I always close up between one and four a.m. depending on the crowd. The big Swede who owns this pub called Thor’s Hammer backs up his bartenders’ judgments. He trusts that neither I nor the busty young woman who replaces me on my days off will pull out early as long as the drinks—and tips—keep flowing. Common sense, right?
But there are weeknights where it doesn’t pay to stay open past one. So this Monday, having stood alone for more than an hour past midnight, I dimmed the lights and began upending the stools across the bar. That’s when the Bunny walked in. She had pink whiskers painted lips to cheeks and big green eyes. My heart leaped like a happy unborn in the womb. I fought the excitement back from my voice but couldn’t control the shock on my face I guess because she smiled coyly when I asked, “Can I help you?”
“Surprised, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” I nodded, noting the colorful straw Easter egg basket in her left hand. “And delighted.”
“I’m delighted too, Mr. Ketchum.”
“Ketchum…” Blood rushed to my face. “My name’s Wally…”
The Bunny flipped the top of the basket open and withdrew a small revolver. “My sister Florence—”
“Sister?”
“…was beaten and strangled in the Pennsylvania mountains by persons unknown, but she confided in me beforehand that after her divorce and drug rehab and several years surviving lonely and depressed in rural seclusion she began an affair with one Wally Ketchum. Because she lived in a cabin in the woods, no witnesses ever saw this costume-fetish-obsessed lover she described to me as a bartender, handyman, and—in time discovered—borderline sadist. I offered to send her money to leave him, but she was too frightened. I couldn’t prove anything from the collect pay-phone calls she made to me, and local police just drew blanks. But as a successful California businesswoman, I had the wherewithal to hire the best PI in the state who tracked down a Horace Ketchum, Wally, who had done heavy time for brutal rape in Delaware. Your prison picture matched Florence’s description perfectly, and my gumshoe had no problem locating your latest whereabouts.”
“Gumshoe.” I slapped her hand so hard the little pistol flew over the bar and plunked to the floorboards. Grabbing her throat I marched to the main switch, doused the lights, and said, “Melodramatic aren’t you?”
The perpetual glow of the red exit sign above our heads revealed her lips twisted in an oddly cynical smile rather than the fright I expected to see on her face. This was disappointing since alarm heightens pleasure. So I squeezed a little tighter to alter that damn expression but was surprised to be greeted with a short laugh. Enraged by her audacity, I drew my right fist back, warning, “When I’m done you’ll think your sister’s ordeal was sheer ecstasy—”
An explosion erupted in my groin, and nausea swept me from stomach to tongue. Electric shocks surged through my left wrist and fingers, and my numbed hand fell from her throat. A sharp cramp shot along my Achilles tendon, and then her forehead struck my nose and I felt my legs being swooped upward. My head slammed to the tiled floor so hard I saw her and her double until I blinked the flashbulb bursts out of my eyes. While my sight was off, my hearing wasn’t, and she stated clearly, “Jujitsu, Ketchum—one of my many accomplishments.”
I managed to grunt, “Please—don’t kill me…”
“Never intended to. That’s why I let you take the weapon so easily.” She grinned. “Not even loaded.”
“Then…what…”
“What are Bunnies famous for?”
“Uh…”
“Humping.” She sniggered. “Now let me turn you over.”
I was too weak to stop her from rolling me onto my stomach, then kneeling on my spine. She placed her hands under my chin and drew me upward like a human bow. The first jerk of her palms sent fire up my spinal cord. The second triggered an explosion between my ears. Then I felt nothing. She climbed off me, walked around the bar, and fetched the fallen gun. Upon returning she said, “This was carefully thought out, Ketchum. Rather than see you in jail, I imprisoned you in diapers—life sentence at that. Total paralysis waist down. No more sex life. No more beatings of women. And what will you tell police after I notify 9-1-1 on my throwaway cell of your collapse—attacked by a woman in a rabbit outfit? Or allude to me as Florence’s sister and implicate yourself in her unsolved murder? You don’t even know my name or the color of my hair and eyes—contact lenses work wonders. Plus my alibi’s been carefully arranged.”
