s Silverado. The one modified and jacked up for off-road mudding.
And he knows this road even better than me.
The first night we met.
It’s the first cool night at the end of summer. The first night it’s not sticky on your skin just standing around. Four weeks into high school football season where the whole town turns out on Friday night in parking lots downtown to listen to the game on tailgates and drink beer.
Go Coyotes.
I’m leaning on the hood of my car, the one you’re wrestling with now, and I just finished the last swallow of my beer when I feel your eyes on me, some jungle sense kicking in and making me itch between my shoulder blades. It takes a second to spot you in the crowd but when I do it lights me up like someone attached jumper cables to my pecker and hit the juice.
You’re next to Bo McClintock and his crew of meatheads but your back’s to him and your witchy brown eyes are laser-locked on me.
All it takes is a smile and you start walking my way without a sideways word to Bo.
You come across that fucking parking lot, sleek legs under a short red summer dress, dark hair bouncing off your shoulders, and I know what it feels like to be stalked by a panther.
Goddamn, you were gorgeous.
Are gorgeous.
I’m so locked into your stare I don’t see Bo until he catches up to you and grabs your arm right in front of me.
“Hey, where do you think—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence before your hand makes a little hard fist and hits him right in the mouth. You have to go on your tippy-toes to reach that high.
He lets go and steps back, bumping into two of his crew, teeth stained red where they cut his lip when you hit him. He looks shocked, like he just got tasered and can’t think straight. Then his big, square face goes mean and he pushes forward, reaching for you again.
“You little bitch!”
He stops short at the high, sharp crash of my beer bottle against the hood of this car.
I hold the wicked sharp end of it between us and push off to stand straight.
Redneck Switchblade.
You slide up next to me and stand there and I can feel the hard line of your body next to mine and it makes me go all loopy inside, like the things in me aren’t anchored anymore and I want to start some shit.
“Turn around or I’ll give her this bottle and let her cut you from balls to bullshit, Bo.”
Everybody is looking at us.
Bo glances around. “This ain’t about you.”
“Ain’t about you anymore. Walk away.”
He stands there trying to make a decision. He’s got three guys at his back the size of refrigerators and most of the people in this parking lot like him way more than they like me.
If the Sheriff gets here, Bo knows he’ll be in the clear and I’ll be in a cell and back on probation.
Dads look after their sons after all.
But everybody knows that Sheriff McClintock has a thing going with Becky Lou Shumacher on the other side of the county and Game Nights are their special nights because her husband, Coach Shumacher, is a bit tied up. Plus, Bo’s unsure if anyone would’ve even called him yet. Deep inside he knows he’s just enough of an asshole that the crowd around us might wait long enough to see if he’ll back down or get cut.
They might want to see if I’d really do it. Am I just like all the other Rakestraws? Would I lay him open like gutting a fish?
I look deep in his left eye, pouring it all in there, letting him feel it.
The neck of the broken bottle is slick in my hand.
His boy, Trey, puts a hand on his shoulder. “Let it go, man. That out-of-town whore ain’t worth it.”
Bo lets himself be pulled away.
I turn and you’re smiling that crooked little smile of yours, dark eyes aglitter with something that makes me feel it deep in the valley of me. You tilt your head toward the bottle. “You got another one of those for an out-of-town whore?”
“That was my last one, darlin’.”
You tilt your head toward the car. “I guess you’d better take me to get more.”
I toss the broken bottle away and open the door, watching the hem of your dress climb you as you climb across the driver seat.
God.
Damn.
“Stay with me, baby!”
I bounce out of the darkness I didn’t know I’d rolled into. My head careens off the glass window and leaves a smear of sweat that blurs it like Vaseline. I don’t think much time has passed. We’re still in the car, still on the dirt road.
The Chevelle shudders and jerks as we get tapped in the ass by Skeeter’s truck.
I feel it in my kidneys like a bat across them. Soft tissue damage.
Bruising.
Rupturing.
My left lung hitches, trying to draw air in with the pain but it has no purchase, like trying to catch water with your feet. I cough and it feels like someone tried to pick me up with a tow chain attached to my asshole.
