Pulp Ink

by Eric Beetner; Chris F. Holm; Matthew C. Funk; Richard Godwin; Reed Farrel Coleman; Allan Guthrie; Hilary Davidson; Gary Phillips; Nigel Bird; Chris Rhatigan

Eric Beetner is co-author (with JB Kohl) of the novels One Too Many Blows To The Head and the sequel, Borrowed Trouble, and is an award-winning short story and screenwriter. Eric's short fiction has appeared in Needle, Thuglit, Pulp Pusher, A Twist of Noir, Crimefactory and many others, including the anthologies Murder In The Wind, Discount Noir, Grimm Tales, and D*cked. Eric lives in Los Angeles with two daughters and a wife who worries about what goes on in his head. For information and links to stories visit ericbeetner.blogspot.com.

  Your Mother Should Know

  By Allan Guthrie

  God took Pa when I was six. An automobile accident. Some folks’ religious fervor would have waned. Not my mom’s. Pa’s early ascent to heaven made Mom even more passionate about her faith. She prayed on her knees every night for hours at a time, skin like squashed spiders when she stood up.

  “I’m warning you, Masie. If you sin, God will strike you down.” Mom took the black-and-white photo of the old church spire off the wall. Looked at it with tears in her eyes. “Broken in two by a bolt of His glorious lightning.” She stared at me. “You want that to happen to you?”

  I never did anything wrong till I was sixteen.

  When I met Billy, he showed me there was more to life than saying Grace, attending Bible study and sitting on hard benches during evening prayer meetings at the church with the restored spire. Billy took me dancing. Billy took me for long drives in his pickup. Billy took me to see movies I wasn’t supposed to see. Billy said middle class white folks had invented God and that He didn’t exist.

  “Watch your tongue, Billy Rearden,” I told him.

  One night Billy kissed me. We were standing under a lamppost. It felt real good even though it was raining fit to choke a toad. I loved the feel of his tongue on mine, the little dance, the wriggle, the rub. And the taste of him. Sweet, like grated carrot. After we’d kissed, Billy tilted his head back and opened his mouth and drank the rain that was pouring down. We were wetter than a pair of naked ducks. I held his hand and tilted my head back, too. The rain tasted clean.

  It was about a week later that Billy took off his shirt to show me the snake tattooed on his back. When he bunched his muscles, the snake writhed. I squealed like a hog when I saw it. It looked so real. He asked me to get a tattoo. An itsy-bitsy butterfly? No?

  I didn’t want a tattoo.

  “You gotta do something,” he said. “Prove you love me.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I will.”

  “What you got in mind?”

  Well, I didn’t have anything in mind. I pretended I’d thought of something. I put on a smirk and told him to wait and see. A week of that and he was crazier than a dust devil in a bucket of sand. Soon, I told him, hoping an idea would flower in my empty head.

  One hot afternoon, sticky with sweat, a sour smell drifting from the cheese shop as we passed, I saw a woman who wasn’t from around these parts. She was maybe three or four years older than me. Hair dyed black, wearing a black dress, black shoes. She had rings on every finger and each ear was pierced a dozen times. Mr. Dawson, the butcher, threw his door wide open, and the woman started speaking to him. I saw that her tongue had a silver stud in it.

  I knew what I had to do.

  Next day, I caught a bus to Franklin. Sixteen miles in the sweltering heat. No aircon. I was parched when I arrived, my dress clinging to me in all sorts of places as I walked down the steps. I bought a bottle of Pepsi, took a long drink. Then sipped, letting the bubbles dance on my tongue while I looked for Aldo’s.

  Pain is unpredictable. That’s what Aldo said. Some it hurts, some it don’t.

  “Try me,” I said, and giggled. Unpredictable, I was thinking, minutes later, metal forceps clamping my tongue, my hands shaking. Like the new me.

  “Deep breath,” he said. “In through your mouth and gently out through your nose.”

  I did as Aldo asked, balled my fists, squeezed, screwed my eyes shut. The pain lasted a lifetime.

  Eventually he said, “Done.”

  Feeling the stud in my mouth was kinda weird. It was out of place in there, like a hard, raw bean.

