No Help From Austin: Red: Book 5

by Darrell Maloney

  Not a single hand went up.

  “Very well. Just as a formality, we need at least one vote to break into the bank’s vault.”

  Not only every hand went up, a very loud cheer did as well.

  The decision was made.

  Red hadn’t wanted to get out. Her recovery was progressing well, but at an agonizingly slow pace. She hadn’t been out of the house since her breakdown, but finally got tired of hearing Lilly nag her.

  They walked up to the back of the crowd as the Mayor was laying out the ground rules.

  “There’s not room for the whole town to be in the bank when we break into the vault. So here’s how it’s gonna work.

  “Judge Moore and I will head up the project, accompanied by Reverend Fall and Pastor Walters. Since none of us know beans about breaking into a vault, we’ll be accompanied by Danny Hance, the town’s maintenance man.

  “Once we gain entry, we’ll have somebody start ringing the church bells. When you hear the bells ring, you can all line up at the bank doors, and we’ll escort everybody in one or two at a time to remove the contents from their safe deposit boxes.”

  “What about the money?”

  “Whatever paper money we find will be worthless. Whatever gold and silver we find will be inventoried and valued and split between those who had money in their accounts. The bigger their balance the bigger their share. It’s the only fair way of divvying it up.

  “Anybody got any concerns or other questions?”

  There didn’t appear to be any.

  “Okay, Danny. Go get your tools and meet us at the bank.”

  Few of the town’s residents went home. Most of them hung out at the gazebo, or spread out on blankets in the courthouse square.

  A dozen or so talked the judge into ripping down the heavy drapes covering the bank’s windows, then pressed their faces against the glass trying to get a view.

  Red sat with Lilly in the tall grass, visited by one old friend after another.

  Most hugged her and conveyed their love, adding how great it was she was finally able to get out.

  A couple expressed their regret that she was deprived the chance to end Savage’s life herself.

  But she seemed to take it in stride.

  “The plague he brought upon this town is over. That’s what’s important.”

  Someone asked if she was going after Sloan when she finished recuperating.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “There’s been too much killing here lately. I think it’s high time this town got on with the business of living again.”

  Thank you for reading the Red series.

  The real Red was my twin sister,

  Debra Lynn Maloney Poston,

  who passed away two years ago.

  Debbie was one of the finest women I’ve ever known, and a far better person than I could ever hope to be. I miss her each and every day and will until my dying breath.

  I love her more today than ever before.

  You’d have loved her too.

  And now, a bonus.

  Please enjoy

  JOURNEY OF THE HANDS:

  A short story.

  By Darrell Maloney

  I was born in a big marble building in the middle of Philadelphia in 1925. Back then I was sturdy and strong, with a sharp chiseled face. I even sparkled in the sunlight, although I didn't see sunlight for the first time until I was six months old. I took my first boat trip on the Erie Canal, in a canvas bag with 999 others just like me. It was cramped but not uncomfortable. I had no idea where I was going, but was happy for the company of the others. From time to time the bag we were in would be tossed from hand to hand as workers moved us from the boat to an armored car, then into a bank in Detroit. The first time I was touched by humans, I was picked up by a grizzled old merchant named Hanz, at his family's apotheke, in Taylor, Michigan. He handed me to a lovely woman named Clara, in a beautiful gingham dress and a bright yellow Easter bonnet. Clara immediately passed me to a young girl named Betsy, who held me up in wonder in the dusty sunlight breaking through the store's east window, and marveled at how I shone. I remember the brilliance of the light, and the warmth of her little girl hands, sticky from the gumball she had been passing back and forth between her mouth and her fingers. Thus began my journey of the hands.

  I took my first train trip in a rickety old Pullman car, nestled into the pocket of a man named Gustafson Baker. He preferred Gus, although his wife used his full name when she was peeved at him, which she frequently was. The train moved west over the Rockies, into Salt Lake City. I was rooted from my nest in Gustafson’s pocket and dropped into the hand of a young porter named Joe, who helped carry the Bakers' bags from the train into the station. Joe traded me for a piece of penny licorice a couple of days later.

  I look back at my days in Salt Lake City with fond memories. I got to meet a lot of people and felt the warmth of hundreds of hands, as I was passed around, sometimes several times a day. Sometimes the hands were soft, and smelled of sweet lilac or perfume. Sometimes the hands were grimy and gnarled, covered with dirt or coal dust, or heaven knows what else. Sometimes I would ride around in a genteel lady's pocketbook for days or weeks at a time. The women tended to hang onto me longer than the men did. I suppose that's because in the bottom of a pocketbook I could be easily forgotten. Once I got to go to a magnificent schoolhouse, in the small pocket of a girl of nine named Millicent. She traded me and an old buffalo nickel for a bowl of soup and a biscuit. Then she sat down and ate her lunch amidst a chorus of chatter and giggles, while I sat in a cold cash drawer, waiting to be passed to someone else.

