It was lunchtime before my head looked up from my shovel. My shoulders were sore from all the bashing. Shelley slapped my back and said something about team spirit.
Ben said, “Look over there.”
It stuck out, the words kind of hung there in my mind. I turned and wished it had been in slow motion, so that I could’ve braced for what I was about to see and react accordingly or at least have my scream deepened.
The figures stood at the horizon. They had come to stop us.
They’d have to catch us first. I ran and screamed and Ben, Sean, and Eric performed the variations of the same act. We were in the trucks before we noticed Shelley had stood her ground.
She said words I didn’t think females could pronounce. Heads and limbs shimmied off bodies and into the field of mashed eggs.
“They knew we were coming this time, man!” Ben screamed as he fought the engine. At least he hadn’t lost the keys, but the pop of the clutch almost threw me from the back of the pick up. Either way, I was awake now.
I pounded the roof of the truck and yelled something stupid, something only lack of sleep could’ve caused, “Turn around and run ‘em down!”
I kind of sounded like Shelley. It scared me, and the reaction in the rearview mirror showed it scared Ben, too. But he obeyed with a swift turn. I think Sean tried to talk some sense into him.
The first lot we struck sounded like a row of mailboxes, and then it was like driving in Arkansas as we bounced over a pile of their vile forms.
Eric leaned out the window and used his shovel to smack the few out of reach of the truck’s girth.
“Get to Shelley! I’ll grab her!” Again sleep deprivation deprived my sense of logic as there was no way I would simply grab Shelley and yank her up into the truck so we could ride off to safety. But Ben must not have been very much awake either because he obeyed another command.
We missed on the first pass. This was not entirely our fault, as Shelley was too busy smashing skulls. Ben yelled at her until she knew the plan and we made a second pass, which was almost successful.
The second pass included the braking of the truck, for a matter of seconds was the only intention. But seconds are where mistakes are made. In hindsight rolling up a window might’ve prevented the issue, but Ben had to yell at Shelley, and he had to hear my idiotic commands. I should’ve been looking on the driver side of the truck as one of them crawled up and took a chunk out of Ben’s neck.
Sean and Eric were quick. It was a new instinct. They kicked Ben from the driver’s seat, kicked him out of the truck and into the field of mashed eggs. Sean hit the gas and rolled up the window and Shelley and I bounced in the back of the truck as she gave out a horrendous war cry.
They answered back in their wretched wails.
We were miles away, exhausted from more than just the lack of sleep, but also the overdose of adrenaline. We had failed, and perhaps all over eggs would cycle towards births by the end of the day. And there would be more of them waiting for us the next time.
No, it wasn’t likely the world would ever be normal again. But Shelley didn’t seem to mind.
“That was successful,” Shelley said wiping some kind of biological fluid from her brow.
I almost said something about Ben being dead, but she was smiling and that was confusing so I blurted, “Was it?”
“Yeah, they were covered in red clay. I know where they’ve been laying low. We’ll go there first thing tomorrow morning and mince those bastards.”
I hear I thought maybe I would sleep in tomorrow.
“How early?”
Shelley looked at me like I was the insane one.
THE END.
PEASHOOTER
Now we’re talking.
A whole wad of cash gets slapped down on the table in front of me. It’s that wad that used to be a perfect stack but maybe someone tried to yank out a few twenties and failed, so the corners just kind of stick out, reminding me of the thickness of a bill and just how many must be banded up.
I think they can see my eyes light up. Perhaps I’m massaging my fingertips with greed, but they laugh.
“All you have to do is walk a way.” They speak like I’m five-years-old, they even repeat what they said slower in case I’ve got Looney Tunes turned up too high in my head. I decide to stop drooling for a moment and respond.
“No problem, Pops.”
Their look is distrustful. Perhaps, I’ve built a reputation of sorts. I think how funny it would be if the old wives’ tale was correct and if I hit him on the back of his bald head right now, the cockeyed, eyebrow raised look of disbelief would get stuck on his ugly pouty lip face for the rest of his life.
