Near To The Knuckle presents Rogue: The second anthology

by Keith Nixon

  Danny glanced at the black and white pictures that lined the walls; a bullet riddled man laid out in a coffin with a sign pinned to him, charred remains hanging from a tree, a head on a pole.

  The old man smiled, without his glasses his eyes shrunken into his skull, dirty blue so they appeared like water that would drip out the sockets at any moment. Limbaugh’s hand moved and Danny cocked the pistol he had taken from the deputy.

  “Kinda nervous ain’t you, boy?”

  Danny felt like his legs had turned into liquorice sticks.

  Limbaugh leant forward and reached for the pack of Marlboros on the desk.

  “You want one?”

  Danny managed to shake his head.

  “Why don’t you put that gun down, kid. You don’t want to shoot me.”

  Danny looked at Limbaugh’s hands — one clutching a cigarette, the other vanished from view beneath the table.

  “Show me your fucking hands.”

  Limbaugh smiled. His eyes hardened in the instant before he moved. His hand leapt to the twenty two in his drawer and Danny fired. His first bullet took the old man through the eye then he re–cocked the pistol and put a second shot through his heart. He watched Limbaugh topple sideways out of his chair.

  “That’s for you baby,” Danny whispered.

  Danny fell into the seat, dropping the pistol on the desk as he went. Pain fired before his eyes. Danny reached down and took the cigarette that Limbaugh had dropped. He took a long toke. Looking down the glint of gold caught his eye. Danny ducked and took the badge from Linbaugh’s shirt. He pinned it onto his T–Shirt and checked the load on his revolver and then the twenty–two in the drawer. Danny looked again at the pictures on the walls and then to the can of gasoline. He’d show this town all about Old fucking Times.

  THE STRAGGLER AND THE YES MAN

  Matt Mattila

  “We gonna fly tonight.”

  The four words that changed my life came through a text message. They were the closest thing Aidan could manage to a code. He’d told all of us at the lunch table that Thursday. There were gonna be protests downtown Saturday, he’d said. Nothing open but convenience stores manned by cashiers with itchy trigger fingers.

  “Everything else,” he promised, that glint back in his eye that meant he believed what he was saying, “is closed.”

  He grinned madly and looked from man to man and pecked at his cold fries. Across from him Jack stopped sucking down stawberry milk long enough to actually say something worthwhile.

  “The game shops? The pawn store?”

  That slow grin crept up Aidan’s face.

  “Everything,” he whispered. Jack lit up.

  “Good. I need to buy you a ring since I told you I’d marry the first guy I fucked.”

  We all had to laugh at that. Even Aidan. Jack was a jock, through–and–through the tall and bulky build, the Nike/Adidas style, the string bag, the way he could snap his fingers to get cheerleaders crawling all over him–but when he put his mind to it he was funny as fuck and quick with snappy lines. His mouth was too poisonous for the athlete community who hated his attitude and quick wit. He found his way to us. And we accepted him like a brother.

  The skinny white boy next to him crawled two fingers up the jock’s arm and pulled himself close. His gay voice sounded almost genuine.

  “Back off sister,” Ted snapped at the leader, “That’s what I’m here for.”

  Jack’s look of horrified amusement destroyed any words possible. Ted scooted away and started to wince and shake himself clean. We all had a laugh at everything. Ted’s glasses almost fell off his tear–streaked face and he pushed them back on with his middle finger. The kid was a fucking clown. He deserved the attention he got. I coulda spent that entire year trying to figure how the hell he was that funny. I didn’t want to believe he was born with it. No one there knew why I was so quiet. Maybe it was because I was a freshman in a crew of juniors led by a senior. Maybe they thought I was a don’t–speak–unless–spoken–to kind of kid. I’d join in sometimes, sure. I was mad shy back then. The crew helped me break out of my shell.

  Maybe I was quiet cuz I studied them. I dunno.

  They were freaks, that’s for sure. Outcasts. Weirdos. Call them call us what you want, we were the funniest people in the entire fucking cafeteria. We didn’t need to find a niche. We had made our own.

