by Ryan Sayles
Graham huffs and nearly trips over a stick or something. My body jitters hard and I must cry out because Graham starts apologizing. Then I hear him say, “You need a charge fixed. You’re lucky I need this.”
“Yeah, yeah. All right, fine. Five hundred for parts and labor, fix the DUI. I take care of your friend. Deal?”
“Deal,” Graham says.
I hear a door open and AC hits my skin. I feel a smooth, hard metal table underneath me and the other voice must be rummaging through some instruments on a tray. Someone tugs at my pant leg and the unmistakable sound of scissors cutting fabric fills the room. A straight line goes up my shin to my knee and the blunt scissors tip bumps the flesh of my kneecap. Moves on to my thigh.
“How do you fix the DUI, anyway?” the other voice asks. “You just wait ’til no one’s looking and tear up a piece of paper? Something like that?”
“I wish,” Graham says. “Who is this guy?”
“Hey. Name’s Ian. Good to meet you.”
I try and open my eyes enough to see just what in the hell is going on. I stir just enough to feel a hand firmly on my chest. Muscles are weak. My skin is getting tacky with the blood coming out of the bullet wound on my back. The voice belonging to this Ian fella speaks up, “Whoa, easy there, big guy. Let us work our magic.”
Graham says, “What the hell is he doing here?”
The female says, “He’s my tech. I need a second pair of hands when I’m operating on anything bigger than a Saint Bernard.”
“Yeah, bro. It’s cool,” Ian says.
I try to stir again and that hand keeps firm pressure. “Whoa, easy there, big guy.”
Graham says, “He’s a man. Not a horse.”
“It’s cool. It’s cool.”
I feel a cold sensation in my elbow, then hear, “You’re going to feel a little poke in one, two, three...”
The needle goes in. I catch a lungful of air and just go with it. As the world sinks away I hear Graham say, “I’m not paying your tech.”
I want to tell him to not be so cheap, but I fade away as I feel them roll me to my side.
Two days later and I hobble down to the end of the driveway; wait for Graham to come pick me up.
I look out and see a herd of cattle across the way, grazing and generally not being bothered by the world. Somewhere I hear chickens. The breeze comes up over the rolling hills and splashes along my chest and back. I’m nude from the waist up, save the industrial-sized bandages wrapped around me.
“So anyway,” Marla, the female vet who owns this place says. “Come back in two weeks and I’ll take out the stitches. Beyond that, clean it with soap and water a few times a day. No physical activity besides the bare-minimum; getting in and out of bed and the car. Walking. No running. Try not to stretch while you yawn, reach for things above your head. You know the drill.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, light up a smoke.
Marla sips from her morning eye opener, a bloody mary that I watched her prepare with two raw eggs and half a gallon of vodka, and she continues, “Quit smoking, if you get a fever or if the wound site starts leaking—”
I tune her out. Think about Carla Gabler. I need to go tell her things are squared away and Mickey can rest in peace. Marla, the DUI large animal vet and her idiot tech Ian patched me up. It’s a double-edged sword going under the knife in someone’s basement. If I show up to a hospital with a bullet in my back, the cops tend to ask questions. If I show up on someone’s doorstep who needs a favor, well, that has its own risks. Fortunately, when Graham cut this deal with Marla, it was her first positive experience with the cops.
I see a rooster tail of gravel dust coming down the road and hope to God it’s Graham. I want news about Molly’s recovery, and I want a damn whiskey. I want a lot of whiskey.
This time Carla doesn’t hesitate to open the door when I’m knocking.
“Hello, Richard. Come in. I have sweet tea.” She smiles and seems to know I’ve come for the last time.
“Hi, Carla. Is Absinthe around?” I hold up a new doll I bought her. “It has a change of clothes that came right in the package with it, so I think it’s pretty high falutin’.”
Carla looks at the doll. “It is very pretty. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I look around, but no little girl.
“Her mom took her to a birthday party,” Carla says. “I’m sorry. She’ll be here tomorrow.”
I fake a sad grimace and set the doll down on the table. “Well, nothing can stop her from playing with it tomorrow, eh?”
“Nope. Nothing.” Carla lights a smoke and offers me a seat. Gets me a glass of tea. Sits down across from me. “Well, you’re here for something. Spill it.”
So I tell her. I never found out the details but Mickey is dead. She cries just a little and I let her. She needs it. I’m sure the bulk of those tears had come and gone years ago when she never saw him out of prison. I tell her the rapist died during apprehension and even though it’s not a slow, agonizing death, Mickey’s memory got its justice.
We blab on for a little bit, small talk. She recites a memory or two about her fallen love and I listen. She tells me about how Mickey was nice and sweet and likeable for all the months they were together. Apparently he wasn’t one for bugs of any kind, and went out of his way to step on any that he saw.
