Honorable Mention
The Ice Man Cometh
“The days grow hot, O Babylon!
‘Tis cool beneath thy willow trees!”
– Revolution by Ferdinand Freiligrath
by J.E. Marshall
Three streetwalkers walked into the LOW TIDE INN SALOON.
“Hey Lucky, this place looks like a morgue! Where’s Spoon?” Connie surveyed the room where all nine drunkards, except for Lawrence Swink, had passed out, predicting how fantastic this visit from Teddy Ray Quinn was going to be.
“He’s asleep,” Lucky Malloy, the night bartender answered. “You girls better get Quinn’s room ready.”
Connie bit her tongue and didn’t tell Lucky that she’d just seen Quinn at the new hotel across the alley. Quinn paid her to get something from Harold Hayes.
April and Maggie did chores while dissing Connie for not carrying her weight in their new day job as replacements for Fanny, Marina and Gladys, the maids who had been removed by ICE agents last week.
“She thinks she’s all that ever since Spoon proposed,” April said.
“Well, what do you expect, she never does her share,” Maggie claimed. “Can you imagine her plucking chickens at that farm they keep talking about buying?”
Lawrence Swink downed the free drink Lucky gave him and resumed staring into oblivion, not ready to talk about the topics of the day yet. Like all the patrons of the LOW TIDE INN, he was grateful for the impending plethora of free drinks that the biannual visits from Teddy Ray Quinn would bring but he was not ready for the wild tales and merriment. He could do without that, especially now. He excused himself to go to the john to avoid further conversation. He took a gun out of his jacket and held it to his head.
Little Mateo purposely marched into the bar, grabbed the priest by the head, lifted him up off the table so he could ask a question. Father Howard Halstrap bolted up from his slumber and shouted, “The days grow hot, O Babylon! ‘Tis cool beneath thy willow trees!” Then he remembered who and where he was and sat down to address the little boy.
“You must stay with Miss Vicky. You don’t want to end up in a children’s camp. They will teach you to hurt people and do many bad things,” Father Halstrap gently reminded the child. Though the priest had never seen the inside of a children’s camp, he had seen what came out of them. He’d spent five years in the DEATH VALLEY FACILITY FOR DISLOYAL ADULTS and noticed the guards were getting younger. Innocent children were molded into cold-blooded monsters capable of unspeakable actions.
Father Halstrap managed to escape from the DEATH VALLEY CAMP on the day of the televised executions but couldn’t bear to return to St. James on St. Vincent Street. He stopped at THE LOW TIDE INN for a drink and never left. Every day since he would find comfort planning the hows and whens of his return to St. James with his drinking buddies.
A frantic Miss Vicky from the underground child rescue mission ran into the bar and collected Mateo, scolding him, “Never do that again! You could get lost and I would never be able to find you!”
“Mamita! Mamita!” His mother Marina was one of the maids that ICE kidnapped in the alley on her way to work at the inn.
“For pity’s sake, Lucky, turn off the damn TV. Where the hell is Quinn? He’s late! Give me a drink!” Father Halstrap knew the woman they were going to execute on the White House lawn. He had been incarcerated with her. After too many escapes on Execution Day at the Death Valley facility, the festivities were transferred to DC.
“Give him a drink, Lucky, for God’s sake, and turn the damn TV off!” Lawrence Swink returned from the men’s room pacing like a caged cat.
The ruckus woke up the elderly veterans, General Van Nam Long, and Captain Bernard Duran who fell asleep leaning on each other in a red leather booth. They were the oldest of the end-of-the-line drunkards and had vehemently endeavored to kill each other in their youth, during the first Indochina war, but were best of friends now. Every day they whiled away the hours describing what it was going to be like when they returned to their homelands of Cambodia and France. Before they could catch up on events, Johnny Love, a disturbed young man entered the bar and asked if Lawrence Swink was there. He cried that they must stop an unjust execution.
“Benny Shields is a genius attorney; he can help you. He’s going to help me get my job back,” Edison Finch, brother-in-law of the owner of the LOW TIDE INN said. Edison was a con artist who constantly talked about the day he would get his job back at the theme park that had fired him for selling fast passes for the handicapped to people who were not disabled.
“Benny don’t practice law! He don’t practice anything except drinking,” former police lieutenant Jack Faegan said.
“What do you know about it anyhow?” Edison Finch asked.
“I know you probably bought him a drink every time he told you that you have a solid case. I know he dropped out of Harvard when his dad got busted big time for stock market manipulation.”
“Says the cop who was kicked off the force.” Finch refused to give up faith that Benny Shields could help him get his life back.
“I hope Quinn will arrive soon before they kill each other.” Matthew Fletcher observed that all the men were getting testy. Something was off.
Harold carried in a case of champagne from the loading dock. He was followed by Matthew Fletcher and Charlie Spoon, each carrying a crate of whiskey sent with compliments from Teddy Ray Quinn. Soon a catering service delivered a roast duck and a buffet of assorted side dishes and desserts.
“Wow!” the day bartender declared! “Don’t let Connie see this spread! She’ll expect me to outdo it at our wedding reception! Speaking of Connie, where is she?”
“She gave Hayes the third degree before she left,” Eddie “Two Weeks” Turner reported. He used to be a war correspondent and dreamed of returning to the front line but earned the name “Two Weeks” by pushing all his promises out two weeks, indefinitely, until everyone, even he, forgot them.
“She’s probably picking out something for the party,” Fletcher suggested. Like Two Weeks, Fletcher had a dream that he kept at arm’s length.
Quinn was very disappointed by Connie’s report.
“He said the only way he could survive without Beth was to sell the house and pretend she was still there,” Connie told Quinn
“That is asinine!” Quinn was so furious he strangled Connie and stormed across the alley into the LOW TIDE INN. His plan to lowball Hayes and make a bundle had crashed.
“I’m not your father, kid. You were already born when I met your mother.” Lawrence Swink turned away from the boy. Swink didn’t want to participate in life anymore. He wanted to observe but not get involved. He did love Delilah Love, but he could not stop drinking. He did not dream of getting back together with her. He didn’t have pipe dreams like the others. But he didn’t want to see her die this way.
“They’re going to kill her,” Johnny Love cried.
“Yes, they are, Johnny boy, because you betrayed her, you turned her in, because you’re a coward.” Quinn enjoyed making a cruel entrance, almost as much as he had enjoyed dismembering Beth. He went behind the bar and turned on the TV so the boy could see the execution of his mother, the bravest woman in what once was the USA.
“Turn it off!” Johnny cried out with tears running down his face!
“Oh, I’m going to turn it off, little boy!” Quinn pulled an assault rifle out of his coat and sprayed the room with bullets. Eighty-eight-year-old General Van Nam Long and 92-year-old Captain Bernard Duran held each other tight and died in each other’s arms.
Within seconds Lawrence and Johnny were the only ones standing.
Lawrence Swink reached for the gun in his jacket that he had intended to commit suicide with, but the rifle was already aimed at his son Johnny, and it was too late to take the shot at Quinn, so he pushed his son to the floor and took the bullets. Then he aimed the gun with the arm that wasn’t blown off and he shot Quinn between the eyes.
“Daddy!” Johnny crawled to his father.
“I’m so sorry, son. My beautiful baby boy. I’m so sorry.”
“Daddy!”
“Go. Be like your mother. Live your life! Hurry before they detain you! Run! I love you! Run son!”
