The Great Recession had settled in firmly, its boot heels dug into the dirt surrounding everyone who stood anywhere and the aire of despair it had brought with it was palpable. Employment opportunities were beyond scarce and even the need for privatized military had dwindled severely and now, for the first time since his junior year in high school, Jack Grabber was out of work and had decided that the blows of this particular time could be softened with a change of environment. Perhaps his destiny could be changed and fate would not lead him by the neck to a grave in the Panamanian jungle or in a gutter outside of a Russian gambling house, but rather, by the hand into a soft country bed where the breeze from the outside comes calmly through the window and simply takes his breath away until his next run at this whole crazy thing.

“August in Washington State was special and those that had never been could never actualize its beauty and those that have never had the blessed luck to experience it would not understand – could never understand.” These were the words that Jack Grabber had written in his journal after the second night he had slept under the crisp blanket of the Washington sky. After nine days in the Northeastern United States, Jack Grabber found work as a land hand at a Gravenstein orchard. Grabber was hired by a quiet, soft spoken black man by the name of Jibs. Jack received a moderate wage, worked long hours and spent his evenings with the boys eating ranch food, smoking hand rolled cigars and drinking backroom spirits. Grabber along with six other hands slept in the cider house that sat lovingly at the back of the property. The boys didn’t sleep as soundly as they usually did, even after their particularly long thirteen hour day; their minds were too unsettled, unable to join their exhausted bodies in a well deserved rest. You see, there had been whispers this week, whispers of the property owner, Ms. Elderod (the heir to her father’s land fortune) would be arriving in the morning to oversee the fruit operations. Grabber and his gentlemen quarter mates were concerned that the stories of Ms. Elderod were not largely exaggerated and they wouldn’t be able to sleep until they found out for themselves.

The morning came as it did every morning in Washington’s autumn; the crimson sun slowly rose over the orchards and the alarm clock woke the tenants of the cider house to the sound of the crowing goats. Of course, as always, Grabber had been awake for two hours already; sharpening sticks he had picked up on his mid-morning walks. This was a practice he was unable to shake no matter how long he had been on vacation. As the rest of the crew wandered into the small room at the front of the house, Grabber put his sticks down and waits for Jibs to give his morning speech. The quiet man enters through the side door. He limps at what seems a painful stride and exhales loudly as he pulls up a stool.

“Okay, boys, todays the day. Lady Elderod should be arriving any minute if she aint here already by now. She’s gained the land due to her daddy’s cold death and she’s been talkin’ bout makin’ a resort out here. Tearin’ down about eighty percent uh da trees if not more. Now, I have no idea how in the name of dick, this Lady Elderod thinks building a resort is uh wise choice durin’ deez ridiculous money times…”

“It’s not a resort, Mr. Mackenrow, a resort is where your peasants would stay if they had ten times the money they have now. I’m creating a luxury escape for the ultra wealthy, for those whom the recession does not even touch.” The voice of a well educated woman comes from behind Jibs. It was Lady Elderod. She was a tall woman, nearly six foot and slender but not in a grotesque Tilda Swinson way.

Jibs turns around and steadies himself as he rises to greet the woman. Ms. Elderod stops him, “Please, don’t get up.” Ms. Elderod flashes the boys a smile and exits.

Jibs stands up and takes a deep breath in order to address the boys. He hangs his head and raises it again.

“Well boys. I guess there’s no point now. I’ll pay you your dues and keep you on until she shuts it down. I guess I’ll go talk to her.”

From the back a man rises, his shadow casts coldness onto the room. Jibs catches eyes with the tower, “Yes, Jack?”

Grabber makes his way through the six other men, who, if Grabber had friends, the man would consider his friends. As he approaches Jibs, the frail man takes a painful step backwards.

“Relax, sir. Just let me talk to her. I can be very persuasive.” Grabber speaks as he pats Jibs on the shoulder.

“With women?” Jibs asks.

“With everyone,” Grabber replies.

Jibs steps out of the way, “Be my guest, son.”

As Grabber approaches the cider room, where he knew Ms. Elderod would be, doing paper work or looking at herself in an expensive compact, he could feel his fists clenching for the first time in seven months, it felt grand. He released his grip though – almost immediately. “This is a woman,” he thought. “She might be a twat, but she’s certainly not dangerous, I mean, Grabber knew the only dangerous women were those that touched his heart. He knocked at the cider room door but no one answered.

