Gabe Redel's Blog: FRYING POTATOES BLOG, page 7
July 10, 2016
Superball
Superball
by Gabe Redel
Have you ever tried to catch
a Superball
that has a lot of spin on it?
When it bounces off the floor
it springs away
in a completely opposite direction.
Then you try catching it again,
but it keeps springing away
at odd angles.
It zigs and you zag.
It goes left and you go up.
It almost gets embarrassing
after a while.
You may even feel
the need to tell people
that you are really a normal person
and you don’t often trip over
your own knees like that.
Sometimes that’s the way
love feels.
July 5, 2016
Died On A Farm
Died On A Farm
by Gabe Redel
Life was everywhere on the farm. Ash had passed it a few times in his Mercedes on the way to the hideout. In the summer months it stunk like hell. He believed he could drop off his victims in the back river and let them rot away. Nobody would notice. He had thought about it, but he never did. Something inside wouldn’t let him. He hated animals. Well, he hated animals with four legs. His kind of animal had two legs. They used their other two limbs to grip pistols and pour gasoline.
Children rode quads around the property in the afternoon. Every time he drove past on his way to the hideout, he saw children. His son could never cut it on a farm. He was in deep with the life— the clubs and the whores. The only time he lifted a finger was to slap one of them or chop a line. The little poser. If his mother weren’t dead, he would have killed her with the way he acted. His mother was a beautiful woman. She had died when he was nine. Ash could never find another woman to replace her. Nobody was good enough to replace her. Maybe that’s why Anthony grew up so rotten.
When he got to the farm, it was dark. He could hear the coyotes hunting him, trailing his footsteps like the cops, smelling the blood that pooled down his pants. Those blood thirsty roaches. Awe hell, his leg was a mess. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was bad. Must have nicked a main artery. Good chance there was three bullets in it. That son of a bitch Trig had the nerve to call him a rat. Fifty years with the family and now he was getting accused of being a rat? He gave them his life, his sanity.
He’d always fight. Nothing in this world could keep him from fighting. He was a protector. The enemy knew that about him. That’s why they struck when they did, when he had his pants down and his nuts on the smasher. He was this close to retiring, to getting the hell away from those two faced shits. He had already picked out a cottage on a reclusive beach. A life was there. His life was there. Now he was on the run, gimping through the mud like a broken pig.
He fell into the fence and doubled over the top of it for relief. His gun was at his hip. One clip was left. He didn’t know how many bullets were in it. It couldn’t be many. They were everywhere. They had him surrounded. Benny. Curse it, they shot Benny. His body had shook as the bullets tore through his chest. The image of his friend collapsing at the feet of that double crossing Jack Johnny was sick. He wanted Johnny’s heart. He wanted to rip it out of his chest and crush it under his foot while he watched. Who was going to lick whose boots, Johnny? Now who’s licking whose boots? He imagined the blood squishing out of his heart as he stamped it, spraying across Johnny’s dying face. His fists pounded the fence with the rage that swelled in his chest. He needed to stop the bleeding in his leg before he died. His white buttoned shirt was all he had, so he ripped it off and tied it tightly around the wound. His bare chest showed under his suit coat. As he toppled over the fence, blood smeared from the pant leg onto the top board.
The cows slept. He couldn’t think straight, and he knew that. Going directly into the herd wasn’t the smartest idea. The manure that was splattered all over the ground in the pools of piss and mud got in his wound. He could feel the filth crawling up his skin.
He needed a place to hide. Walking any farther on his leg wasn’t an option. The barn, he could hide in the barn, but the door was jammed. He pried on it with both his hands, but nothing. It didn’t move, and his leg was weak. He was weak. Johnny’s boys didn’t follow him into the woods. Why would they let him get away alive? That’s why Johnny’s organization was a pit of shit. The idiot didn’t know how to run a mob. He couldn’t run an ice cream stand.
Ash lit a cigarette. The tobacco crackled as he took the first drag. If he wanted a man dead, he’d chase him relentlessly. He’d stuff his guts in the sausage grinder.
