THUGLIT Issue Eleven

by Matthew McBride

  The saleswoman cleared out the cases faster than Larry preferred. He took the duffel bag from her shaking hands, at a loss for what to say and reluctant to go. He was supposed to leave as soon as possible, get in and get out, not waste time. But Larry couldn't help himself—it felt too good to be in charge.

  With a wave of his gun, he directed the saleswoman to the last case at the end. "Gimme that one too," he said, pointing at a ring that more or less looked like the last ring he had been shown a few days earlier. The saleswoman looked puzzled, but gave him the ring, and Larry stuck it in his pocket, took a bow, and left.

  Larry soon realized he was not the only one capable of going off script. The plan had been for him to meet Frankie's boy in a cornfield north of town, ditch the car, and then be dropped off at a camping area where Larry had stashed his truck that morning. But when he got to the cornfield, there were three men there, not one, and none of them were friendly.

  "Everything went perfect," Larry said, holding up the duffel bag.

  "Get in the car," the driver told him. Larry sat in the back next to a skinny black guy who stared out the window, ignoring him. As they drove away, the fat white man in the front passenger seat turned around and took the duffel bag. It galled Larry to watch him paw through the jewelry, as if the man had any claim to it.

  The fat man zipped the bag up, apparently satisfied, and told him, "Gimme the gun."

  "Why?" Larry asked.

  "Because you used it in a robbery. We got to get rid of it. We'll take care of that for you."

  That made no sense to Larry—he hadn't fired the gun and he didn't see how the police could use it against him. Still, he knew he was inexperienced and he did not want to look like a rookie. So Larry gave him the gun and said, "I usually take care of that myself, but I guess you guys can handle it."

  They drove in silence for about thirty minutes. Larry was lost in thought, replaying the robbery in his mind. When he glanced out the window, he realized they were headed in the wrong direction.

  "Change of plans," the driver said. "Frankie thought it made more sense for you to hide out in this place we got set up for you. That way, when we get the money we can split it right then, instead of having to wait around until you show up."

  So far, everything about these guys pissed Larry off. He pulled off a perfect robbery and people were still making decisions for him, like he was a nobody.

  "Guess that's alright," Larry said, pretending to weigh the idea. "But from now on Frankie needs to run this stuff by me first."

  No one responded. After a few more minutes, they turned down a long dirt road that Larry did not recognize. About a mile in, the car stopped in front of a dilapidated farm house surrounded by cornfields. Larry got out and looked at the house, the fat guy and the black man standing next to him. The front porch did not look sturdy enough to step on and a dead raccoon lay next to the door, covered in maggots. Every window he could see was broken. No other houses were in sight.

  "I'm not staying here."

  The driver looked at the two other men, then back to Larry. "Yeah, we know. We got a tent for you in the woods behind the house. They'll take you to it."

  Larry walked with the fat guy and the black man through the high weeds behind the house and into the woods. The mosquitoes were thick and the air was humid and he wondered how long it would take to fence the jewelry. Then they came to a small clearing and he saw a shovel stuck in the ground.

  "Damn, boy. You slow as shit," the fat guy said. Both men had guns out now, though the black man still would not look at him.

  "They was right, you too dumb to see this coming," the fat guy said. "Start digging, we got places to be."

  Larry grabbed the shovel, feeling its weight. His mouth was dry and the cicadas thundered in his head. He knew if he started digging he would die. The fat man leaned against a tree, smirking at him, beyond his reach. The black man was closer, his gun pointed at the ground. When Larry glanced at him, he looked away, reluctant to witness Larry's fate. On instinct, Larry threw the shovel at him the moment he turned his head. It struck him in the chest and he staggered back. In that moment, Larry tackled him, trying to drive him deep into the ground. The black man was stunned, the fall knocking the air from his body. Larry ripped the gun away, but the man rolled on top of him quickly, pinning the gun between their chests. Larry tried to head-butt him but failed, then bit his nose and shook his head violently, like a dog trying to kill a rabbit. The black man screamed and pulled back, giving Larry just enough space to free the gun and shoot him in the throat.

