THUGLIT Issue Two (7 page)

Nora couldn’t believe it. The Congressman was almost smirking as he deflected the question.

The expression on his face looked hauntingly familiar.

The kid who’d asked the question persisted. “Your district has the highest unemployment in the state,” he began, but before he had a chance to finish what he was saying, the Congressman interrupted.

“See, that’s the kind of negativity we don’t need in America right now,” the Congressman said with a phony laugh. Nora hated people who interrupted people. Barton used to do that to Nora a lot, as if what she was saying couldn't possibly be as important as whatever he had on his mind. She could tell the kid didn't like being interrupted either, but his moment had passed and he knew it.

“Asshole,” the young journalist said as he left the room. An older reporter gave him an amused look but no one else even noticed. A staffer had brought out slices of cake and was handing them out.

The press secretary started directing staffers to step up to the center of the room so the campaign photographer could take some pictures.

No one noticed Nora picking up a pair of long, sharp shears from a table where the interns usually worked.

The Congressman flinched a little as he posed with Lowell, obviously uncomfortable being so close to an openly gay man. His body language screamed discomfort when he posed with Caroline, a morbidly obese volunteer who always took the leftover pastries home with her at night. Some of the staffers made fun of her behind her back but Nora didn't. She knew Caroline was trying to make ends meet on a small insurance payout from a car accident that had left her with one leg shorter than the other and constant back pain.

Nora was the last of the staffers in the line for pictures and the Congressman smiled at her as she approached.

“You broke your promise,” Nora said to the Congressman as she stepped up next to him, giving him a last chance to make things right.

“What’s that dear?” he asked, bending down so he wouldn’t tower over her in the picture but smiling for the camera and not for her.

The Congressman slung his arm around Nora’s shoulder and pulled her close.

He barely even felt it as she shoved the scissors into his armpit, all the way up to the handle.

He was dead before the photographer clicked the shutter.

Nora had heard prison food was horrible but she didn’t really care.

It wasn’t like she’d have to pay for it.

And after months of eating nothing but tuna salad and peanut butter sandwiches, she was no longer a picky eater.

b
y Justin Porter

A shabby apparition wearing a shabby hat popped up in front of the carriage and the driver near inhaled the stub of his cigar in surprise.

"Hello!" The shabby apparition grinned and waved like an idiot while the man coughed.

Spitting out the cigar and the taste of burned tongue and ashes, the carriage driver struggled to respond when something cracked against his skull, saving him the trouble.

The horses did not seem bothered by any of it.

"You do idiot really well, Cap," the man wielding the blackjack said.

"Yeah, well ya taught me everything I know, Red."

There were no shouts of "stop thief," as they laid the driver on the street, his head pillowed by a handy pile of old horseshit.

“Let’s go before whoever he was waiting for c
omes back.” Red cracked the rei
ns, setting the two handsome geldings to a trot. The driver snoozed, dreaming of the well-fertilized fields back home in Pennsylvania while Cap and Red drove a twisting route through the Lower West Side and made for the harbor. Down-at-the-heels whores shuffled in front of the tenements, sagging and exposed tits swaying. Driving into a low building, they struck fire to lanterns and four men emerged from the shadows.

"Abel, William, take the horses for a pretty ride, eh lads?" Red said to a pair of teenagers with eyes that looked stolen. After they’d left Cap, Red and the two others dismantled the carriage. Silver fittings were removed and piled on a table, the wooden pieces were discarded and the iron was piled up.

"Nice haul, this," Cap said.

Red grunted. "We'll take the silver to the Jew straight away."

Cap was already wrapping them up into a kerchief.

The boys returned, complaining of tired feet.

"Where did you leave the horses?" Cap asked.

"Took them to our guy what supplies the Army."

"They gonna be okay? He didn’t have no questions?"

One of the twins shook his head. "Just paddocked 'em with the others."

"How much?"

"Ten apiece."

"Try again," Red said.

The lad rolled his eyes. "Fifteen." Then he turned to his brother and muttered, "I fuckin' told you."

Red took the bag from them and held it open. Abel and William dug in their pockets.

"Make it eight dollars each,” Red said. “Save me paying you later. Now get the fuck out of here."

Coins clinked; Red turned to Cap.