Sirens blared over the pasture. They were far away on the road. They would probably find his car punched up with bullet holes. The car was stolen. They couldn’t pin anything on him unless they let the dogs search the woods. Then they would smell his blood, like those coyotes. One of the bullets was lodged deep in his thigh. What a lucky shot. Through the trees, down a hill in the dark. The shot must have been magic. He tried to laugh but his throat was dry. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was going to die. The hell with it. He thought about Benny as his eyelids dropped. He let his back slide down the wall of the barn until he sunk into the mud. Benny was gone, like his wife. Life was gone.
He coughed up blood with part of the cigarette, so he flicked the rest of it into the air and watched it streak an orange arc. It never hit the ground. It stopped two feet above the earth and sizzled out fast. The stars reflected off the surface of a water trough. He stood up and looked into it. A hose, was there a hose around here? It was too dark to search. He was drunk from the loss of blood, from the exhaustion. If he had been able to think, he would have never done it. He ate at the best restaurants. His house was immaculate. The women he dated were goddesses. No way would he have lowered his head into a filthy cow trough and taken large gulps if he wasn’t drunk from the blood draining out of his body. While he drank, he hallucinated that it was cool and that it tasted like a spring. The water gave him life. When he lifted his head out of the trough, it fell from his soaked hair onto his bare chest, cooling his body.
The barn door slid open easier the second time. He could move faster now that he had something to drink. A light was on in the barn. It hung over a table that had papers and pencils on it. This barn was filled with tractors and other equipment. He found the ladder that led into the loft, climbed it and fell onto a mat of straw.
In his sleep he wept. He never cried. It had been years since he last had cried. His face was iron, but in his sleep, he wept. The dreams bombarded his rest until he broke. He woke in the middle of it. Forgiving himself for crying would shatter his principles, even if it happened in a place that he had no control over. His eyes hung like the barn door. Heavy, stuck shut and flopping at the bottom. All he wanted was sleep—deep, unhindered sleep, but the dreams wouldn’t leave him alone. They attacked all night long. They swirled in from the open window at the barn’s highest peak, racing toward his body. He ran in his sleep. He ran as fast as he could. The environment around him never changed. Faces burned like white metal on the edges of his thoughts. They didn’t have legs. They appeared when they wanted, where they wanted. Their lips tormented him. He fired bullets into their eyes until he had nothing left. His gun emptied; his legs ran without moving a single step forward. The faces disappeared and his body was locked in a trunk again. The same trunk in all his nightmares. The first time he had been in it he had felt paralyzed. He had fought himself to wake. Other times he relaxed and waited out the drive. The trunk never opened for him.
He woke to the sound of barn swallows building nests. The loft heated up as the sun penetrated the roof, forcing the first drops of sweat to appear on his brow in the early morning. He wiped it off, looked around and saw the piles of junk and broken tools he had settled in.
The sun cooked him from the window, but he didn’t move. Voices walked around the corner and opened the door below him. He put his hand on his gun. He didn’t move. They fired up one of the tractors and pulled it out. The door remained opened as the voices trailed into the pastures. Nothing in this loft looked useful. It was a bunch of busted up, useless, trash, like him.
The urge to move pounded in his head. His leg was numb, and standing on it took three attempts. He pushed himself up with his arms and tried to bend it. The skin around the wound felt like it was tearing down the middle, but after five minutes of sharp pain, it loosened up. He listened for people. He listened at the top of the ladder, but the barn floor was silent, not a peep that he could hear. Dust was floating through the sunlight. It snorted into his nose, and he had to sneeze. He caught the sound in his two hands the best he could. Three more came. He put his hand on his gun.
A woman sat at the table with a pencil in her hand. She didn’t know who was watching her. He was a mass murderer, killed hundreds. His eyes focused on her hair. It was blonde and it shined. Her forearm brushed against the table as she wrote. He waited. He wanted to move out of this barn before they trapped him in it. His silver hair was crusty with mud from sweat and dust. He could take her hostage. That would give him a way out. Was someone at the house? He needed to find out, so crept back up to the loft.
Three horses grazed at the side window. The cow pasture was at the back. The front window revealed a gravel driveway where the men had parked their trucks. He couldn’t see the house, but he knew it was on the other side of the barn. The woman moved into the pasture. She was beautiful. He checked the other window looking to see who he should kill first. He writhed in pain, grinding his shoulders. He needed to get out of there, but to leave, she was going to have to die.
