The View: salvadore_hart
Title: Let's Play Robbers & Live on the Lamb
Author: salvadore-hart
Rating: R
Characters: Gabe Garza, James Chaffin, Evan “Q-Tip” Stafford
Word Count: 2118
Summary: If it takes shit to feel bliss, then I feel pretty blissfully.
Warnings: Glorification of criminal activity, I suppose, in an O Brother Where Art Thou? fashion. Racial slurs spoken by Chaffin (that I do not agree with.)
Notes: pinch-hit for the song “The View” by Modest Mouse. This is not at all a representation of prison. This is a mash-up of O Brother Where Art Thou?, Cool Hand Luke, and a future!world dystopia. I don't know either.
Thanks to schlicky for an early read through.
Download Link: The View
Gabe Garza and James Chaffin meet on the prison convoy as it is moaning and groaning its way through the desert. The convoy is a big diesel guzzling sort of beast, a fossil in that day and age with black smoke spewing from its pipes, and it is barely occupied with a handful of convicts.
It's because one of the convoy's eighteen large wheels hits something in the earth that makes the caravan rock that Gabe looks up from his clasped hands and sees Chaffin. He's smaller than the other convicts, looking slightly swallowed in his striped jumpsuit. But unlike any of the other convicts Chaffin isn't bowed over his tied wrists or staring at a piece of the metal floor. Instead, he is staring up at the ceiling with his legs lazily spread and a nonchalance screaming out of his loose posture while he idly taps his fingers on the free seat beside him.
That's what Gabe notices first, the nonchalance, before he sees the word CHAFFIN stitched on the left breast of the man's jumpsuit. Gabe sounds the name out in his head, wonders if it follows the rules of the English language, then smiles as he resolves to remember the man's name. He resolves to remember everything.
Gabe is staring at Chaffin's bruised knuckles when he hears a rough, “hey,” thrown his way. When Gabe looks up he is caught in Chaffin's narrowed gaze. There's a wrinkle forming over the bridge of Chaffin's nose that makes him look ridiculous, like he is trying too hard to think.
“What the fuck are you looking at you spick?”
Gabe didn't know there was any background conversations taking place until they go absolutely silent. Half a dozen pairs of eyes turn to stare at Gabe, expectantly. But Gabe doesn't throw any words back.
He drops his head and shakes it. To anyone watching it probably looks like a silent chuckle, but its not. Gabe is taking a breath - a moment his mama used to say - because he doesn't want to look affected. He shifts his legs and when he looks back up he stretches back in a more eased stance. Gabe even gives Chaffin a smile before he leans his head back and closes his eyes in a fake doze.
When they get off the bus, though, and Chaffin is standing directly behind him, Gabe whips his arms around. He clips Chaffin hard in the chin with his elbow and when he pivots, Gabe watches Chaffin hit the ground. The fall kicks up a cloud of dust and for a beat no one moves, not the guards, not the convicts in the yard, not the men in line.
Then the guards are already running toward them as Gabe watches Chaffin struggles in the dirt to roll onto his side. After a few sluggish motions Chaffin manages to find his feet, despite his bound hands, and slowly straightens to his full height. Gabe is watching closely the entire time so he sees the small grin on Chaffin's lips when he stumbles forward.
The guards grab both of them by their collars and there is screaming going on all around them, officials giving orders and convicts catcalling, but Gabe's attention narrows on that small grin.
For a moment they are standing face to face and they are sharing a grin. Then there are heavy hands and heavier clubs making sure that they are very aware of how inappropriate their behavior was. Gabe doesn't listen, though, because he is a thousand miles away in his mind, planning a getaway. Now that he has someone to invite along.
-
After that, everyone from the guards to the convicts to the warden himself expects Garza and Chaffin to make each other's lives fucking miserable. The first time Chaffin jostles Garza in line, Garza almost believes what the others believe, that they are going to be arch rivals, and its disappointing. Then Chaffin cuts him in line and he turns back to look at Garza, who is thinking about punching Chaffin square between his eyes, Chaffin grins at him. Weird teeth and wrinkles around the eyes on full display.
And, as it turns out, the first thing Garza learns about Chaffin is that he hates being predictable as much as Garza does. So they become best friends instead, which works just fine for the both of them. Neither of them wants an enemy on top of the shit-situation that being in prison represents. And, besides, it nearly gives the guards a conniption when Chaffin calls Garza derogatory names that would shame anyones' mother and instead of Garza punching him, he just calls Chaffin out on his nappy-haired half brothers.
-
Chaffin's roommate is a kid named Stafford who was pinched for a theft gone wrong. Rumor has it he laughed at the arresting officer before he'd said with a grin pulling his lips up wide, “What seems to be the problem, dawg?” Stafford had come into the prison a week after Chaffin and Gabe with his rotator-cuff completely fucked up and a hand shaped bruise marring the left side of his face.
