Bill "AJ" Hayes Remembered

TEAM PLAYER - AJ HAYES

An entry in the recent Watery Grave Invitational

Just a trace bar lost in the north desert near Albuquerque. Summer thunder ozoned the air outside and stormfront wind out of the Sangre De Christos made the rat-ass bikes lined up in front shake on their kickstands and blew the trash around in the beds of pick-ups with tribal stickers peeling off rusted chrome bumpers.

Inside, the lightning of puke and heat and real bad whiskey. The kind that comes sweating out of you the next morning and smells like dead folks. Everclear on the juke and mad dog twenty twenty cooking in the blood.

He was on the third stool from the right, staring into his glass like he was watching a television show. I dropped in next to him. He had that long distance look you get when the booze has chopped all your strings away.

“Hey, Skip. What you doin’ this far away from San Antone?”

“Lookin’ for my starting pitcher,” I said. “Guess I found him.”

I motioned to the barman. He brought two drinks, sat them down, took my money and walked away without looking at either of us. Two hundred semi-drunk people jammed shoulder to sweaty shoulder and nobody’s seeing a thing. That kind of place.

“C’mon, kid,” I said. “Too noisy in here.”

He pushed back from the bar and followed me outside. We stood watching the rain slam down through the feeble neon of the beer signs in the fogged-over windows.

Distant fire flashed in the Sangres and the soft ta-thump reached us a second or so later.

“How’d you find me?”

“I didn’t. Mr. Van Zandt had your cell phone tracked.”

He laughed soft. It washed away in the rain noise.

“Leave it to the owner to find somebody don't want to be found,” he said.

“Somebody’s gotta keep track of the franchise, Tommy,” I said. “Take care of the team.”

“Take care of the money, you mean. That man don’t care a whit for the team. He—”

“That your blue truck over yonder?” I interrupted, showing him the gun.

His shoulders slumped and he sighed. “You too, Skip? He’s got you, too?”

“He don’t have anybody,” I said. “This is about the team, kid. Let’s go on over to your truck. Easier to talk that way.”

I kept the old, single-action Colt close on him while he got behind the wheel and I slid in on the passenger side.

“Why don’t we take a little drive into the Christos while we’re talkin’? Might be nice up there. Maybe we’ll get above the storm. Watch the lightnin’ hit the desert.”

He wheezed the beat-up old Chevy into life and we bumpty-thumped across the parking dirt and up the two lane blacktop toward the mountains.

“You don’t have to do this, Skipper,” he said, kind of sad-like. “It won’t make no difference, money-wise. I got the lifetime no-cut, no-trade contract, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s true, kid. That agent of yours.” I shook my head a little. “Pure pit bull, hell-on-wheels, he was. Said you were the second coming and the end of the world rolled into one. Said you threw hellfire and damnation. Got you that contract. Saddled the team forever with a rag-arm pitcher my three year-old grandbaby could hit outta the park. That money could buy us three brand new rookie arms and a third base and a couple of big bats. It’s gutting us. But with you, ah, gone, we could win. Maybe even get the division. Maybe even the Series—”

“Not what I meant, Skip," he said. “You’re the manager, you know that even if you...do this, Peggy will get the money. It’s right there in the contract. My only living relative. She gets it. All of it.”

Ahead, a yellow sign pointed to a flat, viewpoint pull-off. I pushed the barrel into his side.

“Turn here,” I said.

We rolled to a stop at the edge. Below us, the lightning spread across the clouds in billowing streaks of white light. The stars were out, bright and hard.

“You weren’t listening to me, Coach.” His fingers were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “The team still won’t get that cash. You won’t. Peggy will get—”

I pushed the gun a little harder into his ribs.

“Tommy,” I said, “don’t you think Mr. Van Zandt knows that?”

He went sudden still and death quiet. His mouth formed shapes but no words came.

“She’s gone, son.” I sighed. “Opened the door smiling. Probably thought I’d found you. I got her a good one on the jaw and she went down and out. Never felt a thing. I used that bolo tie you like to wear. The one with the thousand dollar gold nugget for a slide. I left it on her throat. They’ll find her and think you done it.”

I patted him on the back and moved the gun to his temple.

“It’ll look like you were a good man who couldn’t live with what he’d done. At least people will remember that about you.”

I pulled the trigger at the same time he floored the old Chevy and we went flying off the cliff.

So, I’m laying here in the mud and it’s raining hard and cold and I can’t move because my back’s busted and something’s poked a hole through my chest and I’ve coughed out about a gallon of blood and there’s this cold white light circling my vision and it gets brighter and whiter and tighter and I can see the kid, with most of his head gone, hanging half out of the cab of the truck and I know they’ll find us both and figure out what happened and why and it’s darker and colder now and the white light is fading, pinpointing down to black and it feels like I’m falling into dark water and I think about the team I love and the game I love and wish I...

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and – god help him – good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway and Josh (Gut Ripper) Converse, who provide great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

Bill "AJ" Hayes Remembered

LAST RIGHTS - AJ HAYES

Father Conner got gunned down on the corner of 19th Street and Grand Avenue yesterday.

I knew it was coming and maybe I should have warned him.

But his small, sweaty hands had taught me years ago to keep my mouth shut, so I did.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and – god help him – good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway and Josh (Gut Ripper) Converse, who provide great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

Bill "AJ" Hayes Remembered

HOUSE OF BONES - AJ HAYES

Once – when the world was just a little younger and more dewy-eyed – there was a boy. He was twelve years-old and lived in a white house, with blue railings and roof, in a sun-flooded neighborhood of pastel-painted houses and cinnamon-colored sunsets. His summer blonde hair hung down, in shaggy bangs, over blue eyes that seemed to hold every dream of every boy who ever lived. The scatter-smatter dusting of freckles across the bridge of his snubbed nose added random exclamation points to the blue of his eyes. All in all, he was the perfect boy.

Perfect – except, that he knew something that other people did not know and saw things that other people could not see.

He had not always known these things. He had not known them when he was younger. He had not known when he used to chase butterflies with his sister (herself a bright, poly-hued, soaring butterfly of a girl) across their oh-so-green front yard. Nor had he known when he went to bed at night, to dream of elves and knights and magic circles in the wild wood. Until, one night, he dreamed a very strange thing.

He dreamed he woke with a startle to something that felt like a bite from a crystal bee with a diamond stinger on his shoulder. He suddenly felt another sharp pain, a much larger pain – in a different place. He looked wildly around his room. His father was there, but his father looked different. His father’s eyes were not their usual blue. They were green, an emerald, glittering green with yellow starbursts in their depths. The pain made it difficult for him to see things exactly, but he thought that his father’s ears had grown longer, more pointed. His father’s hair had become glossy black and seemed to cover much more of him than the boy remembered. Then, the pain grew so large that it pulled him down into darkness.

As he had left the house to meet the school bus the next morning, something caught his eye – a gleaming, shiny spot on the porch railing. He crossed the porch to inspect it. It was a white shadow under the surface of the glossy blue paint – a vague, thin shape, slightly curved. It looks like a bone, he thought.

He had never noticed it before.

That night or the next night, he did not dream. But, on the third night, he felt the bite of the crystal bee again. This time he saw more clearly the green eyes and pointed ears and shaggy hair – the white, sharp teeth. A picture he had seen somewhere sprang into his mind. A wolf, green-eyed and glossy black. His father was a wolf. Pain blossomed through him again; too sharp to be a dream.

In the morning, he rushed from the house and straight to Mr. Malley, the crossing guard.

