American Static

by Tom Pitts

“What?”

  “You said, ‘Easy, boy.’ How do you know it’s a boy?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Lisa, are you for real? I didn’t literally mean the dog was a boy. Did you see me get down on my hands and knees and do an anatomical inspection of the dog’s under parts? It’s a figure of speech.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I get it. It’s a figure of speech, like when I say you’re a pain in the ass it doesn’t actually mean that my butt hurts.”

  The dog cautiously backed away only to dash after the next car coming down the road. Vinny threw his hands in the air and walked to the pump. He tried to lift the nozzle out of the slot but the pump was locked. “Shit!” He glanced in through the open doorway and saw someone behind the counter. “The pump’s locked,” he said wearily. “I’ll be right back.”

  An obese man sat behind the counter. His T-shirt-covered belly billowed over his belt like suds over the top of an overfilled glass of beer. He had a full gray beard and wore a hunting cap. Before him, a slab of meat swam in a plate of brown gravy. He looked up at his new customer, covered his mouth, and belched before taking a bite of heavily buttered corn bread. He picked up a plastic knife and fork and used the disposable utensils to saw through his steak. “Kin I hep ya?” The morsel he stuffed in his mouth was large enough to feed an entire migrant family for three solid days.

  Vinny’s eyes grew large at the spectacle. “That’s quite a lunch you’ve got there. You always eat like that?”

  “Nope, I’m cutting back,” he answered with a full mouth as he pulverized the meat between his molars. “But I had a big breakfast and my wife is bellyaching that I’m gittin’ too fat.” He focused on his steak, slicing the boneless cut into large chunks. He belched, this time without covering his mouth, just as a gray-haired woman in a housecoat emerged from the back room carrying a hefty plate of meatloaf also swimming in gravy.

  “That’s all I got left, Buck,” she said. “That’ll have to hold you ’til dinner.” She smiled at Vinny politely.

  “You gonna eat that too?” Vinny asked.

  “Figure I am.” He covered his mouth and made a sour face before narrowing his eyes at her. “Damn GERD. Jozelle, how many times do I have to tell you? Don’t cook with so many onions.”

  “It don’t taste like nothin’ without the onions, Buck. How many times you tell me not to cook insipid? ’Sides, Oren’s coming home for a visit tomorrow and you know how he’ll holler if my cooking got no taste.” She turned to Vinny beaming with pride. “Oren’s our son. He’s in his third year of medical school at Johns Hopkins Medical School. My boy is gonna be a pediatric surgeon one day.”

  “I’m impressed. A pediatric surgeon? He must be one hell of a smart kid.”

  “Smart? Hell, he was number one in his class at Northwestern. Didn’t cost me a cent all four years he went to college.” Buck looked up and drew a deep, fortifying breath. “He keeps warning me about my weight—I think startin’ tomorrow I’m gonna go on some kind of diet.”

  “Hell, Buck, we goin’ to dinner with Oren and the grandkids at the Chomp-N-Chicken tomorrow,” she reminded him. “Maybe you ought to start the day after.”

  The gas station mutt poked his head in the door, barking and howling loudly.

  “Damn mutt,” Buck groused. “Throw that damn dog one of them hush puppies and keep it from yapping, will ya, Jozelle?”

  She reached into the pocket of her housecoat and hauled out a smoked pig’s ear the size of a dinner plate. Cocking her arm, she flung it Frisbee-style and it went whizzing past the dog, which yelped excitedly and took off running.

  Buck covered his ears. “I swear I’m gonna shoot that dog one of these days.” He grimaced and put a hand on his chest. “I think I need a gas pill. I swear, if I thought my insurance would cover it, I’d get one of those lap band things.”

  Vinny was growing impatient. “I’m glad you’re trying to take better care of yourself, Buck, but I’m kind of in a hurry and I noticed the gas pumps are locked. So…how come?”

  Buck was still grimacing as he answered. “How come? I guess you ain’t from around these parts, are ya?”

  “Me? No, I ain’t from around here.”

  “You from up north?” Jozelle asked.

  “Why?” he laughed. “Don’t I sound like a good ol’ boy?”

  She looked at Buck and shrugged.

  Vinny continued, “Yeah, you guessed it. I ain’t from around here. I’m from New York. Why do you ask?”

