Post by Raymond Neely on Mar 18, 2011 12:47:23 GMT -5
by
Raymond Neely
Dylan turned the last few numbers of the combination and felt the bolt inside release the heavy iron door of the safe, which slowly moaned on its dry hinges. A draft of dispassionate air from the vault's dark inside carried to Dylan the scent of rusty metal and stale paper money. He filled his drawer with bills and change and carried the black plastic till to the front of the store, slid down onto two stacked milk crates and lit up a Kool Mild. The long white flourescent bulbs stuttered for a moment after Dylan flipped the switch, then let out their sterile computer light around the little store. Dylan reached over and turned up the radio, "Don't Need Nothin' but a Good Time," was playing, and for a moment he strummed along silently, eyes closed, ears breathing in the Sunday morning musical sermon. Nothing woke him up happy like squealing electric licks. He dreaded the monotony of another opening shift, took a draw of his cigarette, and relaxed. He waited for the old timers to come through buying their coffee and newspapers and trading journals like they did on every Sunday morning. He would have to cater to them, be polite, give them back correct change, and hear about the weather until their rheumatism acted up, they got tired of standing around bullshitting and went home. It was his job. He was not amused.
The first customer of the day was Daniel Tub, a local air-brusher and artist. Dylan marveled at wizard and unicorn fantasy on the hood of Tub's truck that could have come straight from the pages of a great mythology. Just driving it around, Daniel claimed, attracted a lot of extra business. Custom auto jobs, air brushed T-shirts, and the occasional glorified portrait was Daniel Tub. He was a fairly talented guy, most agreed, with a high-dollar degree from the Pittsburg Art Institute. He cleaned the floors of the store three times a week.
Daniel walked toward the front in that penguin waddle, the way he always moved, a big soft rotund fellow, slumped over shoulders, with wire frames and a full chubby face of easy going contentment. A merry glint as he spoke, "Gander at this one and tell me how it strikes you." Daniel carefully slid a sketch out of his leather bound portfolio. "Your boss comissioned me to do it for the courthouse."
The picture was of Sheriff Huckle with a big campaign smile under his old state trooper top hat. It was an American motif with a bald eagle screaming with all the might of its free spirit in front of the big unfurling stars and stripes at the top. A cop on his motorcycle pursued some unseen bad guy across the foot of the scene, his head held high with dignity and a pair of 1970's style CHIPS sunglasses on.
"I'll bet that when the magistrate and clerks and judges up at the hall see this one they'll be knocking my door down to get more done. Won't want to let the sheriff out do 'em decorating his office. I might decorate half the courthouse. Do you think that's a pretty good one of old Harold?" asked Daniel.
"I really do like it, Daniel," Dylan admitted. "All except you left out one thing."
"What?" wondered Daniel, his eyebrows frowning as he attempted to look at his picture objectively.
"The almighty dollar," Dylan assured him that he had indeed forgotten that one element.
A glance of acknowledgement, "I hear ya brother. And look who I'm giving my dollar back to." Daniel laid his dollar on the counter, taking his cup of coffee and his muffin back outside where the morning light was increasing. The bell on the glass door jangled. Dylan rang up the order and put the money in the drawer.
"That comfortable bear," Dylan thought as he watched Daniel pull out onto route 20. He knew that Daniel would be back that night to sweep, mop, and buff the white tiles behind the counter and down all the aisles. Dylan slouched back into his daydreams. He thought that Daniel's picture was exactly like Huckle's self image and was certain that his boss would love the ego trip it gave him.
The big Cadillac engine purred awake. The car was long and elegantly maroon, prestigious and respectable. It was just the right car for Harold Huckle people thought, and with good reason. Huckle had an impressive resume that included service in Vietnam, the military police, a couple of terms as magistrate, a couple of law degrees, service as circuit judge, as a state trooper, and current county sheriff. A man in his mid fifties, Huckle had neatly combed his graying hair with a hint of greasy tonic. His badge and gun gleamed as he pulled the heavy door of the Cadi closed. Huckle wore his professional gray suite and his business face as he cruised down the winding slope into town.
It was toward the end of the Sunday morning after-church rush and right at lunch time when the boss man Huckle made it down to his convenience store. He gave a quicke election year handshake to a departing customer as he entered. Dylan was ringing up his first beer order of the day, a six pack for an old lady tugging at her uncomfortable church clothes. Dylan wished the lady a fine Sabbath day and she fled to the pickup truck.
The sheriff jerked the radio plug out of the wall like pulling quiet out of his pocket and gained Dylan's attention. Huckle's eyes darted around under the counter in an important searchc and his neck fat dangled like a cow's udders. "Where is that tupper ware bowl I left here last night? I hope Kathy didn't throw it away. I was saving that," he almost whined. "Ah haa!" he triumphantly ejaculated, "my supper." Huckle peeled off the lid grinning and fished out a few leaves of what appeared to Dylan to be cabbage saved in a thick gray oil from the day before. He poked them into his grimy mouth. Ravenous. A searing sound came from the corners of his lips and the muffled crunch of his chomps. Huckle's last supper was a cabbage feast taken by the clenched fist full. He ended with a liquid burp that Dylan reared back from. Huckle wiped his lips.
