Kealan Patrick Burke ~ Featured Author ~ April 2007 ~ Global Gothic

What follows is the book's original prologue, later cut from the novel because it was deemed unnecessary and seemed like a blatant attempt at a drive-by introduction to characters you would meet and learn about later. It was also a somewhat clumsy way of setting up later developments, particularly with Blue Moon Running Bear and other characters I won't reveal here. At first I railed against the idea of cutting it, but a reread, after some time and distance from the material, did indeed make it seem like extraneous tissue, so out it went. The prologue does, however, work nicely when separated from the whole.

"We're closed." The clerk, a string bean in a T-shirt, with long greasy hair that looks like a tattered helmet of oiled leather in the unflattering fluorescent light, doesn't even look up from his magazine. Guitar riffs twang from a small radio by the guy's elbow. As Brody approaches, his gaze drops to the magazine spread-eagled on the counter, spots a plump plastic breast, a delta of dark hair, smooth thighs spread obscenely wide. Perhaps sensing his perusal of the skin rag is no longer a solitary affair, the clerk, at last, looks up. "I said we're closed."

People like the clerk interest Brody. He finds it intriguing how oblivious to imminent danger they are, how they fail so completely to identify trouble, how they can be unaware of the look of it, the scent of it, the way it alters the taste of the air, the way it makes it hum.

The clerk straightens, takes a long look at this customer he doesn't want, and reaches down behind the counter.

The clerk brandishes a sawn-off shotgun, sweeping it across the air between them, muzzle aimed at a point a couple of inches above Brody's head. "This beauty lets me be sure," he says, with pride. "One look at this baby and crooks piss themselves while they're runnin'." The faint smile disappears. "You a crook?"

"Well thanks for the reminder." The clerk returns the shotgun to its hiding place and stares at Brody, who still isn't moving. "I'll be sure to do it as soon as you leave."

"Sorry," the clerk responds in a tone that says he isn't. "Till's locked up; money's in the safe. Can't make no more transactions tonight."

"Then how about I just give you the money and you can do the transaction in the morning?"

Brody's stomach flutters. "Look, I'm not trying to be an asshole here, but you wouldn't believe the shit I've had to deal with tonight, and I have a feeling a smoke and maybe a pull on some of that Wild Turkey you got back there would really help get my mind back on track, y'know?"

"Bad idea, just like our Mommas told us. There are some freaky fucking people out there, man." He takes a pack of Newports out of his pocket, upends it and taps his last smoke free. "This last guy..." he says, producing a lighter and touching the flame to the tip of the cigarette. "I stopped because my girl said she thought it was the ghost of Dean Martin. You believe that?"

"Yeah, you said. Dean fucking Martin! And like a moron, I stopped, and you know what?" He takes a deep drag on his cigarette and stares through the smoke at the irritated clerk, keeps on staring until the guy has no choice but to answer. Maybe at long last he sees something in Brody's eyes, something that shouldn't be there. Maybe for the clerk, the air has changed.

Brody gives him a withering look. "Yeah. I know that. Everyone knows that, but I'm telling you, the guy looked just like him. And when he spoke....fuck, man. You know what he said to me when I asked where he was going?"

"Huh," the clerk says again. He's starting to look more than annoyed now, he looks downright uncomfortable, as if he needs to take a dump and knows the only toilet within crapping distance is plugged.

Brody steps close to the counter. The clerk takes a half-step back. "Buddy, let me offer you a word of advice," Brody tells him.

"Probably not the best idea to be chatting so openly about the money you keep around here. If I was here to rob you, that'd be like you leaving a Burger King Whopper in front of a hungry mutt, y'know?"

"Why don't you just toss me out a pack of smokes and I'll get out of your hair. While you're ringing it up, I'll tell you what happened to Dean."

"I already told you, the till's closed." His fingers flex; Brody knows he's wondering if he'll get away with using a gun to persuade a non-threatening customer, wondering what might happen to him if it turns out the guy he threatened was just a regular Joe, not here for anything more sinister than to tell stories about Dean Martin impersonators and grab a pack of smokes. Wondering whether or not tonight's the night he'll get to see the kind of damage that gun'll do a guy's head.