  “How big are those protests gonna be, anyway?” Aidan was asking. One eyebrow cocked, looking at all of us one by one. I shrugged first. Ted muttered he didn’t know.

  Jack flicked up and around, looking for the principal, and pulled his phone out on the table, dangerously close to the mashed potatoes. He’d lock his eyes on the screen, flick back up to make sure no one else saw, back down, back up, murmuring, “lemme see.”

  “Yeah,” he piped up. “You’re right. ‘Mass business closings downtown. Protest expected to be widespread, containing people from Waterford to Jay Street. The gathering is expected to start at nine p.m. and finish sometime after one. A final report will be available tomorrow’.”

  Aidan did his slow nod and smiled wide.

  “Three hours, bro. Enough time to get in, get our shit, and get the fuck out before anyone knows we left.”

  His voice dragged itself down to a whisper. He was still smiling. I jerked my head around, a look at tables and the principals making rounds pretending to talk to kids.

  Jack was still scrolling on his phone. He had a grin too. Ted fixed his glasses and took a bite at the chicken and tried not to grimace too much. Aidan’s eyes moved to me. I dumped my stare and raised my eyebrows, pretended to look around again.

  “So tell me.” Aidan’s voice was normal again. The smile was still there but his eyes screamed he was nothing but serious. “Whatcha think?”

  A big beefy hand with a gold ring on the pinky clamped down on Jack’s shoulder.

  “No phones, son.”

  The voice was pleasant but firm and deep. The principal, the big Mediterranean guy with slicked back grey hair and skin–black suit. Jack swung his head up.

  “Sorry about that!” he said too jolly.

  “Just don’t do it again.”

  He patted Jack on the head and ruffled his hair like he was a fucking five year old and walked on. Aidan didn’t stop staring him down till he turned the corner. Once he did Jack glanced at it from under the table and slid it back in his pocket.

  “Well?” he piped up. “We doing this?”

  Jack immediately said yes.

  Ted yessir’d.

  I said yeah.

  “Alright then,” Aidan said, and stole a glance at the wall clock above and behind me. “I’ll text you sleazy–ass motherfuckers.”

  A laugh. The bell filled the room with sound. Time for everyone to run for the door at once. Dabs all around. We all went back to class our separate ways.

  I read that article a month later, after the funeral.

  He forgot to mention the part that talked about the massive amount of cops. They were expecting looters. They were expecting riots.

  They were expecting violence.

  ***

  I got the text when I was in bed bullshitting online, headphones plugged into my father’s laptop. It was nine thirty on a Friday night. I kept the phone on vibrate. No ringtone in that apartment, ever. I couldn’t give him an excuse to wake up pissed off again.

  The bedroom door was shut. He was passed out with the bottle of Jack’s under the hand stretched over the edge of the couch. It didn’t wake him up. Loud things never did. The quiet shit got him going.

  I took one earphone out, didn’t hear him grumbling. My heart raced. I pulled the phone from under the pillow and typed I’d be there in an hour.

  I made it sound easier than it actually could be.

  My father was the kind of drunk who made up for slobbiness by being overbearing and stern when he was sober. He was obsessed with cleanliness and orderly living. The smallest de
lay in my daily schedule pissed him the fuck off.

  When I promised to be there in an hour I was signing my own death warrant. If he caught me I knew my father would try to beat my head in again.

  It’d be easier if I had an excuse. I sat up on my bed and mulled over my options.

  Recyclables went out on Tuesdays. And we’d run out of money so I knew we wouldn’t have any plastic jugs of milk or boxes or anything. Wasn’t like we were moving anytime soon.

  I swung my feet out side to side and hit something hard plastic–the tiny room garbage bin, barely a foot deep. It was filled to the brim with my father’s bottles and my gum wrappers from too many late nights spent thinking too much. The Walmart bag wouldn’t fit in there tomorrow. I grabbed it by the handles, twisted them around, jerked up.

