Blood, Guts, & Whiskey

by Todd Robinson

  “Fuck you, loser. Why don’t you just go home, fat fuck.”

  Hank came over.

  “You’re gonna have to leave,” he told Blake. “Carry your ass down the road.”

  “I ain’t fucking leaving,” Blake said, taking a swing at Hank and landing his fist deep in Hank’s ribcage.

  He caught Hank off guard and Hank ended up flat on his ass. While Blake was looking down at Hank, Ed Looney chopped Blake dead in the neck. That son of a bitch fell to the floor right next to Hank. Blake’s rat head bounced once on the floor like a scoop of mashed potatoes with gravy. He tried to talk and couldn’t. The back of his head was dripping blood on the floor. Couldn’t get his ass off the floor.

  “That had to hurt, partner,” Cooper offered as he walked by on his way out, scratching his nuts.

  Ed sat back down like nothing happened, with a look that resembled satisfaction, but it was Ed, so it also resembled not much at all. Someone tried to help Hank up, but he refused and got up on his own. Hank kicked Blake hard as he could in the stomach with his cowboy boot. Blake let out a pathetic whimper that was something like an acknowledgment that he was a dumbass. Hank grabbed Blake by the seat of his pants and tossed him outside. “Don’t bring your ass back in here,” he said, before adding, “at least not for a week or two.” Hank returned behind the bar and resumed beer slinging like nothing had happened.

  Melanie had put on a black slip and was in the corner smoking. I asked her if she was okay, and she said, “That little shit ain’t worth worrying about,” as she blew out smoke.

  “Well, at least you have Ed protecting you.”

  “Damn straight. You better act right, hun.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” And tipped my hat towards her like a jackass.

  Shaking my head, I walked over to Hank. “One more Pabst for the road, Hank.”

  “Be careful on your way home, Billy. Cops sure enough will pull your ass over.”

  “I know, Hank.” I put the beer in my coat pocket. “Have a good night.”

  One of the strippers, Two-Ton Tammy, went out before me and got in someone’s passenger seat. She came up with that moniker herself and was known to add “with two top-notch tits.” She was a big girl and damn proud of it. Boasting a pair of 40 Gs, killer attitude, and sex appeal to spare, Tammy could make a linebacker blush—and cum in Hank’s parking lot for an extra forty bucks. “Holy humdinger, here’s a lady with hellacious hooters, gentlemen” was how Little Bobby, the pervert DJ, once introduced her. Rumor had it that Tammy became a stripper soon after her mama drained a Liquid-Plumr cocktail.

  Dale was leaning against my truck when I got outside.

  “What do you want, Dale?” I asked.

  “My name ain’t Dale. It’s John, and I’m the man who’s fucking your wife.” He pulled his hand from his back and brought out a .38 special.

  He pointed it at me and said, “Here’s how it’s gonna be. Cindy wants a divorce. You’re gonna give it to her. You ain’t gonna say shit about shit and I won’t beat the living shit out of you or shoot you.” He brought the revolver down. “I know you might think this is a bit overly forceful, but I like to get my point across.”

  “Fuck you,” seemed like the appropriate thing to say, so that’s what I said.

  Dale-John spit, then said, “You ain’t fucking nobody. Cindy said you ain’t fucked in six months. That’s fine with me, because I prefer her pussy clean and to myself. But she said you spent all your time chasing skanks at this run-down titty bar, playing that old, pity me, country shit. Shame, shame.”

  A man who fucks your wife and points a gun at you can still have a point. But I didn’t feel like agreeing with him.

  “I’ll fucking kill you. I’ve got guns too.” I didn’t. “But why don’t you put the gun down and fight me like a man, you son of a bitch.”

  He kept the gun instead and stepped towards me and punched me in the gut. I swung at his head, missed, and then felt like I was going to throw up. As I stumbled backwards, I noticed Cooper coming up slowly behind him and he had a shotgun in his hands. He smiled at me. Buying him that beer had apparently been a smart purchase.

  Cooper put the gun to Dale-John’s head and said, “Hey, asshole, why don’t you cease and desist?”

  Dale-John froze and said, “Who the fuck are you? This ain’t none of your fuckin’ business.”

