Poor Boy Road (Jake Caldwell #1) Read Online Free Page A
Author: James L. Weaver, Kate Foster
bloody.
CHAPTER FIVE
How the hell had he got himself twisted in this mess? Jake sighed as he cruised south on US 71 Highway out of Kansas City, through the city of Grandview and on to places less populated. Take care of his dying old man and kill a rival drug lord for his boss. What a clusterfuck homecoming.
Hard to believe he’d been doing this shit for Keats for six years. He used to lie to himself and think of collecting as just a job like someone working in a bank or flipping burgers. He’d tell himself those he collected from were degenerate scumbags who rolled the dice the second they took a dime from a man like Jason Keats.
The douche bags were the easy ones. The ones to whom the world owed a favor. Nothing was ever their fault. The fuckin’ Jets blew the spread by allowing that last meaningless touchdown. The asshole boss fired them, not because they couldn’t show up to work either on time or sober, but because they didn’t like their ethnic heritage, whether black, Hispanic, Italian or White Trash. These people always blamed someone else for their crappy lives and Jake had no qualms putting a few lumps on their skulls with a blackjack to collect what they owed.
The problem was they weren’t all douche bags. Sometimes they were friends. Sometimes the sound of a friend’s thumb snapping like a twig echoed in his dreams. Sometimes the howling winter winds outside his window in the dark of night sounded like the screams of a child walking in as he punched their daddy to a bloody pulp. Sometimes he had to get up and scrub his hands raw under scalding-hot water to get at the blood that would never wash out. Sometimes he stared in the mirror at hollow eyes, seeing the face of a man who hid in the shadows, a man he swore he’d never become. Sometimes.
He rolled past Harrisonville and exited US 71 on to Highway 7, his stomach knotting tighter as he closed in on his hometown. Thirty minutes later, he drove into Clinton and stopped at Wendy’s to take a leak and grab a late lunch before pressing on.
Jake could almost smell the oil and grease from the Clinton junkyard where the old man used to take them on the weekends. Jake and Nicky crammed together in their dad’s ancient heap, listening to him cuss the wasted truck’s very existence in between puffs of Camels lit one after the other in an unending chain. Stony placed Nicky in charge of keeping upward pressure on the eight-track cassette in the dash, so “He Stopped Loving Her Today” would play without warbling. Any deviation to the tone of George Jones would earn Nick a smack to the back of the head. Ever since Mama died, Stony would listen to almost nothing else in his truck but that eight-track. The premise itself made for a stupid country song.
The roads curved and the hills deepened the further Jake got from Clinton, like the road itself didn’t want to go to Warsaw either. He took a pull from his water bottle and turned on the radio, tired of the silence. He sang along and agreed with Kenny Chesney; he should indeed sit and have another beer in Mexico. Mexico sounded good. Warm sun, fine sand beaches, clear blue water and Pacifico beers lined up in front of him. Find a big-breasted señorita with a happy disposition. Maybe after this trip. Maybe after Stony finally kicked the bucket and he fulfilled his obligation to Keats.
The town of Coal swam up, so small that if you sneezed, you’d miss it entirely. Jake slowed without thinking and pulled into the dirt lot of The Coal Bin. He dropped his six-foot two-inch frame out from the truck and ran his hands over his cropped hair, pushing his muscular arms into his back. The vertebrae clicked and crunched.
As he leaned on the warm hood, smelling a mix of manure and exhaust fumes, a dark-haired boy darted out the front door of the white-washed general store and jumped off the step. The boy looked just like Nicky. Mop head and deep dimples the girls giggled over. Nicky. It was hard
CHAPTER FIVE
How the hell had he got himself twisted in this mess? Jake sighed as he cruised south on US 71 Highway out of Kansas City, through the city of Grandview and on to places less populated. Take care of his dying old man and kill a rival drug lord for his boss. What a clusterfuck homecoming.
Hard to believe he’d been doing this shit for Keats for six years. He used to lie to himself and think of collecting as just a job like someone working in a bank or flipping burgers. He’d tell himself those he collected from were degenerate scumbags who rolled the dice the second they took a dime from a man like Jason Keats.
The douche bags were the easy ones. The ones to whom the world owed a favor. Nothing was ever their fault. The fuckin’ Jets blew the spread by allowing that last meaningless touchdown. The asshole boss fired them, not because they couldn’t show up to work either on time or sober, but because they didn’t like their ethnic heritage, whether black, Hispanic, Italian or White Trash. These people always blamed someone else for their crappy lives and Jake had no qualms putting a few lumps on their skulls with a blackjack to collect what they owed.
The problem was they weren’t all douche bags. Sometimes they were friends. Sometimes the sound of a friend’s thumb snapping like a twig echoed in his dreams. Sometimes the howling winter winds outside his window in the dark of night sounded like the screams of a child walking in as he punched their daddy to a bloody pulp. Sometimes he had to get up and scrub his hands raw under scalding-hot water to get at the blood that would never wash out. Sometimes he stared in the mirror at hollow eyes, seeing the face of a man who hid in the shadows, a man he swore he’d never become. Sometimes.
He rolled past Harrisonville and exited US 71 on to Highway 7, his stomach knotting tighter as he closed in on his hometown. Thirty minutes later, he drove into Clinton and stopped at Wendy’s to take a leak and grab a late lunch before pressing on.
Jake could almost smell the oil and grease from the Clinton junkyard where the old man used to take them on the weekends. Jake and Nicky crammed together in their dad’s ancient heap, listening to him cuss the wasted truck’s very existence in between puffs of Camels lit one after the other in an unending chain. Stony placed Nicky in charge of keeping upward pressure on the eight-track cassette in the dash, so “He Stopped Loving Her Today” would play without warbling. Any deviation to the tone of George Jones would earn Nick a smack to the back of the head. Ever since Mama died, Stony would listen to almost nothing else in his truck but that eight-track. The premise itself made for a stupid country song.
The roads curved and the hills deepened the further Jake got from Clinton, like the road itself didn’t want to go to Warsaw either. He took a pull from his water bottle and turned on the radio, tired of the silence. He sang along and agreed with Kenny Chesney; he should indeed sit and have another beer in Mexico. Mexico sounded good. Warm sun, fine sand beaches, clear blue water and Pacifico beers lined up in front of him. Find a big-breasted señorita with a happy disposition. Maybe after this trip. Maybe after Stony finally kicked the bucket and he fulfilled his obligation to Keats.
The town of Coal swam up, so small that if you sneezed, you’d miss it entirely. Jake slowed without thinking and pulled into the dirt lot of The Coal Bin. He dropped his six-foot two-inch frame out from the truck and ran his hands over his cropped hair, pushing his muscular arms into his back. The vertebrae clicked and crunched.
As he leaned on the warm hood, smelling a mix of manure and exhaust fumes, a dark-haired boy darted out the front door of the white-washed general store and jumped off the step. The boy looked just like Nicky. Mop head and deep dimples the girls giggled over. Nicky. It was hard
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