“Hello?” Ms. Elderod?”

There was no answer. In any other instance with any other person in any other state, Jack Grabber would be more cautious, more suspicious. Maybe it was the seven months of fresh air and no violence or maybe it was all the cider in his tummy that was making him sleepy, but whatever it was, it scared him. Regardless, Grabber pushes the door open, he thought he did it gently but as it crashed into the wall and a photo of Abraham Lincoln gutted on the floor, he guessed not. As the glass crushed beneath his size fourteen boots, Grabber peered here and there but he couldn’t sense the presence of anyone anywhere. He relaxed. As he surveyed the room, his eyes caught a desk by a window and on the desk were red-tagged files. If Grabber knew one thing, it was that these red-tagged files could release a shitnami of trouble. He gave his surroundings one last check before perusing through the files. He sat quietly and opened the files – the papers were from Guatemala and written in a Spanish dialect common in Belize, luckily for everyone, Jack Grabber understood every single word. Eleven minutes passed and Jack Grabber had become comfortable in the old hickory rocking chair with his feet up on a small lamp desk. His comfort quickly fades and Jack freezes… someone was in the room.

“Ms. Elderod, I presume.”

“You must be Jackson Brimley Grabber.”

“So, I assume by “Luxury Escape” you meant child slavery housing escape.”

“Clever man. Who would have thought one of Jib’s monkeys could read Portuguese.”

“That’s not all this monkey can do. You know I’m going to stop you, Ms. Elderod.”

“You know I’m going to stop you from stopping me, Mr. Grabber.”

“Not if I stop you from stopping me from stopping you, Ms –“

“Silence!”

Grabber hears the cocking of an old featherweight colt pistol. He’s been out of practice for almost a year but he knew what to do. But before he could execute his plan, Lady Elderod shoots Grabber through the rocking chair through his left shoulder. Grabber couldn’t believe it; was this woman more insane than he could have ever imagined or was he that out of practice? He couldn’t take the time to figure it out. Thank goodness for Grabber, he’d been shot so many times in the shoulders that he barely felt a thing. Grabber kicks the chair out from beneath him, cracking Lady Elderod at the waist, just as she gets another shot off. Grabber leaps through the window and out the cider room. The child trafficking land baron fires numerous shots through the walls.

“C’mon and get me, Sweetheart.”

Grabber takes off down the cobblestone path that leads to the press room – where the juice gets made. It worked. Elderod was following him firing shot after shot, missing Grabber with each one.

“How many bullets does she got?” Grabber says out loud.

Grabber bellies to the ground and sneaks into the press room through the side door. He knew if he could get her in, facing him, he could take control of the situation so he makes it in and sits in the back corner. Now he waits, surrounded by baskets of Gravensteins and a gigantic cider press, sticky sweet with apple juices. Grabber waits and waits and then he hears the footsteps around the press house side door. With one hand full of apples and the other grasping an apple corer he waits for his moment, the door slowly opens… his hands tense and sticky he gets ready to pounce, he could almost see her and just as he’s about to unleash, Ms. Elderod bleats. Grabber slowly rises, it wasn’t Lady Elderod, it was Tallulah, the morning goat. Grabber puts his apples down and Tallulah wanders over to him and licks his face.

“Hi, sweetie, what are you doing in here.” He playfully asks.

“It’s me, Samir. An Iraqi wandering sand witch cast a spell on me and placed my spirit inside this goat, Jack. I can’t be returned to my original form until my name is cleared in Iraq. Please help me.”

Jack couldn’t believe it. He tickled the goat’s funny mustache. One minute he was being chased by a child slave trading monster and the next he’s talking to his old friend Samir, ex-Iraqi Guardsman currently on the run from a rape charge that Grabber just KNEW probably wasn’t true, whose essence had been caged inside a morning goat. “The whole thing with Lady Elderod must have been a dream,” he thought. “Yes, of course, a female land baron turning a Gravenstein orchard into a child slavery trading post… that’s preposterous.” Just as he went to get up, to help his friend Samir, he felt a terrible aching in his head. All of a sudden, Samir the goat was going out of focus, until it disappeared all together. The room suddenly got brighter and he was tied to a shelving unit at the back of the press house and in front of him, Lady Elderod stood, holding an old fashioned hand operated apple peeler.

