Todd Robinson - THUGLIT Issue One

“She shot Andrea is what’s going on,” Chrissie said, a lifetime of Benson & Hedges croaking her tone. “Shot her own mother. Put her in a coma.”

“Shut up,” Darly said, snapping the Magnum back at Chrissie.

“Might’ve killed her. Might’ve killed her own mother.”

“Shut up!”

“Darly,” Big Dan began. The gun’s aim cut him off, almost swayed him. His body felt like brick, head like a balloon, chest burning.

“I came here to tell you because you must’ve changed your damn phone number on us again,” Chrissie said. Big Dan ignored her. He cared only for his granddaughter, beautiful and rabid, and for getting out with her.

“Darly, we can still work this out,” he said, forcing his legs forward. They managed one step. It made the women flinch.

“How? Lawyers?” Darly smiled, all sweet poison. “You’d lose.”

“We can just get out of here,” Big Dan said, demanding another step but failing.

“Are you serious?” Chrissie yelled. “She shot Andrea, Pa! She’s going to prison!”

“I’d take care of you,” Big Dan said.

Darly’s stare softened. He stepped toward it.

Softness only survived a moment. The blaze came back to her eyes, hotter than before, with pain fueling it.

“I’ve heard that before,” Darly said, smile twitching as something in her fractured, “from my bitch of a mother.”

Big Dan reached. Darly’s gun boomed.

He came to after a long instant like snipped film. His cheek was on the Milanese tile. His body felt like someone else’s.

The stink of cordite, car fluid, and the sweet penny smell of blood stained everything he breathed.

Chrissie lay a few feet away, eyes gaping like the fist-sized hole in her throat. He could hear the front door open. The storm howled in Darly’s exit.

Big Dan gathered his breaths. Each had to be wrestled in. Each brought more strength. He collected enough to try taking his feet.

It took half a minute-shoving his palms into the blood gumming the floor, bending his knees, head screaming like it had when his Pa lashed him.

He fell.

He breathed deep twice.

He fought up again.

Big Dan’s house wheeled around him as he went upright and staggered for the door. He let it spin. He let his nerves scream and collapse. He had to get to Darly.

She was escape. Life. Salvation for them both.

The rain embraced him with a beating: Punched his head. Pushed his shoulders. Yelled into the pits of his ears.

He wouldn’t let his old man beat him this time-the girl was still in sight.

Darly jogged ahead through toxic mire that gripped over her ankles. She’d made it to Chrissie’s Toyota truck parked under the Potter Chevy sign. Big Dan failed to call out, lungs filled with caulk.

She fumbled at the lock.

He forced shuffle after shuffle through the sludge, until his boot hit highway tarmac.

She wrenched the door open.

He drove himself faster.

She was haloed by the interior light, face bright as a baby photo, eyes just like his.

He fought words out.

“Darly! Take me with you!”

The fight robbed his wind. His next step faltered. His knees broke the flood mire, buckled on the highway, pitched him forward.

Darly looked back in time to watch Big Dan fall.

He watched, face half in the muck, as she slid into the Toyota without pausing and started it up.

He tried to watch her drive away. Tried harder than he ever had at anything. Needed to see if she at least looked back.

The flood rose to shut his open eyes.

Waiting for her.

Hours spent kneeling and praying with her paperback copy of Falconer in my hands, the book’s cover speckled black with her blood. The terrazzo floor is cold and hard beneath knees raw and burning. Unrelenting, I rest my head on the edge of the bed’s bare mattress, close my eyes and wait for her.

Fading. Booze and Morpheus proceed to conspire against me, allowing only micro-second cuts, flashbacks of a final blinding glance. Numbers blip on a gas pump as Audrey smiles at me through the passenger side window, holding the book she’s been reading to her chest, the white sun on her mahogany skin. I can smell the sweetness of her perfume cutting through the thick vapor of oil and gas and stink of this world.

Eyes flickering. Images floating.

The world’s gone red and I’m reaching, grabbing for her. She’s only a few steps away but like lost halcyon days, never within my grasp.

Spinning free.

St. Petersburg, Florida-Tuesday, July 10th, 1979

The phone ringing and cutting cathartic tendencies short. I grab the receiver and check the time on a glowing bedside clock-11:00-straight up.

“Yeah.”

“Preston Street. Head south off 15th Avenue, a few houses up on your left. Little white shack, bare yard, maroon Crown Vic in the drive. You’ll know it when you see it. Back door opens into the kitchen.”

Standing and straightening out stiffened knees. Tender skin breaks open and blood trickles down my shins and seeps through brown gabardine pants. The pain feels good.

“How many?”

Freddy sniffs. “Two Bloods and a skinny-ass whitebread. Cats be strapped and straight up flyin'. Bad scene, my brotha.”

“Whitebread-the cousin?”

A grunt. “Dig it. Half-assed prison tats on both forearms. Lightning bolts and I do mean Shazam! mothafucka.”

“My nigga.”

Freddy sneezes. “Just remember that, cuz.”

My pulse spikes as the connection buzzes a flatline. I drop the phone, slip on my shoes and grab a black, sweat-streaked t-shirt from a month-old pile of dirty clothes. I don’t even notice the sour aroma of body odor anymore.

Two clean throwdown pieces sit next to a battered gold shield on my dining room table. I clip the shield to my belt and then remember where I’m going, what I’m preparing to do and the price I’m willing to pay.

What I’ve already paid.

Past and present collide and my head does a drunken dizzy dance. I throw the television through the living room wall. Picture tubes explode. Chunks of plaster scatter across the floor and dust fills the air. I toss my shield into the wreckage and grab the hardware, goose a line of flake off the kitchen counter and make my way out the door.

Rolling. Constricted capillaries distend to make room for the river of blood gushing through my veins. Scenarios circulating. She’s been missing going on three days straight, her country bumpkin jailbird cousin off the grid just as long-and alive or dead, she’s already a statistic.

Childhood gone.

Innocence gone.

Morning headlines:

POOR JENNY HUGHES, TWELVE YEARS OLD AND JUST PLAIN GONE.

I grab another gear, drop the pedal, kill the yellow light at 34th Street.

Running east on 15th Avenue South. Hot. This city at night is a sweat lodge and visions appear in the darkness which I know aren’t there-hope in the faces of the hard young brothers who sit on front porch stoops of cribs gone to wrack and ruin. They’re guzzling malt liquor out of bumpers wrapped in brown paper bags. They’re smoking Kool Milds. They’re yapping about poontang. They see me with anxious eyes but don’t care unless I’m buying. The dollar rules, along with despair and destitution.

Teeth gnashing. Perspiration flows down my back and I’m sweat-stuck to the seat as I ease my foot down on the gas, the rumbling of the 'Cuda’s Hemi losing the battle against fleeting minutes screaming Tick!-Tick!-Tick! in my ears even as a realization begins pounding in my skull:

I didn’t call in backup because I’ve got no one left.