The Good Book: Fairy Tales for Hard Men

THE GOOD BOOK

Fairy Tales for Hard Men

Tom Leins

Copyright © 2020 by Tom Leins

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover design by Zach McCain

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Good Book

Chicks Dig Scars

The Curtain Jerker

Hellbelly

The Sunset Flip

Fairy Tales for Hard Men

The Big Blow-Off

The Last Dog & Pony Show

The Cold Vein

Other People’s Pussy

The Glory Hole

Meat Whiplash

Truckload of Trouble

Goat Sucker

Gusher

Beauty & Ruin

Bloater

The Signature Move

Black Sheets of Rain

Guatemala Kill-Pit

The Stooge

Real Americans

About the Author

Books by the Author

Preview from True Dark by Mike Miner

Preview from Chasing China White by Allan Leverone

Preview from The Dead Don’t Sleep by Steven Max Russo

This book is for everyone who spent their childhood watching oiled-up men in spandex pretending to cripple one another.

CHICKS DIG SCARS

NAME: Gringo Starr

BILLED FROM: Augusta, GA

BILLED WEIGHT: 303 lbs.

FINISHING MOVE: The Uncle Sam Super-slam

February 1980

International Plaza Mall, Testament, FL

You see this one right here?

I place her hand under my Knuckle Town muscle vest and with a red, lacquered nail she traces the scar that curves from my right nipple to my hip.

Downtown Devastation. Barbed Wire Match with Walter ‘Waxwork’ Wallace. Thirty-two minutes and fifteen seconds. Victory by pinfall.

Did it hurt?

Some.

Her hand moves towards my washboard stomach and stops, stroking the fine layer of stubble where I shaved my stomach hair three days ago in the mall bathroom.

It’s longer than my dick and throbs when it rains.

Lenora cackles.

She is a well-preserved blonde with a dirty mouth. Well-behaved for a lush, but I expect that will change if I hang around long enough.

I’m running through my pro-wrestling shtick. It’s nothing the barman hasn’t heard a dozen times before, but Lenora is enjoying it well enough.

We’ve been drinking in the bar at the International Plaza mall since breakfast. She said she was jet lagged; I stopped making excuses a long time ago. She said she was a model, and I tried not to look too doubtful. Hand model, perhaps? Foot model? I don’t know too many modelling agencies that hire forty-five-year-old drunks. Then again, I don’t know too many modelling agencies.

She finishes her Salty Dog with a gulp and then licks the salt off her lips. I say Salty Dog, but it’s not really: she switched out the gin for vodka. Some people don’t mind, but I’m a purist. Me, I’m drinking bourbon, with a pinch of sugar. I take it slow, never gulp.

Your place or mine?

I feign ambivalence. This week I’ve mainly been sleeping in my car. I’ll have to call in another favour from my cousin Leonard, who works the night shift at the Testament Motor Lodge.

She retrieves her own car keys from her bag and I glance at the fake Rolex dangling from my wrist. Leonard won’t be at work for another two hours.

She slides the keys across the scarred bartop.

Are you sober enough to drive?

I shrug, and gesture to the barman.

Same again—no ice. And whatever the lady is having.

The Plaza isn’t my favourite pickup joint but it definitely ranks in my top five.

Sunday night. Boredom is my worst enemy. Alcohol is my best friend.

I’m still sore from last night’s bout and I need a couple of drinks to take the edge off. It should have been an easy ride—I got a kickback from the promoter, Fingerfuck Flanagan, to ‘stretch’ some punk kid, but the little bastard was too quick for me. Tougher than week-old dog shit, too. I got tired of chasing his ass round the ring and snapped his damned wrist to force a submission. In the locker room afterwards, Fingerfuck paid me double. Peeled the greenbacks off his money clip and stuffed them down the front of my trunks like I was a fucking stripper. Sadistic bastard. I should have snapped his damned wrist, too.

