by Patti Abbott
Once he had a dream he was pulled over on the side of the road with nothing around him, no trees, no dirt, no ground, just the road with yellow lines that glowed a little bit, the only light. And then something in factory overalls with a black ram’s head appeared. It may have been there the whole time. It had tall jagged horns that curved at the top. It pointed at Rex’s bike and said, “That ain’t gonna cut it,” sounding like something that came from another dimension. “No American Muscle,” it said. Then it went away, but the bricks on the road kept glowing.
There was more of nothing in the dream until his father’s GTO appeared. No one was behind the wheel, but Rex could feel the car hating him. It let him know by the way its spark plugs, pistons, gears, rods, and belts exploded in single moments of combustion, moving together in a melody of infinite violence. It got so loud, Rex thought he’d go deaf. Finally, the car blasted forward, leaving him on the side of the road with his Nighthawk, watching the taillights go deeper and deeper until any semblance of the Goat completely disappeared, the dream ending.
Some nights while driving around, he’d pass Snow White’s. He knew it was the home of the Three Dollar Souls. They’d been talked about and mythologized as long as Rex could remember. However, he heard conflicting reports about the motorcycle club. Once riding with his dad as a boy, they drove by the bar, and when his father saw the motorcycles, he said, “The Souls wouldn’t know manhood if it punched them in the ass.” But when Rex was still in high school, his classmates said the opposite. They’d claim the motorcycle club was a bunch of fighting badasses; “I know a guy that got stabbed by one over a card game,” they said. So when he had his own bike and saw the flock of motorcycles in Snow White’s parking lot, he believed his classmates.
Rex went inside Snow White’s one night and walked up to the first leather jacket he saw, Big Cody, a biker with a forehead proportionate to a pit bull’s and shoulders like a professional wrestler.
“Who do I need to talk to about joining the Three Dollar Souls?” Rex asked.
Big Cody looked at Rex from the tip of his boots to his long black hair and said, “Boy, this barstool’s older than you.”
“Who do I gotta talk to?”
“Talk to me, talk to him,” he pointed at T-Boy, “talk to Pettin, talk to any of us. Hell, there ain’t no leader in the Souls. But they all going to laugh at you like I’m about to if you keep at it.” Big Cody turned away, but Rex kept standing there, making it awkward until the member asked how old he was.
“Eighteen in two months.”
Big Cody sniffed something invisible. “You even got a bike?”
“A Honda Nighthawk,” Rex said.
The biker gave a thunderous honk of a laugh that got everyone’s attention. “It’s best you learn that loud pipes save lives,” he said. “And I guarantee your Honda sounds like a cat farting, but a Harley…” Big Cody got up from the table and into Rex’s face with a quickness that had scared many men and women. He made the noise of a fiendish motorcycle engine, screaming like a hungry bear. While yelling, he shook his whole face and let beer-slobber slap against the collar of his jacket. Atoms of it touched Rex’s cheeks, but he didn’t flinch or wipe it off.
When Big Cody was done shaking his face, Rex said, “I’ll get one when I can.” And he kept standing there.
*****
“I want to say there used to another Fowler around here,” Jerry said, “a little younger than me. He had a Pontiac that raised hell. You kin to him? Can’t think of his name.” Just as Jerry said that, Rex’s memory sparked like a match. In that moment, he dug straight to the spot where all the roots connected into one piece below the surface. He saw it fully, comprehending it at all angles.
Carrington.
Carrington.
Ignoring Jerry’s question, Rex turned to Tip and asked, “You know a Marcie Carrington? Up in Dyersberg?”
Tip said, “Yeah, she’s my aunt. Mother’s sister,” spooked that Rex seemed to know her.
“What’s that got to do with anything I’m asking you?” Jerry said.
“Just wondering,” Rex replied. It had something to do with it. After joining the Three Dollar Souls, the entire club began treating Rex like an older son or younger brother. They introduced him to women. They tattooed him with homemade guns. They told him to remove the exhaust baffles and front fender off his Nighthawk. “You can get the shit-stock off at least,” Big Cody said. “Make it louder. And it’ll lose weight.” They even got him a job.
