Shotgun Honey Presents: Locked and Loaded (Both Barrels Book 3)

by Owen Laukkanen

  Figuring she would shoot me as soon as she got a chance, I swerved hard to the right, throwing her against the door. At the same time, I pulled the piece Johnny had slipped me from where I had stuck it between the seats on my left.

  It was just like that scene in Scarface. She was dead and splattered all over the passenger side of the car. I felt bad for a moment but shit, she would have done me in a heartbeat. I never even knew her name. But, there was one thing I did know: that since I saw those damn walls of Florence State Penitentiary and first encountered the girl with the burgundy hair, everything had gone to shit. Then I thought, you stupid bitch—look at you now.

  I saw a dirt road that led off into the desert. After a quarter mile, I grabbed my duffle, left the car and started walking through the cold night thinking about those guard towers and razor wire. But with a little bit of luck, I’d make it to that Mexican beach. And, once there, the only thing I’d want to see shinning in the moonlight was the long black hair of a beautiful senorita.

  Cute As A Speckled Pup

  Under a Red Wagon

  Tony Conaway

  Please, sir,” she said. “I can see you’re in pain. Let me help.”

  I had just left a Starbucks and sat down in my truck when she came up to me. I’d gotten a taste for their coffee when I was in the Sandbox—yes, big military bases actually have Starbucks. I drink it hot, even on a 95 degree East Texas day. And I was trying to stay sober. Hence the coffee, when what I really wanted was some 120 proof paint thinner.

  If it had been some ass-clown who wanted to sell me an Herbalife joint-pain reliever, I would’ve snarled something like, Well, my dick ain’t gonna suck itself—you want to help with that? But this was a young girl, and a looker.

  I wasn’t going to curse her out until I’d eliminated the possibility of fucking her.

  She almost ruined it when she opened her mouth again. “Please, I’m... I’m just so filled with the power of Jesus. He wants me to help you, I know he does. Please, can I lay hands on your knee and pray for Him to heal you?”

  Now, I don’t believe in God, Buddha or Allah. But hey, I’m a guy. If a pretty girl wants to put her hands on my thigh, who am I to say no?

  I figure she’ll want to go inside the Starbucks to perform this party trick. But no, she surprises me again. I’m still sitting in the driver’s seat of my pickup, my feet outside on the parking lot. (My knee is bad enough that I have to grab that leg and swing it up into my truck.)

  And damned if she doesn’t kneel down right there, on the dirty tarmac of a hot parking lot! She’s wearing jeans, but still—kneeling in a parking lot?

  She goes right into her routine, laying her hands on my leg and praying up a storm, asking Jesus to heal me in a loud voice.

  It takes a lot to embarrass me, but a girl kneeling in front of me in public comes close. I look around to see if anyone is watching.

  And it turns out that everyone in the Starbucks is pressed up against the windows, watching…what? What do they think they’re watching?

  Then I realize that, from their angle, it looks like some girl is blowing me, right in the parking lot! Most of her body is hidden by the open door of my truck, so all they can see are her legs…and the top of her head. Which bobs up and down while she’s praying.

  I decide that, even if she doesn’t care about her reputation, I ought to. I pull her up, then stand myself.

  “Look, it’s too hot to do this out here. Let’s go inside where it’s cool.”

  “What, into Starbucks?” She notices the people staring, and waves at them, as if she’s about to sail off on a cruise. “I’m OK out here.”

  “Yeah, well, in my experience, Jesus only comes to places where it’s under 95 degrees.” I lock the door to my truck and start to guide her down the block.

  She smiles as if she’s talking to a none-too-bright child. “Silly. Jesus is everywhere.”

  “Trust me, I did two tours of Iraq. Jesus doesn’t live there anymore.”

  • • •

  I guided her up a few blocks and around the corner, to a place that called itself

  Ivan’s Icehouse. Of course, it was no more a genuine, old time Texas Icehouse than it was a church. It had electricity and indoor bathrooms, both of which disqualified it from being an actual icehouse. But it was open at this hour, and we’d walked just far enough in the summer heat to work up a thirst.

