I turned in the final edits on the
second Skeet Bannion novel, Every Broken
Trust, to my editor at St. Martin’s at the beginning of July, but I haven’t
been idle since then. (Even though we’re having a summer-long drought and heat
wave here in Kansas City that’s the worst since the Dust Bowl with some temperature
highs even breaking those records.)
I’ve done a number of guest blogs
and interviews—and next week I’m going to put up a page on this site with the
links to all of those plus all the reviews of Every Last Secret. I’ve continued my regular blogging at the
Writers Who Kill group blog and added a monthly post at The Stiletto Gang groupblog. I’ve finished the freelance jobs that always show up this time of year,
including preliminary judging for several national book contests. I’ve set up
the opening situation of my next Skeet Bannion novel and am letting it roll
around in the back of my head while I work on other projects, like the final
version of a new book of poetry that I really like. I’ve been sending out
individual poems in that book, Dark
Sister, to be published in journals and elsewhere. Now, it’s time to start
the manuscript of the book on its way toward publication.
I’m working on a new novel, a Sekrit
Project (to borrow the brilliant nomenclature of Lilith Saintcrow). That’s
going well, and it’s exciting, but I can’t give any details yet on that. I’m
also working on some short stories. Those of you who’ve been following my blog
for a while know that short fiction is a stretch for me. I admire those who
write lots of great short stories. I have friends who are very, very good at
short fiction. I find the short form of fiction a real challenge—mostly because
every promising character and background I come up with starts to open out into
a narrative too complex and long for a story.
I have a good short story publishing
soon in Kansas City Noir (Akashic
Books), as I’ve mentioned before on this blog. That story offered no spreading
complications, nor did the few other literary short stories I’ve had published
in the past. Now, I’m working on a short story that may eventually turn into
part of something larger, but this part of it has built-in limits to make it
work very well as a short fiction. It came about in a peculiar manner.
A good Twitter friend of mine,
another lupus sufferer, is facing major, expensive reconstructive surgery on
her jaw. Until she gets it, she must mash anything she eats to pudding
consistency. Not a very happy way to live. Unfortunately, her insurance company
doesn’t want to pay for this surgery. For all the details behind this, checkher blog entry about it here. Sabrina has a lot of friends who are writers. Not
surprising because she’s a huge supporter of writers on her blog, My Friends
Call Me Kate, and on Twitter and Facebook. Much as we might want to hand over
thousands of bucks to her for her surgery, as writers we don’t have it. Some of
us came up with the obvious idea of writing stories about feeding, jaws, or with
a character named Kate for a fundraising anthology that we’ve titled Feeding Kate. You can contribute to the effort here.
I originally planned to do an urban
fantasy story with a vampire of sorts (no sparkles!) named Kate because I
thought Sabrina would get a big kick out of it. Of course, as I set up my story
world and Ekaterina/Kate’s character, it opened out into something that will be
novel or novella length. Won’t work for this. So I noodled around with a
feeding, nurturing character I’d long wanted to use (but that I knew wouldn’t
carry a book) and up popped another character who cared about her. The story
began to take shape. So here’s part one of my story for Feeding Kate. For the rest, you’ll have to get a copy of the
anthology by contributing to this great cause.
Rivka’s Place
Rivka’s place at 39th
& Paseo is the only remnant of the postwar time when this stretch of Paseo
Boulevard was prosperous—and white. As the area changed in color and class, the
other shops and restaurants of its day moved or closed. Now this old Jewish
lady’s bakery and deli huddles next to a tattoo shop, nail parlor, and liquor
store, directly across the street from The Hot Jazz Lounge with its
board-covered windows, live jazz, and occasional dead bodies late on weekend nights.
Next block down squats Snake Eyes Music, best known for rap, porn, hookers, DEA
shutdowns, and SWAT team visits. Rivka’s is the only survivor of better times.
I call myself CJ Nash. I
work here behind the old-fashioned glass counters, making sandwiches, cooking,
cleaning. Rivka Schinski’s my boss, and she’s about a hundred, a hunched old
lady all twisted up by arthritis. She should have retired and sold or closed
this place a long time ago. Her family sure wanted her to do that. Her grown
kids and grandkids are rich, and they keep trying to get her to close this
place and go someplace where they won’t have to worry about her getting knifed
or shot. But Rivka’s tougher than gunmetal.
When they come around in
their cashmere coats, driving their Lincolns and Lexuses, with their fears of
crime and Blacks and bad publicity, she always says, “Hitler tried to kill me.
The Nazis couldn’t kill me. Why should I be afraid of anyone else?” And she
shakes her tiny wrinkled arm with its ugly tattooed numbers in their faces.
