THUGLIT Issue Seven

by Joe Clifford

  I hefted myself in the cab. Kim started throwing rocks, but she was too drunk to do any real damage, the stones pinging like pebbles. I reversed and began to 3-point. It was a tight turn. Kim managed to wedge herself between the mobile home and my bumper, raining blows on the hood, continuing to wail.

  I gestured for her to move.

  "You ugly sonofabitch!" she shouted. "Think you're better than me? You were gonna stick it in me too, you fat, dirty bastard. Like I'm a piece of garbage to be used up and thrown away. You're no different than the rest of them!" She wound up and flung the vodka bottle at me. Instinctively I covered up and it smacked against the windshield, spider web cracking like ice on a bridge at dawn. My foot must've slipped off the brake. The truck lurched forward and I heard a terrible thud.

  I jerked the emergency handle and jumped down. I'd only gone a few feet, not fast enough to hurt anyone. The way the truck hit, though, she must've bounced off the trailer and gotten tangled in the wheel well, dragged beneath the tires. A bra strap hung from the fender. Kim's head, or what was left of it, had deep tread grooves running through it, eyeballs popping out the skull like a pair of pimentos. I immediately threw up. Bad thoughts tried to sneak into my brain. But I didn't let my foot slide on purpose. It was an accident.

  The vodka lay by her outstretched arm, bottle unbroken. I twisted off the top and guzzled till my throat burned. I had to think, and thinking has never been something I'm good at. I scanned the horizon, gazing into the vast barren plains, nothing for miles. I drank some more till my belly and head were on fire, and the smoke in my brain started to lift.

  I bound her hands and feet with twine, and hoisted her limp, lifeless body over my shoulder and dropped it into the bed, like an old rug you'd haul to the dump. Then I drove into the middle of the black desert mesa, bobbing white moon guiding my passage. I grabbed my shovel, and got to work. I dug fast, ferocious. My roughhewn hands cracked and blistered, flaps of skin hanging from my raw, meaty palms. The salt from my sweat stung, and with all that dust in my lungs, I was sucking wind pretty hard, like a big mouth bass flopping on the sandy shore gulping for air. I didn't think about my pretty friend who used to chase critters with me in the reserve any more.

  I needed to get my story straight. I'd talk to Mike Edsel, explain what Kim had planned. Then he'd help me, he'd be so grateful, of course he would. He could say that no one had seen Kim, that she never came in for her shift. Then tomorrow I'd bring my truck into the garage and get my bumper fixed. Stevie'd back me up. He'd tell 'em I'd come over to help with the roof rats and that we'd been driving to get a box of poison at the all-night Wal-Mart in Pasa Robles when we'd hit a coyote. Everyone knew the coyote problem in the Canyon. The bastards were everywhere.

  The more I dug and drank, the better I began to feel. No one had to know. I killed the bottle and dropped the gate, wrapped my fist around twine like I was pulling a sack of grain to a factory floor. I dragged her through the dust and dirt, thick stream of blood trailing behind, to the edge of the hole I'd dug big enough for two. I leaned on my shovel, exhausted, but finally feeling hopeful. This could work. Sure, it could.

  Then I heard them. A soft desert breeze rustling the hedge, paws stalking shrub, claws crawling through clay. I whipped around and peered into black, trying to get my bearings, heavy panting trapped between my ears, but I couldn't see anything. The low and steady growl grew louder until I could almost feel their hot breath on my neck.

  They began to appear, one by one, creeping from the darkness, red eyes burning like fiery stars come out of hiding, behind the ridges, between the boulders, a pack of hungry devils, licking its chops, closing in on its prey.

  Pegleg

  by Ed Kurtz

  Poke was the craziest spook I ever knew, so I told him that. I knew you weren't supposed to say that when you wasn't black—and I wasn't—but I tried it all the time because I thought it would make me seem tough. I didn't seem so tough after Poke smashed his fist at my mouth and took me off my stool. I thought I got hit by a truck, he hit me so hard. He laughed a little after that, then he grabbed my arm and lifted me up to my feet before socking me a second time, just to make sure I got the picture. I got it.