“Wake up, Mr. Grabber.”

“Dammit. I must have fallen asleep in the press room waiting for her.” He whispered, “I guess my adrenaline doesn’t keep me up like it used to.”

“I guess not. I saw you through the window, you were fast asleep and muttering the name, Samir. Friend of yours?” She asks.

“You don’t worry about him… I’d be worried about you.”

Jack Grabber looks around the room, “AHA!” Elderod has her back to the old cider press, but she’s walking closer and closer, putting her farther and farther from the press. He had to act fast. Lady Elderod turns the handle on the apple peeler slowly.

“Let’s see what your situation would look like… peeled, shall we?”

As she goes for Grabber’s braided belt, he launches a boot into her chest, rocketing her onto the slab of the cider press. She moans in shock. Just then, Grabber tears the shelving unit that he’s been tethered to out of the wall and kicks a large turnstile as hard as he can, releasing the press that rests six feet above Elderod. The press slams down on the feisty charlatan, engulfing her completely. Grabber breaks from the shelves and looks around in panic, then he finds what he’s looking for. He grabs a mason jar from off the floor and places it under a spicket beneath the press slab just in time to fill it with a crimson liquid that comes dribbling out. Grabber stands and takes a long swig of the Elderod juice.

“Mmmmm… 100% bitch. NOT from concentrate.”

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One could barely see the dozens of empty wine bottles through the hazy cloud of cigarette smoke that drifted from the great room and into the kitchen, filling it like the empty space effected by a backdraft of a great fire. Jack Grabber didn’t drink… usually, but then again, Jon and Kate Plus Eight had never been canceled before.

Grabber sat hunched over his ashtray and a bottle of blush like a Black Bear hunkered over a bee hive that had fallen to the ground, cracking open, releasing a buffet of sweet sticky yum yums. He seemed teary eyed, but who knows if it was tears of sadness or rather those of irritation due to the mixture of cigar smoke and cat urine. Grabber’s quadruple XL robe hung off him loosely, this could be do to the fact that he hadn’t eaten a piece of food in over four whole days and coupled with no sleep, Jack Grabber’s emaciated frame had dropped down to a scrawny two hundred and seventeen pounds.

Three days earlier Jack Grabber was on a mercenary mission in the Upper Peninsula of the beauty of the great north of Michigan. A man’s daughter and her best friend had gone missing eleven days earlier and the father, Scott Brown had read Jack Grabbers ad in the New Hampshire penny saver ads. Grabber didn’t know much about the situation, nor that much about the Brown family, all he knew is that he thought Mr. Brown was in politics or something, but to be perfectly honest, Jack Grabber didn’t give a shit. Grabber took a direct flight from Minneapolis to Ann Arbor sixty two minutes after he got the call from Scott Brown. Grabber was in Minneapolis visiting an old friend of his. She drove him to the airport. After landing Grabber took a bus to a foggy location; he only had an address given to him by an old CIA contact who was following the Brown case from afar. As Grabber walked through the snowy trails of the ski area where the abductions were supposed to have taken place, he damned himself for not packing any footwear other than flip flops. He cursed the state of Michigan and, for a moment, wanted to give up on it all together, but he resisted the urge.

After nineteen hours Jack Grabber received a phone call from Scott Brown who had arrived in the area a few minutes earlier, he wanted to meet with Jack at his daughter’s favorite restaurant to get debriefed by Grabber, even after Grabber scolded Scott brown for suggesting that he pull his pants down. Grabber agreed even though he smelled a trap. It’s been a long time since Grabber’s fell into a good trap and he was starving for a deep one. He quickly changed sandals and met Scott Brown at a local Chevron gas station.

“This is your sister’s favorite restaurant?”

Scott Brown scoffs, “It’s my daughter and she likes the muffins.” Grabber exits the station and heads for his rental car.

“Wait!” Brown yells from the doorway. Grabber turns, “I don’t have time for this bull.”

Scott Brown approaches Grabber and grasps his arm, “I need you.”
Grabber bows his head, “I know… I need you too.”

Grabber and Brown get in the rental and drive to a cabin in the woods, they get out and tread through six inches of snow, Scott Brown in full winter apparel and Grabber in fatigues and flip flops. Grabber and Brown reach the top of a very short peak and just beyond that hill sits a cabin, lit up bright like a 24 hour taco stand. Grabber points towards the cabin, loud music can be heard even though they are sixty yards away and Grabber gets a piece of girlish laughter, “I believe your daughter is in there with your sister.”