Bums like him never lived long. That’s why they didn’t bother with a retirement plan. It wasn’t because they were bad with money. It was because when you work for a thug like Willie Pace your number is going to get called. It was either that or the fact that this bum had hit his prime back in the fifth grade when he could kick the kickball further than anyone else.
It’s all downhill from there. Everyone knows that.
I’ve been trying to make the argument for years, a professional kickball league would probably get a few of these hoodlums off the streets.
“I said, ‘no problem.”
“We heard you. And we’ll remember that. That’s a verbal contract there, Chief.”
No one had called me that in years. As soon as my income was reduced to pennies and dimes with Uncle Sam stealing my nickels, there was a new chief in town. And then there was this trouble, this riff raff. It made it hard to turn on the news and remember I used to be responsible, that I’d simply said, enough was enough and let my dream of being the best bingo player take priority.
But all that didn’t matter, I wasn’t making enough at bingo, but a little backyard sleuthing just earned me a stack of young women’s hard earned dancing money. All I had to do was walk away, preferably without falling again.
That’s how they caught me.
And I was lucky that you can’t kill the former Chief of Police because his son happened to be in the House of Representatives sitting on his butt trying to perfect the filibuster.
“I think I’ll take a cruise,” I said, finally taking hold of the stack of green. I’d seen so many of these in evidence rooms, but this one here was mine, filthy, awful blood money.
Willie Pace had his hands in it all.
“You do that,” the bum said like we were old chums now.
“Send you a postcard.”
He shrugged with a stupid grin I hadn’t seen him make before, slapped his hat back on his head and left me alone in my home to sit in the dark massaging the pale green filth in my hands. I couldn’t forgive myself if I accepted this money.
But I wasn’t dumb enough to throw it in their face right then and there.
Seventy-four years old, or at least the last time someone counted for me, and I still wanted to kick down doors and storm castles. I’d send him a postcard, alright. It was about all I could do.
People told me when I’d get old my bones would ache and I’d be tired. They were wrong. Only thing my body does is piss me off. I leave the stack on the table and find brandy. She’s short and not full of much, I don’t even like the taste of her, but she does the trick. One more nail in the coffin.
There’s a guitar in the corner of my kitchen that I never learned how to play. And behind it was my gun cabinet. A proper assortment of a shotgun, hunting rifles, and my little peashooter that made the side of my chest feel so lonely these days.
They say if you take one down another will rise in his place.
They say the evil you know is better than the evil you don’t.
They say a lot of things, that’s all people do, talk. When they’ve said one thing too many times, they start saying the opposite. I’m pretty sure everything that could be said has been said, and if it ain’t it probably wasn’t worth mentioning anyway.
I tuck in my shirt. I dig out a
holster and then I’m tying straps of leather to the old shotgun and slinging my long-range rifle over my shoulder. I looked real dangerous in my mind. Only thing was I knew I didn’t look like I did when I was forty anymore. That’s why I wouldn’t walk by any mirrors.
The pension, the dimes and pennies were a waste. Bums like me shouldn’t get to retirement. I hate bingo and I miss kickball.
I don’t believe money is cursed. That stack of blood money could have a change of heart and do some real good, that’s the difference between money and people. Money can change and people shouldn’t be used. I’m glad they gave it to me. Otherwise I would just be another senseless act of violence.
Yep, all people do is talk. No one listens to me anymore so I talk to myself. I talk while I put handouts in all my fellow retiree’s active community mailboxes. You can’t just give someone a wad of cash, they ask too many questions. You can’t trust cash; you have to earn it by picking numbers.
I laugh as I imagine them worrying about where the money came from, I can hear the old ladies squawking about drug money and then justifying keeping it for themselves because of that sore hip of theirs.
