by Jason Davis
Luck.
He took a deep breath and pushed the image out of his head. He was almost home. Only a couple blocks away. He already called to turn over the investigation to the state police, he was clocked off to the county dispatch, and he was officially off duty. Only a couple blocks and he would be home. He put the car into gear and drove the quarter-mile stretch into town.
He briefly noticed lights on at the doctor's office. That wasn't normal. The doc shouldn't be in for another couple hours.
There was a car parked in front. Illinois plates, but not one he recalled having seen in town before. Not that the car stood out, it looked like every other dark blue Honda, but he would have known if it belonged to any of the local troublemakers. He figured maybe someone broke into the doctor's office for drugs. He was sometimes surprised that it had yet to happen with some of the local deviants.
Oh, how today's youth had fallen into such a waste. What were the future generations going to do when today's pothead was someday, in the White House. It was bound to happen, as respect was lost with each passing generation. He had to deal with it every day.
He guessed he should probably pull in and check on it. Damn, he had hoped to get home to his nice soft bed and some quiet. He could see his house. It was the small yellow one just two blocks down on the right. It was right there. If he just kept driving, he’d be home.
He flipped on his turn signal when the front door to the doctor’s opened. A young woman came out, followed by a little girl. His sister—how she had ever met the local doctor and found love, he never would understand because he found him to be quite a major pain in the ass—walked out behind them.
Well, he guessed, everything was fine then. He turned his signal off and kept driving.
Home, sleep… Unfortunately, he knew that the bad dreams were coming.
****
Tina wasn’t sure what the hell to do. She wasn’t a parent. She never made the claim that she was. She wasn’t ready for the responsibility yet. It required more patience than she possessed and a certain lack of sleep to which she wasn’t accustomed. Nor, as she realized now, did she have the instinct for it.
When the doctor’s wife had come back out and told them it was probably nothing more than a small flu bug and just to keep giving Lisa Tylenol and watch for fever, Tina realized just how freaked out she had been. She was ready to pound down the doctor’s door to see him. Luckily, they had found the doctor already in the office.
I am so not ready for this shit, she thought, letting out a deep breath. She was glad to be leaving. She didn’t know why, but she felt some kind of tension. Something was…off when the nurse had come back to them after speaking to the doctor. Tina shook it out of her mind. Like she would know if that was normal or not. He probably had so many false alarms or paranoid new mothers who came in, maybe they were used to the drill and the “quick” medicine.
“I really am feeling a lot better,” Lucy said from the back seat. Tina looked into the rear-view mirror. Her niece really didn’t look that much better. In fact, she looked worse. Her skin had lost some of its color and the darkness under her eyes had grown thicker.
“You sure, little girl?” Tina said wryly. She tried to show Lucy a smile, and Lucy responded by showing her the same.
“I do. It might just have been a little twenty-four-hour bug.”
Tina was always amazed at how old her niece sounded. She always seemed to be much older than her age, and if Tina were older herself, that might have worried her. However, with Tina being the younger daughter, it also made her the careless, irresponsible one. It was largely because she wasn’t too much older than her niece and nephew herself.
She hated that her damn sister had to leave town and left her in charge of both the bar, which her sister’s oldest son technically ran, and the two children. Well, Jason couldn’t really be called a child, but her sister wanted her to keep an eye on him, as well. Tina didn’t know why. He seemed more together than she did at that age.
“Can I still go to the basketball game later?” Lucy asked from the back seat. Her voice was that little whine only girls that age seemed to master. Tina knew that sound well. She had used it many times on her own parents. Who was she kidding? She still used that voice on them, especially every month when her rent was due.
“I’m not sure. You were sick all night.” Tina wanted to remind her that she kept her up, as well, but she left it alone. She was tired herself, and the only thing she looked forward to right now was getting back to bed. Ten hours of sleep was barely enough for her. She had gotten much less than that last night, so she was suffering right now.
“Please?! I feel better. Really.”
Tina pulled the car onto the last street in town before it stretched out into cornfields and started to wonder if she should let her go. Lucy had gone to school the day before. Today was Saturday, so it wasn’t a school day. It wasn’t like anyone knew Lucy had been sick. If she truly wanted to go, she should be old enough to make her own decisions.
Tina thought about it, debating with herself. She was trying to think what her sister would do, but she had no idea. Maybe she should call her?
“How about I call your mom and ask her?” Tina said, the gravel crunching beneath the tires as she made the turn into the driveway. Tina looked back at Lucy, seeing she was all smiles. That made Tina smile, as well. After all, smiles were infectious, and Lucy was always such a cute kid. Damn, her sister was lucky.
Tina started to open the driver’s side door when she heard the screen door slam shut. She looked up to see a tall, slightly overweight young man, only about nineteen, stomping down the back steps. He hurried past, not even acknowledging them.
“You heading to the bar?” Tina called out as he headed to his little teal-colored Chevy Malibu. It was an old car, an old multi-colored monstrosity that Jason had paid cheaply for, but it was his and it ran.
