I like to look back at my old, unpublished writing. It’s like a time capsule. I can see myself working towards being a better writer. I can see the things I would change. For this week’s story, I want to share a story I wrote in (I think) 2015.
As I read this, I can see myself starting to develop my voice. This isn’t set in Arizona, but is still very much Southwestern noir. I hope you enjoy!
Uncle Paulie
The drive from fucking Amarillo was a beat down. Three hundred and sixty-seven miles of West Texas and New Mexico desert. He lifted his pinky nail to his nose and snorted. Uncle Paulie didn’t let himself get lost in his own supply. He’d grab a taste here and there when needed, but if he ever found himself spiraling into the hole, he’d check himself into some rehab center and clean out. That was the beauty of money. It could buy you what the junkies only wished they could have. Control.
Uncle Paulie checked the gas gauge. The ’67 El Camino was sitting at three-quarters of a tank. He figured the rumbling engine was sucking down a gallon every six miles. This trip was going to cost him a fortune. He’d remind Anson of that as soon as he picked him up.
Anson Belmont was lucky to have landed at Cibola instead of some other federal prison. Uncle Paulie wasn’t sure how Anson’s attorney had swung the deal, but he was glad. No matter how long the stretch, he needed Anson back in one piece.
With spotty sunshine blazing trails of light along Interstate 40, Uncle Paulie scanned the side of the road. Anson would be walking east, but Uncle Paulie was driving west. He’d have to look across the eastbound lanes and hope to spot Anson on the access road. He didn’t figure the boy would be walking along the highway.
He pulled the black cowboy hat down low across his brow as he searched. He grew up as far from the cowboy life as you could get in Texas. He was born in Fort Worth and raised in Plano. He was a city boy, but when he went into business for himself and moved down around Amarillo, he needed a persona. The black cowboy hat worked.
It was six in the morning, and the rising sun behind him was a welcome relief from the deepness of the dark he had driven through to that point. But the fucking clouds kept snuffing out the sun every few minutes. He never did understand why the prisons let inmates out at all odd hours. A little consistency would be appreciated. Or at very least, they could let folks out in the afternoon. Instead, Uncle Paulie had been driving for five hours so that he could catch Anson on the side of the road before he had to walk too far.
Brownish-green sagebrush flew past either side of the highway. The private land beyond Interstate 40 was marked by barbed wire and not much else. Open fields of dry, dead desert. Just beyond a rotted billboard, Uncle Paulie spotted someone walking the access road. It had to be Anson.
He checked his mirrors. No cops. He slowed the El Camino down and turned into the dirt and brush of the median. Uncle Paulie pulled back onto Interstate 40 eastbound just as the sun ducked back behind the gray sky.
He knew Anson had seen him, but he blared the horn anyway as he pulled to the shoulder. Anson had to climb an embankment made of reds and browns and yellows. Uncle Paulie leaned over and opened the passenger door as Anson made it to the car.
“Couldn’t pick me up at Cibola?” Anson asked, sliding in and pulling on his seatbelt.
Uncle Paulie wanted to believe he saw some resemblance, but Anson looked more like his pops than his mom. To the rest of the crew, Uncle Paulie was just Uncle P. It was a name, something to take a little bit of the stress out of the job. To Anson, it was blood. It was Uncle Paulie to him and him alone.
“Shit man, you know I don’t do well around joints like that. Jails or prisons or whatever the fuck you wanna call them. Them and police stations.” Uncle Paulie snapped his fingers, “Oh, and courthouses.”
He kicked the El Camino into gear while staring at Anson’s profile. He’d yet to turn and make eye contact with Uncle Paulie. Even without seeing the eyes, he knew Anson had changed. It’s hard not to once you go inside. Anson’s hair was shorter, but still the same color dirty blonde. His jawline looked crisper, more defined. Uncle Paulie saw Anson’s shoulder muscles stretched and sculpted beneath the thin t-shirt he was wearing. Six months of lifting in the yard.
“Told you to keep your head down, nose clean, you’d be out in way less time than the sentence, right? Was I right or what?” Uncle Paulie asked.
Anson nodded, staring at the empty stretch of black asphalt ahead of them. The clouds drifted together to form a solid slate wall in the sky. The sun did its best to light the morning, but the darkness hung around.
“Hell of a lot better than two years, yeah?” Uncle Paulie asked, begging for some conversation.
Anson looked at the dash, “You still ain’t got A.C. in this thing?”
“A.C.? Fuck that. You ain’t some prissy movie star, are you? Our crew don’t need luxuries. I know I don’t, at least.”
Anson rolled down his window letting the forceful wind of highway speed air break through the car.
“Besides, I hollowed out the condenser in this thing,” Uncle Paulie continued.
Anson looked at Uncle Paulie for the first time. “Why?” he asked.
Uncle Paulie laughed. “Why? Boy, you forget the whole operation while you were inside?”
Anson shook his head and returned his stare to the road ahead. Jagged brown rock hills rose from the ground to either side of the highway. In the distance, below threatening skies, a purple mountainside taunted them and reminded them of the long drive ahead.
“I’m ever in a pinch, right? I can run some in the condenser. The only way it’ll be found is if cops have a goddamn drug-sniffing dog,” Uncle Paulie said.
