Pistol Poets

by Victor Gischler

  “I’m listening,” Morgan said.

  “Not now,” Reams said. “Got to go. Got to keep an eye out for Pritcher. Can’t stay in one spot too long.”

  “Reams-”

  He’d already hung up.

  Morgan returned to the table. “Sorry.”

  “You’ll let it go out.” Jones pointed at the cigar.

  “Right.” He stuck it back in his mouth, resuscitated the glowing tip with sharp puffs.

  “You know what that jar poem made me think of?”

  Morgan kept puffing but arched his eyebrows.

  “When I was ten years old, my father took me camping way back in the Catskills,” Jones said. “It wasn’t like it is now. You could find a forest, go back in there for days.”

  “Did you fish?”

  “No. Just hiking. I liked to build campfires, cook over the wood coals. For some reason a hot dog tastes better in the woods. You get away from the city and you can really see the stars.”

  “I like to fish,” Morgan said. “Supposed to be some good trout streams over the line into Arkansas.”

  “I’m in the middle of a fucking story here.”

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “Anyway I’m hiking pretty far. Dad and me had been hiking all day and it was starting to get dark and we’re way gone into the woods, deeper than we’ve ever been before. I’m thinking maybe we’re walking in a spot where nobody’s ever been before. Maybe we’re the first people ever. You ever think that when you were a kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I’m thinking maybe Indians had been here, but other than that we were the first. I guess even at ten I thought maybe that wasn’t true, but a ten-year-old can think anything. That’s the genius of being ten. Anything can be true. And it’s a split second-literally the next second-after I think this that I take one more step and see a beer bottle, a Pabst.”

  Morgan started to laugh, shut himself up.

  The old man shook his head. “The whole forest arranged itself around that beer bottle, my whole life. Everything I thought. Like that jar on a hill in Tennessee. Seems dumb, I guess. But I was mad about that bottle for a long time. Not because of littering. I don’t give a shit about that. Because it took away what it felt like to be ten.”

  Morgan puffed the cigar. The old man closed his eyes and smelled it.

  “Maybe I talk too much,” Jones said.

  “No. I know what you mean.”

  “What about you?” Jones scooted forward in his chair. “Something’s gnawing on you. I can tell.”

  “I’m supposed to get one of my students to do a poetry reading in a week, but I think he’s skipped out on me.”

  “Kids.” Jones waved his hands like that covered the whole subject.

  “What about you, Mr. Jones? Ever read your poems in front of people?”

  Jones said, “You ever drop your britches and wave your pecker at a passing bus?”

  twenty-three

  Moses Duncan drove his pal Eddie home from the county hospital. They’d told the doctor that the broken window which caused the dozens of cuts on Eddie’s face had been shattered by a hard-thrown baseball. Eddie’s entire face was wrapped in gauze like a mummy’s, only slits for his eyes and nostrils. His lips had been badly lacerated, so he didn’t have a mouth hole.

  “Mmmmph. Mmm mmmph,” Eddie said.

  “Don’t you sweat it, Eddie.” Duncan gripped the steering wheel tight. He still burned with hatred, the image of Big John’s body sprawled in the dust branded on his mind’s eye. His side stung too from the slight buckshot wound. “We’ll get that coon and his buddies too. We’ll go home and get the shotguns and we’ll find that son of a bitch.”

  “Mmmph.”

  “You leave that to me,” Duncan said. “Not many black guys around here. Hell, we’ll just cruise up and down every street until we find him if we have to. Don’t worry. We’ll get him.”

  “Mmmmph umph mmmmph.”

  “Damn straight.” Duncan wondered how he understood Eddie so well. “You know I think I’d of been a good dentist. I could probably understand folks even with my hands in their mouths.”

  “Mmmph Ummm Mmmph.”

  Duncan frowned. “No need to get nasty, Eddie. Just ain’t called for.”

  “Mmph.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Red Zach sat in the back of his limo. He was pissed. Why couldn’t it just be easy for once?

  Spoon sat across from him, one of Zach’s big goons uncomfortably close. Spoon looked drained, broken, and scared. He kept his eyes on the floor of the car.