“That was his cruel streak,” Carla says. “I was always upset with him for how he would squash those little defenseless bugs. I don’t know why it bothered me so. Maybe because it seemed sometimes that he was...I don’t know, taking out his rage on them.”
“Everyone has something,” I say. “Was he phobic of some kind?”
“No. Just didn’t like bugs.”
“I see.”
“His stepmother—Joann’s birth mom—she got onto him about it all the time. Of course, by the time his dad and stepmom married both he and Joann were in their teens and Mickey I guess butted heads with her a lot. He missed his own mom.”
“He did, huh?”
“Yes.” Carla stood up. “Let me show you my favorite picture of us, okay?”
“Sure.”
She goes to her closet—everyone keeps their treasures in a closet, I guess—and rummages through shoebox after shoebox. “We went on our one vacation together to Las Vegas. It was magical. All the lights and the sights and sounds. You could walk down the Strip at two in the morning and it would be alive with people and going-ons. The food was magnificent and it never ended. But anyways, we drove out to Hoover Dam and some kind stranger offered to take our picture.”
She rummages some more, flipping through stack after stack. “No...no...that was...uh, 2000, I think. No...no...here it is! My favorite!”
She stands up and proudly walks over, the magic of the moment, alive and living again with her truest love, Mickey Cantu, she trots over to me like a beaming model that knows she’s a shoe-in for the crown at the pageant.
Carla sits so close to me the fabric of her shirt runs along my skin. She hands me the picture and she does look lovely. The Hoover Dam in full majesty behind them, pouring ocean after ocean into the world. Carla is young and fresh. She looks radiant, and the way she stands, the look on her face, she’s by happenstance identical to a picture I’ve seen before.
She looks just like Ursa Hanchett’s mother in the picture he had on his kitchen counter. Which makes sense, because the man next to her is the rapist I set on fire.
“So, Mickey and you, huh?” I ask, handing back the picture.
“Yes. Those days could have gone on forever,” Carla says, admiring the photo with a love that is as unstained and pure as an infant. “I wish they had.”
“Me too,” I say and pat her hand. She smiles and I let her think I mean something else. Eventually she puts the photo away.
“So, I’m a little confused on a few things,” I say, and even though I’m starting a new conversation I stand up to leave. “Mickey’s birth mother...divorced? Died? Was never around?”
“She, ummmm...she suffered a lot. From things. Addiction. Probably some kind of mental illness. She ended her suffering.”
Took her own life, fell to her own hand, ended her suffering. Committed suicide. Messed that boy up for life when she killed herself on the boy’s birthday. Yeah. Crazy bitch did it on purpose.
“Ahhh...and Mickey’s dad eventually remarried?”
“Well, I’m not sure his parents were ever technically married, but yes. Mickey never spoke much about it. I just pieced it all together.”
“Ever give you his birth mother’s name?”
“Oh yes. Exotic but really bizarre. Ursula Cantu.”
This just got weird. But all the pieces are falling into place, even if I have to fill in the gaps.
I say my goodbyes, and true to my original promise, I only tell Carla the good. I don’t bring up that her one true love was a deeply disturbed man. I don’t say his real name was probably Mickey Hanchett and that after his mother died he probably pranced around in her house coat and curlers and wanted the world to call him Ursa and that everybody did except his own father. Then his father remarried and it caused a fissure in his life that reverberated forever. I don’t tell her I’m sure Ursa spent his teenage years in a miasma of self-identity crisis. He probably wasn’t a cat burglar. He was a home invasion rapist and the only break he took was when he found Carla. Her presence must have quieted the demons in his head. All he needed to vent his urges was to step on bugs and he’d feel power over something.
I don’t tell Carla that she knew her love during one of his good streaks and that he probably loved her to the extremes he did because she was a spitting image of his own mommy. That maybe while he got to know Petticoat in prison he heard rumors of how Petticoat slept with all those women inmates and while Petticoat was trying to buy good will with Ursa by telling him how he “took care” of Carla, what Ursa really heard was Petticoat slipped her the big one and the burglary/insurance fraud thing was just sweet revenge.
I tell Carla only the good.
48
“The sky is beautiful today, all of it, it’s all beautiful.”
Molly’s head is tilted to the heavens above, where no doubt Willibald and Eustace Clevenger are, looking down on us. I stand there, my back aching from being on my feet for the whole funeral. We’re outside again, same spot in the boneyard, same crowd no doubt wearing the same black clothing they wore last week when we interred Eustace. Same rent-a-preacher. Graham next to me, still needing a few more days for the laceration he took to the head when Ursa Hanchett jumped him. He looks at peace, though, and for that I am thankful. Eternally thankful.
One would never guess that Molly spent a half hour in her own trunk, tied and gagged. She still has the shitbox car. I’ll never understand her.