“You want to deal?” Pettin had brought Rex over to his apartment. In a corner of the living room were two plastic storage-containers filled with pills in plastic baggies. “Am-fet-uh-means, can’t sell them fast enough.”
“I could do that,” Rex said.
“Stay here then. I got an extra room. I’ll make sure you get run-around money.” Rex was in good.
He didn’t go around his mother’s that often, bored with the place and the parent he grew up with. But a week before turning twenty-two, he got a phone call from her, saying he needed to swing by.
BeBe sat in the kitchen, holding a letter. “Heard you pull up,” she said. Rex slumped in the chair beside her. “Got this letter in the mail.” She put it on the table and scooted the pages toward her son.
Rex didn’t glance at it. “What is it?” he asked.
“You going to read it, or you want me to tell you?”
“Looks like you already read it.”
“It’s a letter from a woman named Marcie Carrington.” BeBe got up from the table. Before she said anything else, she got herself a glass of ice water. “She lives in Dyersburg and says your father’s dead.” She sat back down at the table, drinking from the glass. The ice and the water jingled like a chime when she put it to her mouth. Rex watched light go inside the cup and come out in a prism of colors.
“He didn’t go nowhere,” Rex said.
“What?” his mother said, confused.
Rex shook his head and moved his hand as if back-handing a fly. “Okay then, I came out here for that?” he asked.
“Yeah, you did. But that ain’t it.” She took another sip. “This Marcie says Richie left you the GTO. It’s at her house and wants you to come get it.”
Rex made a sound with his voice, a beat of sound that came out cynical. He looked at his mother’s hands wrapped around the sweating glass of water. The air-conditioner kicked on. He thought about what the Ram’s head had told him in his dream. Rex stood up, grabbed the hand-written letter, and mashed it in his jacket pocket.
“What’re you going to do with it?” his mother asked, tired of waiting for a response.
“I suppose I'll sell it.”
*****
“Well, Rex, I think you need to hop off that Harley of yours,” Jerry said. Rex got off the seat of the 883 Sportster. “Now turn around, spread your legs, put your hands up. There you go. Tip,” Jerry pointed to the tree line, “look around over there. Make sure Mr. Fowler didn’t drop something.”
Jerry patted Rex down, his hands landing in sync on Rex’s sides. “You got anything in your pockets? If it’s pocket knives, pencils, or pills, I need to know about it.” Rex shook his head. He watched Tip move his flashlight in frontward and backward lines. Rex thought it was difficult to see leather at night. The officer got closer and closer to the tree line while Jerry dug in Rex’s jacket and pants. He went into each pocket, hoping to find something. Tip was at the tree line. Rex watched his hands. He hoped the flashlight wouldn’t stop moving, that the officer kept going as if giving paint strokes of light to the ground. “Well, ain’t nothing in your pockets.” Rex thought about saying I told you so, but he hadn’t told the officer anything. Rex watched Tip instead. Officer Carrington was right there, moving the slither of light against the ground like playing a game with a cat. Rex knew what he’d do if he was Tip.
The light stops.
“You see something over there?” Jerry asks. Rex watches Tip focus on the ground as if he’s about to be
nd over and examine something.
“Naw,” he says, looking directly at Rex. “You find anything on him?”
Jerry gives his head a shake.
“We done then?” Tip asks.
“Yep,” Jerry says. Rex put his hands down and feet together. “But write him up since he was doing 92 in a 60. And also, safety neglect, no side mirrors.” Rex had taken them off, two pounds apiece. He had learned everything gets faster. Jerry continues, “You're not wearing a helmet. Could get you for reckless driving, but I figure you'll learn that the hard way.”
Tip hands Rex the tickets, avoiding eye contact, and walking straight to the vehicle. Jerry lays a hand on the biker’s shoulder. “You gotta remember two things, son. One, know where you’re going. Two, know you’re nothing but 3D. I see you well, real well.” He turns his back and walks to the car. “The clock don’t stop,” Jerry says. “I don’t either. I know everything. All these parts.”
Rex watches Jerry get behind the wheel. The cops make a U-turn in the road, heading back to where they came from. He rests his right foot on the kick-start. Before putting all of his energy into the kick of his foot, he says, “Don’t know shit” in a tone that is as low and silent as the trees are dark. Rex would come back tomorrow. He cranks his bike. It yells like the collapse of a star.
