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When the woman didn’t come back to the chopper with that guy, I figured something bad had happened.

There was just a slice of moon, and all I saw when they pulled up was the outline of this humongous biker with a beer gut and sloped shoulders and a tall woman who was singing there’s a little bit of redneck in all of us over and over again.    It was two fifty in the morning, and I was huddled against the wall of the county library where I could pick up a nice wi fi signal.  I didn’t hang out at the library during the day because of all the why-aren’t- you-in-school looks.

I closed my computer—an ancient MacBook I’d bought cheap off a tweeker — and watched as they disappeared down the steep bank to the creek.  The singing died out, and I’d pretty much forgotten about them until the man started up the motorcycle and pulled away maybe thirty minutes later.  The bike was low slung with high curved handle bars and chrome forks that thrust forward.  The chrome gleamed in the moonlight, and the engine made a deep loping sound that snaked a shiver down my back.

I sat there hoping the singing would start again but knew it wouldn’t.  I finally put my computer in the case I’d found in a dumpster, hid it in the bushes and crossed the highway.  The woman was face down in the water, lifeless.  I pulled her out and stood over her, shaking like a little kid.  I felt real sad, too, but no tears came.  All I could think of was my sister, Amy.  I looked down at my hand and realized I was holding a necklace that must have come loose from her neck.  It shone like gold in the weak light.  I put it in my pocket and washed my sticky hands in the creek before climbing back up the trail.

The woman was stretched across a jogging path and would be found in the morning, I told myself.  No way I’m calling the cops.  They’d start asking questions and pretty soon some judge would want to send me home.  No, I wasn’t going back there, where my stepfather ruled like Jabba the fucking Hutt.  I told mom what was going on with him and Amy, but she wouldn’t listen, and Amy denied it.  That’s when I decided to take off.

I spent a restless morning back at my tent.  I got the necklace out and looked it over, trying to figure out why I’d taken it.  It was heavy like real gold, a collection of different shaped leaves strung on a chain.  On the back of a maple leaf was inscribed To Tayla from Daddy. Xmas ’09.  My eyes burned but stayed dry, and a mixture of guilt and anger flowed over me like hot tar.  I ached to talk to my dad.  If he was alive, he’d know what to do.

That afternoon, I put the necklace in my backpack and headed out for Dougherty’s, the only biker bar in the county.  It was a good five mile walk, and I arrived just as night fell.  I got a single slice of stale pizza at a little market across the street and strolled over to the parking lot behind the bar.  I almost choked on a bite of pizza when I saw the big chopper with the high handle bars.  I waited around, and when a couple of dudes came out and mounted their bikes, I pointed to the chopper and said, “That’s a cool bike.  Know who owns it?”

The taller one scowled and said, “That’s Lobo’s bike.”  The fat, ugly one laughed and added, “Better stay away from it, kid.”

I backed off and waited in the shadows, trying to figure out my next step.  An hour later a man approached the chopper.  My knees got weak when I saw the beer belly and the big, sloped shoulders.  It was him for sure.  As he got on his bike, I stepped forward, swallowed hard and said, “Hey Lobo.  I’m Danny.  Love your bike, man.”

He wrinkled his brow for a moment then flashed a surprisingly friendly smile.  “Thanks, kid.”

I took a couple more steps and swallowed again.  “Bet you did the work yourself.”

He held the smile and seemed to puff up a little.  “Fuckin’ right, man.  Every nut and bolt.”

“Bro, that’s genius,” I gushed as I moved behind him to stroke the fine leather of his saddle bags.  “These bags are awesome, too.  Say, my uncle’s working on a chopper like this, but he’s not much of a mechanic.  Think he could talk to you about it?”

Lobo shrugged.  “I guess so.  Have him give me a call.”  With that, he kicked started his machine and took off.  I stood there listening to the deep, awful throb of his engine receding into the night while I committed the cell phone number he’d given me to memory and moved my fingers around in the pocket where the necklace had been.

I walked back to my tent against a cold wind, but didn’t feel it much.  At the library that night I uploaded this in the jewelry section of Craig’s List—“Beautiful necklace of miniature tree leaves made of gold on an eighteen inch, twenty four carat chain.  Cash only.”  I signed it “Lobo” and gave his cell number.

There was nothing new about the murder in the paper the next two days, and I began to feel like a real idiot, but on the third day, the headlines screamed—Suspect Arrested in Johnson Creek Slaying.  The article went on to belittle the biker nicknamed Lobo, who’d been dumb enough to advertise his victim’s jewelry on the internet.

The next morning I packed up my stuff and headed for home.  It was time to take on Jabba the fucking Hutt.

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Warren C. Easley is a retired Ph.D. chemist with a background in R&D and international business. Although he’s hard at work on his fourth mystery novel, this is his first attempt at flash fiction. He lives in Oregon with his wife and two dogs.