She dropped her gun in the basket, headed toward the front door, turned before stepping into the street, wiggled her cottontailed butt, and chuckled. “I know. Tell them you were really humped by a bunny…”
William E. Chambers, Mystery Writers of America’s executive vice president, 2000–02, is the author of the novels Death Toll, The Redemption Factor, and The Tormentress. His short stories have appeared in major mystery magazines and anthologies in the United Sates and England. “If I Quench Thee…,” a story of murder through racism, is required reading in London’s and Scotland’s middle schools.
THE BANYAN TREE
* * *
* * *
Joe Clifford
Retreating inside his hoodie, Ricky sprinted into the midnight squall across the empty preserve lot to the car parked beneath the big tree. He pounded on the window. The large man behind the wheel looked over lazily, taking another slow drag on his cigarette, making Ricky wait in the pouring rain a moment longer before finally unlocking the door.
“Fuck, Wade,” Ricky said, climbing in front, “I’m drenched now.”
Wade cuffed the back of Ricky’s head, knocking him forward. “It’s Miami. What you want me to do about it?”
Ricky rubbed the back of his skull, mumbling incoherent soft consonants.
Reaching under his seat, Wade retrieved a brown paper bag and held it out. Ricky tried to grab it, but Wade pulled his hand back.
“Not so fast,” Wade said. “You know why I’m bailing you out with this?”
“Because I promised to pay you back twice as much?”
“It’s not a loan,” said Wade. “I’m giving it to you.”
“I don’t need any favors because I’m Big Rick’s kid.”
“Wrong. That’s exactly what you do need. Your father did right by me—and a lot of other people around here. He deserves better than a drug addict son who’s about to land his ass in Metro if he doesn’t fly straight.” Wade pinched his smoke and took a hard pull.
“Got an extra cigarette?”
“No. It’s a bad habit. You got enough of those.” Wade shoved the bag hard into Ricky’s gut like he was handing off a football.
Ricky doubled over.
“You’ve forgotten how to take a handoff.”
Ricky righted himself and narrowed his eyes. He started to open the bag, but Wade jabbed a hand and cinched it shut.
“Don’t worry. It’s all there.” Wade gestured out the windshield at the big tree they were parked beneath. “You know what kind that is?”
Ricky studied the tree, which looked like it had five trunks, limbs all knotted, gnarled and intertwined, roots anchored in the earth like arthritic alien leg bones. He shrugged.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have dropped out of school,” Wade said. “It’s called a banyan tree. Banyan trees don’t grow from the ground like other trees. They start high in the nest of a palm when a bird shits a seed into a frond. When the banyan starts to sprout, it chokes the palm to death as it slithers its own roots down into the soil.” Wade stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray. “See, you can focus on one or the other. The violent birth, or the resiliency to rise above origins.” He turned to Ricky. “Me? I see a survivor. You dig what I’m saying?”
Ricky giggled.
“What’s so goddamn funny?”
“Nothing, man. Just, you know, Wade Wojcik. The Miami City Muscle. Getting all sentimental about a tree.”
“You get older, kid, you start seeing things differently.” Wade grabbed Ricky by the shoulder. “
I was with your father the night you were born, and I seen how proud he was when you started playing ball, before you started fucking your life up with this wannabe gangster shit.”
“Well, he ain’t around anymore, is he?”
“Listen, you little shit. Your father could’ve gone to the cops, could’ve bought himself a little witness protection farm in Kansas, but he didn’t. You know why? Because he’s a stand-up guy who didn’t make excuses. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. No matter how screwed up your beginnings, you stake your claim, you dig in and don’t let nobody take nothing from you.” Wade leaned over, eyes earnest. “All any father wants is for his son to have a better life than him. It’s why I’m giving you this money. You pay back your debt. You make this right, however you have to. Then you get your ass back to school, back on the team—”
A loud knock on the driver’s side glass stopped Wade’s speech. He turned. Out in the rain, a kid Ricky’s age stood blank-faced, hands at his side. “What the—”
Ricky pulled the gun from his waistband, firing two shots into Wade’s gut. Wade looked down dumbly, trying to stuff the holes leaking bloody intestine. He stared at Ricky and opened his mouth, but only bright red frothed out. Ricky pulled the trigger again, and Wade slumped against the steering wheel, a dead man’s gaze fixed on the gun.
