Jake Caldwell Thrillers Read online

  They bumped fists again as Bear jumped into his Chevelle, cranked the key, and waited for the engine to catch, the endeavor always a bit of a gamble. Would it or wouldn’t it? Today it did and Bear tore out of their driveway and on to Poor Boy Road in a cloud of dust.

  Jake went inside the house and smelled something cooking in the kitchen. Janey made her green bean casserole and Jake’s stomach growled. The leaping deer clock on the wall read five o’clock, five hours until he could hook up with Maggie at their spot after she snuck out.

  Jake and Janey ate in the living room in front of the television that night. Burt Reynolds jumped his Trans Am over the bridge to elude Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit, when the familiar muffler of the old man’s truck roared up Poor Boy Road. An engine revved to redline followed by the clunks of gravel flying in the driveway. Jake’s head swung to Janey, her eyes growing wide.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” she said.

  “It’s not,” Jake said, jumping up. “Go to your room and shut the door.”

  He didn’t have to ask her twice. She padded down the hall and disappeared into her room. Moments later, the truck door squealed open, glass bottles clinked together and broke on the driveway. The door shut and Jake clenched the armrest of the chair, staring ahead at the TV, the muscles in his jaw already aching with tension. He could bail to his room, or out the back door, but he represented the buffer between Stony and Janey. The old man hadn’t hurt her, but the possibility of a first time couldn’t be discounted. It wouldn’t happen on Jake’s watch.

  The front door banged open, and an unshaven, dirty mess lurched against the frame. Three days worth of booze, smoke and body odor rolled across the living room and made Jake wince. The old man swayed and scanned the room from side to side as if trying to figure out if he went to the right house. His eyes locked in on Jake on the third sweep.

  “Where’s everyone at?” Stony asked, slurring, leaning against the doorway like it would collapse if he moved.

  “Janey’s in her room. Nicky came home from work but went back into town to hook up with some friends.”

  “So what the hell are you doing?” Stony said, the corner of his mouth drawn up in a sneer. “Not out finger bangin’ your little blondie?”

  Jake remained stone faced as his father laughed and staggered past to the kitchen. He grabbed a cold beer and plopped in his recliner. He chuckled at his joke but stopped when the vein in Jake’s forehead pulsated with anger.

  “Whatsamatter?” He took a long pull from the can, foam on his upper lip and amber liquid dripping down his chin. “Can’t take a joke, you candy ass?”

  “I can take a joke,” Jake said. “I’ll wait until you say something funny.”

  Stony took another slug. He wiped his mouth on a dirty shirt sleeve and pointed at Jake with a long, bony finger.

  “Listen, smart ass,” he said. “I’ll whip your ass if you don’t keep your mouth shut. You think you’re a big man. Big football man fucking the hottie prom queen. You think you’re better than me?”

  Jake was well-conditioned to not engage his dad on any level of confrontation. Stony was on a three-day bender and though he could barely stand, Jake couldn’t bring himself to fight him, a line he wouldn’t cross, no matter what Stony did to him.

  “I don’t think I’m better than you.”

  Stony’s finger wavered in the air, and it took a good ten seconds for Jake’s statement to seep in.

  “Good, you miserable little son of a bitch.” Stony sank back in his chair. “Cuz you ain’t better than me. Big football star. Mister college bound douche bag. Ain’t nobody better than me. Especially you. Now go fix me something to eat.”

  Jake stood without a word, went to the kitchen and heated some of Janey’s casserole on a plate. He waited a minute for the microwave to finish and took the warm food to the living room. Stony slumped in the recliner, out cold, the empty beer can tilted toward the floor. Jake took the can, turned off the light and left Stony there. He knocked gently on Janey’s door. She opened it enough for her red, curly head to show.

  “Go to Darla’s house for the night,” he said. “He’s passed out now, but he’ll wake up eventually and I don’t like his mood.”

  “What about you?” Lines creased her forehead.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m going to hook up with Maggie. I might just take a sleeping bag and crash up on the hill. It’s warm out. I’ll be fine.”