  "You'll watch your mouth next time," Poke said.

  He said that partly because my mouth was bleeding so bad. He handed me a napkin and pushed my drink over to me. I dabbed the napkin in my whiskey and touched it to my split-open lip. It hurt almost as bad as getting hit in the first place and I howled like a damn dog. I had this mutt when I was a boy and one time he got runned down by a milk van and that dirty little dog just howled like nothing I ever heard, his guts all half-spilled out, 'til he died. It was like that.

  When I was through hollering I said, "Jesus, I didn't mean nothing by it, Poke. You know I'm just a dumb ole redneck."

  Which was true but not why I said it.

  Poke screwed up his face like maybe he wasn't done knocking me around, but instead he said, "Would you keep your dumb ole redneck mind on the job?"

  It was the job what made me say he was crazy in the first place. Poke ran numbers a lot and sometimes I'd knock a place off and he did too, but we wouldn't ever do a robbery together on account of there weren't a whole lot of mixed teams running around town in those days and everybody would know it was us who done it. Of course, he wasn't talking about knocking off any five-and-dime or anything like that. Poke wanted to do a smash and grab on Porky Valentine. Like I said: crazy.

  Here's how come it was crazy, what Poke wanted to do. First of all, Porky Valentine was a big sonofabitch. He had him this great big belly hung over his waist like a bag full of lard, and that's how he came by the name, but his arms was like a couple of oaks made out of meat. Whenever I laid eyes on the man, I always thought how little I'd like to be on the wrong end of a beating from a big sonofabitch like that. And I got punched around all the time.

  Another reason it was crazy to fuck with Porky was the guy was connected. We wasn't in any kind of town in those days, it wasn't hardly anything more than a bump in the road like most towns in Arkansas, but the way I saw it everyplace had connected guys. Somebody had to be in charge, and it wasn't usually the city council—if there even was one. In our town, it was Porky Valentine. Anybody was involved in something not exactly legal, he probably had a finger in it, and you probably owed him a cut if you didn't want your fingers broke. Never mind the fella was colored like Poke—guy like that can be purple with yellow polka dots and nobody's gonna say boo about it who don't want to sink to the bottom of the Arkansas River. That man got his respect. And Christ knew, taking anything away from him wasn't really all that respectful in most folks' eyes.

  The third and last reason I thought Poke was maybe getting touched in the head was on account of what it was he wanted to take. There was this little storefront in the one-block strip of shit we called downtown, and in the back of it was where Porky did business. Far as I knew, he just set in there all day long smoking menthol cigarettes and playing cards and counting his goddamn money. I never went back there before, but most anybody reckoned he probably had a few thousand cash in a safe or something at any time. Poke didn't want to go in looking for no safe.

  Poke wanted to take Porky Valentine's fucking leg.

  "Ain't hardly nobody knows about it," he said, leaning in close so it was just between us. "I'm tellin' you, that motherfucker got a wooden leg."

  I thought maybe that's the kind of thing you'd hear about—and I never heard it—but I put that away because I still couldn't understand why the hell anybody would want to jack a man's wooden leg.

  "Probably he's embarrassed, like that," I said. "You take it off him everybody's gonna know. Then Porky gets mad and you get dead. What's the percentage in that, Poke?"

  "See, I don't think it's secret 'cause he's embarrassed. Shoot, I seen that fat bastard act a fool with the whole world watching—this one time he ate enough crawdads down at Billy's place on the crick to feed ten dudes, then he got so drunk he shi
t his pants. Did anybody make a fuss or laugh at him? Hell, no. Porky can do whatever he want, because ain't nobody gonna fuss. Not ever."

  I tried to imagine a four hundred pound man shitting his drawers in front of God and everyone, but it almost turned me off my whiskey so I didn't like that. Instead I fired up one of Poke's little cigarillos and blew smoke and it made the booze taste a little better. Still hurt my lip, though.

  "How come you know anything about his pegleg anyhow?" I asked after a bit.

