by Jim Heskett
Shotgun Mine
A Layne Parrish Thriller
Jim Heskett
Contents
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I. All My Exes Live In Shotgun
II. East Mine, West Mine
III. Jellicle Cats
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HERE WE GO AGAIN
Books by Jim Heskett
About the Author
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Part I
All My Exes Live In Shotgun
1
Layne Parrish flexed his hands on the steering wheel. His palms ached from hours of driving. Eyes red and weary after continuous hours of concentrating, blinking less, having all the moisture sucked from his eyes at this higher elevation.
George hadn’t been at his house. Shotgun Diner had already closed for the evening. That left only one place in town to find a man like him: Shotgun Tavern.
Every business in this little western Colorado mountain town of Shotgun used a naming convention like this. The first of any kind put the town’s name on it. Everyone knew Bob’s Diner was the second diner in town.
As Layne stared at Shotgun Tavern, he didn’t want to enter. Like many businesses at the edges of the town, Shotgun Tavern backed up to the foothills. A log cabin and concrete structure with a roof replaced many times over due to the relentless snowfall at eight thousand feet.
He knew exactly what he would find on the other side of that door; the same bar he’d tried to enter as a teenager. Then, he had obviously been turned away because the town was small enough the bartender knew every one of the teens’ parents. High schooler Layne Parrish had never attempted again.
He and his friends had learned painful lessons about partying in small towns. They would either go to the mines, a hiking trail, or out of town. Shotgun didn’t hold too many urban spots for teens to drink in peace.
With a sigh, Layne pulled a blue skullcap down over his ears and left the car. The mountains lining the edge of the national forest loomed over the town, shielding it on three sides from the elements. Good thing he had found mild weather today, because the October snow had already coated the town in white. In Shotgun, winter lasted from October to May, before a single glorious week of spring would give way to a temperate summer.
Layne didn’t sweat the cold, however. He had bigger things on his mind.
In that bar, Layne knew he would find a man named George. A man Layne Parrish hadn’t spoken to in a long time. The hulking beast who used to beat Layne, his brother Randall, and their mother on a recurring basis. A man who was just as full of rage whether drunk or sober. A man who demanded respect but never offered anything to earn it.
As far as Layne was concerned, George Parrish was a sad monster, and Layne would have been content to never speak with him again. He could have spent the rest of his natural life in and near Denver, raising his daughter, working when he needed to work, and enjoying time outdoors now and again.
But not all things were in Layne’s control.
He pulled his jacket close and shuffled across the frozen gravel toward the bar’s entrance. Late in the evening, angled floodlights lit up the parking area. Haphazard flakes of white trickled across the light.
Layne stood before the door and spent a few beats composing himself. Part of him wanted to do an about-face and return to his SUV, but he knew he couldn’t do that.
“Okay, let’s get this over with,” he grumbled under his breath.
He pulled the door back, and it felt like a wave of nostalgia washing over him. A thousand pieces of sensory information hit him at once. The grimy bar with its rusted stools on the left side. The booths on the right wearing the same burgundy fabric, with many of them tattered and faded. Dozens of framed pictures behind the bar, mostly of miners gathered in front of those dark entrances, lined up like class photos. Also, real class photos of the last few high school graduating class. As well as one special section Layne remembered, the yellowed newspaper headlines from around the time of the Shotgun Bank robbery. The most exciting thing to ever happen to the town, now five decades removed.
Low light shielded the tired faces of the inhabitants. Honky tonk music played. But unlike the jukebox Shotgun Tavern had placed in the corner back in Layne’s younger days, now that same music pumped from wireless speakers anchored to the walls.
Layne scanned the faces. About two dozen people filled the bar and tables. He hadn’t expected to recognize anyone, because he hadn’t set foot in this town in twenty-five years. Not since soon after high school graduation. While he’d had contact with various town residents since then, he’d spent a quarter of a century away.
The bartender looked at him a little funny, but Layne expected that. The young man stood behind the bar, wiping his hands on a white dishrag as he cocked his head and studied this stranger.
“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked.
He’d said it a little too loud, trying to get Layne’s attention from twenty feet away. Up until that point, no one else had paid much attention to this newcomer. Now, a few heads pointed toward him. Most took one look and then refocused on their beverages. A quick scan of their faces turned up a few that felt vaguely familiar, but none snapped into memory.
“Nothing for me,” Layne said. “Just looking for someone.”
From a table near the bathroom, a large man stood and then straightened his back to reach full height. The man grinned as he looked toward this new arrival. He was not quite up to Layne’s 6’4”, and not quite Layne’s 230 pounds, but he was big. And he had a face that sizzled the retired spy’s brain for a few seconds, trying to put a name to it.
And then Layne recognized him. Paul Clausing, a man who had been one year ahead of Layne in school. Not exactly friends and not exactly rivals, they had played on the same Shotgun High football team. They had attended several of the same parties.