“Running your own dope now?” Anson asked.
“Come on, Annie,” Uncle Paulie started, watching for the expected agitation in Anson’s face at the nickname he hated. “I do what I gotta do.”
“Like get your nephew locked up, right?” Anson asked.
Uncle Paulie hated ungratefulness more than anything. Guys in his crew made good money, but they had to take risks. Blood or not, Anson didn’t get to be pissed for getting caught.
“What’re you bitching about?” he started. “You got popped for the first time at 30. I did six different stints before I turned 25. Now, I’ve been free and clear for fifteen years running.”
Uncle Paulie slapped Anson on the arm and tried to lighten the mood. This was no time to start letting the tempers flare. “You get popped sometimes, but as you learn, you get better. You’ll ride it out after this. I’m sure.”
As they rumbled on toward Albuquerque, the dark skies split ever so slightly just above the horizon. The sun streaking across the break in the clouds reminded Uncle Paulie of the first burst of paint from a sprayer on the stripped panel of a hot car. That’s where he got his start when he first got to Amarillo.
It wasn’t always drugs. Uncle Paulie started making a name for himself when his crew got good at flipping stolen cars. Painted up nice, numbers wiped, the cars sold quick in the classifieds. If they couldn’t sell a car, they could sell the parts. Problem was, no matter how hard they tried, some cars could be traced. It was too risky.
Beyond the risk, Uncle Paulie made the jump from cars to drugs for the simple fact that the money was better in drugs. Less work, more money. It was an easy decision.
“How’s Ma?” Anson asked while scraping at a piece of vinyl on the door.
“I ain’t her babysitter,” Uncle Paulie replied.
Anson stared over, his mouth tight. “She’s your sister, man. You should’ve been checking on her while I was away.”
Crackling of electricity popped at the front of Uncle Paulie’s head. He didn’t want it to, but the temper always flared just after he felt that electric feeling in his head and his blood starting to heat. It wasn’t a great feeling, but it helped him get to where he was.
When Uncle Paulie turned thirteen, just dipping his toes into the pool of adolescent angst, he discovered how frightened people were of his temper. The anger he was capable of, the destruction he could wreak in a single fit of rage, was enough to force most people to step aside or give him what he wanted. He used this as he stumbled through the awkward years of high school. He used it when he first started running with a low-level crew run by Smitty Barnes outside Amarillo. He used it when he took every last one of Smitty’s guys and made them part of his own crew.
“I took care of her my whole damn life! Older sisters are supposed to take care of their younger brothers, but fuck no. Ten years older than me, and I still have to babysit her?” Uncle Paulie’s voice rose above the blast of wind jumping between the two open windows.
“You take care of her? You?” Anson started, his voice never rising. Uncle Paulie respected his even head, but he knew Anson lacked the rage that would truly make him great. “Fuck that. I took care of her. Were you there when she was flopping around like a fish out of water, high off your damn supply? Were you there when she was locked in her bedroom closet, a .357 to her fucking temple?”
Maybe it was just because they were family, but Anson was the one person who never bowed to Uncle Paulie’s temper. It should have made him angrier, but Anson’s defiance always impressed him. Eventually, the rage would burn itself out, no harm, no foul. He couldn’t say the same for other people who ignored the temper.
“No, I wasn’t there for that shit, kid,” Uncle Paulie felt like calling Anson ‘kid’ or ‘boy’ would help put some distance between their ages. Most people thought it was fucked up enough that they were only ten years apart, so he’d try anything to make that gap feel larger.
The next sixty miles blew by in silence. The clouds chased the El Camino along the Interstate 40 corridor, never opening up and dumping on them. Uncle Paulie figured the sky would wait until they hit Texas. It wasn’t West Texas unless there was the threat of a spring tornado.
His voice broke the silence like the thunder that the clouds just couldn’t push out. “So what’re the terms? Can you start working or you looking at too much heat?” Uncle Paulie asked.
Anson shook his head, “Work.”
“Yeah, fuckin’ work. Making money for you and for me,” Uncle Paulie said, feeling his temper rising again.
“Work with you’s a fucking trap,” Anson said. “You even think about her?”
The desert landscape slowly gave way to signs of civilization ahead. Albuquerque was rising up in front of them. Uncle Paulie figured they’d have to stop for gas, but he wanted to push it as long as he could. Maybe they’d make it to the eastern outskirts.
“No. Bottom line, shit happens,” he said.
Anson snorted. “Yeah, shit to her, shit to me.”
Uncle Paulie thought about the sawed-off shotgun beneath his seat. Anyone else, it’d be over. He looked at Anson. Thirty years old, single, and free. What the fuck else did he want? Uncle Paulie had given the kid everything. A job and money to burn. All he asked for in return was a little respect.
“Pushing your luck here, Annie.”
Laceless boots flew up to the dash. Uncle Paulie knew Anson was testing him with feet up on the El Camino. He let it slide. Getting deep in this shit while riding in the car wasn’t part of his plan. He and Anson always got along fine. They respected each other’s work, maybe even loved each other like normal uncles and nephews do. But the girl fucked everything up.
Part II coming next week…