Shootout at the K-Y Corral

by Erik Lundy

….. “WHERE DO YOU KEEP THE BUTT PLUGS?!?”
….. Denny dropped the dry, piss poor excuse for a drumstick when he locked eyes with the meth-mouthed lot lizard who trolled the truckstop his side of the interstate. He had so many plans dancing behind his crow’s feet and bare forehead, gout riddled feet propped up on Pleasure’s counter, he never heard the motion sensor. Going deaf.
….. Pleasure’s sat off a 70 east exit halfway between KC and Jeff City. Folks rolling past assumed the sign’s apostrophe was a typo, but Sam Pleasure himself founded the first adult novelty outlet in the county. Mr. Pleasure took a trip to the correctional facility; spent three months as Denny’s cellmate for escorting a fourteen year old girl to the shop basement to have intercourse with twenty men at a shot. Denny couldn’t grasp the allure. Ever since his twelfth birthday, when a twenty-three year old cornered him in The Old Man’s office, Denny’d had a taste for grownass women. Besides, who the hell’s got nineteen friends that’ll help you fuck an eighth grader?
….. When that last arrest left his family business by Kansas City shut down by the sheriff, and as a parolee with a forty plus year gap in legal employment history, Denny bought the scandalized building on the cheap to spend his days being his own boss and nights sleeping in the upstairs bachelor unit.
….. Despite being an old dog, he’d learned volumes. Like, they say you couldn’t judge a book by its cover, but Denny was pretty sure you could judge a movie. Especially if that movie was Anal Invasion 42.
….. “Maryanne, whatta you need with a buttplug?”
….. “Lost my bathtub stopper. The fuck you think I’m gonna do?” Maryanne clacked teeth that could be counted on a hand without a thumb. An ass two drinks away from an awkward breakfast, but a voice as sexy as a rape whistle and a face to match. “Figured you’d be focusing more on customer service with that new place opening across the highway.”

***

….. “Hey! Hey! Dalton I’m doing an impression! Guess who!”
….. Dalton’s lower lumbar strained with the heft of the cardboard box. Glanced over a wide shoulder to find his younger brother, Dale, faux popsicle-licking a genuine replica of Lexington Steele’s manly bits. Ebony veins like Mr. Olympia. Size of a T-ball bat.
….. BZZZZZZZZ….
….. Wasting batteries.
….. “Guess !” Dale waited for his brother response.
….. Nothing.
….. “I’m your mom!”
….. Dalton’s left cowboy boot glanced off Dale’s shin. “That’s your momma, too, you dumb prick!”
….. Dale wasn’t a bad kid. Sure he’d been in and out of the pen since he was thirteen and got out last month in time for his first legal drink. But he wouldn’t steal from family. Or at least had the common courtesy to not get caught doing it. So Dalton dropped his collection route that NFL season and gambled on going into business with the boy, far from temptations of East St. Louis.
….. They signed the deed on Thursday and by Friday transformed it into a Noah’s Ark of debauchery — two of anything to make a trucker stain a steering wheel. Good traffic, and their only competition, an ex-con across the road, had more hair on his upper lip than his head.
….. The one who just walked in, coat hugging old bones, despite the triple digits outside.
….. “Help you, mister?” Dalton didn’t tip his hand. Wanted that next van into the lot to surprise the prick.
….. “Eh, just browsing.” Denny limped down the first aisle, then the second. Almost fell backwards when he got a peek at the crotch of a big titted blonde standee on aisle three.
….. Dale wagged Lexington Steele. “If that’s what ya like… Cut you a deal, but no test rides.”
….. Denny gave his first sermon to The Old Man’s congregation when he was eight and still thought people gave a shit about words coming from a pulpit. For the first time in his life, he stuttered. “No, I, no, wrong turn.”
….. When van wheels crunched parking lot gravel, Dalton and Dale stood tall, gave the old man a peek at the hours of gym and yard time behind their smiles. “Nosir, Denny, I think you’re a man at the exact right place at the exact right time.”
….. Their biggest assets click clacked their high heels through the door. Three teased blonde hairdos perched atop six d-cups. Ages couldn’t have totaled the speed limit, even before they raised it to sixty-five. Wafting hairspray, bubble gum and tragic upbringings.
….. “Girls, we’d like you to meet what is soon to be our former competitor.”