"What do you think?" he asked Cap, who was staring at the scrap iron.

"I think they sold the horses for seventeen apiece," Cap replied.

"Of course they did. S'fine. I paid 'em less."

Cap nodded. "What do you think to do with the rest?"

"It's good iron."

"It is."

"I know a smith. Above Blee
c
ker on the east side."

"We'll go tomorrow then."

Cap turned around to the rest of the crew.

"Alright. Job's done. Come here and settle up."

Paid off out of the horse money, the group left Cap and Red alone with the bones of the carriage and the bag of silver fittings. Cap and Red locked up the warehouse and went to their one-bedroom tenement off Pike Slip down by the Harbor. Once the toothless whore who lived beneath them turned that last sailor out of her bed with empty pockets and the clap, they even slept well.

Morning dawned sweet over the harbor. Cap and Red roused and took a bleary-eye breakfast of black coffee and red beefsteak at a local grocer.

"One day you're gonna learn some manners and take that rat's asshole off your head at the table." Red pointed at Cap's uppermost, and much moth-eaten, point.

"Nah. Holds in my brains. First stop?" Cap asked as he neared the bottom of his second cup.

"The smith. He'll take the secondhand iron for shackles," Red answered.

"Shackles?"

"Army contract. Lots of Southerners surrendering'"

Cap laughed. "Sounds good. What about the silver?"

"Gustav the Jew."

Cap nodded and hefted his empty cup.

"Yeah, we've got time for another," Red said, rolling a cigarette for Cap and one for himself.

By evening it was as if the carriage had never existed, and two evenings after that, neither did the money. Cap waited outside the brothel, dusting off his jacket and trousers. Broke, he'd been thrown out only moments ago. The brothel door banged open again and Red rolled down the stairs, propelled by the bouncer the way a child might tease and chase a hoop. Cap watched the large man beat the hell out of his bosom friend, and adjusted his hat.

When the bouncer got tired and left Red to bleed in the gutter, Cap helped him up.

"One of these days, you might even win," Cap said, handing him his kerchief.

"What are you talking about? I was winning!" Red said, dabbing at a split lip. Cap marveled that he still had all his teeth.

"Sure you were," Cap said and helped him stagger toward home. "What next?"

"Steal another carriage?"

"If we can't think of anything better to do."

"We were doing something better."

"No, Red. I was doing something better. You were doing something worse."

"Yeah? I bet your whore had disease," Red said.

Cap smiled. "Which one? And hey, at least I ain't bleeding."

Morning brought clarity.

"We're broke. We have to find something and steal it," Cap said.

"I've got an idea," Red said. "Blacksmith paid good for that iron."

"Don't remember. Wanna go ask the whores we spent it all on?" Cap rinsed and spat with the two-day old water in the basin.

"Point is, let’s get him some more iron."

"Steal another carriage?"

"Not a carriage. A bus"

"They all run on tracks now. How’re we gonna get away with it?"

"I got a plan."

Several hours later, under the arriving dusk, Cap and Red stood before a fenced-in yard filled with discarded buses from a few years ago, back when they were little more than long, horse-drawn carriages.

"Um. So this plan..." Cap said, his hands on the fence.

"Yes." Red spoke through clenched teeth; he had a feeling what Cap was going to ask.

"How're we gonna steal a bus when we ain't got a horse to pull it?"

Red grumbled and kicked at the fence.

Cap watched Red pick fights with the pebbles and the empty air. A thought stirred and bubbled until it rose to the surface and popped out of the top of his skull where it got trapped in his hat.

"I know where we can get a horse," Cap said as he started walking without waiting for Red to fall in.

The building was squat and foul-smelling. To one side, about twenty unhealthy-looking horses milled.

"What is that Christ-awful fucking smell?" Red said, tucking his nose and mouth into his shirt.

"It's a glue factory," Cap answered.

Red rolled his eyes. "These nags have got one foot…uh hoof, in the grave."

Cap ignored Red and climbed up the paddock, hopping over the side of the filthy pen. He walked boldly up to a brown horse.

"Stop bellyaching, they're fine, just need to exercise a bit. And anyway, be a good thing to get them outta here," he said and looked back at Red as he slapped it on the ass. The horse whinnied, coughed, stiffened and then keeled over stone dead.

