BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled

by Garnett Elliott

  She lay on the floor, one hand clutching the bed linens, mouth rimed in spittle and bile. In her spasms, her shirt twisted and pulled away to expose most of her tattooed breast.

  Efram shut the door.

  He stripped his sodden shirt and jeans, picked up the pint of Old Crow and poured himself a drink. He drank it naked. Then he went to the sink and washed out the ruin of his eye. He added more whiskey into the glass, bent his head to the glass's mouth, and put the burning circle to his eye-socket and titled his head back and screamed at the ceiling as the whiskey filled his eye-hole. He wiped it out with tissues.

  When he was dressed in dry clothes, he poured the rest of the pint into his glass, grabbed the phone book from the credenza drawer, and sat at the table. He stepped over her body to get there.

  There was a mound of blow on the picture frame and it looked like she'd kept tooting until her heart gave out, or had seized. This brick had been cut once, maybe, before packaging. No telling really.

  In death, her coloration hadn't changed much except for blue lips and grey nipple underneath the words "le mort fantastique." Now the bird looked as if it shied away from the fruit, and time had withered the florals and ivy.

  "Just fantastic, Melissa. You fucked me real good."

  He opened the book and began searching for a store that sold paraffin candles.

  John Hornor Jacobs has worked in advertising for the last fifteen years, played in bands, and pursued art in various forms. He is also, in his copious spare time, a novelist, represented by Stacia Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. His first novel, Southern Gods, was published by Night Shade Books. His second novel, This Dark Earth, will be published in July, 2012, by Gallery/Pocket Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. His young adult series, The Incarcerado Trilogy comprised of The Twelve Fingered Boy, Incarcerado, and The End of All Things, will be published by Carolrhoda Labs, an imprint of Lerner Publishing.

  Ric with No K

  Patricia Abbott

  Ric didn't look at me once when they took him out of the courtroom. I was sitting next to Mrs. Roney, my latest foster mother. Mrs. Roney put her arm around my shoulders as Ric passed by, probably 'cause people were watching. I noticed when I came to their house three months ago that Mrs. Roney was a lot nicer to me when other people were around. She put on a little show, hugging me, whispering in my ear, pretending to know all about me.

  Mr. Roney, a little bitty man with hair that stuck out and a nearly flat nose, never came to the trial at all. There was no real meanness in him though. Meanness took more energy than he seemed to have.

  It was Mrs. Roney that took in stray children. Mr. Roney just went along with it. If he had something to say to me, he usually told his wife—even with me standing right there. Like, "Tell Rumer she left her jacket on the patio."

  Mrs. Roney didn't actually repeat his words, but looked at me till I went to do it. This is just an example though 'cause I never left my jacket anywhere but in my room. I wasn't the only kid coming and going in that house. Most of Mr. Roney's remarks were about chores needing doing or things done wrong. Square corners on beds was one of his biggest worries and he made me cover all my school books with grocery store brown bags to protect them—even after I told him they didn't charge nothing for marks on books at my school. He also hid bags of the kind of candy that comes at Halloween in the yellow shoe pockets that hung from his closet wall.

  Ric's lawyer and the court's attorney both said I should be there for the sentencing, not that I'd ever have missed it. And that Mrs. Roney should be there too. They told me to stay away the rest of the time.

  "You never take your eyes off him," Ric's attorney said. And we didn't need to keep reminding him I was fifteen.

  I planned on making everyone understand about Ric and me during the trial. I lay in bed every night, first at the Children's Home, then at the Roney's place in the Whispering Pines Subdivision, trying to figure out what I'd say. I had a good idea of the questions Ric's lawyer and the D.A. would ask from the times we talked before the trial. But when I said that stuff in court, it came out all wrong. Sounded dirty and cheap—the things Ric and me did together.

  Maybe I can get it down right on paper, when there's no one watching or listening or telling me what to say. Ric's lawyer said he was going to appeal the sentence so I'd get another crack at getting it right.

  The trouble is— it seems so long ago. Some of the things, I might have made up in my head, and the D.A. might have made up stuff to keep there too.