When Huckle had emptied the bowl, he smiled above his slimy chin, leaned back, and his considerable belly gurgled like a hot spring. Dylan heard it plopping and churning.
"I want you all to count your drawer in the back office from now on 'cause I guarantee if the wrong man sees you he'll kill you and make off with all my money. Of course, we can replace the money but we can't replace you guys," he proclaimed in his best caring father's voice, proud of himself for showing some compassion. "And don't be cashing any checks for somebody you don't know. Not for just somebody off the street. I'm about to go blind of poverty from all the crumbs you boys are giving away down here, not to mention the few that you probably sneak away with yourselves while I'm not around. I'm telling you, though, it'll be coming out of your checks from now on, when something comes up missing. I promise you that."
"Sure thing Mr. Huckle," Dylan said as he took another spoonful of his lunch, which happened to be a steaming bowl of tomato soup. Huckle had spotted something under the register that caught his interest, and as Dylan slurped a spoonful of soup, Huckle pinched around the midsection of a hairy beatle and plucked it up from the floor. Huckle's snout scrunched at it's mechanical squirm.
"You know, this is what really irritates me," he complained, "I've been telling you to call the exterminator, but I can't seem to count on you to get anything done around here!" He charged over with alpha-male authority to where Dylan sat, dropped the bug right into Dylan's ward soup, and poked it's head under with his pointer finger. "People will have to get less leisurely if they want to work for me." Dylan looked down at it disgusted as its legs sprinted under the thick coat of tomato sauce.
Huckle was standing on the end of the giant red carpet that greeted every customer like royalty with a blue money bag in each hand when Dylan took action. The sheriff was staring off into traffic, maybe hoping to catch the day's first speeder or gas drive off when Dylan bent down and yanked the other end of the carpet until it snapped taught and pulled the rug out from under Huckle. The handle of his revolver clattered on the tile floor as Huckle's ass came down hard and he rolled onto his back, staring straight up at the fourescent lights. Dylan moved quicker than the old overweight sheriff could think and started rolling him up in the carpet, arms down to his sides and fuzzy red carpet from his ankles to his chins. Huckle's face reddened and he grunted like a tied hog. He tried to buck free, but rolled in that pregnate cylinder the way he was, Huckle scarcely accomplished a wiggle.
Dylan locked the front doors, turned off the lights, and turned over the "closed" sign of the door glass. Kicking like a soccer player driving to the goal, Dylan rolled Huckle several wobbly turns to the back office. He clenched the sheriff's oily hair in both hands and forcefully stood the roll of red carpet upright in front of the giant iron safe. Huckle screamed bloody murder.
"Do you think you're some Robin Hood or something?" Huckle spat.
Dylan reached his leg way back out into the store and kicked a field goal on Huckle's behind. Huckle tumbled head first into the big vault and fell unconscious with a clank and a puff of rusty dust.
"I'm more like Jesse James," Dylan assured him, too late for the sheriff to hear.
Dylan screeched the safe door closed and bolted Huckle in the dark. He took a can of charcoal lighter fluid down from the shelf and began to soak all the aisles. He struck a kitchen match and the fire began.
When the deputies opened the charred iron door of the safe that stood in the midst of the smoky ash where the convenience stoor once rose solid and secure, they found their boss in a molten carpet cocoon that, like boiling blood, bubbled a deep crimson. They heard the "cha-ching" of a far away register drawer and the change splashing into the slots sounded like grain poured into a feeding trough. Rosco shivered as the latex glove that covered his hand touched Huckle's stinking cooked face. From a place even more distant they heard more of the sounds which haunted the ash. The squeal of new opportunity from tiny swine. "Poor Sheriff Huckle," deputy Hill sounded genuinely upset, "locked forever in his safe." And if maybe there was just a glint of discovery in Rosco's eye at that moment, why, no one would have noticed.
On the bumper sticker on the Monte Carlo in fron of Dylan was printed "A Criminal Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste," and inside he saw the scandalous-eyed girl with ragged hair and nice tits beneath a wifebeater. He remembered her from the last cut throat saloon along the road. She smiled at him and he rumbled on by. He thought about how well roasted pig in the blanket would go with a dish of pickled cabbage leafs. His mouth watered.
Shadows blotted and speckled the land and sky that rolled out before Dylan, and on all sides the cool phantom darkness beckoned for a million miles. His saddle bags loaded heavy with blue money bags, Dylan's Harley crossed the Mexican border, and there was a bright cherry on the tip of his Kool Mild.
