Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (always you kirsty moseley .txt) 📗

bursts out of the mineral mountain first, coughing and hacking and wheezing, his dark skin frosted with ash, as though some makeup artist had gone a little berserk with the theatrical face powder. He gasps and heaves for air, his lips coated with limestone, as he blurts out a few labored words: “Don’t—let—that dickhead—get away!”

Ten feet away, Kornblum claws his way out of the powder in hacking convulsions. He, too, looks clown-like in all the gray face powder.

Gerbil holds the nine-millimeter on the asshole but keeps yammering at Oswald. “I hate to break up this little party but they’re coming. We gotta split!”

“I know I know I know—” Oswald tries to stand but the coughing weighs him down, keeps him on his hands and knees heaving up a gorge full of rock dust.

“Khhhaa—ahhhhk—aahhhhg!!” Kornblum, also on his hands and knees, is trying to speak, trying to plead for mercy, but his scrawny body is shuddering too violently—each racking cough making him hunch like a cat with a nasty furball stuck in its throat.

“I’m serious, Ozzy. We really need to boogy.”

“Okay, okay. Stop nagging.” Oswald manages to struggle to his feet, grabbing Kornblum by the nape and then pulling him toward the pickup truck.

They toss the shit-heel into the S-10’s cab, in the middle of the bench seat, the stick shift between his skinny legs. Oswald squeezes into the passenger side, and Gerbil dives behind the wheel.

The engine is still running, and Gerbil yanks the stick back against the asshole’s damp crotch, and then floors it, the rear wheels digging into the dust.

The pickup fishtails out of the yard, engine screaming, Kornblum doubling over in pain from the pressure of the shift lever pressing on his scrotum.

The next twenty minutes last an eternity for Kornblum, hunched down between the two lunatics, his lungs burning, his eyes stinging with tears and rock dust. The pickup hurls around tight corners, barrels through a state park, roars down a wooded river road, and rumbles across another bridge, evading an armada of state police and unmarked police cars. Kornblum doesn’t say a word. All he can do is close his eyes, and curse himself for even trying to commit suicide in public, and pray that the madness will end soon.

“The fuck was I thinking?!” the big guy says at one point, his massive arms crossed in a petulant, pouty posture across his barrel chest as the truck booms across a rickety, ancient covered bridge.

“I told you it was the stupidest thing I ever heard,” the crazy girl comments, banging the shift lever against Kornblum’s genitals. “You can’t save people like this, especially these pricks who don’t want saving!”

“Just drive!”

“And besides, you can’t predict when they’re gonna try it.”

“They told me—”

“I don’t care what some state shrink told you! You can’t depend on these flakes!”

Kornblum just closes his eyes and tells himself it’ll all be over soon—either in a fiery crash or when the cops finally blow them all away.

By the time the S-10 reaches Lomax, Illinois, the steel-gray ribbon of Highway 116 gradually materializes off in the heat rays to the east, stitching through a patchwork of soybean fields. The sirens have dwindled, and the girl has dialed back on the speed enough to blend into the countryside—just another wayward pickup of psychotic vigilantes hauling a terrified suicide-risk with a shift knob pressing against his balls. After an awkward silence, the big guy starts unbuttoning his filthy denim shirt. “Goddamn thing is killing me,” he grumbles and loosens a big orthopedic girdle snapped around his midsection.

Kornblum tries not to stare. The Indian looks like he has old injuries under his new ones—yellow-stained gauze around his torso, butterfly bandages on his neck. But the most troubling sign is the bare spot on the back of his skull, a four-square-inch patch of shaved scalp, stained with old Betadine and bristling with stitches and nubby hairs just growing back. Is this guy an escapee from some godforsaken mental institution? Some kind of lobotomy experiment? He lets out a pained breath and turns to Kornblum. “Look, here’s the deal: You ain’t gonna kill yourself. You understand?”

“I don’t—I mean—I didn’t—” Kornblum grasps for the words.

“Shut up and listen!” the big man orders, grabbing a fist full of Kornblum’s dusty tennis shirt. “You’re not gonna try it again—or you’ll be in a world of hurt!”

“Yes, okay, I understand.” Kornblum nods his head with the sincerity of a weather vane bobbing in the wind. “I won’t try that again.”

The girl behind the wheel lets out an incredulous snort. “Oh great, that’s a relief.”

The big guy lets go of Kornblum and gives his girlfriend a look. “Gerbil.”

The girl shakes her head. “You think you can trust somebody has a death wish?”

The big guy looks at Kornblum. “Can I trust you?”

Kornblum looks at the Indian, a little taken aback by the sudden tenderness in his voice. It’s almost as though the big bull of a man actually cares about Kornblum’s future. Stomach clenching with emotion, eyes welling up, Kornblum licks his chapped lips. “Yes, I swear to God, you can trust me, absolutely, I will never ever try something like that again, I promise you.”

The big guy’s voice softens. “Name’s Andrew, right?”

Kornblum nods vigorously.

The big guy looks at him with a sad smile. “You mind if I call you Andy?”

“Please do.” A tear starts tracking slowly down Andrew R. Kornblum’s cheek.

“Okay, Andy, here’s the thing. Next time you hit rock bottom, I want you to think about two things. Can you promise me you’ll do that?”

“Yes... absolutely.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“I promise, I promise... next time I promise I’ll think about two things.”

“Do you know what those two things are, Andy?”

Kornblum wipes his eyes. “Um... no. Actually, I don’t.”

“Here.” The big guy pulls a threadbare old bandana from his back pocket. He hands it over to Kornblum, and then he glances at the girl behind the wheel. “Pull over for a second, Gerbil, will ya?”

Kornblum blows his nose, trying not to fall