“It’s her friend, you jackass.”

“They’re fine, Mr. Brown. I’ll be expecting your check in the mail?” Just as Grabber attempts to collect, his phone rings, “Grabber.”

“Jack, it’s Samir… you gotta come back… something terrible has happened.”

Jack Grabber hated birthdays. Not just his, but everyone’s, but especially his. Jack Grabber had such distaste for birthdays that he actually had no idea how old he was and often had trouble estimating the age of others. He had always assumed that he was between the ages of twenty and sixty years old. He was almost positive.
All this talk of birthdays and how old he may or may not have been worn tired on Jack. When heavy thoughts such as these stacked up, there was only one thing that could set him right.

Jack Grabber loosened his grip from the rag he was using to choke out the counterfeit king pin, Hansel Bode. Grabber had been after Bode for almost a year after a run-in ten months earlier when Grabber was declined at a surplus store for mega boats called “Got Yachts” when he attempted to purchase a boat with counterfeit cash, which he was able to trace back to a Mr. Hansel Bode, who as it turned out, had been behind the largest counterfeit ring in the history of the Southeastern United States.

Bode gasps for air, once and then again, longer and deeper than the first. Grabber throws the dirty blue rag to the floor and grabs his coat. Samir Godot looks up from a table in the corner; he’s been doing paper work while Grabber was getting answers. Grabber turns to Samir on his way out the door,

“I gotta go get some pie.”

“Aw, birthdays again? Jack don’t think about it.”

Grabber kept Samir on for more than one reason, but one of them was that deep down, Samir got him.

“Keep an eye on Bode for me.”

Samir nods and goes back to his paper work, but then barks,

“Jack, wait!”

Grabber turns around and leans in through the door frame, staring at Bode.

“What is it?”

“Whats a three letter word for “patisserie?”

Grabber averts his gaze from the man gasping for breath in the folding chair in the middle of the room to his friend, Samir, and smiles.

“Pie.”

Samir scribbles the word “pie” down, gets up and watches over Bode, who has now caught his breath. Samir circles him, looking back and forth between the criminal in his possession and the crossword he had been tackling for nearly two hours.

“You any good with words?”

Bode looks at him from under his brow and lets out a normal, steady breath,

“What’s the deal with the pie?”

Grabber approaches the large archway and heads through the doors of a gothic, upper west side Manhattan building. The heavy scraping of his metal soled boots are deafening in the empty hall. He approaches a small space on the left. The words, “Mai Pies” are etched in the glass on the door. He’s talking on the phone as he pulls out a set of keys.

“Thanks again, Jeanie. I know its Sunday and you’re not open, but I just really needed a pie and your pies are the best.”

Grabber fumbles with the keys until he finds the one he’s looking for, slides it through the grooves and turns the key to the left, a loud “click” announces to him that the door is now unlocked.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve made tons of pies before; I won’t burn down your shop. Hey, how’s your dad doing?”

Grabber walks in and looks around, he pulls the phone away from his ear as he looks in awe, surveying all the pie making gadgets.

“Yeah, well, you should probably get him buried then. Thanks again.”

Grabber hangs up and puts the phone on a metal wheelie cart near the entrance.

“Alright, what do we have here?”

Grabber peruses all the ingredients and starts pulling all the prep tables together to form one large surface. Throwing flour and prepping the crust, the base of the crust is getting bigger and bigger. It’s now six feet in diameter.

“Excellent.”

Grabber pre-heats the oven to four hundred and fifty degrees and hops back to the enormous crust.

“Perfect.”

Grabber’s cell phone rings and he reaches for it in his jean pocket. It’s not there. Then his back pocket, nothing.

“Looking for this?”

Grabber turns around. Hansel Bode is standing in the door way, holding Jack Grabber’s phone. Bode looks at the caller ID,

“Who’s Samir Godot?”

“How did you escape?”