  Okay, Zach had to get in character, so he could play hard-ass with Spoon. Not for the first time, Zach supposed he needed to train some middle-management personnel, a couple of good men to do all this bruiser work. Zach could lounge on the beach in Antigua and hear all about it via cell phone or e-mail. The key to an operation like this was to get it on autopilot as much as possible. Zach wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the dirty work.

  But until then, if he wanted shit done right, he’d have to do it himself.

  “Your boy Harold killed one of mine in that trailer,” Zach said. “You don’t think I can just let that go, do you?”

  Spoon shook his head.

  “Where’s he going now?”

  “I don’t know, Red. Shit, he don’t tell me nothing.”

  “That’s what you said the first time,” Zach said. “Once we helped you remember, you told us about Harold coming to Oklahoma.”

  Spoon’s hand went to his split lip. “I don’t know, man. You got to believe me.”

  Zach smiled. “Okay, I believe you.” He nodded to the goon.

  Moving fast, the goon looped the length of piano wire over Spoon’s neck, yanked. Spoon’s eyes bulged. His tongue popped from his mouth. His whole face bunched tight like the last bit of toothpaste being squeezed from the tube.

  Zach flipped open his cell phone and thumbed the speed-dial. “This is Red. I need all the boys down here right now.”

  Spoon kicked. The goon hanging tight. Blood from Spoon’s throat.

  Zach wasn’t paying attention anymore. “Don’t waste my time asking why. Get the fuck down here and make sure everyone’s packing heat. We going to make an example.”

  Spoon went slack, eyes wide. The body slumped to the car floor.

  Zach folded the cell phone closed, looked at the body and the goon and the blood. “Goddammit. You got blood on the seat. Shit.”

  The goon hung his head, looked sheepish.

  Deke Stubbs had found a lot of names and a lot of secrets in Annie Walsh’s journal. Two names stood out. Moses Duncan and Timothy Lancaster. Annie had tried to be subtle in some of her journal entries, but it was obvious that Duncan was her connection. A good possibility.

  Duncan wasn’t in the phone book, but Lancaster was. His apartment was close.

  The two beers Stubbs had swilled at Friday’s put him in the mood for more. He stopped at a Quickie-Mart and bought a six-pack of Busch and a copy of Hustler. He drank one in the parking lot and flipped through the jack-off magazine. He was getting crazy horny again. Something happened to Stubbs when he saw skin. It made him desperate crazy. Maybe that’s why he was always forking over big bucks to get his rocks off.

  He threw the magazine into the backseat before it made him too crazy. He flipped through Annie Walsh’s journal instead.

  Apparently, Annie had boinked this Lancaster kid a month back as some sort of experiment. The journal said that Lancaster “intrigued” her.

  A place to start. A thread.

  Stubbs pulled out of the parking lot, tossed the empty beer can into the backseat. He opened another, slurped, held the can between his legs, and pointed the Dodge toward Lancaster’s apartment.

  He was in no particular hurry. He was getting paid by the day.

  twenty-four

  Jenks scooted close to the little campfire DelPrego had built. They were deep in the strange woods, glo
wing eyes watching from the shadows. Jenks gritted his teeth against the wind that whistled through the branches.

  “We can’t stay out here.” For the first time, DelPrego showed he was aware of the cold. “This fire ain’t enough. I can’t feel my damn fingers.” He blew on them, held them toward the fire. The wind stung his ears.

  Jenks didn’t say anything. He was cold too, but didn’t know where to go. He couldn’t go back to his garage apartment, that was for damn sure.

  “Let’s get my truck,” DelPrego said. “We could sneak back slow. Check it out. If we can get to the truck, we can go anywhere.”

  “Shit on that idea. You don’t know Red Zach. I’d rather freeze than have my own balls fed to me.”

  A long silence before DelPrego spoke. “What’s going on?”

  Jenks looked at the fire, didn’t say anything.

  “Sherman.” DelPrego raised his voice. “Who’s Jenks? He called you Jenks.”

  “Never mind.”

