A Burnt Tongue/Zero Drafts

Say it wrong, read, pause, think, resume

The Ballad of Daytona Doyle and Tulsa Tristero: Part 0

Outside the long fifties Edward Hopper painting diner dawn was starting to creep up peach ass in the sky. The grit-bottomed coffee in front of the four men at the window table was steaming past hot, and everyone was the metal-coiled tense that vibrates the air, even though they were social distanced, hidden behind COVID masks aside from when eating, which no one was doing much of then so far, and Tulsa couldn't stop sniffing, claiming it was just the allergies in the panhandle that he couldn't stand instead of the numb chem cocaine drip he was slurping back down his throat again and again.

Their waitress wasn't attentive, blonde, young, lithe, on summer break or just dropped out, her stained shirt read The Lunch Box on it in almost fancy vintage lettering spattered with condiments, and she walked by with coffee every pause in the conversation before she took back to looking at videos on her phone.

"So the load is all there in the bag?" Daytona said. His face mask was snakeskin, along with his silver capped shoes with their silver spurs. Everything about the man slick and pedicured to present an air of don't fuck with me intimidation. It worked. His white shirt with the wide sharp collar, his long black oil slick hair combed back and shining without a single flying away. Contrast with Tulsa next to him, a rangy mess of near beard, dirty ballcap, tan hunters vest and a pistol in open carry, visible, strapped to his hip. Tulsa’s the sort just wore Vans sneakers because he knew he could walk in them without making a sound.

The men across from them at the table not touching their food were Cartel cartoons, too clean starched Western shirts in pastels with black and red piping and curlicue filigree, greying moustaches, and paunches hiding their thin legs in spotless Wranglers that are always so new they never don’t look outta place. The men who delivered the work were never the young bucks. The young bucks were too stupid, too aggressive, pistoleros ready to blow your balls off under the table, which was funny cuz hunched over the formica with his shoulders slumped, Tulsa had one hand clutching the handle of his coffee mug above, and the other between his legs holding a Sig Sauer P226 aimed right at the Cartel uncle’s nuts.

"Load is all in the bag my friend, all you need to do is get it to Los Angeles," the man in the pink shirt across from them said.

"Don't expect we're going to get it all out and count it," Tulsa’s voice is smoke rolling low over gravel, "this being a fuckin' handoff in public."

"Tulsa you should chill, this is just how it works down here," Daytona said and sipped his coffee. So much sugar and five crunched up plastic pots of cheap vanilla creamer clouding it. "They'll leave first, and then we leave with the bag."

"He's right, that's how it works my friend" the other cartel uncle in a pastel blue shirt said. Big wet eyes. The sort you know been in too long, has family, looking forward to getting this done with.

"Load is all in the bag. Friends, all you need to do, is get it to Los Angeles," the man in the pink shirt across from them said. in their pastel getups they got up, left hundred-dollar bills for their untouched piles of cold food, greasy sausage, runny eggs, untoasted toast, and slow shuffled out the front door, boots scuffing the dirty floor playing cowboy. Tulsa watched them all the way out, plot hound attentive. 

"Has anyone ever told you you're too fucking paranoid for this line of work?"  Daytona asked him and took the last bite of his cold waffle just soaked like a pissed mattress with the cheapest syrup Sysco foods sells in bulk.

"Have I ever told you that's why I'm still alive?" Tulsa said, put the pistol between his legs on the seat, and went at his rye toast with butter; the only thing he'd ordered aside from shit coffee.

"And you do too much of the co-cayne" Daytona continued after swallowing.

"We just gonna sit here all day," Tulsa talked with his mouth full of toast, Covid mask around his neck, spitting crumbs like a woodchipper "or are we going to get on the road?"

"I'm getting the bag, and you're spitting toast fucking everywhere, heathen," Daytona grabbed the gym bag under the table and slid out of the booth. Tulsa smooth grabbed the two hundred dollars the cartel men left as a tip with one hand and carried his pistol in plain view dangling from the other. Daytona looked over his shoulder and said put that fucking thing away.

Daytona was cool, smooth, calculating, the air of a mystic to him. Tulsa had a marionette walk and heard music that wasn't there. You ever hear the opening to Black Sabbath's The Wizard? Daytona was halfway to the door but in Tulsa's head he heard that harmonica playing, his head bobbed, and then in his ears came the guitars.

Tulsa did not holster the P226.

"Tulsa come on," Daytona said and the door chimed when he opened it.

Tulsa did not come on. He raised the pistol and shot their waitress in the face, splattering blood up the wall to the ceiling, blew a hole in a line cooks head; the man hit the flat grill and his face sizzled on the way to the ground. Then he emptied the rest of the magazine into the walls, tables, people, whatever, 'til it clicked empty and Daytona was yelling at him, grabbed him by the shoulder, pulled him out of the diner out into the parking lot. The daydream ended; Daytona was starting the car. Tristero sitting in car seat, diner not a scene of carnage, the lyrics still play. He patted his hip, pistol in holster. A man with a gun and a bad habit of losing time.

"Without warning, a wizard walks by," Tulsa almost singing but just talking; cocaine melodious; spoke to no one.

"We need to get the fuck out of Tallahassee you fucking," Daytona regretted Tristero except for the times he needed him, or times the bugs in Tulsa's brain whispered truths.

A white 1989 Grand Marquis bought off lot rural three days prior cash no questions from Florda Man. Daytona threw the bag in the back seat, cranked the engine, and pulled out of the parking lot calm into traffic, just normal as anyone. Tulsa just sang the song in his head, all the people, gave a happy sigh, the lyrics vented under his breath. Doyle had told him before, and he believed it by then, that there was a rock he kept in the car made them invisible to law enforcement. Good for one use, after that it cracked into pieces. 

They stopped at a lot of rock and mineral shops for replacements.

Tulsa passed out against the window and Daytona took them west, out of Tallahassee, hundreds of thousands of pill mill opiates vacuum sealed in rough square bricks loaded tight plastic wrapped in one rectangular bale, and surrounded by dirty t-shirts in the duffel bag on the back seat, headed to Los Angeles.

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