For the Sake of Tomorrow
Ryan Mitchel Collins
Chapter 1
Sir and Mickey got the raw opium a few weeks before, illegitimately of course. Mickey stole a car while he was lost and blacked out, walking home in his own neighborhood in the middle of the night. Instead of going home, he decided to drive to New Haven, going about 130mph to clear out a house one of his friends tipped him off about. From what I hear, it was like, “taking candy from a baby, Charlie.”
The new Range Rover parked out front with New Jersey plates didn’t even scare him; it’s what convinced him to go in. He made out with something like twenty pounds of the stuff. Sir drove Mickey up to the woods when he sobered up, and they torched the stolen car in a magnificent blaze, a sacrifice to the gods. To Mickey and Sir, it was all like some fairy tale. They’d finally found what they thought was the American dream, and justified their actions by saying, “we’ve paid our dues, and now it’s about time somebody pay ours.”
Sir introduced me to Mickey that spring after they’d gotten out of the penitentiary. From what I was told, Mickey’d spent more time in than out during his life. He was a wildcard, and to me that was exciting. He brought a certain buzz when he came around, the kind of excitement that allows you to escape the monotony of life. Mickey was a person who didn’t get the breaks in life. While the rest of us went to high school, he had a daughter and was hustling the streets by sixteen.
He was about five ten, and very well built due to all the extra time he had on his hands in prison. He looked like a kind of person you could trust and hold a good conversation with. Somewhere along the line, he’d found it paid to look like a police officer. People never suspected, or even doubted him. Mickey was also well read, and you could tell he was intelligent, but intelligent like a fox. I think The Art of War was his favorite book. Everything was a battle tactic to him. He had this certain sense for the streets you couldn’t teach anywhere—the way he carried himself—it was one of a kind. His past was a mystery to me. I never asked, he never told.
Sir was a family friend who’d done some time for a scam he’d made out big on for a little while—before it caught up with him. His family hired one of the best attorneys to get him off, and after the trial and his subsequent conviction, they cut him off.
His wife left him, taking the kid and dog, promptly moving back to her hometown with her mother in California. She was engaged within the month, to one of Sir’s childhood friends. She wrote him a letter while he was in jail to tell him as cold and calculated as she could.
I knew Sir well when we we’re in our early twenties, and when he got out of prison, he started coming around again with a giant beard and the new name, the Sir. I was introduced to a friend of his, Mickey. The rest as they say is history; a few jobs here and there, and we were a crew.
They would always make money, but would spend it twice as fast. I was the only one with established money from my family, and didn’t need small jobs for cash. Mickey’s trip to New Haven wasn’t a small job, and they came to me the next day. It all sounded too good to be true.
I found myself supplying cash for operations until they started moving it. Sir and Mickey told me they would repay every penny borrowed, and I believed them. The plan was suppose to go something like, they supplied the stolen product and I gave them customers. Profits were to be split in thirds.
Because they needed money, we found ourselves making connections with somebody I’d met in a bar named Henry. Apparently, I’d given him my number and the fake name Jimmy; the exchange of numbers happened somewhere in-between shooting my mouth off while I was drunk, telling him we had some great stuff—I even gave him some for free. He called me the next day, telling me he wanted to meet in a week, “outside of Brunswick.” He wanted two pounds, so this wasn’t a deal to overlook, plus he was paying more than we could ever dream of getting in Westover.
It didn’t take much for Sir and Mickey to follow my plan. At first they were cautious—not wanting to get popped selling to some random—but when they figured the total sum, they changed their minds immediately. They kept saying, “ Cash money, Charlie,” and by the end of the week, we were on our way to Brunswick.
Sir and Mickey argued the whole way about prices and logistics, like they always did. I stayed quiet smoking cigarettes, gazing at the sliver of a moon, crushing it with my fingers. We preferred to travel by dark, and Sir had a theory, “it was impossible to get made in the middle of the night if you were going fast enough.” It was a hundred miles to Brunswick from Westover, and my headache burned with intensity the more space we traversed from home.
In my pained boredom, I imagined we were bootleggers, like my forefathers before me. Crossing the border in the middle of the night, dogging government officials at every corner, with some incarnation of Sir always peeling around the corners of the generations. In my mind angry men with exotic firearms were chasing us. Every once and awhile, I’d have to throw a grenade at them when they got too close.