  Janey grabbed a bag, stuffed a few clothes in it and peeked in the hall. The two tiptoed to the front door, though a parade of trumpeting elephants could trample through the place and Stony wouldn’t twitch a muscle.

  Jake escorted Janey a quarter mile up the road to her friend Darla’s house, as small as their own, but better maintained. Darla’s folks didn’t make a lot of money, but they were kind, hardworking people who knew what the Caldwell kids faced at home and would take any of them in without a word when needed.

  Janey safely deposited, Jake walked back toward home, past the front yard and up the hill into the woods, following the moonlight touching the dirt path that climbed to the Spot. He waited, taking in the moon-kissed treetops with his knees drawn up, hugging himself with his brawny arms. He thought of his dad passed out and how they had to escape him. It was fucking ridiculous.

  Maggie arrived with her spirit-lifting aura twenty minutes later. They embraced and kissed, said a few words and kissed some more. She couldn’t stay. Her parents were still up and working on something for church. She snuck out her window but needed to get back. They promised to get together tomorrow and parted ways.

  He trudged back down the hill, his work boots crunching leaves and twigs. A rabbit darted across the path, diving into the opposite brush. He wished he’d brought his sleeping bag. But the day’s work and the beer left him wiped out; he didn’t have the energy to walk back to the hill. Stony would be out until morning anyway.

  The chainsaw sounds of his dad snoring in the chair shattered the silence of the house. His father hadn’t moved an inch in the hour Jake was gone. In the bedroom he shared with Nicky, he peeled off his clothes and dropped on to his bed in his boxers, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Maggie. His leg dangled off the side of the bed, sweeping back and forth. Jake counted the pendulum sweeps of his big toe brushing the bare wood. He counted to sixty before falling asleep.

  He dreamed of a monstrous shadow chasing him through the darkened Warsaw streets. The normally wide Main Street squeezed together to nothing more than an alley, and he darted from door to door trying to escape. The stores were all locked and the windows dark. Long, pale faces with black eyes stared out from inside the shops as he screamed for help. Every time he approached a door, the faces drew back and disappeared into the blackness. The thump of the shadow’s heavy footsteps drew closer and the impact ring of metal meeting metal. The narrow Main Street triangulated to a point, trapping him. As the shadow approached, Jake pressed his back into the unyielding wood and screamed aloud.

  He woke in a sheen of sweat, heart racing from the nightmare. The light from the hallway backlit the figure hovering over him with something in hand. Jake smelled beer, dirt and sweat.

  “You want to leave, boy? Let me tell you somethin’. You ain’t goin’ nowhere.” His father raised the dull silver pipe, eighteen inches long, an inch in diameter. The pitted pipe descended and crashed into Jake’s knee as it dangled off the side of the bed. Pain erupted like a volcano, sending piercing, fiery waves of agony through his body. A second swing of the pipe crashed between Jake’s hands grasping at his shattered knee and sent him reeling into darkness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Willie smoked and sweated outside the house, the four o’clock sun peeking through the trees to the west. He hated wearing the hazmat suit, but better to sweat it out than let the chemicals seep into his skin. Dexter kept an eye on the process inside the ramshackle house, making sure nothing boiled over. Thank God they neared the end of the run. Dexter cre
eped him out.

  Bennett crashed in the back of the pickup truck, where he’d pretty much been since his noon arrival, snoring loud enough to wake a hibernating bear. Even from this distance, Willie could smell the alcohol and weed seeping out of his pores. He, Bub and Howie tied one on last night at the Turn It Loose bar. Bennett said poor Howie lay wrecked in their trailer back home puking his guts out. Willie gave him until six o’clock to sleep it off before getting his ass back to work, or he’d let Shane know Howie wasn’t pulling his weight.

  Bub rumbled up in Willie’s truck. He slowly poured himself out of the cab, wincing with each step as he made his way to the house.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Willie asked.

  Bub coughed and drew in a deep breath, pressing his hand to his side. “Think I broke a goddamn rib.”

  “From what?”

  “Some big fucker jumped me and the Sterretts down by the Community Center.”