  He said, "Same as I know there ain't no safe back of that shop he always sets in. This brother goes by Spaceman…"

  "Short fella? Got them…whatcha call it?" I mimed the way Spaceman's hair looked, which was all braided and tight on the skull.

  "Cornrows," Poke told me. "Yeah, that's him. See, my man ran a delivery for Mr. Valentine his own self, and when he went to pick it up they took him in the back. Fuckin' Holy of Holies, you know what I mean?"

  I nodded and eyeballed the bar on account of I wanted another drink. The barman was rubbing his crotch up against it while he talked to some lot lizard from the Flying J next door. Typical, was what I thought of that. Me, I wouldn't hump a woman like that with Poke's dick and the bartender pushing.

  "Are you hearin' me out man?"

  I came back to him and nodded my head.

  He said, "Look, Spaceman tells me—and this is a two six-packs in, you know, the man is just babblin'—but he tells me there wasn't nothing even like a safe back there. He knew 'cause he was lookin' around for one, kinda half-casing like you do. Dude wouldn't never do nothing 'bout it, but you know how it is. Always lookin'."

  I knew how it was.

  "A'ight, so these dudes take Space back there, and they set him down at this table 'cross from Porky. There's all this cash money on top and lines of blow, shit like that. Porky's not touching the blow—that shit would kill a man that fat—but he's finishing up with the money. Space says it's all hundreds and bigger. He gets into what it is he wants Space to do, and while he's talking he passes a fat stack to one of the guys on his crew. Just hands it to him, and keeps on talkin', and the other guy gets down on his knees right there. My man says to me he thought the dude was gonna suck Porky's dick."

  I bust out laughing at that, because it was a pretty funny thing, but it made my bottom lip break open again and next thing I knew I was dribbling blood all down my chin. Poke gave me a look and threw another napkin at me. I dabbed my lip and he went on.

  "Now he didn't see everything exactly, but he got an impression, if you know what I'm saying. This other dude, Porky's dude, got down on the floor with the money and came back up with nothin', and then just crossed his arms like it didn't never happen."

  "Maybe he put it in Porky's sock," I said.

  "Huh-uh," Poke said. He grinned at me. "When Spaceman was going out, he looked down, real quick like, and the big man's pants leg was hiked up a little. So he saw."

  "He saw."

  "The goddamn wooden leg, you dumb bastard."

  I rolled it over in my head and put out the cigarillo in my empty glass.

  "How the hell's he get around on a wooden leg being as fat as he is?"

  "Get it together," Poke snapped at me. "You understand what this is? Porky's leg is the safe, brother. You get the leg, you got the motherfucking bank."

  I stood up and went to the bar. Snapped my fingers at the horndog making time with the hooker even them truckers next door wouldn't prod with a stob. Made my back sort of shiver just thinking about it. And after I got another double Wild Turkey—151, I'm no slouch—I came back to the table and I said to Poke, "All right, so how do we do this?"

  *****

  Smash and grab was what the man said, and he wasn't fooling around about it. Thing was, Porky Valentine wasn't ever by himself, probably not even when he went to the can. There were always guys around, and those guys packed for sure. So that put the sneak factor right out the window from the get-go. The only way to do this thing was to bust right up in that fat sucker's face and take what we came to get.

  Poke knew a brother dealt with guns, so he gave the guy a call and brought him out to his place, a little two-room house a mile west of the quarry. Dude drove up in a beat-up old Camaro and hauled two suitcases out of the backseat, brought them inside, and opened them up to show us twenty different kinds of guns. There was a little bit of back and forth, bargaining and like that, and he ended up leaving Poke with a SIG while I went for a compact Smith & Wesson .45. Hundred bucks, said it was untraceable.

  Poke said, "We won't have to fire a single shot, don't worry."

  I hoped he was right about that.

  *****

  In the car—Poke's car, a station wagon older than Methuselah, since mine got repo-ed—I pulled the balaclava down over my face and Poke did the same. I didn't know that's what you called a robbery mask, but it's what Poke called them. Up 'til then I always went with pantyhose.