“That should hold them for a second I should think, Sir. I really let’m have it with that last one.” I looked back at the damage unleashed and loaded a fresh clip in the ak-47, making steady aim.
They chased us in Range Rovers; all of them had New Jersey plates. It looked like they we’re all dressed in Armani suits. Sir gleamed from ear to ear, he was proud of his Dodge he’d named Rambo. It was performing magnificently.
“We’ve got bogeys starboard, Sir. Slow Rambo down and let me get some. Charlie’s havin’ all the fun,” Mickey lampooned. He cocked back his Browning automatic rifle, ready to unleash hell.
Sir complied and slammed on the brakes; the jolt snapped me back to reality.
**********
“We’re here, sir,” the Sir glutted.
“He has that look on his face again, like he just got woke up from one of his naps. We’re here, Charlie, you know, the place?” Mickey gleamed with his ethereal smile, laughing in the darkness.
We waited at the tree line outside Brunswick. It was on the east side of town, where I used empty Jack Daniels bottles to shoot at after we’d finish them with a toast to our health. This time I wasn’t shooting the eagle, but I had it nearby.
“Call him for fucks sake, Charlie. Do we have to wait here all night? We need to be bar side, breaking out some of that sweet cash by midnight.”
“Sir, I’m gonna need you to calm yourself and let me call him, and may I have one of those por favor, Senor?” He playfully held out a cigarette and pulled it back as I grabbed for it, eventually handing it over. “Y un encendedor por favor, senor?” I lit the cigarette and picked up my phone, searching out Henry in my phonebook.
“Henry we made it. We’re waiting at that spot I told you about.”
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“Yeah, we’ve got it all.”
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“Twenty grand like I said earlier.”
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“Ok, cool, brother, see you in about twenty.”
We waited for about ten minutes before the Questions started in.
“Where is he?”
“If he’s not here, you should call him, shouldn’t you?”
“What if you told him the wrong place?”
With each question I assured them everything would be ok, and Henry was a stand-up guy. That was a joke considering I’d known Henry for all of five minutes in my life, but they didn’t know that, cash money. For all I knew he could have been J. Edgar Hoover, arisen from the dead, come to put our asses in the stern, and I was just too drunk at the time to realize it, or worse yet—too stupid to see it coming.
They smoked cigarettes one after another, exchanging nervous glances. “Charlie, if we get busted I’m going to kill you. You’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a pillow over your head when I get out of Jail. About 4AM, if you know what I mean?”
“Mickey, you just concentrate on not saying anything. I’ve got some business to do here.” We could see the approaching headlights and Sir shined the spotlight through the obscurity of night at the approaching truck, I recognized the passenger under the gleam as our rendezvous Henry.
He got out of his two-ton Chevy, his gleaming white cowboy hat and all. “Jimmy, glad to see you made it in one piece. Have to say, we had some doubts if you’d make it. I mean delivery service and all!”
We got out of the truck, rolling up the windows, all smiles and no worries; the thought of all that cash in our pockets forced a smile, even on my face. Henry seemed like the kind of guy who enjoyed a good old-fashioned icebreaker.
“That’s why they call me Jimmy on the spot, Henry. Always there if you need one, but rarely used.” I walked up to him and shook his hand, which he received whole-heartedly and warmly.
“You got some wet hands there, Jimmy—is everything all right? And who the hell are these guys?” Henry’s facial expression grew rapidly tighter as he scrutinized Mickey and Sir.
“Everything’s fine, Henry. This is, Mickey and Sir.”
“Mickey and Sir?”
“Yeah, hey listen, we’ve got to get back on the road here soon, we’ve got another appointment at midnight. So sorry to rush you or anything, but the quicker we could do this the better,” I say wiping sweaty hands on my pants going back to the truck to get the stuff. For some reason I’d forgotten my eagle in the truck, so I grabbed it casually while I was getting the briefcase, and I stuffed it down my pants slowly, not wanting to alarm Henry. The eagle’s so big, it’s obvious I have a gun, but in the middle of the night it’s hard to tell what the bulge was. I came back with the suitcase and set it on the hood of the truck, opening it up for him.
