Pistol Poets

by Victor Gischler

  He opened the door, stepped into the trailer. He pulled the door closed behind him, each movement in exaggerated, agonizing slow motion. He took one step toward the kitchen and the floor groaned. He took his weight off the spot. He slipped out of his tennis shoes, set them aside. He walked along the side of the hall, inching forward until he saw the kitchen around the corner.

  Beyond the kitchen, the living room and the TV.

  Someone was in the easy chair, the battered La-Z-Boy he’d picked up from a junk heap and patched with duct tape. He couldn’t see who, only an elbow on the armrest, a hairy hand holding the remote control.

  The hand was white.

  DelPrego frowned. This didn’t make sense. He’d been expecting one of the gangsters who had chased him and Jenks into the woods. In his mind, he replayed the conversation he’d heard under the trailer window. One of the voices had specifically mentioned Red Zach.

  Okay, never mind. White or black, this guy was in his house, waiting to kill him.

  He walked through the kitchen, looked at the counters. No knives in sight, and he couldn’t risk the noise of opening a drawer. He grabbed a saucepan. He’d come up behind this guy and bash his brains in.

  He started toward the easy chair, careful steps, slow, quiet, get within arm’s reach, and let him have it. DelPrego screwed up his courage, gathered it into a tight, hot ball in the center of his gut. He had to crack this dude’s skull with everything he had. He didn’t want the guy to get up again.

  The guy swiveled the chair, looked square into DelPrego’s eyes.

  DelPrego looked at him and screamed, dropped the frying pan.

  The guy in the La-Z-Boy screamed too. It came out ragged and muffled. His head was completely bandaged, only big, frightened eyes showing from slits. The mummy-faced guy had the chair in the recline position. He thrashed in the chair, struggled to sit upright and turn the chair back to the pump shotgun leaning against the wall.

  DelPrego regrouped, launched himself before the guy reached the shotgun. He smacked into Mummy-man, tumbled over, chair tipping. They landed on the floor in a clinch, clawing and grabbing.

  Mummy-man rolled on top of DelPrego, a hand going over DelPrego’s face, pushing. A pinkie finger slid into DelPrego’s mouth. He bit down hard. Mummy-man’s hoarse scream died in the cotton bandages. He jerked his hand back. DelPrego punched, but Mummy-man twisted away. The blow glanced to the side.

  The skill level of the fight went from bad to idiotic. Pulling at clothes, rolling. They bumped against a coffee table, tipped over a lamp.

  Mummy-man pulled free, kicked away DelPrego’s fumbling hands. He belly-crawled across the dirty shag toward the shotgun. DelPrego lunged and grabbed one of Mummy-man’s ankles. Mummy-man kicked. He was two inches from the butt of the shotgun. He reached, stretched, strained against DelPrego’s hold.

  DelPrego cast about. He needed something to hit with. A large glass ashtray had fallen from the coffee table. He reached. Two inches.

  Both men stretched in opposite directions, gritted teeth, grunted.

  DelPrego got to his knees, readied himself before letting go of the ankle. He grabbed the ashtray, turned, and leapt back on Mummy-man, who had the shotgun in his hand. DelPrego crashed into Mummy-man hard, pinned the shotgun against his chest. DelPrego landed a knee into the Mummy’s gut, heard air burst out of him. He raised himself, the ashtray high over his head. He brought it down hard.

  It smacked hard into the Mummy’s forehead. Mummy-man jerked.

  “Fuck you, King Tut.” DelPrego hit him again.

  Mummy-man went slack, sank into the shag. DelPrego sat on him, chest heaving, sweat. He shook. His hands especially trembled out of control. He dropped the ashtray, fell off of Mummy-man’s body, and lay on the carpet, sucking for breath. Another dead guy. He’d bashed in another guy’s head. For the second time DelPrego was a killer. No. Three times. He’d killed the guy with his shotgun when the drug deal had gone bad. But somehow that had been different. Not up close like when you bash a man’s skull into jelly.