  My tongue hurt all the way home, but I couldn’t stop grinning. I’d done it. Proved I loved Billy.

  I hardly recognized him behind the counter at the shoe shop. His hair was combed and he wore smart clothes. He smiled, pretty as sin with those straight white teeth. I told him I had a surprise for him. I couldn’t pronounce “s” without slurring. I stuck out my tongue.

  Billy’s smile turned into a sneer. “Why did you do that?” he said. “It’s gross.”

  I wanted to rip my tongue out.

  Instead, I turned and ran. Feet thumping the sidewalk, the bones in my toes scraping together. The heat was something terrible, air so humid I could hardly breathe. Dark clouds were gathering. A bad storm was coming. I kept running, my feet hurting, my lungs wet as drowned kittens.

  Mom was in the kitchen, baking. The smell of apple pie was enough to make me cry. I threw my arms around her. She said, “Whatever’s the matter?”

  “Just hold me, Mom.”

  Her arms circled my back. “What have you done?” she said, after the first flash of lightning lit up the room, making it brighter than the brightest day.

  I let go of her and stepped back.

  “Look at me,” she said.

  I tried to look at her.

  “Oh my stars.” She was angry now. “What have you done?”

  I shook my head.

  “Speak to me.”

  I tried to think of a word that didn’t have an “s” in it. “Nothing,” I said.

  She pinched my chin between her finger and thumb and forced my head up. “What in God’s holy name is that in your mouth?” Her eyes blazed with the kind of fury I’d only seen once before, when I skipped Bible class. She’d beaten me so hard I had to spend a night in the hospital.

  I brushed her hand away. Then I turned and dove into the bathroom. It had a lock. I was safe in there.

  She banged on the door, yelling at me and telling me how much of God’s wrath I had invoked.

  “Leave me alone,” I whispered. She couldn’t hear me but God could.

  Through the frosted glass window I saw another bolt of lightning. Seconds later, a crash of thunder. I hoped the rain would come soon. I loved the rain now, after Billy had shown me how to enjoy it.

  I loved Billy. I’d proven it. He’d see that soon. He was fine. As fine as hair on a frog.

  After a while, Mom stopped banging on the door. I could hear her praying for me.

  I opened the window. Another flash of lightning. I stood on the toilet seat and poked my head outside. I felt a heavy raindrop land on my forehead. I craned my neck, twisting sideways to catch the rain as it fell. Subtle honey drops splashed in my mouth. I thought of Billy again and started to cry.

  My mouth opened wider, craving more rain to wash away the salt of my tears.

  The pain was sudden and intense.

  My tongue burst open. My cheeks exploded. Fire tore through my chest. All at the same time.

  When I woke up, I was on the bathroom floor, Mom holding my hand. I forced words out through a choked tunnel of pain, gagging on the smell of scorched flesh. “Wha’ happen’?”

  “A bolt of glorious lightning,” Mom said. “I warned you, Masie.”

  Billy came to see me in the hospital. I think I'd have killed him anyway but he didn't help himself by throwing up the minute he caught sight of me.

  Seven weeks later, that's all it was. Soon as I was able, I walked out of there.

  Billy first. He cried a lot.

  Then Mom. She didn't even struggle. I did her a favor. She missed Pa.

  I don’t know why I killed Mr. Dawson, the butcher.

  I was wore out after that. I sat on the sidewalk in the rain, a real frog-strangler of a downpour. My bandages soaked through and my wounds stung. I thought maybe God had something more to say, but He seemed happy enough.

  -

  Allan Guthrie is
an award-winning Scottish crime writer. His debut novel, Two-Way-Split, was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger award and went on to win the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year in 2007. He is the author of four other novels: Kiss Her Goodbye (nominated for an Edgar), Hard Man, Savage Night and Slammer and three novellas: Kill Clock, Killing Mum and Bye, Bye Baby, an Amazon Kindle Top Ten bestseller. When he’s not writing, he’s a literary agent with Jenny Brown Associates.

  You Never Can Tell

  By Matthew C. Funk

  Junior was studying Atticus’ hands to figure if they were the right ones and Nina wondered how he might tell they were the ones that killed his father.

