Three Men May Keep a Secret if Two of Them are Dead
Three Men May Keep a Secret if Two of Them are Dead
May 14, 2024
Bob looked nervous. It wasn’t his job to drive the truck today. It wasn’t his job to drive the truck at all. The light took a long time this morning. Facing uphill, in a double clutched stick, hoping his cargo didn’t shift, hoping his truck didn’t stall, all occupied Bob’s thoughts.
The baby carriage rolling across the street should have instead.
Phillip knew the gig was up. He heard his associates saw him talking to a cop. As such, Buffalo was no longer his stomping grounds. He could take a bus or a plane or a train out of the city. He might even get away with this, if he was lucky. Instead, Phillip opted for a more reserved approach. Instead of riding, he drove. They would never be looking for a cab driver or a school bus driver. All he needed was to get past I-90 to Niagara Falls or take I-90 to Erie. Neither would be a good idea on a school bus. In a cab, either may work.
Simon was adverse about prison as anyone would be. He knew of two loose ends and two fixers he could afford to guarantee they would not be loose for much longer. Bob’s family was his life. His little girls provided little in the way of resistance when apprehended on the way home from school today. His fixers sent the message and Bob would understand. He would not like the message, but he would like the mess even less.
By 3:30 that afternoon, the stroller’s owner, a young mommy with a handwritten note addressed to Bob, initiated a predictable response. Bob’s truck rolled down the embankment, backwards, into the path of a fixed 1000 pound LPG tank. The collision led to a fire which led to a series of explosions. The resulting BLEVE incinerated the remains of the driver and the truck he drove.
Simon tipped his fixer for a job well done.
However, Phillip was not as easily persuaded by his ex-wife, now held in captivity. She held a grudge and kept secrets, but only as entertainment would she prove useful. She would be tortured for information and disposed of as fertilizer. Phillip didn’t care. He viewed Simon as an exit to alimony. Kill her off were his last words on the diner’s pay phone.
This left his sons as leverage. Both were grown and deployed overseas on a destroyer and a submarine. In Simon’s time frame, they were untouchable. That would be problematic. Phillip could evade pursuit confident of Simon’s impotence with kidnapping. Simon would just throw more money, hire a few more fixers, perhaps even activating a sleeper, all to locate Phillip.
It had to be done and it had to be done soon.
And by 10pm that day it was.
Phillip came to call on an old girlfriend in Erie, PA for dinner. She was always up for a free dinner and conversation. Someone had anticipated this and waited. It only took a single shotgun blast and both bled out on the pavement. The shooter disappeared into the night. The police found no reason to investigate what they already were told not to investigate. A few collected envelopes with cash. A few more more a notch or two higher on the next promotional list. Simon learned of the confirmed hit and retired early for the night. His trial would begin next week and he would not have to increase the presiding judge’s allowance after all.
His secret safe forever. His actions merely justifiable as insurance, proving once and for all, Ben Franklin’s words of wisdom are more than just a phrase in some almanac somewhere.
Today, these words had more life than those who should have read them.
Sinnerman, a mind horse, a sky in haiku, anxiety, stigma, and luckier than most.
The satin chalk tone of Nina Simone formed today's intro, and was followed by five pieces authored with the feel only our writers deliver, every line, every time. Led by a new kid on the block, three more add to the lift, with a close by our man of the SoCal streets, to make episode 36 one mean mofo of a show, yo... Yeah, tons of coffee...
Anyway, here's to the week ahead. Summer is officially usurping the west, and the road east is looking really good.
Here's the link to Prose. Radio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljZo8mlUCMg
And here are the pieces featured.
https://www.theprose.com/post/815461/mind-horse https://www.theprose.com/post/815448/a-vibrant-blue-sky https://www.theprose.com/post/815436/the-red-man
https://www.theprose.com/post/815376/stigma https://www.theprose.com/post/815402/ayahuasca-death-trip
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Mind Horse
In the empty plains
where everything is distance
When I am surrounded endlessly
in the vastness of the feels
I whistle up
mind horse
who comes galloping nowhere
illuminating
the grown over path
The speed of mind horse unparalleled
Smooth the ride on
Earth holds no boundary
no gravity
no barrier to appear
Close your eyes
inner hear mind horse
Appear before the barriers
Gallop hundred centuries in hundred steps
Time walks no distance
And no distance cannot be unjourneyed
By my glowing horse
Turbo Lover, fast and loose, noble sufferings, substance, and light from stars.