  He stood, knees like water. He’d need to think what to do. He had his truck keys, so he wouldn’t have to flee on foot. He ran back to his bedroom, found the stash of 280 dollars he’d been saving for an absolutely life-and-death emergency situation. This qualified. He grabbed a knapsack, filled it with two changes of clothes (four changes of underwear) and his father’s Purple Heart from Vietnam. He left the knapsack on the bed and went to put on his shoes.

  The sight of Mummy-man’s loose-limbed body disturbed DelPrego. Maybe he should do something with the body, hide it somehow. Or maybe just the thought of the dead man in plain sight on his shag carpet gave DelPrego the willies. He didn’t want to think of himself as the kind of man who’d bash a guy’s skull in, then just leave the body lying around. He bent over the Mummy, grabbed him by the jacket lapels. Touched his chest.

  Breathing.

  DelPrego gasped, put the palm of his hand over the guy’s heart. It beat. Crazy, relieved giggling bubbled up in DelPrego’s throat, spilled out of his mouth. Mummy-man was alive, his breathing seemed regular, normal. Of course, he hadn’t hit him that hard, not enough to kill him. Mummy-man had only been knocked cold. DelPrego didn’t know why he was so happy. The son of a bitch had been waiting to blow a giant hole in him with a shotgun.

  DelPrego shook his head. He was glad he hadn’t killed the guy. He didn’t want the memory, didn’t want to see the man’s mummy face haunting him in his dreams. He already got chills whenever he thought about the man he’d killed with the golf club.

  DelPrego grabbed Mummy-man under the arms, dragged him into the little bathroom. He dumped him into the tub, made sure he was faceup and could breathe okay. He’d need something to tie the guy up. All DelPrego wanted was a head start.

  DelPrego heard a car door slam. He froze.

  He rushed to the window, peeked through the blinds. It was the other one. Shit. The face seemed familiar. He tried to remember. It came to him slowly like a grainy movie slipping into focus. Holy fucking shit. The guy from the drug deal. That fucking redneck who’d tried to steal Jenks’s coke. And while DelPrego had stood gawking, the guy had reached the front door. Shit shit shit.

  The shotgun! Too late. DelPrego had left it in the living room.

  Think, dumbass!

  He looked at the Mummy-man in the tub.

  Moses Duncan was halfway to get food when Red Zach had called him on the cell phone. He’d said to forget about watching the trailer. Get back to the farm quick. Change of plan.

  Right. Sure. For the thousandth time Duncan thought about cutting loose, hitting the road. On the one hand, he did stand to make a lot of cash working for Red Zach. On the other hand, the thought of Red Zach moving into the old farmhouse, setting up shop like it was a goddamn Motel Six, probably had Daddy spinning in his grave. So Duncan was going to bite his tongue and bide his time. Someday, in a month or a year or ten, he’d have the last laugh on these coons.

  Duncan tried the front door. Locked. He knocked. No answer.

  “Come on, Eddie. It’s me.” Nothing.

  “Hell. Now what?” He banged on the door louder, shook the trailer.

  Duncan sighed and walked around behind the trailer. The back door was open, and he went inside. “Eddie?”

  Duncan heard a flush. The bathroom door creaked open. Eddie came out, tugging at his face bandages.

  “What’s up?” Duncan asked. “Stitches itching again?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “Get your shit together. We’ll eat later. The coon squad wants us back home.” He tossed Eddie the car keys and picked up the shotgun. “I got the twelve-gauge. Your turn to drive.”

  Eddie stared at him, didn’t move.

  “Don’t just stand there, dummy. Come on.”

  “Mmmph. Mmmm,” Eddie said.

  “What?”

  “Mmmmph Mmmmm Mmmmph.”

  “Your tongue must be swelled up or something,” Duncan said. “Suddenly I can’
t understand a damn thing you’re saying.”

  thirty-six

  The ride back from Houston was uneventful and unhappy.

  Reams’s anger at Jay Morgan was of the slow, brooding variety. Morgan realized the professor had gone to some trouble to arrange the morning job interview, but Morgan had simply not given a rat’s ass. The police had kept him until nine in the morning.