It hurts.
A lot.
You scream in anger and the car lurches as you stomp the gas and almost shoot us into the embankment on the left.
Everything goes up and sideways. The cardboard box full of Rodney’s drug money slides across the backseat and tumbles against the door behind me and pain shoots up my leg all the way to my chest as the twelve gauge in the floorboard rattles around like dice in a cup and smacks my knee, blued steel barrel against my tendon and bone.
That’ll leave a mark.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’ll get us out of this.”
I can’t look at you. I want to look at you, but it’s all I can do to watch the road. I know this road.
I know it.
This road takes you to Merscham’s Field where I convinced Jenny Holliday to finally let me get my hand under her dress.
Down by the river.
Down by Deadman’s Bridge.
I fight to stay conscious even though the black is squeezing my eyes.
Just get us there, darlin’, and I’ll fix this.
That first night together we stuck up Old Man Crenshaw at the Suds N’ Stop for a case of shitty Miller High Life and two bottles of Mad Dog 20/20 using the .357 my daddy left behind when he bailed on Mom and me. We found a cutout on a back road like this one and drank our ill-gotten gains and laughed as the adrenaline of it all buzzed under our skin. You glowed that night, all lit up inside with excitement, sparks zipping around inside you. I could see them as you slid that red dress up your body and then your body up mine. We did it here in the front seat, our skin slick with passion and our mouths full of the too-sweet taste of stolen wine.
The fall and winter passed and we were together, like we are now, mated and fated. Outlaw married, living the outlaw life. Doing crime for money but mostly for the fucking thrill of it.
Nothing gets you worked up faster than when the guns come out.
It sounds like I’m saying you forced me to join you, coerced me in some way, maybe even seduced me to the dark side.
Bullshit.
I’m right here with you. Always have been even before we met. I don’t fit the straight life and neither do you.
But we fit each other.
Goddam right we do.
And together, we are hell on wheels.
I’m drifting.
Shit.
Hard to think with no air in me, gimping on one lung in a ’69 Chevelle doing a rocket impersonation on a shit red clay road while some white trash wannabe druglord chases us.
Rodney.
Pushrod Shubert.
Biggest dealer in the Tri-County area.
Biggest asshole too.
I didn’t want to get back involved with him, but around here if you want to do some outlaw shit you gotta go through him. We wanted to pull stakes and head to Atlanta, but we weren’t ready, not without some seed money.
So we went to work for Rodney.
Driving product to the next county, picking up tax-free cigarettes for him, a little of this and a little of that. As long as it paid and got you hot we were in.
Sometimes we were the ones who held the guns when bigger assholes came around to do business.
That’s why we have the shotgun.
But Rodney got too comfortable around us. Underestimated how much we want to go, start a new thing in a bigger town. He didn’t think we were real outlaws, just kids playing at it.
He didn’t know how you get around a lot of money.
He shouldn’t have left that damn box full of it just sitting there with us holding guns.
The bridge looms ahead of us, looking like a rickety old barn that could fall in any second. It’s almost a hundred years old, built by the mill that used to be at the other end of this road. It’s not going to fall in, these timbers are oak soaked in tar pitch. Rock hard and waterproof, they’ll never rot. They aren’t going anywhere.
But the planks across them? Those aren’t so steady.
There’s a big hole in the middle of the bridge, been there forever.
Big enough for a car to go through, falling into the river a hundred feet below.
You’ve managed to make some space between us and Rodney. They aren’t far behind, but the straight part of the road back there and the gravel let you pull ahead, and they’re out of our sight.
You keep pushing the car. The bridge keeps getting closer.
I yank on the seat belt, pulling myself forward, swiping at your arm. It hurts to do it but I need your attention.
“Slow down.” I push out.
“What?”
“Slow....down.”
You hit the brakes and it pushes me forward against the seat belt. It feels like I’m being cut in half. Gotta stay awake. This is the important part.
My hand flops out to the right. “That side.” I flop again. “Hole.”