“Looking for me?” Paul said, flashing a grin with a missing front tooth. He took a couple shaky steps toward Layne. His fists weren’t balled, but he kept them by his side, arms loose. An untrained eye might have thought this guy just drunk, but Layne knew better. He did not look like someone poised to greet an old friend with a hug or a handshake. Paul was looking for a fight.
Layne shook his head. “Hey, Paul. Good to see you again, but no, I’m not looking for you.”
Paul took another couple steps toward Layne. He wasn’t quite in striking distance, but if he came any closer, Layne would have to react. He had no idea why Paul had decided to bare his aggression like a gen-pop con in a prison yard.
“So you do remember me?” the man said. His eyes flicked down. “Those are nice shoes. Aren’t you worried about getting them dirty?”
Layne was wearing brand-new Carhartt boots, but they weren’t covered in diamonds or anything like that. Just regular work boots. “I’m not worried about anything, Paul. Could you scooch out of the way, please? Like I said, I’m not here for you.”
Paul took another step forward. His movement had become less wobbly, and his bleary eyes squinted to focus.
“Why are you doing this, man?” Layne asked. He tried to keep his reactions small and careful, so he wouldn’t trigger whatever testosterone bubble had made Paul Clausing smell blood in the water.
“I’m not doing anything,” Paul said. His eyelids were drooping, his shoulders and hips barely swerving as he stood in place.
Layne desperately tried to remember if he and Paul Clausing had any leftover grudges from back in those days. But, after a quarter century away, he couldn’t bring anything to mind. “I really don’t understand what’s happening
right now.”
A man and a woman at the nearest booth scooted out and then shuffled to the other side of the room. Had Paul done this sort of thing before? So far, the bartender hadn’t become involved. He was now at the far end of the room, slicing limes on a cutting board.
“What are you doing back in Shotgun?” Paul asked.
“Looking for someone,” Layne said.
Paul took another step. He raised a hand, but didn’t make a fist. Instead, he pointed a finger and tapped Layne on the chest. Not enough to move him, just a little poke.
He’d dropped the glove.
Now, the bartender seemed to take notice. He abandoned the limes and drifted a few feet toward them. “Guys, I don’t know what’s going on here, but take it outside, please?”
Paul leaned a little closer. “What do you say, Layne?”
Layne shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I don’t have time for this. I didn’t come back to town to settle an old score or anything like that.”
“Then what are you doing in Shotgun?” Paul asked, and he raised his finger to poke again. For a brief moment, Layne thought of his five-year-old daughter. He thought of the new lessons about patience she’d been teaching him by refusing to clean her room at his condo. Layne was now used to repeating himself ten to fifteen times before Cameron would acknowledge and take action. Maybe Layne needed to treat Paul like a stubborn preschooler.
But when he saw that angry finger poised to jab him again in the chest, Layne tossed that plan out the window. And even though Layne knew it was a bad idea, he couldn’t help himself.
He snatched the finger in midair and gave it a hard twist to the right.
Paul cried out and immediately sank to one knee as Layne broke his finger. Out of his peripheral, Layne watched a few people rise from their chairs and shuffle away. Vaguely, he could hear the bartender calling again for them to take it outside. But he made no effort to actually break it up.
Layne didn’t want to cause a scene, and he figured he’d made his point. He was ready to let go when he saw Paul readying his free hand to punch.
But, drunk and slow, he didn’t get it off in time. Layne stepped back and jerked the finger a twist in the other direction. Paul howled and collapsed to the floor, clutching his wounded digit. Half the bar had now cleared out, hurrying toward the front door. Maybe they were expecting bottles to start flying through the air, but Layne saw no need to escalate. Paul was on the floor, clutching his injured finger, with no apparent plans to retaliate.
And then the bathroom door opened. Out came George Parrish, Layne’s father. He had dropped sixty or seventy pounds since the last time they’d spoken. His hair was a dirty shade of white, his limbs gangly and awkward. Deep wrinkle lines turned his face into a roadmap.
“Damn it, Layney,” George said, and Layne noticed only half of his mouth moved when he spoke. The words had come out labored and weak, as if George lacked the oxygen to put weight behind his voice. An odd thing to hear coming out of his father’s mouth.
“What?” Layne said.
George scowled down at Paul, still nursing his broken finger. “He was my ride home!”
2
Layne Parrish and George Parrish didn’t say a word to each other as Layne drove his father up the winding mountain pass to his home. George lived in a literal log cabin overlooking the town, about a thousand elevation feet higher up the mountain. The car ride only took five minutes up the road, but it felt like hours. They still hadn’t added guard rails to most of the turns, and there were a few small rockslide areas adjacent to the road. Still as dangerous as ever to get around this town.
Layne parked in front of the cabin, a little structure he hadn’t seen since the day after graduation. He wiped a hand through his blond hair and sighed at the building. It was about a thousand square feet, with a freestanding tool shed around the back. The roof here wasn’t in much better shape than the bar in town. With a layer of snow over the ground, Layne couldn’t see if his father had kept up with the yard work. He doubted it. George had never been the sort of man to worry much about the aesthetics of things. That had been Layne’s mother’s job.