  Willie stepped off the porch. “One guy took all three of you? Who was he?”

  “Don’t know. Big. Solid. Short brown hair. Was asking about Shane. If we knew where to find him.”

  Sirens wailed in Willie’s head. “Cop?”

  “Don’t think so. Didn’t look like it anyway.”

  “Maybe a fed?”

  Bub lit a cigarette with painful movements that made Willie ache. He’d had his ass kicked before and recognized the telltale movements. “Never seen him before. Said Shane owed him some money and he wanted to know where he could collect.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “Told him to fuck off. Like I’m gonna give him Shane’s address. Then Hank took a swing with a pipe at his head and it was on. Man, that guy could fight. Like one of those ninjas in the movies. Don’t think we hit him once.”

  “What then?”

  “In about five seconds, both Sterretts were out cold on the ground, and he had me by the throat. Police sirens went off and the guy just disappeared like a fart in the wind. Cops didn’t even see him and didn’t want to jack with us. Just told me to get the hell outta there.”

  Bub ground the cigarette in the dirt. What should Willie do? Tell Shane? Probably not. Shane would send him on some witch hunt for the guy and he had enough to do. Besides, Willie didn’t want to mess with any man that could take down Bub and both the Sterrett twins at the same time.

  “Go take a rest next to Bennett,” Willie said. “We’re finishing up here.”

  Bub nodded and limped to the truck bed. He slid back and passed out before Willie got to the front door of the house.

  Back inside, Willie learned from Dexter the Meth Master for the next couple of hours. His final product had a crimson hue, chunks of rock like faded rubies. Dexter called it “Devil Ice.” He offered to let Willie try some before pounding a crystal to powder and snorting it. His eyes bugged and he howled a primal scream.

  “That’s some good shit,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re missing, kid.”

  Willie knew exactly what he was missing. He took a long pull of bottled water and his mind drifted to the girl. Little Halle who wasn’t little anymore, almost legal in the eyes of the law, though still too young for Willie to even think about. But think about her he did.

  Willie wandered back outside and lit a cigarette, leaning against the rickety front porch railing. It wasn’t her centerfold body, perfectly tan and smooth which was all Bub ever saw. It wasn’t her cascading hair or her soul-penetrating icy blues. For Willie, it was her smile, full of promise and a lust for life, that got his motor racing, even if she never cast it in his direction. He fantasized of chance meetings around Warsaw, long strolls around the lake, making out under the moonlight in the back of a sweet truck he’d probably never own. In the darkness of his trailer when his hand would reach below, she’d peel off her shirt, always the orange tank top, reach behind and unclasp her bra. Willie would reach forward and caress those perfectly round, soft breasts and lick the sweat from her cleavage.

  “What the hell are you thinking about?” Bub asked, lying on his side in the truck bed, propped up on a meaty arm.

  Willie jerked from the fantasy as if he’d been shocked in the ass by a cattle prod.

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. You had that stupid, faraway grin on your ugly mug and judging from your banana wood there, I’m guessing you were thinking about Halle.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Man, I’m telling you, we should pick her up sometime. She’s always wandering around town. Take her down to the lake…take her down everywhere.”

  An image flashed of Halle at the hands of a fat animal like Bub and his stomach rolled. He flicked the cigarette toward the truck. Right now, Bub ogled over Halle and joked around. But eventually he’d quit joking and his pea brain would try to turn fantasy to reality.

  “Don’t even think about it, Bub.”

  “Or what?” Bub must’ve been feeling better and clambered forward, dropping his boat-feet to the ground. He demonstrated the unwavering loyalty of a dog, but even a dog could turn and kill the man holding his leash. To set things to order, the master pulls on the leash and the dog obeys. Willie needed to yank on Bub’s leash.

  Willie reached on to the porch rail and picked up his butterfly knife. With practiced dexterity and a glimmer of sunlight on silver, he exposed the blade, locked the handles together and threw the knife at Bub’s feet. The blade buried itself inches from his toes. Bub’s fleshy jaw hung open. Willie puffed as wide as his skinny chest could expand.