You nod and twist the wheel, moving the car to the right side of the bridge.
I flop and gasp. “Closer.”
Your mouth goes hard and you shimmy us right some more. The timber rail disappears from my sight and I know you’re almost touching it with the car.
Damn, you’re amazing.
I hope the fucking hole hasn’t gotten worse.
We’re down to a creep.
I’m watching you, trying to pray to God above, that we have enough room to squeeze past but it feels like I’m talking to dead air. Your eyes go big and you lean toward the window, looking down.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.” The word slithers out of your mouth.
I know when we pass it because your whole body relaxes against the steering wheel.
The sight of you like that makes me want to gather you up, fold you against my chest and hold you, tell you it’ll be alright.
Instead I flop.
You look up.
“Over....and stop.” I unfasten the seat belt as you do it.
“Baby?”
I don’t answer ’cause I can’t. I don’t have enough left. Not for that and this. With the seat belt off me I slump forward, creasing to the left without the lung to support my ribcage. I grab the barrel of the shotgun. It’s hot under my fingers.
Damn, my hand is white.
My other hand slaps at the door handle, fingertips catching it, the weight of my arm making it open.
“Baby, what are you doing?”
I want to tell you. I want to recite you poetry, to sing you a song. I want to tell you a thousand words how much I fucking love you, to describe in detail the perfection of your lips, the curl of your lashes, the line of your collarbone. I want to use every word for beautiful in the English language and then I want to start on Spanish...then French.
I want to breathe all these things into existence and to kiss you one last time, pressing lip to lip, twining tongue to tongue, drinking you, eating you, tasting you forever.
All I can do is croak out three words.
“Don’t...look...back.”
I flop right and roll along the seat, stumbling out of the car. My feet hit wood and I push with all I have, locking my knees, standing.
The shotgun is in my hand.
Good.
I forgot I was going to bring that.
I can smell the river wafting up through the hole in front of me.
My head has gone staticky and I hear you scream as if from across a field, just loud enough to hear that you’re crying as you do it.
Skeeter’s truck rumbles onto the bridge. I feel it through the planks under my feet.
You scream again and the Chevelle roar
s as you pull away.
The shotgun weighs a million pounds as I swing it up to my hip and point it at the truck.
Through a circle of darkness that steadily closes around my vision I see Rodney yelling at Skeeter and pointing at me. Skeeter hunches forward over the wheel and his shoulders jerk when he hits the gas.
The truck roars toward me, pulling toward the railing. The entire bridge shakes and my teeth clatter against each other.
I’m numb from the waist down and ice cold and the world keeps getting narrower.
They get closer and the world gets smaller and finally I jerk the trigger. The shotgun bucks in my hands and flies away but in my tiny sliver of vision I see the windshield of the truck crack and bust and Skeeter’s shirt go red across the chest. He goes limp and loose around the wheel and the truck jerks left.
I’m blind when it goes through the hole, but I hear Rodney scream like a stuck pig and I feel the hot wind of their backdraft on my face and I have just enough time to think “I love you, darlin’” before it sucks me forward and I topple in behind them.
Back to TOC
SNAKE FARM
Les Edgerton
It starts with trouble. You don’t think it starts with peace, do you? William Goyen, in an interview with Reginald Gibbons
The guy in the cell next to mine confided in me once that his father abused him sexually. That isn’t a news headline. What he told me later was, that his mother also assaulted him sexually. That’s a story that goes above the fold. Either, by themselves goes on page eight if it goes at all. That both parents took him to bed is a headline. You know: Man bites dog...
His name was Jerome-something or other, I forget his last name, but I remember his prison number—#36693—since it told me right away how long he’d been there—before me at #49028. It’s important to know how long your next-door neighbor has been inside—it tells you how you should probably conduct yourself around him. If he’d had a number newer than mine, that’d be different. That’d be someone I was over, you see?
He was a weight-lifter and a tall man. He took early parole by jumping off our third tier. The advantage in this kind of early parole is that you don’t have to check in with a P.O. like a sixth-grader who’s been grounded for not eating all of his supper.