Lone Star Noir

Jasmine

GINGER

Flat River, August 31

Toad, it’s always a pleasure to get one of your wandering forays into the fucking miasma of your twisted, lying mind. You’re as ugly as Momma and twice as crooked. Stop whining and send the fucking money. Now. I’ve got a new sword swallower that will turn your bad news dwarf into mincemeat pie. And perhaps do a little cosmetic surgery so no one will ever mistake us again. Your excuse was late, mailed to the wrong place on purpose or by accident, no matter. The USPS is a fairly solid bet these days. Of course, there didn’t seem to be a check from you for $3,700, and no child support from Harney. Tell him I’ll put the sheriff on his ass and this time McAlaster will welcome him home. Or, hell, just forget it. I’ll come take the whole works, baby-in fact, forget everything. Like you always do. I didn’t fuck any drummers in Tucumcari, dear. I was in the governor’s suite with a fist full of cash and a mouth full of the governor’s press secretary’s cock. So we could get our permits restored, permits you’d lost with a rigged wheel. Then you told Harney it was me. That’s why I fucked him the first time. Or was that the first five hundred times? Who can keep it straight, bitch.

Wow. Time for a deep breath, a reassessment, then back to business. But before I forget, Pop didn’t leave because Mom wouldn’t go down on him. He left because she was boring, mean-spirited, and fairly stupid. And wall-eyed too. Just like you. Yeah, I can hear you sigh. She’s in denial again.

Maybe not, sis. Maybe not.

Look at it the real way, sister mine: you seduced him at thirteen for a pair Cherokee platform boots to impress Lauren Poltz. But you got Tommy Poltz in every orifice, didn’t you? Then it was off to Spokane to have the baby, then a flappy-ass job in the accounting wagon. While I shoveled Shetland pony shit and battled anklebiters as they covered me with baby shit, thin puke, and endless screams. I could have gone to college. You couldn’t finish grade school.

So when I was sixteen, I seduced the old bastard too, because he was the single most lonely man in the world, and I couldn’t stand it. He was a fine man. I don’t think he ever gave a shit about fucking you. You were so awful from the day you were born, you had to be forgiven for everything from the start. Or be throttled in the fucking crib.

And remember this too: Mom was too fastidious to nurse. She didn’t want too-big boobs to get in the way of her tumbles. So we were bottle babies. You were, at least until they discovered you had been stealing mine out of the crib in the dog cart.

You owe me the money. Or you’re ruined. That would be fine. On your own, sweetie, you’ll be in jail in six months. Where you’ve always belonged.

Pay or die, sister bitch.

Your sister in chains,

Ginger

HARNEY

I tried to stop it. I really did. I loved those women. Fire and ice, blood and guts, yin and Yankton, South Dakota.

The first time I saw them standing in a wheat stubble field outside Valentine, Nebraska, that long, stroking wind pushing their cheap dresses against their bodies so ripe… the sensation was this: lick your finger, then touch their skin, and try to get your finger back; touch them with your hand and pray that they don’t explode; hell, sometimes just looking at them made you think the whole fucking world was going to end in a single orgasm. Not with a bang, no, nor a whimper. But one long, glorious groan of infinite pleasure.

Romantic twaddle, I told myself as I bolted the aisle to the wheel. I’d been to several schools: Gunnison High, Colby, Soledad, and ten years drifting and grifting with the carnivals. I’ve learned some things. If you’ve never been locked up, you don’t know what the world is all about. Never trust anybody working the carnivals. Shit, never trust anybody. And never say romantic twaddle.

The first time with Jasmine, I thought I’d broken some ribs. The second time I was sure I’d broken my back. The third time I fainted.

I made a drunken mistake early on, in a citizen’s bar outside El Paso. I told the ring-a-ding guy about fainting. Drunk and in love until he said, “Shit, man, when she was a kid she used to jack off the Shetlands to keep them copacetic. Story is, man, she killed three of them one year.”

I ran. I came back. A dozen times. Jasmine was worse than Soledad. I knew that if I watched my back and walked their line, I’d get out. Eventually. Jasmine didn’t work that way. I stole her money; she had the roustabouts beat me until I cried. Something that never happened inside. I fucked her sister for a long time-great, but not the same-acknowledged our baby girl, and Jasmine laughed at me. She knew the worst.

Except for Ginger, the twin. How could two women be so different-bodies of long, sweeping curves frosted with glowing red-brown skin smoother than polished ivory and steaming with an internal fire-Jasmine seemed to laugh in flames when she came and her breath seemed hot enough to scorch my beard. Ginger was terrific, but ordinary. Jasmine was heaven and hell, cocaine and crank, star light and black hole.

I gave our little girl, Pearl, to a childless family outside Marengo, Iowa, and wished the people all the best luck. They seemed like nice people. If Pearl had been a cat, I would have had her fixed.

Jasmine had to be first, or I could have never finished it. After I cut her throat, I dumped her into a swamp outside Mud Lake, Wisconsin. In that shallow, muddy water, she floated like a queen. All I ever loved. Ginger was easier. She lifted her neck to the blade as if she’d been waiting for years. “Jasmine,” she whispered, as if she knew. Ginger’s yellow dress, blood like a flood, bobbed in the small Minnesota creek, drifted like a fading light. As always, I’d done what they wanted.

Now it was time for me. The raucous silence of Stillwater prison, the quiet needle smooth in the vein, the end of memories. Peace.

PREACHER’S KID by JESSICA POWERS

Andrews

Looking back on it, with everything that’s happened since, Sammy disappearing and all, I’m not sure I did the right thing. I’ve seen many things in my life, and I’ve learned to let many things slide, but it’s not just me, you see. It’s the wife. She cares about these things. So the second time Chief brought Sammy home, drunk as a skunk, saying he’d found him passed out just inside the Andrews County line, I felt I had to speak to the boy.

“You’re making your mother look bad to the church ladies,” I said, thinking he’d have some compassion for her feelings. They’d always been close. “Those are her friends. They’ve known you since you were a small boy, a good boy.”

He sneered.

There was something in that sneer that made me think twice about what I said next. But I went ahead, glancing at Charlene to see her reaction as I spoke. She was sitting on the couch in her bathrobe, looking as anxious as the bride I married thirty-three years ago.

“Drinking is the devil’s business,” I told the boy. “Don’t bring the devil’s business back to this house again.”

He looked at me then as if I’d said something curious, and that’s when I noticed the color of his eyes in the morning light-amber from one angle, green from the other, same as my own.

Later, I got to thinking. I got to thinking how maybe I should’ve asked him why. Why he was staying out all night. Why he was drinking. But at the time, I was just so concerned with what he was doing, why didn’t even occur to me. It was only after he disappeared for a while, then came back, then disappeared again for good, that I started thinking about how he’d looked haunted toward the