My short fiction is a diverse mix of styles and has appeared in publications ranging from the prestigious Los Angeles Review to down-and-dirty Shotgun Honey.
Little Willie Almost Robs His First Liquor Store
Originally published in the Los Angles Review
The thing that surprised Little Willie most when he tried to rob his first liquor store was how much blood and near nudity was involved. The blood didn’t come from a gunshot wound because the weapon he used wasn’t loaded. In fact, he wasn’t sure that old gun could have been fired. It was more of an antique than anything and he’d bought it at a garage sale for a laugh.
But as he rode in the back of the ambulance, shivering in his skivvies, he held a nine-year-old girl’s blood-covered hand and reflected on how such a simple thing had all gone sideways.
§
Earlier that day, Willie was in a funk. He couldn’t get the band’s lead singer to even look at his songs and he worried he’d be standing in the shadows for the rest of his life. He knew he was destined for spotlight, but there were a couple of pressing matters holding him back: A nasty spell of writer’s block and six hundred and twenty dollars in back rent.
He was kicking himself because some girl from Beaumont, Texas drank through the advance money he’d been given for the next few gigs. She’d been pretty when they started, even prettier after they’d been drinking and then pretty much gone after the liquor dried up.
As Willie stared at the empty bottle of Jack Daniels a dark thought formed in the part of his mind where the songs came from.
He understood knocking off a liquor store was against the law, but he figured stores like that had to be insured and since he’d spent so much on booze the last few months, one could argue that it was like a rebate for a very loyal consumer.
§
Willie knew a place called Marty’s Liquors off a rarely traveled highway that he could get in and out of quickly. He parked in the back and then emptied an old duffle bag to carry the loot. Finally, he checked that his weapon was unloaded and slipped on the rubber Richard Nixon mask.
Weeks ago, he’d found the president’s caricature on a backstage bathroom floor. A roadie from the Lee Shelton Blues Review started vomiting near the stage and hadn’t stopped at any point during his sprint to the men’s room. Willie wasn’t normally a good Samaritan, but the man owed him money, so he followed the putrid trail to check on him.
“Hey man, you dying?”
Wincing at the smell, Willie almost wrote off the money owed to him, but that rubber face seemed to call to him from under the stall’s door.
Willie kicked at the mask, “This yours?”
The reply from the stall sounded like a hose loosing something soft and solid at the same time. Willie was glad the stall door was closed; he wasn’t sure which end it was coming out of.
“Can I keep it?”
With all the gurgling and moans, Willie couldn’t tell if the reply was “Hell, if I care” or “Help” but either way the answer hadn’t been “No.”
Willie was fascinated by the heightened features on the Nixon mask, finding them creepy and sad and funny and unsettling all at the same time. He didn’t know why he wanted that mask, but he was sure a face like that would present its own opportunities.
§
Wearing the face of a disgraced president, Willie slipped into the liquor store as cool as he could. He spotted a pudgy, liver spotted old man sitting behind the counter with a fist full of Funyuns. Willie scanned the aisles as he approached and breathed a sigh of relief that they were alone.
“This is a robbery.” Willie said as he raised his weapon.
He altered the tone of his voice and the rubber mask changed it even more. Willie liked how hollow it was and thought he’d need to play with that the next time he got in a recording studio.
“Well I guess it is, isnt’ it?’ the man said while he chewed.”
“Sir, would you mind emptying the register into this duffle bag?”
“That’s a mighty big bag, son. How much money you think we got in here?”
“I don’t know, sir.” Willie sighed. “How bout you open that register up and we find out?”
“I think optimism is a fine trait for a young person. You don’t find it much in your generation.” The old man took his time getting off his stool.
“I don’t mean to be rude, sir, but COULD YOU PLEASE PUT THE FUCKING MONEY IN THE BAG.”
“Alright, alright. But just so you know saying ‘I don’t mean to be rude’ and then using that kind of language don’t make a whole lot of sense.” The man wiped the Funyuns residue on his jeans leg and started to open the register. “Sorry, don’t like to get the register keys all sticky.”
Willie noticed a security camera over the man’s head. His heart sank.
“Is that camera on?”
“You know…I can’t remember if I turned that damn thing on or not.”
“Jesus.”
“Well, I’m sorry, son. I don’t have all the answers all the time. I tell my grand- daughter the same thing. Wait till you get older, you’ll see.” The old man started to climb up on the counter to tend to the security camera. “Gimme a second.”
“Hey, git down from there. C’mon now.”
“Well, do you want to know if it’s on or don’t you?”
Willie fought the urge to take off his mask to get a better view of the camera. Wearing Richard Nixon’s face didn’t allow for much visibility. He craned his neck and spotted the on/off switch. It was set to off, but the old man’s fingers were flicking at it, just missing.
“Hey, don’t do that.” Willie panicked.
The old man couldn’t quite reach it, so he stretched and strained, awkwardly balancing on one leg.
“You’re trying to turn that thing on?”
“Yep. That’s what it’s there for.”
Willie heard a crash in the back of the liquor store. His and the old man’s heads whipped around to see a nine-year-old girl with her face covered in blood. She stood in scarlet soaked Scooby Doo pajamas next to a minefield of shattered glass from the shelf of orange sodas she’d just knocked over.
“Grandpa?”
Willie tried to stay calm, but it was hard with senior citizens climbing around on counters and bloody girls standing in broken glass. “Don’t move, sweetheart. No need to get yourself all cut up.”
Making a last desperate swipe at the camera, the old man shouted, “Run, baby, run!” His fingers just grazed the switch, activating the camera, but the jerky swipe caused him to lose his balance. He tumbled, hitting his head hard on the edge of the counter.
Willie winced when he heard the nasty thud. The old man wasn’t moving.
