Knuckledragger

by Rusty Barnes

  Here in Houston, no one had a problem taking cash, so I dropped a thousand dollars with the Rancho Texas for a week’s worth of decent rooms. I didn’t know how long it might take us to find an apartment, but at this point I wasn’t willing to think more than a week ahead of myself. We’d taken Tito down. Otis would have to come himself, and he wasn’t likely to come without force. And he was likely to come soon.

  Our room looked over the downtown area, a gray haze around the tops of the highest buildings. The AC had been turned on before we got in the room. I guessed with this kind of heat that just figured into the cost of doing business. I took a flop onto the bed and tried to relax. Rosie had already hit the shower.

  “Ooh, this is nice. I love this water pressure,” she yelled. I didn’t answer, just closed my eyes. Our lives could end in so many different ways here, it was difficult to know what to do next. Apparently, Rosie thought we were on some kind of vacation. Then I shook that thought away. She’d killed Tito, and I had to figure that in now when I thought about what we could do, what we could handle.

  When I opened my eyes again, her dark nipples were dangling by my nose, and I took one of them into my mouth.

  “That’s right,” she said dreamily. “You suck that.”

  She maneuvered over top of me, pulled my shorts down and impaled herself on my cock with a solid grunt, her arms crossed around her breasts. “Now fuck me,” she said. “No messing around.” It could’ve been five minutes or fifteen, but I’d never forget the way her cunt clenched around me when she came and lay exhausted and sweaty on my chest.

  “Wow,” I said. “What brought that on?”

  She didn’t lift her head when she spoke. “I think I’m pregnant.”

  CHAPTER 41

  “YOU JUST WHAT?” I SAID, though I knew exactly what she’d said, I just wanted a second or two to let it sink in.

  “I’m probably pregnant.”

  “What does probably mean, in this case?”

  “I’m five days late.”

  “But it could still come,” I said. I put my hand on the .357, which was on the bedside table.

  “The fuck?” Rosie said. “You want the gun? You want to kill something, is that it?”

  “No, of course not. I just—” I just wanted protection. But it wasn’t coming.

  “You’re a weird motherfucker.”

  “I guess.”

  “Anyway, who said it was yours?” Rosie said.

  “OK, enough.”

  “So I need to get one of those tests.”

  “You want me to go get one right now?”

  “It can wait.” She laid her head on my chest. Within five minutes she was breathing so regularly I fell asleep as well.

  When I woke up again she’d shifted off my body and covered up with a sheet. her upper arm was stippled with goosebumps so I turned the AC down and tried to open a window, but it turned out to have a hole for a crank, but no crank in it. I sat down at the desk and turned on the memo function of my phone. I meant to make a list of pros and cons about having a baby, but after thirty minutes of sitting there the only thing I could legitimately put on the pro side was the fact that Rosie seemed like she wanted it. I rubbed my face down with both hands, trying to breathe down my anxiety.

  I slid the curtain back a few inches so I could see what was happening in the parking lot. It might be coincidence or it might not, but three guys leaned against it, talking. Their faces were dark even in the halogen street lamps, so they were brothers. That didn’t mean anything, necessarily. They could be random dudes that just happened to be there at the time, or it could be Otis and some of his. Only one way to find out. I threw on my shorts and the shirt I’d worn all day, the .357 at the base of my spine and the derringer in my right front pocket. It could be nothing, it could be everything. I touched Rosie on the hair before I went out. I resisted the impulse to touch her belly. The hotel door clanged shut behind me. I hoped it didn’t wake her. The bright hallways offended my nighttime senses. Lights should be dimmed at night. I trotted down the stairs, feeling the strain in my back from driving all day on roads I didn’t know. My mental stress asserted itself in my lower back and in my thighs for some reason.

  I passed the front desk—no one there—and rang the bell. No one home. I walked out into the parking lot with my hands in my pockets, knowing there were no employees to back up or witness my play. Not a good feeling. Two of the men straightened up when they saw me approach.

  “What’s shaking, fellas?” I said. Only one of them was near my weight, and I sensed he was the de facto leader.