“Better than advertised. Jimmy, you really do know how to do business. This is some heavy stuff you know? Where’d you get it?” Henry’s eyes light up, smiling enigmatically at the splendor before him. He pawed at the stuff for a second, the excitement in his face never diminishing.
“We’ve got our sources Henry. It doesn’t matter; I mean they’re fighting a war to control the stuff in Afghanistan now. And by control it I mean mass produce. It should start flooding the streets anytime now. And by that I mean, in pharmaceutical form of course.” I laughed at the bullshit flowing out of my mouth as the heavy winter cold made my breath visible.
“Well, there’s a demand to say the least. My guy just lost a bunch and he needed some right away. I remembered you gave me your number and a sample that night, so I had to pull the trigger. It just worked out too perfect. Yeah it was just too perfect. You said twenty grand right?” Henry said, fingering the tip of his cowboy hat.
“Yeah. Like I said three times before, Henry.”
He went to his truck and produced two money stacks. Foolishly, I grabbed at them when he was walking to me, thinking I was the rightful owner.
“Hey, hey, what the hell do you think your doing, Jimmy? Did I say our business was concluded here? Did you think you could have this? God dam, Jimmy, you should know better than that.”
“Sorry, Henry.” I looked over at Mickey and Sir, who were both shaking their heads.
“I’ll let it slide this time kid, but next time, next time, I don’t know. Now lets get down to the business at hand shall we? So here we have the goods,” he looked at the briefcase and smiled, “and here we have my Colt python.”
“Really, sir?” the Sir said.
“Yeah what the hell, Henry? You pull that out to show off your heat or what? It’s pretty nice.”
“Shut up, Jimmy you little yuppie shithead. See we’re all gonna play a game called do what Henry says, so make like good little thieves and line up by my truck. Go on, move.” He shoved his menacing elephant killer at me, and I really didn’t think it was worth dying over, so I decided not to make this an old fashioned shootout. It seemed like my gun was going to fall out of my pants the whole time backing up to his truck.
“Really good, Charlie. You make a deal with a guy who holds us up? If he doesn’t kill you, I’m going to when this is all over.”
“Thanks, Mickey. You’re a real help.”
“Now what game did I say we we’re playing here? I said, we’re playing the let’s do what Henry says game, and I sure as hell didn’t say talk.” he said this, reinforcing his will by aiming at us with more intention. It was the first time a gun was pointed at me. There was no correct expression for the terror I feel, my heart is stricken with fear.
“There we go, that’s right. Now all three of you empty your pockets and throw everything in front of you, and do it all slowly.” All the extra loot comes out of our pockets—Henry watches in glee—and all the while I’m thinking of a plan.
“Now is that all the stuff you guys brought, or if I go and search your truck am I going to find more?” Henry pointed the gun more at me than anyone else when he asked the question. Naturally, I thought he was talking to me.
“That’s all of it Henry. We really didn’t bring any extra, planning to get robbed if you know what I mean?”
“You think you’re a tough guy then, Jimmy? Well why don’t you step right up and see what happens when you test the Henry?”
This guy doesn’t have the balls to shoot me is what I thought as I stood up. He simultaneously cold clocked me with the butt of his gun.
Out I went as my consciousness fluttered into a million pillows, all of them comforting. It was like floating off into the unknown of a baby’s first sleep, never knowing if there’s ever going to be an awakening, or what an awakening is. The melody of the angel’s chorus rhythmically hymned, and all was peaceful.
**********
“Shall we wake him, Sir?”
“Not yet, sir, he took a pretty good one on his temple.”
“That guy bashed Charlie so hard he fell on his ass after, Sir. How does that happen?”
“I was there, sir, and I still have no idea, but I remember you grabbing that rock while he was giving old Charlie the once over. And what I remember even more is the way you beautifully guided that rock into old boys dome piece. Very nice work, sir Mickey.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“Of course, sir.”
“You know what I will remember the most, Sir?”
“What’s that?”
“The way you knew how to tie those knots, so we could tie Mr. Henry to the hood of his truck. That was brilliant, Sir, just brilliant.”
“Oh thank you, but what I thought was brilliant was how you decided to strip him naked and—”
“Oh, Sir, he’s waking up!”