  “That explains it,” Buck said. “You probably ain’t heard about the atrocious murder over at the Sack-O-Suds convenience store. I’m fixin’ to install me one of them closed circuit TV systems. Two Yankee boys done shot young Jimmy Willis in cold blood.”

  Vinny thought about keeping his mouth shut, but he just couldn’t. “Um…I don’t think you got your facts straight, Buck. Those two Yankee boys were exonerated.”

  Jozelle became alarmed. “What? They fried them boys already?”

  Vinny laughed. “No, dear,” he explained. “I said ex-on-er-ate-ed, not elec-tro-cute-ed. They were acquitted,” he said with a robust smile. “Found innocent of all charges.”

  “That so? Well then who shot Jimmy Willis?” Buck asked.

  “Two other guys were arrested in Jasper County, Georgia, a couple of days ago. They found the gun they used and everything.”

  “That sounds like horseshit to me,” Buck said. “They found another pair of boys with the same gun?”

  “Not the same gun, Buck. The first set of kids…well they didn’t have a gun…only a can of tuna fish.”

  “Where was those guilty boys from?” Buck asked.

  “Sorry, I really don’t know.”

  “Huh. What did I tell you, Jozelle? I heard them Yankee boys had some kind of slick, hot shot attorney. That’s how them New York ambulance chasers work. They probably found two local boys to use as scapegoats.” He reached under the counter and withdrew a Smith & Wesson 9mm. “I tell you what—I don’t know much about any fancy legal mumbo jumbo, but this here sidearm is the only kind of justice I need. I’m surprised Jimmy wasn’t carrying over at the Sack-O-Suds. For my money, I think everyone ought to carry a gun.”

  Vinny recoiled at the comment. “Really? You really think that?”

  “As the Lord is my witness.”

  “Whoa. Ain’t you ever heard of gun control?”

  “Gun control, my ass,” Buck said. He turned the gun around and offered it to Vinny. “You hold this gun in your hand and tell me it don’t make you feel like a better man.”

  “Ah, that’s all right. I think I’ll just get some gas and go. Thanks anyway.”

  “Nonsense,” he bellowed. “I ain’t unlocking the pump ’til you hold this here gun in your hand. Careful, though—it’s loaded.”

  “Uh, that’s okay. Really…no. No, thanks.”

  “You want gas or don’t ya? Take it. Go on. Take it I say. It’ll change your life.”

  Vinny thought about the Caddy’s empty gas tank and the prospect of getting stranded in the middle of nowhere. “All right…but just for a minute.” He reluctantly accepted the weapon and considered the substantial piece of ordnance as he weighed it in his hand.

  “How’s that feel?” Buck asked with a grin. “Tell me that ain’t a better solution than a room full of slippery-tongued lawyers.”

  “Still, you really think everyone should have a gun?”

  “Damn right. Gun control ain’t nothin’ more than political horseshit. You show me a shootin’ and I’ll show you a criminal with a stolen gun. It ain’t the law-abiding types that are killin’ folks.”

  Buck’s backwoods way of thinking was getting Vinny riled up. He considered keeping quiet, but once again, he just couldn’t. “Wait a minute. What about all those poor innocent kids that got killed at the elementary school shooting? Are you trying to tell me that’s not a valid argument for gun control?”

  “Look stranger.” He seemed to be growing hot as he stuffed another chunk of
steak into his mouth. A loud burp came out that made him grimace. “I don’t mind you being from up north and all, but no one’s gonna walk into my place of business and tell me who can and who can’t—” His eyes bulged and his cheeks ballooned.

  Jozelle panicked—she rushed to Buck’s side as he keeled over face-first into his plate of chicken-fried steak and gravy. “Buck! Oh my God. Oh my God.”

  “Shit. Call nine-one-one!” Vinny hollered, still holding Buck’s gun in his hand.

  Just then the sound of a gun being cocked registered in his ears and a hostile southern voice shouted, “Freeze!”

  ***

  Vinny felt his legs being swept out from under him. He barely had time to process what was going on when he slammed face-down onto the floor with a knee embedded dead center in his back. “Excuse me,” Vinny said, “there’s been a misunderstanding. You see, I’m a lawyer and—” He felt handcuffs ratcheting over his wrists. “Hey! What did I just—”

  “Shut your trap, mister.” Squawk from a handheld radio filled the air. “This is Deputy Ty Bembrey over at Buck’s fillin’ station. Better send an ambulance quick.”

  Jozelle blurted. “Buck ain’t shot. He’s choking.”