  "Don't let them manipulate you," a therapist in the Children's Home told me once. But it's hard to know when that's happening.

  `No one guessed the judge would come down so hard on Ric—sending him away for twelve to twenty years. I wanted to gasp or scream when I heard the judge say it. But I knew Ric wouldn't like any of those dramatics, so I held back. If there's a new trial, like Ric's lawyer says there'll be, I can get my story right. I can explain what we were to each other to the whole world.

  My mother—Jessie— was only seventeen when she had me and I don't know if she even guessed she was going to have such a thing. Folks say my mother was a dreamy sort of girl. It was hard to talk to her about anything like the weather or who's president, but she knew every fact about Demi Moore and Tom Cruise. Grew up on those stars. She didn't even need to see their movies after a while—just made her own movies up in her head. I could see those movies whirling around when she looked at magazines from the eighties she'd saved in an old red record player case. I could see her lips mouthing the words. She even named me after Demi and Bruce Willis' first kid, Rumer. I'm just glad I was born before the third girl came along, the one called Tallulah.

  Welfare took away my baby brother, Emilio, when I was seven, but let me stay with my mother 'cause I was pretty good at foolin' people into thinking she could take care of me. I went to school every day, in clean if used-up clothes. I got good enough marks to move up every spring. Made sure Jessie showed up at school or at the church once in a while, watched what she wore outside, and chased her home from her stopping places before midnight. You might think I mean bars by that, but I always found her swinging in the playground or sitting on that low wall over by the Peasley's garden.

  Lots of people knew Jessie Simcoe couldn't take care of a guinea pig much less a kid, but they probably also knew firsthand what happened to kids in foster care. So no one said anything. And I was doing all right mostly—even if I didn't have any friends or much money to spend on things. I could live with that easy. I could do that with my eyes shut.

  I was still in middle-school when I met Ric. This is exactly how it happened: I was coming home from school, just passing the convenience store at the corner of Walnut Street and Fifth when I saw Ric coming out through the glass doors. He was about to put a cigarette in his mouth, but when he saw me he put it behind his ear instead and squinted, shading his eyes with his hand. That was about the first time I remember anyone really taking notice of me. He stopped flat in his tracks, eyeing me good. I figured he was about eighteen, though it turned out Ric was twenty-five or more then. Never said he was younger than he was; I just believed it.

  I saw him again the next day except this time, he said, "We've gotta stop meeting like this," which made me laugh though I tried to swallow most of it down.

  Knew enough not to take up with strange men on the street. That's a good way of ending up in the children's home or, even worse, at that place for girls that get knocked up or flunk out of the tough love class at the high school.

  The third time I saw him was about three days later 'cause the weekend came up about then and got in the way. Ric was already out in the street that Monday, leaning against his car, a little red Contour, when I passed by. He did a little dance and I stopped dead, probably with my big mouth open.

  "Name's Ric with no K," he said. But I misheard him and thought he said, "Name's Ric. Okay?"

  "It's okay with me," I said, shrugging. He laughed, thinking I was making
a joke. And that's how we met finally.

  It turned out there was no K in Ric because his real name was Ricardo not Richard. He was short and awful skinny with dark hair and even darker eyes. I thought he was pretty nice-looking, but I'm nearly the only one ever did. No one took a shine to either of us before that day. About made each other up.

  We kind of stood there till Ric lit a cigarette and offered me a drag. I'd been smoking since I was ten—any time Jessie had money to buy her Salems I took a few. Ric never smoked the same brand twice. Said it was like buying the same candy bar every time. I took the drag and made the smoke go up my nose. I'd practiced that at home enough to be pretty good at it. Ric said he guessed I could keep the cigarette for myself after that stunt. Lit another one and we mostly just smoked cigarettes and watched the cars go in and out of the lot.

  I started counting those cars the way I always do but kept that information to myself. Nobody needs to know I count everything that can be counted. Cars turning into a lot, number of people waiting in line, number of chairs in a room. A real bad habit, but I need to keep track, otherwise things get away from me.

