Kiss or Kill Under the Northern Lights

by Susan Johnson

  I nodded unable to stop the flow of tears of relief. At least I wouldn’t be stranded and alone.

  “Come on,” he said, then pulled on my hand as we made our way out through the crowd. As we came to the open door, I glanced back at Bob and smiled. He nodded and tipped his hat. At least he knew I was taken care of now.

  We walked through the maze of cars and trucks surrounding the barn to a completely dark area far in the field. I struggled through the weeds and uneven ground to keep up with Collins as he tugged me along behind him.

  “Why did you park so far away?” I said, breathless as I caught up to him at the back of the tarp-covered truck.

  “This is why,” he said, pullin’ back the tarp to show me stacks of boxes of bourbon whiskey in wooden crates, stamped with a seal that said Kentucky.

  “What is this? What are you doing with liquor? Don’t you know what they’ll …”

  He clamped his hand over my mouth as my eyes went wide. By God, they could shove him in prison and throw away the key. Why had I been so foolish as to put all my eggs in this one basket? No wonder all them fellars back in the speakeasy were giving him a wide berth.

  “Shhh, not so loud,” he said, nervously looking around the area surrounding us. “I don’t drive animals to slaughter, Gladys. I’m a bootlegger for Diamond Jim Colosimo. I run whiskey for him throughout northern Iowa, and this joint is just one of my regular stops.”

  My breaths started coming quick and short as I struggled for breath with the news he was giving me, my pulse pounding in my ears. He held me close to him now, dropping his hand from my mouth to capture my lips with his, the kiss burning me with his desire as he desperately pulled me to him.

  “I’ve been trying to figure a way to tell you without making you run far and furious from me.” He pulled away from, then held my face in his hands. “I didn’t want it to happen, but I’ve fallen madly, desperately, passionately in love with you, Gladys, and this thing with your Pa findin’ out is just fate’s way of making sure we can be together. What do you say?” His eyes looked at me needy and hesitant, more like a little boy than I’d ever seen him before. “Do you still want me, knowing what I am?”

  I nodded my head, in fast little nods, small and short and definitely unsure, feigning a smile that didn’t go all the way to my heart. Collins wasn’t the man I’d thought him to be. He was much more dangerous and nowhere near as settled, but I had made my bed, so I needed to lie in it or jump out for the safety of home.

  “We gotta get going,” he said, giving me a fast and hard kiss, then pulled me along behind him to the driver’s side, giving me a hand up into the cab and following quickly behind. “I’ve got someone on my tail, so we need to make tracks, baby.” I scooted over on the bench and made room for him as he started the truck and drove through the field behind the outbuildings until we came to a field road.

  “Behind the seat, baby, there’s a rifle,” he said, pointing behind him. “Pull it out from behind there for me, will you? Be careful not to point it at me or anything.”

  “A gun?” I cried. “You’re not gonna hurt someone, are you?”

  “I never plan to, baby. Hurry!”

  I squirmed onto my knees, reaching one arm behind the seat until I felt the wooden stock of a rifle. I pulled on the long, hard, cold metal rod, my heartbeat pounding in my head. What the hell was I doing? I’d never touched a firearm in my life. I was from a peace-loving Baptist family for crying out loud and now I was running around beside a bootlegger with a rifle. Time seemed to stand still as I stared at that deadly piece of machinery in my hand, gently touching the metal and feeling the warmth of the wood on my hand.

  Collins turned the corner from the field row onto the gravel county road then stepped on the gas and the truck lurched forward. The sound of clinking bottles in the back and the swaying of his load reminded me of the precious cargo we were carrying and the need for him to take care with his product. Not only were we running for our lives, but we had something worth its weight in gold along with us.

  “Thank you, baby,” he said, pulling the gun from my hands, leaning it up against his knee and shoulder. “It’s all gonna be okay. Don’t worry. I’ve been in worse spots.”