“Yes, it is beautiful,” Graham says. Puts an arm around her and tugs her head forward in his elbow. He kisses her forehead and they share a loving glance. Graham turns to me.
“Where’s mine?” I ask, smile. Molly leans over and punches me in the chest.
We start to leave and Detective Collins, the SAPD homicide dick who worked both Eustace and Willibald’s cases, comes over to us. “Hey, boss, good news.”
Graham shakes his hand. So do I. “I love good news,” Graham says.
“Well, you know last week we found LaTrell ‘Thuggie’ Williams shot dead, correct?”
We all nod and Collins continues. “Anyway, the gang unit made short work of announcing that to the world. We also found a bunch of his boys burned to death in a building nearby. Whatever it was they were doing, I’m afraid to ask. Playing with fire, I guess. But, skirmishes have broken out all over the city.”
“Vying for Carnivore Messiah territory?” I ask.
“Yes. The Carnivores are all but done with. We’ll see splinter groups and new crews pop up, but Thuggie’s legacy will be forgotten next week.”
Molly scrunches her eyebrows, asks, “So what’s the good news?”
We all look at her like she just said we should start calling soccer “football.” I look at Graham and let him answer. “A bunch of gangbangers are dying, and best of all the people responsible for Grandma and Grandpa’s deaths are among them. That’s the good news.”
Molly just stares at him. “You guys and your coppiness.”
We talk for a while longer and eventually Collins makes his goodbyes. Leaves.
“Let’s go. First round is on me,” Graham says.
“I’m not drinking Oktoberfest,” I say. “Let’s get that clear.”
Graham looks over and smiles at me. “Man, I haven’t thought about Oktoberfest beer in a long time. I used to love to love that stuff.”
“I’ll kill you,” I say.
We get to the car and Graham stops, gives me his serious look. “Richard, thank you.”
I pat him on the shoulder and nod. “I’m not good at that stuff, Graham. Never have been.”
“I know. But you need to hear it.”
“Heard it. You’re welcome.”
He smirks. “Okay. Fine. That’s out of the way now.”
“Yes. Now we can get to the booze,” I say and Graham steps inside the car, scoots over to Molly.
Graham laughs and says, “Booze. That’s all you care about, Richard.”
I look inside the backseat, see my only true friend and his wife, look at the shadows of bruises on their faces, see where Graham’s lip was split but healing, feel the burning hole in my back. Think of the elephant I took from Ursa’s closet and set back amongst my wife’s other things.
“Booze isn’t all I care about,” I say to myself. Get inside next to them and shut the door on the whole mess.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was a stop-and-go process that took me years to complete. I started writing it while my wife was pregnant with our third child. Now he’s four as I’m typing all the not-story stuff that each book requires. Hell, child number five will be born before this book is actually published.
Benoit Lelievre deserves a special shout-out here. He runs the Dead End Follies website and reviews things—books, movies, the NBA, whatever else pops in there—as a second job. He took time out to read an earlier version of this (while still consuming books to review, writing his own stuff, working his day job and being the best dog owner he could be) and his comments made it a much stronger book. So, thank you Ben.
Susie Henry also deserves a special shout-out here. She’s an astronaut or something, as well as a poet, photographer, editor, devoted mother and wonderful friend. She’s been a huge supporter of my work since I met her and has informed me she would marry Buckner if he were real. She also took time out of her busy life to read an earlier version of this and her comments were fantastic. They dug at the nuanced stuff; stuff I never would have caught on a self-editing run. Her comments made it a much stronger book.
Chris Leek deserves a special shout-out here. My English brother from another mother, a much stronger writer than I’ll ever be, and tall. He dug in deep here and I can’t remember the shape the story was in before he came through and fixed it. What can I say? Chris mother fuckin’ Leek, ladies and gentlemen. His comments made it a much stronger book.
And here is my standard disclaimer: I always wanted the book tuned slightly higher than reality—maybe up to 110%, because normal anything isn’t entertaining enough—and I felt comfortable where I landed. It’s exaggerated here and there. Mainly the violence. Whatever is written correctly, I was advised on. Whatever wouldn’t fly in real life is squarely because of me.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ryan Sayles has over two dozen short stories in print, anthologies and online, including the Anthony-nominated collection Trouble in the Heartland: stories inspired by the music of Bruce Springsteen. He is the author of Subtle Art of Brutality, Warpath, Goldfinches and That Escalated Quickly! He is a founding member of Zelmer Pulp. He was in the military and is currently a police off
icer. He’s online at https://vitriolandbarbies.wordpress.com/.
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ALSO BY RYAN SAYLES
Richard Dean Buckner Mysteries
The Subtle Art of Brutality
Warpath
Other Works
That Escalated Quickly!
Goldfinches
Disordered Mullets
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