***

….. Denny swallowed half a cup of tepid coffee and the last bite of half-assed truck stop fried chicken like an aspirin. He’d use the recipe he stole from Gus’s old restaurant to cook his own if the gas company deposit didn’t keep his stove cold. Almost as disturbing as the fried chicken was the fact that these cocksuckers were stealing his westbound folks. How the fuck was his DVD and magazine aisle going to compete with the kind of live women eastbound customers didn’t know existed without staples across their tits. Probably community college girls from Joplin or high school girls sprinting from touchy-feely step-dads. Pretty now, but a couple years of biker crank’d turn them middle aged before they outgrew a fake ID.
….. He stared past the rig of the only two customer’s he’d had all day, a couple tag team drivers watching DVD’s back in the stroke tanks, at the party across the exit. Heard the goddamn music over the interstate’s roar. This morning, he hadn’t thought he could hate The Eagles an ounce more.
….. The motion sensor buzzed. Papa John’s kid’s acne at the door. Denny hopped the counter and blocked the way. “Ain’t old enough to be in this place.” Scanned his brain for a pizza order. Panicked, recalling The Old Man’s Alzheimer’s. Figured if he could remember that much, he was in working order.
….. His eyes were shit without the bifocals, but he made out a body in the parking lot across the way waving a foam “We’re #1” finger.
….. State trooper’s cruiser slowed, peeked at Denny and the pizza boy on legal terra firma. Hit the gas.
….. Denny paid up for the pies, and the breadsticks, and the wings, and the cinnamon bread, and the extra banana peppers, too. Looked at his empty wallet twice more for a tip, like money grew there. Hell, it used to. “Don’t come back ’til you can vote.”
….. Stomped back inside with the boxes, imagining the TV: “State Patrol Finds Underaged Pizza Driver in Smut Shop. News at eleven, Tom.” Gulped a breadstick. No, he couldn’t use a gun for this one. Felony parole turned that into a twenty dollar solution to a nickel problem.
….. That’s when he heard moans from the back.
….. Found an extra pair of cowboy boots under a stall door.

***

….. “Did you see the look on that submitch’s face?” Dale giggled until he almost dropped the binoculars. Did drop them when Dalton’s open palm landed against his rat tail.
….. “Hey, those were my good ones for spotting deer!” Dale rubbed the back of his head. Didn’t have to for long, as Suzie, the youngest blonde, planted a breast on each side of his thick neck, fingering scalp.
….. “Well, genius, that pizza boy trick of yours didn’t work, and now that old fucker knows we’re gunning for him.” Dalton rubbed the legs of blondes number two and three. Still didn’t know their names. Pretty enough, in a Cracker Barrel hot way, but if he was going to camp out in the country, he needed to find a church girl with loose morals and a big cookbook.
….. “He knew that when he walked into the shop. Just have to be more imaginative.”
….. Suzie flipped bangs. “Maybe something involving arsenic. My uncle’s good at burning houses.”
….. Before Dalton could correct public school vocabulary, POP! POP! POP!
….. Shots echoed.
….. Dalton ducked behind the counter, ceiling tile dusting eyelids. Six shooters. No shells hitting tile.
….. Dale got the balls up to peek over the counter as a twelve gauge turned the smutrack over his head into a snowstorm of tits and ass.

***

….. Denny remembered a phrase the old man used to say. “Never hesitate to exert your will upon others.” Opened the big rig’s glove box. Found the first set of logs. Felt underneath the driver’s seat and found the second set of logs, a set a D.O.T officer would find enthralling toilet reading.
….. So he didn’t have to do much persuading when he kicked the stall door open and found Jake hip deep inside Billy Joe. Truth be told, it wasn’t the first time Jake and Billy Joe’d been blackmailed. In fact, it’d happened so many times they considered it overhead.
….. They got the idea quick. Walk across the street. Fire a couple shots into a ceiling. Nobody inside wanted to be a witness. Owners didn’t want to draw legal attention to stains on dancers’ sequins or white trails under their noses.
….. Hit the place twice in one week. A third on the eighth day for good luck.