  She demurred when I tried to guide her inside. “I—I can’t. I’m 20 years old—I’m not old enough to go into a bar.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Anyone asks, tell them you’re married to me.” That’s one of our quaint Texas customs—an underage person could drink if she was married to and accompanied by someone aged 21 or over. They’ve probably changed that law, but I also knew that they didn’t care that much about proof of age in this place. Not for pretty girls.

  I’d been sober for almost two months, so it irritated me that Bob the Bartender showed no surprise to see me back. He just nodded and went back to watching candlestick bowling on the bar TV. Even with satellite TV, there are hours when your choice of sports is limited to an obscure pastime out of Boston.

  I sat her at a table then got us some drinks. I figured she wasn’t an experienced drinker, so I ordered her a Long Island Iced Tea. That’s a potent drink with several types of alcohol, yet doesn’t really taste like it. Myself, I downed a shot of Jack Daniels at the bar. If I were a religious man, I would’ve shouted “Hallelujah” when that shot of Jack hit my gullet after two long dry months. I got a bottle of Shiner bock to chase it with.

  She wanted to get started on her faith healing of my knee, but I convinced her to take a few swallows first, while I enjoyed my cold beer.

  As soon as I finished, I left her to sip her Long Island Ice Tea, and I headed back to the pool room. I figured Denny the Weasel would be back there. I was right.

  I caught his eye, then nodded towards the men’s room. He smiled and joined me in the none-too-large bathroom.

  “I need the best painkiller you’ve got.”

  “Oxy?” he asked.

  “Oxycontin or oxycodone?

  He held up a baggie with six oxycodone caplets. Solid pills, so you couldn’t open them to snort the drug. Three day’s dose for normal person. Probably only last me two.

  “How much?”

  I’d just cashed my disability check, so I had enough. I realized that was being wildly optimistic, that I would be able to spend two days in bed with this chick. Or maybe I was thinking that, if I was going to fall off the sobriety wagon, I might as well do it in a big way.

  I paid the Weasel, put one pill in my mouth and chewed it. Oxycodone is a time release drug, made to be swallowed whole, but it works faster if chewed. I washed it down with a handful of water from the bathroom sink. I’d learned how to dry-swallow pills in the Army, but I never liked it.

  Sometimes I had nightmares where I was still in-country, lying under camo, waiting to ambush some ragheads. In the dream, it’s time to take my anti-malaria meds. I’m trying not to move or make noise, so I dry-swallow the pill. But it gets stuck in my craw, and I can’t keep myself from coughing, which alerts the enemy—you get the picture.

  So I don’t like dry-swallowing.

  Before limping back to the girl, I went to the bar and got two more beers. There weren’t many guys in the bar at that hour, but one wannabe cowboy was already talking to her, trying to pick her up. I returned to our table and chased him away. Everyone in town knew I was a crazed vet who had killed more than my share of axis-of-evildoers overseas, so not many people were willing to stand up to me.

  I sat. “There. It’s good to be out of that heat, ain’t it?”

  “Yes.” She looked around. “I’ve never been in a place like this before.”

  What I wanted to say was, You’ve never been in a place where every man there wanted to fuck you? Sure you have. You just didn’t realize it.

  Instead I said, “Inside a bar? You must have seen one
on television. Or in movies.”

  “No. My parents were awful strict. No TV, no movies. Until they sent me to the Bible College at the edge of town, I’d never even been away from home.”

  Well, that explained a lot. I felt the oxy kicking in, so I figured it was time to get down to business. “You want to do that laying hands on my knee now?”

  “Here? I suppose.”

  And she kneeled in front of me and started praying again. Everyone in the bar was staring, but they were staring at her before anyway.

  When she finished, she said, “How does that feel?”

  I stood, slowly. Thanks to the oxy, I could move my knee as if there was nothing wrong with it. I walked around the circular table without limping. She was thrilled. I figured she would be.

  When I made a complete circuit of the table, I took her in my arms and kissed her.