  “He’s what?” Ty asked.

  “He’s choking, Ty. Can’t you do the Heineken or somethin’?”

  The deputy raced around the counter. Standing behind Buck he extended his arms as far as they would go, somehow managing to lock his fingers just below Buck’s diaphragm. He grunted and his face turned red as he administered the Heimlich, repeatedly jerking him upward with all his strength.

  Jozelle burst into tears. “The dern fool—I always tell him he don’t chew his food.”

  Vinny managed to lift his torso off the floor and attempted to crane his neck to see what was going on. His eye level had risen just enough for him to see a slab of steak come flying out of Buck’s mouth. He tried to dodge it but it smacked him squarely in the face.

  Back to TOC

  Here is a preview of Danny Gardner’s debut crime novel, A Negro and an Ofay…

  CHAPTER 1

  As he came to, with blurred vision, he detected light. It didn’t shine so much as claw at the brick walls, like the slender fingers of angry ghosts. An endless flight of concrete stairs coiled away from him. He was headed downward, though not by his own volition. He remembered drinking in a roadhouse joint. “Black Night” was playing on the juke. He understood how Charles Brown hated to be alone. A shot of corn. A friendly chippie. More corn. An offered dance. By the time Brown’s brother was in Korea, he heard hard words behind him. “Get your hands off my woman, red nigger.” The absolute wrong thing to say to him when he had been drinking. “Fuck you” this and that. A shove. The juke stopped. A fist for that fat, greasy, chicken-eatin’ mouth. He heard something behind him.

  Then black.

  His head hurt. He heard ringing. Assumed blood in his ears. A moment later, it sounded like jangling. He figured chains or keys. His hands were bound. His wrists were cold. He thought he was cuffed.

  Hoped he was cuffed.

  He had accommodated himself to incessant disorientation while in Europe, where he would climb out of his tank and find himself immersed in bullets and bombs and shouts and screams. In the din of war, he learned to disregard the senses that failed him and focus on his singular survival. That’s how Elliot Caprice returned from the Battle of the Bulge with all his limbs. And most of his wits.

  He shifted his feet.

  “Take it easy, boy.”

  Boy.

  “Shit, I’m in the bing.”

  “Shut your hole,” the fat jailer holding his feet said. He hadn’t seen the skinny jailer holding him by his arms until he rolled over after they dropped him on his face.

  “If you can talk, you can walk,” Skinny said.

  “Easy to see which one of y’all picks up the donuts in the mornin’,” said Elliot.

  “You are in the custody of the St. Louis County Sheriff. You’ll be detained until you can appear before a judge. Got it, smart guy?” Fatty said, just before he kicked Elliot in the ribs.

  Elliot rose to his feet. Skinny pushed him down the stairs.

  “Why am I here when I vaguely remember bein’ dry-gulched in Belleville?”

  “You had a police issue thirty-two on your person,” Skinny said. He produced a key ring. “Get comfortable. Make friends.”

  He shuddered as the cell door slammed behind him. It sounded eerily similar to the lid of his M18 Hellcat. The blast of body heat combined with the cold limestone felt just like ol’ Lucille’s air-cooled engine exhaust. He was rudely reminded of the involuntary smells men create when their glands respond to despair; sweat and filth, rushed through the air on panicked breaths. Elliot immediately turned back toward his jailers.

  “Look here, constable. How’s about my phone call?”

  “No calls on Sunday. Gotta wait until morning. Could be in front of the judge by then,” said Skinny.

  “That’d be too bad for you, halfie. Beatty is a hangin’ judge,” said Fatty.

  “I’m colored. They’re all hangin’ judges.”

  “Ya know, Nathan White,” said Fatty, as he looked at the docket. “You keep that attitude, you may not get in front of the bench. You’re in the Meat Locker, pally.”

  The infamous Meat Locker was the massive desegregated holding cell underneath the St. Louis County Courthouse. As broad as it was long, it was nearly standing room only. Only a few pendant lights hung overhead so inmates depended upon street light that passed through the barred, narrow windows above. Elliot wondered if anyone walking by knew what was down there, in the depths, stowed underneath St. Louis’s poor excuse for a palace of jurisprudence.