Truth of the matter is it
hasn’t really been all that dangerous for her here. In its own way, the
neighborhood looks out for its own. Rivka’s good to folks. She’s always got
free treats for kids and food for the poor. She lets homeless street people,
like Weedy, El, and The Rev, hang out inside the shop when it’s bitter cold or
killer hot, along with the working girls. I’ve never known her to turn away
anyone hungry who couldn’t pay. So, folks watch out for Rivka.
I know I do. I was homeless
when I first met her, homeless, penniless, and on the run. Rivka’s been real
good to me, gave me a job and a room in the back of the shop. Never asks
awkward questions. I appreciate that.
My old man would hate to
see me today, working for a Jew and hanging around with Blacks and Latinos. He
thought he was the white man’s messiah, or that he’d raise my brothers and me
for the job. We believed it, too, didn’t know any better. Back in those hills,
I’d had no contact with anyone outside my family since I was six years old. My
dad ran the world I grew up in, and his was the only truth I knew. It was a
combination of boot camp and special forces training throughout my whole
childhood.
But after the feds charged
in, and we fought back, Dad looking like a pincushion for bullets, Mom and my
brothers dead, too, I couldn’t keep them from taking me captive with two slugs
in my gut. Once I healed and went to prison—I was barely eighteen, see, but I
was eighteen—I got a whole new education.
Now, I just keep myself to
myself, low profile. Don’t leave this building much, except to ride the bus
once a month to the nearest used bookstore down in Westport. I stay in the
front of Rivka’s, slicing meat, vegetables, and breads, or work the mixer and
oven in the kitchen or just lie on my cot in the back and read at night instead
of sleeping. I’d just as soon no one realized I was even around.
I live in a whole different
world from the one my crazy old man preached with its brotherhood of the white
man. Truth is, hardly anybody white ever helped me after the troubles, except
for this crazy little twisted-up Jewish woman.
I knew we had a new kind of
trouble the day Kev Mackey came around to flirt with pretty little Trini
Hernandez, like he always does, and brought that new gangbanger with him.
Trini’s tiny, half Mexican, half Dominican. She keeps her hair cut short and
wears jeans and sloppy T-shirts all the time. Trying not to look sexy and
available like her hooker sister. Trying to say she’s something different from
what every man who sees her wants her to be. Sometimes I give her a book to try
to read between her several jobs. She’s studying for her GED. Her secret hope
is to go to school to become a nursing assistant and then maybe a nurse.
Kev’s a kid on the brink. He
could come up with extraordinary guts and strength and go down the good road or
do the easy thing and claim a gang and that short, brutal life. His new pal
made that decision a long time ago. Big, tough, head shaved, pierced all over
with silver knobs and rings, tats all over, especially on his fingers. Saw
plenty of those in prison.
“They call me Dom, little
girl. That’s short for Dominator ‘cause that’s what I do. No one disses me. No
one refuses me. That’s the way it’s got to be, sis.” He went after Trini right
away. “Now, you are fine, girl. Just as fine as my homes Kev told me. You and
me going to be real close friends. Real close.”
A cloud of menace hung over
him. He wasn’t from here, and it wouldn’t make any difference to him that Rivka
was good to people or that Trini was working hard to get out of this
neighborhood where her dad and brothers wound up in the joint and her big sis
on the streets. It sure wasn’t going to make any difference to him that Trini
was a good girl. He’d just break her. That’s the way those eaten-up, lost ones
work. They don’t give a shit about anyone or anything.
Trini just ignored the
punk, but Kev stood there with his mouth open like he couldn’t believe what
he’d just heard. “No way, Dom. Trini’s mine.” Brave words, but he sounded as
scared as he looked, all skinny brown-skinned teen with acne and nappy hair,
trying to look bad with his jeans hanging around his knees.
Dom twisted his mouth. “But
you want to share, right, homes?” His voice cut the air, harsh and dangerous.
He glared at Kev with real threat. Dom wasn’t more than seventeen or eighteen,
like me when I killed those feds. Like me, he’d been bred and trained to be
dangerous. I knew his type. I’d been his type.
“There won’t be any sharing of me.” Trini looked across
the glass counter at the two of them. She couldn’t help that her voice was
small and soft, but she made it as firm and strong as she could. “I belong to
no one but myself. Certainly not to you, Kevin.”
“Shit, Trini, you know you’re—“
“No bad language here, Kevin,” said Rivka, walking
in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel at her waist. “You know
the rules. You boys get something to eat and then leave Trini alone. She’s
working.”
She came behind the shorter counter where Trini
sat at the cash register. She reached over in the back of the high glass-front
counters next to her and plucked up two doughnuts. “Here you go, boys. Nice and
fresh and sweet.”
Dom glared at her and leaned over to get right in
her face. “Listen, you old bitch! I—“
Rivka reached up and stuffed one of the doughnuts
right in his open mouth as he was laying into her. His eyes flew open in shock
and then panic as he started to choke.