He stopped suddenly, seemingly noticing them for the first time, and looked at Tina. Then he smiled and nodded. Smiling back, she waited until he was in his car and backing up before she opened her own door. It was a small two-car driveway. She didn’t want him taking her out.
Lucy was already out of the car, hurrying to the house. Tina didn’t know how she had navigated around the large overgrown pine bush that was snug against the passenger side of the car, but she had and was nearly all the way up the back steps. Tina knew she going to let her go to the game. She seemed okay, and it would mean the house would be quiet.
Sleep. Ah, yes. Glorious sleep.
Chapter 7
Jason looked at the checkbook, then at the log again. He looked back at the balance sheet before he repeated the sequence. Man, he never understood how his mother could keep all this stuff straight. She had the boards, the 20/20, checking all the machines, figuring out how much booze to order, and making sure the till came out okay. He was just perplexed. It didn’t quite come out how it should, and he didn’t know where he made the mistake.
He had been at the bar for the last two hours. At first, things had gone well. He had done the paperwork for the last two days. He should have done Thursday’s numbers Friday morning, but he had been tired and the thought of doing anything more than unlocking the door and putting money in the drawer just seemed like too much work. Besides, his mom wouldn’t be home for another week. What was one day of slacking on the books going to matter?
Now he wished he had done them because something didn’t add up right. He wasn’t sure if it was something he miscounted from Thursday’s numbers, something he miscounted from Friday’s numbers, or if someone had gotten into the money bag from Thursday or he had miscounted change Friday night.
Either way, it didn’t add up. As far as he could figure, he was nearly three hundred short, which meant he wasn’t going to have enough in the account to cover the alcohol check he was going to have to write because they were running low. He didn’t know how they had managed to go through so much Jäger and
Black Haus the night before. Skimpy, the resident Black Haus drinker, must have been on a binge.
What the hell was he going to do? He wanted to call his mom, see what she thought, but then he would have to admit to not doing the books the night before. Plus, he didn’t want her to think he couldn’t handle it on his own. Not that it was his dream in life, but he wanted to prove himself as being able to run the bar so maybe she would leave it to him someday.
He heard the heavy security door at the back of the bar open and close. He quickly looked up at the clock. It was past nine already? Shit! Jones would be in for his morning coffee.
Jason tried to remember if he had put a fresh pot of coffee on when he came in. He had come in the front door, just like he always did. Because of how the bar was constructed, a person would have to. The back door was secured with a large, thick piece of metal that looked like it had been a leftover steel rail from the train yard. So he had come in the front door and put the code in the alarm keypad. It had beeped at him three times, letting him know that all was okay and he may enter, which was good because the alarm wasn’t set to call the police. It was set to call his mother’s cell phone.
After the alarm, what did he do? He was tired. He sure as hell remembered that. So he had come in, went to the back door, and unlocked it. Then he went to the windows and withdrew the broomstick handle that his mother had cut down to size to put in between the two windows so they couldn’t be opened.
And then? And then he went to the kitchen, started a pot of coffee, then walked to the safe.
Yes. Coffee!
He took a deep breath and smelled the heavenly scent that drifted from the little kitchen area down the hall. Yes, there was coffee. Maybe he should get himself another cup. He was more tired than he thought he was.
He quickly gathered the piles of money along the top of the counter, using paperclips to keep each of the piles separated, and dropped them into a vinyl blue bank bag. Then, with a quick zip of the bag, he dropped it into the empty sink just as Mr. Jones entered the interior door to the bar. While his mother didn’t care if early customers came in and saw her counting the money, Jason did. He was just paranoid that way. He didn’t feel comfortable with that much money around and people coming in and out.
He focused his attention back on Mr. Jones as he came in and sat at the end of the bar. He was always the first customer of the day, limping his way, with the help of his cane, to the bar. He’d then hang his cane over the end of the bar, prop his prosthetic left leg up on the footrest, and then would just sit there and wait for his cup of coffee. He would never say it, but it was known that if he had to wait too long, he wouldn’t be very happy.
Jason hurried to the back to get Mr. Jones his coffee. After all, they were a bar, not a café. Coffee wasn’t something that was normally on the menu. In fact, other than a handful of regulars, nobody knew about coffee being on in the morning.
He grabbed the plain, white coffee cup from the shelf just above the pot, poured, and hurried back to the front to deliver the steaming cup to the man sitting impatiently at the bar. No matter how fast that first cup arrived, it was never fast enough.
Mr. Jones didn’t do anything more than just glare at Jason until the cup was in front of him, then sat long enough for the vibrations along the top of the liquid to fade into stillness. Finally, he looked at the cup and brought it to his lips.
Jason turned from him, walked back to the sink, and grabbed the vinyl bag. He tried to be as unobtrusive as possible as he took the bag back to the kitchen, but he knew Mr. Jones probably realized what he was doing. He set the bag down by the coffeepot, then leaned against the counter. He knew he couldn’t be back there for too long, not with Mr. Jones out there, but he didn’t want to hurry back and deal with him.
