Sarah Weinman - Sex, Thugs, Roll, and Rock & Roll

The first letter I got wasn’t really a letter at all. It was an envelope with an Idaho postmark and two photographs. The first picture was of a huge fish-what appeared to be a white sturgeon-half in the water, ready to be released back in. The second was a similar picture of the fish from a different angle and the photographer had allowed his shadow to fall out over the water and into the shot, along with the tip of his right boot. The boot looked like Bob’s, and the shadow looked like it had a ponytail.

Two months later, a postcard showed up in my mailbox. It bore a Vancouver postmark. “Still OK still sober” was all it said on it.

One night I was sitting there during a terrible lightning storm. The cabin phone rang. Scared the hell out of me. I answered it and in the darkness, it sounded like someone was there.

“Bob?” I said. “Bob?”

There was no answer. The lightning must have made it ring. I was alone.

The stripers were hitting in the Hudson in April and May this year. I caught my share on the weekends, with my father and Rich. I fished from shore some weekends during the summer and got a pass to one of the reservoirs. I saw some eagles early one morning and the fireworks got rained out on the Fourth of July, so they shot them off the following weekend. I watched them from the porch of the farm, what I could see of the lights above the trees. The shale business kept on and I drove every day and got dusty and dumped and hauled all the loads my cousin gave me. I was grateful for the work.

I pulled up the dusty driveway one Friday in late August and my father’s truck was close to the house. He was sitting on the porch with his ball cap off. I got out of my rig and walked to the house and he didn’t say anything. He was holding something and when I got closer, it looked like an envelope.

“Hi,” I said. “What’s going on?”

He just handed me the envelope. It had an Idaho postmark and my father’s address handwritten on the outside. Inside was a newspaper clipping from a week earlier, from a newspaper in Spokane, Washington. I read it.

A man the Idaho State Police had identified as Robert Threepersons had died from gunshot wounds in a parking lot outside a truck stop casino near the Idaho-Washington border. The police were investigating the shooting, although there were no clues at this time.

“I should have told him to stay here,” my father said. He indicated the clipping. “His sister must have sent this from the reservation.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Between the war and the drugs and the gambling, the poor guy must have been afraid of his own thoughts,” my father said.

“He probably was,” I agreed.

“And people coming after him,” he said. “It was too much.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I can’t draw a straight line from the war to Bob’s problems for you to see, but I know it’s there,” he said.

We sat on the porch till it started to get dark. My father headed home to his house and my mother. And I looked over at the middle cabin, to the place where Bob had been sober for a little while. To where my fishing buddy had lived for a summer.

What if it wasn’t him that died in that parking lot? What if somebody got the drop on him but he shot them and put his identification on them, to throw the cops off? Or what if he were finally dreamlessly asleep and peaceful, delivered by violence into someplace else. Off this earth, with the beautiful blue sky coloring him forever.

Patricia Abbottwrites literary and crime fiction from Detroit. Stories have appeared recently in Pulp Pusher, The Thrilling Detective, Demolition, Spinetingler, Hardluck Stories, Bayou Review , and Storyglossia . She has just completed a novel set in Detroit.

Jedidiah Ayreslives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Matthew Baldwinspent the late ’90s as a customer service rep for an online store, right at the height of the dot-com bubble. He is now a programmer by day, freelance writer by evening, and sound sleeper at night. He maintains the Web log Defective Yeti and lives in Seattle with his wife, son, and a handful of good-for-nothing cats.

Greg Bardsleyis a former newspaper reporter who covered everything from politics to deranged, homicidal psychos. Since then he has worked as an editor, ghostwriter, speechwriter, and video producer. In addition to Thuglit , his pulp fiction has appeared in Demolition and Pulp Pusher .

Gary Carsonis a former feature writer for the Kansas City Times and the Westport Trucker . His fiction and essays have appeared in Hardluck Stories, Thuglit , and Noir Originals . A California refugee, he currently lives in Rolla, Missouri.

Lyman Feerograduated in 2006 from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing. He is also a published alternative fiction author with works in several genres including crime, horror, and science fiction. Most recently he participated in the Blog Project #3 and L.A. Noir’s Mugshot Challenge. He is currently working on his first novel.

Allan Guthrieis an award-winning Scottish crime novelist.

Jordan Harper, born and raised in Missouri, is a frequent contributor to Thuglit . He has been nominated for the Derringer Award and has had two stories selected by the Million Writers Award as notable short stories of the year, including “Like Riding a Moped.” He is currently working on a novel and is turning “Like Riding a Moped” into a screenplay. He currently lives in Los Angeles. Contact him at author@jordanharper.com.

Daniel Hatadiwasted lots of valuable time as a musician, a petrol station attendant, and a programmer in the shady world of gambling before turning his attention to crime fiction. The Sydney-based writer has published several short stories and articles and is currently working on a novel. He is also the founder of the Internet crime fiction community, Crimespace. Visit Daniel online at crimespace.ning.com or at his Web site, www.danielhatadi.com.

D. T. Kellygrew up on the mean streets of Chicago. After years of dodging firebombs, two-bit hoodlums, and drive-by shootings, he now resides in upstate New York, having traded in his bulletproof vest for hiking boots. He can be found online at www.dtkelly.net.

Jónas Knútssoncommitted arson at five. When Jónas was ten someone not unlike Viddi Golbranson tried to throw Jónas into a duck pond. Jónas enjoys the distinction of being the only person to be expelled from a prestigious German film school before commencing his studies.

Patrick J. Lambelives in New Jersey, the cradle of civilization. He’s had short stories in various Web sites and magazines, as well as short stories in the Plots with Guns anthology, Dublin Noir , with more coming out soon. His short story “Union Card” was listed as a distinguished mystery story in The Best American Mystery Stories of 2005 . He’s currently working on several novels while working as a telephone technician. Please visit his Web site at http://patlambe.com

Joe. R. Lansdaleis the author of thirty novels and many short works. One of his novellas, Bubba Hotep , was filmed to considerable acclaim, and his short story “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” was part of the Masters of Horror series on Showtime. His works have received The Grinzani Prize for Literature, the Edgar, seven Bram Stokers, the Herodotus, and numerous other awards. A Fine Dark Line is scheduled to be filmed next year.