"The guy started singing," Brody says, ignoring him. "'Brother, Pour the Wine'. And I gotta tell you, soon as he started crooning, I knew Carla was right. We had us a ghost in our back seat. And not just your regular spook, but fucking Dino, man! What do you think about that?"

"'Course, as it turns out, it wasn't a ghost at all, and that was kind of a bummer. Know how I know that?"

The clerk shakes his head. Some of the color and all of the smarminess has drained from his face. He is no longer in control of a situation he misjudged in the first place, and it's showing. One look at the butt of the gun sticking out of Brody's waistband tells him that.

"I know that," Brody continues, "Because he smelled like puke and shit, and though I can't say I know that much about 'ol Dino's lifestyle--bit before my time, you understand--I don't think he'd go hitchhiking smelling like a bum, do you?"

"No." The clerk swallows, and reaches behind him, to where the cigarettes are stacked and hung upon the wall in little plastic chutes.

"Those aren't Newports," Brody says when the clerk slides the pack before him. "Hey, here's an idea. I bet you'd get a kick out of seeing the guy I've been yapping about, right? Bet that'd make a believer out of you."

The clerk's hands are shaking as he reaches for the Newports. "I just don't want any trouble. You need to leave."

Brody frowns. "Who said anything about trouble? Trust me, man. The guy was heavy, but bringing just his head in here won't put my back out. Might make a mess of your floor here though."
The clerk goes white, and the cigarettes jerk from his hand, falling short of the counter on his side. He starts to duck down for them, and Brody shakes his head. "I wouldn't. Get a fresh pack."
Behind Brody, the bell above the door tinkles and a harried female voice sweeps in over the staccato clop of high heels. He closes his eyes, mutters a curse. It's not Carla. The night seems awful dark beyond the windows.

"Excuse me, sorry. Can I use your restroom? I'll buy something if I need to but my little girl can't wait and we haven't seen another stop for miles. She needs to pee bad."

Brody turns. The mother comes storming up to the counter, tugging a cute little blonde girl behind her. The child's cheeks are red and swollen as if from having tears scrubbed away by rough hands. The mother looks like she's the one who needs to squat n' squirt. Brody suspects that might be the case. Easier to blame the kid, he guesses, than make known the whims of her own immaculate bladder.

The clerk swallows again, looks at Brody, who smiles. "We're closed," the guy tells the lady.
"But the door was open." The tone of her voice tells Brody everything about the woman. Doesn't matter that her hair is neat and styled so not a strand is out of place. Doesn't matter that her clothes look expensive or that she's wearing too much jewelry. Doesn't matter that her teeth are perfect and her skin clear. Doesn't matter that she's got a perky pair of tits beneath that conservative blouse and probably wears stockings and suspenders to turn on her attorney/banker/stockbroker husband/lover. Fact of the matter is, despite her looks, she's ugly. Brody figures her for the kind of woman used to getting her way, and more than willing to argue, whine and complain until she gets it. The kind of woman who'd berate a waitress for a cook's mistake or punish a child for the transgressions of it's pet. The kind of woman who spends the first twenty years of her life yearning to have children, only to resent them for stealing her life when at last she does.

"Sorry Ma'am," says the clerk, and Brody wonders, for a guy who obviously has little to look forward to in his life, and even less to live for, why he's so vigilant about the policy of a two-bit store that not only forces him to deal with folks like Brody and the Iron Maiden in Prada, but probably underpays him and treats him like dirt too.

"What do you mean, 'Sorry'? The sign says 'restrooms available to customers only', doesn't it? Well, I'm a customer."

The woman is staring at him. He feels her eyes on his face, feels the air change again. This time it's not tremors of excitement that thrum through him, but a warning. Fuck. And he didn't even think high-class women looked twice at the mug shots they show on the main evening news, assuming themselves above and beyond danger by rote of their wealth.

"Ursula," the woman says, and the way her voice has changed, become panicky, guarded, is all the confirmation he needs that she's made him. "Let's go, we can find someplace else."

Ursula, Brody thinks. What a fucking horrible name to stick a child with. She'll probably grow up to be a nun.