  Dirk Jakes’s anger at Jay Morgan was more of the ranting and raving variety. Jakes’s brand-new Mercedes had been “stolen” according to the story Morgan gave the police. But more than anything, Jakes seemed hurt and angry that he hadn’t been invited to the titty bar when Morgan had “borrowed” the Mercedes for his midnight drive.

  All in all, Morgan was damn unpopular for the duration of the cramped ride back in the Geo Metro, the only rental available on short notice. They made it back into Fumbee late Sunday night, and Reams dropped him off without a word.

  For all Morgan cared, Jakes and Reams could go fuck themselves. With corncobs. He had no energy left for apology. The night and early morning with the police had left him wrung out. He couldn’t tell them the real story without it leading back to Annie Walsh. He’d tried to keep it simple. After the titty bar, he’d gone, so he claimed, to the beach for some air so he could sober up. A bunch of Mexicans had beat him up and thrown him in the water, then taken the Mercedes.

  “We found the car ten minutes ago,” a big detective had told Morgan.

  Morgan had shrugged. “Those crazy Mexicans.”

  “What about your shoes?” one cop had asked.

  “I wanted to walk in the sand.”

  “Then shouldn’t you have taken off your socks too?”

  “I told you,” Morgan had said. “I was drunk.”

  Morgan had claimed the whole incident had happened about a mile down the coast and away from the pier. The situation seemed impossible and hopeless. Nobody had mentioned a body. Morgan had watched the car go down. There’d been no sign of the man.

  Perhaps Morgan should flee the country. A former colleague made good money teaching English in Asia. Morgan had seen the job listings before. English teachers needed in Japan and South Korea.

  But that would take time to arrange. Surely recent events would catch up and overwhelm him before then. At least he was home. For a while, the world could wait. He went to bed, slept like a cold, dead stone.

  Monday morning he went to Albatross Hall. He was five minutes late for his poetry workshop. He noticed three empty chairs in a row, didn’t have to think too hard about it. Ellis, Lancaster, and DelPrego.

  “Has anyone seen our missing comrades?” He gestured at the empty seats.

  The class shook its collective head, mumbled ignorance.

  “Never mind. Let’s get on with it. Tammy, read us your poem.”

  A thin girl, sandals with socks, dishwater hair, and no makeup. “It’s called ‘The Aftertaste of Love.’ ” She stood and cleared her throat, read from a pink sheet of paper. “How he clings, like the orange dust from cheese puffs. How he screams the silent, dog-whistle need of his generation. But nobody hears…”

  Ah. It was as Morgan thought. God had started punishing him already.

  Morgan closed his office door. It had been a long morning. He switched on the radio, then rummaged his desk drawers. The radio announcer spit out the local news, then switched to the weather. Mild for most of the week, but winter’s last hurrah gathered up north and west in Colorado. A cold front. It threatened to slide south by the weekend and dust Green County with a few flakes.

  Morgan found what he was looking for in the bottom drawer. A flask of Jim Beam. Not his usual poison, but it would do in a pinch. He unscrewed the cap and took a long swig. The familiar warmth again in his belly. Morgan decided that not only had he officially fallen off the wagon, but that the wagon had also backed over him and parked on his head.

  He took another swig.

  The phone rang in midswig, startled him. A mouthful of booze spilled down his chin. He grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

  “Morgan? It’s Dean Whittaker.”

  Morgan sat up straight. “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “Good news, Morgan. Lots of press going to be there all the way from Tulsa and Oklahoma City. We pulled some strings. Going to be great press for the university.”

  “Uh…”

  “Also, we have the honors college assigning the poetry reading as mandatory extra credit for their freshman composition and humanities classes. I know these sorts of events aren’t generally well attended, but we want to put our best foot forward, eh? I think we can fill up the whole damn auditorium.”

  “That’s fifteen hundred seats.”

  “Well, the press, faculty, most of the administration, the graduate students from the writing program, the usual collection of community art-fags-you didn’t hear me say that-and about a thousand freshmen. I know most eighteen-year-olds don’t usually go in for this sort of thing, but the seats will be filled and it’ll look good. That’s what counts. The eyes of the entire university will be on this show. Exciting, isn’t it?”