Raymond Neely
Dylan turned the last few numbers of the combination and felt the bolt inside release the heavy iron door of the safe, which slowly moaned on its dry hinges. A draft of dispassionate air from the vault's dark inside carried to Dylan the scent of rusty metal and stale paper money. He filled his drawer with bills and change and carried the black plastic till to the front of the store, slid down onto two stacked milk crates and lit up a Kool Mild. The long white flourescent bulbs stuttered for a moment after Dylan flipped the switch, then let out their sterile computer light around the little store. Dylan reached over and turned up the radio, "Don't Need Nothin' but a Good Time," was playing, and for a moment he strummed along silently, eyes closed, ears breathing in the Sunday morning musical sermon. Nothing woke him up happy like squealing electric licks. He dreaded the monotony of another opening shift, took a draw of his cigarette, and relaxed. He waited for the old timers to come through buying their coffee and newspapers and trading journals like they did on every Sunday morning. He would have to cater to them, be polite, give them back correct change, and hear about the weather until their rheumatism acted up, they got tired of standing around bullshitting and went home. It was his job. He was not amused.
The first customer of the day was Daniel Tub, a local air-brusher and artist. Dylan marveled at wizard and unicorn fantasy on the hood of Tub's truck that could have come straight from the pages of a great mythology. Just driving it around, Daniel claimed, attracted a lot of extra business. Custom auto jobs, air brushed T-shirts, and the occasional glorified portrait was Daniel Tub. He was a fairly talented guy, most agreed, with a high-dollar degree from the Pittsburg Art Institute. He cleaned the floors of the store three times a week.
Daniel walked toward the front in that penguin waddle, the way he always moved, a big soft rotund fellow, slumped over shoulders, with wire frames and a full chubby face of easy going contentment. A merry glint as he spoke, "Gander at this one and tell me how it strikes you." Daniel carefully slid a sketch out of his leather bound portfolio. "Your boss comissioned me to do it for the courthouse."
The picture was of Sheriff Huckle with a big campaign smile under his old state trooper top hat. It was an American motif with a bald eagle screaming with all the might of its free spirit in front of the big unfurling stars and stripes at the top. A cop on his motorcycle pursued some unseen bad guy across the foot of the scene, his head held high with dignity and a pair of 1970's style CHIPS sunglasses on.
"I'll bet that when the magistrate and clerks and judges up at the hall see this one they'll be knocking my door down to get more done. Won't want to let the sheriff out do 'em decorating his office. I might decorate half the courthouse. Do you think that's a pretty good one of old Harold?" asked Daniel.
"I really do like it, Daniel," Dylan admitted. "All except you left out one thing."
"What?" wondered Daniel, his eyebrows frowning as he attempted to look at his picture objectively.
"The almighty dollar," Dylan assured him that he had indeed forgotten that one element.
A glance of acknowledgement, "I hear ya brother. And look who I'm giving my dollar back to." Daniel laid his dollar on the counter, taking his cup of coffee and his muffin back outside where the morning light was increasing. The bell on the glass door jangled. Dylan rang up the order and put the money in the drawer.
"That comfortable bear," Dylan thought as he watched Daniel pull out onto route 20. He knew that Daniel would be back that night to sweep, mop, and buff the white tiles behind the counter and down all the aisles. Dylan slouched back into his daydreams. He thought that Daniel's picture was exactly like Huckle's self image and was certain that his boss would love the ego trip it gave him.
The big Cadillac engine purred awake. The car was long and elegantly maroon, prestigious and respectable. It was just the right car for Harold Huckle people thought, and with good reason. Huckle had an impressive resume that included service in Vietnam, the military police, a couple of terms as magistrate, a couple of law degrees, service as circuit judge, as a state trooper, and current county sheriff. A man in his mid fifties, Huckle had neatly combed his graying hair with a hint of greasy tonic. His badge and gun gleamed as he pulled the heavy door of the Cadi closed. Huckle wore his professional gray suite and his business face as he cruised down the winding slope into town.
It was toward the end of the Sunday morning after-church rush and right at lunch time when the boss man Huckle made it down to his convenience store. He gave a quicke election year handshake to a departing customer as he entered. Dylan was ringing up his first beer order of the day, a six pack for an old lady tugging at her uncomfortable church clothes. Dylan wished the lady a fine Sabbath day and she fled to the pickup truck.
The sheriff jerked the radio plug out of the wall like pulling quiet out of his pocket and gained Dylan's attention. Huckle's eyes darted around under the counter in an important searchc and his neck fat dangled like a cow's udders. "Where is that tupper ware bowl I left here last night? I hope Kathy didn't throw it away. I was saving that," he almost whined. "Ah haa!" he triumphantly ejaculated, "my supper." Huckle peeled off the lid grinning and fished out a few leaves of what appeared to Dylan to be cabbage saved in a thick gray oil from the day before. He poked them into his grimy mouth. Ravenous. A searing sound came from the corners of his lips and the muffled crunch of his chomps. Huckle's last supper was a cabbage feast taken by the clenched fist full. He ended with a liquid burp that Dylan reared back from. Huckle wiped his lips.