  Would it be something in the crease of the knuckles? In the notches? In their weight? She just knew they weren’t the hands Junior had been seeking for these past nine months.

  Junior and Nina simmered on folding chairs down a stretch of lakeshore from Atticus and watched. Sweat crawled on them like cake frosting. Nina drank Old Mill and fed Bug from her breast. Junior stared at Atticus, shoulders sloped and belly bulging from his open Cabana shirt, apelike with delayed attack.

  Atticus smoked and drank from a paper bag. He checked his fishing lines and his balls. His eyes were for the lake and for the women in it. His thoughts were for Junior to guess.

  The sun was melting deep orange over the haze of Mississippi pines when Junior pulled out the photograph like Nina knew he would. He smoothed open the wad of it. He studied it and studied Atticus.

  “He’s the one,” Junior said like he had three times before. A breath something like the kind she held at the top of the county fair rollercoaster’s crest unfurled from Nina.

  “You sure?” It took an effort to keep her voice smooth. Nina was a mess of strings inside.

  “Sure as I’m going to be.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I just get a feeling.” Junior’s hands got restless – all motion; no direction. Nina got a chill, even though summer still had its tongue all over her. She thought on the temperature of metal in a morgue.

  “You’ve had such feelings before,” Nina scolded, only to be knocked slack-faced by Junior’s glare. He wadded the photograph like he could crush it out of the world.

  “It doesn’t change what I’ve got to do.” Junior spoke with fists on his knees, fists in his eyes. Nina felt desolate. It was a kind of bravery – enough to find a voice.

  “Explain to me again why you’ve got to do it. Explain what your Pa dying has to do with us giving up our life in New Orleans to find who done it?”

  Junior’s answer was to turn away. It so often was. His anger slipped, leaving only the tonnage of despair to stretch down his features. He looked just like a hound dog, Nina thought. Just like a hound dog that got beat and didn’t know why.

  She reached out, hoping her fingers would smooth some of those lines from his face – hide the tenderness raked up in her man. Then Junior hissed and stood.

  “Goddamn it,” Junior pulled off his round Cuban hat and stripped the wet from his brow with a shaking hand. Nina glanced around. Atticus was gone.

  “Pack the shit,” Junior said even though Nina had already begun to roll the blankets. Motion stirred the beer in her blood, a welcome feeling. Her veins felt half-asleep and she would take all the sleep she could get.

  In their yellow pickup, Nina hung her head back against the seat and let her eyes pretend they could shut. Her neck wouldn’t set; kept rolling her head toward Junior’s shoulder. She had set it there all during their dances at their wedding, as rice crackled under their soft-floored shoes and Dixieland played. She had kissed that shoulder with crawfish and butter on her lips during their dinners at the Pelican in Pass-Christian. Junior had smiled like his face would never have cause to stop.

  Now he was unsmiling and the only times her head found his shoulder was in the beds of a succession of motels. He gripped the steering wheel, knuckles bloodless, a man about to make a sharp turn. They waited for Atticus to get back to his Forerunner as baby Bug babbled in the back.

  Nina spoke up after a while rather than go on listening to the mosquitoes beat the glass, tired of hearing the anxious hunger for blood and nothing else.

  “Bug’s going to have his first word soon, at the rate he’s going through sounds.”

  “Reckon so. He got the brains from his Mama.”

  Nina looked at Junior for the grin that should’ve gone with those words. There was none. She didn’t frown. She was all out of those too.

  “And his mouth,” Nina said.

  “Yes indeed.”

  “What do you think his first will be, Junior?”

  Junior reached across Nina to open the glove box. His bicep brushed her nipple. She tingled. He tensed.

  He saw the Ruger .44 inside there and only then settled. His hands flew back to the wheel.

  “No,” Nina said.

  “No?”

  “No. Baby’s first word is usually ‘no’.”

  “Not my boy.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “It’s in the blood.” Junior’s eyes had been hollow, watching Atticus’ Forerunner. Now they cluttered with ghosts. “I never said ‘no’ to my Pa.”

  Nina rubbed her arms as if the bruises were in her and not Junior. She wanted another beer worse than she wanted to hear Bug prove Junior wrong. When the pickup ignition barked to life, she startled.

  The Forerunner was pulling out. Junior put the truck in gear to follow Atticus to where he’d been hiding – hiding out since Junior started seeking those faces in the wadded photograph.

  “Daddy,” Junior drove glancing from road to glove box to smoking black road.

  “What?”

  “His first word will be ‘Daddy’.”

  Nina feared that Junior, for the first time since this all began, would be right.

  ***

  Nina tidied the motel room, making space for the ghosts. Junior cleaned the Ruger and watched the space between Nina’s legs as she floated through the swelter of the room. Insects tapped lust on the shaded window.

  Nina wore only her underwear because this was the only time Junior would stare at her – truly look at her; not just glare or sulk or glance to check she was there, as if she were slight enough to misplace. He cleaned the gun every night and he made Nina feel clean with his attention.

  Attention gave her a sense of purpose. It made them have a purpose. It meant what they were doing had a purpose.

  Otherwise, there were only ghosts to make space for. Nina straightened the space on the dresser where a bottle of Wild Turkey should have sat for them to sip from while they listened to music like they had every night in New Orleans. Its ghost was vivid in the sullenness of the room. The ghost of their CD player was vivid in the silence. Nina dusted the place where it should have set.

  In the closet, Nina hung Junior’s shirt next to where her dancing gown, with its flare of crimson taffeta, should have hung. Right beside it would hang Junior’s suede suit, impregnated with his scent. Memories of musk and cologne and cigar smoke suffocated there under the antiseptic fact of mothballs.

  Nina moved on, back into the bedroom, a dance cadence stirring up from her ankles – a two-step, a waltz, a tango – and then it dried up, unborn. She walked to the table where Junior had the pieces of the gun spread out. There, she would make a space where their dinner should have gone – the kind of dinner they had every weekday night in their two-room Treme apartment, with candles and plastic dishes and too few napkins.

  The photograph set there. Nina stared at it. She would not touch it. The nine faces in it stared back.

  Three of the faces had black crosses carved in them by ballpoint: Kip. Natty. Elijah. Six remained. All were smiling. None were entirely recognizable, even though one was hers, one Junior’s and one his father’s, Burl Senior’s.

  All were smiling as if they could not even imagine what the photograph would become.

  Now Nina smiled, and bitterly.

  “I’m get
ting a drink from the machine,” she said, because she needed a taste of outside air if she would be able to breathe again. “Want one?”

  “Yeah,” Junior stopped staring at her. He went sullen as a child sent to early bedtime. She would no longer be nearly nude and so Nina could feel his shoulders sag from the end of their game.

  She could not care, not nearly so much as she cared to be away from the photograph. She slid into her dress, its fabric sticky with what the wilderness had sucked from her pores during the day hunting Atticus. The feeling brought back the day of the photograph.

  It had been Hunting Day. Her first and last hunt with Burl Senior. She had drunk with the disgusted enthusiasm of the sixteen-year-old she was. The eyes of the men – Burl Senior’s “associates”; his go-to good old boys – had their hands all over her, but only Junior touched her.

  She gathered Bug to her, wanting to remove him from that spoiled space too.

  Nina stepped out of the motel room and shivered despite the heat. The deer hunt that had followed the taking of the photo was visible, crisp against the blue haze of the night. The men had gone out in their trucks, into the nature reserve. They had no rifles. They only needed the darkness.

  They hunted by floodlight – shining a 120-watt hand lamp fixed to the driver’s side doors into the woods. A deer had been caught in it. Nina, frozen, and the deer, frozen.

  As the deer stared, fixed by the light, the men had left their trucks with baseball bats and beat it to death. The deer went down fast and took a long time to die.

  Nina’s gorge rose at the memory and she stepped unsteadily toward the drink machine. The concrete sidewalk before the rooms tilted under her bare feet. She clutched Bug as memory clutched her.

  She recalled a feeling of transformation that day. Burl Senior, a man she had danced with and talked the Bible with and shared a table with was, suddenly, shown to have a brutality in him: Something animal and fierce that Nina could not have conjured before and could not dispel since.

  Junior had not beaten the deer. He had shared the tense space of the truck with Nina. But his eyes had inhabited the vision of his father and his father’s friends, beating, laughing, kicking.