Mr. Malley, glowing in his yellow raincoat with red stripes, listened to the boy’s frantic babble, patiently. “Well now, lad. So your father is a wolf, is he? In your dreams? I think it’s too much candy after dinner we’re talkin’ about here.” He chuckled and offered the boy a mint. “And your daddy a doctor and all; he should be knowin’ better than anyone about that. There’s your bus,” he said, pointing across the street.

The bus was too crowded with children laughing and shrieking for the boy to ask the driver for help. His teacher listened to him after school, but offered much the same opinion as Mr. Malley had. He knew that his mother would not understand, either. She loved the wolf, whom she thought a man. No help from the grown-up world, he realized. He was on his own.

That afternoon, he noticed shadows under the bright white paint of the house – long, slender shadows, knobby at the ends. He knew what they were. Bones – carefully concealed by the wolf, unseeable – unless you knew they were there.

The boy’s world shrank. He no longer flew kites, played marbles or any of the other things he had done before. He spent every afternoon in the library, reading about wolves. He read about real wolves, mythical wolves and fairytale wolves. He read every book he could find on them.

He learned wolves are clever and good at concealing themselves; and that the ones with green eyes and black fur and white, sharp teeth are the cleverest of all. He read of the many methods adults and children had used to outwit or kill other wolves. But there were no stories of defeated emerald-eyed wolves. Emerald-eyed wolves always won and usually those stories ended, “So, the wolf ate them all up!”

The afternoons passed in wolf study. At night, the dreams – and the pain – continued. The boy, though despairing, remained resolute – somehow, he would find a way to stop the green-eyed beast in the house of bones.

In his desolation, there was only one bright place. After the library, he would return home and his butterfly sister would greet him. Her laughter and squeals of delight, as they chased birds, made faces out of the clouds and played hide and seek, made him almost forget – almost not see the shadows of the bones under the paint of the house.

Then, one night, the dreams stopped. A week passed, then a month and then a year with no dreams (though he still felt the bite of the crystal bee almost every night). The boy wondered why and began to look for the reason. He pretended to sleep deeply. Sometimes when he did that, the crystal bee did not bite him. When the bee did not sink its diamond stinger into his flesh, he saw clearly. He prowled the house, listening, watching – and sensing the bones beneath the surface of the walls. Late one night, he heard it – the reason the dreams had stopped.

From the butterfly’s room came a murmured cry – like twigs breaking from dead trees in a winter chill – and the low growl of the wolf.

It doesn’t want me anymore, he thought, it wants her.

He raced to the door of his mother’s room, pounding on it, hurting his hand. She appeared in her doorway, swaying. Her eyes were funny looking. On her shoulder he saw a mark he recognized, the mark of a fresh bee bite. He shook her frantically, yelling into her ear. He saw understanding creep into her dulled eyes.

His mother ran from him, to the door of the butterfly’s room. Throwing it open, she stood in the entrance. Saved, the boy thought, saved.

“You!” she screamed. “You promised! Never again, you said. No more girls. I’M the only one. You promised me. I’M the one. You need ME! Because you love ME! Is that why you made me have this little whore? So she could be your next? You bastard!

There was a snarl and a sound like a softball makes when it slams into a catcher’s mitt, a loud, hard, smacking of leather into leather. His mother fell to the floor, crying in a voice like the dusty rustle of leaves blowing in a bleak wind on an icy sidewalk. “You...promised.”

The wolf stood in the doorway, growling. Its eyes, shining with deep-sea phosphorescence, found the boy. It turned to a corner of the hall and opened a black satchel standing there. It came towards the boy with something glittering in its hand. It growled a warning and the boy stood still, feeling the bee bite his thigh. The familiar darkness took him. But, before it swept him down, he felt a fierce joy. In its red rage, the beast had made a mistake.

The boy knew where the creature kept the crystal bees.

A single word sprang into his mind. A word that all wolves fear – even the emerald-eyed ones. His grin as the darkness took him down was a feral one.

He had a plan.

The next morning, he opened his bedroom door to find that the wolf had dropped all pretenses. The house glowed white, bare of illusion. The floor was made of overlapping bones as were the hallways and the railings. The stairs glowed with the soft ivory and white of bones. Wrist bones, small and delicate, supported tabletops made of rib bones, curving with a polished grace. The walls were thighbones, hard and strong, reaching for the ceiling, which was made of shoulder blades. The stairs were footbones and knucklebones, inlayed with backbones rising for banisters. Everywhere the hard gleaming white of skeletal purity reflected the morning light. His breath steamed in the chill.

Downstairs, at the table, the wolf sat – its eyes following the boy as he descended the bleached gleam of the stairway. When, stepping slowly and cautiously, he had reached the table, the Wolf growled softly. Its luminous eyes swept over the leaf - tumble figure of his mother in the corner of the room. Turning its muzzle, the wolf moved its emerald stare lingeringly over the gray moth that the butterfly had become. The beast growled again, low. The boy knew the meaning of that growl: “Tell and I will kill.”

The boy missed his school bus on purpose. He watched from where he hid in the thick branches of the hedge as it disappeared around the corner. His hand made a small waving motion that might have meant goodbye.

His father, leaving for work, in a light gray suit and tie, never saw him. His mother, when she rustled by on her way to the store with his sister – held hard by the hand – did not see him either. As their station wagon passed his hiding place he looked through the car window at the gray moth. Soon, he thought, you’ll be a butterfly again.

When the automobile vanished, he hurried into the house. Straight up the stairs – the knucklebones making a cracking sound under his rushing feet – to the satchel in the corner. He fumbled open the clasp and reached inside. There! He felt the brittle crystal hardness of the bees. Carefully, he removed four of them from their nest in the worn leather satchel.

He raced back down the stairs, the chill of the house seeping into his body, and opened the refrigerator. There! Slabs of meat glistened in their wrapper. The wolf’s was, naturally, the biggest. (Blood rare, the wolf always said, blood rare.) Quickly and carefully, he opened the wrapper and inserted the shining stingers of the bees into the redness of the meat. His thumb thrust the plungers down one by one and the fluid within the body of the bees flowed into the supper of the wolf. Another trip upstairs and the empty bees were replaced in the satchel. Nodding with satisfaction, he left the house and used the side door to enter the garage.

In the cool darkness, he found what he sought – a rounded dome, bright red and pungent. When he picked it up, it made a soft sloshing sound. He carried it to the yard and hid its oily metal symmetry behind one of the rosebushes near the front door. The large red and pink flowers, heavily sweet, masked the sharp odor of the can nicely. Now, he thought, waiting is all I have to do.

At dinner that evening, the wolf tore at the dripping meat, snarling softly, mopping the juices with a thick slice of bread. The boy watched closely. Only when the last of the glistening red moisture had crossed the wolf’s lips did he relax.

Later, he lay in his bed, ears reaching out in the silence for sound. Wolfsteps approached his door and the knob turned. He held his breath, terror stricken – the plan had not worked. The door opened and phosphorus eyes met his. Fear frozen, he watched as the wolf approached him, its teeth gleaming whitely. It growled, bloodlust in its eyes, then fell with a great thump to the floor, its mouth open and teeth shining, green eyes closed.

The boy ran down the footbone stairway and into the yard, returning with the sharp-smelling can. He splashed the liquid within it over the floor and the walls and the thighbones and the wristbones and the ribcages and the knucklebones. Down the hallways of glowing ivory, he splashed, and over the backbone doorways, until the can dropped empty from his hands.

He ran to the butterfly’s room, sweeping her from her bed. He raced to his mother’s room and roused her from her bee-bite sleep. Down the knobbiness of the stairway and out the cold curving doorway to the lawn, they ran. He turned and tossed a kitchen match inside the house.

Even green-eyed wolves fear fire, he thought.

