Candy and Cigarettes

by CS DeWildt

  Candy and Cigarettes

  By

  CS DeWildt

  In the face of revenge, innocence is meaningless.

  Death is omnipresent to small-town loner Lloyd Bizbang. Today proves no exception. After being attacked yet again by a pair of sociopaths who have targeted him since childhood, Lloyd stumbles upon a sight he wishes he could unsee in the town junkyard. Now as he just tries to live through another day, the bodies are stacking up in the town of Horton, and Lloyd finds himself connected to each of them via the drug-and-drink-addled, unhinging police chief, yet another person who has an old score to settle with Lloyd. A game of revenge and survival is underway, but will there be a winner at the day’s end?

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the production of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. This book, and parts thereof, may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission. For information, e-mail info@vagabondagpress.com.

  CANDY AND CIGARETTES

  © 2011 by CS DeWildt

  Vagabondage Press

  PO Box 3563

  Apollo Beach, Florida 33572

  http://www.vagabondagepress.com

  First digital edition in the United States of America and the UK, July 2011

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  Cover image by Jan Skwara. Cover design by Maggie Ward.

  Candy and Cigarettes

  by

  CS DeWildt

  Dedication

  For Sarah

  Thanks to anyone who has read my stuff, especially Patrick and Karena.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter Before

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  His cadence was truth as he walked backward into the wind, his right thumb stuck out for a ride. It was the last night of the Horton Fair, and the fair signaled the end of summer more than a calendar or even the planet’s position in space relative to the sun. He didn’t take much notice of the clouds or rain threat as he walked the grass and gravel shoulder of the highway. The summer-bleached grasses beyond the pavement and rocky earth bowed in the wind. His feet continued to kick dust, and he leaned back into the wind. He let it hold him, but he would not bend to it, though the wind tried. Instead, it cushioned him before splitting into separate paths around him, meeting again beyond the obstacle. To the wind, he was no different than an ancient hardwood tree with deep-sunk roots and thick canopy. The wind, for now, conceded to form and function, but the wind knew of eternity, knew the power hidden away in time and in lifetimes. It knew of wars and battles, that each was not the same and never were they to be confused.

  A dot appeared in the distance, giving premonition, growing. “They’ll stop,” it said. Thirty yards ahead, the ’83 Hurst/Olds grumbled over the gravel shoulder. He jogged to the car, reached it, puffing. The vehicle was silver, trimmed with black, and the T-tops were open despite the falling temperature of the day. The V8 shook the dirt beneath it, raising a plume of dust that pillowed rich brown before diffusing into the gray backdrop of everything else. He wiped clear snot with the back of his hand as he saw the passenger, then the driver. Their smiles rose as Lloyd Bizbang’s fell.

  “Jesus,” Lloyd said.

  Cutter was the family name. Sun-browned Terry was driving with dirty blonde, scar-cheeked Zeke sitting shotgun. Lloyd should have taken notice of the car. He may have just as well chased a pair of vipers down for a ride.

  “Fuck you, Bizbang! Fucking baby killing faggot!”

  Lloyd watched Zeke raise the piece, and the shots began to pop before he could thaw. He felt the burning hornet stings all over his torso, then a shot in the face that caved his nose. He felt the warm spray in his eyes, and he dropped, hands to face, blinded. Cackling laughter and a dozen more shots found Lloyd as he rolled and curled on the side of the road like a piece of frying bacon. The tires spun in the gravel, spraying Lloyd with the rocks and dirt.

  Dust clung to his wet face. Lloyd laid in the silence in his place on the edge of the highway, on the county side of the birdshot-pocked city limits sign. The silence was the death of the town. All within would perish, eventually. The able-bodied and mobile had already fled. A few survivors continued to do so. The unskilled tried to maintain a semblance of the life they knew before the town busted.

  Lloyd killed that silence as he began to think that maybe he wasn’t going to die just yet. He touched his face and found it all there. His nose hurt and didn’t seem to be the right shape, but he rubbed his eyes and found he could see again. The shirt was splattered pink and blue. Lloyd felt his torso. He was whole, not porous. He heard the rumble as the same shining point in the distance appeared again, now from the opposite direction. Lloyd pulled himself to his feet quickly and started walking. He hugged his throbbing trunk and stumbled down the slope from the road, knocking the dry brush away and collecting tag-along thistles with each step. He scrambled up and over a narrow slope, atop of which the east/west train track ran more or less parallel with State Road 45. Lloyd skirted the highway side of the tracks, walking below the peak of the opposite slope, hidden by the mound. The rumbling engine peaked and then sustained and then slowed. The subtle undertones of the motor, pistons and fan blades, belts, all could be teased apart from the steady, airy, orange explosion of combustion.

  “Bizbang? Where you at?” Zeke called out in his watered-down, Yankeefied drawl.

