"Hey, Bobby, you sure are white, man," Turk said, grinning.
Bobby Sorrenson had just walked out of the bedroom, dressed only in his briefs. He was smacking his lips and scratching himself.
Byron added, with a chuckle, "Fish-belly white, man." Byron, an outdoorsman, knew all about fish and their bellies.
"Hells bells, what'd'ya expect? I just come down from Minnesota. You can't get a tan there until July, August, and then you'll get eaten up by them big old mosquitoes."
"Whatever," Turk yawned. He stood up from the kitchen table and stretched out his powerful arms. Bobby was trying to respect Turk, which his advanced age of twenty-four warranted and his size and meanness demanded, but contempt kept getting in the way. Byron was about the same age as Turk, and they had been friends since junior high. Byron reminded Bobby of a cockroach. Bobby was the newcomer, having arrived in Dallas as Turk's stepmother's nephew, looking for a place to crash. They had taken him in after he'd gotten Turk's old Harley to run after Turk had given it up for dead. Turk tied the red bandanna back over his head, biker style, in honor of the rebirth. "Besides," he'd said, "the chicks like how it sets off my gray eyes an' my black hair an' goatee."
The previous night they had all gotten drunk and stoned and got to talking about a problem common to all three—needs and no money to satisfy them. Or, as Turk slurred it, "Ends without means." Turk had finished three semesters in Community College, and he liked to show off his education by using such fancy words. Byron and Bobby—Turk called them his "BB's"—didn't appreciate this skill. "Big fuckin' deal," Byron had drawled.
Bobby had showed his nineteen-year-old naivete by suggesting they get jobs. This idea was quickly rejected as "a load of stupid shit." Turk and Byron had been supporting themselves by various types of crime—they started out by lifting car stereos and selling them at swap meets in El Paso and Lubbock, then moved on to dealing marijuana from Mexico—but they had recently faced a setback. As Turk and Byron told it to Bobby, a couple of "low-lifes" stole their supply of weed right out of the house. By the time Turk and Byron had caught up with them, the product was gone, and they'd resisted Turk and Byron's methods of persuasion to give up the money they'd made selling it.
"They wouldn't tell us where they'd hid the money, so we beat on `em a while longer just to teach `em a lesson," was how Turk had explained the situation to Bobby.
Byron had snorted, "Now they'll have to spend all their profits on medical bills."
But just after Turk had stood up from the table the morning after this discussion, his throbbing, hung-over brain experienced an epiphany on how to quickly raise some cash.
"We're gonna rob ourselves a bank," he announced, rubbing his hands together.
Futures
Magazine: The Anthology of Short Tales for Story Lovers, February-March,
2002
 |
 |
 |
 |
Contents of this site ©2000 and beyond by George M. Scott. All graphics, text and other contents are protected by copyright. No text, graphics or other contents may be sold, reproduced or used without the written permission of the copyright holder.