by Angel Colon
The common perception of course on the subject of Burt's passing, since no one could believe Burt would kill himself, is that Jean Louise and her boyfriend Harry had somehow staged the thing.
And Burt, too, is indeed filed under suicide, since he was found in his bedroom by yours truly. Mid-morning, after I hadn't seen the man yet that day, I finally went to look for him. I'd never known him to sleep more than fours hours on any night and he was always out there working before me. The hole in Burt was much smaller than the one in Lee. That bullet had passed through his brain and then broke a mirror and stuck in the wall behind it. The way he was laid out and where the gun was, I would say looked like a suicide. I agreed with the police and the coroner on that.
Burt's will stated that the ranch would go to his kids, but only when they all had reached the age of eighteen. It would need to be looked after by a steward appointed by the trustee, which was his neighbor Cooney. The youngest of his kids was yet seven years old, so Jean Louise would have to wait a while. In the meantime, I was named steward, being the logical choice at the time, and I agreed to stay on.
It's a strange arrangement. Burt went out of his way to make sure that Jean Louise wouldn't have control of it. It'd be the kids' when they were all old enough, if they still wanted it. If not, fuck it, I guess was his thinking.
I stay on for Burt's kids' sake but I always feel Jean Louise breathing down my neck. She finds reasons to come by. Two of the kids still work on the weekends and in the summer like they have the last few years. She comes too, but she don't work for shit.
It's natural country out here, but I do think of moving along at times. I still sleep down in the old trailer by the creek, and I find it hard to find more than a few hours a night, as when I lay down my head I always think of Burt.
I still let Cooney brand his cows up here. And that Jake Shiner called up one time, having heard we were branding. Said he had a bunch of calves he wanted done, and could he bring them up? I agreed, figuring it would already be chaos out here, with fifty or sixty people supposedly coming by. That's what it was that day, with only a few of us doing any of the goddamn work. That tends to happen. Everyone was drunk, and when it finally got dark was when Jake seemed to take on that bristling werewolf kinda deal he does—something that ain't even caused by drink, though he did drink a shitload that night. Just something inside that lies for awhile and then busts out. Simply a family trait?
When he saw I was alone, Jake made a beeline for me and he started talking about Burt, and the ranch, and all sorts of other bullshit. Then he drops this one on me about how Burt was a witness to Lee running over the Indian. So what he was meaning, and I picked up on it, was that Lee was killed at his front door by a fucking Indian, and it was probably one had some relation to the one he ran over. The one Burt saw Lee run over.
Which meant, to Jake, that the same guy that got Lee probably came after Burt, making it look like he offed himself. Now, I agree that Burt wasn't the kind that would kill himself. Didn't seem so to me anyway, in the time I knew him. But I don't know if he would have been killed just for witnessing something. And there did seem to be a wave of people putting an early end to their selves around here. In the end, Jake said, flip a coin—it could have been Indian revenge, or it could have been Jean Louise and her little fucking Harry. But no way would Burt take a dirt nap of his own volition.
I was looking to get away from the conversation around this time. But Jake went on.
"I'll never forgive 'em for Lee," he said and I believed him…though I didn't know who he meant exactly.
"Last week," he said, smiling all sneaky like he'd only pulled a prank, "I had the opportunity to see an Indian. He was working on his car on the side of the road. And I got him, I did."
"What's that mean?"
"I came up on him, offered my help, and instead I gave him a hatchet, right in the back of the neck. Hit him and hit him until his head was just dangling off, just some of his veins and a little bit of skin holding it on."
"Goddamn, Jake, you ain't serious."
He just shrugged and smiled, making some little noise with his mouth—like a woman just said she's gonna hold back sex from you 'cause she's mad you just told her you didn't believe her.
And the Shiners had a track record. So I did come to believe him.
"I left him in the fucking ditch."
"I ain't heard shit about it."
"Not that you would. And you won't ever. Just a fucking Indian."
He crushed his beer can underfoot and tossed the silver disc into the pitch black weeds.
"And that's why," he said, "I'm'a take out more of 'em. Lee made the mistake of not killing that one. He was just having fun, sure. But I take my fun more seriously."
I found my way out of that conversation. There was still plenty drinking and I came to wander away from it all to be alone.
When I had finished my drinking for the night, I lay outside on one of the picnic tables, just getting some silence by the dam. Thought about Burt, Jake and the rest of it. A goddamn buck broke through the weeds along the dam. It startled me and got my heart racing. I couldn't sleep from then on out.
Right before morning broke, I walked over to the barn, passed the house. Place was cleared out, but I saw Jake's truck was still there—though I did not see Jake.
I walked over to the bucket loader, like I did every morning, to go pick up a bale and bring it out to the cows.
Well, in that bucket I found Jake Shiner, sleeping off his beer, dead to the world, but unfortunately still breathing.
I thought about having a little joke. Like he said, committing to the fun. It was just a joke after all, a goof, like killing people was to him.
I turned on the engine and checked to see if it would rouse him but it did not. So I jumped in and turned that thing around and took off down the road towards the pasture.