She slipped a halter on one of the horses and patted its muscled shoulder and ran her fingers through the horse’s main. The two other horses stretched their heads under the electric fence to reach the grass-line. The woman put her hands on her hips and tipped her hat toward the sun. She pulled two carrots out of her shorts’ pocket and made clicking sounds with her tongue.
She worked just like Sarah, his wife. She would wash Anthony in the sink, dabbing his back with a wet cloth, squeezing the soap over his head. The water would stream down her arm and soak her shirt at the elbow. He had married her young. They were only seventeen when they married. She didn’t know who he was. He couldn’t tell her what he did and have her still want to marry him. His lies kept something good in his life. He needed someone good.
A roll of twine hung on the loft wall. The ceiling of the loft was coated with thick cob webs. He felt trapped, robbed. He felt weak, dying. The twine was a quiet weapon. He lifted it from the nail and made the painful flight down the ladder. The trough of water was next to the large barn door. Clumps of hay and dirt floated at the surface. It nearly made him puke. He crept toward the horse pasture thinking about what he had to do until children called from the stable, freezing him.
He couldn’t off the mother with her children watching, or, at least, he would give them an hour before he did it. A water spout was next to a horse stall. Clean water for his thirst. It pumped easily, and the water spilled into the thick dust. It filled his mouth and rinsed his hair. A pool seeped over the floor. Someone had already run the water this morning, so nobody would notice. His legs were weak. He could barely stand. The loft was a welcoming thought. He climbed the ladder and fell into the hay until sleep pulled him under.
It wasn’t until hours later that he woke. Breathing was difficult. The air suffocated him. It was hot. The face of the evening sun poked through the window, blinding him. The men were parking the tractor underneath. The engine vibrated the floor, like his wife’s old Lincoln had vibrated his room when it passed over the driveway. On the winter mornings, she’d leave the engine warm up next to his window. That made him nuts. She had let Anthony drive the car at eight years old. The first thing he did was hop the curb at The Drop. They had the best pizza burgers in the country. Maybe Anthony would like to go to The Drop for a pizza burger when he got home? Anthony loved to lick the grease off the bun when he was a child.
Only seven bullets left in his clip. Eddy would have killed the whole family by now. It would have been the first thing he did. He would have slit the farmer’s throat and tied up the children. The woman, he would have killed her too. It would have been a merciful killing, nothing grotesque. The house and the food and the medicine would have been his by now. Eddy killed without thinking. Lives vanished at the sight of him. He was an animal programmed to murder. Ash murdered plenty, but he murdered with a purpose. He was good at what he did. Those lives Eddy took, they didn’t mean a thing to him. They were trash to him. They were numbers that added to the total level of anger he could reach. Ash, respectfully, could name half of the men he had gunned down, knifed or put in the ground alive. They had names, and he knew them. Maybe there was one person he regretted killing. He wasn’t living the life. He was a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. He remembered the look that man had given him before he struck the match. His eyes said he was innocent. Even as he burned alive, his eyes didn’t stop saying he was innocent. The man didn’t scream, not once. Ash never knew how the man didn’t scream.
Two squad cars pulled into the driveway of the farm. The woman saw them and met them at their cars. Ash sat under the window listening. They asked about him. They said they found his blood on the fence. He had to move. She told them they could look around and pointed them into the cattle barn. The officers put their hands on their weapons. He moved downstairs and poked his head around the door that led to the driveway.
A man in a suit was crouched behind the silo. It was Eddy. He made eye contact with him. Eddy smiled that shark tooth smile of his. Ash signaled for him to move around to the backside of the barn by the cow pasture.
When he entered, they hugged. Eddy checked his leg over and poured a bottle of whisky on the wound.
Ash wanted to know what happened to the rest of the gang. Apparently Eddy didn’t know, and that made him mad. Eddy was holding something back. He didn’t want to tell him what had happened at the hideout. Maybe Eddy thought he was a rat, too. Maybe Eddie was coming to kill him, but he couldn’t do it in front of the cops.
The police officers walked back to the woman who was leaned against a truck. They wanted to check the other barn—the barn where they were hiding—so the two mobsters crouched behind the stalls. They were prepared to gun them down. When the officers appeared within range, they shot. Their bullets tore into the unsuspecting officers. Their bodies flew backwards into the deep dust of the barn floor.
