The marriage was already a corpse, of course, just twitching now and then for old time’s sake. The illusion was still standing, propped up in the corner of the living room like a cheap mannequin, but illusions don’t do a damn thing to keep you warm when the night gets cold and quiet. So, I was on my own most nights, a goddamn man-child trying to fill that gaping, black hole in my gut with loud music and cheap booze.
Bend, Oregon, that was the playground. And the drive home afterwards, half-drowned in the bottle, was always the main event. A stupid little cat-and-mouse game with the cops, headlights in the rearview, heart pounding with that cheap, ugly thrill. You play that game long enough, you know how it ends. The cat always gets the mouse, eventually.
Didn’t help that I had this nagging suspicion my wife was on a first-name basis with the state police dispatcher, probably feeding them my goddamn coordinates every time I slammed the door on my way out. But that’s another story, ain’t it? One that belongs at the bottom of a different bottle.
My friend Mike would come down from Portland, and we’d do what men do when they’re trying to forget. No expense spared, just a drunken, barreling tour of every brewery that would have us. Drink until you hit that sweet spot of intoxication, then stumble to the next one, and the next. A pilgrimage of sorts. It’s amazing, all that beer, and a man still gets hungry. Or maybe the hunger is for something else entirely.
We’d just moved into this new place. A beautiful goddamn house, or so my family thought, tucked away in one of those neighborhoods with only six homes, where the local elite get to pretend they’re royalty. An old ranch out in Winston, all chopped up six ways. We had eight acres of dirt to call our own. Hadn’t even had time to give the new neighbors the phony handshake and smile routine before I was out the door with Mike that night, chasing the bottom of a bottle. Priorities.
You could feel it right away, though. The house itself was cursed, had bad blood in the walls. The poor bastard who built it put up the barn first, had this whole fantasy laid out: live there forever, wife, kids, the whole nine yards. Then, the story goes, the wife caught him with his pants down somewhere they shouldn’t have been, and that pretty little dream went up in a puff of smoke and betrayal.
The house got passed to some rare book dealer, a guy who probably needed cash more than he needed a four-bedroom monument to failure. I came in, smelled the desperation on him, and slid a cash offer across the table for three-hundred grand less than he was asking. He took it without blinking. Just another link in a whole goddamn chain of broken promises, and I’d just bought my piece of it. The house was twenty minutes out in the sticks, far enough out that the stars were bright as diamonds, no city lights to wash them out. It felt safe, secure. I was happy with the purchase, no complaints. Had ideas, of course. Sell it for a profit later. I always have ideas.
That night, Mike and I had been soaking ourselves in brewery suds pretty hard, and the scenery was getting stale. We needed a change, something with a little more grime on it. We decided to hit Corey’s, a real goddamn dive bar. No windows to let the ugly truth of daylight in, just the front door. It was the kind of joint that had a section they’d wall off with a cheap partition around two in the morning to sling breakfast, then reopen at five for the sinners who needed a bloody mary and a plate of greasy hash browns to face the world. My kind of church.
Naturally, the first thing I do when I get in there is make a beeline for the jukebox. Can’t help myself. I start feeding it dollars, one after another, to play “Piss Up a Rope” by Ween. A real goddamn anthem for the unapologetic bastard. A few old boys are shooting pool, and they’re singing along, hollering the words like it’s the only truth they know. Me, being the dick that I am, I figure I’ll play it twenty more times, just to see what happens.
Around the fourth or fifth spin, the bartender, a tough-looking broad who’d probably heard it all, she marches over to the jukebox, yanks the plug right out of the wall, and resets the damn thing. She didn’t have to say a word. We all knew she was wondering what kind of asshole would keep playing the same damn song. Guilty as charged.
The pool game was shot to hell. We ambled up to the bar like a couple of thirsty old bulls, and there she was. The bartender. Goddamn. A real piece of art. Had a couple of arguments for original sin spilling out over the top of her shirt, the kind of assets that make a man forget his own zip code. Mike was hooked instantly, you could see it in his dumb, hopeful eyes.
I leaned in, conspiratorial, like I was giving him the secrets to the universe. “You want her attention?” I said. “Forget the small talk. When she asks what you want, you look her dead in the eye and say, ‘What do you recommend? What’s your favorite?’ Trust me. She’ll be wrapped around your finger all night.”