Looking up, I felt my head throbbing like a portal to hell. But what a surprise held like a splendor before my eyes. There, on the center console was the briefcase with the money stacked on top, and my gun used as a paperweight
Chapter II
The next few weeks were lived in ominous travel. It took a little time to recover from my concussion, but before long, I was ready to go. It wasn’t the first time I’d had a concussion, I use to get them all the time as a boxer. We didn’t want them to track us, so we stuck to a plan, and that of course was to go from town to town, never staying long enough to attract attention.
This of course was a problem, considering the attention my associates and I were prone to attracting. There were a few bumps along the road in Chicago and St. Louis. Nothing to the effect of drawing police attention to ourselves, but we weren’t worried about the police at this point, we just wanted to lose whoever it was Mickey stole from. I’m sure they’ve figured out who we are and where we lived, so going home at this point was out of the question.
Mickey getting into a scrap in downtown Chicago didn’t help us lay low any. He got it pretty good, and disappeared for a day before he showed back up at the hotel. We were about to leave him and split up his share, we thought he might have got picked up. I was both relieved and sad he showed back up.
He was all black and blue, and apparently it was a narrow escape with his life. He’d got the bright idea to stumble into a parking lot drunk, and do some cocaine on some random trucks tailgate. The owner of the truck and a few of his friends came across Mickey using their truck for lewd purposes, and they told him to scram. He acted like he was going to leave, telling them sorry and all, but right as he was making way, he turned around and lunged at the biggest guy with an overhand right. It missed completely. On the ground the whole group pounded him senseless.
After they’d set in on him for quite some time, they decided to choke him almost to the point of death. Mickey was pretty sure they would have killed him had it not been for some old man and women that came along and threatened to call the cops. They didn’t let go of him right away. It took three or four threats of the police getting called before they let him go.
And when they let him go, they told him to go home and not swing at them again. When they started to let him go, Mickey tried to swing at them again, missing. They all go one last shot on him before they finally let him go.“ Maybe even three rights to the jaw,” Mickey told us.
“Why’d you leave us, and why the hell would you swing at him then?”
“They wouldn’t of let me go, Charlie. They would have chased me down and beat me from behind like a dog. It was better to try and knock the leader out. I mean why didn’t you use the gun when you had it on you the whole time? John could of shot us right there and then if he wanted to.” he said, applying ice to his wounds.
“That was a different situation, Mickey. Tell him, Sir.”
“I’m gonna have to go with Mickey on this one, Charlie. I still don’t understand why you didn’t use the gun on John when you had the chance. He could have killed us all,” he said looking at Mickey’s wounds closer. “But then again, I have no idea why you would of taken a swing at them if they were letting you go. You both equal out on this one.”
“I don’t know what any of us have been thinking, running around scared like this. John is taken care of and who cares who else they might have, it makes no difference. We can deal with anyone they have. You and Sir, both of you dragged me away from my daughter. I’ve never been away from home before. Sorry if I let the pressure get the best of me, you both know I’m not normally like this. Charlie, I’m blamin’ you for everything. This is your fault.”
“Snuff it, Mickey. None of us would have any money if it weren’t for me. You just try and stay out of trouble and quit getting so soused. Every time you get that drunk, you end up pulling some stunt.”
“Oh it’s not my fault, Charlie. You’re the one—“
“Just stay off the booze until we figure this all out.”
After our confrontation, Mickey laid off the liquor. But not before he got drunk and told us the rest of the story—how he jumped to life when he heard the sirens getting close; told us how he crawled into and alley and laid unconscious for the better part of a day. It wasn’t he was some raging drunk or anything like that. He just had a problem being away from the only home he ever knew. I tried to think about how it would be if I’d never been anywhere besides the town and state I was born in, but the thought was too constricting. This was all new territory for him. Every hill we crossed was a place he’d never been before, a shroud revealed from the hidden corners of his mind. The colors were being filled in on the once gray area of the map.
We were going to Mexico eventually, via California of course. Mickey and I’d never been, and of course Sir’s stories about the majestic beauty of the place enchanted us. You could really see the gleam in Mickey’s eyes whenever Sir mentioned the word California. His eyes lit up probably even more than his daughters on Christmas morning.
