The Lucky Clover by Nick Heeb

Author:Nick Heeb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

I woke up short of noon, or so the clock beside my bed told me. Red slept without movement, her face toward mine. She still wasn’t bad the next morning. She wore only a thin veil of makeup and I was pleased to see her eyebrows were real. That was my initial reaction. But after a minute, a creeping melancholy set in, and the thought of Laura made me turn over, away from Red.

It wasn’t the sun or a hangover waking me, but George’s voice, a muffled rumbling, like he was speaking through a culvert. And he sounded pissed. Irate, rather. Then the trailer door opened, and I heard his boots thumping down the hall. I hopped out of bed and peeked my head out of my bedroom.

“What’s up, George?”

George didn’t respond. He was wearing blue and black boxer shorts and a t-shirt gripped tight to his build. He disappeared into his bedroom and came back a minute later with his Remington pump action twelve-gauge; the pump was wood grained and the light from the window made it shine like new. He rested the muzzle on the floor and started thumbing shells into the reserve. “Motherfucker,” he said.

“What is it, George?”

He thumbed the last shell into the reserve and placed the shotgun into the crook of his arm. “Motherfucker,” he said again, walking past me. I threw my t-shirt on and followed George out.

Here we were, two men in boxer shorts trudging across the town of Paradise, one with a shotgun in arm, the other trailing like a newborn calf. It was fucking bitter. My breath nearly froze in a cloud in front of me. My skin was red before we’d walked a hundred yards.

“You ain’t gonna answer me?” I said.

“Motherfucker,” George said over his shoulder. He was half-jogging, but because he had short legs, all I had to do was take long steps to keep up.

I followed him for about ten minutes. I was warming up from the walk when we took the street to Tait’s house and stopped in front. George stepped onto Tait’s lawn, so he was facing the broad side of the trailer. He lifted the shotgun to his shoulder and unloaded. He pumped the smoking shell from the chamber and slid another in the barrel.

“Jesus Christ, George,” I said, moving toward him.

George swung the shotgun in my direction, aimed it chest-level, though I’m not sure he meant it as a threat. I stopped, leaned back.

“You don’t even know what the fuck’s going on,” he said.

“Christ no I don’t,” I said.

He swung the shotgun back toward the house, fired again. He fired twice more, then stopped and waited. There was nothing.

“What the fuck was that?” I said.

“Tell Tait he ever shows up to the Clover again, he’ll end up throwed in a shallow grave.”

“What the fuck, George.”

“Tell him.”

“Alright. Alright, I’ll tell him.”

“Motherfucker,” George said, walking past me, back into the street.

I waited in the yard, then walked up Tait’s steps once George was almost certain not to return.

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