The Ten-Ounce Siesta

Magnificent Seven; think Yul Brynner in Westworld.

Harold stared at the slick lump of dog food and remembered what had happened to Jesus’ head out there in the woods. Busted up white bone and raw flesh smearing red as it splattered the green green grass of home.

Harold looked at the dog. Man oh man, what to do?

Harold didn’t know what to do. There was too much in the way right now. All this damn dog food. Ten bucks’ worth. Every penny gone to waste.

The dog wouldn’t eat, and the really funny part of it was that Harold was hungry. Really starved.

All this talk about taters. .

Harold set the.357 on the counter, where he could get to it fast if danger reared its ugly head. Then he cooked up a mess of hash-browns, bone white and hot, just this side of crispy.

He slathered those taters with catsup.

Lots of it.

A pair of fiery redheads, Tura and Lorelei, inseparable as always. The both of them tall and tan and young and lovely-just a couple of gals from Impanema in their black leather bikinis, enjoying the morning sun.

The sisters were lookers, that was for sure. Except for the machine guns in their hands and the snakebite scars which nestled like marble grave markers on the rich brown earth of their flesh, they might have been models for the Victoria’s Secret lingerie catalog.

The machine gun bucked in Lorelei’s grasp. She flexed up, taut biceps and forearms rippling, and she gentled that sucker down ASAP, the gun barking the whole time.

Slugs ate metal.

Three cans of pineapple juice spouted thick yellow streams.

“Wish we had tomato juice,” Lorelei said. “With tomato juice, the cans look like they’re bleeding when you hit ’em.”

“Yeah, but you missed the first three. In a real firefight, you don’t have time to make adjustments. Waste a couple seconds like you just did and you’re the one spoutin’ juice.”

“Guess I’m lucky that pineapple juice cans don’t shoot back. What do you think the problem is?”

“I think your sight is off. You should go back to the Swarovski instead of that Israeli piece of shit you got on there.”

“Could be.” Lorelei popped the clip and reloaded, then jammed it back in the Steyr AUG. “Well, let me give it another try. If I miss this time, you can call me Swarovski.”

A series of sharp blasts erupted behind Lorelei, and the remaining three cans of pineapple juice were blasted airborne. A second later they descended pissing sweet yellow streams.

Tura laughed, blowing on the barrel of a 9-mm full-auto TMP machine pistol. “That’s how it’s done, sis.”

“You bitch.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“And I know this one.”

“You think you do. I got plenty of tricks up my sleeves you know nada about.”

“You got tricks, all right. And their names are Felix and Raoul and Pablo. . and then there’s your favorite, that doctor who outlived Methuselah.” Lorelei wrinkled her brow, a coy little pause. “Now what’s his name?”

“You know as well as I do. Just the way you know they all used to come to me. You remember that right. Girl, you’re lucky we didn’t stay in Vegas. If you had to make your living as a lap dancer, you would have starved-”

“You girls stop your chitchat and get back to work!”

Simultaneously, Tura and Lorelei turned toward a little rise to the east. Mama had her old Ford pickup parked up there. Her lounge chair was planted in the bed, which was lined with tinfoil that reflected the morning sunlight on the back of her legs.

Mama slathered cocoa butter on the brown belly that had once been home to Lorelei and Tura and their younger sister Eden. That belly was pretty firm for a sixty-two-year-old woman, but then again there weren’t too many women like Mama. Today she was sunbathing in a black leather bikini accessorized with a shoulder holster and a Heckler amp; Koch USP40. Usually she didn’t wear the shoulder holster because it gave her tan lines something fierce. The only reason she made an exception this morning was because of the kidnapped Chihuahua and all.

“You girls answer your mama when she talks to you!”

“Yes, Mama.” The words came out of their mouths in one voice, because Tura and Lorelei had spoken them many times before.

“Now get back to work!”

The twins sidled up alongside one another, nearly putting their heads together. Lorelei whispered, “The old bitch doesn’t miss a trick.”

“No she don’t. Look at her, sittin’ up there like the mistress of all she surveys. One eye on us, and the other eye on the house.”

“Probably got a TV hooked up so she can keep her eye on Daddy, too.”

“She wouldn’t dare. Not with Daddy.”

“Yeah. He keeps her in line.”

“I can hear every word, girls,” Mama yelled. “Get back to work! Get them cans set up!”

Tura fed the 9 mm’s clip and slammed it home. “Think she really hears us?”

“If she does, she ain’t gonna anymore.” Lorelei slipped a CD into her battered boom box and pumped up the volume. Joan Jett screamed “Bad Reputation.”

Lorelei said, “That’ll show the bitch.”

“Yeah.”

Tura and Lorelei set down their guns and set up the cans. Mama sure knew how to get them riled. She’d never let things be. Everything had to go her way, right down to the color of their skin.

Eden had it easy. She couldn’t tan. All she did was bum. It was hard to believe that Eden was really their sister, because everyone else in the family tanned as brown as nuts.

Tura and Lorelei weren’t so lucky. Mama insisted that Eden’s older sisters be the same shade-the far side of bronze, not quite as dark as she was. Mama’s skin was the measuring stick. She was forever holding her arm against those of her daughters. Her dry saddlebag skin chafed like fine sandpaper. Then she’d tell them more sun or less sun. They were never just right.

Nope. Just right wasn’t part of Mama’s vocabulary. There was no pleasing the woman.

By the time the sisters returned to the firing line, Joan Jett had finished up “Bad Reputation.” “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” kicked in as Lorelei took aim.

The gun felt wrong against her shoulder. The damn leather bikini strap was sawing at her skin like a knife. She checked her weapon and adjusted the strap.

“Black leather bikinis and black leather panties. Black leather Wonderbras. Black leather miniskirts and long black leather gloves. I’m so fucking sick of wearing black leather anything.”

Tura nodded. “Me too. We get that half a million and they’ll be no more hijacking trucks off the highway. No more living off whatever we can steal. No more drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon because we got a hundred cases stored down in Daddy’s bomb shelter. No more eating tuna sandwiches and tuna burgers and tuna surprise because we hijacked an ocean of canned tuna. No more wiping our asses with pages from the May 1997 issue of Cosmopolitan because we’ve got three hundred of those and toilet paper costs money. And no more wearing black leather just because we knocked over a truckload of S amp; M gear headed for some kink shop in Vegas.”

“Yeah,” Lorelei said. “If this deal works out. I’m done with hijacking. I’m sick of playing lot lizard so I can climb up into some trucker’s cab. I’m sick of the way the goobers laugh, even when I pull out my gun. And I’m sure as hell sick of cleaning up the mess when we get done with them. It’s too damn hard to get goober bloodstains off of black leather.”

“Don’t worry about it, sis. A half a million, and all those worries are dust in the fucking wind.”