“Chew,” Rivka said. “Chew and swallow. It’s good
for you. Sweeten your temper. And no more bad language. You can’t frighten me.”
She pointed to the tattoo on her wrist. “Scarier men than you will ever be have
tried and failed.”
I moved out from the corner table behind the tall
counter where I stayed most of the time, sharpening knives, making up bags of
doughnut holes, whatever. I drifted over to stand next to Rivka. Mutt and Jeff.
I’m almost tall enough to include two of her, one on top of the other. I still
held the big butcher knife I’d been sharpening.
Dom was chewing as fast as he could and still
choking some. Rivka waved him toward the door. “Go on home. Come back when you
feel better.”
I started to move around the short counter behind
Trini. I thought I’d whack him on the back since he was having such a hard
time, but he turned and dashed for the door to the street before I could.
“Come on, Trini,” said Rivka, grabbing her purse.
“I will drive you home.”
“But I’ve got two more hours to work.” Trini
looked as if she might start crying. “I need the money.”
“Kevin can work your hours. I will still pay you.”
Rivka turned toward Kev. “Why would you bring such a meshugganuh…?” Her hands
tried to grab words from the air. “Such a crazy one. Why bring him here to
torment Trini?”
Kev started to sputter in anger. I raised my eyebrows
at him. I know the effect that can have on a kid, what with the scar that runs
from one brow down to my jaw.
Trini whirled to face Kev. “You stupid! You better
not bring that punk around me again, Kev, or I’ll never, never speak to you
anymore.”
“Come, Trini, let me drive you home. I don’t want
you to walk tonight.” Rivka pushed her toward the back door. “You keep your
phone by you tonight. Call me if anyone comes bothering around your place.”
“Call 911,” I shouted after them. “They might not
get there as fast as Rivka, but they’ll have more firepower.”
When I turned back to Kev, he was staring at the
butcher knife in my hand. “What? This?” I shook it at him a little.
He pulled his head back as his eyes grew bigger.
“Kev, I was sharpening knives when your pal got so
out of line. I just happened to have it in my hand.”
“You sharpen knives a lot of the time. I’ve
noticed that.”
I shrugged. “I was taught to take good care of my
tools. A dull knife is dangerous. You’re much more likely to cut yourself or
someone else accidentally with a dull knife. And I never want to do something
like that accidentally.” I walked back to my corner butcher block table and
laid the knife on it.
I had the knives laid out in a line on the table,
ordered by size. I put away my sharpening stone and its bench. I’d finished
that part of the drill. Next, I’d take my butcher’s steel and hone the knives
so it would take the barest touch of their edges to open the skin or surface of
almost anything.
“You know, Kev, the time comes when you got to
think for yourself and not just move in the direction everyone seems to be
pushing you to move.” I looked at him directly, making direct eye contact
though I usually avoided it. I wanted to make sure he was hearing and
understanding. “This Dom guy may seem cool, but he’s not. He’s bad news for
someone like you. Anything you do with him will bring him what he wants because
you’ll be left to take the blame and punishment. Never let someone else control
what you feel and do.”
I knew it was probably useless to talk this way,
but I was talking to myself at his age more than anything, that kid who’d blown
away two feds thinking he was protecting his family, thinking he was doing the
righteous thing, only to learn after too many deaths that he’d been misled and
would now have to pay forever for letting someone else control his emotions and
actions. I was talking to the boy who’d set me on the course I’d been on ever
since that day the feds showed at our home compound.
“Nah, Dom’s okay. He just doesn’t want anybody to
feel like they can mess with him.” Kev’s face suddenly looked troubled. “I sure
wish Miz Rivka hadn’t done that to him. You know, she dissed him bad. He’s
going to have to come back on her hard.”
I nodded. I knew that the minute Rivka did it. I’m
not sure she didn’t know it also. Rivka’s a lot smarter than people give her
credit for. Dom was going to have to come back in and put the hurt on her big
time. I didn’t want to see that. I hoped he’d get smart and go somewhere else.
I had to keep myself as low and out of sight as
possible. Just because the search for me wasn’t active any longer didn’t mean
it wasn’t ready to leap up any second the feds heard of a sighting or whenever
my fingerprints showed up in some case or other. So I avoided trouble always.
Now, Rivka had walked herself right into some really bad trouble. I didn’t see
what I could do about it.
Coming up in the next week, a review
of Kathleen George’s upcoming Simple,
a political thriller, which is something new for her, with her trademark
plotting, suspense, and beloved Pittsburg police officers, and another Books of
Interest by Writers of Color post with Ruth Behar, Stanley Banks, and Xánath
Caraza. Stay cool out there!