Eddy ran out to make sure they were dead. He looked up and saw the woman frozen in fear. He raised his pistol and took aim. He had her in his scope until Ash kicked him in the back of the knee. The bullet sailed out of his gun and struck the woman off target. Eddy took aim at Ash next, but Ash was too quick. He put three bullets into Eddy. One in his head and two in his chest.
The woman lay hurt on the gravel. Her blood coated the gray stones. Ash ran toward her and put her head into his lap. The bullet had entered her shoulder and got lodged at the joint. He threw off his suit coat and tore out the inner lining and used it to put pressure on the wound. He apologized to her. He called her Sarah and told her that he shouldn’t have killed her. He told her that he was sorry that all of this had to happen and that he didn’t mean for Anthony to turn out this way. He knew she wanted better for her child. He knew she wouldn’t have married him if she knew that he was a murderer. It was his fault she died. He killed her. He was sorry. He was so sorry. Everything that had happened to her and to Anthony was his fault.
He scrambled to heal her wound. The woman told him to run to the first aid kit by the table in the barn. He scrambled as fast as he could. He opened it and grabbed the bottle of alcohol. A roll of tape fell out and hit the table. It rolled onto the piece of paper the woman had used earlier to write him a letter. It read Take as much water and food as you like. I won’t tell him you’re up there. She knew. She had known the whole time.
He ran back to the woman with his weapon drawn, pointing it at her face, and accused her of calling the police. Her note said that she knew he was up there and that she wouldn’t squeal, but she did squeal. She denied it. But the cops showed up! She didn’t know who he was. She thought he was just another hobo, and her husband didn’t like it when she gave the hobos a place to stay. He asked her what husband she was talking about.
A bullet entered Ash’s back. It raced through his lungs and out of his chest. He flopped over and spilt the alcohol on the ground. The boy who had shot him with the rifle ran up to his momma to protect her. Ash saw that the person who had shot him was a boy. He observed the child, staring deeply into his eyes. The boy looked back without making a face. Ash’s mind twisted. He wanted to plead with the child with everything he had, but he could only choke out a few last words. “Never start killing, boy! Never kill!” The boy stared at him without a word. Ash grabbed him by the collar and yelled into his face. His chest had a hole in it the size of a hoof. His lungs stopped breathing and his eyes shriveled up like crab apples. He said, “I’m crying. I’m crying and I’m awake.” The boy saw that the mobster’s face was dry as a bone, but he nodded anyway. He nodded his head and watched Ash’s body slip into the breeze.
by Gabe Redel
Life was everywhere on the farm. Ash had passed it a few times in his Mercedes on the way to the hideout. In the summer months it stunk like hell. He believed he could drop off his victims in the back river and let them rot away. Nobody would notice. He had thought about it, but he never did. Something inside wouldn’t let him. He hated animals. Well, he hated animals with four legs. His kind of animal had two legs. They used their other two limbs to grip pistols and pour gasoline.
Children rode quads around the property in the afternoon. Every time he drove past on his way to the hideout, he saw children. His son could never cut it on a farm. He was in deep with the life— the clubs and the whores. The only time he lifted a finger was to slap one of them or chop a line. The little poser. If his mother weren’t dead, he would have killed her with the way he acted. His mother was a beautiful woman. She had died when he was nine. Ash could never find another woman to replace her. Nobody was good enough to replace her. Maybe that’s why Anthony grew up so rotten.
When he got to the farm, it was dark. He could hear the coyotes hunting him, trailing his footsteps like the cops, smelling the blood that pooled down his pants. Those blood thirsty roaches. Awe hell, his leg was a mess. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was bad. Must have nicked a main artery. Good chance there was three bullets in it. That son of a bitch Trig had the nerve to call him a rat. Fifty years with the family and now he was getting accused of being a rat? He gave them his life, his sanity.
He’d always fight. Nothing in this world could keep him from fighting. He was a protector. The enemy knew that about him. That’s why they struck when they did, when he had his pants down and his nuts on the smasher. He was this close to retiring, to getting the hell away from those two faced shits. He had already picked out a cottage on a reclusive beach. A life was there. His life was there. Now he was on the run, gimping through the mud like a broken pig.