(The real story is a rap of repeated accounts of petty theft and a judge who had wanted to make an example out of Evan.)
All of the black eyes and sprained limbs that the guards expected Garza to ration out on Chaffin are exacted by Stafford. And Chaffin gives as good as he gets, so most days the two cellmates wander around with darkened eyes and insults bitten back behind pursed lips. The only reason Chaffin and Stafford get away with it, and aren't thrown in solitary, is because they only beat on each other when the lights are out. And the guards couldn't give a fuck in the middle of the night.
Gabe brings that up, one day in the yard. He's lying out on the bleachers, staring at the sky, while beside him Chaffin is re-breaking the ring finger on his left hand so he can set it with the medical supplies he traded for.
“I heard that solitary used to be time spent in a solitary cell,” Gabe says, trying to make it sound offhanded.
Chaffin snorts and says, “Maybe fifty years ago, brother.”
Gabe frowns, but he doesn't disagree. He could let his mind wander to the boom of robotics and the darkened alley ways in his neighborhood. In the past he and Chaffin had exchanged the tales of “before” that they had heard growing up.
But today that is the last thing Gabe wants to dwell on. Instead he rolls over on his side so he can stare up at Chaffin. He broaches the topic of their getaway with, “So...”
“Wait,” Chaffin interrupts. He looks up, eye narrowed against the harsh, desert sunlight. When he finds who he is looking for, Chaffin cups his hands around his mouth to amplify his shout and the broken finger sticks out perpendicularly.
“Q-Tip!”
Chaffin's cellmate looks up with a disgusted look, but he does toss the half-inflated basketball at another prisoner. Catcalls follow Stafford as he presses a hand to the top of his bandana as he jogs across the dirt of the courtyard toward the bleachers. Gabe looks up at Chaffin in question and Chaffin drops his head to chuckle, amused.
“Kid has snow-white hair. Like a baby, I shit you not,” Chaffin offers up willingly. His lips are curled up in the corners and Gabe smiles at the sight of the grin. Stafford, who is close enough by that point to hear what Chaffin says, sticks his middle finger up at the pair of them.
“Fuck you, dawg.”
“Fuck you,” Chaffin quips with a grin. “We have a proposition for you.”
-
Their getaway involves a distraction and stealing one of the eighteen wheel convoys. The beasts are the only things that can run through the twenty-foot, electrified steel fence and still keep going.
Gabe has never been more appreciative of what he learned during the summer he spent hijacking cars with his cousin as he is during the five-minute window where Stafford and Chaffin are brawling to distract the guards. Gabe spends that window of time under the steering wheel, stripping cables and praying to god that the engine kicks in before either he gets electrocuted or his brothers get dragged into solitary.
Gabe shivers at the thought just as the engine decides to give him a rumbling purr.
Stafford and Chaffin drop their raised fists and race for the vehicle as soon as the sound perforates through their snarled threats. Stafford stops in the middle of a rant about Chaffin's mother and grins lopsidedly. His hand goes to his head, keeping his bandana in place as he raises for the gate. Chaffin is right behind him, already whooping as he shoves a guard from his way. Stafford makes it to the passenger seat first and then there are several voices screaming at Gabe to drive. His foot is on the pedal and he is already making a u-turn, watching Chaffin's arms wave in the rearview mirror.
Just feet from the gate, Chaffin leaps and makes it inside the back through the swinging door. Gabe hears him cry, “motherfuckers!” cheerfully back at the prison.
-
Step two in the escape plan is to crash the vehicle after they have gained enough ground to have a substantial head start. Gabe fulfills this task alone, and afterward Chaffin and Stafford pull him from the wrecked cabin and drag him away from the crash sight with him held between their two shoulders. Stafford is whistling and telling him how amazing it was to watch, but Gabe's head is spinning. So, Gabe just nods in agreement until his head feels to heavy.
He blacks out for a bit, but at one point he hears Stafford ask, “How the hell, did you guys end up in that shit hole?”
“We're what some would call rebels. Defactors of the new regime,” Chaffin says in the same tone that he uses when he shrugs and intones, “Weather could be worse.” Gabe doesn't remember ever telling Chaffin about what landed his ass in a cement cell.
“I was in what was once Arizona, but I don't know about this motherfucker.”
“Fuck homes.”
Stafford whistles again and Gabe decides now is as good as any to go back to sleep.
-
Gabe, Chaffin, and Stafford end up deciding to go East. Stafford says he has a friend near the new territory of Maine. Turns out, what the three of them have in common is a military background. Though, Stafford had spent more time on the bases than seeing action. And the John Christeson, from Maine, he swears up and down will help them hide, was in his troop back before the “dissolution.”