Red and orange waves of salvation crashed up the wall and over the ceilings and doorways as the bones flamed, painting a different kind of color on the neighborhood.

He heard the wolf howl. His mother, startled out of her diamond stung haze, screamed, “John!”

She screamed again, raced toward the house and disappeared into the brightness within the doorway. He heard, or he thought he heard, her scream again as the flames took her. He thought she cried, “Only ME!” The house erupted into an ocean of orange as the bones took fire and exploded.

In his arms, the gray moth wakened. Her blank, bee-bitten eyes turned to the house and reflected the flames in a whirl of color – like the wings of a butterfly.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and – god help him – good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway and Josh (Gut Ripper) Converse, who provide great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

Bill "AJ" Hayes Remembered

MEXICO - AJ HAYES

Tecate Divide gets cold in December. The Mexican side of the border at night is all sage and rocks and the mountain wind cuts like surgical steel. I turn the heel of my left boot on a tie and damn near go butt over breakfast. A red hot railroad spike of pain punches a hole through my guts. I grab air, catch my balance and put one foot in front of the other. The gleam of steel rails and roadbed stretches in front of me like a thousand miles of midnight. Fuckin’ Mexico, I think. It had to be fuckin’ Mexico.

*

“Hey, Gomez,” Carter yelled through the jukebox noise. “C’mere.”

I eased back my bar stool and shouldered through the crowd. The San Pedro sun blasted through the streaks of grease on the windows and cut yellow bars on the floor, light, dark, light, dark.

“How the fuck many times I got to tell you I’m no Messican,” I say. “My name’s O’Connor.”

His fat face cuts into the wrinkles he calls smiling. I think it just makes him look old—which he is, but when boss-man calls, you move. Or you get dead.

“Can’t prove it by me,” he says. “You look more Mex than Mick to me.” He leans in close and I can smell the garlic grease in his armpits. “Got a job for you. You remember Mojo? Little guy with a burn face scar?”

I nod. “Yeah, sure.”

“He needs to be gone, know what I mean? Gone.”

“Okay,” I say.

“’s why I picked you for the job, Gomez . He’s in Tecate. You know Tecate, south of San Diego? Heard he’s tending bar in a joint down there. The Tecate Club on the square. You know it?”

“Sure,” I say, “When?”

“Tonight. Comes on shift at eight.”

“On my way,” I say.

“That’s my Messican,” he says.

I parked my old Ford in a dark shadow side street a block south of the border fence and walked the two blocks to the old wood door of the Tecate Club. The smells from the square hit me like a ton of shit. Took me back.

*

I’m not being entirely straight with people when I say I’m Irish. My father was Irish, but my mother was Mexican. He was a sailor. She was a whore. Mom never saw her sailor man after their one-nighter. But, being a proper Catholic whore, she couldn’t get rid of the baby—me—because she figured God would have no problem with whores, Mary Magdalene and all that stuff, but she damn well knew he’d burn her ass in Hell forever if she aborted a baby. So, she raised me as best she could. Took me to street fairs on the square, parades on Cinco de Mayo and all that other stuff they do down south. She even took me to a couple of bullfights. For years after that I dreamed of being a bull fighter. Well, for a couple of years I dreamed of that.

And then one day, when I was thirteen, I came home and found my mother beaten to death. She was cut up so bad I had to wash the blood from her face to make sure it was her. The neighbors told me in whispers that it was her pimp that killed her. So I found him at the Tecate Club and, with a single stroke of a machete, took his head off at the shoulders and lit out for the border. I got lucky and made it to Long Beach and then San Pedro. I hooked up with a couple of crews. Made some dough and honed my natural talent.

*

I slipped the door open and looked inside. A few men drinking alone and some couples in the high backed, hundred-year-old dark oak booths doing nice things to each other in the shadows. Mojo was on a tall stool at the far corner of the bar staring at the counter top. He never saw me until I slid onto the stool next to him. I leaned in close, staring into his eyes.

“How ya doin’, Moj?” I said.

He tensed and I felt the move coming, his right hand sliding slow off the bar top. I grabbed it hard and shook my head slightly, still looking deep into his dark brown eyes.

“Nah, Moj. Too late for that.”

I smiled a little and brought the steel up and in. He didn’t try to yell. Wouldn’t have done him any good anyhow, since I’d made sure to cut his diaphragm. Watching, I saw the panic fill his eyes and he wobbled a little. Like always I kept my eyes locked with his. Saw a little hope glimmer in them but when the tip of the steel touched the bottom of his heart, that glimmer left and was replaced, like always, by a flood of light that burned brighter when the rest of the blade followed. It never failed, that light. I’d seen it in all twenty-two pairs of eyes I’d looked into over the years. I’d always wondered what they saw, those guys, when the blade did its job, what they were looking at, what they heard.

“I am the matador,” I whispered and let him gently down on the bar top.

I put the knife away, pushed slow away from the bar, walked across the room and out the door. The commotion and crowd spilling out onto the street yelling and pointing didn’t happen until I was in the Ford and headed for the border. Smooth, I thought, real smooth. I thought that—until I saw what I’d forgotten: A barred gate and a sign that read BORDER CLOSED FROM 8:00 PM UNTIL 8:00 AM.

Winter hours, I thought. Born in this lousy shit hole and I’d forgot fucking winter hours!

I spun the wheel hard and jumped the center divide, figuring I could bust the entry gate going the wrong way. I didn’t see the car parked there until I was almost on it. Just a flash of green and white. I had time to stab the brake and crank the wheel hard left, so I only hit the fucker a glancing blow that spun him around and stalled the engine in the Ford. “Shit,” I yelled, “horse-fucking-shit!” I twisted the key, yanked the shifter fast into reverse and smoked the tires backing up.

That’s when the Federale, who up ’til then had been peacefully dozing his shift away, jumped out of the car and blew a gaping hole in my windshield with his single-action .44.

“¡Alto!” he yelled and pumped another round through what was left of the shattered glass.

“Fuck you!” I screamed at him, scrabbled my .45 out of the shoulder holster and punched two fat rounds into his face. He stood, swaying a moment then fell.

“Take that, cocksucker!” I yelled and pounded the butt of my pistol on the roof of the Ford. “Take that!”

That’s when the Federale’s partner, who had, evidently, been sleeping in the back seat, jumped out and started blasting away at me with some kind of heavy caliber motherfucker. I swung the Colt around and nailed him, but not before the bastard put one straight through my belly button.

The round slammed me back into the front seat of the car. Which fit right in with my plan. I slapped the shifter, spun the wheel and got the fuck out of there: the hole in my guts soaking my pants with blood, screaming the Ford, speedo pegged at one-hundred-thirty-five fucking MPH, up the wide-open, pitch-black, asshole of Mexican Highway Number 2.

I ditched the car at the 80 kilometer sign and cut cross country until I hit the old railroad tracks. I figured I could follow the rails until I was close enough to the two-wire border fence and the small mountain town of Potrero. Not much of a town but there was a pay phone that I could use to call for a ride. Home free, I thought. Piece of cake. Went down smooth.

*

Somewhere along the way, it started snowing. I don’t remember when. I’m too concerned with the right foot, left foot, right foot slogging that’s moving me along. The blood soaking through my pants and down my legs felt warm at first, but now it’s ice. I got both hands holding my belly now, but it doesn't seem to help stop the steady drip, drip, drip of blood. Right foot, left, right, left. Oddly, I’m not cold anymore. It’s quiet up here. Just the wind. And me. And something up ahead. Light. Bright light and a kind of murmuring noise. For a moment I think maybe it’s a train. I mean, I’m on the tracks, right? But the trains on the Mexican side haven’t run for years. I keep walking. Right, left, right... I’m closer to that light now. And the noise. I figure out the noise first. Voices, a lot of voices. A big swelling sound, ¡Ole! ¡Ole! ¡Ole! they’re saying. And the light is the sun. Bright golden sun streaming down on the yellow sand of the bull ring and the crowds. It’s brighter now and louder. ¡Ole! ¡Ole! ¡Ole! Mexico.