  Yes, she’d just downed a strong drink. But it was her excitement at healing my knee that made her kiss me back. And follow me out of the bar, back to my truck, over to my place, and into my bed.

  Praise Jesus, indeed.

  • • •

  The next morning I stumbled out of bed around 8:30 am. It was already over 90 degrees, Fahrenheit. I’d brought two six-packs of beer last night, but they were gone already. So I made do with coffee, and toasted to the fact that I was back in a country where they used Fahrenheit instead of Celsius to tell you how uncomfortable it was.

  Sarabeth—that was her name—bounded out of the shower naked. That was just one of the revelations she’d discovered last night: that it was fun to walk around bare-assed. She had the body for it. Apparently her parents had considered nudity to be one of the seven-hundred-and-nine deadly sins.

  I continued to stare out the kitchen window at the tangle of weeds that used to be my late mother’s garden. But I couldn’t ignore the 20-year-old girl who wrapped her still-damp arms around me and rubbed her tits into my back.

  “Good morning! Good morning! Good morning! Isn’t it a beautiful day! Did you make me coffee?”

  “I reckon it is. And no, this is one of them one-cup coffee-makers. You can pick what you want to drink—coffee, tea, even hot chocolate.” I took a box of K cups out of the cabinet. The teas and the chocolate had come with the coffee, and I hadn’t touched them since I bought the damn thing two years ago. But I don’t think those things go bad. I’d used up all the coffee that came with it, but I had a bowl with an assortment of Starbucks and Dunkin Donut coffee K cups. Folks in AA take their coffee even more seriously than soldiers.

  She rummaged excitedly through the containers. “Oooh, hot chocolate! My Grammy used to make me hot chocolate.”

  Grammy, I thought. I’m fucking a hardbodied girl barely out of her teens, who used to have a Grammy. Is this a great country or what?

  • • •

  We spent most of that day fucking. Sarabeth wasn’t a virgin, exactly. But apparently, yesterday was the first time she liked having sex. I figured she’d been molested by some assistant pastor or had a quick tumble with a clueless prom date in the back of a Buick. I didn’t ask. It’s hard enough to get women to shut up, even without asking them questions.

  Thankfully, I was unemployed, so I didn’t have to call out sick. We did go out for some food and—of course—more alcohol. I spent what was left of my disability check on six cases of beer and a dozen different bottles of liquor, so she could try them and see which ones she liked.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that she liked the sweet stuff: rock and rye, amaretto, and Bailey’s Irish Cream. None of which is cheap.

  I got her good and drunk that evening, just so I could get some rest. I’m not a teenager, and I was having more sex than I’d had in ages.

  When she was drunk and snoring on the bed, I staggered out and went to where I usually sleep. Call them nightmares, call them PTSD, call them night terrors—I have these episodes where I wake up and I’m back in the Sandbox.

  My wife left me because she was afraid to sleep next to me. She said that she was afraid I’d hurt her.

  Or at least that’s what she said at the divorce hearing. Who knows with women?

  But, when I have these bad dreams, I sleep in the closet. I’m more comfortable there, waking up in the dark. It’s small enough so I can reach out and touch a wall on all four sides.

  I don’t have a dog any more, but now I understand why dogs like to sleep in a doghouse that’s just big enough for them to lie down in.

  But I still had to drink most of a bottle of Canadian to get to sleep.

  • • •

  There’s no justice in this world. The next morning I was hung over, while Sarabeth was as chipper as ever.

  “Good morning! Good morning! Good morning!” She wrapped herself around me from behind. “Why are there so many books? There’s a full bookcase on almost every wall.”

  I may talk like a redneck, but that doesn’t mean I’m ignorant. But I wasn’t about to explain that to Sarabeth when I was hung over. Right then even my nostrils hurt when I inhaled.

  “Book club,” I whispered.

  “Book club? There must be two, three thousand books!”

  “Once you join, they’re hard to get out of.”

  “Okey-dokey,” she said. “Well, if you can find room for me somewhere in your library, I think it’s time I moved my stuff here.”