Hansel Bode raises his gun at Grabber but not before Jack is able to fling the rolling pin across the kitchen, knocking the gun from Bode’s grasp. Bode charges at the six foot six man and leaps, but in one swift motion, Jack Grabber catches his enemy, flips him over his shoulder, setting him gently into the enormous pie crust. Grabber reaches across to the other side of the prep table, pulling the top of the pie dough across Bode like a flourery bed sheet and hurling the man pie into the oven with such force, the open oven door slams shut. Grabber jumps over the prep table, grabs two large metal pie spoons and bends them in a pretzel shape between the handle of the lower and upper ovens. Grabber flips the light switch on for inside the oven and watches Hansel Bode bake to death. Quickly the screams from inside the industrial sized oven fade into crackling pops of Grabber’s new yummy pastry. Grabber takes a deep whiff, flaring his nostrils above the oven door,

“Mmmmm. I wasn’t in the mood for Steak and Kidney pie, but I’m sure Bode wasn’t in the mood to chicken pot die today, either.”

Grabber looks around for someone to share his laughter with, but it was just him and the pie.

Ex-military policeman, Jack Grabber, had come to. It took him a moment to feel his bearings; on his fists he pushed himself up from a prone position. He had injured one his 400 bones on the fall…he didn’t know which one it was, or what it was called, he only knew it was more crooked than usual. He took two deep breaths and began gagging viciously, then with a dry heave, up came his pocket watch pistol, a gift from an old lover. He thought to himself, “I knew swallowing this would be a good idea.” At just 5 inches long, the snub nose was an easy swallow for Grabber. The brutish and now ferocious Grabber looked about, realizing he was in a shaft of some kind, he doesn’t know if he was pushed or if had fallen in. His weapons were stripped from him as well as his clothes, “I don’t ever remember being this nude,” he thought. He begun to assume he had been pushed, although he had read accounts of men’s clothes disintegrating into gaseous material from intense impacts, he had read it from a book he wrote…although he didn’t think this was the case here. He took notice of the walls and the height of the shaft he was in… “fools” he scream-whispered, “This will not hold Jack Grabber.” With that he climbed a foot and a half up and he was out of the dirty grave. It must have been the light, as the hole wasn’t nearly as deep as he thought it was. “Smoke and Mirrors” he chuckled, “Smoke and Mirrors.” But where the shit were his clothes? Then it hit him…he was beginning to remember – He had taken them off because it was so hot. And wait…he remembered even more – he had dug that hole himself. “Of course!” he screamed. He was digging a hole in the back yard of his boss’ home. He had agreed to do this for the man’s daughter’s new play set. Then they caught glances: She was watching him the entire time! Grabber bellows, “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! I can leave no evidence of this blunder” he said quietly “Just to be safe” he thought…

The barbed wire fence glowed a wavy red sweat from the heat and sizzled when touched with the damp morning grass. The heat grew hotter as Grabber opened up on it with his flame thrower until it was red hot and then walked right through it… just walked right through. It was unbelievable almost as much as it was believable. There he was, standing in front of the crowd of frightened and shocked little girls; they were newly freed sweatshop workers. Their recently fired boss was barely alive but standing on his feet while his flesh continued to melt off his bones from the heat bath Jack Grabber had just given him with his bathing gun. The burning man was trying to speak but he couldn’t enunciate while his lips were dripping. “I’ll do the talking now,” Grabber smugly growled, “You took advantage of these little girls… made them work 14 hour days for nothing… now they…”

“Not so fast, Jack.”

It was a voice from behind him. It was a voice that sang in the tune of Mustafa and he was not dead. Grabber turned slowly to see the only man who could almost physically scare him. Neither of them had a weapon. Mustafa had lost his during the earlier scuffle. Grabber had thrown his flame thrower high up into some trees after the rush of the barb wire stunt and the baptism by fire he’d given Mustafa’s second in command, Moussaka. Now they both stood, looking at each other, weaponless – or were they.

Mustafa began to lurch towards him, but Grabber surprised him by simply closing his eyes and not moving a muscle. Grabber thought of the women who had been in his life and he thought of those who hadn’t. Sweat developed upon his brown. Images of the little sweatshop girls flashed into his brain and it made him think of his daughter – she wasn’t real of course, Grabber had no daughter, but he had drawn pictures in crayon of what he thought she’s look like. Oddly enough, she was Korean in his mind. Mustafa was almost upon him, Grabber could smell the hummus on his breath. Grabber thought of Samir and the female orderly and just in time a nine inch blade he kept in his pants burst out of his capris and jumped into Mustafa’s thick, fatty, IPA’d filled gut. Grabber always kept it in his pants… the knife that is. The blade wasn’t particularly sharp and it didn’t need to be. He pulled himself from the big man’s gut, but left the knife in to make certain that he would be killed until he died from it.
“These girls don’t work for you anymore, Mustafa,” Grabber said with restrained fury. “They work for ME.”