  “You white as snow, ain’t you?” He wore a watch cap, which he pulled down over his eyes as I approached. “Booga-booga, white man.” He laughed and slapped hands with the other two.

  “I’d appreciate if you didn’t lean on my car.”

  “We’ll be on our way, then,” the big one said, putting his ski mask in the right position.

  “In the right place, that stunt could get you killed,” I said, smiling tightly.

  “Killed? Who’s talking about killing, white man?”

  “None of my business. Just keep off my car.”

  “It’s a fine piece of machinery, a Lexus,” the smaller one said. “You making paper?”

  “I do all right,” I said.

  “Sure, sure,” Big One said. “You got a little lady in that hotel?”

  I turned slightly to face him. “None of your business.”

  “OK. We out of here.” The three of them took off toward the street. “See you soon,” Big One said. I stood by the Lexus and waited till they were safely out of sight. As I turned to go back upstairs, I saw the curtains moving in a certain room upstairs, and I had a horrible thought come over me. I ran to the hotel door and fucked up the key card entrance twice, then an employee of the place showed up and buzzed me in. I took the stairs two at a time till I got to the room. Rosie stood at the window shocked as I busted in through the door.

  “You OK? I said, breathing heavily.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine, Irish. Calm down.” She sat me down on the bed and brought up a soaked hand towel for my head. As she rubbed the towel along my upper neck and my crewcut, I started to calm down. “Why’d you go out without me?” she said.

  “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I took the gun from my back and put it on the table. I left the derringer in my pocket. “They looked like they were checking out the Lexus, like maybe they were from Otis. They were just kids.”

  “Doesn’t mean they aren’t involved,” Rosie said. She’d abandoned the towel now and kneaded at my tight shoulders like a trouper. “You’re like a rock,” she said.

  “They make me nervous, is all.” I said.

  “I can understand that,” she said. A smiled curved her lips for just a moment. “Were you extra-scared for me because of me possibly being pregnant?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Softie,” she said. She patted my head like a puppy and went over to the window. “Irish,” she said. “I think they’re back.” I jumped up and looked at the window. Three guys were standing by the Lexus, arms crossed, baseball caps, all of them looking up at us, outlined by the inside light and the dark glass of the night. I pushed Rosie to the side and stood in the window myself. The four of us looked at each other for what seemed like a long moment of time, during which my head filled with thirty different scenarios of how this all might go down and how I could possibly keep Rosie out of the line of fire. I knew nobody in Houston or any of the surrounding areas.

  “Let’s leave right now,” Rosie said. “They’re not going to follow us.”

  “Yes they will. They’re going to follow us tomorrow. They probably put a tracker on the Lexus. We’re all going to end up in the news.”

  “This from a guy who’s got a body count like you have?”

  “Stop that. Just because you kill someone doesn’t mean you’re alw
ays right, or even confident. There’s such a thing as being too confident.”

  “We still have to leave,” Rosie said.

  “Yes, but not until morning. I don’t want to be caught out at night in a place I don’t know.”

  “Let’s go out somewhere,” Rosie said. “Let’s go dance or something.”

  “What?” I said. “Are you nuts?”

  “I may not get many more chances,” Rosie said.

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I mean because of the baby.”

  “Right.” It began to dawn on me how much her little nugget of news had changed the game. I had two potentials to take care of. I looked at the clock. Rosie was right. It was only ten-thirty at night.

  “Let’s go do something, even drive around,” Rosie said. I made the decision then and there. I didn’t know the city at all, so it didn’t matter where we got jumped, if we did. It was all up to God, or somebody. I wasn’t going without my guns.

  CHAPTER 42

  WE DROVE OUT OF HOUSTON proper at about eleven and hit the 610 loop, which wrapped the city in a cocoon, but apparently gave us the opportunity to get anywhere in this huge fucking city within forty-five minutes or so. Lights along the side of the highway alternated between burnt-out and over bright. Rosie put her sunglasses on, more to avoid looking at me than anything else, I thought. The AC was whirring, and the radio played that American aquarium drinker song. I kind of liked it.