He fell into the fence and doubled over the top of it for relief. His gun was at his hip. One clip was left. He didn’t know how many bullets were in it. It couldn’t be many. They were everywhere. They had him surrounded. Benny. Curse it, they shot Benny. His body had shook as the bullets tore through his chest. The image of his friend collapsing at the feet of that double crossing Jack Johnny was sick. He wanted Johnny’s heart. He wanted to rip it out of his chest and crush it under his foot while he watched. Who was going to lick whose boots, Johnny? Now who’s licking whose boots? He imagined the blood squishing out of his heart as he stamped it, spraying across Johnny’s dying face. His fists pounded the fence with the rage that swelled in his chest. He needed to stop the bleeding in his leg before he died. His white buttoned shirt was all he had, so he ripped it off and tied it tightly around the wound. His bare chest showed under his suit coat. As he toppled over the fence, blood smeared from the pant leg onto the top board.
The cows slept. He couldn’t think straight, and he knew that. Going directly into the herd wasn’t the smartest idea. The manure that was splattered all over the ground in the pools of piss and mud got in his wound. He could feel the filth crawling up his skin.
He needed a place to hide. Walking any farther on his leg wasn’t an option. The barn, he could hide in the barn, but the door was jammed. He pried on it with both his hands, but nothing. It didn’t move, and his leg was weak. He was weak. Johnny’s boys didn’t follow him into the woods. Why would they let him get away alive? That’s why Johnny’s organization was a pit of shit. The idiot didn’t know how to run a mob. He couldn’t run an ice cream stand.
Ash lit a cigarette. The tobacco crackled as he took the first drag. If he wanted a man dead, he’d chase him relentlessly. He’d stuff his guts in the sausage grinder.
Sirens blared over the pasture. They were far away on the road. They would probably find his car punched up with bullet holes. The car was stolen. They couldn’t pin anything on him unless they let the dogs search the woods. Then they would smell his blood, like those coyotes. One of the bullets was lodged deep in his thigh. What a lucky shot. Through the trees, down a hill in the dark. The shot must have been magic. He tried to laugh but his throat was dry. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was going to die. The hell with it. He thought about Benny as his eyelids dropped. He let his back slide down the wall of the barn until he sunk into the mud. Benny was gone, like his wife. Life was gone.
He coughed up blood with part of the cigarette, so he flicked the rest of it into the air and watched it streak an orange arc. It never hit the ground. It stopped two feet above the earth and sizzled out fast. The stars reflected off the surface of a water trough. He stood up and looked into it. A hose, was there a hose around here? It was too dark to search. He was drunk from the loss of blood, from the exhaustion. If he had been able to think, he would have never done it. He ate at the best restaurants. His house was immaculate. The women he dated were goddesses. No way would he have lowered his head into a filthy cow trough and taken large gulps if he wasn’t drunk from the blood draining out of his body. While he drank, he hallucinated that it was cool and that it tasted like a spring. The water gave him life. When he lifted his head out of the trough, it fell from his soaked hair onto his bare chest, cooling his body.
The barn door slid open easier the second time. He could move faster now that he had something to drink. A light was on in the barn. It hung over a table that had papers and pencils on it. This barn was filled with tractors and other equipment. He found the ladder that led into the loft, climbed it and fell onto a mat of straw.
In his sleep he wept. He never cried. It had been years since he last had cried. His face was iron, but in his sleep, he wept. The dreams bombarded his rest until he broke. He woke in the middle of it. Forgiving himself for crying would shatter his principles, even if it happened in a place that he had no control over. His eyes hung like the barn door. Heavy, stuck shut and flopping at the bottom. All he wanted was sleep—deep, unhindered sleep, but the dreams wouldn’t leave him alone. They attacked all night long. They swirled in from the open window at the barn’s highest peak, racing toward his body. He ran in his sleep. He ran as fast as he could. The environment around him never changed. Faces burned like white metal on the edges of his thoughts. They didn’t have legs. They appeared when they wanted, where they wanted. Their lips tormented him. He fired bullets into their eyes until he had nothing left. His gun emptied; his legs ran without moving a single step forward. The faces disappeared and his body was locked in a trunk again. The same trunk in all his nightmares. The first time he had been in it he had felt paralyzed. He had fought himself to wake. Other times he relaxed and waited out the drive. The trunk never opened for him.