  In the spray of blood, Larry pushed the black man off of him, scrambled to his feet and ran. He could hear the roar of the fat man's gun and expected at each step for everything to go black as a bullet entered his brain. But when he was hit, it was in the back of his arm, not his head, and he felt a blinding flash of pain, so powerful that it knocked him to the ground and he rolled down the hill. He crawled under a group of pine trees and listened to the fat man yelling for the driver to come help. Larry was empty handed, the gun lost somewhere on the hill. The pain in his arm left him breathless, but he knew if he wanted to live he needed to run now, while they were regrouping.

  Larry said a quick prayer and then slipped out of the pines and ran as quietly as he could away from the sounds of the other men.

  Near midnight, Larry emerged from a cornfield onto Harlan Road, less than a mile from Tammy's parents' house. He had not heard sounds of pursuit for several hours. During his escape, he had wrapped his shirt around his arm to stop the bleeding, but the shirt had fallen off at some point, lost in the woods or fields behind him. He stood bare-chested, covered in blood, looking like one of Clyde's skinned squirrels.

  Before he went on, he paused, wondering if he were crazy. He knew he was in a bad spot, that he should hole up somewhere until his arm was better. But he felt driven to see Tammy. So he limped off in her direction.

  When he arrived, the lights were on in the living room. He looked through a window and saw Tammy asleep on a couch, a smile on her face. He knocked on the door and then realized he had no idea what to say. Before he solved that problem, Tammy opened the door. Her smile was gone, he noticed.

  "Larry?"

  "Baby, I'm so glad to see you. You have no idea."

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I needed to see you. We got lots to talk about. Aren't you gonna let me in?" Before she answered, he slid past her into the small hallway, careful not to touch anything with his bloody body.

  When she saw him in the light, she gasped. "What happened to you?"

  "It's a long story. But it's got a good ending."

  "Are you hurt? Is this because of what happened with Clyde last week?"

  "No, listen. Just stop asking questions for a minute. I got something to ask you."

  "If you're in trouble or someone's after you, then you got to leave. I'm serious. Maybe I should call the police."

  "Don't talk crazy. Listen for a second—I been thinking we should get married."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I got the ring already." Larry pulled the ring from his pocket and Tammy could not have looked more horrified if he had ripped his beating heart from his chest and showed it to her.

  "We're not getting married. We're over, Larry. I've been with Eddie for two months now." Hearing that was not as painful as being shot, but it wasn't much fun either.

  "You been seeing Eddie for two months."

  "I thought you knew."

  Something clicked in his mind. "You didn't even move out until a month ago."

  She shrugged, looked him in the eye. "I know that."

  Larry rubbed his bloody face, wondering how much effort Tammy was worth.

  "You're making a mistake," he said at last, trying to sound indifferent, as if he were pointing out an error to a stranger.

  "I don't think so."

  "You are, that's a fact. You'll find Eddie don't quite measure up to me."

  She
laughed at and then said, in that serious tone he hated, "Don't get any blood on the door."

  Back again on Harlan Road, Larry walked underneath a starless sky, towards his brother's house. He patted the ring in his pocket, checking again to make sure it was still there. He had considered throwing it as far as he could into the cornfield along the road, but had thought better of it. It was evidence, after all, that Clyde had been wrong: Larry could pull off a successful robbery.

  Ofrenda

  by J. David Gonzalez

  Dulce Ibanez shuts the bedroom door behind her and shuffles towards the dining room, making her way in the dark. The pendulum clock chimes a quarter to three and Dulce finds the noise bothersome. She silences the clock by the bob, then cuts the air conditioner and the ceiling fan and strains her ears to listen. She's humpbacked and skeletal-skinny, her hair roughed up from a bad night of sleep. Her tongue lolls around in her mouth, searching for moisture. From the pocket of her housecoat she removes a set of candles, lights them and places them on the dining table. Also on the table: a wood bowl layered in mint and yam root, and a headless duck, its feathers intact.

  She walks into her kitchen, a cramped formica cavern unaltered since the day she bought the house, late in the summer of 1970. A Frigidaire refrigerator, a hooded electric stove, a wire basket loaded with fruit, onions and tubers, and a window that looks out onto the street. She squints through the blinds and sees streetlights, a pair of garbage bins and something she guesses is a dog. "Mierda," she says, her eyes have turned to such shit.