A year later Jack Grabber was one of the richest men in Guatemala. A year later Mustafa and Moussaka were still dead.

Grabber woke, opened his eyes and looked at the alarm clock near the bed. Exactly 3:45 a.m. Exactly the time he’d set his mind’s alarm clock for. He got up from the bed carefully, using every well-toned muscle in his body to keep the bedsprings or the floor from making a sound. Once he was up he glanced at Lea, assuring himself she was still asleep. She was. He touched her long dark hair once, softly, and then crept to the kitchen. This wasn’t going to be easy. Jack Grabber didn’t usually drink, but he now poured himself a full glass of Goldschlager and tossed it back. “Here’s to memories,” he whispered, “or soon-to-be memories”. Lea died for him in that moment. She had to. It had turned out that Murlock, his arch-rival was still alive; still alive and onto his trail. He couldn’t afford to have a girlfriend now. And he couldn’t afford to have an ex-girlfriend either. He entered the bedroom. He didn’t look at Lea’s sleeping body. He didn’t think of her family or friends. He didn’t think of her dreams of being a high powered corporate consultant. He couldn’t think of those things now or he wouldn’t be able to go through with it. Instead he just saw a breathing mass on the bed. He pulled the roll of duct tape from where he’d hidden it under her nightstand. He pulled the series of injections he’d prepared for her from under his bed. He pulled the sledge hammer from behind her bookshelf, the welding iron from her walk in closet. He took all these things, kissed her once on the forehead, and set to work…

So this was the drug lord they called La Muchacha. A dark figure moving swiftly through the dewy green of the jungle. Jack Grabber tried to follow as quietly as possible, but the man was like an animal in its natural habitat while Grabber had to inch slowly to keep from being detected. Suddenly a snap. Grabber knew it was a branch under his foot. Hard to miss them when you have size 16 steel toed army boots on. La Muchacha turned. Grabber could see his eyes (lashes curled, lined with eye-liner) hone in on him. La Muchacha fired something but it wasn’t a normal gun. A small grenade landed nearby, chemicals hissing from its top in Grabber’s direction. Tear gas seeped into his eyes, blinding him. That’s when instinct kicked in. It had to if he was going to survive. He remembered what his mentor had taught him. If you can’t see, then rely on muscle memory. He lowered his gun to his crotch like so many times that he had peed in the dark. And since he was 16 he’d never missed the toilet, his target. And he didn’t miss now. As the bullets issued rapidly from his crotch he could hear his prey drop like a dead deer. Or Quail. After was done firing he shook the gun twice to clear the smoke. Shaking it three times would have been playing with it.

The man with the glasses and the safari helmet was still pushing his way through brush and bushes. Jack Grabber continued to follow him, but his patience was wearing out. Fast. Suddenly they stopped at a man-made clearing. He was looking out on a bull-dozed pit filled with dinosaur bones. The thing was as big as half a football field and what looked like hundreds of the biggest creatures known to man were continuing their final rest in it. “What is this?” Grabber asked. “Mass grave”, the safari man said… “Only one of it’s kind in the world.” Grabber paused… anticipating what was coming next. “Why did you bring me here?” The man wiped his brow, looked Grabber in the face, “Because it was one of the earliest male members of the Grabber clan who killed every single one of these beasts. This was before tools, before arrows, even before rocks were invented.” Grabber took a deep breath. A slow smile spread over his face. “I recognized the work” he said. He spat into the grave and walked away. There were more monsters out there to reckon with he guessed. And the Grabber clan wasn’t finished yet.

“That’s it. Keep the stock tight against your shoulder because this gun KICKS. Site your target. Now a lot of people say you should breathe in and then exhale gently while you pull the trigger, and maybe that’ll work for you, but not me.”

“What works for you?” asked the incongruously intense, yet still unchanged, pre-teen voice.