  The lot was busy with people buying stuff for dinner. Pastor Wilkins, from the church I sometimes dragged Jessie to, pulled into the lot and I took off, hoping he hadn't spotted me. Pastor Wilkins' church is kind of strict but it's the closest one to our apartment and we never did get a car since Jessie don't drive. I think if she did, she'd drive till she hit the Atlantic Ocean and still keep going.

  Ric and I met up quite a bit. The D.A. said later, he was reeling me in, but it wasn't like that. Not really. We just played music, and talked, and smoked cigarettes. Ric never tried to get me to drink or smoke weed. And he didn't try to kiss me. Not for a long time. By the time he did, I wanted him to, been thinking about him doing that and more every night. Putting my own hands where his would soon be.

  So one day we just started kissing and it felt like something we should have been doing all along. It was like falling off the bank into Tyson's pond for the first time each summer. When that water flowed over you, nothing ever felt so good. I wanted to do more than just kissing right away—even if doing that stuff made me a slut like some people might say. I wanted him to pour into and over me. I wanted to carry him inside me like he was my baby and my boyfriend all at once. I bet nobody in that courtroom wanted to hear that, but that's how it was. For me, at least. Before Ric, I only had mama and that wasn't enough—cause of how she was.

  Ric made his living doing favors for a man named Mr. Nerone, who owned a club 'cross the river. That's what Ric always called it—doing favors—not working for him. Favors like picking up Mr. Nerone's laundry, chauffeuring him around town, picking up money from people who owed him. One time Ric was waiting for me in a navy-blue Cadillac. That was the car used for driving Mr. Nerone around town. Ric made me sit on a towel to keep the seat clean, but it was still nice.

  Mr. Nerone was an important man. I could tell that from how twitchy Ric was when he'd just been to see him or was planning to go. I pictured him as big, but when I finally saw Mr. Nerone, he was a tiny man, fat, with piggy blue eyes, and smelling of some old cologne. Mr. Nerone had a regular guy named Tommy who drove him most places, but Ric was the backup driver and fixin' to be number one some day.

  After a while, it seemed like a good idea not to hang around that 7-Eleven store all the time so we drove around the times Ric had enough gas. Or else we sat in the car next to our rinky-dink airport and watched planes come and go. Not many did, but I counted them, of course. Ric didn't mind. He said there were a couple of weird things he did too, though he wouldn't say what.

  One day, we were sitting there doing nothing when Ric asked me if I wanted to make a little money. "You just have to go into the bathroom at that gas station over on Birch and wait till a lady shows up with a package."

  I didn't much like the sound of hanging around in a bathroom, but Ric said he'd be right outside and it would definitely be a woman who came in with the package. It was the same nasty bathroom for men or ladies so why couldn't he wait in there? Truthfully, I was scared that some man might come in and show me his thing. This had happened to a few girls at school in public bathrooms, and, once on a bus, Sheri Mason once had to hold a man's thing till he rang the bell to get off.

  "He got off in more ways than one," Sheri told us the next day, making a face.

  I don't think it really was a woman who came in either. She was too big and her voice wasn't right though she didn't say much. She was wearing a peacock-blue dress like she'd just been to dinner at a fancy restaurant and wore makeup and nail polish and lots of heavy gold jewelry that rattled when she walked. After I gave Ric the package, he peeked inside, smiled, and then he gave me ten dollars.

  "Not bad for ten minutes' work," he said, trying to get past it. When I didn't smile or say anything at all, he added, "I hate sulky women." So I had to stop being a big baby.

  There were other days Ric asked me to do things. None of them were sex things like the D.A. said though. Not unless you count letting his friend, Pico, go to third base on me for his birthday. Pico was eighteen and had never been with a girl. Ric said it was the best present we could give him and it hardly bothered me at all. It didn't even take five minutes before he was finished. And I knew Ric was standing outside if Pico tried anything more, but he didn't. Pico just got a shit-eating grin on his face when Ric opened the car door afterwards. Then we all split a pizza and never once talked about it.