  She sets a large pot of water to boil on the stove, adds a squirt of soap, then warms a saucepan of milk and brings it with her into the yard.

  Outside, the night buzzes with cicadas and telephone wires. Palm fronds rattle in the wind like bones. Like most yards in Little Havana, Dulce's is small, surrounded by chain link, and suitable for fruit trees, stray excuses for pets, and a clothesline. Recessed in the corner is the toolshed her son Dagoberto built. It wasn't long ago he planted a pair of guava trees. He said he'd help keep them and for a while he actually kept his word. Now, the strain of bending to pick them up is too great for Dulce. Instead of jam and candied shells, the guavas go soft and rot and fill the air with an inescapable stink.

  Dulce walks across the yard towards the clothesline. She crouches beneath a stiff towel and sits in a patio chair alongside a fence overrun by vines. A siren mourns across Flagler Street. The air, soup-thick around her, is laced with the smell of night-blooming jasmine and cigarette smoke.

  "Already you're smoking?" asks Dulce. "You haven't even said hello yet."

  "I grew lonely waiting," says Milagro, her voice so full of rocks you could scrape your knees on it. "What's a young girl to do?" she says. She's obese, Milagro is, covered in sweat and sitting on a backup generator, a twelve thousand watt beast. She wears rollers in her hair, last night's makeup in the craters of her face. Milagro Flores. A stage name she adopted as a showgirl in Havana. Those were different times. And she was something else.

  "You? Young? You haven't been young since the day you were born," says Dulce. "Let's get this over with."

  "That's what I've always loved about you," says Milagro. "Nothing matters quite like the business at hand." She heaves herself off the generator and extends two tin mugs through a hole in the fence.

  Dulce divides the milk and steam curls in the space between them. Milagro places the mugs on the generator and reveals a small metal pitcher. Dulce nods and Milagro pours a dark shot of coffee into each of the drinks.

  "To what do we toast?" says Milagro. She spits the cigarette onto the ground and leaves it smoking in a pile with the rest.

  "To forty years of not killing each other," says Dulce.

  "At least not yet anyway," says Milagro.

  The women sip their coffee, careful not to scorch their lips.

  "Delicious," says Dulce.

  "A grand tradition," says Milagro. She gets a better look at Dulce. "Dear God, vieja. You used to respect our meetings. Are you not wearing your teeth?"

  Dulce shakes her head, helpless. "It's these goddamn gums of mine. They're just shot to shit. I went to the curandero for a healing and still nothing. I don't know how much more of this I can take. If it gets any worse, I might start thinking of seeing a dentist."

  "To tell you the truth," says Milagro, "you look sweet this way. Like someone's doting grandmother. An absolute angel of an abuela. It's the way your mouth caves in. Your chin too. Without your teeth your face goes soft. Might even make someone feel sorry for you. Me? No. Not me. But someone."

  Dulce smiles, shakes her head at her neighbor. "I didn't come here to talk about my teeth, and I sure didn't come here for your compassion. So tell me, why exactly am I here? I'm tired, and the air is wet. If I stay here any longer I'll get sick and at my age, that's two steps from the grave."

  "You know what your problem is, you're too damn skinny. That's why you're always cold. Look at me. You think I get cold?" Milagro slaps her chest. "Besides, it's unnatural to be that skinny. It's bad for you. I'll just ask you one simple question and then you can go back inside where it's warm. Tell me vieja, where's Dagoberto?"

  "Dago?" says Dulce. "I don't have the slightest idea where he is. Why?"

  Milagro crosses her giant arms across her giant body and looks every bit the fortress. "Don't lie to me, Dulce. You've always been a terrible liar."

  "Mi'jita, we've known each other how long now? You're my oldest and dearest friend."

  "Friend?"

  "Oldest, dearest something. The point is, why would I lie to you?"

  "Because Dago is in trouble," says Milagro. "Real trouble this time. And I think you know it."

  Dulce sets her cup down. "You're right," she says. She dabs her forehead with a small cloth and shoves it back into her housecoat. "This weather is a nightmare. Why don't we ever talk inside?"