Judas Priest inspired today's show, or rather informed the mood of the morning and coffee while a handful of writers waited to be read and heard, by you. One hell of a show today. Sit your asses down, grab a tall, cool beverage of choice, and go into this world of words by these stone statues of stanza and ink.
Here's a link to the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soR_UH--EbY
And here are the featured pieces.
https://www.theprose.com/post/815271/fast-and-loose https://www.theprose.com/post/815219/substance https://www.theprose.com/post/791497/lamentations-anew-a-poem-by-tf-burke
https://www.theprose.com/post/815261/remember-that-time-i-thought-i-was-dying https://www.theprose.com/post/815249/i-am-insatiable https://www.theprose.com/post/815229/starlight
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Daddy’s Girl
A two-toned, red and white Chevy pickup truck was parked in a bare spot which wouldn’t grow grass underneath the shaded limbs of one of the two magnificent pecan trees which dominated either side of the old farm house’s front walk. From the covered front porch the excited voice of Eli Gold could be heard describing action from The Charlotte Motor Speedway clear out to the road, even through the hand-sized transistor radio. Beside the truck, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a dripping sponge in hand, a man was caught in a curious pause from his truck washing, having stopped to watch his four year old at play. The child was behaving in an unusual, if enticing manner, having climbed down inside her pink, pedal-powered plastic Barbie car to remove the bicycle-chain linkage which acted as the little car’s transmission. The man’s ’Lil Miss had managed to identify the master link, then had used some unknown tool to pry it apart, and was currently attempting to shorten, or tighten up some slack which had grown with time and use between the gear sprockets.
The man with the dripping sponge didn’t have nearly enough time at home with the kids, so it was with great effort that he resisted the urge to jump in and help his baby girl, though it appeared that his youngest had gotten herself into something that he was uncertain if she could resolve on her own. A good father, the man determined to let her try, just as he would have let her older Bubba try.
The child’s chubby, undeveloped fingers struggled with the tiny pieces of linkage. He watched as she dropped a part, found it again, and spent some time figuring how it fit back with the larger pieces. But she did figure it out! His pride swelled nearly to bursting as he watched her remove a link from the chain and slowly jigsaw the thing back together. Unable to contain himself any longer the man finally did step in as his little girl fought to snap the master link back together again, knowing she would not have the strength to do it.
”Here.” He handed a pair of pliers up under the toy car’s chassis, then he watched on amazed as his Missy pondered the pliers for a long moment before finally gripping them correctly, centering the linkage between their jaws, and snapping the chain almost expertly back together with them.
”Fixed it.”
”Yes! Yes, you did. And you made a nice job of it, too!” There was no camera present, so the man made a snapshot of the moment in his mind, desperate to hold on to the memory of it forever.
But the child’s expression remained serious. She took the car in a quick, neat circle around her father before handing up the pliers to him. ”It needs woobwicant.”
After a moment lost in translation the man chuckled aloud, the pride which had swelled his breast having pushed its way up through his choking neck and into his eyes, embarrassing him no little bit. “Yes Missy, it probably does need some lubricant, but how could you know about that?”
”Fiwabaw is teaching me to be a wace caw dwivuh.”
”Fiwabaw? Fireball? Fireball Roberts?
The girl’s smiled sparkled. “Yea! Fiwabaw!”
”Honey, Fireball Roberts has been dead twenty years!”
Ignored, the man was forced to keep up as the little car sped off towards his tool bench in the barn, and the can of 3in1 oil atop it. He watched from the doorway as his baby girl expertly held the can in place, turning the car’s pedal to rotate and lubricate the entirety of the chain beneath the can’s dripping tip as if she’d done it hundreds, or even thousands, of times.
”Fireball Roberts, huh?” He smiled as he said the name.
”Yea! Fiwabaw!”
You know, Fireball was your Grampa’s favorite, back in the day.”
”Yea! Gwampaw!”
The truck gears ground down as the man pulled out onto the highway towards both town and the Western Auto, his Lil Missy perched happily up on the seat beside him. Momma wasn’t gonna like it one bit, but who was a mother to interfere with fate?
Daddy’s girl was getting herself a go-cart today!