  He’d increased the speed of the truck to a point where I’d never gone that fast in a vehicle before, certainly not on an unpaved road, let alone one that was carrying a heavy load. I looked out the side mirror to see the headlights of a following car turn the corner we’d just made as they nearly overshot the road. They adjusted their course, swerving from side to side and coming up behind us, making better time. They weren’t hindered by having to haul whiskey, so they’d be on us in no time if something didn’t happen to stop their progress.

  Collins made another sharp turn, this time onto another field road, a tighter road with trees off to the side apparently nearby a river. It wasn’t graveled over but there was a clear path for tires to pass and it was relatively smooth.

  “If I can get up here and get ahead, I can pull over and pick them off,” he said, again, increasing the gas to propel the truck ahead at what seemed like an unsafe speed on such an unpopulated and God-knew-how-well-managed piece of road. He cranked down the window with his left hand while he kept the other on the steering wheel, deftly adjusting to the bounces the road required of him. He’d clearly done this kind of risky driving on more than one occasion. I couldn’t help myself; I peeked at the mirror in time to see the car behind us make the turn for the field road and make some time on us, when we came to a dip with a high hill on the other side. Collins slowed the truck as we approached the top, then carefully turned the truck onto a field approach at the very top.

  He put the truck in park, turned his body, breathing deeply as he settled himself with his rifle on his shoulder. He took aim and shot, ejected the casing, then reloaded the rifle and shot again. I looked over his shoulder out the window as he repeated the action of aiming, firing and reloading over and over for a total of five shots until we saw the lights of the car at the bottom of the hill veer off course. They were headed toward the ditch when we heard the crash of metal against wood and Collins took the rifle down from his shoulder and began to relax.

  He turned back to me and said, “I think I got him. All that time in the war didn’t go for nothing.” He reached over to me, rubbed his thumb against my cheek and smiled. “Relax, baby. The worst is over, but I’m gonna go check. Stay where you are.”

  He got out of the truck with his rifle and walked down toward the car, keepin’ his rifle at his shoulder, just in case someone was still able to take aim at him. It was a dark, cloudless night and once he’d left the circle of light cast by the headlights of the truck, I couldn’t make out his shape in the black of the night. I sat in the seat, starin’ straight ahead. What if someone was still alive in that car and shot at him? They’d come for the booze, find me cowering here and kill me straight out. Oh my God, where had my life headed? I swore to myself at that moment if I heard a gunshot, I’d go running for my life. In the next second, that was exactly what happened.

  The clap of a shot rang out in the silence of the night and I clambered out of the passenger side and climbed down the steep embankment of the roadside ditch, figurin’ I could follow that along the roadside in the pitch darkness of the night. The killers wouldn’t know to look for me. I kept slowly walkin’ through the deep weeds of the ditch until I heard a voice call out. “Gladys! Where did you go? I told you to stay put!”

  I turned from where I’d been walking. “Collins! You’re alive?”

  “’Course I’m alive, which I can’t say for the other fellar,” he said, calling out into the darkness. “Where the hell are you? What’s got into you?”

  He caught up to me in no time, reachin’ out to me in the darkness, pulling on my hand.

  “I thought they’d shot you and I needed to run for my life,” I said, nearly crying at this point. The relief that washed over my body in feeling him was almost unbearable and I clung to
him, my body shaking uncontrollably. He held me to him and let me calm down, rubbing his hand down my back and over my head, shushing me softly and tenderly. I could hardly breathe realizing this same man had so coldly taken another man’s life only minutes before in such a controlled and deliberate way, and yet he was so gentle with me.

  “How could you …? I mean, you killed him,” I said, barely able to get the words out of my parched mouth.

  “It was him or us, sugar,” he said, his voice deep and husky. “That tends to make a man see things a little more dark-like. You understand that, don’t you?”

  I nodded my head against his chest as he propelled us up out of the ditch onto the field road and back to the truck. He helped me up into the truck, then went around the cab to get in the driver’s side himself. He took a deep breath and looked over at me before he put the truck in gear.