  The thing that finally got us in trouble happened because of my mother. I really didn't know why Ric wanted to meet her so much. I finally brought him home to meet Jessie on one of her better days. She was only a few years older than him and knew some of the same people from high school. She wore her best pair of jeans and her hair was fixed up pretty good though she was always prone to sticking something in it. That day, she'd stuck in a pinwheel. I don't even know where Jessie found things like pinwheels. But wandering around the way she did, she found some wondrous things and stacked them up all over the apartment. Once in a while, I would get rid of some of the smellier or dirtier stuff, but the pile grew up again like she watered it at night. You'd think Jessie'd come across something valuable from time to time, but if she did, she hid those items away. The piles I saw were the same things you saw in trash cans at the park: broken toys, candle stubs, empty food and wine containers, discarded magazines, dirty combs, torn clothing, a lost glove. So the pinwheel was a pretty good find for her.

  Ric went out later and brought back takeout from the Summer Palace Restaurant, and I found out that day that my mother knows how to use chopsticks. Ric held one in each hand and stabbed his food, which made us laugh. That was one of the best nights we ever had. Later, we watched an old movie called Stripes with Bill Murray and drank a liter of Diet Coke and ate a jumbo-sized bag of Cheetos between us.

  When I fell asleep, Jessie and Ric were still looking through her high school yearbook, which I didn't even know she had. Ric said later it was somebody else's yearbook—from some other high school in some other state, but that makes it even better to me. Maybe my mother even walked over to that other state to get it. Jessie could walk farther than anyone I ever met as long as she was going forward. Anyway, it was nice to fall asleep with the sound of my mother and boyfriend laughing in the next room. Felt real normal. Later people'd say they did more than just talk, but I don't believe it.

  Ric came over a couple more times, but Jessie was never that good again. On her worst days, she just rambled on about old TV shows that no one else even remembered. But that's why we lived as good as we did—for her being crazy. She got a check each month from the state and a little more money from the county. We could stretch that money into a life for us if nothing bad happened.

  Ric was nice about it though and never said anything mean to her. And when she fell asleep in her armchair, we could have sex in her bedroom instead of in the car. That part worked out real good. Even though the sheets were gritty and
the window bled cold air right in on us, we didn't mind 'cause we could be naked there instead of half or more dressed—like in the car.

  Next comes the hardest part to tell right. My grandmother, who lived down in Kentucky, left us some money from selling her house. After she died, that is. It was a lot of money— about ten thousand dollars. Granny's lawyer made Jessie put it in the bank, telling us to keep it for a rainy day. When Ric was fooling around in her room one day, he found her bankbook in an old purse and asked me about it.

  "You know I could double or triple it in no time," he said. "You know, Mr. Nerone has a guy does nothing but make money for him."

  Wasn't hard talking my mother into it either. It was raining outside but she marched right down the bank, got that money out, and handed it over. Ric gave us an IOU, which Jessie fastened to the fridge with a Strawberry Shortcake magnet.

  A month or two later, Jessie got a letter from her half-brother in Kentucky saying didn't we want to put a headstone on Granny's grave? Jessie decided she really did want to do that and while she was at it, she wanted to send a gift to Coco Arquette, Courtney Cox's new baby. Jessie had been a real fan of Courtney Cox since she saw her climb up on the stage with Bruce Springsteen in that "Dancing in the Dark" video

  "Just get me two thousand dollars of the money for the headstone and Coco Arquette and let the rest keep growing," Jessie decided. "I can get something nice for both of them with that." She was sitting in the chair, looking at a catalogue from the Target store when I left.

  I couldn't find Ric that day, nor the one after that. I took a bus up there twice a day for the next three days. But he was never home. I could tell that from a distance 'cause the mail was making the door hang open and his Ford Contour was gone. Ric had disappeared like this before so I wasn't the least bit worried except Jessie kept dogging me. She'd forgotten about the headstone already but she had a bunch of stuff picked out for that Coco Arquette. Stuff that even I knew no rich lady's kid would wear or want.