"How can you get tired of the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band?"
I tuned out as the debate started up again. I grabbed a tumbleweed branch and flicked the used rubber off James. Someone had to watch out for the dork. Annabelle said something about Robin Trower. I glanced her way.
"Trower? Really? I would have taken you more for the Bay City Rollers type."
She curled up her lip and sneered at me.
"Dude, aren't you gonna chime in and tell us the Stones are the best?" Hawks pushed his lips out and pranced around, flapping his arms like chicken wings in his impersonation of Jagger.
"Hey, I got me some satisfaction," Sarah said.
Tommy leaned into the car and flicked off the stereo. "Screw the music. Let's go shoot something. Get us a couple rattlers. I need a new belt."
Annabelle perked up. "You got a gun?"
"Right over here." Tommy walked to his Z, Annabelle in tow.
"That's all we need," Tory harrumphed. "Let's get out of here."
"Be there in a minute." I wanted to see Tommy's gun. Maybe he'd let me shoot a snake or a jackrabbit.
Three a.m. The party had dwindled to the hardcore, plus James. Roxie and Tory sat in the car and rifled through tapes to find something we hadn't already heard twice tonight. Annabelle oohed and aahed over Tommy's Colt 45. Andy searched for some chips or cheese puffs or something. Hawks, Sarah, and I leaned on Roxie's hood with nothing to say to each other.
"Here," Andy yelled. "There's some Lay's in my van."
"You already got a lay in your van," Sarah yelled back.
"Nobody can eat just one!"
"Promise?" Sarah giggled and joined Andy in the van again. They didn't even bother to shut the double doors in the back this time. I almost preferred Tory's retching to Sarah's moaning.
James rolled to his other side.
Peter Frampton's mechanically distorted voice surged through the speakers.
"No!" Tommy screamed. "No way! I do not feel like you do."
The music ended abruptly as two quick explosions reported across the silent desert, the echoes rolling in waves like thunder. Annabelle screamed. Roxie jumped out of her car and raced to the back, Hawks and I right behind her. Sarah and Andy ran over to see what the commotion was all about, Sarah while she tugged on her jeans and tried to zip up. Andy didn't bother with his pants. His renewed vigor pointed the way.
Tommy, gun in hand, admired the results of his handiwork. In Roxie's open trunk, two speakers silenced with fist-sized holes ripped through the mesh covering. The fumes of spent powder burned my nose.
"I will not listen to that crap."
"You owe me new speakers, you ass!" Roxie walked over kicked Tommy in the nuts. Really hard.
I had to hand it to her. I wouldn't kick a man in the sack while he held a pistol. He never saw it coming. He doubled over in pain and laughter, eventually dropped to his knees and set the gun down so he could rub his balls.
Roxie leaned down, as if to whisper, and screamed right in his ear, "You owe me!"
Tommy fell over to his side, still holding his crotch, still laughing. "I know, I know. I'll replace 'em. But that was too funny."
"It's not funny, asshole!"
"Don't you feel … like I do?" Tommy sang in his best impersonation of a talk-box guitar.
Roxie kicked him in the seat of the pants. She looked around at the rest of us. Her gaze paused at Andy's swiftly dwindling fervor before she scanned the crowd around her. James grunted somewhere in the background, then silence hung over us again, a dry, dusty silence that smelled like firecrackers, air that vibrated with the transformers overhead.
"Where's Tory?" Roxie asked.
We all looked from one to the other, like she would materialize in the group if we just squinted a little harder.
"Tory?" Roxie ran to the passenger door and yanked it open.
Tory sat there, relaxed, leaned back against the headrest.
"Tory?" Roxie shook her shoulder.
Tory spilled out to the ground. Blood seeped from the back of her head into the dirt.
Roxie screamed and screamed and screamed. Sarah and Annabelle joined in before they even saw why Roxie screamed.
I rode in the back of Andy's van, holding Tory's head on my lap as he whipped across the desert track and onto the asphalt. Annabelle sat in the front seat, turned around to keep a watchful eye on us, like somehow that would help.
"Don't you die, Tory. Don't you dare die on us." Annabelle repeated her orders over and over, like a mantra or perhaps a prayer of sorts.
Roxie and Sarah followed us to the hospital in the car with the blown speakers. Tommy and Hawks left, as we'd all agreed in a quick vote, headed to Hawks' apartment to get rid of the gun and bleach any powder residue off Tommy's hands. We'd all just been out partying in the desert when a gunshot echoed from the distance and Tory fell over. That was our story. No need in one of our friends going to prison for an accident. Stupidity, perhaps, but still an accident.
I cradled Tory's head, keeping the pressure on the wound, and brushed her hair from her face. The blood seeped between my fingers and soaked my pants and the blanket I sat on. The blanket Andy and Sarah had just used for better purposes.
I should have defended my friends better. We should have left when Tory first suggested it.
Shit. "James! We left James!"
"He's fine," Annabelle assured me. "His car's there."
Andy helped me carry Tory toward the emergency room doors, which whooshed open as a team of nurses rushed a stretcher toward us.