  I went to get the other bags in the kitchen cabinet, looked at the can tucked against the fridge. I’d make it full if I had to. If my father tried to stop me at the door–all he’d have to do was look up, really; the end of the couch was a yard away–I’d lie to his face and say I was taking the garbage out to the dumpster across the plaza. I would be back in a moment, I would say.

  If he hadn’t gone through the second bottle. If he woke up at all.

  The plan sounded perfect. I can be a fucking genius sometimes. The only part left was doing it. The kitchen garbage was almost full. My father had gone fridge clearing and dumped all of the old moldy vegetables he’d never cook and the week–old milk he couldn’t use for White Russians because he ran out of vodka. The fridge would have a shitload of room for food no one would ever eat when I came back. I know how his process worked. It’d fill back up and we’d starve again in no time.

  No snoring a wall over. I listened for breathing. I heard nothing. He could’ve been dead. Maybe he was just passed out again. Maybe he was awake, laying there motionless, waiting.

  I was making too much noise. Plastic gets loud nine thirty at night. The Walmart bag was already stuffed in, the drawstrings pulled tight. They’d tear my fingers on the way down.

  The bag refused to come out. I put the can on its side, pulled it off swearing under my breath and sat it back up. Sometimes after a fridge clean–out I’d have to carry the fucking can downstairs and drag it through the parking lot because the bag was sealed in.

  I ran to the bedroom, put a new bag in. No excuses to stay now. I put a white one in the kitchen garbage, ends over the tip, tucked it back in place. Swinging the bag over my back like Santa, hat already on my head, the black hoodie zipped up to my neck.

  I walked out of the kitchen. If he hadn’t started anything by now he was too shitfaced to move and passed out comatose. It’d look too suspicious if I was tip–toeing anyway.

  The words were already on the tip of my tongue.

  “Just taking the garbage out Dad, I’ll be back in a second.”

  He grumbled out some response that made sense to him. I slipped on my shoes one at a time, took a second to look at him snoring on the couch, silent. His mouth was hanging half open again. His eyes never moved. His right hand twitched an inch above the floor.

  I clicked the deadbolt over. Nothing from him. The cold air outside made my skin crawl. I opened the door and shut it behind me and bounded down the stairs.

  I forgot to lock it. Didn’t matter. All the bad kids were downtown.

  ***

  Once again I was the last one there. The crew huddled around Aidan, standing above all of them on his doorstep. No car in his driveway. His parents were gone. Probably out helping the protesters.

  Nobody looked impatient. They all knew what I had to go through just to bet out of the house. Jack could ask his parents for a ride. Aidan waited till his left. Ted lived around the corner, was a good kid at home, asked his mom if he could go out. He got here in five minutes, even with the ankle sprained from gym. It took me an hour worth of walking.

  I was the only one who’d had to sneak past a passed–out father to have a night out of the one–bedroom. The crew was the only friends I needed. They were the only ones who understood me enough not to give a shit.

  When they heard my feet clomping up the hill all they said was “what up.”

  “Not much, man, not much.”

  Jack shifted over to let me in the circle and dabbed me. His left hand reached around his bag to pull out a can of Monster and hand it to me. Aidan nodded down at me and stood a bit taller.

  “Alright, now that everyone’s here, lemme go over it again.”

  He stared down at all of us and blinked slowly with an asshole grin on his face.

  “We all listening?” he said.

  “That should be painfully obvious, yes,” Jack piped up.

  I chuckled. Aidan shot me a glance, then one at Jack. Something in his eyes demanded authority. I heard Jack swallow right next to me.

  “A lotta stores are closed tonight,” he began, “as you already know. But just because they’re shut doesn’t mean we won’t have to worry about security.”

  Ted still had that asshole grin on his face. Aidan turned to him and stared daggers.

  “How many of you have robbed a store before?” he snapped.

  That shut us up.

  “Who here has stolen anything more valuable than a fucking Kit–Kat?”

  We looked up at him in cold silence. Half of his face had twisted into a snarl. He knew he got us right where he wanted.