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Today — May 16, 2012 — is the first ever National Flash Fiction Day… and International Flash Fiction Day as well, since this special day has quite naturally spread from the UK to the rest of the world.

What can you do today? Read Flash Fiction Chronicles’ interview with National Flash Fiction Day founder/organizer Calum Kerr! Check out all the fabulous stories at FlashFlood and get some great prompts from The Write-In! And see more events and activities on the National Flash Fiction Day blog! Follow along with Facebook and Twitter!

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We sat at the bar in Reno’s in downtown San Francisco. Do you think anyone will ever match it? Ice rattled in highball glasses and mixed with the exaltations of drinking men. Don’t you think that’s one record nobody will ever beat?

Joe DiMaggio winced, just for a second, long enough to deem the question inane. Smooth, suave, frosty Joe, not Yankee Clipper Joe, the ball player of flawless grace in the black-and-white photos on the wall. This was cautious Joe, man of the world, disdainful of it, sitting at the bar opposite me in a double-breasted cashmere blazer, perfect for the blustery October day, a baby blue tie, the whitest shirt I’d ever seen. I don’t know. He spoke with a cultured, gentlemanly sneer.

So what, I thought. My paper was paying for a three-day trip to San Francisco, and I didn’t care if Joe found my questions mundane. This was the stuff the folks back in Poughkeepsie wanted to know. Joe had agreed to the interview through a friend of a friend. Twenty minutes at Reno’s, that’s all I got. One rule: no questions about Marilyn. You ask about Marilyn, I was told, you’re out.

But with no Marilyn, that left only The Streak. Everybody knew about his business success, his charitable efforts and part-time job as a Yankee’s spring training coach, the elegant walls he’d built around himself to keep away people like me. And nobody cared.

The Streak. What did it feel like?

Felt like the best day I ever had, looking back on it. He smiled that devastating, wincing smile. A television played at the end of the bar, Dodgers versus Twins in the World Series, but Joe wasn’t watching. Day to day, it was a job, he said. That was it. Answer over.

Yeah, but it must have felt special, you know, kind of powerful, with everybody watching? How did it feel to know the world was watching your every move?

Something happened, a softening in those dark Italian eyes. A delicate bubble, thin as gossamer, surrounded him, his shoulders slackened, chin dropped, as if he dared not let it burst. That reminds me of Marilyn, he said tenderly. Something she said to me once.

The bar became quiet, like her name sucked the sound from it. Even the drunks turned silent in reverence to that sainted, busted blonde. I sat there still as a statue, my pencil stopped on the page, afraid to move a muscle, afraid I might break this sudden spell.

This was the same night we got into such a terrible row, he said, after Wilder had her parading around Madison Avenue like a common Tenderloin tramp. I don’t know how wives behave back in Poughkeepsie, but where I’m from, women don’t show themselves like that. All those people watching. The press. I hated it. She knew how I felt, of course, but I don’t think she cared. Something always made her stand up to me, like a contest, just to see who’d win. Fame, he said. Fame was the winner. He looked past me, out the window into something deep and blue.

But who is the loser?

He paused for a moment, smiled wistfully at a memory:

This was later on, back in the hotel room that night. We were serene then, spent, you know, like the ocean after a storm. Don’t you know those people are taking your soul? I said to her. Don’t you know they’ll take it all if you let them have it?

But Joe, she said. God, the little girl in that voice, the innocence buried deep down inside her I could never seem to touch. But Joe, I was just giving everyone what they wanted. What else could I do, with everybody watching?

With that, the bubble burst, the icy veneer crept back onto his handsome face. Funny, though, isn’t it, he continued, the melancholy pleasure of memory still lingering on his lips, the things we justify to ourselves for the eyes of others, the things we are capable of because the world is watching.

He lifted a finger and the bartender appeared out of thin air, put a finger of whiskey in a shot glass, and just as quickly disappeared. He slugged it down, looked at his watch. Twenty minutes or no, the interview was over. The Streak? He smiled grimly, the way I imagine a hangman smiles on execution day, whiskey bringing water to his eyes. Did it make me feel powerful? Quite the opposite. I feel empty, like I gave it all away.

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Andrew Waters believes the apocalypse will happen on the Internet and wishes he could write like Raymond Chandler. He lives in Salisbury, North Carolina. His story, “The Girl With Rain In Her Hair” will be published in the Spring 2012 edition of “Pamlico Magazine,” the literary journal of UNC Pembroke.

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The only thing I ever wanted was to ride on the float in the Apple Harvest parade. I wanted to stand up there in front of that big Red Delicious, with the sash across my chest, smiling with all of my teeth and doing one of those little waves while the Brethren in Christ Ladies’ Auxiliary walked alongside handing out Dixie cups of steaming cider.

