EXCERPT 10, FLY IN THE MILK
Johnny Beam looks for the good life in the direction of trouble in Chapter 2 of Fly in the Milk, ebook available wherever ebooks are sold:
After the meal, Johnny lit a cigar. Bob Nash and his girl Sheila went downstairs to the piano bar and Harry decided to go home. Lambert told Johnny he’d see him at the Bayside and departed with the jiggling, redheaded Gloria in tow.
Johnny joined Bob Nash in the piano bar. They didn’t say much to each other; just Bob’s same old line about how Johnny could hold his state title for another ten years, easy. How there was no one out there that could touch him. Always avoiding the question about any big fights or the chance to get a shot against a national contender.
Johnny had a good load on and he began to flirt with Bob’s blond bombshell. He could have left with her, but that night he was more interested in business than pleasure. He was only flirting with the broad to get Bob Nash’s goat. Most of all, he wanted to think about making corn whiskey. A young fighter he knew name of Big Cat Edwards had bragged about making corn whiskey and bathtub gin good enough for a true boozehound. At least that’s what he’d said one night, and Big Cat wasn’t the type to bullshit. Johnny believed him, anyway, and you just had to go with your hunches.
Around 11:45 Beam said his goodbyes, pumping Bob Nash’s hand and maybe squeezing a bit too hard and planting a big smooch on Sheila’s full, fleshy lips. The parking lot was dark and quiet as he went to his car, the only sound the dull clack of his heels on the frozen pavement. He could see the lift bridge looming in the vague light. The car door moaned as it slid open and the wind bit at the back of his neck. The leather seats were ice-stiff. The throbbing in his head had faded into the background. The ignition fired and the engine roared to life. Johnny looked out at the frozen grayness of the bay and felt like good things were about to happen. For some odd reason, it seemed life was about to start going his way.
Bay City was dark and dirty as it always was. Sooty snow and greasy black ice filled the gutters and clung to the curbs. Hunks of paper and flattened plastic cups danced and pinwheeled across the pavement, driven by the snarling wind.
Johnny considered what it might be like if he still lived in this town and shook his head. All he could remember about his childhood here was a couple of sunny spring days, just a few months before he and his mother had left for Minnesota.
Warm days in the springtime were a rarity on the shores of the big lake; that’s why you remembered them. Having a dying rat flying at your face was another reason to remember.
His mama had been feeling good that day and she’d let him go off with some of the neighborhood boys, even though they were a little older, white and scruffy. The group spent the afternoon walking along the railroad tracks that ran through town, looking to smack rats with a hockey stick. They had two sticks and plenty of targets.
The system worked like this: the older boys held the sticks and walked alongside the tracks while Johnny and another boy walked through the weeds in an attempt to flush out the rodents. When a rat scurried in front of a stick bearer, he attempted to swat the filthy beast, a slap shot being the preferred method.
On Johnny’s day in the sun, the boys developed a new twist to the game: “Hit it at the pickaninny.”
He never forgot the sight of those filthy things flying at his face after a hard slap shot, sharp teeth sticking out like fangs. Enough to make him afraid of rats forever.
Goddamn state boxing champion afraid of rats…
The memories made him feel the same things again: the dread, the fear—like he was a scared little kid again. He squeezed the steering wheel a little harder and inhaled deeply, felt his boxing wounds throb.
(To be continued)
T.K. O’Neill’s crime novel Fly in the Milk is available on ebook at online bookstores, including Barnes and Noble, ebookit, Google, iBookstore (Apple), Amazon, Sony Reader Store, Kobo (Borders) and Ingram Digital.
Fly in the Milk – $2.99 at https://amzn.to/2LbNJ8j
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