That’s a steak dinner on me, Phyllis! I hate the old bag, but that’s why she only got a twenty, that and I was all out and maybe she just happened to be the last mailbox. I thought it was a sign from God that I was on the right path. Would’ve felt too nice if I’d given her a penny more, but a twenty I could live with, that was like running a red light in the middle of the night on a quiet street and no one getting hurt—forgivable.
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I couldn’t kick the door open. So my peashooter did the trick. The cash room was well guarded so I made a lot of racket that the kids probably didn’t notice over their ‘music.’ I forgot that guns smell when they’re fired. I forgot cigarettes caused cancer and other people’s cigarettes spread germs. It didn’t matter I’d captured the cash room. They’d come for me now. All I had to do was sit and wait. I hadn’t smoked in years.
There was no alarm, no sirens.
Criminals operate on the pounding of feet and the cries of ‘geeteem!’
The shotgun’s turn was mainly to let them know I had a big gun that didn’t need to worry about missing in a narrow hallway. I dropped three before the cowards in the back slinked back down the stairwell to call me old.
I lay down beneath the desk, positive I wouldn’t be getting back up again. But also positive these bums wouldn’t toss a grenade, not because they didn’t have one, but because stacks surrounded me that made me disappointed in the stack they gave me.
My hunting rifle had a scope and it liked to shoot the hairs off a fly, so I took the eyebrows off the young man who kept popping around the corner to fire randomly at the wall. It made his cohorts brave and they came running up the stairs before I could switch my tools. I missed their feet and couldn’t stand up with a desk on top of me. All that was left was my peashooter.
And it made shins bleed. They dropped to my level and we were eye to eye and I almost had a heart-to-heart with them. Tried to talk them out of their life of crime. Only almost because it was another conversation I had in my head. The only thing I said was said with what was left to say with my peashooter.
It was quiet afterwards. There was no one for it to talk to anymore and that was fine, it was never much of a talker. I had three shotgun shells left, and a few more in the rifle. But I wasn’t going to stick around. I’d only killed the day shift.
I knew there would be more. But I hated how they wouldn’t let me know they were coming with sirens. So I decided to get some myself.
Old people like me have to be careful with cigarettes we’re always falling asleep with them lit, and then the brandy on our lips ruins our evenings.
The flames are ugly. Not pretty like a fireplace or a campfire. They’re like a rotting corpse, their stench visualized in a smoky blaze. Money stinks when it burns, too.
So does hair.
Macaroni and cheese.
Rubber.
Bingo.
I can smell it all.
So can Willie Pace. I spot him angrily watching from a safe distance as good men and women try and put out the fire. But he had spotted me first. Before I could take aim at him, the bum he’d sent to pay me off had his arms around me like he knew me, or planned to get to know me real fast.
Body didn’t hurt. It just pissed me off. I couldn’t fight back. I got dragged back into an alley then into a luxury sedan that I would’ve driven real slow in the fast lane and pissed everyone off. That must’ve been why they didn’t let me drive.
“You think that was smart?” He had plenty of questions it turned out, his bad tie might’ve confused me into thinking I was on a game show, but even with my senility I knew his ugly mug would never get on television. “You think your son the politician and his baby girls are safe?” He jerked me around and my teeth almost rattled out, thank Poli-Dent. “You got a death wish?”
To be honest I didn’t know any of these answers. Was what I did smart? I’m not sure it’ll earn me a job as a professor anywhere. Are my son and his girls safe? Is anyone ever? Do I have a death wish?
I knew the answer to that one, and I split my head open on his chin, but the bum was a kickball player in his prime and not a boxer. He went out like a light.
So only two scrawny yes-men stood next to Willie Pace, who’d come to watch me get my dentures knocked out. They looked like runners. I bet they had a lot of in the park home runs when they kicked the red ball. Either that or they whiffed a lot and peaked at warming the bench and drinking soda pop afterwards. They had pistols drawn that looked expensive and heavy. Their eyes darted at me and Willie Pace, back and forth, hoping for an order like confused puppies.