  By the time I was five years old I had given up on my goal of counting the number of hands I had touched. The quest was borne out of boredom, and I had no idea it would be so many. After the first hundred hands or so I gave up on trying to remember all the names, or the details. After a thousand or so I gave up altogether. Suffice it to say it was a lot of hands in those early years.

  When I was ten, I was on the move again. This time was not so glorious a journey. I slipped through a hole in the pocket of a farmhand who was loading steers into a cattle car heading south. For days I lay on the hard wooden floor of the car as it lurched along its tracks, occasionally being stepped on by a four-legged beast that had no more idea where we were heading than I did. We wound up in southern California, where the cattle were turned into steaks and I was passed many times from one hand to another. I learned my worth was two tomatoes or one apple. I was in the land of itinerant farmers, most of whom were displaced by the dust bowl and the depression, and moved west in search of a better life. I would go back and forth, from a set of scratched and cracked hands belonging to a picker, to the soft and lotioned hands of a grocer, in exchange for two tomatoes, or an apple, or a pat of wrapped bread. Then given in change back to another set of cracked dry hands. Back and forth, day in and day out. It was monotonous. Sometimes I was passed back and forth in poker games, where I was apparently enough to ante my owner's hand of cards into the game.

  In 1943 I belonged to a man named John. John had picked me up on a sidewalk in Waco, Texas, where I had been carelessly dropped by a small child whose hands were too tiny to carry a handful of change. John looked at my date and proclaimed me his lucky penny, since we had been born the same year. I knew it was 1943 because the other pennies being jostled about in John's trouser pockets were marked with that date, and were shiny and new. They never stayed around long, though. John carefully picked through his change whenever he paid for something. The shiny pennies would leave, never to be seen again. I would stay with him to bring him luck, he'd say. John worked in an armament factory outside of Waco, making gun barrels, until the day he changed careers and put on an ugly brown uniform. He stopped being John and began being Private Moseley, and he kept that name for the rest of the time I knew him.

  Private Moseley always rubbed my face before going into battle. For luck, he said. In those chaotic days, scared men in faraway lands
did whatever they could to calm their nerves and convince themselves that they would live to see another sunset. The last time I saw Private Moseley we were on a landing craft in rough seas, heading toward something called Omaha Beach. He rubbed my face, said a short prayer, and placed me in his left breast pocket. Then he patted me through the pocket. I heard him tell a buddy that his lucky penny would keep him alive.

  For two long weeks I sat in a box alongside a handful of other change, some love letters from Mary, three worn and tattered photographs of Private Moseley's mom, Mary and his young nephews with their ear-to-ear grins. I was jostled about in this box, not knowing where I was, or where I was going, but knowing from the constant rocking that I was in the cargo hold of a ship. Later I could feel the vibration of a truck that seemed to labor forever across the dusty and bumpy roads of west Texas. Finally I heard voices, then light, as the box was finally opened. I saw Mary's face, red and puffy, polluted by too many tears rolling from her pretty blue eyes. I saw her clutch the love letters she had written to Private Moseley, to John, so many months before. I felt the warmth of her fingers as she picked me up, his lucky penny, and gazed hard at me. Then in a rage she threw me from the porch swing where she was sitting, and into the soft green grass of her front yard.

  For many years I sat in the dirt of that front yard, watching seasons come and go. In the spring and summer months, the grass would grow tall, and would block out the sun. Then someone would cut it and I'd see light for a few days or weeks, until it went away again. My life became a series of cycles. I became very good at guessing the seasons. The grass growing and cutting cycles meant spring. When the growing slowed marked summer. When it stopped altogether it was fall. The cold marked winter, and I lost track of how many winters I laid there.

  One year in the cycle I knew as spring, I could hear voices. A lawnmower had passed over me not too many days before, and sunlight was penetrating through the shortened grass and warming my face. Suddenly I was up, away from the earth, feeling fresh air for the first time in way too many years. A smallish hand scraped the dirt from my sides, and I went into a dark pocket, where I joined two other pennies. One of them was rough cut, with freshly minted features. I could not see it well in the darkness, but I could tell from the feel of it and the smell of new copper that it was recently minted. It said 1963 on its face.

  Suddenly I was alive again. I was being used again in the manner in which I enjoyed, being passed from hand to hand to hand. Children buying candy. Ladies buying produce. Men buying flowers for angry wives they had slighted in various ways. I sat in a coin tray at a 7-11 convenience store, unwanted by one customer, then picked up and used by another. One day I was dropped at a bakery and rolled under a display case. For several months I lay, smelling the glorious smells of fresh donuts each morning, and hearing the joyous laughter of children begging their mothers for cookies. One day the smells drifted away, never to return, and the laughter went away as well. For a long time I was once again alone, day and night. At least I wasn't getting rained on as I had been in Mary's front yard.

  Eventually the old bakery was reopened, only it wasn't a bakery any more. It was now an insurance office, and of course the old ovens and display cases had to be removed to make room for desks and chairs and typewriters and such. As the display case was lifted off of me, a worker picked me up, dusted me off, and thrust me into a khaki pants pocket. The pompous, overbearing quarter beside me said 1981.