He woke to the sound of barn swallows building nests. The loft heated up as the sun penetrated the roof, forcing the first drops of sweat to appear on his brow in the early morning. He wiped it off, looked around and saw the piles of junk and broken tools he had settled in.
The sun cooked him from the window, but he didn’t move. Voices walked around the corner and opened the door below him. He put his hand on his gun. He didn’t move. They fired up one of the tractors and pulled it out. The door remained opened as the voices trailed into the pastures. Nothing in this loft looked useful. It was a bunch of busted up, useless, trash, like him.
The urge to move pounded in his head. His leg was numb, and standing on it took three attempts. He pushed himself up with his arms and tried to bend it. The skin around the wound felt like it was tearing down the middle, but after five minutes of sharp pain, it loosened up. He listened for people. He listened at the top of the ladder, but the barn floor was silent, not a peep that he could hear. Dust was floating through the sunlight. It snorted into his nose, and he had to sneeze. He caught the sound in his two hands the best he could. Three more came. He put his hand on his gun.
A woman sat at the table with a pencil in her hand. She didn’t know who was watching her. He was a mass murderer, killed hundreds. His eyes focused on her hair. It was blonde and it shined. Her forearm brushed against the table as she wrote. He waited. He wanted to move out of this barn before they trapped him in it. His silver hair was crusty with mud from sweat and dust. He could take her hostage. That would give him a way out. Was someone at the house? He needed to find out, so crept back up to the loft.
Three horses grazed at the side window. The cow pasture was at the back. The front window revealed a gravel driveway where the men had parked their trucks. He couldn’t see the house, but he knew it was on the other side of the barn. The woman moved into the pasture. She was beautiful. He checked the other window looking to see who he should kill first. He writhed in pain, grinding his shoulders. He needed to get out of there, but to leave, she was going to have to die.
She slipped a halter on one of the horses and patted its muscled shoulder and ran her fingers through the horse’s main. The two other horses stretched their heads under the electric fence to reach the grass-line. The woman put her hands on her hips and tipped her hat toward the sun. She pulled two carrots out of her shorts’ pocket and made clicking sounds with her tongue.
She worked just like Sarah, his wife. She would wash Anthony in the sink, dabbing his back with a wet cloth, squeezing the soap over his head. The water would stream down her arm and soak her shirt at the elbow. He had married her young. They were only seventeen when they married. She didn’t know who he was. He couldn’t tell her what he did and have her still want to marry him. His lies kept something good in his life. He needed someone good.
A roll of twine hung on the loft wall. The ceiling of the loft was coated with thick cob webs. He felt trapped, robbed. He felt weak, dying. The twine was a quiet weapon. He lifted it from the nail and made the painful flight down the ladder. The trough of water was next to the large barn door. Clumps of hay and dirt floated at the surface. It nearly made him puke. He crept toward the horse pasture thinking about what he had to do until children called from the stable, freezing him.
He couldn’t off the mother with her children watching, or, at least, he would give them an hour before he did it. A water spout was next to a horse stall. Clean water for his thirst. It pumped easily, and the water spilled into the thick dust. It filled his mouth and rinsed his hair. A pool seeped over the floor. Someone had already run the water this morning, so nobody would notice. His legs were weak. He could barely stand. The loft was a welcoming thought. He climbed the ladder and fell into the hay until sleep pulled him under.
It wasn’t until hours later that he woke. Breathing was difficult. The air suffocated him. It was hot. The face of the evening sun poked through the window, blinding him. The men were parking the tractor underneath. The engine vibrated the floor, like his wife’s old Lincoln had vibrated his room when it passed over the driveway. On the winter mornings, she’d leave the engine warm up next to his window. That made him nuts. She had let Anthony drive the car at eight years old. The first thing he did was hop the curb at The Drop. They had the best pizza burgers in the country. Maybe Anthony would like to go to The Drop for a pizza burger when he got home? Anthony loved to lick the grease off the bun when he was a child.