  "Because it smells like cat piss and rotting fruit out here and I always assumed you were comfortable in your element. Let me ask you again. Do you know where your son is?"

  The moon, fat in the sky, filters through the branches and dapples the old lady in light. She shakes her head, purses her mouth. "I can't say that I do," says Dulce.

  Milagro huffs, lights another cigarette. "When was the last time you saw him then? Will you answer me that?"

  "Eight, maybe nine months ago. My mind isn't what it used to be."

  "Bullshit," says Milagro. "You're turning eighty-two next week. I've known you since I was seventeen. What is that now? Almost sixty years? And the entire time I've known you, you've never forgotten a single payment. Not a one. Not who paid it. Not who collected it. And you can't tell me the last time you saw your own son?"

  "He's a son of a bitch," says Dulce. She raises her voice. Her face hardens. Anger and resentment steel her. "Why should I know where he is? He's the one that should be keeping tabs on me. His mother. Eighty-two years old. And not eighty-two easy years, mind you. No. These are eighty-two shit years you're looking at. They've left me in tatters they have. And what? Does Dago ever call? No. Does he ever visit? No. Does he take me to the mall, to the movies, to the fucking park for Christ's sake? No. He doesn't even help me with my groceries.

  "My God, you should have seen how I fell last week. All my food, all over the floor at the supermarket and me, laying there, crying like some kind of stupid animal, thinking I broke my hip, my back, my knees, my I don't know what. Can you believe it? Me? On the floor of a fucking supermarket? Fuck Dago. I shit on Dago. Never again will I go to him for anything. In fact, I asked the Nicaraguan across the street if he could help me with my groceries. I even offered to pay him and you know what he said, he said it'd be an honor to help a woman of my stature. There's a real man. Not my turd of a son. You ask me the last time I saw Dago? You ask me where Dago is? I ask you, why in hell should I know?"

  Milagro leans back on the generator, breathes through her nose like a bull. "Victor is not happy."

  "We wouldn't be out here if
he was."

  "That's right. You see, I told him you still have some sense in you," says Milagro.

  "That doesn't mean I know where Dago is."

  Milagro pulls at her face in frustration, extinguishes her cigarette. "When was the last time you spoke to Victor?" she asks.

  "Friday."

  "Two days ago?"

  "No."

  "Last Friday? You left your money at Victor's for over a week." Milagro scoffs. "That's not like you, Dulce."

  "I've been busy."

  "Doing what?"

  "I'm thinking of moving," says Dulce.

  "A little old to be retiring, don't you think?"

  "Just imagine," says Dulce. "A nice place on the beach. High up, like on the twentieth or thirtieth floor. One of those buildings on South Beach with a doorman and a view of the ocean. Somewhere I could really kick my feet up. Maybe even get a bird. I've always wanted a bird. The kind you can teach to say things like, 'go to hell' or 'I shit on your mother.' Maybe, if I got really bored, I might even teach it a joke or two, like old Alvarez Guedes routines. Wouldn't that just be incredible?"

  "I'd hate to say I'd miss you," says Milagro. "Has Victor called?" she asks, removing another cigarette.

  Dulce turns to look at her home as if half-expecting to see him standing beneath the gloam of the porch light. She looks to Milagro and nods her head yes. "But I didn't answer," she says.

  Milagro takes a moment, shakes her head then lights the cigarette. "Let me save you the suspense," she says. "Had you answered, Victor would've explained that Dago, your son, shot and killed Manrique Estevez last night. You know who Manrique Estevez is, right?"

  "El Manco?"

  "That's right. That one-armed piece of shit. Gambled himself straight into the grave. Not that anyone finds that surprising. Thing is, it happened at the One-Eyed-Cat, and that backroom is Victor's. You know this. I know this. And everyone who goes there looking for action knows this. Including Dago. So Victor asked me to talk to you. He knows you and I have an arrangement that goes back to when we were shits thinking we could run all of Havana's numbers ourselves. And it worked, Dulce. Our arrangement. It worked there and it's worked here. But here, it's worked because of Victor.