THUGLIT
Issue Twenty-One
Edited by Todd Robinson
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in the works are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
THUGLIT: Issue Twenty-One
ISBN-13: 978-1522999782
ISBN-10: 1522999787
Stories by the authors: ©Nick Kolakowski, ©Rena Robinett, ©David Rachels, ©Dale Sandlin, ©Christopher Fulbright, ©Travis Richardson, ©William R. Soldan, ©Preston Lang
Published by THUGLIT Publishing.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the Author(s).
COVER ART by Roxanne Patruznick roxannepatruznick.com
Table of Contents
A Message from Big Daddy Thug
The Long Drive Home by William R. Soldan
Nut Lobby by Preston Lang
Being Fred by Travis Richardson
The Night They Burned Ol' Big Tex Down
by Christopher Fulbright
Virgin Sacrifice by David Rachels
Paradise by Rena Robinett
A Nice Pair of Guns by Nick Kolakowski
Mercy by Dale Sandlin
Author Bios
A Message from Big Daddy Thug
Ahoy-hoy, Thugliteers.
So, it's 60 degrees outside here in NYC.
Two days after Christmas.
It's snowing in Texas.
Hopefully, if you're reading this, we haven't devolved as a society into a Mad Max-like wasteland before the New Year.
Either way, I'm keeping the Lord Humongous mask that Lady Detroit got me for Christmas. That's not what she says it's for, but I know better…
IF you're reading this instead of burning and pillaging for guzzoline, let me be the first to wish you all a Happy New Year. And if you are currently spray-painting your teeth chrome and souping up your Dodge Neon for the road wars that will inevitably spring up around us…
Just walk away.
Give me your pump, the oil, the guzzoline, and the whole compound, and I'll spare your lives. Just walk away and we'll give you a safe passageway in the wastelands. Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror.
If you're not?
Well then, enjoy eight new kickass stories brought to you in the way that only Thuglit can. In the meantime, I better go figure out what the fuck else the Lord Humongous mask is good for.
…is that a cat o'nine tails?
Uh-oh.
IN THIS ISSUE OF THUGLIT:
Texas is on fire.
Better Fred than dead.
Hawaii ain't all leis and coconut bras.
The road can be lonely…and deadly.
Steal steal, bang bang.
Sometimes you feel like a nut…
When the bad man comes to town.
Get some!!!
SEE YOU IN 60, FUCKOS!!!
Todd Robinson (Big Daddy Thug) 12/27/2015
The Long Drive Home
by William R. Soldan
Before getting to the house, we pull off, and I try cleaning myself up in the smudged rearview. Don't want her to see me like this, road-weary, haggard. Only a three-day drive, give or take, but it's taken a toll. Going cross-country can do that to a man, anyone. That's why I picked up the kid in the first place. That and because I'm trying to change. I've never much cared for the company of other people and figured it was fate giving me that chance. Or maybe just dumb luck.
The second reason was the dog. Been a dog lover all my life and couldn't bear to see it that way.
It had just begun to rain when I saw him flying a sign near an on-ramp in Sacramento, one of those street kids you see everywhere out west—baggy clothes and matted locks the color of wet sand. He had a backpack and a sack of bones and fur sitting beside him on the shoulder of the road. His torn cardboard sign just said EAST, and I was looking at a long drive alone.
I pulled up in the Le Mans and waved him over.
"You goin' east?" he asked.
"I am. Come on."
He tossed his bag into the backseat, climbed in, then whistled. The scrawny brown dog, a mongrel, sprang onto his lap and between his legs. Curled up on the floor. "I'm Hopper, and this here's Maggie."
"Alan," I said, offering him my hand. We shook, and his palms were rough, his fingernails caked with dirt. He had the musk of someone who hadn't showered in a week or more.
"How far you goin'?" he asked.
"Ohio. What about you?"
"Chicago."
"Well," I said. "Guess it's your lucky day, then."
As we drove, the rain picked up, and by the time we started our climb over the Sierras it turned to sleet and finally snow. There was supposed to be upward of nine inches in the region the next day, and besides thundering semis, the drivers of which seemed to know no fear, the mountain road was free of traffic. A sign on the side of the road that read DONNER PASS stood out in sharp relief against the dark and towering pines, and for a little while I began to think maybe I should have bought tire chains. Soon we reached the crest, and the ride down got dicey until the snow turned back into sleet, then back into rain.
We needed to make it as far as possible before we stopped. If we didn't outrun the storm, the only options would be to go back, take I-5 into Southern California, go east from there, or wait until spring. And neither of these options worked for me.
"So what's in Chicago?" I asked him as the road eased out of the mountains.
"Family, just outside the city," he said.
"Long way from home. What are you doing out this way?"
"I was in Portland for a while, needed a change of scenery. I got some people in L.A., thought I'd try it out down there."