"Are you hurt?" one asked me. She stared at my crotch and stomach. It looked like I'd been gut-shot.
Our story fell apart pretty quickly when the cops showed up and Annabelle's inherent honesty failed to yield. Maybe Tommy deserved a few years in Florence for crimes against intelligence. Maybe we all did.
Tory's mom came and dismissed us. When the cops were done with us, they dismissed us too. Except for Annabelle. The only one under eighteen, they called her parents to come get her. Roxie and Sarah left. Andy and I waited for Annabelle's parents to show up before we left. We left Tory with her parents and the doctors and the nurses and beeping machines.
Andy and I rode back to the power lines to check on James. The sun was up, the heat building with each passing breath. James sat on the hood of his car, drinking a beer.
"You got any more of those?" Andy asked.
James grunted and nodded to the cooler in the back of his car.
"Where'd y'all go?"
Tonight, the wind picks up and drives the heat away in front of the imminent monsoon. Andy cracks open two PBRs and hands me one. He owns a construction company, so he can afford better, but tradition is tradition.
"Thanks, man."
We both raise our cans to the power lines. "Here's to Tory," Andy says.
"Here's to Tory."
Annabelle sidles up against me, sips her diet soda, and laces one arm through mine.
"Miss you, Tory," she whispers.
We can't stay all night this time. Our babysitter has to be home by ten.
"Did anybody bring tunes?" Andy asks.
Dedication
To Linda, who has traveled with me through three decades of life's ups and downs, in and out of exile.
Acknowledgments
A hearty thanks to my friends and fellow writers, the Grey Havens, for their total support, encouragement and honest-to-the-point-of-pain feedback; to my family and friends on whom I inflict first drafts; to Calista Taylor for the wonderful cover art; to S.P. Miskowski for challenging me—or perhaps it was a dare—to write a horror piece, which turned into 'Desert Rain.'
What others are saying about Sonoran Dreams:
"Robb Grindstaff is a master storyteller!" —Maria Grazia, Horror Bound Magazine
"I don't think there is any genre Robb Grindstaff can't conquer. Some writers excel at characterization, others at plot, and still others are best known for their unique prose style.
Robb is a triple threat, and any book with his name on it is bound to be a great read. —S.P. Miskowski, author of Knock Knock
"Robb Grindstaff has a wicked sense of humor, a keen eye on the human psyche, and impeccable timing. His prose crackles and doesn't waste a syllable. These stories turn the desert Southwest of Cormac McCarthy into a carnival funhouse." —Pete Morin, author, Diary of a Small Fish
"Robb's talent for creating real-life characters and bringing us into their lives is extraordinary, but what marks him apart from so many others writing today is how American his voice is—Robb's writing amuses, charms and yet, when you least expect it, can still challenge and shock." —Alexander McNabb, author, Olives: A Violent Romance
"Robb Grindstaff's seamlessly written stories are full of strong characters, rendered with wit and subtlety. Stories unfold gently, judgments are never made, and the reader is left with a story that resonates long after the book is closed. His writing reminds me of John Irving (The World According to Garp; A Prayer for Owen Meany). " —Phillipa Fioretti, author, The Book of Love
About the Author
After a career in newspaper journalism and management, which took him from Arizona to North Carolina, Texas to Washington, D.C., and five years in Asia, Robb Grindstaff now writes and edits fiction full-time.
He has two completed novels being prepared for publication while writing his third and fourth. His short stories have published in anthologies, print mags, and e-zines, and his articles on the craft of fiction have appeared in writer magazines and websites in the U.S., Europe, and Australia.
For more on Robb's writing and information about his editing services, visit his website and find him on Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon.
https://robbgrindstaff.com
@RobbWriter
Robb on Facebook
Coming Summer 2012
Hannah's Voice
A novel by Robb Grindstaff
When six-year-old Hannah Cross's brutal honesty is mistaken for lying, she decides to stop speaking. Her family, her community, and eventually, the entire nation struggle to find meaning in her silence.
School officials suspect abuse. Church members are divided—either she has a message from God or is possessed by a demon. Social workers interrupt an exorcism to wrest Hannah away from her momma, who has a tenuous grip on sanity. Hidden in protective foster care for twelve years, she loses all contact with her mother and remains mute by choice.
By the time Hannah leaves foster care at age eighteen to search for Momma, a national debate rages over her silence. A religious movement awaits her prophecy and celebrates her return. An anarchist group, Voices for the Voiceless, cites Hannah as its inspiration. The nation comes unhinged and the conflict spills into the streets when presidential candidates chime in with their opinions on Hannah—patriotic visionary or dangerous radical. All the while, a remnant still believes she is controlled by an evil entity and seeks to dispatch her from this world.
Hannah stands at the intersection of anarchists and fundamentalists, between power politics and an FBI investigation, but all she wants is to find her momma, a little peace and quiet, and maybe some pancakes. One word would put an end to the chaos if Hannah can only find her voice.
—Lovely, intelligent writing, and very entertaining.
Email
[email protected] to be notified of the release of Hannah's Voice.
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends