by J. L. Abramo
When she ran to the gate, the calves danced along behind her, ever curious. She slipped through the gate and ran back up the path, leaping over the sleeping snake and pausing only at the edge of the road to make sure she didn’t get mowed down by the men from Atlanta. A big, shiny black Ford rumbled up with a cage chained in back, and Emma Lee hid behind a tree until it had passed. She didn’t run up the dirt drive behind that scary truck; she cut a longer path around the rear of the trailer and darted in the back door.
It was loud again. The dogs were barking and growling and throwing themselves against the rattling chain link fences as men laughed and taunted them from the safety of the other side. The trailer shook with swaggering footsteps, and the air stank with cigarettes and the skunk-smell of weed smoke. Emma Lee checked the short hall before dashing for her room and closing the door gently so it wouldn’t make a sound, her back falling against the flimsy door as she caught her breath.
“Well, ain’t you a sweet little thing?”
Her heart just about hopped out of her mouth when she saw a shape sitting on her bed in the low light, tossing something from hand to hand.
“This is my room,” she said. “Daddy don’t let men in here.”
He turned on her bedside lamp and smiled at her with crooked teeth. “Maybe he didn’t used to, but maybe he changed his mind. What’s your name, honey?”
Emma Lee put her hand on the doorknob, and the man stood, whipping out a knife. “Shh, honey. Don’t wanna do that. Just turn around now and let me get a good look. Let’s have us a chat. Your Uncle Jerry says you’re good with the dogs. Says you respect ’em.”
Lamplight flickered off the dirty knife, and Emma Lee took her hand off the doorknob and put her back against the door. The man nodded like she’d done good and sat back down.
“I don’t like it,” she said, referring both to the dogs and to what the man was doing in her room, his knees spread wide in too-big jeans and his work boots rubbing red clay on the gray carpet.
“If you don’t like it, maybe it’s just because you ain’t had it done good enough,” he said. “I know my business, honey.”
Emma Lee shivered, feeling like the sundress was the flimsiest thing in the world and wondering if her Daddy had dressed her this way on purpose. “I’m ugly,” she said. “Everybody says so. You don’t want to mess with me.”
His smile was all wrong and sideways. He put down the knife and held out a scarred hand. “Maybe I do, though. It ain’t all about your face. You wanna come stay with me? I got a nicer place. We got a pool. You like to swim?”
“No. I wanna stay here.”
He’d set down the thing he’d originally been tossing around, and now he picked it back up again, holding it out to her. “I’ll let you keep a kitten for yourself. How long you had this one? You didn’t take good care of it, did you?”
Emma Lee’s stomach flipped over when she saw it lying there, floppy and still. She’d stolen it from its litter the night before and slept with it, soft and warm and milky-smelling, under her chin. She hadn’t even named it yet. When she’d gotten up this morning, she’d put it in the shoebox under her bed with Dixie cups of food and water, and she’d checked on it, and now...
The man must’ve seen the dread slash over her ripped-up face.
His grin went dark. “Does Daddy know you steal from him? You be good to me, and I won’t tell. It’ll be our secret.”
Emma Lee reached behind her, fingers skittering over the broken mirror. When she found a shard, she smiled and nodded.
“Okay.”
The man smiled back. He set down the kitten and held out his hand. So shyly, hands behind her back, she walked toward him, flip-flops quiet on the carpet, and let him wrap his big fingers around her waist.
As he pulled her close between his knees, she slashed straight across his neck with the shard of mirror.
The blood spray didn’t surprise her; she’d seen enough dog fights to know where to strike to end something fast. She stepped back to watch him thrash around on her bed, his blood soaking into the faded checkered sheets as he tried to hold it all in. It was strangely quiet, just gurgles and dripping, no growling at all. As he fell still, she picked up the kitten and rubbed a thumb over its tiny ears. Its head flopped sickeningly, and she had no trouble imagining this man hunting around under her bed for a little girl’s treasures and laughing as he wrenched its neck.
She looked back at her door. The mirror was missing several shards now, and she remembered to check her hand. It hadn’t cut her too bad, just a little scratch. She wiped it off on her sheet and picked up the man’s knife from where he’d dropped it. He was done with needing it, but she sure as hell wasn’t. She knew he had a piece on him, somewhere; they all did. But she didn’t trust guns. They were unpredictable. Emma Lee trusted what she knew.
The barking picked up around front, signaling the beginning of the fight. Emma Lee licked her lips and sat down on the floor to trade her flip-flops for a ragged pair of sneakers. Picking up the dead kitten, she scurried back outside and found Daddy’s pile of old tools from when he’d tried to grow a patch of weed to sell. The grave was shallow and small, but so was the kitten. Her hands shook as she covered it with crumbly red dirt and a brick. They just fed the dead dogs to the ones still alive enough to fight, so she’d never seen anything get buried before. There was no one around to tell her if she’d done it wrong.
Peeking around the trailer, she saw about what she expected. All the men were gathered around the fight pit down the hill, which was just a big hole in the dirt edged in plywood and stained with years of blood. Most of the time, Daddy kept an above-ground pool over it with just a scant bit of rainy water in the bottom, but now it was moved aside and two dogs were down in the pit, going at each other in a flurry of teeth and fur. She didn’t know who was down there, and she didn’t want to know. She didn’t need to know. But she checked that every pair of eyes on the property was aimed down into that hole, including Daddy, who was standing over the pit, his frenzied face lit by floodlights, spitting every curse he had as a beer dangled, forgotten, in his hand.
Emma Lee ran back into the empty trailer, climbed up on the counter, and snatched Daddy’s key ring from where he kept it hid, in the Snoopy mug on the highest shelf. Each key had a number written on it, and each number matched one of the kennels outside. One to one, two to two. She unlocked each padlock, leaving it dangling on the chain as she moved on to the next cage; only Ripper’s kennel was empty. Most of the dogs had never seen an open door, and they were too busy barking at the fight and the strangers, so they didn’t even try rattling their cages open. Once all eight locks were undone, Emma Lee looked from the kennels to the fight pit. What she was about to do—it couldn’t be undone. Once those doors were open, she couldn’t close ’em again. Down in the floodlights, Daddy threw his head back and whooped, and the man standing beside him in a leather vest held out his hand to shake.
The first kennel door opened, and then the next, and the next, all down the line, as fast as a little girl’s blood-slick fingers could go, fumbling with the locks and chains and the rusty gates until all the dogs had rushed out into the night, baying their rage and aimed for the scent of blood and grilling meat. Emma Lee picked up a rusty hatchet from the firewood pile and backed away into the shadows to watch.
Killer was the first one to hit the crowd, and he went straight for Daddy, just like Emma Lee would have, if her teeth had had any bite. The Atlanta men scattered, but Uncle Jerry headed over with a break stick to help. Ol’ Killer was latched onto Daddy’s arm like a snapping turtle, and Murdergirl rounded on Uncle Jerry, her torn-up ears and long, pink nipples flapping as she lunged and caught his leg, shaking him to the ground. Emma Lee realized her own teeth were bared, a growl coming up soft from her chest.
She didn’t wait to see what would happen next. She held on to that hatchet and ran.
Down the dirt drive to the asphalt, across the road, into the woods, over the creek, and in
to the moonlit pasture. The cows were sleeping peacefully, shadowy blocks snoring softly, gentle as a dream. Emma Lee curled up behind the cows’ round bale, hidden by scratchy hay, to listen. And to wait. If another Atlanta man came looking for her, or if Killer found her first...the hatchet was in her fist, and she’d be ready.
Like the cows, she was accustomed to the sounds of death. Barking and growling she knew, and diesel trucks roaring down the road, and the punch of gunshots. But there were sharper, newer, sweeter sounds, too: the screams and shouts and pleading cries of grown men dying in the jaws of dogs they’d trained to kill.
Things went quiet for a while, just like it did when the dogs were eating breakfast every morning. By the time the sirens and flashing lights arrived, it was too late. The cows rustled sleepily and lowed their displeasure at the interruption. There were more gunshots, and Emma Lee couldn’t help wondering how many bullets it took to put down Killer or Ripper or Murdergirl when they were in a frenzy. By the sound of it, plenty. It was a long time before the night went silent again and Emma Lee felt safe enough to drift off.
Mr. Gooch found her the next morning. Emma Lee was deep asleep, snoring through scar-twisted lips, the cows stepping daintily around her as they nibbled their hay. Sweet Daddy lay near, watching her like she was one of his calves. In one arm she held a white pit-bull puppy, torn to shreds and barely breathing. She held the hatchet in her other fist.
He did not wake her.
Back to TOC
AIN’T NO GRAVE
Ryan Sayles
“I’ll be damned if that don’t do it,” Riggs said as he lets the hammer off his revolver and walks away.
I lay still, face down and listening to the crunch of dead leaves under his boot get softer and softer until I knew he was far off. The dirt between my teeth tasted clean compared to the bits of burnt gun powder drifting down onto my lips. I didn’t blink. Not once. The night’s frigid and I can feel the snakes of heat rising from my body cool instantly in the air. I try to breathe. It’s hard. My left eye is filling with blood that the January cold is working overtime to coagulate real fast.
I owe Riggs sixty large. I robbed his card game. No sense in sugar coating it. I just strolled in there and blasted Keith, his muscle. The four players stared, Keith’s blood all over their kings and sevens. I approached them and you’da thought I was a beam of light breaking up some cockroaches. They scooted back from the table and I slung one hand down, snatched up the kitty. Pocketed it. Rolled out. Counted it later and never woulda thought it woulda been so damn huge.
I needed seventeen grand for Emilina’s trust. Emilina, my mentally-handicapped daughter. My tard, as Riggs calls her. Her mamma was the type of woman I always courted. Drunk. Trailer queen. Died about four months after birthing Emilina. Seems she finally found a rail of coke she couldn’t handle. Took her long enough. I held the baby and fell in love right then and there. Didn’t really miss her mamma, though.
If you knew me, you’d know I’m not good enough to care for my Emilina. She’s six now, and doin’ as good as she is thanks to her grandma, which is my own mamma. My pa went to the state pen for robbery and hurtin’ some people. Never made it out. Found on the shower floor, bleedin’ from everywhere, I hear. Cocksucker had it comin’ every which way. But I’d leave Emilina with my own mamma for months while I went and chased work or tail. It was a fine arrangement. So my mamma raised her for all this time and then she upped and died a month back. Heart attack in her sleep. God rest her soul. That leaves Emilina to me, and what that really means is Emilina is in trouble.
A church-goin’ friend of mine got Emilina into an assisted living home. Seems she had some pull there. Seventeen grand wasn’t going to cover Emilina’s life, but it would get her by until other monies showed up. So I robbed a damn card game. Simple plan. I ain’t a worthwhile man, but I do want to be something different for that little girl.
Riggs knows about Emilina. I didn’t think he did. You don’t want Riggs knowin’ ’bout anything important to you.
I used to work for him. He runs the dope in the town, as small as the town is. Cops either take a couple of bills from him, they don’t care enough to get involved, or they got squeezed. Riggs isn’t shit, but he struck lightning somewhere, sometime. Now he runs his own show. I acted in it.
So he finds me, pistol-whipped me in the bar bathroom not an hour ago. Drug me out here to the edge of the woods. I woke to a shovel falling on my face, the metal flat striking the bridge of my nose. “Dig,” is all I heard. So I did. I got about a foot down and Riggs was impatient. Probably the cold leeching into his bones just as it was mine.
Down on my knees, me thinking Emilina was going to be okay because she’s already in the home. I hear him cock back his hammer and when the bullet punched me in the back of the head all I did was think about my sweet little angel as I fell over, face first. It was a good death.
But then Riggs says, “That tard daughter of yours...you ain’t worth sixty grand. Hell, you ain’t worth the shit I took this morning. But she is. I’ll get my sixty grand from her.”
He waits around for a minute, me trying to stifle the tears I felt. Only blood ran from my eye, drizzling down my head from the hole in the back of it.
“I’ll be damned if that don’t do it,” Riggs says as he let the hammer off his revolver and walks away. Guess I don’t warrant a second bullet. But I ain’t dead. The left side of my head hurts in a way I can’t even put words to, but I ain’t dead. Soon, ain’t no doubt about that. But not yet.
Got a new lease on life through a gun shot.
I drag my arms up, put ’em underneath me. Weird sensations firing off through my head, my body. Like my brain’s trying to figure out how to do all the things it did before now that I got skull-popped.
I push up off the ground. Leaves falling off me, drops of blood dribbling like I was flicking the hairs of a paint brush. Stand up on shaky legs. The left half of my world is dark and blurry. Bullet must be there. I lifted a hand and my fingertips met the bloody clumps of hair around my skull. I had the urge to reach inside there. The bullet hole is behind my left ear, and just skirted inside the bone. I can feel a trail of fire underneath the skin as it traveled around my head.
Who cares? It’s a ticking time bomb now.
“I’m coming, Emilina,” I say, light a smoke and walked out of the woods. Feels good to smoke. Burns. Feels like inhaling hate. There’s enough vengeance rollin’ around in my guts to where I don’t even feel cold no more.
I chain-smoke six coffin nails before I reach the outer edge of the bar’s parking lot. It’s like stepping from hell and across the threshold to heaven when I met that pave job, as cracked and weathered as it was. They musta heard the gunshot. I wonder what Riggs said to ’em as he drug me out the bar. Probably Leave well enough alone.
Tony’s cab is right where it always sits; at the far end of the one cone of light working over the bar’s front door. The glow of his cigarette cherry is like a beacon; bright red, dulled to shadow, bright red, dulled again. A flashing buoy to lead me in.
I try not to look like I was shot in the head as I move over to the door. Rap a knuckle on the window. Tony’s half-asleep, slumped in his driver seat but slides right up, grabs the steering wheel.
I get in and a blast of agony rolls across my brain. Feels like the first wave of tissues in there shit the bed. I gotta move before I get that same sensation in the center of my brain. The underlying reek of fake leather and a mishmash of smoke, liquor, vomit and breath mints don’t mix well with the way my stomach is roilin’.
I grit my teeth and fight off a groan. Takes a second. “Tony, you know where McCray lives?”
“McCray?” Tony stubs out his smoke and looked in the rearview at me. Recognizes my face, says, “Riggs’ right hand man?”
“Yessir.”
Narrows his eyes, sounds concerned. “I do. Why?”
“I gotta get there.”
Tony’s eyes in the rearview mirror; sea
rch my face in the dark of the back seat. “I’m not a big fan of those parts.”
“They ain’t the ghetto or nothin’.”
“I know. It’s just that...you look like you got a score to settle and I don’t want—”
“The association?” I try to laugh and it don’t work. “You don’t want to be on my side?”
Tony takes a long moment. “Truth be told...yeah. That’s it. I got a family, you know.”
“Me too,” I say. Follow it up with some lies. “It’ll be fine. No score. No trouble. Just real quick, eh?”
Tony sighs, “I dunno. I kinda was waitin’ out here for a quiet night of driving drunks is all.”
I reach into my pocket. Grab some bills and toss them up front. Tony looks down, does the math, drops it in drive. Sighs. “It better be fine.”
“It will be,” I say and rest my hand on the knife I always keep tucked down in my boot. I like it because it’s long and thin, and has no problem making its way between two ribs.
“Drop me off two doors down and I’ll come meet you back at that cul-de-sac we just passed,” I say. “Shouldn’t be but a minute.”
Despite his greenback courage, Tony’s all too happy to pull over and let me out. Tony knows I lie, and he knows I cause trouble.
The neighborhood is hushed. Cold. The only one street lamp is a few more doors up the road, and its light is piss yellow. About as half-dead as me. The dead grass and leaves underfoot crunch with that hard, crusty sound where you expect snow. We ain’t gotten any this year. Not yet. Just a wind that steals the life outta all the things it rolls over. Emilina keeps watch for snow. I shoulda moved her to the Dakotas or Alaska. She loves snow.
