Fiction 2

To play (MIDI), click here Carolan's Maggot

excerpt from "Laser Green!" Copyright 1992 by Richard J. Waters

Chapter 1

 

"A traveller!

By my faith, you have great reason to be sad."

As You Like It, William Shakespeare.

 

 

 

       Once upon a time I was someone else.        

       More like an honest man, some might say.  Or perhaps not.  More legitimate, at any rate.  But lately I've been dabbling in the family trade, which is another matter entirely.        

       My mother's father, not an admirable man otherwise, was an accomplished swindler by the time he was sixteen.  At the advanced age of forty-four, his daughter's eldest son is only now practicing nickel and dime hustles, props and short-cons in cheap saloons.  That's just to keep busy, really.  There's no money in it unless you're willing to put in long, hard hours.        

       Truthfully, it's a little irritating to start all over with the lessons that I scorned as a boy.  But my other life died.  Lost now beyond recovery, almost beyond recall; it was really all I ever wanted then.  Afterward, when my blank days became inseparable, I began to take risks; serious risks.

       I should correct that.  They seemed like serious risks then.  But that was before I met Roxanne.

       "Goin' downtown?"  

       It was almost a sigh, soft and husky with a funny little lisp.  The whisper had to be coming from the bronzed and shapely redhead on the other side of my window.        

       My oh my!        

       For a second or two the source was just an idle speculation: the CopperTone lovely was directly in front of my truck, but the seductive inquiry was only tickling my left ear through the partly open window next to it.  Finally, though, both sensations merged into a single event demanding some of my attention.  And maybe more than some of it.  Even on such short acquaintance, there was something appealing in her Texas voice, something alluring about it.  Some mystery ingredient.

A tantalizing thought occurred to me: that it might be fear.        

 

To play (MIDI), click here Four Green Fields

 

        That warm spring evening, it was well past time for me to bail out of a pink shanty named "La Mamselle."  That was the name, boldly if not proudly, proclaimed on the front wall in a big, ugly, hand-painted scrawl.  True!  The odd building was, and still is, on Highway 35; although the bar is out of business now.  At any rate, the fluorescent atrocity had caught my eye on every trip north from Corpus Christi.  And this time, curiosity had finally won out.        

       It was, of course, a disappointment; just the latest of many.  The joint was not jumping and that was just as well, I guess.  This rural blight had only inspired an early exit after a couple of tasteless sips of lukewarm beer.  There was nothing and nobody else there, just the bartender and a few half-dead customers, all of them broke.                

       I wasn't’t all that good at what I did in those days because my heart wasn't’t really in it.  I needed something to work with, at least a little blood in the turnip.  The one attraction that remained, outside, had me arrested in the parking lot.  I fancy myself to be a bit of a poet, as does any Irishman who can't sing well, and the aerial view inspired chorus lines of oncoming cliches.  

       The dying sun was as red as a bloody rose, while dark western clouds piled on top of each other like pillows, overshadowing its deathbed.  -One of the little hoofers is kicking up its heels right now-

       And so I was just sitting in the truck, staring at the sky and trying to work up enough ambition to turn the ignition key.  I didn’t really want to go on to the next joint; maybe I wanted to skip the planet altogether.

 

 

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