From SPR Review: “Love, loss, brotherhood, and purpose clash in a timeless examination of freedom through a drug-addled lens. With a clever and original flourish for simple, unexpected descriptions, the prose hums along at an even clip, occasionally taking time to wax poetic, à la Kerouac, with the urgency in Frank’s mind and movements reminiscent of Sal Paradise, if not Dean Moriarty. Comparisons aside, this book is far from derivative; it is a refreshing homage to beatnik life, telling an accessible story with a familiar lesson – you can’t go home again, and home is wherever you make it.”
Rolling across the pitch black desert in the station wagon, dust cloud in the rearview glowing taillight-red, giant cacti looming beyond the arc of the headlights like lost soldiers in Pancho Villa’s army, Frank could only shake his head at the turn the evening had taken.
All because of the young girl on his right, her nose full of white powder and her belly full of booze and downers.
But no, that wasn’t really accurate.
What went down was all because of the predatory behavior of two overly entitled white guys with too much money and too few values.
Guys who believed it their right to take what they wanted without concern for the consequences.
But, hey, they weren’t the Hillside Stranglers, as Clayton Cook had so fervently declared.
Frank’s mind switched gears and began working on the thorny problem of what to do now.
“You got some place to go, Evelyn, some place I can take you?”
“No, not really,” Evelyn replied, her jaw set at an angle and her eyes momentarily wide and staring in the glow of the dash lights.
“Whattaya mean, no not really? You haven’t got a home? Come on, I’m just trying to help here.”
“Of course I have a home, pendejo. I share an apartment with my brother Javier.”
There was that ben decko shit again.
“Good, I’ll take you there. But you have to tell me the way. I’m not from around here.”
“Really,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her words like wax from a candle, “I never would have known. Your car is just like the cars in my neighborhood—old and shitty.”
Girl using sarcasm? She must be doing better than he’d thought. “It’s not shitty. It’s reliable. Trustworthy. Just like me. Now tell me how to get to your apartment.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I stutter or something?”
“Just give me directions.”
“I give you directions out here in the desert, you’ll just forget them by the time we get to Phoenix.”
Frank couldn’t help himself and broke into song: “ By the time I get to Phoenix, she’ll be waiting.”
Evelyn made a face. “You got a permit for that voice? Permit to carry a tune? Think you’re in violation, Jack.”
“Name’s Frank. Give me the directions when we get back to civilization then.”
“Javier finds out I’ve been doing drugs, he’ll slap me around.”
“Your brother beats you?”
“Only if he catches me doing dope. Both our parents are dead and Javier thinks he has to play father to me. Even though he’s younger. I’ve had some trouble with drugs in the past, so I guess he has a right. I can drink as much as I want and he doesn’t say a damn thing, but he finds out I’ve had one taste of coke or a pill or something, he blows his cork.”
“Where would you like me to drop you then?”
“I dunno. Hotel?”
“Got any money?”
“Few bucks.”
“Nice. Sweet. Just fuckin’ dandy. How old are you, Evelyn?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Got ID?” You’ve been a bartender for ten years, you have to ask.
“I need ID to ride in this piece of shit?”
“Never mind. I’ll take your word for it.”
But Jesus, look at her, she looks seventeen.
If that.
He could see the state trooper shining a flashlight in the window at the dangerously young girl with booze on her breath and white powder on the edge of her nostrils. And then the light hits the loaded handgun on the front seat.
Night plinking in the desert, son?
Then the cop shines the light on the face of the driver—a much older man— forty, at least.
Only thirty-six, Frank was thinking as he tossed Larry’s pistol out the car window.
And what, pray tell, is the age of consent in Arizona?
For an answer he got an image of Clayton Cook: “Old enough to bleed, old enough to butcher.”
Pleasant.
“You got any tunes in this car?” Evelyn said, still showing signs of life.
“Radio doesn’t work.”
“Shitty car, like I said. Even the campesinos have a radio.”
Frank jammed on the brakes and the wagon skidded to a halt. “You want to get out and walk?” he said, feeling like what he imagined the father of a teen-ager might feel.
He watched her look out the window at the blackness. Saw a couple pairs of eyes looking back.
Arizona coyotes.
She laughed. A guffaw, a snort and a girlish giggle. “No thanks. I know you won’t leave me, you have kind eyes.”
“Okay, you got me.”
He hit the gas.
Few minutes later, glancing at Evelyn, he could see she was starting to fade again, her eyes getting heavy and her head lolling forward like one of those bobblehead dolls people were putting in their back windows. “You know, Evelyn, your friend Clayton put Tuinals in your drink.”
“Toenails in my drink, ew.”
“No, honey, Tu-i-nals. It’s a barbiturate.”
“Barbershit?”
“Sleeping pills.”
“Fuckin’ lumiosos. Now I need a toot.” She stuck her hand in her purse and came out with the coke bag, pinched a wad between thumb and forefinger and sniffed it in.
“Okay, honey, that’s enough for now. Wipe off your nose and give me the coke. We’ll be back in town pretty soon and we can’t have the policia seeing you snort up. Definitely not cool.”
Frank was keeping track of her snorting; determining that she needed a toot about every fifteen minutes just to stay reasonably coherent.
Time to cut her off and hope she passed out.
“Stop calling me honey,” she said, handing over the bag of powder.
“You got it, swee—ah—Evelyn.”
And before too long, miraculous as it seemed at the time, they came upon some lighted streets Frank halfway remembered.
And then, more miracles, they were somehow back in front of the Neon Cactus, the club now looking eerily vacant, surrounding streets empty and clean as if no one had been there for a week.
(To be continued)
Ebook Special $3.99
PAPERBACK + EBOOK AVAILABLE
Bookshop.org: https://bit.ly/3XG682t
Barnes and Noble: https://bit.ly/3sBA5SZ
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3DEFkYz
https://books2read.com/u/mlEM1B
SEE ALL T.K. O’NEILL’S BOOKS HERE: https://bluestonesblog.com/
To contact Bluestone Press or T.K. O’Neill, email bluestonepress@outlook.com or call 218.724.5806
Bluestone's Blog 
Leave a comment