  “Fuck that. Talk to me. I killed-” DelPrego’s voice caught. He swallowed hard. “I bashed a man’s skull in with a golf club. I thought I was doing it to save a friend.” His voice shook, tight, nerves raw. “Now you goddamn tell me what’s going on right fucking now.”

  Jenks opened his mouth, shut it again. He needed to gather himself.

  “I’ll tell you, but you got to let me tell it all.”

  “Fine.”

  “You got to listen,” Jenks said. “You got to let me get it all out, try to understand where I’m coming from.”

  “I said fine.”

  Jenks let it all spill out, Spoon and the alley and Sherman Ellis. He told him about his crazy idea to steal Ellis’s life, slip into Eastern Oklahoma University, and write poetry. It had been his way out, his way to shed the ghetto and the drug trade and all the gangster bullshit. And he realized he was telling the story for himself too, trying to downplay his part in Ellis’s death. He needed to believe, even more than he needed to convince DelPrego, that what he had done was forgivable. Or at least understandable.

  And by the end of Jenks’s story, the truth had shifted, taken on a new shade. He told DelPrego that his old life, his old patterns, the old ways had such deep hooks in him, that only a crazy plan could get him free. Sherman Ellis had lost his life, but Jenks could resurrect it again, make it work for good. Sherman Ellis’s death could save Harold Jenks.

  Jenks’s story trickled out. He looked at DelPrego, but couldn’t see his expression in the dark. The fire had dwindled, the coals casting them in a dim, hellish orange. The silence stretched.

  “Wayne?”

  “Don’t talk to me.”

  “I had to do what I had to-”

  “Stop talking right now.”

  Jenks started to bark at DelPrego. Fuck you, man. You don’t know what I had to live with. He clapped his mouth shut, saw the bulk clenched in DelPrego’s fist glinting orange and metallic in the light of the coals. It was the big automatic DelPrego had taken off Zach’s boy. The complexion of Jenks’s situation shifted uneasily. He was aware of the woods again. It would be a long time before a body was found out here. DelPrego wasn’t quite pointing the pistol at him, but Jenks kept his mouth shut.

  “I’m going to tell you something,” DelPrego said at last. “I don’t know anything about your life. Maybe we had to kill that guy in the trailer or be killed ourselves.”

  DelPrego’s voice tightened. “But you can’t steal education, man. It’s up here.” He tapped his head with the pistol barrel. “You can steal a car or a radio or a big-ass bag full of drugs, but you can’t steal an education.”

  “I’m not hurting anybody.”

  “Fuck you.” DelPrego stood, sudden, violent, knocking sticks into the fire and spreading the coals. Sparks. “You’re hurting me, man. Me. I worked my ass off for my college education. I pulled third shift as a security guard at a rendering plant, stayed up all night wired on coffee reading Milton and Shakespearean sonnets and smelling hog stink just so I could pay rent and buy books. My senior year, I slept more nights in the library than I did in my bed.”

  He exhaled raggedly, sat down again hard. “Maybe my life wasn’t dangerous. Maybe my neighborhood wasn’t as tough, but I earned my education.” He tapped the side of his head again. “Everything in here belongs to me.”

  DelPrego stood, shook the gun at Jenks. “This fucking thing is your way.” He turned, tossed the pistol into the woods.

  Jenks felt hot in the face. DelPrego made him mad and guilty. “That’s right. You didn’t come from my neighborhood. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “I’ll bet Sherman Ellis did.”

  The words hit Jenks like a punch in the gut. DelPrego had said what Jenks secretly already knew deep in his heart. Sherman Ellis had earned his way. Sherman Ellis had worked for it. Jenks had tried to sneak in the back door.

  Jenks wiped at his eyes. “Fucking campfire. Too much smoke.”

  The fire’s orange glow faded.

  “What’s your name?”

  Jenks looked up. “W-w-what?” He was freezing.

  “Your real name.”

  “Harold Jenks.”

  “Okay.”