  “You know, you handled yourself real cool, calm and collected even though I know you were scared to death, sweetheart. Would you consider taking me on full-time, you know, in a legal-like way? We could find a justice o’ the peace and wake him up.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Would you be my wife, Gladys Roberts, to have and hold and all that?”

  “Oh, my God, yes,” I said, throwing myself at him as he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me breathless.

  We married that very night, truly pulling a man in his suspenders out of bed to speak the words over us, his wife in hairpins and curlers lookin’ on. We settled in Collins’ little shack on the outskirts of town and Hazel May was born the next spring. She was always a sickly child, needin’ goats’ milk to take on any weight at all. Collins was fearfully attached to that child, treatin’ her like she was the Queen of Sheba, but I figure that’s just how some men are with their little girls.

  The time I spent with Pearl was both a thrill and a heartache. We always were watching over our shoulders, wondering when the next shoe was gonna drop or someone would find out what had happened on adventures that night in the backwoods near Charles City. The knowledge that what he was doin’ made a good living was a blessing, but it brought the discontent that you never knew when he’d be hauled off somewhere. In some ways, that made the love we shared all the sweeter.

  When Prohibition ended, so did the gravy train. Collins got a real job, workin’ as a stockman for a local farmer and died not five years later when he was gored by an angry longhorn.

  I never knew another love like I had with that man. Of course, I found other means of getting by with Hazel, through the depression and all of that misery. Some of the old hags in this joint talk of their spouse like he was something else, but none of their high and mighty husbands have ever loved them more than Collins loved me and my girl back then. Good Lord, how I miss that man.

  I reach over to grab the carafe of coffee the aide has brought my roommate but stop myself and shake my head. I lean over to pull out the bottle of Jim Beam I hide at the end of my bed after it’s been made and fill it half full with a little medicine. Who the hell would actually drink the coffee in a hell-hole like this?

  THE END

  About the Author

  Patricia M Jackson writes romance novels with a mixture of realism and fiction. Sometimes they are comedies or could be classified as suspenseful. Often, they’re a mixture of both. Her House of Donato Series features a group of new adults finding love in a turbulent world. She also writes novellas and short stories on occasion. You can find her living in the Minneapolis area with her husband and geriatric dog, Charlie.

  patriciamjackson.com

  www.goodreads.com/author/show/14783050

  The Bent Fork Café

  By Diane Pearson

  The will to succeed is strong for Jaymie, a recovering alcoholic who works as a bartender and delivers newspapers for extra money, but when Henry dies before she can help him finish a special project, her support system is destroyed. And worse, the blind date her friend Brooke has arranged is the detective in charge of the homicide investigation.

  1

  “Are you sure you can manage without me?” I asked the managing bartender as he wiped off the bar top. The crowd was thin tonight at Johnson’s Ale House, and I was glad to get off work early. Now I had time to scoot on home for a quick shower.

  “Get out of here, kid.” He gave me a wink and nodded toward the door. It's been decades since I was called a kid, and I think he called me that because I was shorter than he was and yes, younger, but not by much. He added, “See you tomorrow.” Of course he would see me since I'm the dependable type especially when a paycheck is part of the deal.

  Striding to my car, my nerves started jiggling, and I considered doing something stupid, like call off this not-quite-a-date date that my friend conned me into.

  Brooke didn't believe me when I told her I wasn't ready to get back into dating. Part of me knew she was right, the other part, the louder voice, said a man would be a complication that I didn't need right now. I still wore the scars of my last complication. There was no reason for my boyfriend to dump me. He could have waited until I was out of the hospital. Even better, he could have waited until I was out of jail. His text message was loud and clear when he said that he couldn't deal with my addiction.

  An owl hooted from a nearby tree changing my focus. A blanket of stars spread overhead like an open umbrella protecting the blue-green glow cast by the mercury vapor lights dotting the parking lot. The June night air smelled densely fresh.