  “What is this shit?” Rosie said. “Can I get some Usher or Rihanna up in this joint? Homegirl is doing it.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said. I saw an exit toward a place called the Woodlands and took it. Almost immediately, the surrounding houses and business went upscale.

  “Hmm,” Rosie said, her hand protecting her non-existent belly. “This don’t look like our kind of place, Irish.”

  “We get to see how the one percent lives.”

  “How about that hotel we in, though?” Rosie said. “River Oaks is all mansions and shit. The only negroes I saw there were on the front lawns.”

  The Woodlands, what I’d seen of it anyway, only made me nervous. I turned back to the city. On the way we passed a James Coney Island, and Rosie asked me to get her a chocolate shake.

  “Do the cravings start this early?” I said.

  “I didn’t ask for no pickle with it, did I?” Rosie said. “And we don’t know if I’m pregnant.”

  “All right, let’s find this shit out,” I said.

  “Fine by me,” Rosie said.

  On the way back to River Oaks I stopped into a Kroger’s pharmacy and picked up two EPT tests. Two little cardboard boxes. “How do these things work?” I said.

  “Well, you pee on a stick, and it changes colors if it’s positive.”

  “You mean if you’re pregnant.”

  “Were you born an idiot?” Rosie said with a sideways glance at me.

  The parking lot had filled in the time we were gone, and the only space we had was behind the T-shaped building with the employee cars and maintenance worker trucks. I held the plastic bag with the tests too tightly as we went up the stairs.

  “I want a ground floor apartment someday,” Rosie said.

  “Everyone who grew up in a city wants the same thing,” I said, opening the door. Something hit me in the jaw and along my ear. I heard Rosie try to scream, but someone punched her in the stomach so it came out a blurt more like a grunt than anything else. A man climbed my back and put me down the rest of the way to the floor. He slashed a couple zip-ties on my wrists and pulled them overtight. The jaw hit made me woozy, but I could hear Rosie trying to fight someone off, then, horribly, silence.

  The man on my back kicked me over onto my rear. I tried to sit up but he kicked me in the chest, and my head slammed the floor.

  “You don’t take hints well,” Otis said, then forced my head down. He took the .357 from my back and the derringer from my pocket. I heard the wet smack of flesh hitting flesh from the bed. I strained against the zip-ties, eyes closed, until Otis forced me to watch, prying my eyes open and seeing Rosie, oh God Rosie.

  “You’ve got about ten grand, all told,” Otis said to me some time later, I couldn’t tell how much exactly. “That’s not much consolation for somebody who’s been such a pain in the ass.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Not today.”

  “Let Rosie go.”

  “Like you let Nina go.”

  “That shit goes two ways,” I said.

  “X, get off the bitch,” Otis said. “You’ve done enough.” I saw Otis’s other main man, X, his pants still unzipped.

  “I’m going to square this, X,” I said. I didn’t know how, couldn’t see my way out of it. Rosie lay on the bed, her eyes nearly closed with bruising. I heard, or thought I could hear, the ragged shuffle of her breath.

  “You’ve squared your last, Candy,” Otis said. He pulled my own .357 and wrapped a pillow around his hand, then put the gun to Rosie’s head. I screamed, then the shot went off. I might as well have died then, but the round O of the barrel came toward me next. Truth to tell, I couldn’t wait.

  Back to TOC

  Rusty Barnes, poet and crime writer, grew up in rural northern Appalachia. He received his B.A. from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Emerson College. His fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared in over two hundred fifty journals and anthologies. Sunnyoutside Press published two collections of his fiction, Breaking it Down and Mostly Redneck, as well as a novel, Reckoning.

  Forthcoming books include a sequel to Ridgerunner titled The Last Danger; a linked story collection titled Kraj: The Enforcer; and a novella titled Sunset Approaching. He edits a blogazine of crime stories and occasional reviews called TOUGH.

  Back to TOC

  BOOKS BY RUSTY BARNES

  Breaking It Down

  Mostly Redneck

  Reckoning

  Ridgerunner

  Knuckledragger

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