  It was nighttime and the street was mostly empty. There were some cars parked, but there was always a car or two parked on Main. All the storefronts was closed up, shuttered, and only the streetlights gave off any glow. Poke killed the engine and we climbed out of that shitty old station wagon at the same time. He had his SIG tucked into his pants but I kept that .45 in my hand.

  "Let's go 'round back," Poke said. So that's what we did.

  There was this skinny alley between Nelda's diner and the feed store, and we went down it single file until we was in the back. More cars were parked back there on the dirt, all at crazy angles because it wasn't really a parking lot, and the crabgrass grew up at least a foot behind that. Snake territory. I hated snakes worse than anything.

  Poke counted the doors at the back of the buildings to find the one we wanted. Porky's door. Most of them was wood doors you could kick in even if you was a little guy like me. Porky's was solid steel.

  We walked up to it, our shoes crunching the pebbles and dirt, and tried to listen real careful-like. But we couldn't hear a thing other than the bugs making a racket back in the grass. Poke touched the butt of his gun and heaved a huge breath into his lungs. When he pushed it back out again I could smell all that vodka he'd been drinking back at the bar. I was starting to wonder if maybe we shouldn't have waited 'til we was sober enough to do this job clean, but by then Poke was pounding on the door with his fist.

  I said, "Shit!" And then there was this big crunching sound like a warship listing at sea or something. It was just the bar coming off the door before it opened up. Poke got his gun all the way out and I tightened my grip on mine, even though my hands were sweating like crazy.

  Cigar and marijuana smoke spilled out into the night, and the second this black face came in between the crack and the jamb, Poke jammed his SIG right in the guy's nose.

  "Don't be stupid," he said to the guy. "Just let us in, real nice and quiet."

  The dude probably wasn't older than twenty-five and looked like he wanted to piss his pants. His mouth hung open and his eyes crossed at the barrel of the gun. He swallowed loud and opened the door the rest of the way, keeping his hands where we could see them. Poke grabbed him by his shirt and spun him round, locked his left arm round the guy's throat, and put the gun to his temple. He pushed into the room and I came in behind.

  There was a record player on top of a crate playing some of that Motown stuff and the lady singer was talking about love. She was the only one talking. In the middle of the room two other guys flanked their boss, staring us down with a mean hate in their eyes. The boss looked meaner still.

  Porky was sitting at a card table and the whole thing looked just like I imagined it when Poke was telling Spaceman's story. Sure as shit there was a card game going on the table, and a little money, though no coke. It was just as well. We didn't come for no nose candy.

  The big man's face was dripping sweat and his shirt was stained in the pits right up to his chest. He had both hands on the table and a great big cigar smoking between two fingers of the right one. His
bottom lip stuck out like when little kids pout, but his eyes were all man. A four hundred pound man who would drop us like cattle at the slaughterhouse and then forget he ever done it.

  Since Poke's gun was still on the guy from the door, I put mine on Porky. I had this queer feeling about it, like I was affronting God. But my hand didn't shake at all.

  Then Porky stuck that cigar in his mouth, drew in a huge lungful of smoke, and blew it out.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he said. He said it real calm, like there wasn't any guns on him at all.

  To me, Poke whispered, "In and out, man. In and out."

  He'd said it before, on the way there. I knew what he meant.

  "I want you two put your hands on top of your heads and face up to the wall there," I said to the dudes flanking Porky Valentine. The one of the left glared at me and the other dude looked to Porky to see what should he do. Porky nodded, just once. Both men laced their fingers over their domes and walked to the wall, where they stood with their backs to us.

  I came over to the table and rifled through the cash. It wasn't much. Card money was all. I gathered it up and stuffed it in my pocket anyway. Only about fifty bucks.

  Porky went on smoking and said, "Satisfied? You robbed a blackjack game. Big win for you. Now get the hell out of my storeroom."

  I looked to Poke and he pushed the fella he was holding away from him. The guy staggered a few feet and then went to join his buddies against the wall. Now Porky had two guns on him and he still didn't look like it much mattered to him. He was sweating worse than anyone I ever saw, but I reckoned it was hot in there and he was twice as big as he ought to be. You can tell when a man's scared by looking at his eyes, and I didn't think he was scared at all.