Fat fuck calls out to him. Policeman turns around. Fat fuck is pointing at the van, shaking his head, and moving his fat fuck mouth.
“Go on,” Chet says. “Cut somebody. It’s like flying, the best part.”
Two days later, Danny and Truck are throwing horseshoes in the early evening. The light still lingers but the air is cooled. The yard is shady and crickets buzz from the hidden places.
“Nice one,” Truck says.
Danny says nothing and goes to retrieve the horseshoes.
He comes back and hands them to Truck.
Truck takes them, makes like he is going to throw one and then stops, putting them down on the grass.
“They got Chet.”
Danny nods, wishing Truck wouldn’t talk. Why ruin the silence?
“Pulled his ass out of bed. I heard from his sister that he went apeshit. Took like five cops to hold him down. I heard they beat the absolute fuck out of him. Heard he took a night stick to the eye that near about blinded him.”
Danny picks up a horseshoe, weighs it, lets it fly. Wide right.
“What happened in there?”
Danny doesn’t know where to begin, so he shrugs.
“Lady must have described him pretty well.”
“Must have.”
“You ain’t worried she’ll make you too?”
Danny shrugs again. He can’t decide what would be worse, going back to prison or living out here where he is always falling, speeding toward the next crash. He has decided one thing since leaving out the back window with Chet still telling him it wasn’t too late to find out about the best parts of life. He’s going to leave this place. If he’s going to fuck up, it won’t be here anymore. He hasn’t told Mom yet, but he plans on leaving tonight after she gets off work. She’ll ask him where he’s going and he’ll tell her he doesn’t know, which will be the truth.
“I thought he was going to kill her,” he says. “Rape her.”
Truck shrugged. “You can’t never tell with Chet.”
Just then, a car turns off the highway and onto the dirt road about a half-mile away.
Danny ignores it. Tosses another horseshoe.
Wide right again. Shit.
One more. He picks this one up, feeling it perfect and solid in his hand. He can make it count. One more chance. If he concentrates, throws it just right, it’ll be dead on. Surefire? No, not surefire. But a good chance. That’s all he’s ever asked for.
Truck whistles low and soft. “You see what’s coming down the road there? Shit. I’m gone. You got any sense, you’ll head for the woods too.”
But Danny isn’t listening. Instead, he’s focused on the little pole in front of him, his arm already in motion.
He lets it go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Mantooth is an award-winning author whose short stories have been recognized in numerous year’s best anthologies. His short fiction has been published in Fantasy Magazine, Crime Factory, Thuglit, and the Bram Stoker Award-winning anthology, Haunted Legends (Tor, 2010), among others.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Danny Evarts is an illustrator, editor and graphic designer, and currently holds down the role of Art Director and Technical Editor for Shroud Publishing. He has been attempting to perfect his obsession with layout and design since the mid-1980s. Danny abandoned a career in journalistic and fiction writing in the early ’90s as he came to realize that his visions were better suited to illustration, first for underground magazines and mini-comics. He soon fell in love with relief printmaking, and after a brief stint as a designer in the music industry, his works—most often original prints made through carving into wood or linoleum—now pepper the pages of books and magazines. He is also the illustrator of the Unchildren’s Book It's Okay to be a Zombie, and is fomenting further adventures in this series alongside many other projects. Danny lives with his partner in the Maine woods, where they spend most of their time working on their property and fleeing from irate wildlife.
The Best Part: Short Story Page 3