But wouldn’t you know that the year I turned thirteen — my first year of eligibility — a blight came across from Michigan and wiped out nearly the entire crop of Delicious, Red and Gold, not to mention what it did to the Braeburns, Winesaps, and Idareds. And the Aurora Golden Gala – all blistered and pustulated. I am sorry, but words cannot even describe.

The next year those smarty pants at the county extension office came up with some kind of spray — it seems it killed all of the ducks, but the apples were smooth and shiny and the Harvest parade was on again. And wouldn’t you know that Belinda MacIntyre, whose father happens to be one of those agricultural geniuses, just snuck right in and stole the whole show right from under my nose.

Now, the year after that things were getting desperate. I was fifteen, and it’s not much longer that a girl can climb up in front of a fiberglass apple wearing last year’s homecoming dress and handing out fascinating brochures like ‘Apples are Really Top Banana,’ without looking like a fool. This was my last chance, and it was clear to me that I was going to have to take action.

First, I thought I would present my qualifications one-on-one to the members of the selection committee. Oh, I had it all planned out: apple pie, apple dumpling, apple kugel, apple brown betty, the works. Would you believe that Dr. Ueber, my own dentist, is the head of the committee? I guarantee you that it is one hundred percent impossible to bake your way into the esteem of a man who has lectured you on your flossing habits since you were four years old.

I was stumped. I went out back of the house past the refrigeration shed. The crews out picking the early Gravensteins waved as I went past, but I suspected them of laughing behind their gloved hands. I plucked an apple out of a crate and walked on.

I plopped down on the grass beside the irrigation pond and bit into the apple. I had to get on that float somehow. Next year it would be all boys and keg parties in the woods, and I wouldn’t care anymore — just ask my sister, Apple Harvest Queen two years running, and proud teenage mother of a six-month old. Ugh. I took a last savage bite of the apple and hurled the core with all my might into the pond.

Splashing right up out of where it landed, came a huge black and white duck with patches of red warts on each cheek. I had been sitting on that bank for a good ten minutes and hadn’t seen a sign of any duck. I didn’t know they could spend so long underwater. I also thought all the ducks had died.

“It wasn’t for your want of trying,” the duck said.

I sort of fell right over on the bank, I was so surprised.

The duck glided across the pond and hopped onto the bank beside me. Up close, those red patches on its cheeks were raw and blistered.

“I’ve heard you have a little problem,” the duck said as he shook out the water and reached back to preen his feathers. “Maybe I can help.”

I did feel a little foolish confiding my troubles in a duck – especially a mutant pesticide duck – but I was going to feel a lot more foolish if I didn’t get up on that float. I told him all.

The duck thought on it for a moment, the red warts on his cheek boiling and bubbling like a tub full of Calgon. Then he sat down on the grass and got a funny, faraway look in his eyes. He stood up, and there underneath him was a clutch of speckled eggs nestled in the clover.

“Boy ducks don’t lay eggs,” I started to say, but he dove headfirst back into the water, just the tip of his tail feathers showing.

The next day was Sunday, and I baked up a cake — apple, of course — with my nice fresh eggs, and took it to church. “I’m just so excited for all of us,” I said as I served up an extra big slice to Missy Wojicki, whose sweet, apple-blossom complexion made her the prettiest girl in the county.

Come Monday morning, it turned out that every girl who ate that cake had the worst break-out of her entire life — I mean, craters. A bucket of Clearasil and a gallon of double-matte foundation and they still looked like a pizza had thrown-up on their faces.

As I stood before the Harvest committee and modestly bowed my head to receive the sash from Dr. Ueber, he caught sight of Missy Wojicki crying in the front row. She had taken her hands off her face to wipe away the snot and I felt the shudder of disgust run all the way up Dr. Ueber’s arms at the sight of her uncovered face.

I had my day at last, and let me tell you it felt go-o-od. I caused a sensation when I climbed up in front of that Red Delicious in my brand-new bridesmaid’s dress — my sister’s baby daddy was finally going to make an honest woman of her — and started handing out brochures on the dangers of pesticides. And, just to prove my point, on top of the apple there was a little nest, upon which sat the world’s last remaining duck.

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Alisa Alering is a writer and scribbler living in the American heartland. On a clear day, she can see cows from her writing desk. On cloudy days, she stays inside and makes movies out of cut paper. She is a graduate of the Clarion West workshop (2011).

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Podcast EDF063: The Truth About Truth by Ted Lietz read by Ted Lietz

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“The Truth About Truth” by Ted Lietz was originally published on January 20, 2012.

Ted Lietz is a freelance writer and reformed marketer. His work also has been published in such places as Every Day Fiction and Flashquake. Everyone has to be somewhere. He happens to live in Pittsburgh.

 

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