"So what made you change your mind?"
"Holiday season and all." He paused for a beat as the radio broke into static and I scanned the dial. "Besides," he said. "You know what they say about home."
I looked over at him.
"It's where they have to feed you and loan you money." He chuckled and a waft of rotten breath dispersed in the car like aerosol. "So how 'bout you?" he asked. "What's in Ohi-ya?"
"Same," I said. "Family. Wife and daughter."
"Ah, let me guess, traveling salesman."
"Not quite. It's just her folks are getting on, and she wanted to be closer. I stayed behind to wrap up some things."
"How long's it been?"
I thought about the last time I saw them. It had been just over a month, but it felt like forever ago. "Too long," I said.
We stopped in Reno to fuel up and get some food. Hopper was broke, which didn't surprise me, so I grabbed us some bags of chips and Slim Jims, a couple cans of Alpo for Maggie. Watching her scarf the brown mush from an old take-out container was pathetic but touching. "When was the last time she ate?" I could have asked the same thing about him, but the truth is I wasn't as concerned about that.
"Yesterday?"
"You don't know?"
"No, it was yesterday," he said. "We split a burger and fries."
When the food was gone, the dog smacked her chops and looked at me with the warm affection only a dog can give. She circled my legs, her tail an oscillating blur. I patted her haunches and ran my hand along her side, feeling the severity of the ri
bs, the way my fingers sank between them. She trembled beneath one palm while licking my other one. She loved me for eternity. And if she could speak, I imagined she'd tell me so.
"Easy now," Hopper said. "She might start thinking you're the boss." He laughed, but I sensed his wounded pride behind it, something just beneath the surface but connected to something deeper. Something I didn't much care for.
"Better keep moving," I told him.
We got back in the car, and a few minutes later we plowed into the Nevada desert, darkness on all sides and Reno's fading glow behind us.
When I woke up, Hopper was in the backseat, snoring, and Maggie was nuzzled in beside me up front. The rest area was a little brick box the same muted color as the surrounding rocks and desert. Two restrooms and a broken payphone in the middle of nowhere. The clouds above were laid out like stone slabs. Back the way we'd come, far off in the distance, the sky beyond the craggy spine of the Sierras was a seething gray mass. We'd gotten a good lead on the storm, but it was still coming our way.
After taking a piss and splashing some water on my face in the rank single-serve restroom, I let Maggie out of the car to go. "Hey, Hopper, you need to use the can?" I asked through the open door. He rolled over, groaned, and released a pent-up fart. "Guess not."
When Maggie finished marking her territory, I fed her the other can of Alpo I bought in Reno while the car aired out. Then she jumped in shotgun, and we put rubber to the road.
It was another forty-five minutes before I found a place to get coffee and more smokes, and when I came out of the store, Hopper was up and standing beside the car. "How far'd we make it?" he asked, lighting a wrinkled cigarette butt he'd picked up off the ground.
"About sixty miles, maybe." Looking up at the sky, I could see the sun trying to come through the clouds. "We're making good time."
"What time is it, anyway?"
"Just after eight. I'd like to make it over the Rockies by tonight."
"Man on a mission," he said, dragging the cigarette butt down to the end and tossing the smoldering filter on the pavement. "Cool. Hey, you got a buck?"
My singles were wrapped in larger bills I didn't want him to see, every last dollar I could scrape together. "There's some quarters in the ashtray," I told him.
He returned from the store, got in the car with a Snickers bar in his hand and something bulging in his coat. His arms looked bigger than they should have. "All right," he said, "let's hit it."
"What you got there?"
He removed two quarts of beer and grinned. "Just a little breakfast."
"Only a buck, huh?"
"I got the five-finger discount." His grin widened.
Not long before my wife and daughter left for Ohio, she and I had been arguing about my drinking, so I decided I'd dry out for a while before going to join them. She'd be happy to see it.
He began opening one of the bottles.
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't drink those in here."
He stopped. "Why, you on the wagon or somethin'?"
"Been a little while now," I said.
"How long's a little while?"
Two weeks, three days, I thought, looking at the clock in the dash. Thirteen hours. "Just a while," I said.
He seemed to take the hint and didn't press it further. "Okay, well, give me sec, then."
He put the beers back in his coat sleeves and got out, then hooked a leash to Maggie's collar and headed toward the side of the gas station, practically dragging her through the parking lot. They ducked around the corner.
"Better?" I asked when he returned about five minutes later.
He belched, the smell enough to make my eyes water. "Oh yeah."
As we turned back onto the road toward the Interstate, he said, "You know, I gotta say, you look like you could use one."
I punched in the car's cigarette lighter. "One what?"
He stared at my hands as I slid a smoke from the new pack with my teeth. When I went to light it, they were shaking a little.
"I'm fine," I said.
"Sure you are, no problem. Hey, you got another one of those?"