We had a whole plan, and most of it was my plan. We were going to go lay low in Mexico until things blew over, and of course we would monitor the situation from afar. We would go through all the significant cities on our way to Los Angeles before we dipped out south of the border. We would make it a vacation of sorts. None of us ever really had the opportunity to go across the country like this, and we were going to take advantage of the situation. Mickey would make plans and have ideas on where we should go along the way, but all along, Sir and I eyed each other—knowing we couldn’t let him make any plans. Mickey was like a kid again and he showed it to a hitchhiker we picked up outside of St. Louis.
It was Mickey’s idea to pick him up on the pretence he’d never picked up a hitchhiker. Sir and I didn’t see this as too big of a problem, and we thought nothing of it as we pulled to the side of the rode and welcomed this kid into Rambo.
“We’re going to the Grand Canyon, and the giant crater in Arizona. Oh, and the Hoover dam. We’re going all the way to California. Have you ever been there, Billy?”
“No, not ever.” the hitchhiker Billy said, he looked scared.
“Well you should come with us,” Mickey said to the complete shock of Sir and I. “I’m sure you would have a good time with us, we might even need some help with a few things.”
“Well, Mickey. You said your name was Mickey right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, Mickey the thing is. You see the thing is, I would love to come with you to see all these great spots and do all these exciting things, but I have a family I’m trying to get back to outside of St. Louis.”
“Do you have any kids, Billy?” Mickey’s eyes immersed on Billy. “I have a daughter.”
“Yeah, I have three.”
“What’re their names?” he said enamored on the point.
“I don’t know man.”
“You don’t know the names of your own kids? You should be ashamed of yourself, Billy.” The hitchhiker fidgeted after this damnation.
“Give the guy a break, Mickey.” I said trying to ease the tension, “I can’t stand when you jaw at people all the time, it gives me a headache.”
“No it’s ok,” Billy said. “The reason why I don’t know all their names is because I haven’t met the youngest born. One things for sure, and I think you were starting to catch onto it there—I’m not the worlds best father.”
Billy started to cry a little from the looks of it and Mickey affectionately responded, “me too.” They almost hugged for a second, but it never really happened and they both seemed to turn away, and there was a long awkward silence in the truck.
Mickey and the hitchhiker were sitting in the back and they became less visible as darkness slowly crept in on the fading evening. Lights of the highway and the occasional passing of another car made them visible in the back again. You could hear them talking shattered words over the music ever so often, but for the most part I started to slip into a beautiful dream in the passenger seat, but not before I heard Billy offer Mickey a dose. I was too tired to stop him and I thought to myself, “at least he’s not drinking.”
I’ve never really been able to fall completely asleep in a car, but the thing I’ve been able to do is see my life from strange perspectives in a halfway state between sleep. The problem I’ve always had is I’m too attached to the thought of who I am, and it’s hard to see myself from different angles. I want to change all the obvious problems, but can’t. It’s not really a sleep, but the mere impression of sleep that sometimes feels the same, but there’s always a foggy layer coating consciousness when you wake.
And I take my waking slow. Sometimes it takes some time to completely wake up, but when you do—it hits you slow and hard, always making way to reality. And Billy talked to Mickey in my waking with mad wild eyes. Looking as if his life depended on whatever was to take place in-between his there and now.
It didn’t matter really, they were gone by that point and there was no bringing them back. Time had to do its trick before they would come back down. They’re talk was rampart and wild; they would always lose focus before they could finish their topic of conversation. They would change topics without finishing points, or making one for that matter. Billy kept asking Mickey what had happened to his face and why he was so banged up, but Mickey would respond time after time, that he’d, “cut himself shaving.” Sir and I would wince every time he committed this blatant lie. We wouldn’t ruin the fun of watching Billy’s response, and in the short time I paid attention to him and his habits, I could tell he was a very gullible man, and had no idea the sort of crowd he’d so suddenly surrounded himself with. I wanted to tell him this company would lead to his demise, but I didn’t have the heart.