Sure as shit, she comes over. Mike delivers my line like he’s auditioning for a goddamn play. Her eyes light up. She names some god-awful licorice-flavored rotgut, some black shit that probably starts with a ‘T’ and ends with regret. “Sure,” Mike croaks, the doomed man. She pours him a double on the rocks. The look on his face after that first sip was a masterpiece of human suffering. It was like gargling with battery acid and fire ants. Stung. Hurt. Made your eyes want to bleed. But he was in the game now, so he choked it down with a pained little smile, a willing partner in his own damn execution.
She flutters back over. “How is it?” she purrs. “Life is good,” he lies, sweat already beading on his forehead. He struggles through the rest of that glass of poison. She comes back. “Another one?” He forces a smile, looking like a man on death row being offered a final cigarette. “Yes, please.” He did that six more times. Six.
After a while, his body staged a full-scale rebellion. He starts choking, makes a frantic dash for the bathroom with a hand clamped over his mouth. The bartender drifts over to me, all concern. “How’s he doing?” she asks.
“He’s great,” I lie, straight-faced. “Loves that stuff. And he really likes you. Get him another round, will ya?”
“He’s a cutie,” she coos. Just then, Mike stumbles back into view, green as a goddamn dollar bill, with a little speck of something on his goatee that definitely wasn’t there before. He looks up at the bar, and there it is, waiting for him like the hangman’s noose: another full glass of that black poison, shining under the dim lights. I’d already paid for it, of course.
Christ, it was a joy to watch him take that last, soul-crushing gulp. A real thing of beauty.
We spilled out of that shithole and into my truck. Mike was already gone, a 400-pound sack of wet cement slumped in the passenger seat, dead to the world. Me? I was drunk, sure, but the booze just wakes up the hunger, makes it meaner. And I had a powerful, goddamn hunger for a Rigoberto’s burrito.
Mike was out cold, snoring like a busted chainsaw. I got my carne asada, a few rolled tacos on the side, and pulled over in some forgotten industrial park—all gravel, shadows, and chain-link fences. The night air was cool. I rolled down the window, the cab filling up with that beautiful, greasy smell of grilled meat and onion. The crunch of those tacos was the only sound I wanted to hear.
I’m halfway through the burrito, a real moment of peace, when the snoring next to me stops. It’s replaced by this wet, choking sound, like a drowning man trying to cough up the ocean. He couldn’t hold it. The passenger door swings open, and he lurches out into the dark.
He makes a desperate lunge for the fence, throws his arms out to catch himself. His hands slide down the wire before his fingers finally hook into the metal diamonds, holding him up just enough. And then he just… lets go. Unleashes everything. A goddamn geyser of that black licorice poison and all the half-digested brewery sludge he’d poured on top of it. His whole body bucking and convulsing, like some damn werewolf trying to turn inside out under a full moon. It was a hell of a show, I’ll give him that. Whatever magic potion that pretty bartender had been serving, it was not meant for this world. I don’t think he’s touched the stuff since.
I let him finish his performance. No sense in letting a perfectly good burrito get cold. Once the heaving stopped and my tacos were gone, I went over, peeled his sorry ass off the fence, and shoved him back into the truck. I made damn sure to roll up his window first, keep that gut-wrenching, acid-bile stench out of my personal airspace, and pointed the truck towards home.
A mile out from my own private slice of hell, I make the turn onto Simon Road. Pitch black. No streetlights, no mercy, just the smell of dust and the kind of darkness that swallows sound. As I swing by the mailbox, the headlights slice through the night and catch them: two coyotes, frozen dead center in the road. For a second, you can see everything in their wide, terrified eyes—the panic, the confusion. They give each other that silent, frantic look animals do, a clear “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
And me? Being the good old drunken bastard that I was that night, I saw not two animals, but an opportunity. A choice. Instead of the brake, my foot stomped on the gas. A roar ripped out of my own throat, some primal scream full of cheap whiskey and pent-up rage as the truck lunged forward.
One of them, the smart one, leaped the fence into the black, a blur of fur and luck. The other one hesitated, trapped, scrambled back into the middle of the road, right into my path. And that’s when I got him.
THUMP-ba-dump-bump-bump.
A sick, rolling shudder came right up through the steering wheel. I slammed on the brakes, the truck skidding twenty-five feet down that gravel road in a cloud of dust. The jolt snapped Mike out of his stupor. “What the hell?” he screamed, eyes wild.
I was already out the door. There was blood on the gravel, a dark, wet trail leading off into the brush. But the body? Gone. Vanished. Not a goddamn hair. Just the stain and the ringing silence.