“Just yank away. It doesn’t matter. You’ve got the body and the muscle to hold it steady, that stock ain’t going anywhere.” And it was true, the kid had the body. Those Grabber genes. The little fuck was already nearing 6′0 and that was about 6 feet of young muscle and bone. Solid bone. Pretty much through the whole male side of the Grabber clan the bone was almost entirely hard with just the thinnest streak of marrow running through the very center. Just enough marrow to stay alive. Too much marrow for Jack Grabber. Too much marrow, also, for his little bastard of a son.

The child yanked the trigger repeatedly, putting his whole body into it each and every time, the muzzle jerking up and down, side to side, bullets unseen but nonetheless travelling through the muzzle flash, out into the world, and shattering their targets. They didn’t necessarily hit the targets where the little fucker had been aiming, but they hit alright. And those that didn’t hit something. And as Jack Grabber had said for years, “’something is a target, too”. Some people could use such logic as a kind of fuzzy math to obscure their lackluster shooting skills. Grabber said it because he meant it. Completely. That creeped some people out. Grabber had saved the lives of just about eighty percent of those people.

The kid looked up from from the smoking barrel. Smoke was even leaking from the firing mechanism and out of just about every seam of the old Viet Cong sniper rifle. Sniper rifles aren’t meant for rapid fire. At all.
Ahead of them was the target area. They crossed the street and walked toward it. Most of the diners were still on the ground, covering their heads. Almost every wine-glass on the outdoor cafe table was shattered. The wall looked like it had been painted in a combination of light brown and duck confit. One child, a little older than Grabber’s, was crying.

Just as Jack was about to make a remark he was seized from behind and dragged back about 20 yards by an absolute monster of a human being. His arms were pinned. They weren’t pinned physically, of course, no one could accomplish that. They were pinned in the sense that he was letting them be held down because a gun was being held to his head. A very large gun. The kind of gun that when you pulled the trigger didn’t just spout out a flag that said “bang.”

Grabber looked at his son. Saw hesitation in his eyes, and fear. He was still an untested warrior. By the time he turned 13 that fear would be gone. There was fear but there wasn’t much. He just needed encouraging. “Take him out”, Grabber said, feeling the grip holding him get tighter. The kid raised the gun and sited but didn’t shoot.

“I can’t, dad, I’m not accurate enough to hit him with you in the way.” Which was true. He wasn’t. At all. Didn’t need to be. He could sense the figure (undoubtedly an old enemy) behind him beginning to feel that he had won. Could sense the man thinking, beginning to phrase together his demands.

“Son,” Grabber said with all the intensity he could muster, “who said I was going to get out of the way… TAKE HIM”, he roared.

The little asshole didn’t need time to think or process it, he UNDERSTOOD. Yanking the trigger four times he saw his father’s body convulse at four points. The man behind staggered more, beginning slowly to fall to the ground. The son yanked the trigger nine more times for good measure until with the last shot the barrel burst into flames and fell from the stock. He spiked the barrel into the ground and ran over to his father.
The kid offered Grabber a hand to pull him up. Grabber pretended he needed the assistance. 13 holes smoked in his chest and thighs. His son took a now burnt out half cigarette from one of the scattered cafe ashtrays and lit it off the smoking hole closest Grabber’s heart. Grabber looked, adrenaline pumping, at a priest who had been sitting nearby. The priest looked back at him, stunned by what he had just seen. “Now there’s a stigmata,” Grabber said. “THERE is a stigmata,” both Grabber’s said in unison.

They began walking to the local whorehouse. It wasn’t far away.

It was a town he could understand because it understood him. It was Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was Jack Grabber. Most places nowadays have a problem with drifters. Not this place. If it didn’t exactly embrace them it didn’t look down on them either. Whereas in most places you can’t easily hitch a ride anymore, it was not so here. Drivers in the Southwest still tended to sympathize with the down-and-out and were willing to help a stranger in need. When their bodies were found a day later you couldn’t help but admire their big hearts. They still had faith in humanity.

“Faith”. Grabber said it out loud and smiled. The driver who had picked him up glanced over at him like he was crazy. And maybe he was. Maybe he was. Grabber loved the clean mountain air that streamed into the car through small slit where his window was rolled down a little. He wanted more of that air so he turned, grabbed the window at the top with both hands and forced it down further with all his might. “Jesus, man, use the goddamn switch”, the driver protested. “I don’t use machines”, Grabber said, pulling the cell phone from his pocket to see if he had missed the call. He hadn’t. Where was Samir Godot? They had agreed to meet today and he had never known Samir to go back on his word.