I am the Matador.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and -- god help him -- good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway, who provides great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

Bill "AJ" Hayes Tribute

As many of you know, we all lost a great friend and outstanding writer recently when Bill "AJ" Hayes passed away unexpectedly. Bill was a true friend in every sense of the word, being supportive of fellow writers (especially this one), willing to talk shop and give advice whenever it was needed. Bill extended himself beyond just the writing, being a voice of reason and a stabilizing force in various people's lives. Though I never met him in the flesh, I felt like we were pretty good friends, closer than most, not as close as I would have liked.

ATON will be recognizing Bill Hayes' talent by re-running over the course of the next couple weeks just a small portion of what this great man put out into the world.

I miss you, AJ.

A Twist Of Noir 645 - AJ Hayes

SHARED PAIN - AJ HAYES

ROBERT

The way it happened was a woman in East L.A. answered her doorbell one warm summer night and took a full load of double ought buck from a sawed off Remington twelve gauge square in the face. It was a good thing that she went first because she didn’t see her kids get it. Twelve year-old twins though you couldn't tell that after the buckshot did its job. The dog was just a pile of scraps with no head. The first cops that got there spent a couple of minutes puking. Then they called me. I identified them all. My wife, kids and the dog. I wasn’t good for much of anything after that.

GINA

Another night, another fucking court mandated twelve step. All that, Hello I’m Gina, jive. Followed by my sad story. Followed by a parade of losers telling theirs. Here’s a tip. Never share. Because the next asshole in line will have a much more tragic tale to tell. I say: “My Mom and baby sisters were murdered and I was away at night school and Dad killed himself a shot at a time. Boo fucking hoo.” Then you wait for the next guy. Usually goes, “Hi, I’m fuckface and I drunk-drove my semi through a convent. Killed sixteen nuns and a blind newspaper boy.” Shit like that.

Then a big guy stood up. Started telling the group how he thought he was the one who’d taken my life away from me. How he had been crazy drunk and jacked up on PCP. I didn’t believe his story. Just another jerk trying for my panties. I mean there’s a lot of fucking going on after meetings. So I just figured. Then he mentioned the dog.

That got my attention.

ANGEL

“Baby,” Gina’s voice, as always, makes me want to pull the blankets over us and stay all day. “Angel, open your eyes, baby.”

I reach for her and there’s a clank. I wake up fast. I’m handcuffed to a rusty pipe that runs along an old brick wall. I try to jerk away.

“Baby, stop.”

Something in the way she says it makes me freeze. She’s sitting, knees against her chest, across the room. It’s almost dark in here and it smells like wet dirt.

“Got to tell you some things, babe,” she says.

I wait.

“Remember this place?” Her green-gold eyes make my heart thump.

I take a look.

“Sure. That crappy twelve step. You saved me. Here.”

Her soft laugh hits me hard.

“You love me?”

“’til the wheels fall off, baby.”

“Did I take away your pain?”

“Yes.” My mind fills up with her and our twin girls growing inside her.

“I’m glad,” she says. “That’s why I drugged you and brought you here.”

She shakes her head no when I start to speak.

“We have to talk about pain now, baby,” she says. “I worked hard at yours. Held you in the dark with my body, my mind, my heart until all your nightmares finally stopped and that was so damn good.”

Her eyes are far away.

“But there’s another kind of pain, baby. My kind.” Her face caught in shadow. “As much as I love you. I can’t share this pain. I can only give it away.”

She lets her knees drop so I can see the bloody wreckage where our babies used to be.

“They didn’t feel anything,” she says. “Their heads were close together. One shot. No pain. Me though ... that’s different.”

She coughs a bright spray of blood. Slides something across the tiles.

“You got a choice, baby. Live with my pain ... or not.” The coughing stops and so does she. I look down and see a gun and a cell phone.

We sit for a while: my dead wife, our babies and me.

I make my choice.

“I love you,” I say.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and -- god help him -- good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway, who provides great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45. Check out his poetry in the latest issue of Yellow Mama.

A Twist Of Noir 599 - AJ Hayes

SAVANT - AJ HAYES

Fuckin’ guns. It’s always fuckin’ guns. They think they pull a fuckin’ gun and everybody just goes shit that’s a fuckin’ gun and falls down.

Jimmy’s got the hoodie cinched so tight only the tip of his nose is showing.

Take it easy kid I say. Relax. I torch a doob and pass it over. What guns? Where?

Down at the pig farm he says.

Jimmy talks different. I mean he ain’t hard to understand just different. But he don’t talk that much at a time so I figure maybe I go take a look. You know see if there’s any wallets or bags of dope left laying around. Usually is when there’s guns been out.

You hang here Jimmy I say. I’ll be right back. It’s only a couple blocks.

He says okay Bobbie and settles down with the joint.

I case the street both ways before I slide out of the alley. No cops. I figure this town nobody’s gonna call ’em. Just another quiet night at the beach.

I get to the police substation and take a look jerking my head around the door frame and back real fast. Dead cops. One behind a desk two on the floor. Looked like one guy almost made it out. But he didn’t.

I think Man you should never ever pull a gun on Jimmy.

So I’m rummaging around. You know wallet here ring there that shit. What the hell they ain’t gonna be needing them right? Then behind me somebody coughs and I wheel around spouting alibis.

Big mustache gold tooth bigger gun. Aimed right between my eyes. Couple bangers all muled up right behind him. Sanchez. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Hey Bobbie. ’Zup?

His fuck you eyes wander around the scene and come back to me.

How come you kill all my cops Holmes? You tryin’ steal my dope?

I start to tell him I didn’t and I wasn’t and he gets ready not to believe me and I know what’s coming next and it can’t go any way but bad.

Then Jimmy says Hey Bobbie and every head in the place does an exorcist turn to focus on the skinny black kid in the red thrift-store hoodie.

Sanchez gets it back together first.

Who the fuck’s that?

His gun muzzle starts to waver away from me and over to Jimmy.

José I yell. Don’t.

It’s enough to make him jump and swerve the pistol back to me.

Fuck you talkin’ about?

I jerk a thumb at Jimmy.

He don’t like guns I say.

Now he’s grinning bigger like he thinks I’m just trying to put off what we both know is coming. Like maybe I’m trying to save the kid too.

Fuck should I care what a twelve-year-old likes or don’t? He says.

He glances at Jimmy and his eyes narrow.

He a retard?

Jimmy’s just standing there watching. Smiling that smile.

No I say. Autistic.

José gets it.

One of them retard math guys like in that movie?

I nod.

Yeah like the movie I say. But it ain’t math he’s good at. He’s got a different talent.

José glances at his Rolex. Blows out his mustache. Shrugs.

Tell ya what Bobbie he says. I’ll do the kid first. That way he won’t be scared.

I shake my head slow and sad.

Okay man thanks I say. And hit the floor fast. At least I tried.

I gotta give Sanchez credit he’s quick. Racks the slide spins and almost gets to pull the trigger. Couple of yells. Somebody even gets a shot off. Then it gets quiet. All I hear is the ocean.

S’okay Bobbie Jimmy says.

I poke my head up. Like I expected there’s a few more bodies and a lot more blood. I lift some more cash from the crooked dead cops. José’s dope is useless bags split open and the coke all soaked with blood. Jimmy’s wiping off his straight razor and putting it back in his hoodie.