  “Well, my name is Cooper, and I’m from North Carolina. Drop the gun on the ground, son.” He cocked the shotgun for emphasis.

  “Your ass is mine, faggot.” But he did what Cooper said.

  “Hey, Billy, why don’t you grab that gun and we’ll call the cops on The Intimidator here. Have I mentioned how much I fuckin’ hate Chevy’s?”

  I picked up the gun and started to walk inside and tell Hank to call the police. But with visions of his hands touching my wife and him smiling like Luke Cocksucker, I turned back around and smacked Dale-John in the mouth as hard as I could with his piece. The blood from his mouth raced him to the ground as he fell to his knees. He spit out a few teeth or parts of teeth and said something, but I wasn’t listening.

  Cooper stopped grinning for a second. Two-Ton Tammy ran out of Cooper’s car and went to help Dale-John.

  “I appreciate it. I owe you,” I told Cooper.

  “Always here to help, man. Shit, thanks for making my Friday night interesting.” The smile returned.

  Hank came running out the door and I knew I owed it to him to explain what happened. But my mind was swirling and I just got in my truck. I took the gun with me, figuring I would toss it in Lake Mead like real soon. I pictured Cindy and me in the bathtub together long ago, two horny teenagers, smiling and red-faced. I put the key in the ignition and a cassette playing Merle Haggard’s “The Emptiest Arms in the World” was turned up too loud. I left it that way.

  I took the beer out from my coat and drank it as it foamed over. I reached down to get the bottle of Jim Beam I kept under my seat and put it between my legs, wondering which back road I would pick to throw a pity party. Old Myrtle Road would do. I hit reverse—way too hard—and my back end bucked wildly when my truck hit a mudhole.

  She was standing in the wrong spot. I couldn’t stop in time. Two-Ton Tammy screamed as Hag howled for the lonely.

  Mercy First, First Mercy

  David Harrison

  People stop taking their meds all the time.

  I’m sorry I killed that dog, though.

  Just, stuff gets stuck in your head—am I right? Am I right? Aggravation. Insults.

  Childhood ...

  Or a plainclothes named Barlow and, behind him, his overwrought partner, the one who’s pacing, rolling his eyes through one-way glass along the dirty wall of an airless interrogation room.

  “From the top,” Barlow says.

  This ain’t my first time; I know that’s an order.

  Still, I ask for another cigarette.

  Wrong brand, but if I know another thing, it’s that beggars can’t choose. I close my eyes, inhale—deep—imagine the nicotine like pretty paint rolled on my inside walls.... When I open my eyes, I’m guessing I’ve smiled, ’cause Barlow wants in on the joke and the partner looks, more than ever, loaded for bear.

  “Seriously,” Barlow says.

  But he’s the one smiling now—I’m almost sure of it. Doesn’t make me nervous so much as it makes me mad that I don’t know how long the three of us are gonna be stuck together in this sneaker box of a room. “I’m sorry I killed that dog—”

  “The top,” Barlow interrupts. “That’s an order!”

  My stomach growls. I’m probably hungry. There’re coffees they’d brought me, all gone cold, collecting in Styrofoam cups atop the dented steel table between me and Barlow. I don’t drink coffee—won’t, either—I told them early on. Again I ask what it takes to get a Canada Dry around here.

  Barlow tells me, “Water.”

  With my hands cuffed behind me, I spit the cigarette butt from my mouth to the floor; I
turn, lean, drink from a straw though the water’s lukewarm. I’m picturing the nicotine running and streaking, and I don’t think my eyes are even closed....

  The top? I liked the dog fine. Some kind of retriever. Square head, thick haunches, dark tail taut like a whip. So black he looked blue when the light hit him right.

  And I swear he didn’t talk.

  I tell Barlow and his partner, “Wouldn’t stop barking, though—”

  Partner peels himself away from the window—in time to slam a big hand down on the table. “From the beginning!”

  “I’m right here,” I say. Then, to Barlow, “He always shout like that?”

  “Take five, Frank.”

  Partner—name is Frank, I guess—leaves.

  Barlow says, “Just you and me.”

  I want to point to my temple, tap some, correct him. But the cuffs. Fuck it.

  “Danny,” I say.

  “The boy—”

  “My brother.”