We could see St. Louis come up in the distance and I was excited to see the gateway to the west. It stood before me like I’d seen it in the pictures, but it was real before me, defying nature and all things east of it. We were entering into the great American west and there was nothing stopping us except our own ignorance. And the Billy, Mickey tandem, showed plenty of it. At some point I heard Mickey say he was, “cold,” asking Billy if he had a sweater in that, “great big backpack of his.” Billy being seemingly generous man—produced a hardy looking plaid. Mickey gawked at the striped chaos, but gladly put it on, marveling at the simple checkered patter all the while. He had lost his mind in all the confusion and travel. He couldn’t handle the pressure that comes with this kind of lifestyle, but the worst of all he had no idea he couldn’t handle it.
All these things flooded my mind as Sir pulled into an affordable looking hotel. It was called the Golden Nugget. The clerk inside seemed reasonable enough and he gave us the suite after I talked to him about college a little bit. He was a sophomore and working at the hotel during the nights, so he could, “do his homework.” It seemed innocent enough to me. But I could tell he was hiding something in his look. Perhaps it was the fact I was hiding something from him in my briefcase, but our conversation was somewhat edgy amongst the placation. I thanked him for his generosity and brought my suitcase up to the room.
The suite was something after a miner’s fantasy. Maybe it was the golden hue immersing the entirety of the room; or maybe it was the gold satin sheets draping over the edges of the bed. It was decent enough, I just hoped we wouldn’t shatter that poor clerks reputation for giving the suite at such a low price to the likes of our company.
I called the Sir, informing him what room to come to, and before long he emerged through the door. Mickey and then Billy followed him, but it took them sometime to make their ways through the half-cocked door. The room mesmerized them, and you could tell by the sort of shimmy they did after looking around. It must’ve been the golden hue, but who really knows what they were thinking. They were past the point of no return, and there was no turning back for them now. They reminded me of how I was in high school.
Sir and I took to our sleeping positions and began to wind down, but this wasn’t the time for Mickey to unwind. He kept saying, “I have to get out of here, the walls are closing in. Can you see that? They’re breathing at me.” The way he repeated those words with horror, convinced me he was truly losing his mind on the road.
“I’ve gotta go on a walk. I can’t stay in here another minute. Billy, this is your city isn’t it?”
“Well not really Mickey, I told you that I was from just outside of St. Louis. I’m from St. Peters, Missouri.”
“That’s nice. Me too.”
“No you’re not, Mickey,” Sir and I both blurted out.
“We’re all from just outside St. Louis don’t you think?”
“No, Mickey.”
“Whatever, Billy, let’s go on a walk around your city.”
“I told you, Mickey. Oh what the hell? Let’s go.”
And like that, they were both gone out into the bright world they sought out so much. We comfortably slipped into a coma of sorts, and slept hard, undisturbed. We began to worry again when Mickey didn’t show up at check out time, so we negotiated with the clerk to extend our stay one more evening. He gave us an even better bargain, considering we hadn’t burnt the hotel down, and there was minimal noise reported coming from our room.
We sat and waited. We waited out the time by making plans and dreams out west for ourselves, Sir and I. Mexico seemed the best idea on account of the drug wars going on. Sir thought it would be easy to slip in unnoticed with the raw opium, considering how nobody cared what was going into Mexico, only what was coming out. The idea seemed crazy to me, but at this point, I wasn’t going back home.
When I thought of home, the only thing I could feel was a deep nostalgia, but a sick nostalgia. The thought of home was like a sickness eating at my flesh, beckoning me into the eternal grave. The thought of my sticks of furniture being given away by my asshole landlord for a reasonable price brought me some comfort. He would try to find me and persecute me to the full extent of the law, but there was no finding me, he was never going to find me. They could have my lifetime supply of nothing, and all those things disgusted me now. It’s hard to believe I was so attached to all those meaningless objects. There was no going home. The road to Mexico was my only home at the moment, and that was all the home I needed. No possessions and no attachments.
We talked about how we were going to split the money and leave Mickey if he fucked up to bad. We loved the guy with all our heart, but he was a liability to both of our lives.
The hours passed one after another with the ticking of the old clock in our room. We played cards and talked about more schemes. How we were going to spend the money and all that, but too much of that made my head hurt and I fell asleep to Sir still talking.
As in, tighten up your prose. Be ruthless and cut out anything and everything that slows the story down. Dialogue, description, anything excess, cut, cut, cut.