***

….. Suzie sucked a rail up her nose half the size of Colombia. Dalton figured she had plenty of room to store it behind those eyes. So did his brother, or else he would’ve listened about dope in the business place of a recently released felon.
….. Dale paced so fast Dalton knew Suzie was the sharing type. “We call Bedford, he sends down a case of them Israeli pistols like Snake Eyes from the G.I. Joe used, cut them fuckers in half before the door opens.”
….. Dalton had more grey matter between his ears. Didn’t get to his age with only one trip upstate by pulling triggers. “Let ’em come. I got a better idea.”

***

….. Billy Joe dumped a sea of quarter-sized tokens onto Denny’s counter. “They take the cash in, put it in a time safe. Hand these out to the dancers for credits. Dancers turn ’em in at the end of every two weeks. Keeps girls on the company store, keeps us out of the company cashbox.”
….. Jake hugged his partner. “Look Mr. Mustache, I think we got this debt pretty much square.”
….. “You boys up for running that rig on a D.O.T. up and up gig?” Gears cranked behind Denny’s caterpillar eyebrows for his impending retirement from the smut business.
….. Jake and Billy Joe shrugged. “Always happy to do business with a friend.”
….. Denny stroked his mustache, wiggled it back and forth. Thought about tokens. Great idea. That is if cousin Jimmy didn’t run every arcade between Columbia and Tulsa.

***

….. The two blondes Dalton still didn’t know the names of stood hands out, waiting for cash. He looked at the empty time safe again. He’d had to wade through truckers just to get to the pisser.
….. “How?” He counted in his head. Thousands of dollars. The kind of thousands starting with teens and twenties.
….. “I’ll tell you how.” Dale snorted, turned red eyes on the girls. “Somebody’s got potbellied eyes, taking cash for dances instead of tokens.”
….. Dalton bumped Dale’s chest. Not as much bulk. But fifteen years of picking up bet money taught him the best place to jab a fist. “That, or going up a nose.”
….. Dale wiped his own nostrils, then saw a snowy outline on his desk the size of a baggie. “Where’s Suzie?”
….. “Just saw her walking across to the truck stop. Probably getting a cup of coffee.” Blonde number two eating an eyeful of ground.
….. “Oh, I bet she is. Maybe she’s moonlighting, selling something more concentrated than coffee.”
….. Dale was out the door.

***

….. Suzie smiled from the other side of the Pleasure’s counter. “Be nice to work for a man instead of a little boy.”
….. Denny leaned back in his chair, ecstatic to see the first ship jumper. His salvos were sinking it. Water in the hull, masts coming down. Captains ready to hop in the life boat or go down with the vessel. Didn’t make a lick of difference to him.
….. Speaking of licking, the girl was getting down to business on a popsicle. Suzie’s tits might have been fake. But the fog they made when she dropped them on that glass countertop wasn’t. Denny’d seen tits before. Often as a prospective employer. But not since he’d needed a little blue pill for such interviews.
….. The excitement of war…
….. Back in The Life…
….. No pill required.

***

….. Dale dodged traffic, feet hitting the truck stop lot before Dalton’s even touched the yellow center line.
….. Dalton yelled, “You give her the combination to the time safe?”
….. “Just to make some change, man.” Dale gritted teeth as Dalton met him underneath gas pump neon.
….. “Change for?”
….. “For pizza and shit. Besides, she wouldn’t do that, she loved me.”
….. By now, the two blondes had caught up, and a laugh fell out of one’s mouth before she could catch it.
….. “Oh, we got someone here thinks I’m a comedian.” Dale stood over her, hand back.
….. “Dale, don’t care what fried cough medicine’s running that brain of yours, but you don’t touch the girls.”
….. “Dalton, you don’t have to be nice to them. They’re whores!”
….. Just as the first scratch marks, tiny rivulets of crimson appeared on Dale’s face courtesy of Blonde Number One’s manicure, they discovered the source of their cash flow hemorrhage.
….. Mary Ann, the meth-mouthed lot lizard who was always slumming across the street. Her remaining teeth beaming at the moon. “Getcher tokens! Free tokens! Tokens for titties!”
….. Rocking on heels, giggling, filling the hands of a trucker with lead slugs and pointing to the boys’ place of business.