In a moment of heroism that might have defined the clerk's life, altered it in ways he has previously only dared imagine, he ducks beneath the counter, hands like claws preparing to pull the shotgun free of its mount.

The woman screams and shoves the child headlong into a small pyramid of Mountain Dew. Ursula hasn't time to cry out before she's on her face lying sprawled amid rolling soda cans. Shock and hurt are etched on her little face.

Brody holds his breath, tugs the Colt. 45 from the waistband of his trousers and draws a bead on the clerk. As his finger tenses on the trigger, he lunges to the left and grabs the Iron Maiden's hair, yanking her forward hard enough for her feet to leave the floor. She leaves one shoe behind as he rams her face into the countertop. She gasps, there's the sound of a gloved hand crushing a peanut shell and blood spurts from her nose. It isn't enough. She's dazed, body limp, but not out, and the clerk is rising from behind the counter with some kind of hysterical battle cry. He's probably already rehearsing the interview he'll give CNN. As Brody brings the woman's head back again, the weight of her body a serious inconvenience to his aim, he leans in close. The clerk's muzzle wavers. He hesitates.

Brody checks the woman's car, still idling by the gas pumps. He expected to find some cowering suit in there, but it's empty. He can still hear the whimpering of the little girl inside the store, and that makes him feel bad. He has never hurt a kid and doesn't ever intend to, but her Mom had to be dealt with. In truth, the sensible thing to do would be to kill the kid too. After all, she's seen him, but he can't bring himself to do it. Besides, chances are after what she's just witnessed, it'll be some time before she'll be able to say anything to anyone. Brody knows what that's like. He's been there.

Carla's dozing in the car but wakes when he shuts the door. She looks at him, eyes blurry, her mascara slightly smudged, her lipstick a mess from the attention she gave him fifty miles or so ago.

"Hey," he says, starting the engine, more to hide the trembling in his tone than out of any urgency.

"Couple of hundred. Fucking till wasn't even turned off. Lying sack of shit. Got about two hundred from the woman's purse too."

He turns on the radio, volume low. Dean Martin sings about the composition of memory.

Wintry kneels, lowers his massive frame to the floor and clasps hands that have been roughened by the harsh weather he favors and the hard life he struggles to forget. His house, a tarpaper shack he has bolstered against the wind with iron struts and oaken beams, is set like a bad place in fairy tale less than a half-mile from the peak of the mountain. It creaks and shudders around him, the wind slipping fingers through the cracks, looking for a firm grip so it can yank the house down. Water trickles down the walls. Snow weighs as heavy on the roof as the sins on the big man's mind. Tonight, here, alone, they have brought him to the floor, his knees forcing the worn wooden boards to strain in sympathy.

He looks up, brown eyes watering like pebbles in a pond, to the statue of the Virgin Mary he keeps on a pedestal he made himself from the ruins of an old desk. He looks into her face, but only briefly. Last night, while he slept, her countenance changed. Today, it's blackened as if burnt, though She has not been kept near flame. And while her posture is a benevolent one, that face is like that of the devil, daring him to throw his prayers at it. Stranger still, when the mystery flame had its way with her, it should have melted the cheap plastic away so there was nothing left. It didn't. The rest of the statue is untouched, and the face, though melted, has revealed that this particular effigy--picked up for five bucks from a roadside souvenir shop a hundred miles and a lifetime away--had a full set of yellow teeth waiting behind its lips.

So now it grins at him, mocking him, but still he kneels before it and silently says his prayers, for he has nowhere else to send them.

He does not look at the statue again. Instead, he rises with a barely perceptible grunt, crosses himself and grabs his coat from the back of the living room's sole concession to comfort, a battered wooden chair, rescued from the town dump.

Protected against the ravenous wind, he opens the door and looks out into the night, then down into the valley, where a single light, separated from all the other buildings in Milestone, winks almost lewdly at him.

Wintry tugs the door shut behind him and as he picks his way down the mountain, he wonders about the statue, if it's a sign that tonight he's going to burn for what he's done.