Cap stared at the dead horse.

"Cap, you fuckin' idiot. Look what you did."

Cap stared at the horse in horror. "I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. Aw, fuck. They can’t all be like than, can they, Red?"

"They fuckin’ well could."

"I don’t think I want to do this anymore."

Red shook his
head and climbed over the fence, landing in
mud and shit. Cap wandered on his own until he called Red over in excitement.

"Jesus Christ they're huge!" Cap leaned back in awe. “We can rescue ‘em!”

"Don't go slapping these 'uns, Cap. If they fall over they'll kill ya," Red said

Two Clydesdales looked down on them from a great height. One of them snuffled at Red's coat and then bumped him, almost setting him ass-first in the mud.

"He likes you," Cap noted, smiling.

Red picked himself up and eyed the horse with mistrust. "Yeah. Okay, Cap. Now what?"

An hour later they were still leading the massive beasts back to the yard.

"Not built for speed are they?" Red grumped, tugging without effect.

"Don't talk about them like that. They don't like it."

“You’re an eejit, Cap.” But Red patted the big animal on the neck despite himself.

They coaxed and cajoled and pushed and pulled, but the Clydesdales moved because they wanted to, and not before. By the time they got the horses hitched and the bus out of the yard toward downtown, it was creeping up on seven in the morning. People were on the streets.

It was making Cap and Red very nervous. Cap was about to suggest ditching the whole thing when a clam
o
ring came from the back of the bus and a older, portly woman got on, waddled to the fare-box and dropped in a nickel.

"Well?" she asked, peering up at Cap and Red who stared back in confusion.

"Well what?" Red said.

"I haven't seen one of these for a dozen years at least. Not since I was a wee slim girl."

"Ma'am, I..." Cap was a bit wild around the eyes.

"Don’t just stand their gaping. Let's move it faster. Though I will say it'd help your passengers if you stopped first to let them on. I about half-killed myself jumping onto the back of this thing. I ain't in my youth." She waddled back to the middle of the bus and sat with a grunt.

"What the fuck are we gonna do?" Cap asked.

"Me? This was your idea," Red said.

Cap made a strangling sound. “Are you fucking..?”

"How the fuck're we gonna steal this thing with that fat bitch riding it? Maybe we can sell her to somebody."

"We can't sell somebody," Cap said.

"I know. Who'd buy her? Could chuck her in the harbor for the whalers to practice on." Red giggled. It was not a nice sound.

More clam
o
ring came from the back of the bus, along with much cursing and swearing.

"You might want to stop this damn thing, you expect folks to ride it," a man's voice said.

"I told them the same thing, I did," the fat woman answered.

"Isn't this thing a bit old to still be running?"

"I know. I haven't seen the like since I was a wee slim girl."

Red turned around. "Hey there, you've to pay your fair you want to ride."

"I paid," the man said.

"No, you didn't. Get up here, you skinflint."

Cap seethed out a "What the fuck are you doing?" but Red held up a palm.

"Don't make me come down there," Red said.

They heard the man drop a nickel into the fare box.

"Much obliged," Red said while Cap stared at him as if he'd lost his mind.

"What are you doing?"

"I got an idea."

He waved away Cap's other concerns and the Clydesdales pulled and pulled.

"Excuse me!"

Cap and Red ignored the voice, watching the sides of the street for blue uniforms.

"Excuse me!"

Still, they said nothing.

"Hey assholes!"

Realizing they were being addressed, they turned and saw that there were several more people on the bus and a man of about thirty-five years was talking.

"What?" Red asked.

"This a real bus?"

"What makes you think it ain't?" Red said, thrusting out his jaw and glaring.

"Well for starters it's a rickety piece of shit, ain't it?"

"It's a perfectly nice bus, it's just that…" Cap said.

"And those horses look like they're about ready for the glue factory," the man continued.

Red started to laugh but Cap nudged him and pointed at the horses. "Quiet. I don't want them to hear you."

Red shook his head and turned back to the passengers. "Look it's a real fuckin' bus. What else do you want? We gotta watch the road."

"Okay, fine. You going past the waterfront?"

Cap jumped in. "Yes, indeed, sir. Our route takes us past the waterfront."

"Alright, then."

"You pay your fare?" Red asked before he could walk away.