***

….. Denny hadn’t had a cigarette in going on fifteen years. But goddamn if he didn’t agree that Mr. Joe Camel’s wasn’t sweet.
….. He flipped the cherry into the street, saw a yellow flare from the truckstop parking lot. Didn’t hear the pistol’s pops until the picture window next to him fell in a heap of icy razors on the sidewalk.
….. Denny shoved the girl inside and behind the counter.
….. A tornado of lube raining.
….. Cherry. Lemon. Cordite clouds of Jolly Ranchers.
….. A squall of chewed rubber genitals, male and female, buttplugs, ball gags.
….. Lead glancing off handcuffs, burning lycra, raping already gaping pink holes in magazines.
….. Drumming drywall.
….. Brass casings cymbal beating on tile.
….. Denny reassessed his own ban on firearms ownership.
….. Then saw the whip.

***

….. Dalton wondered how small the Uzi was for his brother to carry it unnoticed. But, no matter the size, it was mowing like a Deere. Dale stopped long enough to drop one clip and insert another as they hopped through the smoky picture window and into Pleasures’s.
….. Dalton put a hand on his younger brother’s heaving shoulder. “It’s okay. We gotta get you out of here and back to momma-”
….. The first pop of leather snapped out Dalton’s left eye. Second split his lower lip in half. When he finally saw the old man flanking their side, his Adam’s apple exploded.
….. Gagged, spit crimson and pointed a finger that fractured like a grade school pencil next.

***

….. Dale leaped on his bleeding brother as girls screamed in the street.
….. Leather rent fabric and skin from Dale’s shoulder.
….. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the old man bringing the whip down.
….. Dodged to the left, bits of hair and scalp floating in the air as his foot connected with Denny’s recently emptied balls.

***

….. The tissues were meant for customers heading to the “theatre.” But, currently Dalton held a box apeice against his eye and mouth. Barely seeing Dale’s Uzi deep throating Denny.
….. Denny choked, lips chapping against the fiery barrel, smoke the color of his hair pouring from his nose.
….. Suzie’s neck lodged between the split glass of a display case, spitting copper syrup across tile.
….. Denny couldn’t help but cackle. He preferred domestic weapons in his day, but in the early 80’s they got a sample batch from the Hassids. Nine millimeter chainsaws. But awful bad for jamming, ring on top sticking halfway between the front and back sights.
….. Like this one’s.
….. Easy fix to pull it back and clear the chamber.
….. Unless your eardrums are exploding from an oncoming eighteen wheeler’s air horn and screeching brakes, full load of fireworks, headlights blinding you.

***

….. Jake rolled from the cab into the open door, Zippo on a Roman Candle’s wick.
….. The first burst hit the tissues in Dalton’s mouth, sending him outside for air and onto, then over, the hood of an oncoming Impala. Then under Bronco wheels.
….. The second turned Dale’s chest hair into an inferno.
….. Denny returned the ball kicking favor, sending the boy onto a shelf of perfume.
….. Dale smelled hair ablaze before he felt flames tickle the backs of his ears.
….. Ran like The Human Torch, feet skittering across broken glass.
….. Dale saw his boots raise above his eyes, heard a snap as the base of his skull hit the floor.
….. And his world went black.

***

….. The state trooper testified that, in his professional opinion, Billy Joe and Jake acted in defense of their employer during a robbery. And while a geriatric ex-con could indeed not put hands on a firearm, the books said jack shit about whips or hiring a couple fellas to haul in a truck load of fireworks to open a Fourth of July stand.
….. …..The prosecutor, however, felt an urge to mention, in front of twelve parents, the perils of adult novelty stores containing the corpses of under-aged females. Especially one containing a mouthful of the aforementioned ex-con’s DNA.
….. Denny lived most of his life without regrets. Never thought he’d regret his last blowjob. At least the last one he’d ever receive. But now, as he lay in a bunk, cell mate’s snoring staving off his own sleep, he regretted never standing up to The Old Man and going to college in Tallahassee. Regretted cheating on the first wife with the second. But most of all, as a convict old enough to never walk streets again, regretted never paying that gas deposit and getting one last pan of decent fried chicken.

####

Erik lundy is a cartoonist, standup, writer, chicken strip consumer. Art Director for Plots With Guns. And is currently writing about himself uncomfortably in the third person.

Erik produced animation for Wolverine and the X-men, the guys from
Jackass and worked alongside folks from The Simpsons and Ren and Stimpy. As a standup, he’s performed at the Hollywood Improv, Upright Citizen’s Brigade, Laugh Factory, and various bowling alleys. He was once described by a radio DJ as the neurotic bastard child of Woody Allen and Mark Twain.