When Huckle had emptied the bowl, he smiled above his slimy chin, leaned back, and his considerable belly gurgled like a hot spring. Dylan heard it plopping and churning.
"I want you all to count your drawer in the back office from now on 'cause I guarantee if the wrong man sees you he'll kill you and make off with all my money. Of course, we can replace the money but we can't replace you guys," he proclaimed in his best caring father's voice, proud of himself for showing some compassion. "And don't be cashing any checks for somebody you don't know. Not for just somebody off the street. I'm about to go blind of poverty from all the crumbs you boys are giving away down here, not to mention the few that you probably sneak away with yourselves while I'm not around. I'm telling you, though, it'll be coming out of your checks from now on, when something comes up missing. I promise you that."
"Sure thing Mr. Huckle," Dylan said as he took another spoonful of his lunch, which happened to be a steaming bowl of tomato soup. Huckle had spotted something under the register that caught his interest, and as Dylan slurped a spoonful of soup, Huckle pinched around the midsection of a hairy beatle and plucked it up from the floor. Huckle's snout scrunched at it's mechanical squirm.
"You know, this is what really irritates me," he complained, "I've been telling you to call the exterminator, but I can't seem to count on you to get anything done around here!" He charged over with alpha-male authority to where Dylan sat, dropped the bug right into Dylan's ward soup, and poked it's head under with his pointer finger. "People will have to get less leisurely if they want to work for me." Dylan looked down at it disgusted as its legs sprinted under the thick coat of tomato sauce.
Huckle was standing on the end of the giant red carpet that greeted every customer like royalty with a blue money bag in each hand when Dylan took action. The sheriff was staring off into traffic, maybe hoping to catch the day's first speeder or gas drive off when Dylan bent down and yanked the other end of the carpet until it snapped taught and pulled the rug out from under Huckle. The handle of his revolver clattered on the tile floor as Huckle's ass came down hard and he rolled onto his back, staring straight up at the fourescent lights. Dylan moved quicker than the old overweight sheriff could think and started rolling him up in the carpet, arms down to his sides and fuzzy red carpet from his ankles to his chins. Huckle's face reddened and he grunted like a tied hog. He tried to buck free, but rolled in that pregnate cylinder the way he was, Huckle scarcely accomplished a wiggle.
Dylan locked the front doors, turned off the lights, and turned over the "closed" sign of the door glass. Kicking like a soccer player driving to the goal, Dylan rolled Huckle several wobbly turns to the back office. He clenched the sheriff's oily hair in both hands and forcefully stood the roll of red carpet upright in front of the giant iron safe. Huckle screamed bloody murder.
"Do you think you're some Robin Hood or something?" Huckle spat.
Dylan reached his leg way back out into the store and kicked a field goal on Huckle's behind. Huckle tumbled head first into the big vault and fell unconscious with a clank and a puff of rusty dust.
"I'm more like Jesse James," Dylan assured him, too late for the sheriff to hear.
Dylan screeched the safe door closed and bolted Huckle in the dark. He took a can of charcoal lighter fluid down from the shelf and began to soak all the aisles. He struck a kitchen match and the fire began.
When the deputies opened the charred iron door of the safe that stood in the midst of the smoky ash where the convenience stoor once rose solid and secure, they found their boss in a molten carpet cocoon that, like boiling blood, bubbled a deep crimson. They heard the "cha-ching" of a far away register drawer and the change splashing into the slots sounded like grain poured into a feeding trough. Rosco shivered as the latex glove that covered his hand touched Huckle's stinking cooked face. From a place even more distant they heard more of the sounds which haunted the ash. The squeal of new opportunity from tiny swine. "Poor Sheriff Huckle," deputy Hill sounded genuinely upset, "locked forever in his safe." And if maybe there was just a glint of discovery in Rosco's eye at that moment, why, no one would have noticed.
On the bumper sticker on the Monte Carlo in fron of Dylan was printed "A Criminal Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste," and inside he saw the scandalous-eyed girl with ragged hair and nice tits beneath a wifebeater. He remembered her from the last cut throat saloon along the road. She smiled at him and he rumbled on by. He thought about how well roasted pig in the blanket would go with a dish of pickled cabbage leafs. His mouth watered.
Shadows blotted and speckled the land and sky that rolled out before Dylan, and on all sides the cool phantom darkness beckoned for a million miles. His saddle bags loaded heavy with blue money bags, Dylan's Harley crossed the Mexican border, and there was a bright cherry on the tip of his Kool Mild.