Only seven bullets left in his clip. Eddy would have killed the whole family by now. It would have been the first thing he did. He would have slit the farmer’s throat and tied up the children. The woman, he would have killed her too. It would have been a merciful killing, nothing grotesque. The house and the food and the medicine would have been his by now. Eddy killed without thinking. Lives vanished at the sight of him. He was an animal programmed to murder. Ash murdered plenty, but he murdered with a purpose. He was good at what he did. Those lives Eddy took, they didn’t mean a thing to him. They were trash to him. They were numbers that added to the total level of anger he could reach. Ash, respectfully, could name half of the men he had gunned down, knifed or put in the ground alive. They had names, and he knew them. Maybe there was one person he regretted killing. He wasn’t living the life. He was a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. He remembered the look that man had given him before he struck the match. His eyes said he was innocent. Even as he burned alive, his eyes didn’t stop saying he was innocent. The man didn’t scream, not once. Ash never knew how the man didn’t scream.
Two squad cars pulled into the driveway of the farm. The woman saw them and met them at their cars. Ash sat under the window listening. They asked about him. They said they found his blood on the fence. He had to move. She told them they could look around and pointed them into the cattle barn. The officers put their hands on their weapons. He moved downstairs and poked his head around the door that led to the driveway.
A man in a suit was crouched behind the silo. It was Eddy. He made eye contact with him. Eddy smiled that shark tooth smile of his. Ash signaled for him to move around to the backside of the barn by the cow pasture.
When he entered, they hugged. Eddy checked his leg over and poured a bottle of whisky on the wound.
Ash wanted to know what happened to the rest of the gang. Apparently Eddy didn’t know, and that made him mad. Eddy was holding something back. He didn’t want to tell him what had happened at the hideout. Maybe Eddy thought he was a rat, too. Maybe Eddie was coming to kill him, but he couldn’t do it in front of the cops.
The police officers walked back to the woman who was leaned against a truck. They wanted to check the other barn—the barn where they were hiding—so the two mobsters crouched behind the stalls. They were prepared to gun them down. When the officers appeared within range, they shot. Their bullets tore into the unsuspecting officers. Their bodies flew backwards into the deep dust of the barn floor.
Eddy ran out to make sure they were dead. He looked up and saw the woman frozen in fear. He raised his pistol and took aim. He had her in his scope until Ash kicked him in the back of the knee. The bullet sailed out of his gun and struck the woman off target. Eddy took aim at Ash next, but Ash was too quick. He put three bullets into Eddy. One in his head and two in his chest.
The woman lay hurt on the gravel. Her blood coated the gray stones. Ash ran toward her and put her head into his lap. The bullet had entered her shoulder and got lodged at the joint. He threw off his suit coat and tore out the inner lining and used it to put pressure on the wound. He apologized to her. He called her Sarah and told her that he shouldn’t have killed her. He told her that he was sorry that all of this had to happen and that he didn’t mean for Anthony to turn out this way. He knew she wanted better for her child. He knew she wouldn’t have married him if she knew that he was a murderer. It was his fault she died. He killed her. He was sorry. He was so sorry. Everything that had happened to her and to Anthony was his fault.
He scrambled to heal her wound. The woman told him to run to the first aid kit by the table in the barn. He scrambled as fast as he could. He opened it and grabbed the bottle of alcohol. A roll of tape fell out and hit the table. It rolled onto the piece of paper the woman had used earlier to write him a letter. It read Take as much water and food as you like. I won’t tell him you’re up there. She knew. She had known the whole time.
He ran back to the woman with his weapon drawn, pointing it at her face, and accused her of calling the police. Her note said that she knew he was up there and that she wouldn’t squeal, but she did squeal. She denied it. But the cops showed up! She didn’t know who he was. She thought he was just another hobo, and her husband didn’t like it when she gave the hobos a place to stay. He asked her what husband she was talking about.
A bullet entered Ash’s back. It raced through his lungs and out of his chest. He flopped over and spilt the alcohol on the ground. The boy who had shot him with the rifle ran up to his momma to protect her. Ash saw that the person who had shot him was a boy. He observed the child, staring deeply into his eyes. The boy looked back without making a face. Ash’s mind twisted. He wanted to plead with the child with everything he had, but he could only choke out a few last words. “Never start killing, boy! Never kill!” The boy stared at him without a word. Ash grabbed him by the collar and yelled into his face. His chest had a hole in it the size of a hoof. His lungs stopped breathing and his eyes shriveled up like crab apples. He said, “I’m crying. I’m crying and I’m awake.” The boy saw that the mobster’s face was dry as a bone, but he nodded anyway. He nodded his head and watched Ash’s body slip into the breeze.
