Volume 2, Number 7                        July 2006

Laddie    by Frank Zafiro  Sometimes, you'll do anything for the one you love.  Rob.  Kill.  Anything.  Then again, some people don't have to be pushed too far to make them do those things.

“Hold on, Laddie.”  Shae reached back and grabbed hold of my arm.  “Jes’ feckin’ hold on.”

I opened my mouth to reply but only a gurgle escaped.  The fiery pain in my gut sent shock waves outward.

“Oh, Jaysus,” Shae moaned, glancing back and forth between me and the road in front of her.  Stress always thickened her Irish brogue.  “Oh, sweet Jaysus, Laddie.  Don’t feckin' die on me!”

"Tell me, Warren. Which one of these plants is poisonous? Only one is. Can you guess?" John waved a plastic bag filled with greenery in front of Warren's face.

Warren grinned at him, trying not to let the food escape from the corners of his mouth. "As long as it's in the bag and not on my plate, I don't care." He laughed at his own joke, the camping stool creaking underneath his muscular legs. He stuffed in the last of his dinner.

I stood next to my uncle’s headstone and laid out a red checkered tablecloth. I’d brought a picnic basket and a dozen yellow roses. It had been five years today since he passed.

“I’ve come home, Leo, this time to stay.” He never liked me calling him uncle. He said it made him sound civilized, and he wasn’t. He rode a Harley and looked like a biker:  barrel chest and tattoos. Most men stepped aside when they saw him coming. But ten years ago he showed another side to himself to me.

Sometimes Hannibal thought he could actually hear trouble coming. In this case it was the distinctive sound of a smooth twelve-cylinder engine that drew his attention. He had just settled into his office chair for the first time that morning when he heard the Jaguar shut down in front of his building. Hannibal stood back up, pulled on his black suit coat and slid his Oakley sunglasses into place, confident the car’s occupants would head for his door. After all, the Jaguar was not a species native to the Anacostia section of Washington D.C., and when strangers came to this neighborhood, he was most often the reason.

As Dr. Steven Middleton sipped his lemon tea and spread a little more jam on a croissant, he looked out over the mountains from his Chattanooga home. He was overcome by a sense of relief. It was late afternoon on a cloudless Saturday in September and his wife had just gotten up from her chair on the deck to go answer the phone. As he sat there, remembering and reflecting on a lifetime and career that left little to be desired, he was relieved. Yes, he told himself, that was definitely the feeling, relieved.

The day was hot enough to melt the sunglasses right off your face.  I couldn't understand how birds could chirp, much less fly, when it was that hot, but there was a bunch of them making a racket over near old Mrs. Post's birdfeeder.  The squawking almost drowned out the sound of the heavy earth moving equipment as it leveled what used to be Jenkins' Filling Station and General Store, Wilmer Jenkins Prop.  The whole town has changed so you wouldn't know it.

The pounding hooves, the rocking and rattling of the stagecoach and the blowing dust all combined to give Jim Dailey a terrible headache. He reached up and massaged his temples with fingers that possessed clean and trimmed fingernails, a rarity in the West of 1883.

Across from Dailey sat the only other passenger in the stagecoach, a scruffy-looking and sweaty individual who had introduced himself as “Big Tom” Branson. Occasionally he leaned over and spat a brown stream of tobacco juice out the open window of the stage, and Dailey would close his eyes in distaste. But when he opened them, he could still see Branson’s grinning, tobacco-stained mouth.

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