  Only because my friend, Brooke, caught me in a weak moment, had I agreed to meeting. She said, “Just meet him. He'll treat you to a free meal.” She had been pushing me to meet this “great guy” for several weeks. My budget was tight, but not so tight that I needed a stranger to feed me.

  “Think of it as an adventure,” she said.

  I wasn't sure I wanted adventure. My plate was pretty full.

  She persisted. “His name is Lee. Lee Hudson.” She refused to tell me much about him other than he was dependable and a professional. “Tall and good looking in a rugged sort of way,” she said without elaborating. Then two days ago, when she brought up the subject again, I prodded for more information. But she got annoyed and said she wanted me to keep an open mind, free from any preconceived opinions. Then before I again said I'm not ready, she added, “I'll have him call you,” and hung up.

  Hours later, when Lee Hudson called, he sounded nice. His voice was a deep baritone like my dad's. Made me wonder if he was as tall. He told me he had gone to college with Brooke's husband and they got together regularly. As he talked, I got the impression that Brooke had pressured him to meet me. She means well—most of the time.

  There was a catch in his voice that intrigued me. But was I ready for a face-to-face?

  “Well, I work a weird schedule,” I said. “Nights.”

  He didn't press. Said that his schedule was crazy at times as well.

  Since I wasn't all that eager, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings, I suggested meeting for coffee after I got off work around two or two-thirty a.m. I totally expected he would offer a different time, so I could say I was busy. But no. He chuckled and said the time was perfect. He suggested Perkins.

  A quick glance at my dashboard clock, told me I had forty-five minutes. Plenty of time to shower, change, and get to Perkins out on I-694. If the guy turned out to be a dud, I could always say I had to get ready for my next job. I'm sure I could come up with some story besides the truth. After all, delivering newspapers didn't require any preparation.

  A few blocks down the road, a doorbell rang signaling an incoming text message from Henry Edmunds, the owner and chief cook at The Bent Fork Cafe. I've been helping him with a cookbook/memoir. I took the photographs, he supplied the recipes and stories which I typed for him. An added perk was the delicious coffee and fresh caramel rolls. Henry wanted to finish what we dubbed, “The Project,” before the Northern Lights Chili Cook-off. I figured I had another few weeks to talk him into adding a chapter about hi
s Army days which could easily lead into how he came to name his restaurant The Bent Fork. But he adamantly refused.

  The media buzz around Minneapolis and St. Paul and the outskirts about the Ninth Annual Northern Lights Chili Cook-off ignited last week when Channel 5 News reported that tickets to the Independence Day event sold out in less than twenty-four hours. The fight was on for the six participating restaurants. The front running favorites, The Bent Fork Cafe, The Pier, Big Red’s Ribs, and Mad Dogg Catering had been hyping the event and the competition was heating up.

  It's against the law to look at your cell phone while stopped at a red light and I should have waited until I got home. But, my finger eased to my phone in the cup holder. One quick tap and the message surprised me.

  “Shit.”

  “Cancel today. Sorry,” he wrote.

  Strange. Odder yet, he offered no explanation for cancelling our eight a.m. get together to review the newly revised pages.

  Fifteen minutes later, I parked in front of my garage, killed the engine, and considered dumping the date idea. I could say I needed to go to my temp job early. Call me chicken. The guy didn't need to know that the newspaper didn't care what time I started my delivery route as long as I finished before seven o'clock. Even that time-frame wasn't set in stone.

  A tap at my side window, made me jump.

  “You scared me,” I said to Brooke. “What are you doing here?”

  “I couldn't sleep, so I came by to check on what you're going to wear on your hot date.”

  “Coffee is not a hot date.” I grabbed my cell phone and purse, stepped out of my car and then hip-nudged the door closed.

  Brooke's eyes under the glow of the overhead security light held a playful glee. I was in no mood. “Won't John be looking for you?” I really wanted to tell her to shuffle her size five feet back to her own place, a few blocks away. Instead, I pretended she wasn't following me into my townhouse.