He smiles that smile.

Later we’re at the ice cream shop and the squads roll past red lights code seven all swat and five-o shit.

Huh Jimmy says. Wonder where they’re going?

Beats me I say.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and -- god help him -- good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway, who provides great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

A Twist Of Noir 593 - AJ Hayes

JACKIE BOY - AJ HAYES

I like Mr. Johnson. He always smells of cigar smoke and a little bit of whiskey. My daddy always said you can't trust a man who doesn't drink because you know when he wakes up in the morning that's as good as he's going to feel all day long so he gets mean after a while. I don't know exactly what that means but mommy always said daddy knew what he was talking about.

Mr. Johnson's nice though. He always lets me keep the change. Buy yourself something he always says. Sometimes he gives me two dollars for the daily and sometimes three for the sunday. That's a lot of change. I've got three big glass jars full of dimes and quarters and one day I'm going to use them and go to the zoo. Tonight though Mr. Johnson says he has a job for me so I say okay Mr. Johnson. Yessiree Bob Mr. Johnson you bet. My daddy used to say that when he had a job to do. I don't remember most things so good but I remember that he used to say that. Good boy jackie Mr Johnson says. I'll be by after you close the stand tonight.

I close up early because when the wind off the river blows the snow up and around in swirls it gets cold and people don't come by for their papers as much. I pull the shutters down and snap the big brass lock through the loop. The river wind gets inside my wool coat and makes me feel like I'm frozen.

Doc the old guy with white eyebrows who sleeps in the box next to mine in the alley behind Mr. Johnson's building says it's arthritis in my joints. I don't know what that is but I memorized how you spell it off an old brown glass medicine bottle I found. Anyhow Doc says that's why the wind hurts. Like it does tonight.

Pretty soon Mr. Johnson comes by and says come on jackie boy it's time. Yes sir Mr. Johnson I say. Mr. Johnson has a big old car with little fishtails over the tail lights. I get in the front seat slow because the arthritis is pretty strong tonight. I like the way the seats in the big old car smell. Mr. Johnson says they don't make them like this anymore. Mr. Johnson's pretty old too. Anyhow the seat is nice and warm and I get a little sleepy so the time passes pretty quick. Mr. Johnson parks in front of one of those falling down buildings with the windows out and we climb a lot of wooden stairs that squeak like mice and come out on the roof. It's flat and there's a small wall around the edge that keeps people from falling off I guess. We walk over to the wall and lay down on the gravely roof. It's your time now jackie boy just like always Mr. Johnson says and hands me the long bag with the leather handles. I pull the zipper down and take out what's inside.

H&K PSG1 7.62 sniper rifle with a Russian made silencer semi automatic with roller delayed blow back and Hensoldt 6 by 42 600 meter scope. Mr. Johnson says despite your grievous head wound jackie boy in some things you are truly amazing. I'm not really listening because I know what comes next and I'm already scanning the street below acquiring target data and chambering one of the subsonic death viper hollow point rounds.

Brown overcoat Mr. Johnson says gray hat in front of the hotel. I center him in the cross hairs and when Mr. Johnson says go the round is already halfway there. The gray hat flies straight up spinning and the top of the targets head evaporates in a red and gray fog. The men and women around him run and some fall down and some look like they're screaming but I can't hear if they are or not.

Time to go lad Mr. Johnson says and we hurry back to the big old car.

Mr. Johnson parks behind his building and walks me to my box. He leans over and pats my head and says good work jackie boy. You made your last one a good one the best you've ever done. He smiles at me but I think he looks sad. What's the matter Mr. Johnson I say you look sad. Mr. Johnson sits down next to me and takes a silver thing out of his coat. He unscrews the top of it and takes a sip from it. I'm not sad really jackie boy he says I'm just sort of sorry it's over. What do you mean it's over Mr. Johnson I say.

He leans back against the alley bricks and sips some more. Well lad he says I mean we're through with the job. It took us a long long time but you and me we got every single one of those murderin plottin traitors. We got the last one of em tonight. They thought they could run and hide but we found em. We found em all. He stands up and looks down at me. I can go home now and you can just be the old man on the corner who sells newspapers and lives in the alley and has a nice peaceful life he says. He stops a minute to wipe his eyes. I guess the cold wind is making them tear up. I'm going to go now jackie boy he says you have a nice life. I will Mr. Johnson I say. He walks into the night and I hear the old car start up and drive away.

A swirl of cold wind makes my head start to ache and I crawl into my box and settle down. Good night doc I call and doc says goodnight jackie boy.

I snuggle down and listen to the wind blow and like I do every night I look at my wall and the picture of the pretty lady with the dark hair in her pink dress and wonder why she looks so beautiful and so sad.

Oh well I think tomorrow is another day.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and -- god help him -- good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway, who provides great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

A Twist Of Noir 571 - AJ Hayes

A FLASH OF RED - AJ HAYES

“Morning, sugar,” the bus driver said in her big, cheery voice. “And how are you doing today?” Charley murmured a soft, “Good morning.” He liked the driver, although her loudness and large gestures and white teeth stirred his mother’s voice within him.

He saw her; sitting at the kitchen table, white sunlight behind her, looking at him over the rim of her glass, big and bold, wearing her broad grin, her brows arched like swords. Sometimes the clear fluid in the glass would catch the light, break the morning sunbeams into rainbows that illuminated her collection of bruises: arms, cheekbones and neck patched with plum colored new wounds and the fading green of old.

“Moderation, Charley," she would say. "Stay small, my little mouse.”

Good advice, Charley thought. It had worked for him for 52 years – not for Mother, though, no, not for her.

“And where are we off to today, Mr. Excitement?”

The driver’s voice scattered his thoughts and Mother, waving a cautionary red-nailed finger at him, vanished.

“The park,” he said, “the museum.”

“Dinosaur bones, cobwebby stuffed critters? You sure that ain’t gonna be too intense for you?” Her chuckle reverberated. “You’ll be needing a transfer then. The usual route is all tore up by construction.”

As she handed him the slip, her glance swept over his brown suit, brown tie and chocolate brown wing-tipped shoes.

“Honey, you got any other color clothes?”

He was about to say that he liked brown, when two other passengers climbed the steps into the bus. The driver boomed a greeting at them, obviously dismissing Charley from her mind. That often happened to Charley. He supposed that he was just not interesting enough to hold people’s attention for long.

He walked along the aisle, choosing his seat. Not the front, no, never the front – too visible, too conspicuous. Certainly not the back, that’s where all the jagged people sat, the unruly ones – the ones who called him Mouseman. He, as usual, chose the middle rows – the quiet rows.

As he sat down, something rustled. He looked on the seat beside him. The headline startled him. One word captured his eyes.

Murder.

He shivered a little. The word seemed to glow, bright and black, its edges crisp against the gray-white background of newsprint.

Murder.

He carefully folded the paper and slid it under the seat. He relaxed when the word was no longer visible. Charley didn’t like strong words like that. He fingered the blade of the knife – whittler, he hastily corrected himself, the whittler – in his jacket pocket. It was the only thing his father had left him. Charley didn’t like to think about his father. His father never spoke to him. Never – except in the occasional nightmare.

Six months ago – when he had been fired – his boss’s voice had reminded him of those nightmares. His boss’s voice had made the same echoes in his mind that his father’s did.

“I’m sorry, old buddy; nothing I can do. Corporate decided to job out the bookkeeping. Outsource, you know? We looked and looked, but there’s just no place left for you here, although I did manage to get you a great severance package. It should hold you over until you find something else.”

There was nothing else. He had answered ads, made phone calls – nothing. He could feel it in the interviews. The way their glances slid to his face and then slipped away. He could detect it in their averted eyes as he left.

