Brian Hawkins
When a Plan Comes Together
We woke up right about the same time, the two of us sandwiched into the cab of my pickup. I couldn’t feel my ass and, from the way he lurched to reposition himself on the bench seat, Hobie had at least one arm down for the count. The sun had come out, just hard to tell where it had gone. No way to know the time, even for us. Clouds so thick overhead the world might have been a glass globe shoved into a box of packing peanuts, secure for shipping to anywhere you might want to send it. Plus, my watch was MIA.
“How long you think we’ve been asleep?” I asked Hobie.
“Shit, Bucky. Don’t know. Not long,” he replied. Nothing more to offer, he resumed rubbing life back into his useless limb.
I had managed to park on that old patch of gravel out back and across the road from Wiley’s Tavern. After all the hooch we snorted the night before, and more than a bump or two of nose Pez, I had no memory of take-off, let alone landing here. I tried to pull together my every remaining wit and focus on our situation. For one thing, I was still drunk but no longer flying. I estimated Hobie was in a similar condition.
As if on cue, Hobie asked, “We got any more dust in that last baggie?”
“All out. No more money neither.”
Hobie swore and rotated his shoulder as best he could in the small confines of the cab, seeming satisfied his range of motion had returned but not with the situational update. “I need a bump. Still drunk, man.”
With no solution to offer, I sat looking out the window at the rear of Wiley’s.
“We ain’t been out all that long,” Hobie opined. “Couldn’t have. Look it. Just barely morning. No one will be at Wiley’s till at least ten. Let’s bust in. Find something we can sell.”
He took the slight nod of my head as full concurrence on all points.
We hopped out of the truck, my ass still numb, and stumbled across the road as quickly as we could, but looking more like extras in a George Romero movie, taking care not to vomit in Wiley’s backlot. No trace of evidence from us. Too smart.
When we got to the door, Hobie tried the handle and found the deadbolt disengaged. He looked at me, shrugged, and pushed forward. I crept in behind him as we crawled across the kitchen, like Green Berets evading VC jungle rats in Vietnam. We made it about halfway to the end of the prep table and Hobie stopped. I looked up to see Big Jeff, Old Man Wiley’s longtime cook, chopping onions and staring down at us.
Like a pair of drunken, uncoordinated synchronized swimmers, we stood. Old Man Wiley, Big Jeff, and the rest of the kitchen staff had been watching us from the moment we entered. Shaking his head, Wiley stepped around Big Jeff, as well as the chef’s knife looming over us, and said, “What are you two shits doin’? You tryin’ to rob me during the lunch rush? Fuckin’ morons of the world.”
Though the whiskey and white powder might have disagreed in that moment, I have since come to realize the old man had himself a point.
Brian Hawkins lives and works in southern Indiana with his wife Lacy, two dogs, and three cats. They own a bookstore in their hometown where they also teach high school. Brian's work has appeared in Morehead State University's literary journal Inscape, Scribes Micro Fiction, Down in the Dirt, The Barcelona Review, and Ariel Chart. He can be found on Instagram @hawk.it.is and Twitter: @hawk_it_is.