Perhaps they were trying to trick me into thinking they were too cute to kill.
Got news for them. I never liked puppies. They were always pissing on things. I know that probably makes me look like the real villain, but it’s damned true and I’m tired of living with that lie. I hate pee.
“Eh!” Willie Pace yelled. It was loud enough that the sirens seemed to overcompensate to drown him out, but it was really just a couple of ambulances finally arriving to the blaze behind us. But they flew right by this alleyway. It missed the guy who needed them most.
I had taken the bum’s 9mm when he kept ramming it in my good kidney. I’d been standing there clutching it this whole time as Willie Pace realized I had it pointed at him and his scared little puppies didn’t know if they should shoot me first or not.
“We paid you.”
“I paid it forward,” I gummed. So I understand Willie Pace’s confusion and irritation. But it’s not like he would’ve liked my answer had he been able to understand it. He gave the signal and the puppies got to piss on me.
Shooting a gun is harder than people think. It’s a lot like playing darts, everyone thinks they can hit what they’re aiming at, but no one really knows how to aim. Aiming takes practice. It’s an extension of you. Your eyes have to reach out and your hands have to follow. On top of all that, you’ve got a man-made gun in your hands that has to participate.
They shot me.
The knee they took out wasn’t much good to me anymore, but the hip I’d been real proud of its durability. But they make new ones these days.
I emptied a full clip without much aiming. I could feel the eyes of a crowd gathering at the end of the alleyway. I could hear them radioing in for backup.
Willie Pace should’ve run then. But I’d killed his puppies and I guess he didn’t mind getting peed on. He looked like he wanted me dead. But he’d had a perfectly good shot from where he was standing, but he must’ve wanted to put the gun to the head of the old man lying on the asphalt drooling into his own blood, feeling his heart jerking to a stop like the bus to downtown.
Guns are hot after they’ve been fired. Willie Pace’s wasn’t. It was cold and personal. I wanted to roll over and know that there were people witnessing this. I wanted to
know that I wouldn’t die for nothing. All kinds of emotions that led me to tears came up inside me but I wasn’t going to beg.
People ask for things they don’t need all the time.
I don’t need to live.
I kept telling myself that, but I wanted to make Willie Pace hurt. My gun was still hot and I jammed it into his ankle. He shrieked and kicked it away and then fired. I didn’t feel any additional pain. I was just a little more pissed off.
I heard someone yell, “Freeze!”
But I didn’t think they meant me. I had an empty peashooter still in my holster, keeping my fading heart company. But everything leaves you eventually, why should my heart have company?
I chucked it as hard as could and heard another gunshot. It was the deafening one. The one that made all the sirens drop out. Then I heard another and heard the stupidest groan I’d heard in seventy years of living that I could still remember.
I’d hit Willie Pace pretty hard and that gave the men in blue a clear shot.
Bang, bang the witch is dead.
Talking to yourself is overrated. I miss singing to myself. I sing about the wicked witch. It makes me happy.
THE END.
THE YANKEE SWAP
December 24th – Christmas Eve
Paul looked down the hall and into his bedroom. The door was wide open and the light from the hall had caught someone. Their shadow sat patiently on the wall. Paul hesitated and wondered.
Who could it be?
He knew it was too late to simply sneak up on the person. He’d stayed far too long in one place after having been so busy gathering up all the hiking gear he’d scattered across his apartment the last time he went for a hike. He had walked in more than ten minutes ago, and made all kinds of a ruckus before he had noticed their looming shadow.
He tried to think of something cool and calm to shout out to get the person to reveal him or herself, but Paul knew he’d probably just embarrass himself. He gently set the CamelBak down on his couch, and then decided to make a little more noise. He hoped he hadn’t given away his awareness of a stranger. He had to keep pretending he didn’t know. Meanwhile, he started digging for his Leatherman knife, it wouldn’t do too much damage, but at least he wasn’t unarmed.
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