He didn’t like Mr. Jones. Once the caffeine got into him, the old man would no longer be the silent, glaring man. He would be talkative, have an opinion on everything, the only right opinion would be his own, and Jason did not want to have to listen to him.
And if Jason stayed in the back for too long, or if he didn’t listen to the old man, Mr. Jones would leave early. It wasn’t as though that was a bad thing. It would be heavenly if the old man just stayed away while Jason ran the bar. However, when his mom came back, Mr. Jones would be all too happy to give her a report, and that would never fly.
“Ugh.” With a groan, he pushed himself away from the counter and went back to the front of the bar.
“So, when’s your mom get back?”
He asked that damn question every day, Jason thought to himself. He knew the answer didn’t matter. The old man knew it would be another week before she was back. No, the question was always meant to be more of a rub against Jason. It was the countdown until the all-knowing, much kinder, much better bartender came back.
Jason didn’t know why it bothered him. His mother would be back, and he would be released to go back to school. Back to the campus that seemed so far away.
“She’ll be back next week,” Jason said, opening the cooler and pulling out a diet Mountain Dew. “Do the Dew” was in large letters across the top of the can, making him smile.
Thankfully, Mr. Jones wasn’t in a talkative mood…yet. He didn’t say much more as he took another sip from his cup. It was going to be a long day. Jason didn’t want to just stay there talking to the old man all morning, but he couldn’t just leave the bar, either. He was stuck there. He had to take care of the place.
****
“Shit,” Rob said under his breath as he stared down at the flaps of rubber and exposed metal of his flat tire. No, not a flat. A flat tire would have been just that. A tire that had gone flat and could be fixed so he could drive it a short distance. No, this had been a blowout, the remnants of the tire littered along the country road. He felt the heat that had risen in him over the frustration, and he could barely keep himself from continuing to curse at the mess of wire and rubber attached to his rim.
His heart pounded in his chest, his hands still shaking from the adrenaline coursing through him. He was not in the mood to deal with this damn shit. He was running just a little ahead of schedule on his way to court. He didn’t have time to deal with changing a damn tire out in the middle of nowhere on a highway that was barely used now that the interstate had been put in.
He hadn’t been in the area at the time, but so many of the locals told him that it was when businesses started to close and traffic had nearly disappeared along the highway. Sure, the interstate was great to get people from point A to point B, but what about all the little mom and pops along the way? Not that any of that mattered right now. Right now, he just wished there was more traffic.
He still couldn’t believe just how much goddamn shit could go wrong in one damn instant. He kicked out at the tire again, instantly regretting it as his foot recoiled, the pain from making contact with the metal of the rim shooting up his leg. He grimaced with the pain, which just made the mind-numbing pain in his head that much worse.
When the tire first blew, he had barely been able to keep control of the car to get it off to the side of the road. He had been thankful, even sending up a few prayers, grateful he had been able to get over to the shoulder and that no one had gotten hurt. He would quickly change the tire, then be on his way, right?
Wrong.
When he opened the trunk to get the spare, he found that not only was the spare flat, but the tire iron was missing. When he had pulled it from the trunk, it had hit the cement shoulder with a loud, flat thunk.
After looking at it, he saw the large gashes, remembering the tire getting slashed a couple months ago. He thought he had mentioned it to his wife, Robyn, asking her to get it fixed when she got a chance. He guessed she, like him, must have forgotten about it.
The town they had moved to just over a year ago wasn’t just a small town. It was damn near tiny, hardly even a dot on the state map. Rob was one of the deputies there, had been ever since leaving the Ch
icago Police Department and moving to the little speck on a map, but he liked it. It was quaint and peaceful, without the gangs and the violence he had always been around in Chicago. However, that didn’t keep bad things from happening.
Like the slashing of his tires. It was one of the first times he had learned the difference between something that would have been considered a passive act of violence, probably done by one of the local gangs in the city, and a little property damage done by the local kids just screwing around on a boring Tuesday night.
Rob found out the difference when he had called it in to his chief and was told it wasn’t anything major. It was probably that Hampson kid, the one Rob had given a ticket to for curfew the night before. He advised Rob to talk harshly to the kid about it, play tough, but to just let it go.
Rob had done so, but his tire was still damaged. At the time he had found it, he had just been about to start his shift. He changed the tire, worked his third shift, and had said something in passing to his wife about possibly getting it fixed. He thought he had asked her to check into it while he slept, but
he couldn’t even be sure he had.
It was just going to be a shit fucked kind of day.
After he checked and found that he had no usable spare, he went into the car to grab his cell phone. At first, he had checked his pockets, then felt along his belt. When it wasn’t there, he figured he had left it in the center console of his car. However, when he opened the door and reached across, trying not to lean to hard into the steering wheel, he didn’t see or feel anything. He reached back to where the center popped open. He looked inside. Nothing. He pulled back and rested his hands on his hips.
A car raced by, and with the speed it was traveling, the wind pushed Rob toward his car, then pulled him to toward the road. The motion was quick and sudden. Rob had to struggle to keep himself from losing his balance.