June 19, 2016
Searches
Searches
by Gabe Redel
Comets are rocks
or minerals
and chemicals
and they carry fire
on their skins.
They move like the thoughts
in an engineer’s head.
We could examine them further.
We could know more.
We could keep our perspective
on material
and substance
and studies.
The other things
a comet carries
are smiles
and enthusiasm
and cheers
from those that spot them.
But what more is that
they carry a path
that has no end to our perspective.
And no end means
we can find hope
in what we do not know.
Tangled Wires
Tangled Wires
by Gabe Redel
This ball of tangled wires in my chest
throws electricity
from my hands and off my fingers.
The shock snaps
against the things I hold.
I have been naturally programmed
to be able to untangle the wires.
Then they would work
as they were meant to work.
I would work
as I was meant to work.
I wouldn’t operate
as a machine any longer.
My eyes would not be hard
and lifeless
and far off where nobody
can read them.
But what would I be
if I were not a mess?
I wouldn’t be
what I want to be
and I sure as hell
wouldn’t get along
with anybody else in this world.
Touch
Touch
by Gabe Redel
by Gabe Redel
This handle
on this door
is there to be touched.
It’s there to be held
and turned and when
it’s used
another world opens.
And the ground
is much like the handle.
When it’s wet and
the wind takes seeds
and throws them
over the ground
a new world opens up.
A new life begins.
And humans are like the ground.
And humans are like the handle.
When we are touched
and we like what we feel
and we put our lips
against another’s
and we turn
and we drink
and when the wind moves us
into the spirit of the one we love
another world opens up.
A new life begins.
My Dog
My Dog
by Gabe Redel
It is best when this dog
is peaceful on his leash.
It’s humiliating
when he acts up and loses
control.
I try to keep him calm
by talking to him nicely,
but that rarely works.
He just keeps pulling harder and harder.
I know what comes next.
He loses his cool
and flies off the end of the leash
in a panic of barks and bites.
It doesn’t matter
how hard I try,
my dog always wins.
And when he’s done making a fool
of himself,
it is up to me
to gather him up, the sad little mess,
and act like nothing happened.
How embarrassing it is
when I can’t
keep my emotions… I mean
my dog under control.
June 13, 2016
Here
Here
by Gabe Redel
This place is home.
I need to stay in it.
I’m comfortable here
and I don’t know what’s
over there.
Well, I have an idea
of what’s over there
and I know I wouldn’t like it.
It’s at the beginning
and lonely
and I wouldn’t be able
to think about you over there.
I need to be here.
This is where we kissed.
This is where we held hands.
We talked a lot
and we prayed together
and we laughed
and we fell in love
and we felt like we had met our dreams.
I know you are gone now,
but here is where I still have you.
I can’t move from this spot.
I can’t move from you.
A Hero
A Hero
by Gabe Redel
A hero once rose up
to fight against
the terror of a king.
The hero forged his sword,
gathered a band of warriors
and led the battle
against the king’s trained army.
The battle continued
until the hero was within minutes
of striking the king down
with the edge of his weapon.
But an arrow shot from the tower
sank into his skull
and killed him.
I Came Here
I Came Here
by Gabe Redel
The dirt rises over our heads
on both sides.
The trees lean in
trying to stand against the climb.
The ground is a bright orange, like fire
and the air is freshly scented
with the flowers of Summer.
Shadows pass over.
The life of desire
has its hands on everyone’s shoulders.
This place
is where I don’t want
to be,
but is where I know
I should be.
I came here
by my own decision.
One-hundred foot vines
gag the air.
I brace myself
going down hill
on wet ground.
June 12, 2016
The Tree Up Ahead
The Tree Up Ahead
by Gabe Redel
I don’t see it.
I know there is a tree
up ahead,
and on its branches
is the fruit that will heal me.
If I hug myself
super tight
and put my head down
I will get to it.
I know it is up ahead.
It will be there
ready for me.
I can taste the fruit
with only a thought.
I’ll keep my head down.
I’ll hug myself super tight.
I’ll wait for Father Time
to unplug the seconds
that stab me
with every tick.
I know I’ll get there.
I can make it.
I know there’s healing
up ahead where that tree grows.