At least Eleanor didn’t know. He kept the family books so it had been an easy matter to conceal it from her. Eleanor never suspected that he wasn’t going to work when he got on the bus every day. Mild, loyal, Eleanor didn’t suspect a thing. She wouldn’t until the money ran out in a month. He didn’t know how he would quiet her when that happened – how he would save her from her fear.

“Maple Street. This is your stop, you playboy, you.” The bus driver’s voice startled Charley. He hadn’t realized so many blocks had passed. “Like I told you, walk straight up the street for six blocks and you’ll see the bus stop. Don’t get lost now.” The doors hissed shut behind him. Charley looked around.

The neighborhood looked fresh. Early morning sunlight fell on small lawns revealing the faint tracks left by yesterday’s mowers. The houses stood at the back of their lots, protected by their white picket fences from the orderly progress of the sidewalks. In the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb, maple trees thrust toward the sky, one per home. The driveways harbored autos – compact Japanese and American models – plus tricycles, bicycles and basketball hoops, all resting silently in the early morning brightness. The whole picture pointed to new families, young marrieds and children. The energy level of the place would grow as the sun rose farther into the morning and the children emerged from the houses. He had often wished that he and Eleanor could have had children. Charley liked children.

The sidewalk rose in a gentle slope, cresting toward the middle of the neighborhood and descending from there to the bus stop at its end. As he walked, Charley noted the identical mailboxes in front of each lawn. They each bore the name of the family whose home it was. Charley thought the mailboxes were nice. Names were much homier than anonymous street numbers. The trees were pleasant. He liked the way their summer blooms stood out against the dark green of the leaves.

Murder.

The word overpowered his vision.

Murder.

Charley started, then relaxed when he realized that it was only a newspaper caught in the branches. The same one as on the bus. Probably the paperboy had tossed it into the tree and not bothered to retrieve it. Charley hadn’t liked it when the same thing had happened to him the other day. He thought he might as well get it down. If he did, then whoever came out to look for it would not have to spend extra time getting it out of the tree. Charley felt in his jacket pocket for his whittler. The brass of the nick guard felt smooth against his fingers. As smooth as it had the day he’d found it, lying in the pool of red on the carpet, under the couch, when... No! The door that had been opening in his mind slammed shut.

“Level plain, Charley. Stay small,” the sandy voice whispered.

He took aim at the paper and tossed the whittler at it. The straight blade caught the sunlight and broke it into fractured colors as it and the paper fell end over end from the branches. He looked down in mild pleasure at the two objects resting on the grass. There, he thought, there.

Where should he put the paper, he wondered. He supposed he could toss it over the fence and onto the lawn – but the grass was still dew-soaked. Charley knew he, for one, didn’t like soggy newspapers; so that was out. Onto the pathway, then. No, there was moisture there also. The porch, he could walk up the pathway and leave it on the porch; that was it, safe and dry on the porch.

The latch of the small gate in the picket fence made a quiet click as it yielded to Charley's fingers. He swung it open and walked toward the house. When he reached the steps leading to the porch, he noticed that the front door was ajar. They must not lock their doors, he thought. Maybe it was all right in this neighborhood. It seemed peaceful enough for trust. A flash of red caught the corner of his eye. Startled, he looked quickly around – a hummingbird feeder. He breathed a sigh of relief. He felt a weight in his right hand – his whittler. How did that get there, he wondered.

A slight buzzing in his ears, low and persistent, unsettled him a little as he looked at the open door of the house. He could, he thought, leave the paper on the kitchen table. That would be nice. The buzzing in his ears grew louder. He stepped onto the first step and paused.

Suppose there was a dog? Suppose the dog barked as he entered the house? The barking probably would awaken the family – before he could use his whittler to quiet the dog. Maybe the children would wake first and run downstairs. They would see the dog. Charley knew that pools of red upset children. Charley had been upset the day he saw the pools of red, terribly upset. He would have to quiet the children. He would spare them the strong emotions the quieted dog would cause in them. And the parents, he thought, what of them? What would he do about them after he quieted the children? He would have to quiet the parents, too. Like his father had quieted his mother – his large, bold, loud, bruised, warrior mother with her red lips, white teeth and laughter. The buzzing in his ears was overpowering. The weight of the whittler in his right hand was like lead. The newspaper in his left was like feathers. He turned the paper over and looked at the bright blackness of the word. Murder! He stepped onto the porch, toward the door, hearing his father’s voice whispering softly through the buzzing in his ears.

All right, Father, he thought. Eleanor, too? Yes, all right.

A flash of red and emerald and gold filled his vision, a blur of wings and a tiny shrillness of sound in his face. Charley plunged the whittler into his pocket. He flailed at the threat with both hands. The paper fell to the porch. He stumbled backwards. As suddenly as it had come, the confusion ceased. There was only empty air in front of his face – and a voice in his ears.

“May I help you?”

“What? I...What?” Charley gasped.

He saw a tall man in a white tee shirt and blue shorts, standing in the open door, staring at him with a startled, but pleasant expression.

“May I help you, sir?” the man said.

“I...I found your paper in the tree. I was bringing it in to the porch. I...” Charley said, regaining his composure a little. “There was this buzzing and something – red and small. In my face, I...”

The other man grinned. “Oh,” he said, “she’s very protective, isn’t she?” He pointed to a small bundle of twigs and mud attached to the corner of a rafter. In front of the swatch of twigs, a hummingbird hovered, its small wings making a loud buzzing sound. “She has babies. She’s very aggressive when she doesn’t recognize you.”

Charley’s breathing had returned to normal and he stooped to pick up the paper. He handed it to the man. “Yes,” he said, “yes, she is. Well,” he bobbed his head in a quick mouse-like motion, “here’s your paper.”

The man smiled his thanks. “It was very nice of you to do that.”

“Oh, no bother, really,” Charley answered, “no bother at all.” He shifted from foot to foot. “Well,” he said, “the bus...I’d better...”

The other man’s smile dimmed as his eyes slipped over Charley and slid away – there was nothing to hold his gaze. “Thanks again,” he said, closing the door with a small thump.

Charley handed the bus driver his transfer slip. “Your stop, sir?” the driver called as the bus pulled away from the curb. Charley made his way to the middle seats.

“Home,” he said. “Home.”

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and -- god help him -- good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway, who provides great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

A Twist Of Noir 553 - AJ Hayes

BEASTS - AJ HAYES

Across the alley, in the back of the junkyard, a man was beating a dog. The man’s arm rose and fell slowly. The dog—a pit bull mix—stood still, staring at nothing in particular. The drizzling rain had soaked them through. Neither seemed to notice. Both looked bored. They said that, once, the dog attacked a guy. Almost killed him. They said the man had helped.

I got a plate of leftovers and a gun.

“Hey,” I called.

They both looked up.

“One of you can change,” I said.

I shot the man and fed the dog.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and – god help him – good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway and Josh (Gut Ripper) Converse, who provide great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

A Twist Of Noir 543 - AJ Hayes

TEAM PLAYER - AJ HAYES

An entry in the recent Watery Grave Invitational

Just a trace bar lost in the north desert near Albuquerque. Summer thunder ozoned the air outside and stormfront wind out of the Sangre De Christos made the rat-ass bikes lined up in front shake on their kickstands and blew the trash around in the beds of pick-ups with tribal stickers peeling off rusted chrome bumpers.

Inside, the lightning of puke and heat and real bad whiskey. The kind that comes sweating out of you the next morning and smells like dead folks. Everclear on the juke and mad dog twenty twenty cooking in the blood.