  These days I don't go anywhere. I am confined to an airless, clear plastic pouch, which I assume is for display purposes. On the white cardboard label attached to the pouch are the words "Lincoln Cent, 1925 P". I don't know what that means, but I do know that I am lonely. I miss being passed from hand to hand and traveling across the country and around the world. I miss being admired by children and hearing the joy in their voices as they traded me for the latest sweet thing. I even missed the grumbling of some adults who cast me into parking lots or sidewalks, as though carrying me was not worth their effort. I knew that invariably, someone would pick me back up, recognize my worth, and pass me along. I even miss feeling the ants run across my face in Mary's yard, and shuddering each time the lawnmower passed over, ten to twelve time a year, in the season I knew as spring. I would love to break out of my plastic prison and feel the warmth of the hands. I really miss them...

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  Please enjoy this preview of

  Darrell Maloney’s new series

  The Yellowstone Event, Book 1:

  FIRE IN THE SKY

  The Yellowstone Event series is now available at Amazon.com and through Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

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  “Come on! What do you have to lose?” she cried gleefully as she dragged Tony by his arm through the carnival midway.

  “Um… how about ten bucks?”

  “I’ll give you a kiss.”

  “I’d rather keep the ten bucks.”

  “Excuse me, mister?”

  He stopped and held her, then laughed.

  “I’ll tell you what, Hannah. You give me just one good reason why I should throw away good money on a fortune teller. If you can give me just one good reason, I’ll give in to your silly demands. But it’ll still cost you a kiss.”

  “And what if I don’t have a good reason? What if I’m just a silly girl who wants to find out once and for all whether you’ve been telling me the truth about marrying me someday?”

  “Oh, so that’s what this is all about. You’re gonna make me pay ten of my hard-earned dollars just to hear some old gypsy fortune teller say what I’ve been telling you all along? That hurts. It really does.”

  “What hurts?”

  “It hurts that you don’t trust me. That you’d believe some crazy old fortune teller but you won’t believe me.”

  “The fortune teller has nothing to gain by lying to me.”

  “And I do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Maybe? Just what the heck does that mean, maybe?”

  “It just means that you’ve been trying very hard to get to third base with me lately. And you wouldn’t be the first guy who promised marriage to get the honeymoon first. That’s all.”

  Tony smiled.

  “Third base? Heck, baby. I don’t want third base. I want a home run.”

  The smile left her face, replaced by something akin to a little girl’s pout.

  “You’re not helping your case any.”

  He brushed the long brown hair from her face and kissed her on the tip of the nose. Then square on the lips.

  “What if she’s a fraud? Most of them are, you know. They just say whatever pops into their minds. They can no more tell the future than you or I can.”

  “I’ll be able to tell if she’s a fraud. If she is, I’ll let you off the hook. But if she’s genuine, I’ll know that too.”

  “Oh, so now you’re an expert on gypsy frauds?”

  Her smile returned and she coyly replied, “Maybe.”

  “Oh, geez,” he said as he stomped toward the purple tent. “The things I do to make you happy…”

  “I know, honey. That’s why I love you so very much.”

  She wasn’t quite what he expected, when she sat them at the table. For one thing, she looked… normal. She wasn’t the hideous witch he’d expected to find. She didn’t have hair growing from weird warts on her nose and huge silver hoop earrings. There weren’t bats flying around her head and the smell of cheap incense permeating everything in the tent.

  She looked as normal as Tony and Hannah.

  That sealed it in Tony’s mind. That proved she was a fraud. She didn’t even know enough to dress the part of a cartoonish gypsy. She didn’t even put out that much effort. How much effort would she put into reading Hannah’s emotions and verifying that yes, this guy sitting next to her was truly her one and only?

  Now Tony could tell his own future. In about five minutes or so Hannah was going to go storming out
of the tent and straight to the car. She’d insist that he take her home immediately. And once there she’d let herself out, slam the car door, and stomp her way up the steps to her house.

  He’d be left in the car, his head still spinning, with absolutely no chance of getting lucky on this particular night.

  “Good evening, Hannah. Good evening, Anthony. I’ve been wondering when you two were coming to call.”

  Hannah didn’t catch it. She was too mesmerized by the woman’s eyes. They were pools of blackness, devoid of emotion.

  But Tony caught it. He’d always been good at that. At noticing subtle things others missed.

  “How… how did you know our names?”

  It was more of a demand than a question.

  “Oh, I know more about you than that, young man. Stella knows everything about you. Your past, your present, your future. I know what’s in your heart and what evil lurks hidden in your soul. I know the good in you. The bad. The secrets you keep. Now then, young man, the only question is, which things should I tell to Hannah and which ones do I keep to myself?”

  His head told him she was bluffing, that she knew nothing about him. That maybe someone who knew them saw them coming and tipped her off to their names. Or that there was some other reasonable explanation.

  His heart, it wasn’t so sure.

  “Relax, Anthony. You need not worry, for I know what’s in your heart. This girl loves you. She wants to know if you love her as well. She wants to know if you’ll marry her someday. It is a reasonable request. And I will share with her your true intentions.”