“I’ll make coffee,” George said, but through his strained whisper-grunt voice, it came out as aaahhll meeek hoffeee. He said nothing else as he exited the car, his limbs slow and every motion seeming difficult for him. The car again stilled, quiet, with fat snowflakes hitting and melting on the windshield as Layne breathed.
Strange for him to see his father this way. The elder Parrish had always been a beast of a man, with tree trunk arms and a barrel chest. As far as Layne knew, he had never exercised a day in his life outside of what he received incidentally at his job. Nevertheless, he’d been stronger and faster than any other grownup Layne had known. He was always grumpy and yelling about something. Mostly, the government and foolish kids who thought they were invincible. Also, he was prone to regular and escalating ferocious outbursts. God help you if you accidentally broke one of his coffee cups or tracked mud onto the rug.
He didn’t seem so fierce now.
This man who had moments ago left the passenger seat across from Layne couldn’t weigh more than one-fifty soaking wet. He seemed more like a stick figure drawing of George Parrish than the real man Layne remembered.
George said nothing else as he limped toward the house. He definitely seemed to favor one side. These most recent changes had to be the result of a stroke or some other serious brain injury. He could only remember one time when George had been less than himself, because he’d broken his arm when falling off the roof of the cabin. Layne had been six years old. Seeing his dad with a cast on had been such a strange experience; he’d learned that day his father wasn’t invincible.
Layne sat alone in the car for a moment, preparing himself. His fingers popped a nicotine lozenge in his mouth, and a calming sensation flooded him instantly. He hadn’t thought it would feel so strange to be here. He hadn’t thought he would feel nervous. Layne Parrish had stared death in the face more than once, but this situation had an extreme gravity to it. Layne didn’t know why.
He exited the car and took his bag from the back seat. George stood on the porch and watched Layne heft the bag, but he said nothing about it. Layne entered the log cabin as the old man crossed the room toward the kitchen.
George sneered at Layne. “Were you born in a barn?”
Layne turned and noted the door open behind him. It was the same line George had used to chastise Layne for not shutting the door since he was four years old. Born in a barn.
Layne kicked the door shut behind him and set his suitcase next to it.
George pointed at the bag. “What’s that?”
“My suitcase. I assume you turned my old bedroom into a storage room or something. If there’s no bed there, I can take the couch. I’m not too picky.”
“Couch is lumpy,” George said, and offered nothing further.
Layne looked around. Not much had changed over the years. The cabin opened to a living room on the right and a dining room on the left. The kitchen was attached to the living room, with a hallway to the bedrooms from the dining room. Everything on the walls looked the same, although Layne didn’t have a picture-perfect memory. And there were few photos of them all together, for reasons Layne didn’t understand when he was younger. Now he knew. His mom wouldn’t allow herself to be photographed with black eyes and bruises on her cheeks.
He hadn’t thought about that in years. Now, it all came bubbling up in his memory, long-sleeping monsters of anger wanting to grab his brain and retroactively turn him into a snarling teenager. But, Layne kept his mouth shut. All of these feelings would normalize in a day or two.
“Lumpy couch is fine,” Layne said. “It is what it is.”
“Why are you here?”
“I heard you were dying.”
George shrugged with his hands as he opened a drawer and produced a tin of instant coffee. One hand, he could barely bring up to wai
st-level. “Everybody is dying.”
“No, Dad, you’re not going to brush this one off. I didn’t know about the stroke. That’s new, isn’t it? Because I heard you had lung cancer.”
George coughed a couple times, then he leaned against the counter. “The one thing I did right… make sure you kids never smoked. Never get the big C.”
Layne shook his head. "I smoked cigarettes for years, Dad. You just never paid any attention to us.”
The old man shook with anger. “And when have you paid any attention to me? Your mother left. Your brother left. You left. Nobody gives a shit about George.”
The reactive high schooler inside Layne wanted to yell, to correct him, to escalate the fight. But he realized his actual anger had faded in the last few seconds, replaced by another feeling it took Layne a moment to name. Pity.
“You drove everyone away.”
Again, George waved that disparaging hand, and he went back to his task of prepping the coffee. “Whatever you say, son. Did you bring my grandson?”
“You don’t have a grandson, dad. Your granddaughter is Cameron.”
“That’s what I meant. Is she with you?”
Layne had driven his father here from the bar, so where did the old man think Layne had stashed Cam? In the trunk? “No, Cam is with her mother this week.”
“Then why are you here?”
Layne thought of a few options. Something like, to see your decline for myself. Or to watch you die and know you’re gone. Or, so you can see how you never broke me, no matter how hard you tried.
Instead, he pointed at the door. “I could stay in town if I’m not welcome here. Is the Shotgun Motel still open?”
George breathed in wheezes for a few seconds, averting his eyes from Layne. “Closed down ten years ago. People in town rent out rooms with some app on the internet, but I don’t know how that works. You can stay here. Your old room still has a bed in it and there’s probably even some of your old clothes in there.”