He was on the third stool from the right, staring into his glass like he was watching a television show. I dropped in next to him. He had that long distance look you get when the booze has chopped all your strings away.

“Hey, Skip. What you doin’ this far away from San Antone?”

“Lookin’ for my starting pitcher,” I said. “Guess I found him.”

I motioned to the barman. He brought two drinks, sat them down, took my money and walked away without looking at either of us. Two hundred semi-drunk people jammed shoulder to sweaty shoulder and nobody’s seeing a thing. That kind of place.

“C’mon, kid,” I said. “Too noisy in here.”

He pushed back from the bar and followed me outside. We stood watching the rain slam down through the feeble neon of the beer signs in the fogged-over windows.

Distant fire flashed in the Sangres and the soft ta-thump reached us a second or so later.

“How’d you find me?”

“I didn’t. Mr. Van Zandt had your cell phone tracked.”

He laughed soft. It washed away in the rain noise.

“Leave it to the owner to find somebody don't want to be found,” he said.

“Somebody’s gotta keep track of the franchise, Tommy,” I said. “Take care of the team.”

“Take care of the money, you mean. That man don’t care a whit for the team. He—”

“That your blue truck over yonder?” I interrupted, showing him the gun.

His shoulders slumped and he sighed. “You too, Skip? He’s got you, too?”

“He don’t have anybody,” I said. “This is about the team, kid. Let’s go on over to your truck. Easier to talk that way.”

I kept the old, single-action Colt close on him while he got behind the wheel and I slid in on the passenger side.

“Why don’t we take a little drive into the Christos while we’re talkin’? Might be nice up there. Maybe we’ll get above the storm. Watch the lightnin’ hit the desert.”

He wheezed the beat-up old Chevy into life and we bumpty-thumped across the parking dirt and up the two lane blacktop toward the mountains.

“You don’t have to do this, Skipper,” he said, kind of sad-like. “It won’t make no difference, money-wise. I got the lifetime no-cut, no-trade contract, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s true, kid. That agent of yours.” I shook my head a little. “Pure pit bull, hell-on-wheels, he was. Said you were the second coming and the end of the world rolled into one. Said you threw hellfire and damnation. Got you that contract. Saddled the team forever with a rag-arm pitcher my three year-old grandbaby could hit outta the park. That money could buy us three brand new rookie arms and a third base and a couple of big bats. It’s gutting us. But with you, ah, gone, we could win. Maybe even get the division. Maybe even the Series—”

“Not what I meant, Skip," he said. “You’re the manager, you know that even if you...do this, Peggy will get the money. It’s right there in the contract. My only living relative. She gets it. All of it.”

Ahead, a yellow sign pointed to a flat, viewpoint pull-off. I pushed the barrel into his side.

“Turn here,” I said.

We rolled to a stop at the edge. Below us, the lightning spread across the clouds in billowing streaks of white light. The stars were out, bright and hard.

“You weren’t listening to me, Coach.” His fingers were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “The team still won’t get that cash. You won’t. Peggy will get—”

I pushed the gun a little harder into his ribs.

“Tommy,” I said, “don’t you think Mr. Van Zandt knows that?”

He went sudden still and death quiet. His mouth formed shapes but no words came.

“She’s gone, son.” I sighed. “Opened the door smiling. Probably thought I’d found you. I got her a good one on the jaw and she went down and out. Never felt a thing. I used that bolo tie you like to wear. The one with the thousand dollar gold nugget for a slide. I left it on her throat. They’ll find her and think you done it.”

I patted him on the back and moved the gun to his temple.

“It’ll look like you were a good man who couldn’t live with what he’d done. At least people will remember that about you.”

I pulled the trigger at the same time he floored the old Chevy and we went flying off the cliff.

So, I’m laying here in the mud and it’s raining hard and cold and I can’t move because my back’s busted and something’s poked a hole through my chest and I’ve coughed out about a gallon of blood and there’s this cold white light circling my vision and it gets brighter and whiter and tighter and I can see the kid, with most of his head gone, hanging half out of the cab of the truck and I know they’ll find us both and figure out what happened and why and it’s darker and colder now and the white light is fading, pinpointing down to black and it feels like I’m falling into dark water and I think about the team I love and the game I love and wish I...

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and – god help him – good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway and Josh (Gut Ripper) Converse, who provide great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

A Twist Of Noir 502 - AJ Hayes

LAST RIGHTS - AJ HAYES

Father Conner got gunned down on the corner of 19th Street and Grand Avenue yesterday.

I knew it was coming and maybe I should have warned him.

But his small, sweaty hands had taught me years ago to keep my mouth shut, so I did.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and – god help him – good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway and Josh (Gut Ripper) Converse, who provide great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

A Twist Of Noir 483 - AJ Hayes

HOUSE OF BONES - AJ HAYES

Once – when the world was just a little younger and more dewy-eyed – there was a boy. He was twelve years-old and lived in a white house, with blue railings and roof, in a sun-flooded neighborhood of pastel-painted houses and cinnamon-colored sunsets. His summer blonde hair hung down, in shaggy bangs, over blue eyes that seemed to hold every dream of every boy who ever lived. The scatter-smatter dusting of freckles across the bridge of his snubbed nose added random exclamation points to the blue of his eyes. All in all, he was the perfect boy.

Perfect – except, that he knew something that other people did not know and saw things that other people could not see.

He had not always known these things. He had not known them when he was younger. He had not known when he used to chase butterflies with his sister (herself a bright, poly-hued, soaring butterfly of a girl) across their oh-so-green front yard. Nor had he known when he went to bed at night, to dream of elves and knights and magic circles in the wild wood. Until, one night, he dreamed a very strange thing.

He dreamed he woke with a startle to something that felt like a bite from a crystal bee with a diamond stinger on his shoulder. He suddenly felt another sharp pain, a much larger pain – in a different place. He looked wildly around his room. His father was there, but his father looked different. His father’s eyes were not their usual blue. They were green, an emerald, glittering green with yellow starbursts in their depths. The pain made it difficult for him to see things exactly, but he thought that his father’s ears had grown longer, more pointed. His father’s hair had become glossy black and seemed to cover much more of him than the boy remembered. Then, the pain grew so large that it pulled him down into darkness.

As he had left the house to meet the school bus the next morning, something caught his eye – a gleaming, shiny spot on the porch railing. He crossed the porch to inspect it. It was a white shadow under the surface of the glossy blue paint – a vague, thin shape, slightly curved. It looks like a bone, he thought.

He had never noticed it before.

That night or the next night, he did not dream. But, on the third night, he felt the bite of the crystal bee again. This time he saw more clearly the green eyes and pointed ears and shaggy hair – the white, sharp teeth. A picture he had seen somewhere sprang into his mind. A wolf, green-eyed and glossy black. His father was a wolf. Pain blossomed through him again; too sharp to be a dream.

In the morning, he rushed from the house and straight to Mr. Malley, the crossing guard.

Mr. Malley, glowing in his yellow raincoat with red stripes, listened to the boy’s frantic babble, patiently. “Well now, lad. So your father is a wolf, is he? In your dreams? I think it’s too much candy after dinner we’re talkin’ about here.” He chuckled and offered the boy a mint. “And your daddy a doctor and all; he should be knowin’ better than anyone about that. There’s your bus,” he said, pointing across the street.

The bus was too crowded with children laughing and shrieking for the boy to ask the driver for help. His teacher listened to him after school, but offered much the same opinion as Mr. Malley had. He knew that his mother would not understand, either. She loved the wolf, whom she thought a man. No help from the grown-up world, he realized. He was on his own.

That afternoon, he noticed shadows under the bright white paint of the house – long, slender shadows, knobby at the ends. He knew what they were. Bones – carefully concealed by the wolf, unseeable – unless you knew they were there.