Inside, Cobb looks at his ancient face in the mirror, watches the flicker of thoughts like minnows in the faded blue pools of his eyes. "Not yet."

"Don't use that language with me, Dan. I won't have it. I've made enough concessions to suit your lifestyle and if I get only one from you, it's that you don't use that kind of talk in this house."

"Fine," Cobb says with a sigh and runs a finger over his tangled beard. So goddamn old. Forty-five years of age next month and I look eligible for a senior's pass. Despite his chagrin, the prematurely aged face staring grimly back at him from the mirror knows as well as he does that this is how things are. It's a price he doesn't have to pay, and if he stopped tomorrow, so would the ageing. But he continues to sacrifice the years for a cause some might consider noble. For Cobb, however, it is not about nobility, or atonement. It's habit. What he does, he does now because he knows nothing else. It comes as natural to him as shaking his tool after a piss. And above all else, he's afraid, and has been since the realization that he was not like everybody else, not as unremarkable as he'd always assumed, because the consequence of failing to help others when it's within his power to do so suggests itself in fantastic dreams that propel him screaming from sleep. There is his calling, his curse, and then there is life, which he measures by the bottle to keep from too closely studying all he has left to lose.

Another knock on the door and he closes his eyes, yanks the faucet to the right to set the hot water running.

Henry's ashes are quiet tonight and Flo takes that as a good sign. Then again, there's no telling when he might decide to start berating her again, taunting her like that beating heart in the Poe story, trying to force her into admitting his ruin was her doing. That would be Henry all over. The sonofabitch. Death was too good for the likes of him. "Goin' out tonight," she tells him, as she steps from her clothes, exposing herself fully before the large window, or "flaunting her wares" as her late husband would have called it, for the benefit of the two men watching. One of them's a dead man, sealed in a two-dollar plastic urn atop the mantel and mercifully silent for now. The other might as well be dead, given that he can never leave his house, and she can't hear him at all. But the house has windows, and right now Flo can see his silhouette down there through the trees, backlit by a square of yellow light as he sits in his chair watching her, grateful for her distant, untouchable, unattainable display. Smiling, she dallies before the window, inspecting herself, stretching, until she grows bored and pulls the curtains closed.

With a smile, she heads for the shower, imagining as she does so that she can hear the sound of Blue Moon's frustration from here.

"Gonna have a fine time too," she tells Henry. She neglects to mention how much she'd prefer the choice of venue, and company, was hers to make, keeps that fact to herself because she doesn't much like admitting it, bristles at the idea of being controlled. Last man who tried manipulating her ended up in an urn, and she fantasizes daily about doing the same to Reverend Hill.

It's one of those nights when not one goddamn song on the radio's worth listening to. With a curse, Kyle reaches over and kills Lyle Lovett mid-croon. He runs a hand through his hair and checks the rearview mirror as the truck bounces over the ruts in the road. No lights behind. There seldom is, seeing as how anyone with a lick of sense wouldn't be caught dead, alive, or otherwise, anywhere near this godforsaken town. Most of those dumb enough to have found themselves mired here don't bother showing their faces after dark. Why would they? It's not like there's anything to do, and for Kyle, just turned eighteen, there's even less. A couple of beers in a bar he has no choice but to patronize, and a quick poke from a stone cold whore and then another day in Hell begins. It's always the same.

He nods, as if the thoughts came from somewhere other than his own frustrated brain. Always the same; nothing changes. Tonight though, there'll be plenty of changes. He intends to make sure of that. Whatever the power, or the curse keeping him and the rest of those losers trapped in the bar like moths in a killing jar, tonight it will end, at least for him. The idea brings to his sweaty face a smile he doesn't feel.

He has to get out, and he has to do it now, no matter what it costs. With each passing day he can feel the claws of this place digging deeper into his skin, tightening its grip on him, claiming him for its own, and he knows opportunities to free himself are few and far between. He knows because the thought of freedom means hope, and hope is not something this town recognizes.
A deep breath and he tells himself to relax, turns on the radio again just for the company. Just so he doesn't feel quite so alone. But then he glances toward the passenger seat, at the loaded gun sitting there, and realizes he isn't.

Kealan Patrick Burke

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