Northwest Utah was mile after mile of blasted saltpan and shimmering light. So much damn space to think through. Emptiness. Too much. So I got on the topic of what had brought us out here to begin with. "Work," I told him. "It's always about the work, am I right?"
"It's been a hot minute for me," he said, "so I wouldn't know."
No, I can't imagine you would.
The more I saw beyond the grit and stubble, listened to his comments about milking the family tit through the New Year, after which he'd thumb it down south where it's warm, I realized he couldn't have been more than twenty-five at the outside.
"When it comes to getting by," he said, "that's all any of us are doing, be it out here or stuck in some nine-to-five grind. Far as I'm concerned, I'd rather be floating than tied to a fucking post."
"I don't know," I said.
"Tell me this then—how'd it all work out for you, the work?"
I thought about it, thought about the jobs that just weren't there anymore, anywhere, and said, "I see your point."
"See?"
He bummed another one of my smokes and rambled on, ideas about the system, refusing to be a cog in the machine. Grand notions, I thought, left over from an earlier generation, when there was work to be had, a machine to be a part of. Refusing to do something suggested there was something to do. He clearly hadn't considered this, but the drone of his voice and the road beneath us, the radio, the wind, filled all that emptiness and thinking space for a while.
Once we made it through Salt Lake City, the sun had fallen behind the curve of the earth, and we pressed on into Wyoming. Places like Green River, Rock Springs, and shadow-soaked prairie gathering dark beyond the high beams. There and gone. The Le Mans powered over the Continental Divide without much strain as the night rolled over. Foothills and forests and a city called Rawlins.
We stopped there.
Hopper was hanging around the gas pumps, spare-changing and rooting through the garbage. He'd made a new sign: HOMELESS AND HUNGRY, PLEASE HELP, GOD BLESS. People took pity on him because of the dog. I had. Hands reached into pockets or purses, came out clutching green paper. Smiles, kind words. God Bless.
I thought about calling my wife and letting her know where I was, but my cell was dead and all the pay phones at the truck stop either had flattened keypads or busted receivers.
From the car, I could see Hopper must have had a good night when he came out of the store with a shrink-wrapped hoagie and a bag full of other things. And whatever he had stuffed in his sleeves or down his pants. For the most part, he'd turned out to be lousy company, and I'd considered going on without him a few times already. But when I looked at Maggie, so fragile and meek, I figured she'd had it hard enough for awhile.
He sat on the curb, unwrapped the sandwich, and ripped off a small piece for Maggie, which he tossed up and she snatched out of the air. Maybe he's all right, I thought. Then I watched as Maggie sat eagerly awaiting another piece, which he didn't give to her. Instead he waved it in front of her, teased her with it as her tongue hung dripping from her hungry jaws.
"Hungry dog protects better," he said when I walked over.
"It's also one that'll stray," I told him. "Sooner or later. Trust me on that."
He brushed off the comment with a wave of his hand and continued to dangle food before the dog's mouth.
"You should really stop that. I'm serious."
He looked at me for a moment like a defiant child, then back at the dog.
"Oh, I'm sorry, girl." He offered her the last bite of the sandwich, but just as she went for it, he pulled it back and shoved it in his own mouth. He walked past me toward the car, chuckling as he chewed. Maggie followed him, head down, sniffing at the ground for any lost morsel. She looked back at me once with sad, desperate eyes.
The car's temperature gauge had been creeping upward, so I took the nearest exi
t and followed a desolate two-lane highway several miles north into the center of a small town, the sign outside of which read: Dix, Nebraska, population 255. A stretch of fractured asphalt sprouting yellow weeds, vacant storefronts, a one-pump service station with a faded CLOSED sign on the door and a rust-mottled pickup beside it in the shade. Not much else. No cars lined the main street, and few sat along the narrow side roads. I had heard stories about entire communities disappearing overnight, and my first impression was that everyone had fled. Drought, maybe. I thought maybe they were watching us right then from behind the dusty shop windows. Then I remembered it was Sunday.
"Hot damn," Hopper said. "Bet the nightlife's killer."
"Church," I said.
"Say what?"
"It's Sunday. They're probably all in church."
The temperature needle was still climbing, so I pulled up along the curb in front of an auto parts store, turned off the ignition, and popped the hood. No smoke, but the coolant was low.
"Well, it ain't a leak," I said. "Could be the head gasket."
"Cars are not my forte. Might as well be speaking Chinese," he said.
The auto parts store was closed like everything else, but the engine needed to cool down, so we let it sit. Hopper took a bottle of Thunderbird out of his backpack and cracked the seal.
"Another five-finger discount?"
He tipped it my way and smiled. "You got that right. That bother you?"
"I didn't say that," I said, thinking this might be a good place to lighten my load.
THUGLIT Issue Twenty-One Page 1