  “C’mon buddy. We’re just playing around!” The cackling returned and left quickly underneath the growling motor and its vector.

  Lloyd followed the bed of Rush Creek away from the road. The creek was mostly dry, save for a few deep puddles that had survived the summer. Lloyd didn’t hear the frogs. Too harsh a season? Too dry? Maybe just too cold. The foliage was thick with a spring promise that had been broken and browned by the reality of summer drought. Dead seed heads and densely spiked burrs sprung out of the dry dirt like sepia fireworks explosions, but the dull tones of the hearty survivors were only pale imitations of the vibrant hues of the past, a second-rate offering to be spat upon.

  Lloyd’s nose throbbed, dripped blood. He wiped a gray flannel sleeve under the spigot of his nostrils and explored his tender beak with
tentative fingers. He poked at his nose to see how sensitive it was. Very. He examined the dusted blood on his fingertips and moved on.

  As the crow flies, Lloyd could be home in an hour. He labored over fences and waded through the high corn in a kind of vertical breaststroke, the top of the irrigated corn stalks blowing green above and giving him the look of flea on scalp. Crows launched themselves from hiding ahead of him, and Lloyd wondered if he might meet a scarecrow. He never had and wondered if he ever would. He was often in field cover of Horton, avoiding, hiding. Today, flannelled and bleeding.

  Lloyd reached the dump, the relic, crossing the open field with the poised ears and eyes of a piece of game. He scavenged in the pits and piles of junk. The county took over the trash pick-up years ago, and the chemically unstable had long ago vanished. What remained in the dump were your slow decayers: your automobile halves and discarded appliances and beaten men who just would not return to the earth.

  Old, rusted farm equipment was scattered, half buried, sometimes burying, completing a jigsaw-quality bucolic tableaux. The wood handles of the old hand plow were pitted and starting to rot. Lloyd ran a hand over the weathered handle as he scanned the piles. He felt safe among the junk, hidden; though had it been dark, the area would have been avoided. High school kids and adults who wished high school hadn’t ended, the Cutters for instance, used the junkyard for bonfire parties. Lloyd didn’t fret a few hung-over kids, should there be any, but when the alcohol flowed and the fire roared, his presence could only end in frenzy, the toll of living infamy.

  Lloyd grabbed the splintering window frame. One pane of four remained, and Lloyd tilted the glass in front of his face, in search of himself. He saw his mug, bare and beaten. The glass reflected the pinks and blues covering his face from mouth to hairline with subtle gray clarity. His crooked nose was caked with paint and blood and dirt. Lloyd’s reflection touched the nose again. The glass fell to the ground and cracked, complimenting the sound of Lloyd’s nose as he forced it straight. Warm blood flowed, pushed passed a long, wormlike clot that dangled from a nostril. He poked at his nose, still painful, swollen, unsure but straight on his face. Lloyd took in the cold air.

  He yanked the rusted metal handle, unlocking and opening the old, fallen icebox, hoping for an alcohol stash. He stared inside for a long time. He closed the refrigerator again and tried to wipe away stained knowledge. Lloyd fled the dump, through the field and into the wooded edge beyond. He picked up the creek again and continued following. He tried again to forget what he’d seen. The pink and blue furred opossum, dead and freezing in the fields, went unnoticed by him.

  Chapter 2

  The Cutters had all but forgotten about Lloyd. The Hurst drank up the road, and they cracked cans of beer, slurped, dribbled.

  “Wanna get some more paintballs?” Zeke said.

  “No.”

  “Toss it then?”

  “Yeah, alright.”

  The gun flew from the T-top and landed in the deep weeds beyond the shoulder. There was a crunch as dry brush was laid down. The toy now lived in the silence among the objects of the natural world, nothing but a mass to be weathered and reincorporated into the soil should enough time pass. The oxygen would thin and flake its form, feeding the microbes until it was all gone.

  Chapter 3

  “What the hell happened to you, Bizbang?” the cashier said.

  “Got run up on by the Cutters. Gimme a pack of nasties.”

  “What kind?”

  “What’s cheap?”

  “Nothin’. Rollies.”

  “Gimme the Rollies then and some Zigzags.”

  “You look like you need the doctor.”

  “No.”

  “Your nose is broken.”

  “I know.”

  “You want me to tape it up for you?”

  Lloyd looked at him. Al the cashier was older than Lloyd’s twenty-seven years by about two-score. He had a balding, lonely, fatherly quality to him that reeked of the unrequited. Some people look like their pets; Al looked like his truths. He was a father. He did not know where his own children lived anymore.

  “Just give me the tape, and I’ll do it,” Lloyd said.

  Al nodded and got the tape from the first aid kit he kept. He leaned over the counter, eyes following Lloyd’s roughed-up figure down the narrow, gray hall to the greasy restroom facilities. “What’d they paint you or something?”