Ricky slid over and unlocked the door, and the kid outside jumped in back.
“Holy fuck!” the kid said gleefully. “That was some cold-ass shit!”
“What took you so long?” Ricky snapped.
“Lot of big trees in this park.” The kid leaned forward, tentatively peering over the seat. “Is he…?”
“What the fuck you think? Yeah, he’s fucking dead.” Ricky tried to look tough. “You got the pipe?”
The kid in back fumbled through his pockets, passing pipe and lighter over the console. Ricky tossed him the paper bag full of money. “Stick that in your pocket.”
“I thought you were only capping him if he didn’t loan you the green?”
“Wasn’t a loan. Said he was giving it to me.”
“I don’t understand,” the kid said. “Why’d you shoot him then?”
Ricky dropped a rock in the bowl, sparked the glass. He inhaled deeply, blowing out a thick cloud. “Because while you were beating your meat, I was stuck listening to a goddamn history lesson on trees.” The smoke hit, and Ricky felt right.
“Trees? What about ’em?”
Ricky stared through the rain at the ugly banyan tree. He didn’t see anything special. There were a million overgrown weeds just like it in these swamps.
“Who the fuck knows,” he said. “But I’m on to better things. I popped a cap in Wade Wojcik. When word gets out, I won’t just be Big Rick’s son anymore.
“They’ll know I’m a player in this game for life.”
THIS STORY WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN NEAR TO THE KNUCKLE.
Joe Clifford is editor of The Flash Fiction Offensive, and the producer of Lip Service West, a “gritty, real, raw” reading series in Oakland, California. He is the author of three books: Choice Cuts, Wake the Undertaker (Snubnose Press), and Junkie Love (Vagabondage Press). Much of Joe’s writing can be found at JoeClifford.com.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * *
* * *
Christopher Coake
This work—the most significant I’ve ever attempted—could not have been possible without assistance from many. Please indulge me as I offer my deepest and most abiding thanks to:
Margaret, my wife. You were this story’s subject, its reason for being. I think, by its end, you understood me at last.
Paul, who since childhood has been my closest friend. What can I say that I haven’t already said? If you never knew me before, you know me now.
My father, who, in so many ways, has been my inspiration. You taught me—in no uncertain terms—that each day in this world we must earn our manhood anew.
Lisie. Here’s to the future. Our future.
My children, Melinda and Greg, for your obedience. I have raised you to see only what you must.
Thanks as well to:
The tall, silent man at 437 Wakefield, standing in his yard at two thirty yesterday morning, whose eyes could not penetrate the shadows. To you, sir, I am eternally grateful.
His dog, unchained, who exchanged silence for half a scone.
Ms. Anne LeChance, for Dostoyevsky.
The high-pressure system that stalled last week over the East Coast, causing three days of rain in this city, the rain that softened the ground.
Betsy, my seventh-grade crush, for laughing, laughing.
The Pep-Me-Up, for serving me coffee and a snack at 10:01, even though the sign said CLOSED.
Officer Jim Pope, CPD, for believing.
The admins and message-board community of LastGasp.com, for their most excellent advice.
My mother, for her absence.
All those who have hurt me, for my convictions.
And finally, thanks to the silence, which has lasted.
Christopher Coake is the author of You Came Back (2012) as well as the collection of short stories We’re in Trouble (2005), which won the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship. Coake was listed among “Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists” in 2007. His stories have been published in several literary journals and anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories 2004 and Best American Noir of the Century. He is a professor of English at the University of Nevada.