  “Sure.” Morgan found his hand reaching for the Jim Beam.

  “You are going to put on a good show for us, aren’t you, Morgan?”

  Morgan cleared his throat, picked his words carefully. “I promise a professional reading with excellent and innovative poetry.”

  “Right,” Whittaker said. “Just so long as we get the right message across. You know what I mean.” He said good-bye and hung up.

  Morgan drank whiskey, rubbed his eyes. He thought about Ginny. Maybe he should call her. He was surprised to wish he could be with her. She had a soothing effect. She’d been right. People who have a secret together need each other. He picked up the phone, put it back down again. No, she might still be with her parents, and Morgan didn’t have the spine right now to explain himself.

  He called Sherman Ellis at home. The phone rang and rang.

  Morgan hung up, bit his thumbnail.

  Morgan’s phone rang and made him jump. He grabbed for it quickly. Maybe Ellis had *69 and was ringing him back. “Hello? Hello?”

  “Take it easy, Professor,” Fred Jones said. “You sound like you just ran a mile.”

  “I’m really pretty busy right now, Mr. Jones.”

  “Busy my ass. I have four new poems, and we have an appointment.”

  Morgan rubbed the bridge of his nose, bit off the first reply, and took a deep breath before saying, “You know, Mr. Jones, part of any good poet’s education is to accumulate a myriad of poetry experiences. There’s a poetry reading on campus tonight. It might be a good experience to give your own work a rest and go hear some other readers.”

  “Quit jerking me off.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. But seriously, there’s a guy on campus maybe you could talk to. A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.”

  Jones went quiet on his end for a moment, then said, “Who?”

  Morgan told Jones how to find Valentine’s office. The image of the two strange old men amused Morgan. Let them drive each other nuts. The thought made his mouth twist up in a grin. It had been a long time since anything had made Morgan smile. His face muscles weren’t used to it. It almost cracked his face in half.

  thirty-seven

  DelPrego was sweating hard. The thermostat in the dingy little farmhouse seemed to be stuck on the ultrahell setting.

  And the farmhouse was full of black guys with guns. They all seemed pissed off. DelPrego sat in a corner, tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. The sweat poured down his back, formed under his armpits, and dripped. The thick bandages on his face were heavy and damp, clung sticky to his face with somebody else’s blood and grime.

  Duncan had gone to the kitchen with a black man in an expensive yellow suit. It was evident the man in yellow was in charge. He had the hard eyes and easy, cheerless grin of a man used to getting what he wants.

  DelPrego’s eyes shifted toward the door. It was agonizingly cl
ose, but he was too scared to bolt. Maybe if he simply stood and strolled out like it was no big deal, they’d ignore him. Or maybe they wouldn’t.

  The drive in Duncan’s truck had been nerve-wracking. Duncan had held the shotgun loosely in his lap. DelPrego had thought about grabbing it or leaping from the truck at full speed or a number of other things that ultimately all seemed like bad, bad ideas which would make him horribly, horribly dead.

  He waited, closed his eyes. When he opened them again nothing had changed. He was still in a world of shit.

  Red Zach sat at the kitchen table and drank Moses Duncan’s coffee from a Rebel flag mug. He paged through a J. Crew catalog and wondered how he’d look in a turtleneck. Something subdued. A nice taupe maybe. He liked earth tones. He was supposed to visit his mom at Easter, and he couldn’t go dressed up like no Huggy Bear motherfucker from Starsky & Hutch.

  Duncan entered the kitchen, sat at the table across from Zach.

  “Maurice saw Jenks on campus,” Zach said.

  “Did he get him?” Duncan asked.

  Zach sipped coffee, shook his head. “By the time he turned the car around, he’d lost track of him. But we think he must be hiding out someplace at the university. Maybe in somebody’s dorm.”

  Duncan shook his head. “Don’t make no sense. If he knows you’re hot on his trail, why don’t he just leave town?”

  “I didn’t ask for your peckerwood opinion, but I’ll explain. There’s only five roads out of this town, and I got them all watched. He’s got no car and no money and the next closest town is thirty-five miles. No, he’s tucked in someplace, lying low. You’re going to find him.”