  Barlow’s bushy eyebrows arch. He thumbs through my file. “Uh-uh.”

  “Deceased,” I tell him. “Long time ago.” Mercy is where and whenever you find it.

  Barlow only sighs.

  “My father was a welder,” I continue. “He caught fire once—all up and down his one arm. Wound up limp, all smooth, real ugly—like candle wax left in the sun.” Pop liked me and Danny to touch it....

  “The boy.”

  A one-track steel trap this Barlow, lucky devil. So, I try to concentrate—I really do....

  The boy? His father spoke Spanish. La madre went mute. I heard their works through thin walls when I should’ve been sleeping. Poor kid, in the treacherous dark with his pitch-black dog ...

  “Boy’s name was Antonio,” Barlow interrupts.

  If he says so; I mostly remembered big ears, skinny legs, bruising all up and down the kid’s arms. Clumsy, my ass. Or am I thinking of Danny? Old gets new, again and again....

  And again.

  Barlow says, “Antonio Diaz ...”

  “I offered him gum once.”

  “... age eleven.”

  I tell Barlow how the kid took a stick, but didn’t know to thank me. Up close, his eyes had looked old. “Swiveled his head like he might get caught stealing, you know?”

  Barlow knows of what we speak; I can see it in the way he shrugs his shoulders, in the way he taps one foot, in the way he writes left-handed. The scrape of his soft pencil across the notepad sounds like a wagging tail....

  “We never had no dog of our own,” I say, thinking Barlow ought to know. “My brother stole a turtle once.”

  “Danny.”

  “Tyson.”

  “Tyson?”

  Danny’s turtle’s name was Tyson. Got found, all right; Danny offered to take Tyson back to the pet store, make things right, whatever it took. Pop handed Danny a hammer instead....

  “You got kids, Barlow?” I ask.

  “You think we got nothin’ but time around here?” But he puts down his pencil. Then, he’s looking around the entire tiny, shitty room; he’s spreading his arms, slowly, and pointing or something—crazy bastard—like he’s a television spokesmodel or some goddamn thing.

  “I’ll show you crazy,” I hear myself tell Barlow. But the cuffs; I sit back down.

  “Pop handed Danny a hammer.”

  Like that, Barlow is writing again.

  And writing.

  I gather I must be talking: Hammers. House pets. Parents. Pulp. I see sweet Danny’s eyes, but my rap to Barlow is all about old man Diaz, about how I figured out which Fridays were paydays from the bumps in those nights, from the barley stink of freshly drained forties in the Dumpster, from Saturday bruises still swollen and purple before time turned poor, skinny Antonio yellow....

  “Man died much too quick, you ask me. You know the sound it makes when you drop a flat rock onto mud?”

  Before Barlow can answer, I’m on to the missus, tu madre, the mute. “How dare she?” I ask him. Hurt like a bitch when she dug those nails into my neck. And teeth on her too; left one of my earlobes about on a thread. “All of a sudden she’s a fighter?”

  Barlow’s scribbling like a genuine madman now. It makes me think I’m talking about the kid, about Antonio, D for Diaz, for Danny, for damn sure, ’cause just growin’ up is murder enough, but it’s worse to be waiting and wishing when you know that things don’t change, things won’t ever change, old is new, new gets old, like father, like son, brother’s keeper, losers weepers....

  “D for done?” I ask.

  Barlow nods as he puts his pencil down. He twists in his seat, shoots the same nod out that mirrored glass.

  Like that, the partner, Frank, is back. Still ugly, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t have my ginger ale.

  “Where and whenever.” I laugh and lean and sip and slurp. “Danny buried Tyson in the woods behind our house.” I found arrowheads out there once; I straight away showed them to Pop. He snatched the lot, made me watch when he put them in hamburger meat, fed the neighbor’s collie....

  Dogs bleed.

  Kids see.

  Danny loved that turtle.

  I love Danny... .

  So, meds or no meds, maybe I ought to tell Barlow and Frank how a hammer’s only good enough for fathers, for mothers, for goddamn dogs who just wouldn’t stop with the barking and barking. And barking ...

  But I’ve said enough.

  “Crazy bastard,” Frank mutters as Barlow leads their way out.

