Redneck Press: Home of TOUGH

  F rank bent Mandy over the counter, one hand clamped over her mouth and his other groping under her skirt. I came in the back door, the key in one hand and the trash barrel in the other, and saw the fluorescent light reflecting off the tears on Mandy’s cheeks and casting jagged shadows on Frank’s face. Before they could see me, I pushed the door open again so it slammed behind me. By the time I mounted the stairs to the store proper, Mandy was gone and Frank held the day’s receipts. He nodded at me, his eyes like cinders. “All the registers are cashed out, Jerry, so you can take off.” I dropped the keys on the counter and went back downstairs for my jacket. I waited until Mandy appeared from the restroom, her face a frozen mask except for her eyes. “I saw,” I whispered. “Are you all right?” “Compared to what?” She was a year older than me, and a few inches shorter. Even in the flats the store made all the women wear, she had beautiful brown legs. I smelled fear...

J eremy Spokane—a mondegreen more than a pseudonym—had plenty of reasons to dislike metal. To despise it. There was that “Say You Love Satan” guy out over in Northport who killed someone over a drug deal, and how every teenage dirtbag on the island, from Seagate to Montauk, actually loved being implicated. The long-hairs loved it when the cops beat the shit out of them too; chicks dig battle scars and contusions. Jeremy, his hair long in the front, great swoopy bangs over his eyes, was less enthusiastic about being called a devil-worshiper and getting punched in the face. There were the endless guitar solos—virtuosos, sure, but in the service of what? Not even Satan, just baby baby baby and sometimes flowers sad in the rain, girl. Power ballads to play during tearful slow dances at prom in memoriam of Jenny and the Craigster who got their heads chopped off in a drunk driving incident two Saturdays prior while on their way back from Laser Zeppelin at the planetarium. And then there wa...

  R ay Ray’s feet swept onto South Mission Beach without the rest of him. “ He had huge feet,” his sister Samantha said. She perched on the metal chair in front of my desk, her hands stretched apart. “All the rubber in the soles of his shoes made his feet buoyant.” She scooped up blond hair and draped it over her shoulder to hide a teal strap that didn’t look like it could support a fishing lure. “ Police tell ya that?” She toyed with my desk plaque: Serving Justice Since 1966. “ Maybe a great white got the rest of him,” I said. “ Ray Ray wasn’t a surfer.” Samantha inspected her split ends. “He was a peanut vendor at SeaWorld.” “ There you go. Didn’t the original Shamu nearly bite off a trainer’s leg?” To my way of thinking, a satisfying story. People who caged up animals deserved what they got. I reached for my Marlboros parked by a glass ashtray. “ Shamu’s an orca; great whites are sharks.” “ Right,” I said, squinting, “but orcas are killer whales , right?” ...