  Lloyd ran the water until it was hot and he could feel the steam on his face. He rubbed his hands together under the stream. His hands were cold and numb, and the heat raised his spirits a notch, despite his aching face and body. He cupped his hands and splashed his face with the soothing hellfire. He rubbed his face with light pressure, removing the paint and dried blood. The blood and dirt and paint swirled together in the slow-draining sink. Soon the face was clean, and its waste coated the white porcelain. Under the violent fluorescents, the face was flawed and wooden. It was pocked and scarred to a measure somewhere between character and monstrosity. Lloyd cupped the hot water over his white hair, giving the illusion of darkness. All that remained to be dealt with was the swollen, slightly crooked nose packed with toilet tissue. Lloyd let the tissue set for a bit longer, staring into the mirror before pulling it out. The bleeding had stemmed.

  He pulled the white tape across the bridge of his nose, tight to his face. He became nauseous from the pain and the wet crunch of the rubbing bone and cartilage. He breathed deeply through his mouth, trying to hold his insides in. The stabbing pain rescinded, replaced by a warming throb. He ate the four aspirin Al had handed over with the tape.

  Al was busy with fuel customers and didn’t see Lloyd as he passed by the beer cooler and then left the station. Al saw the bathroom door ajar, the room empty. He scanned the interior of the store for Lloyd’s figure, found nothing. Al spit his tobacco juice into a coffee mug and stared at the opposite side of the large convenience store. There was a failed sandwich shop where the garage used to be. It had been Al’s garage at one time; the entire place had been his. He lost it and did his time. Now he worked the evening shift, jockeyed the register, made coffee, cleaned the messes.

  He pushed it from his mind, like the old back injury that popped up again without warning. He’d become good at keeping the past in the background. “Just keep on living,” they told him, though he didn’t care to listen. “Tomorrow is another day,” they would utter, a kind of meta-understanding, their empathy polite yet only thinly blanketing their disgust, their contempt, their shameful joy.

  Al agreed. “It is another day.” And that was the bitch of it.

  Chapter 4

  Lloyd pulled a stolen tallboy out of his jacket pocket and cracked it. He took in the watery beer and didn’t even mind the cold gusts that were blowing in from the west. The cold beer was even colder, and it made the winds feel almost warm. In fact, Lloyd hoped it got colder; he had a second tallboy in his other pocket and another mile to go. The alcohol came on quick, and mixed with the cold and the aspirin, it had him feeling pretty good. He downed the tallboy quickly, dropped the can into the street and cracked open its mate. He poured a quarter of the contents down his wide gullet, forcing himself to stop and savor the taste. He wished for a third can. He knew he’d finish the second long before he made it back home.

  He entered the house and stripped off his paint-stained shirt and jacket. His white chest was beaded with red welts. He found a bottle of Kesslers whiskey stuffed in the ripped, flowered couch. He turned on the television and drank from the bottle. The weather girl promised a freeze that evening.

  “Forget about that Indian summer,” she said.

  “What’s the opposite of Indian Summer anyway?” the desk anchor said.

  “European Winter, I guess.” Lloyd smiled because the weather girl was too cute not to smile at.

  Amber Alert: Andy Philips was missing. He was eleven. Last year’s school picture was displayed on the screen: dark hair and eyes, a red sweater and a half smile superimp
osed on a 2-D forest backdrop. His mother last saw him when he left the house with his paintball gun that morning. A phone number flashed below the photo as Lloyd tipped back the bottle and closed his eyes. He rested.

  With his thoughts washed, Lloyd stood and stepped over the filth and clutter of the home: dishes, newspapers, beer cans, bottles broken and bottles whole. The place had the perpetual damp, sweet smell of alcohol and smoke. Brave roaches ambulated casually in the fading daylight. Tiny food atoms joined with the roaches’ antennae, directing them here and there throughout the universe. The vibrations of the footsteps split them left and right and cleared a path as Lloyd approached. He walked down the wide dark hall, old brogans clomping on the hardwood. He rapped his scarred knuckles on the solid oak door with the broken faux-crystal handle.

  “Grandpa,” Lloyd said. He waited and knocked again before entering. The old man was upright in his Craftmatic adjustable bed. He was on oxygen; the clear tubes ran from his nose and then spiraled and tangled before straightening and separating again at the green oxygen tank beside the bed. The TV game show glowed through the dim room, the primary source of light.

  “What is a marsupial?” a contestant said.

  “Grandpa!”

  The old man turned and looked at him. His mouth wiggled a bit, and he almost nodded. The old, gray, cataract-covered eyes connected in recognition for a moment and then severed just as quickly.

  Lloyd led Grandpa down the hall to a small lavatory with no special accommodation. Above the tank was a dusty, framed cross-stitch that asked: “What the hell are you looking up here for? Watch what you’re doing!” Lloyd helped Grandpa drop his sweatpants and sit. He waited outside the door, listening for the bathroom sounds to stop.