  At last, giving me my own clear view to the one-way glass. I see Antonio’s eyes, grown wide as Danny’s did in the final instant, not scared nor brave, not empty though, either, just already dead at eleven years old, long gone before I snap his neck, past lost before I save a soul....

  “Mercy, me.”

  This ain’t my first time.

  Overclocked

  Lawrence Clayton

  I got the worst fucking luck.

  The downtown local broke onto the subway platform like a rogue wave, and I was nearly pulled under by the riptide. I wrapped an arm around an upright steel column, encrusted in decades of tough, brightly colored institutional paint. Someone had started an archaeological excavation, exposing a multitude of layers, geological strata millimeters deep, and no sign of the naked underlying steel. Like a coward I crouched in the lee, waiting for the surge to pass. About the only thing I had going for me was that I was headed opposite the commuters on their way to work.

  Sometimes I believe I live inside a giant pachinko machine, I swear. I couldn’t decide if it was way too early in the morning or way too late at night.

  I felt shaky. Nauseous. Like a shadow on a cloudy day. Too much coffee, my stomach twisted in knots in protest; and the numbing effect of the alcohol was beginning to morph into a splitting headache. I wanted methamphetamines. I wanted valium. I wanted to eat a mile of pussy. I was still technically on the clock.

  On a stainless steel edge, I smoothed a crumpled twenty that had until recently lived a solitary existence in the bottom of my blue jeans. I fed it into the slot, and shockingly, the machine accepted it on the first try.

  “Would you like to add money to your MetroCard?” No. I didn’t have a MetroCard. I wanted to get one. That was the problem. The solution, however, didn’t seem to be revealed on the touch screen. I hit cancel. “How may I help you today?” No sign of my twenty. “Please insert credit card or cash to begin.” I looked around. The token booth, encased in inch-thick Plexi, stood empty. “Thank you for riding with MTA.”

  More Trouble Ahead.

  It was going to be a long walk. For a minute I just stood there, looking at the thing. I swear, if a machine could look smug, this one did. I considered digging my ten-inch Crescent wrench out of my tool bag and doing a number on its smug little touch screen, but frankly I didn’t have the energy. I sighed, probably too loud and too dramatically, and headed up the urine steps into the morning sun.

  Technically I was still on the clock. Technically I should have stil
l been at the bottom of a very deep pit in a very tall building on the walkie-talkie with Joe Blow, trying to dial in load sensors whose manufacture and installation had been botched twenty years ago by a company out of Ohio that no longer existed; but then technically I’m not supposed to drink whiskey at work either and that’s never stopped me, now has it? Seven hours of this shit is more than enough for anyone, certainly more than enough for Joe and me, and the rats in my peripheral vision give me the fucking creeps, and who really gives a shit if we cut out a little early? Not me.

  Fuck this, man. It was kind of weird to be out and about this early in the morning. The light was strange. I had this strong paranoid feeling that I was being watched, but I chalked it up to caffeine, amphetamine withdrawal, and general paranoia. I checked over my shoulder a couple times nonetheless. Hey, you can’t be too careful. An ounce of prevention is worth a pig in a poke, or something like that.

  I picked up the mail on the way up to the apartment. Crap, whole lotta crap. Doctors Without Borders wanted more money. Man, you write them one lousy check and they never leave you alone. What else? Another rejection slip. A CD in a cardboard mailer for Nate. He’d been getting a ton of those lately. The Con Ed bill. Christ on a flipping crutch!

  “Hey, Nate?” If there is one thing I really, really cannot stand, will do almost anything to avoid, it is conflict. My share of the electric bill, however, even considering our sixty-forty split, currently represented more than the sum of my total liquid assets, and rent was coming due again.

  Nate poked his head out of his bedroom. Actually what we call his bedroom is just a sheet of half-inch plywood drywall—screwed into the far end of our railroad studio. It is a bedroom in that it encompasses just enough space for Nate’s futon, and in that he sleeps in there. Not that I’ve ever actually known him to sleep.

  “The electric bill just came in. It’s for over nine hundred dollars.” Our power bill had been creeping up for months now. Nate just looked at me. His eyes seemed wobbly. Or maybe it was just me, just that I hadn’t slept in a really, really, really long time. “And I can’t afford it.”