  “Touch Halle and I’ll cut your balls off. Got it?”

  Bub closed his mouth. He kicked the knife over and winced back on to the truck bed, scooching back like a crab while holding his side. “You’re a crazy sumbitch, you know it?”

  Willie played the part of the powerless pawn working under Shane, and it felt good to throw his weight around. He nodded and went back to the house. Dollar signs rolled as he shattered the sheets of Devil Ice and bagged the results. With those dollar signs translating to bills in his pockets, he floated back to Halle and picked up with the imagined scenario in the pickup truck. This time, instead of sex, the two of them left Warsaw together for the bright lights of Kansas City.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Howie Skaggs teetered on the side of his bed, holding his throbbing head in his hands. With his eyes clamped shut against the piercing daylight blasting through the smoke-yellowed windows of the trailer, he grabbed his cigarettes off the end table. Without opening his eyes, he lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in as the nausea stirred in his belly. He glanced at the clock and groaned. He’d been in bed all day and now had only an hour to get to the cook house by six o’clock or Willie would have his ass.

  Hank Williams, Jr. nailed it; the hangovers hurt more than they used to. A few years ago, he could’ve pounded the same amount of beers at the bar as he did last night and been right as rain today. But the mileage on his body since then had taken a toll. He had a vague recollection of dancing with Marcie Wallows to the music blaring from the blown juke box speakers at the Turn It Loose. He opened his eyes and touched the top of his head, wincing at the bump and the memory of Daryl, Marcie’s husband, busting a pool cue across his noggin for groping his old lady while they grinded to some techno-pop garbage. Bub threw the man into the parking lot. Howie glanced to his swollen knuckles. He and Bub took turns pummeling the guy’s face raw. When Daryl slid down the side of a rusted-out pickup with half an ounce of consciousness, Howie walked back in the bar and picked up where he left off with Marcie. Either she didn’t know her husband just got his ass kicked like a narc at a biker rally, or she didn’t care.

  Someone hammered on the door to the trailer. Probably Willie there to get him back to the cook house. Howie slid to the edge of the bed, trying to find the will to stand. The door thundered again.

  “All right, all right,” Howie shouted, recoiling at the reverberations in his beer-soaked brain. “What the hell is so important?�
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  He flung open the trailer door and froze. Not Willie, but Bear with his paw on a holstered pistol. Randy Daniels, one of the local deputies who everyone called Sad Dog, leaned against the squad car, his sturdy arms cradling a shotgun. A pale hulk with a thickset face, and cropped, red hair, Randy wore his patented “don’t fuck with me” look. Howie was one of the few people in town who knew why people called Randy “Sad Dog,” but it wasn’t worth the ass beating Randy would lay on him if he told anyone.

  “We need to talk, Howie,” Bear said. “Mind if I come in?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” Howie stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “What’s up, Bear?”

  “You’re up,” Bear said. “You and that shit heap Bub beat the hell out of Daryl Wallows last night. He’s up in Clinton in a hospital bed with his jaw wired shut and three broken ribs.”

  Howie cursed internally. Bear’s sights had locked on him and wasn’t about to let it go. His mind did a quick inventory of the trailer. His unlawful pistol and a couple of stones of Devil Ice he’d pilfered from the cook house sat on his dresser. Shane’s angry face floated across his mind’s eye. He was in deep, deep shit.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Howie said.

  “Yeah, you do. You okay? You look nervous all of a sudden. Something inside I need to be worried about?”

  “Nah,” Howie said, anxious to get Bear away from the trailer. He tried passing Bear, appearing casual. “Let’s go to the station and talk about it.”

  Bear stopped Howie in his tracks with an arm to his shoulder. “Hey, you ain’t getting in my car in your goddamn boxer shorts. Go cover up that little dick with some clothes.”

  Howie turned and glanced over his bony shoulder. Bear breathed down his neck. He should’ve known they wouldn’t let him go in by himself. He tried to dart inside and pull the door shut, but Bear grabbed it, stepping inside and pushing Howie back.

  “Hey,” Howie yelled out as Bear passed. “You ever hear of unlawful entry?”