I was waiting for Jake to wake, for him to stick his hand up and then his little pointed head. Then when I saw his face, and the look on it, I would stop short and drop the little bastard, send him flying.
I sped up, gleefully thinking about it, laughing to myself in anticipation. Laughing like an idiot, I raised the bucket, high above my head. I considered the fall he'd have to take, and how he'd probably break an arm at that height.
I was laughing and watching the cows who were watching me as they always did, a few huddled up and just staring at me, waiting for me to make my move.
I was waiting on Jake, waiting for that hand to come sticking out of the bucket.
But nothing seemed to wake him. He was peacefully unconscious. He needed stirring.
I hit the brake. Jake went flying outta the bucket and hit the ground. It made the same kind of noise a calf makes when you' flip him on his back and it cracks on the dirt. Except the calf gets up, that is, after you've branded him and taken his nuts.
Jake did not get up. He was awake now, however. He just turned, rolling over, holding his elbow, and then his shoulder. And I saw his eyes wide as hell, wide as calf eyes when they get held down and a brand stuck in 'em, and he looked at me. He could just see me under the bucket, behind the shield.
Then all he could see, the last thing he'd see, would have been the tires and the undercarriage as it flattened his head.
I didn't have to hit reverse like Lee had. I had done the job at one shot. Besides, this one was going to make the news, and the story would break just as it had factually gone down. Local business owner and known goofball falls asleep in rancher's bucket loader, is accidentally crushed when his drunken ass fails to alert the rancher to his presence.
Anyway, the cops believed it. And it did make the papers.
AUTHOR BIOS
ANGEL LUIS COLÓN's fiction has appeared in multiple online and print journals like Shotgun Honey, The Flash Fiction Offensive, Revolt Daily, Thuglit, and All Due Respect. His debut novella, The Fury of Blacky Jaguar is due out this summer from One Eye Press.
PATRICK COOPER is a writer curr
ently living in the oven known as Orlando. He's a member of the Florida Film Critics Circle and writes movie reviews for Bloody Disgusting.
TIMOTHY FRIEND is a writer and independent filmmaker with an MFA in Creative Writing and Media Arts from the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His writing has been published in Crossed Genres, How the West was Wicked, and others. His story "Dog Night," published in Needle: a magazine of Noir, was listed as a distinguished story in Best American Mystery Stories 2013.
HUGH LESSIG is a career newspaper reporter who currently writes about shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia, where the shipyard is king. Three of his stories have appeared in Thuglit, the first in 2007 and the most recent one in 2013. His work has also been published in Needle: A Magazine of Noir.
STEVEN MURPHY Steven Murphy is a graduate of NYU film school and now writes for TV & Film with over 30 credits including the ESPYS, the MTV Movie Awards, and the VMA's where Kanye West stormed on stage and scared poor little Taylor Swift. Once, during the Cannes Film Festival, Steven overdosed on oysters and was rushed to a French hospital. He still owes the French government a hundred euros or so. They're never gonna see it.
BRYAN PAUL ROULEAU was clean 120 days since he first got published in Thuglit 13, but is now back on the Thug Literature junk. You can look him up on the Google. Words and deeds of his characters are (usually) not his own.
TOM SEE is a freelance farmer, film lighting technician, and director of the Manhattan Short Screenplay Competition. He lives in New York.
LIAM SWEENY is a crime and mystery writer from upstate New York. His work has appeared both online and in print in various publications, and his collection of short works, Dead Man's Switch, will be released in January 2015. You can learn more about Liam Sweeny through his website, www.liamsweeny.com.
TODD ROBINSON (Editor) is the creator and Chief Editor of Thuglit. His writing has appeared in Blood & Tacos, Plots With Guns, Needle Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Strange, Weird, and Wonderful, Out of the Gutter, Pulp Pusher, Grift, Demolition Magazine, CrimeFactory, All Due Respect, and several anthologies. He has been nominated three times for the Derringer Award, twice short-listed for Best American Mystery Stories, selected for Writers Digest's Year's Best Writing 2003, lost the Anthony Award both in 2013 AND 2014, and won the inaugural Bullet Award in June 2011. The first collection of his short stories, Dirty Words is now available and his debut novel The Hard Bounce is available from Tyrus Books.
ALLISON GLASGOW (Editor) will eat up all your crackers and your licorice.
JULIE MCCARRON (Editor) is a celebrity ghostwriter with three New York Times bestsellers to her credit. Her books have appeared on every major entertainment and television talk show; they have been featured in Publishers Weekly and excerpted in numerous magazines including People. Prior to collaborating on celebrity bios, Julie was a book editor for many years. Julie started her career writing press releases and worked in the motion picture publicity department of Paramount Pictures and for Chasen & Company in Los Angeles. She also worked at General Publishing Group in Santa Monica and for the Dijkstra Literary Agency in Del Mar before turning to editing/writing full-time. She lives in Southern California.
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AND NOW, an exclusive preview of Thuglit veteran ROB HART's upcoming novel from Polis Books: NEW YORKED
"Most cities are nouns; New York's a verb."
