Niagara Moments Magazine For The Arts

Freedom’s Just Another Word

 By John Swan

He zips up.

“Well,” she says, looking at him back over her shoulder, “just gimme the twenny then.”

“The fuck?”

“S’not my fault,” she sighs.

No, not her fault, he thinks but he’d shared his pipe with her. That should count for something. Should shave a little off the bill.

“I don’t come back with twenny at least,” she says like reading his mind, “the old man’ll wack shit out of me.”

He can see the irony. If he’d gotten off he wouldn’t give a shit. He’d be done with her and wouldn’t take her whining. Wack shit out of her himself if she persisted. But, not having finished, he’s still inclined to share.

“The Raghead’s,” he says.

“Not that I got anything against ragheads,” he explains as they leave. He doesn’t even know if The Raghead is a raghead and not a paki or a camel jumper. He wouldn’t care even if The Raghead was a fish-head. He isn’t, but he wouldn’t care. “Except ragheads are about the only ones got businesses around here.”

There’s another one around the side of the station, changing the tires on an old brown beater. Doesn’t matter, he thinks. Can’t see inside the cash shack from there. They’ll be in and out before the man knows, raghead or not.

They wait until there’s no customers at the gas pumps, more money in the till, then he lifts a roll of cough-candies from a rack inside the door, wipes his nose and fists the roll inside his coat pocket, pointing it toward the clerk.

“Open up,” he says.

He enjoys the informal arrangement that’s been built over the years: ragheads don’t resist, the money in the till not worth risking injury over, meaning he doesn’t have to go to the bother and expense of carrying an actual gun. Like, where the fuck would I get a gun? he almost says aloud.

The cash drawer slides open. The clerk steps away.

“Come on come on motherfucker,” she says going around the end of the counter and scooping out the bills. “All of it!”

The fuck? he thinks. She should stay by the door, making sure nobody surprises them from behind.

“Open the safe,” she screams. “Open it now!”

No, no! That’s not the arrangement! It’ll only hold if you take just a little at a time.

“I don’t know the combination,” the clerk says.

“Fuck that motherfucker. You don’t know the combination how do you put the money inside, asshole?”

The slot. Can’t she see the slot in the countertop? “There’s a slot . . . ”

“Open up cocksucker or you’ll never lick another piece of dirty ass rag . . . dirty piece of rag ass . . . raghead ass . . . again,” waving a foot-long kitchen knife under the clerk’s eyes.

The fuck? the air pressure changing as the door opens behind him. Did she have that back at the crib while I was banging on her? He hears it before feeling it, the crack of bone, the whole shack rocking like a dorry, his knees giving and nausea rising like the tide as he slumps to his back looking up at that other raghead looking down at him, one arm raised with a lug-wrench, blood and stuff dangling.

My blood and stuff, he thinks. “The fu–?”

“Cocksucker, motherfucker, ass hole, shit-for-brains,” he hears as she steps over him, the knife waist high, the blade sinking to the hilt in the soft overhang of the other raghead’s belly, the lug-wrench sagging a bit, the knife blade coming out with a twist and then nothing until the blood seeps and then pours and he knows he has to get up, get up and out before the other raghead falls on him and he’s totally fucked.

They score at the crib middle of the block and she takes most of it upstairs to her old man. He cranks what’s left, but it doesn’t stop the gong-sized ache in his head, Christ, as he lays back on his mouldy mattress not sure he’ll wake again, I don’t fuckin’ deserve even to wake up.

End