I turned to scream at Mike, to tell him what happened, to share in the manic, bloody thrill of it, but he was useless. He was already half out of his side of the truck, bent over, dry heaving into a ditch, sounding like a sick cow in heat.
I got his sorry ass back in the truck, drove that last mile up the gravel road to my cursed house. He stumbled off to the guest room to die for the night. I went to mine. Didn’t bother with the shower, didn’t bother brushing the taste of rotgut whiskey and carne asada off my teeth. What was the point? Just collapsed into bed, into the cold, empty space next to the wife who was already pretending to be asleep.
Two hours later, I’m dragged out of whatever shallow, drunken grave I’d fallen into by a sharp hiss in my ear. It’s the kids’ mom, shaking me like the house is on fire. “What have you done?” she’s spitting. “Goddammit, James, what the hell did you do now?”
I have no idea. I’ve done a lot of things. Which particular sin are we talking about this time? “The police are downstairs,” she says, her voice like ice. “Like ten of them.”
I figure she’s dreaming, or drunk herself. “Nope,” she says. “Deadly serious.”
I stumble down the stairs, my head full of cotton and the ghost of that licorice whiskey. And there they are. Jesus Christ. A welcoming committee in blue. I get to the front door, still clueless, and out of the corner of my eye, I see it: the cops flanking the doorway have their guns out, drawn and pointed right at my gut. Not here for a goddamn bake sale. The guy in front, the sergeant, does the talking. The woman officer behind him has her hand resting on her weapon, ready.
“Is this your truck?” he asks, his voice flat, all business.
“Yeah, it’s my truck.”
“Tire treads match the prints we took from an incident down the road,” he says, his eyes like little black stones. His voice gets firm then, the kind that makes the hair on your arms stand up. “Tell me what happened tonight.”
I give him the short version. “Went out. Came back.”
He leans in a little. “You been hurt? You bleeding anywhere?”
“No, no blood.”
“Were you alone, sir?”
“No, with my friend, Mike.”
“And where is he?”
The whole damn room gets tight then. The guns get a little steadier.
“He’s in that room,” I say, nodding towards the guest room. “Sleeping.”
“Can we see him, sir?”
The wife, of course, throws open the door without waiting for a reply, starts yelling at Mike to get his sorry ass up. He stumbles out, blinking, thinks it’s all a big joke too, right up until he sees the uniforms. They look him over, make him turn around like he’s a piece of meat at the butcher shop. The sergeant turns back to me.
“We got a call, sir,” he says, letting the words hang in the air. “Neighbor reported a truck like yours, heard a lot of yelling, screaming… then a loud bang, followed by moaning, like somebody was shot and hurt.” He stares right through me. “So, let me ask you again. Were any firearms discharged here tonight? Were any of you shot? What exactly happened at that corner?”
The fog in my head finally starts to part, just enough for a sliver of stupid light to get in. “Oh,” I say, the pieces clicking into place with a dull thud. “You mean the coyote?”
The sergeant’s eyes narrow. “The coyotes, sir?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I ran one of them over.”
“And all that screaming?” he presses, his voice flat.
“Oh, that was me,” I tell him, maybe with a half-grin he didn’t appreciate. “Just being jovial. Having some fun, it was exciting. Made me giggle.”
“And the loud bang?”
“The bang? Hell, that was probably me slamming the truck door. Mike didn’t want to participate in my happiness. I don’t know. Wasn’t a gunshot.” Luckily for my sorry ass, there was still a tuft of the poor bastard’s fur caught in the grill, a grisly piece of evidence that happened to back up my story.
Meanwhile, some other cop is scraping at my tire treads, and in the background, the police scanner is broadcasting our greatest hits for the whole neighborhood to enjoy. “…speeding… reckless driving… assault…” They knew my whole damn record. Poor Mike, he got the same public shaming. Our new neighbors, before we even had a chance to say hello, got to hear the full criminal histories of the trash that had just moved in next door.
When it was all said and done, they seemed to figure out they didn’t have enough to drag me in. They never searched the truck, thank Christ. Because my Desert Eagles were sitting right there in the center console, fully loaded and ready for a different kind of party. I think we were planning on going shooting the next day, but don’t ask me to swear on a bible.
That whole shitshow, that was our official “hello” to the neighborhood. We weren’t in that house for more than a month after that.
When they finally cleared out, I just crawled back up the stairs and into that cold bedroom. Slid into bed next to my pissed-off wife. Not that I could tell the difference. She was pissed off yesterday, last week, last month. It didn’t matter. Just another average goddamn day in a long line of them.