-John F. Kennedy
NEW YORKED
By Rob Hart
1.
Sharp crack and I'm awake.
Whiskey-colored sunlight spills across my fingertips. There's a white wall and a crumpled blue bed sheet in front of me. A boot is pressing my face into the hardwood floor.
After a few moments, I realize that's just the hangover.
My blood weeps for nicotine. I need water and a cigarette. I need to go back to sleep and pretend this never happened. I need to re-evaluate my decision-making process.
Somewhere in the room there's a hiss and a crackle. Through a veil of static a bored voice says, "10-36 Code 2, 10th and C." Automobile accident three blocks east, no injuries or washdown required.
Good. I'm in my apartment.
My cell phone shakes somewhere close. The vibrations rattle the floor and shoot nails into my skull. I work myself into a sitting position, dry-heaving twice. Moving hurts. The phone is behind the nightstand. Probably buzzed itself across the surface, waking me up when it hit the floor. There are three voicemails waiting for me.
I need fresh air. After making sure I'm wearing pants, I crawl through the window and on to the fire escape. The bitter air clears me up a little. I'm no longer confused about being in my own apartment, which is a good start.
It's probably around four in the afternoon, from where the sun is and the look of the crowds on First Avenue. I verify that on my phone. It's cold and I want to go back inside for a hoodie, but the hangover wants me to not move ever again.
There's a half-empty bottle of water cradled in the rusted slats of the fire escape. I'm pretty sure it's mine, so I crack it open and swallow as I sit there and watch the city breathe in and out, comb through my memory for a clue about what happened last night.
It started in my office. For the past few weeks some degenerate has been running up behind women, groping them and bolting. Always after last call, always women walking by themselves, always around or near Tompkins Square Park.
I organized a buddy system, so anyone who had to walk home alone could call a number and get an escort. There was also a decoy in place to draw him out. A pretty girl would walk around the park from 4 to 5 a.m., with a big angry bastard lingering in the shadows. The perp was a low-level coward. One beating would shut it down.
But more than a week had gone by, and nada. No sign. I was frustrated I couldn't catch the guy, and I did what I always do when I am frustrated: unspin some Jameson.
My memory gets fuzzy around the bottle's halfway mark. Everything after that is jagged. Bar tops distorted through the bottoms of empty glasses. Bodies in a crowd smothering me. White subway tile. Then my bedroom floor.
At least I made it home.
I bring my hand up to rub the sleep off my face and find the words you promised written on my palm. It's my handwriting, but nothing else about it is familiar.
The phone vibrates again. I type my PIN, set it to speaker, and rest my head against the cold brick.
"Hey. It's Chell."
Chell. The harsh crack of her name makes it sound like a swear word.
May as well be.
"I'm still really pissed at you, but I need your help. I think someone is following me. There's this guy who's been…look, I'm scared. I'm at Fourth and B. Can you come meet me? I know that after what happened, we should talk. I'm going to walk toward your place. If you're home or you're close, I'll be walking up First. Can you come meet me? Please?"
There's a second message. Silence and a click.
The third message is from Bombay. "Dude, turn on your TV or call me back or something. It's Chell, man. Chell's dead."
•••
The story plays in a loop on NY1. A helicopter looks down at a junkyard in the Jamaica section of Queens. People are standing on a brown expanse of dirt broken by tires and scrap metal. The helicopter is too high for the camera to make out any details besides the color of their clothing. An army of police cruisers dot the street, along with a single silent ambulance.
That scene shrinks into a little box that plays next to a sullen anchor, who says Chell was found mummified in packing tape. In a deep baritone that's subdued to signify grief, the anchor says there were positive signs of sexual assault, with no suspects at this time.
He calls her by her real name.
The coffee maker beeps to let me know it's finished. I don't remember making coffee. I pour some into a mug, then put the mug in the freezer to cool. I close the door and lean forw
ard, my palms resting against the smooth white plastic.
I can't think. I need a cigarette. I can't think without smoke in my lungs.
There's no pack next to the sink. If I had cigarettes, that's where they would be. The ashtray on the windowsill only has a few stray butts smoked to the filter. I could run to the bodega, but I can't open a door to a world where Chell being dead could be true.
My phone is quiet, but the message is spinning around my head like a bad song I can't shake.
How can I smoke two packs a day and there's nothing in this apartment for me to light on fire?
There are no cigarettes in the freezer or under the sink or in the medicine cabinet. There isn't a stray pack under the pile of clothes in the corner of my bedroom or behind the couch. I toss my sock drawer because I never really know what I'm capable of when I'm drinking.
And no, nothing except a small elastic hair tie. Threaded around it is a single red hair, long enough it would have fallen from the top of Chell's head down to her shoulder.
My fingernails cut into my palm, and I can't breathe. I wrap my arms around my sides, hold in the thing that's trying to split open my skin.
Chell is dead.
•••
It was August sometime, so hot you could smell the blacktop.
We were trying to find you a new pair of sunglasses. You had this thing about the glasses you wore. They had to match your hair, which was a shade of red somewhere between a fire truck and the blaze it was rushing to put out.