AUTHOR BIOS
PATTI ABBOTT's stories have appeared in more than 100 publications over the last decade. She is the author of Monkey Justice (Snubnose Press) and the forthcoming novel in stories, Home Invasion (which got its start on Thuglit). She won a Derringer for "My Hero" in 2008. You can find her at http://pattinase.blogspot.com.
ERIC BEETNER is the author of The Devil Doesn't Want Me, Dig Two Graves and the story collection, A Bouquet Of Bullets. He is co-author (with JB Kohl) of the novels One Too Many Blows To The Head and Borrowed Trouble. He has also written two novellas in the popular Fightcard series, Split Decision and A Mouth Full Of Blood. His award-winning stories have appeared in over a dozen anthologies and he was voted 2012 Most Criminally Underrated Author by the Stalker Awards. For more visit ericbeetner.blogspot.com
GARRETT CROWE currently lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His writing has appeared in several print and online publications. He works in public radio. You can follow him at twitter.com/crowegarrett
ROGER HOBBS graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 2011. He is the author of Ghostman, a heist thriller, out now from Alfred A. Knopf. He is 24 years old
CHRISTOPHER L. IRVIN scribbles about the dark and mysterious and dreams of one day writing full-time. His stories have appeared in the University of Maine at Machias Binnacle Ultra-Short Competition, Weird Noir, Shotgun Honey and The Rusty Nail Magazine among others. He lives with his wife and son in Boston, Massachusetts. You can find him online at www.HouseLeagueFiction.com
ANTON SIM has wasted several careers in nonfiction scribbling about things that really happened and prefers writing about things that didn’t, couldn’t, and shouldn’t. He is proud to be a Thuglet.
ALBERT TUCHER has published more than forty short stories about prostitute Diana Andrews. She has appeared in Thuglit, DZ Allen's Muzzle Flash, and the anthology The Best American Mystery Stories 2010, edited by Lee Child. Most recently she took on Atlantic City in The Retro Look, from Untreed Reads. Albert Tucher will also appear in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in 2013 with a stand-alone story called Hangman's Break. Like so many authors of hardboiled crime fiction, he is a librarian in his day job.
SAM WIEBE's first novel, Last of the Independents, won the 2012 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Unpublished First Novel, and will be published by Dundurn in 2013. His stories have been published in Spinetingler and Thousand Islands Life. His story "Humanitarian" won second place in the 2011 Scene of the Crime contest. He lives in Vancouver
TODD ROBINSON (Editor) is the creator and Chief Editor of Thuglit. His writing has appeared in Blood & Tacos, Plots With Guns, Needle Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Strange, Weird, and Wonderful, Out of the Gutter, Pulp Pusher, Grift, Demolition Magazine, CrimeFactory and the anthologies Lost Children: Protectors, and Danger City. He has been nominated for a Derringer Award, short-listed for Best American Mystery Stories, selected for Writers Digest's Year's Best Writing 2003 and won the inaugural Bullet Award in June 2011. The first collection of his short stories, Dirty Words is now available and his debut novel The Hard Bounce is available from Tyrus Books.
ALLISON GLASGOW (Editor) was once the only woman on the Spike's Hot Dogs Wall of Fame (Fall River, MA).
JULIE MCCARRON (Editor) is a celebrity ghostwriter with three New York Times bestsellers to her credit. Her books have appeared on every major entertainment and television talk show; they have been featured in Publishers Weekly and excerpted in numerous magazines including People. Prior to collaborating on celebrity bios, Julie was a book editor for many years. Julie started her career writing press releases and worked in the motion picture publicity department of Paramount Pictures and for Chasen & Company in Los Angeles. She also worked at General Publishing Group in Santa Monica and for the Dijkstra Literary Agency in Del Mar before turning to editing/writing full-time. She lives in Southern California.
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Table of Contents
Copyright
A Message from Big Daddy Thug
Through the Perilous Night
Going In Style
Bet It All On Black
Brass
Under The Bus
Gallows Point
Allure Furs
Of Being Darker Than Light
AUTHOR BIOS