The boy’s world shrank. He no longer flew kites, played marbles or any of the other things he had done before. He spent every afternoon in the library, reading about wolves. He read about real wolves, mythical wolves and fairytale wolves. He read every book he could find on them.

He learned wolves are clever and good at concealing themselves; and that the ones with green eyes and black fur and white, sharp teeth are the cleverest of all. He read of the many methods adults and children had used to outwit or kill other wolves. But there were no stories of defeated emerald-eyed wolves. Emerald-eyed wolves always won and usually those stories ended, “So, the wolf ate them all up!”

The afternoons passed in wolf study. At night, the dreams – and the pain – continued. The boy, though despairing, remained resolute – somehow, he would find a way to stop the green-eyed beast in the house of bones.

In his desolation, there was only one bright place. After the library, he would return home and his butterfly sister would greet him. Her laughter and squeals of delight, as they chased birds, made faces out of the clouds and played hide and seek, made him almost forget – almost not see the shadows of the bones under the paint of the house.

Then, one night, the dreams stopped. A week passed, then a month and then a year with no dreams (though he still felt the bite of the crystal bee almost every night). The boy wondered why and began to look for the reason. He pretended to sleep deeply. Sometimes when he did that, the crystal bee did not bite him. When the bee did not sink its diamond stinger into his flesh, he saw clearly. He prowled the house, listening, watching – and sensing the bones beneath the surface of the walls. Late one night, he heard it – the reason the dreams had stopped.

From the butterfly’s room came a murmured cry – like twigs breaking from dead trees in a winter chill – and the low growl of the wolf.

It doesn’t want me anymore, he thought, it wants her.

He raced to the door of his mother’s room, pounding on it, hurting his hand. She appeared in her doorway, swaying. Her eyes were funny looking. On her shoulder he saw a mark he recognized, the mark of a fresh bee bite. He shook her frantically, yelling into her ear. He saw understanding creep into her dulled eyes.

His mother ran from him, to the door of the butterfly’s room. Throwing it open, she stood in the entrance. Saved, the boy thought, saved.

“You!” she screamed. “You promised! Never again, you said. No more girls. I’M the only one. You promised me. I’M the one. You need ME! Because you love ME! Is that why you made me have this little whore? So she could be your next? You bastard!

There was a snarl and a sound like a softball makes when it slams into a catcher’s mitt, a loud, hard, smacking of leather into leather. His mother fell to the floor, crying in a voice like the dusty rustle of leaves blowing in a bleak wind on an icy sidewalk. “You...promised.”

The wolf stood in the doorway, growling. Its eyes, shining with deep-sea phosphorescence, found the boy. It turned to a corner of the hall and opened a black satchel standing there. It came towards the boy with something glittering in its hand. It growled a warning and the boy stood still, feeling the bee bite his thigh. The familiar darkness took him. But, before it swept him down, he felt a fierce joy. In its red rage, the beast had made a mistake.

The boy knew where the creature kept the crystal bees.

A single word sprang into his mind. A word that all wolves fear – even the emerald-eyed ones. His grin as the darkness took him down was a feral one.

He had a plan.

The next morning, he opened his bedroom door to find that the wolf had dropped all pretenses. The house glowed white, bare of illusion. The floor was made of overlapping bones as were the hallways and the railings. The stairs glowed with the soft ivory and white of bones. Wrist bones, small and delicate, supported tabletops made of rib bones, curving with a polished grace. The walls were thighbones, hard and strong, reaching for the ceiling, which was made of shoulder blades. The stairs were footbones and knucklebones, inlayed with backbones rising for banisters. Everywhere the hard gleaming white of skeletal purity reflected the morning light. His breath steamed in the chill.

Downstairs, at the table, the wolf sat – its eyes following the boy as he descended the bleached gleam of the stairway. When, stepping slowly and cautiously, he had reached the table, the Wolf growled softly. Its luminous eyes swept over the leaf - tumble figure of his mother in the corner of the room. Turning its muzzle, the wolf moved its emerald stare lingeringly over the gray moth that the butterfly had become. The beast growled again, low. The boy knew the meaning of that growl: “Tell and I will kill.”

The boy missed his school bus on purpose. He watched from where he hid in the thick branches of the hedge as it disappeared around the corner. His hand made a small waving motion that might have meant goodbye.

His father, leaving for work, in a light gray suit and tie, never saw him. His mother, when she rustled by on her way to the store with his sister – held hard by the hand – did not see him either. As their station wagon passed his hiding place he looked through the car window at the gray moth. Soon, he thought, you’ll be a butterfly again.

When the automobile vanished, he hurried into the house. Straight up the stairs – the knucklebones making a cracking sound under his rushing feet – to the satchel in the corner. He fumbled open the clasp and reached inside. There! He felt the brittle crystal hardness of the bees. Carefully, he removed four of them from their nest in the worn leather satchel.

He raced back down the stairs, the chill of the house seeping into his body, and opened the refrigerator. There! Slabs of meat glistened in their wrapper. The wolf’s was, naturally, the biggest. (Blood rare, the wolf always said, blood rare.) Quickly and carefully, he opened the wrapper and inserted the shining stingers of the bees into the redness of the meat. His thumb thrust the plungers down one by one and the fluid within the body of the bees flowed into the supper of the wolf. Another trip upstairs and the empty bees were replaced in the satchel. Nodding with satisfaction, he left the house and used the side door to enter the garage.

In the cool darkness, he found what he sought – a rounded dome, bright red and pungent. When he picked it up, it made a soft sloshing sound. He carried it to the yard and hid its oily metal symmetry behind one of the rosebushes near the front door. The large red and pink flowers, heavily sweet, masked the sharp odor of the can nicely. Now, he thought, waiting is all I have to do.

At dinner that evening, the wolf tore at the dripping meat, snarling softly, mopping the juices with a thick slice of bread. The boy watched closely. Only when the last of the glistening red moisture had crossed the wolf’s lips did he relax.

Later, he lay in his bed, ears reaching out in the silence for sound. Wolfsteps approached his door and the knob turned. He held his breath, terror stricken – the plan had not worked. The door opened and phosphorus eyes met his. Fear frozen, he watched as the wolf approached him, its teeth gleaming whitely. It growled, bloodlust in its eyes, then fell with a great thump to the floor, its mouth open and teeth shining, green eyes closed.

The boy ran down the footbone stairway and into the yard, returning with the sharp-smelling can. He splashed the liquid within it over the floor and the walls and the thighbones and the wristbones and the ribcages and the knucklebones. Down the hallways of glowing ivory, he splashed, and over the backbone doorways, until the can dropped empty from his hands.

He ran to the butterfly’s room, sweeping her from her bed. He raced to his mother’s room and roused her from her bee-bite sleep. Down the knobbiness of the stairway and out the cold curving doorway to the lawn, they ran. He turned and tossed a kitchen match inside the house.

Even green-eyed wolves fear fire, he thought.

Red and orange waves of salvation crashed up the wall and over the ceilings and doorways as the bones flamed, painting a different kind of color on the neighborhood.

He heard the wolf howl. His mother, startled out of her diamond stung haze, screamed, “John!”

She screamed again, raced toward the house and disappeared into the brightness within the doorway. He heard, or he thought he heard, her scream again as the flames took her. He thought she cried, “Only ME!” The house erupted into an ocean of orange as the bones took fire and exploded.

In his arms, the gray moth wakened. Her blank, bee-bitten eyes turned to the house and reflected the flames in a whirl of color – like the wings of a butterfly.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and – god help him – good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway and Josh (Gut Ripper) Converse, who provide great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.