  Elliot was amazed at how, although drunk and disoriented, he managed to give his alias. Nathan was his middle name, the first name of the uncle who adopted him as a baby—Nathan “Buster” Caprice. White was for the most mysterious half of his racial heritage. He resolved to use only one name, unlike the litany of aliases of the con men he encountered during his time on the Chicago Police Department. A liar is only as good as his memory. Elliot’s life depended upon his deceptions.

  He shambled through the bodies of poor unfortunates forced to integrate until he found a cot on the other side of the cell. The galvanized bucket chamber pots had overflowed. He’d missed the only meal of the day. He was booked on a Sunday. No small blessing. It gave him time to figure on his situation. The gun needed an answer. He was once a Chicago beat cop. His record would be examined. After that, the guards drop a dime. Elliot somehow hangs himself in the shower. The screws split the bribe. Fatty takes the bigger cut.

  He laid on his back with nothing else to do but serenade himself with curses. One for drinking too much. Another for his weakness for the blues. A third for the corresponding weakness for big-legged women. Above all, he cursed himself for not playing the game well enough at Bradley Polytechnic. When life had him by the short hairs, he often fantasized about being a good student who graduated on the Dean’s list. Then he could have traded on his near-whiteness to land a job in the front office of some industrial farm in Illinois. Could’ve had a nametag. Maybe a desk. Dated some chippie from the secretarial pool. Perhaps that would have kept him from enlisting in Patton’s Third Army. He would have never followed every other discharged colored to the big city. He wouldn’t have taken the police academy test while drunk, just to show how much smarter he was.

  He wouldn’t have ruined his life.

  “Hey, yella. That’s my cot.”

  Elliot opened his eyes. A mountain of a man had taken a seat on a cot across from him. He was dark as midnight and stood well over six feet, as tall as he was broad. He had the scarred hands of a fighter. The lines in his face outlined a massive skull underneath.

  “Yeah, white boy. Get it up,” came a much slighter voice.

  “You a cannibal, big man?”

  “What’s that smart shit you say there?”

 
“How else you got a voice comin’ out ya ass, if’n you didn’t eat a fella?”

  A smallish man, no more than five feet tall, stepped from behind Mountain. If he felt better, Elliot would’ve laughed.

  “Watch it, light-skin,” the big man’s tiny flunky said.

  “Seems like y’all got yaselves a couple of cots already. Push on.”

  Elliot closed his eyes again, until he felt the jump of Mountain’s kick at the cot’s legs.

  “Ain’t nobody tell ya? They all my cots.”

  “You want a cot, you gotta ask us,” said Flunky.

  “Ovah there, jawin’ with the jailers, soundin’ like you Jimmy Cagney. You-dirty-rattin’ wit’ them ofays,” Mountain said. He assumed a fighting posture. “You ain’t white yet, high yella, but you keep tryin’. Now, up it.”

  “What yo’ name is, corn pone?”

  “This here is Frank Fuquay. Folks around our parts call him Big Black,” said Flunky.

  “What parts would those be?”

  “Yazoo County, Miss-sip!”

  “Yeah, Lawd!” Big Black said.

  “Is that so? My daddy was from around that way,” Elliot said.

  “Yo daddy, huh? No doubt sum’ cracker that took the long way home one night.”

  That was the last slur of his mixed race Elliot intended to hear. Big Black’s buddy was a short-stack, but it was still two against one. Uneven odds were nothing new to him, so he resolved to play it cool.

  “Tell you the truth, he was ’bout as inky as you.”

  “What you say?”

  “Yeah, boy. It took a whole lot o’ snowflake to dilute that much buck. You a tall drink of Darkest Africa, Big Black. Whycome you got no white in you at all? Yo granny wasn’t pretty enough for the slave foreman?”

  “I know you ain’t gonna take that, Frank!”

  “Shol’ ain’t!”

  Big Black’s swiftness would have startled Elliot, had he not set him up for it. From his lower position, he delivered a fierce heel kick to Frank Fuquay’s left knee, just above the patella. Most folks don’t know healthy joints have enough give in both directions to protect them from injury. Big Black found out the hard way. The glazed concrete floor, slick from the tears of the miserable, let him down. Frank fell forward. Elliot swerved out the way. Big Black hit the floor. Before his monstrous opponent could recover, Elliot knelt, grabbed him by the throat and placed his entire two hundred pounds behind the knee he slammed into Big Black’s chest. It made a loud sound. The sort a paddle makes when one beats the dust off a rug. The air rushed out of the bruiser’s lungs. Flunky stayed put, shouting commands.