Then Willie heard the whir of the security camera starting up.
The light over the lens fired up red and began judging.
“Shit.” The air left Willie’s body.
The girl ran to her grandfather. And Willie ran out the door.
§
Willie jumped into his car out back. He had his key in the ignition ready to drive off. Then he thought of that little girl running over all the broken glass to get to her fallen grandfather and he just couldn’t leave her there.
“Fuckity. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” He slammed his hands on the steering wheel.
Something fired in the part of Willie’s brain where the songs came from. And even though he didn’t believe in God anymore, he prayed just in case, and stripped down to his underwear.
§
Willie burst into the liquor store, raced over to the girl and her grandfather.
“Aayyyayayaayy” She jabbered helplessly. Willie thought the sight of a skinny longhaired man wearing nothing but underwear and cowboy boots coupled with her fallen grandfather was probably too much for the little girl to process.
“Richard Nixon just stole my clothes!” Willie screamed.
The little girl’s face was a mask of blood and tears, but her eyes went wide.
“I think Richard Nixon just killed my grandpa, too.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
Willie called an ambulance.
§
The cuts on the little girl’s feet were minor and after bandaging them the EMTs let her ride in the back of the ambulance with her grandfather. She insisted that Willie be allowed to ride with them.
After losing so much blood Willie couldn’t figure out how the girl remained conscious. At the very least she should have been light headed, but she held her grandfather’s hand steadfast.
“Did you cut yourself in the bathroom?” Willie asked.
“No.”
“Then why were you bleeding?”
“Please don’t let my grandpa die.” The girl tugged on the jacket of the EMT.
The EMT smiled “He’s not gonna die. He’s just gonna have a nasty headache.”
Willie asked again, “Why were you bleeding, sweetheart?”
When Willie said the word sweetheart, he saw the girl’s eyes flash. He could almost peer into her mind imaging the moment when she saw Richard Nixon telling her not to move by the broken glass. She shook the thought from her head. This couldn’t be the same man.
“I don’t want to say. It’s embarrassing.”
“I do embarrassing shit all the time when I get scared. Stuff you would not believe.”
“I was doing my homework in the back when I heard the robber come in and start yelling at my grandpa. I peeked and saw he had a gun.”
“Pretty scary, huh?”
“I pick my nose when I get nervous.”
“There was a lot of blood on your face.”
“I picked it pretty hard.”
“Yeah, you did. You ought to get that looked at.” Willie looks over at the EMT, “Can you look at this girl’s brain? Might be a finger sized hole in there.”
Willie sorted through random pieces of the ambulance’s gear, stopping occasionally to hold them up to the girl’s head. The EMT wasn’t not too pleased until he saw Willie’s shenanigans were making her smile.
Willie held the girl’s chin in his hand. “Listen here. You keep your finger outta that nose for a month and you and me are gonna go roller coaster riding.”
“How many times?”
“Till we throw up?”
“That’s a lot of times.”
“Well let’s just see,”
§
When they got to the hospital, the little girl gave Willie a hug and a promise not to pick so hard. The police took his statement and he fought the urge to grin as he told them about getting mugged by Richard Nixon.
The police gave him a ride back to the liquor store and they were so grateful he’d been there to help the family avert tragedy that no one thought to search his car for a shitty old rubber mask.
“You’re a hero, Willie,” the officer said as he drove away.
Willie kicked the dirt and grinned. But it was not the devious grin of a man who’d gotten away with something. He was smiling because he knew this whole business was going to make one hell of a song.
§
The headlines may have said, “LOCAL BLUES MUSICIAN SAVES THE DAY” but no one would be satisfied until the would-be thief was behind bars.
The police searched for the criminal and the Richard Nixon mask, but had no luck. Their task was made harder by the local high school kids. They’d gotten wind of the details of the attempted robbery and traveled as far as Tennessee to purchase the masks. They wore Richard Nixon’s face all over town in some sort of strange tribute to Willie’s heroics. The teenagers loved it, but it was more than a little disconcerting to people passing through town who didn’t know the story.
The crime caught the town’s imagination. There was a lot of local media pressure for the police to make an arrest. They used the attempted robbery as an excuse to arrest Wilbur MacGuthrie, a pedophile who’d recently been paroled and was living in a halfway house behind the Ace Hardware.
Local law enforcement and many of the citizens themselves felt pedophile and parole were two words that did not belong in the same sentence regardless of the court’s opinion on the matter and this was a means of cinching the knot on both crimes in a satisfying way.
Had Wilbur lain low, he might have served his probation quietly, but bells had gone off when he applied for a license to drive an ice cream truck.
The security footage recovered from Marty’s Liquors was brief, and only showed a man’s back running out of the store. But most of the town (even the ones who wouldn’t be caught dead in a liquor store) volunteered to be eyewitnesses. They were willing to say anything to get Wilbur off the streets.
Wilbur swore up and down that he’d never (nor would he ever) wear the mask of a Republican president. Said he’d voted for McGovern.
The jury took that as one more reason why the man belonged behind bars. The gavel was swung and justice was served fifteen minutes before supper.
Although Willie received only a modest reward from the liquor store for saving the cashier and his granddaughter (two bottles of Jack Daniels and a hand- drawn picture from the little girl) he was able to write a couple of crossover country blues singles.
“Wilbur was a Pedophile” was more of a novelty song than anything. But it had catchy hook and made a fine run in the summer of 1978. Although it never made it past number thirty-two on the charts,
But “Pick it till it Bleeds” took off.
Rolling Stone praised the combination of incendiary guitar licks, a hometown hero and the subtext of a nation’s contempt for a disgraced president, as inspired.
Critical praise led to major market radio play. That and its grass roots appeal propelled it all the way to number one.
And Willie never had to play back up guitar again.
