The blade slid warm across Sonny’s lip, grape jelly sweet on the tongue; tip toes strained on a Bud thirty-pack: had to see over the kitchen counter to spackle stale sourdough. Was wiping the switch with his t-shirt when a slap jarred his skull, sending the knife to blistered linoleum. Pops didn’t say a word, […]
Black Ridge, Wyoming, 1861 The thoroughfare through town was a coursing stream of mud, cutting and forking as the clumps gained a foothold. The steady downpour had been feeding the soil for hours, and looked to continue well into the night. As the lantern lights flickered, so did the veins of lightning, washing the storm […]
“Mr. Harris?” The damned voice sounded like a rock sliding back and forth over a cheese grater. “You ready for your vitamin shot?” “Hell no.” Harris rolled over, away from the nurse. It was bad enough that he had to suffer the indignation of being here. “Mr. Harris, we’ve been over this before.” He relented, […]
“You got a freezer. Part the fucker out. Every week or so you slip a foot or a hand in with the trash. Right in there with the coffee grounds and the other rank shit.” “No good. Problem with that is you end up with maybe fifteen chances of gettin’ caught. It raises the odds, […]
I pulled my hat lower on my head, gritting my eyes against the dipping sun, watching for the tell tale trail of dust that Jake’s truck would make when it turned onto the unpaved county road. The early spring wind froze my blood inside the vein, and I spit in the dirt, attempting to exorcise […]
The fire came over the prairie as if the anger of a God gone mad and every living thing in the whole world ran before it; Coyotes, deer, antelope, all rushing mad through the night, like Hell’s own children. Rye Lee dashed back from the well too hastily and tripped. The bucket he held crashed […]
My footfalls were heavy in the dense air of the church sanctuary. They echoed up to the domed ceiling, a mass of concrete and plaster, bent and broken with the pressure of 300 years of snow and wind. Snowflakes battered the windows. My beige work boots traced the ruby stone flooring all the way up […]
We been runnin’ Slater Street since the beginning of time. Ask anybody. This has been our show since before the county even laid the blacktop, so we knew it wouldn’t be long before my brother Garrett dropped the hammer on this new crew trying to edge in on our thing. They’d been comin’ on like […]
He caught her auburn hair through the wire-mesh even before the guard buzzed him in, feathered and longer than he remembered. Distraction captured her attention and they didn’t meet eyes until he finally sat in front of her, separated as they always were by thick glass and a five year absence. He picked up the […]
The rifle rack behind Sheriff Tommy Denton’s desk was empty. The one-of-a-kind rifle the Sheriff had won in a special Winchester-sponsored shooting contest in Pine Tree Bluffs was missing. The unique prize had been found laying next to a murdered man, a murdered Sheriff to be precise. That was two weeks ago. Sheriff Roy Byrd […]
So much blood! On his gloves, on his jacket… on the knife lying beside him. He scrubbed at the stains on his clothes with handfuls of snow. His efforts seemed to make little difference but perhaps it was a trick of the twilight. The image of her slumped against the counter flashed through his mind. […]
Pushing a loose strand of auburn hair away from her wet eyes, she sits behind the wheel and stares—across the parking lot and over the freeway, choked with traffic. One direction stretches north to Waco, the other southwest to San Antonio. But she goes neither way. She just sits, the motor idling, a cigarette burning […]