  “That’s what I thought, dipshits. I’m the only one here who’s ever broken a window and snapped a case open and grabbed enough gold watches to buy out a Swiss bank and run out of there before the alarm tipped the cops off and made it home alive. While the rest of you were too busy doing your homework or going to fucking swimming practice, I was out here making my own fucking money.”

  The sidewalks were dead. All on the block I could imagine paranoid housewives and annoyed fathers hitting the deadbolts and the curtains.

  Aidan dropped to a whisper.

  “So this is the part where you shut the fuck up and start listening. Rule one is be quiet. The second is most important: If you can’t be quiet, be fast. I can’t fucking stress that enough. They can’t convict you if they can’t catch you.”

  Ted pushed the bridge of his glasses back on his face. His foot tapped involuntarily, like it was numb and he was trying to bring it back to life.

  “So what’s the deal,” Aidan spat. A bead of sweat slid down my back, cold as a knife blade. “We good or what?”

  Nods and murmurs.

  “Well then let’s go.”

  He was always a bitch when he got nervous.

  ***

  The main streets were cordoned off. It deterred the tourists and the protesters who’d come from three states over to march outside in thirty degree weather to feel good about themselves.

  It was cold. The alleys were going to be silent. They’d be our best route. We had lived there our entire lives. We knew those alleys by heart.

  Aidan’s place was just inside the city. Two miles out from the main protest camp, the barricades, the police. All of Main Street and the drag around it was cordoned in to curb the population. To keep the protesters in. To keep us out.

  The good shops circled the site three blocks away, on all sides except south. We didn’t want to go looking for gold in the water.

  The walk might take an hour and half at most. Aidan told us not to walk. Save your energy, he said. We’ll probably have to run after.

  I got a lump in my throat after that.

  Dark alleys. Squeezing past dumpsters with broken lids, garbage bags oozing out of them. Patches of yellow grass, drooping, damp with the leftovers of yesterday’s rain.

  The rule was that we could talk all the fuck we wanted to as long as we never stopped listening. Keep your ears peeled, Aidan had said, and always think of two different ways out. You never know what you’re getting into tonight.

  We knew there would be patrols. We were going to run into one eventually.
The entire cop force couldn’t be stuck watching protesters.

  We ran into our first cop two blocks from the plaza. Our alley was darker than we thought it was. Maybe we’d gotten used to the darkness. The tail end of his cruiser stuck out into our view, white as snow.

  We heard the murmur. A thousand voices pissed at the men supposed to protect their lives. “Don’t shoot,” they chanted, and banged their drums and stomped their feet. They might have been on the other side of the brick wall.

  The cop faced them. We were inside the blocked–off area. They find us here, high school kids in all black, sneaking around at midnight with backpacks, we would all be busted.

  The “shit” someone muttered was an understatement.

  “Get down,” Aidan snapped, and inched around us on his haunches like a cat on the prairie. We all filed behind his back, started behind him. His right hand snapped back, palm out. We stopped. He got low to the ground and flicked his head around the wall and back in, his back to us.

  He hugged the wall. Stood all the way up. We held our breath. He glanced out again and darted back to us.

  “One in the car, watching the marches,” he hissed.

  “If we hug the bumpers we can go around him,” Jack said. “Get around his car, out at the end of the street, lose ourselves in the protest.”

  Aidan shook his head.

  “There’s an alley on the other side. Stick to the bumpers, like you said. Stay low. We’ll find the way around him.”

  “Was he looking at the mirrors at all?” Ted asked.

  Aidan stared at all of us. All blood had drained from his face.

  “He glanced at his driver’s mirror the first time. When I looked again that second time he was leaning closer to it.”

  Jack swallowed. I breathed in and out. Aidan looked down and back up. He asked how Ted’s ankle was. Ted said it’d be fine if we shut the hell up and got across soon.

  No one laughed. We started shuffling. Aidan took the lead, shooing us on with hand signals until the bricks stopped scraping our faces and he stopped on a dime, stood up, flicked his head one more time and got back down. A thumbs–up next to his head. We followed him.