  The truth was, that was the last thing I wanted right now. Why can’t they ever just fuck you, then go home? But it was easier to give in then argue.

  • • •

  Three hours later I was back in the bathroom of Ivan’s Icehouse. I had just come from the bank, where I’d cashed in my lone CD. I needed money for more oxy.

  “Need anything else?” asked Denny the Weasel.

  “Yeah.” I hated to admit it, but I was thirteen years older than Sarabeth. I needed some help to keep up with her in bed. “Got any Viagra?”

  “Shit,” said Denny. “The average population of this town is, like, ninety. Everyone young gets out of town. ‘Course I got Viagra, and Cialis, too. You bonin’ that pretty young blonde I heard about?”

  “Yeah. She’s got my truck now, loading it up with her belongings from Bible College.”

  “You ain’t helpin’ her move?”

  “She said her roommate would be happy to help, just to get rid of her. I figure if I step foot on sanctified ground, I’d burst into flame.”

  “Huh! Like a vampire going into church? You that bad a man, Able?”

  “No,” I said as I paid him. “I’m worse.”

  Afterwards I nursed a few beers until Sarabeth got back. She sauntered into the bar, looking happier than ever.

  She greeted me with a kiss fit to suck the fillings out of my teeth.

  “Hey, you got any money on you?” she asked. “I need a few things while we’re here in town.”

  I though about my rapidly-diminishing savings. “As long as it includes a few cases of beer.”

  • • •

  Next morning I was hung over again. I sat on my front porch in my robe, pretending there was a breeze. I watched a robin search for worms on the stony, sun-dried plain that passed for my lawn. When I joined the military, East Texas got thunderstorms every day in the summer, and this lawn was like a jungle. When I was discharged, we were in a drought. Now it looked too much like Iraq for comfort.

  The robin scratched at the hardpack soil with one foot. The scritch was audible. It hurt my hung-over ears.

  “G’won, get outa here!” I croaked. The robin ignored me. Cocky motherfucker. Robins think they own your property. I looked around for something to throw at him.

  When I’m sober, I kept my little house squared away, like a good soldier. Now, after just a few days of drinking, there was crap everywhere. I found a scuffed workshoe on the porch railing, and threw it at the robin.

  At that very moment, a man stepped around the corner. He showed no surprise that there was a shoe flying at him. He caught it effortlessly.

&nb
sp; “And good morning to you, too, Able.”

  Shit. It was my AA sponsor, Cornthwaite. He probably parked on the street so he could sneak up on me.

  “Didn’t see you there, Cee. I was tossing that at a snake, over yonder.”

  He nodded as if what I said made sense, then came up on the porch. He sat down across from me, without asking. The shoe hr placed just outside the front door, like this was a fancy hotel that shined your shoes if you left them out.

  “Haven’t seen you at the last few meetings, Able. You haven’t returned my calls, either. Thought I’d look you up.”

  “Yeah. Been busy. Got a new girlfriend.”

  “She named Margarita? Because I can smell the tequila on you from here.”

  “She’s real enough. She decided she wants to take up jogging. I bought her a new set of workout duds yesterday.”

  “Well, Able, you know that we don’t recommend that you start any new relationships for your first year of sobriety.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve got to get yourself right first, before you can handle getting involved with someone else.”

  “Yup.”

  At that’s when Sarabeth came jogging back, her new tee-shirt clinging to her. Sarabeth—and the look on Cornthwaite’s face when he realized she was with me—was probably one of the top ten finest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

  “God damn!” said Cornthwaite. “She is cute as—”

  And he uttered some stupid expression they say in rural Florida. I don’t remember what it was. But then, some things I try to forget.

  • • •

  After introducing Sarabeth to Cornthwaite, they went inside. I stayed out for awhile. As much as the sight of Sarabeth took my breath away, her constant chatter wearied me. Let Cee talk to her for awhile.

  For no good reason I looked for the other workshoe, the mate to the one I threw at Cornthwaite. I finally found it in the mailbox. Then I took both shoes inside.

  I was not surprised to find that Sarabeth was doing most of the talking.