Samir was a hard man. Ex-Republican Guardsman from Iraq. Like Grabber, Godot had been run out of the military against his will. Grabber for issuing commands to an officer who outranked him. Godot for an alleged rape. He hadn’t done it, but unfortunately the massive amount of evidence presented at the trial convinced the jury of twelve peers. An ugly smile formed on Grabber’s lips. “I bet if there were thirteen he would have gotten off” he said out loud. The driver began to sweat. “STOP” he roared. The man jammed the brakes on before the sound had ceased echoing off the dashboard. His hands were trembling. “I MEANT STOP SWEATING” Grabber yelled. The guy started the car back up. “STOP”, Grabber shrieked again. “I can’t”, the driver feebly protested. “ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS HIT THE BRAKES”, Grabber yelled. “To stop sweating” the man asked with fear streaked throughout his faltering voice. “NO, I WANTED TO GET OUT THERE” Grabber yelled louder than anything the man had ever heard. He pulled over. Fast. Grabber got out. Before the man could take off, Grabber leaned back in the window. The man cringed. “Thanks for the ride,” Grabber said, “no one ever stop to pick me up. I can’t say that I blame them either. Not a great idea to take on a hitchhiker who is 6’5, 250 lbs, so it really makes things hard for me, as you can imagine. But you were different. It really means something to me. I don’t show my emotions on my sleeve, but… (and here his voice faltered touchingly) it’s little things like this that really touch my heart. Now it’s time to see some titties jiggle.” The man almost looked more scared now. “What?” he managed to say quietly. Grabber pointed back behind him to the dark little building. The neon sign said “Cheeks” and had a nude woman on it. He looked back to Grabber. “Uh, ok” he said, “no problem.” Grabber didn’t say a thing, just put two outstretched fingers so they pointed out from where his nipples were, nodded, and started walking toward the club.

The inside of Cheeks was small, darkly lit, and teaming with the smell of soured beer and low self-value. Girls born with little other than beauty milled around in little outfits picked out for them by fat, balding, old men. In a way they had chosen it but in a way they hadn’t. If they had been born to another family or in another town maybe they be a normal level of slutty. Instead they turned out a little more slutty than that. These girls gyrated and fellated for the basest of reasons. Money. While the luckier, classy girls fellated for a sense of acceptance, a nice new dress or part-ownership of a cute little Miata. A very pert little stripper walked by Grabber. He slapped her ass once, hard, and sarcastically said “oops, I don’t have any ones on me, I’ll have to remember to pay you later” with a wink. She feigned disgust but then smiled as she walked away. After all, he was 6’5. “Nice flapjacks” he said to another. Then he got her digits and headed over to the main room. Grabber was on his fifth personal table dance and had just slid an IOU under the girl’s (for she was but a child) strap when a huge commotion went up in the hallway that led to the shitters. A girl was yelling and screaming in real distress and pain. It was hard to tell what she was saying because the voice was so manic and anguished, so Grabber sat and listened intently until he was sure that she was being accosted by some hooligan who didn’t realize that he was currently in the last minute of his life.

“That’s it” Grabber yelled, picking up his table in one big hand and smashing it on the edge of the stage, knocking the dancer down. He stormed back toward the restrooms, grabbed the back of the attackers collar so hard that three buttons in the front of the shirt ripped off and his pants fly burst, and was turning him for the first (and probably fatal) right hook when he suddenly stopped in his tracks. An enormous smile spread across his face like a storm of happiness. SAMIR GODOT!

The woman was crying and trembling on the ground. “You old joker,” Grabber said, “I thought she really was in trouble! That someone was actually trying to rape her!” He laughed hard for what felt like ten minutes. He laughed hard for what also in fact actually was ten minutes. His friend Samir laughed with him with a wild look in his eyes. Something bulged in his pant-front that Grabber assumed was a gun though the placement was a bit odd. Grabber slapped him on the back as they both calmed down. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. Then, looking at the woman who still gazed up at Godot, her hands crossed defensively between her legs, he added “and you, my lady, are quite the actress” before taking Godot’s arm and leading him away. Godot turned once and told the girl “this isn’t over.” Grabber guessed it meant that they had another prank in store for him.