It’s a good night to introduce Lenora to my uncle, Randall. He’s probably my favourite living relative. He’s my only living relative.

He used to work for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs—the precursor to the DEA. He got shit-canned in the early seventies when Ingersoll started rooting out corrupt agents. He wasn’t the worst, but he was dirty all the same. He worked in private security until his retirement three years ago and now he lives in a double-wide behind a redneck bar called the Silver Dollar.

The Silver Dollar used to be a strip club called Big Dick’s—Big Dick was the owner, but everyone thought it was some kind of sissy joint and gave it a wide berth. After all, who wants to pay money to have a dick—big or otherwise—rubbed in their fuckin’ face?

Big Dick himself is dead now—his heart exploded after a cocaine binge. He had one of those ironic names—poor motherfucker was only four-foot-nine. Smallest goddamn coffin I’ve ever seen. His wife asked the funeral parlour for a discount. Didn’t fuckin’ get one though.

Lenora is wearing a white blouse, too-tight hooker jeans and spike heels. I’m in a tropical print shirt, jeans and sneakers. The usual.

You’ll like my uncle. He’s just like me, but better educated, and with a looser moral code.

She giggles, already half-cut.

Randall has beer to drink but not much else. Lucky I brought a hip flask. We sit on lawn chairs behind his trailer and talk shit. I tell a few stories from my time in Glades Correctional, but leave out the one about the jailhouse wedding. It tends not to play well with female guests. Randall tells her about the time he infiltrated a white power rally and ended up getting head in the back of a cop car. Somehow he makes it sound funny.

Plenty of people hate him, but he’s a good man, always done right by me. He has a ragged, perforated cheek where he was hit with knuckle-dusters in a bar fight at the Dollar last Christmas. When he smokes it oozes through the flimsy patch of skin on his face.

If Lenora is shocked she doesn’t let on.

When he tells his anecdote about busting a meth lab at a leper hospital she almost wets herself.

After she goes inside to use the bathroom, Randall coughs up something bloody and rubs it into the parched grass with his big toe. He clears his throat.

Gregory, do you like this girl?

Hell no, Randall. She’s old enough to be my…slightly older sister.

He shrugs, nearly grunts.

I say, She’s married to Denholm McDaniel.

He raises one of the scar-tissued ridges that passes for an eyebrow. Denholm McDaniel is Testament’s meat king. Last year he earned more money than God. Randall gazes at me curiously. What’s your angle, Gregory?

Fresh pussy, Randall. Same as it always is.

He scoffs. Fuck you, son.

He stares at me, waiting for me to ask.

Do you have guns, Randall?

Will we need guns?

Now it’s my turn to shrug.

He says, I’ll call Gordy.

I drop my cigarette butt in an empty beer can and crumple it. Fucking Gordy. These two old bastards are as thick as thieves. He talks about the fucking guy more than he talks about my dead aunt, Lorraine.

The river behind the double-wide is thick and brown, coursing lazily like spilled blood.

What about the girl?

What about her?

Tuesday morning. The whole sick crew.

We’re at the Silver Dollar, eating pancakes. The bar doesn’t open until noon but Randall has a key, in case he needs to use the bathroom. His chemical toilet backs up something chronic during the winter months. His thinning hair is slicked back, and he’s dressed in a brand-new sports jacket. He already has syrup on his left lapel. The rest of us are wearing black boiler-suits.

Next to Randall is Gordy Grace. He’s a tough old bastard. Used to be in my line of work. Once survived a knife attack from a couple of locals in a Puerto Rican locker room after a Caribbean championship title fight. As legend has it, he slit their throats and left them to bleed out in the shower, exiting the building with their purse money for the night. He retired a couple of years ago and now runs a two-bit training school in Crooked Timber—a rickety two-storey building known as Disgraceland.

Gordy has what my uncle terms ‘survivalist tendencies’, what I term a fuckload of guns. They met at the shooting range and