  Jenks said, “I know it won’t work, so don’t worry about me. Shit, you should see how the professors look at me. They know something ain’t right. I can’t do it, so don’t worry. I’m not stealing anything.” He sniffed, wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Only class I’m keeping up in is the poetry workshop, and that’s only because I’m as bad as everybody else.”

  DelPrego laughed sudden and hard, the tension draining. “Shit. Professor Morgan. What would he say?” More laughter.

  Jenks laughed too, wiped his eyes again. When the laughter spent itself, he asked, “You still mad?”

  DelPrego said, “Mostly I’m cold.”

  “Me too. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “Where?”

  Jenks stood, stomped his feet. They felt like lead bricks. “Anyplace indoors.”

  DelPrego snapped his fingers. “I know, follow me. The back of the campus is only about a mile this way.” He headed off into the underbrush.

  Jenks followed, shoving his way through the branches. He was so cold he could barely move. They made their way slowly.

  “Wayne?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where’s the gym bag?” Jenks hesitated to raise this question, but he had to know.

  “I stashed it. Someplace safe.”

  “Where?”

  “Someplace safe.”

  So that’s how it is, thought Jenks. Okay. I won’t press it for now.

  They found an open window and climbed in. Jenks was so happy to be in the relative warmth of the classroom he didn’t bother asking DelPrego why they’d broken into Albatross Hall. At least it was unlikely Red Zach would find them there.

  “Come on.” DelPrego led him out of the classroom and down the hall to the stairwell.

  They climbed.

  The fifth floor looked deserted. Dark.

  “What are we doing here?” Jenks asked.

  “Quiet.” DelPrego froze, listened. “You hear that?”

  Jenks listened too. “Music.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What is it?”

  “Wagner,” DelPrego said.

  DelPrego walked faster, Jenks right behind him. They took a few turns and ended at a door. The music came from the other side. DelPrego twisted the knob, pushed the door open slowly.

  DelPrego looked in. “Professor Valentine?”

  The old man jerked his head around. “Wayne. Hello. A bit late to be out and about isn’t it?”

  Valentine was reading an enormous leather-bound Bible. He was stark naked except for a black beret with the words SEA WORLD, ORLANDO, stitched in yellow.

  “I thought you were still away,” DelPrego said.

  “A long story.” Valentine’s eyes shifted from DelPrego to Jenks. “Who’s your friend?”

  DelPrego hesitat
ed. “Sherman Ellis.”

  Jenks wondered about DelPrego. He hadn’t told his real name. DelPrego wasn’t going to rat him out. Not yet anyway.

  Valentine leapt up, setting the Bible aside. He walked to Jenks, hand outstretched, his old-man genitalia swinging between his legs like a Ziploc bag of shriveled fruit.

  “Good to meet you, Ellis.”

  Jenks shook his hand. Not eagerly. “You’re naked.”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you not be, please?”

  Valentine chuckled, crossed the room, grabbed a robe, put it on.

  “I didn’t know you’d be here,” DelPrego said. “We were sort of looking for a place to hide out.”

  “How long do you want to stay?”

  “Until the heat’s off,” DelPrego said.

  “On the lam, eh? I understand,” Valentine said. “But mum’s the word. Nobody knows I’m here.”

  And that suited them just fine.

  Part 3

  twenty-five

  Deke Stubbs knocked on Timothy Lancaster’s door. He smelled like a six-pack of Busch. He swallowed a belch.

  Lancaster opened the door a crack, eyed the detective. Lancaster looked a little annoyed and also worried. A nervous bookworm type, custom-made to cave under pressure. Stubbs liked it when they were worried. He could lean on them good and stiff and get them to talk. He hadn’t had to do that with Annie Walsh’s mousy roommate, but he wouldn’t mind with this guy.

  They stared at each other a long second.

  Finally Lancaster said, “Yes?” The word slipped meekly through the crack in the door like an apology.

  “Lancaster?”

  Another long pause from the kid. “Yes.”

  “Can I ask you some questions?”

  The pause was really long this time. “About what?”

  “About Annie Walsh,” Stubbs said. “And about drugs.” Stubbs threw the part in about drugs at the last second. Sure. Shake the kid up. He looked nervous already, so why not push the envelope?