THE TERMINAL
* * *
* * *
Reed Farrel Coleman
Although his window faced a brick wall and the bed was as welcoming as a butcher’s block, his dreary little room at the Terminal Hotel was a step up from most of the shitholes he’d crashed in over the years. Rough living and life on the run teaches you how to compartmentalize physical discomfort, and he’d been an apt pupil. The sheer drabness of the joint had its upside. When he was awake, he wanted to be elsewhere.
Given its rich (and by rich I mean pathetic) history, you didn’t need an imagination to figure out why they called the place the Terminal Hotel. Unlike the old Half Moon, the place where Murder Inc.’s notorious Abe “Kid Twist” Reles was helped out the window while being guarded by a squad of New York’s Finest, death at the Terminal tended to be anonymous and inglorious. Over the decades, it had been the last stop for Drano-drinking housewives, crack whores, and cirrhotic old alkies on a good-bye bender. But like the deaths themselves, the name of the hotel had more mundane origins. It was right across the street from the Stillwell Avenue Terminal in Coney Island: the last stop for several subway lines. Last stops. He knew a little something about last stops.
“They was lookin’ for you again, Doc. They out there waitin’ for you,” the deskman said, fishing for a five-spot. “They know you’re here.”
Doc. He repeated the name to himself as he put five bucks on the counter. He had a given name too, but that felt more like a pulled tooth in a jar on a dentist’s shelf than a part of him.
He stepped out of the Terminal and stood on the corner of Mermaid and Stillwell. It was damp, the ocean breezes cutting ragged little holes right through him. Weather reports were useless this close to the water. Living in Coney had taught him that there was more to the local climate than the heat of the sun, the pull of the moon, or the direction of the wind.
He walked away from the Terminal, past Nathan’s, over the boardwalk, onto the beach. He knew they were there behind him. That was okay. She was safe. He was old. He was tired of running. Still, he got the shakes. The salt smell of the sea was nearly overwhelming, but the clank and rumble of subway wheels blending with the swoosh and retreat of the waves relaxed him. He liked it here. He liked how Coney displayed its decay like a badge of honor. It didn’t try to hide the scars where pieces of its once-glorious self had been cut off. Stillwell Avenue West was like a showroom of abandonment, the empty buildings wearing their disuse like bankrupted nobility in frayed and fancy suits. He had
come to the edge of the sea with the other last dinosaurs: the looming and impotent Parachute Jump, the Wonder Wheel, Nathan’s, the Cyclone.
He stared out at the caravan of container ships queuing up to enter the mouth of New York Harbor. He tried imagining what this odd slice of Brooklyn—then populated only by rabbits and local Indians—had looked like to Dutch sailors as they laid their eyes on the New World for the first time. Could they, he wondered, have imagined what this tiny peninsula would become? As he turned to his left to look at Brighton Beach and the Rockaways beyond, he heard their soft footsteps in the sand. He held his ground.
“Hey, Doc.” It was Johnny Rosetti and two of his boys. Boys! They were the size of the damned Parachute Jump and didn’t look nearly as impotent.
“Hey, yourself, Johnny Rosetti.”
“Where is she?”
He smiled at Johnny and realized he didn’t smile much anymore. “I don’t know, and I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
“You know, Doc, for some reason I believe you.”
“I never lied to you before.”
“She used you, Doc. She made a fool of you, old man.”
“That may be.”
“Was she worth it?”
“I thought she was, but I guess I’m about to find out, huh?”
“I guess you are. I guess you are, Doc. Do us both a favor, old man, and turn around, face the other way. Okay?”
Doc turned his back to the ocean and beheld the amusement park’s moth-eaten splendor. From where he stood, in the first light of morning, it still looked a grand place. At that distance, it all seemed in working order. Even the Parachute Jump appeared ready to shine again. From Doc’s place in the sand, he thought, you might be able to fool yourself that the sun-faded, blue-finned Astroland rocket atop Gregory and Paul’s food stand might fire up its engines and blast off. You had to get much closer to see the truth of it, the rust and folly of the place. So Doc walked ahead.
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