Gabe doesn't see why not, and Chaffin murmurs something along the lines of, “Pappy could bring the boys anywhere. Maine's as good as any place to meet up.”
They find an old, two-wheel diesel machine abandoned in a ranch house. All three men are dehydrated and tired from walking. Stafford and Chaffin fight over an old faucet and Gabe grins at the motorcycle like its an old friend. The engine revs when Gabe guns it, the wheels have air, and there's even a side car still attached.
Both Chaffin and Stafford look at him like he might be touched in the head. Then Chaffin drops his head in that amused way of his, shaking it bacak and forth as he chuckles into his chest.
“Q-tip,” Gabe calls, picking up the nickname for the first time. He's grinning at Chaffin when he says, “Get in the side car.”
“Fuck, dawg,. why do I have to ride bitch?”
“Because James has nicer breasts,” Gabe says. Q-Tip throws his head back when he laughs. Chaffin is grumbling dirty lies about Gabe's mother, but like Q-Tip, he's moving toward the motorcycle without substantial argument. Watching his brothers laugh and shove at each other as they clamber on, Gabe sees life there that he hadn't before. He hopes to see more.
Gunning the engine, Gabe points them out the bar and then toward the rising sun. His naked skin feels pricked by pins and needles, and his eyes burn at the hot air. Gabe grins through it all. Chaffin's arms are tight on his waist and the sun is heavy on their backs. At Gabe's side Stafford screams, “FUCK THE POLICE!” and they all laugh while the engine roars.
Author: salvadore-hart
Rating: R
Characters: Gabe Garza, James Chaffin, Evan “Q-Tip” Stafford
Word Count: 2118
Summary: If it takes shit to feel bliss, then I feel pretty blissfully.
Warnings: Glorification of criminal activity, I suppose, in an O Brother Where Art Thou? fashion. Racial slurs spoken by Chaffin (that I do not agree with.)
Notes: pinch-hit for the song “The View” by Modest Mouse. This is not at all a representation of prison. This is a mash-up of O Brother Where Art Thou?, Cool Hand Luke, and a future!world dystopia. I don't know either.
Thanks to schlicky for an early read through.
Download Link: The View
Gabe Garza and James Chaffin meet on the prison convoy as it is moaning and groaning its way through the desert. The convoy is a big diesel guzzling sort of beast, a fossil in that day and age with black smoke spewing from its pipes, and it is barely occupied with a handful of convicts.
It's because one of the convoy's eighteen large wheels hits something in the earth that makes the caravan rock that Gabe looks up from his clasped hands and sees Chaffin. He's smaller than the other convicts, looking slightly swallowed in his striped jumpsuit. But unlike any of the other convicts Chaffin isn't bowed over his tied wrists or staring at a piece of the metal floor. Instead, he is staring up at the ceiling with his legs lazily spread and a nonchalance screaming out of his loose posture while he idly taps his fingers on the free seat beside him.
That's what Gabe notices first, the nonchalance, before he sees the word CHAFFIN stitched on the left breast of the man's jumpsuit. Gabe sounds the name out in his head, wonders if it follows the rules of the English language, then smiles as he resolves to remember the man's name. He resolves to remember everything.
Gabe is staring at Chaffin's bruised knuckles when he hears a rough, “hey,” thrown his way. When Gabe looks up he is caught in Chaffin's narrowed gaze. There's a wrinkle forming over the bridge of Chaffin's nose that makes him look ridiculous, like he is trying too hard to think.
“What the fuck are you looking at you spick?”
Gabe didn't know there was any background conversations taking place until they go absolutely silent. Half a dozen pairs of eyes turn to stare at Gabe, expectantly. But Gabe doesn't throw any words back.
He drops his head and shakes it. To anyone watching it probably looks like a silent chuckle, but its not. Gabe is taking a breath - a moment his mama used to say - because he doesn't want to look affected. He shifts his legs and when he looks back up he stretches back in a more eased stance. Gabe even gives Chaffin a smile before he leans his head back and closes his eyes in a fake doze.
When they get off the bus, though, and Chaffin is standing directly behind him, Gabe whips his arms around. He clips Chaffin hard in the chin with his elbow and when he pivots, Gabe watches Chaffin hit the ground. The fall kicks up a cloud of dust and for a beat no one moves, not the guards, not the convicts in the yard, not the men in line.
Then the guards are already running toward them as Gabe watches Chaffin struggles in the dirt to roll onto his side. After a few sluggish motions Chaffin manages to find his feet, despite his bound hands, and slowly straightens to his full height. Gabe is watching closely the entire time so he sees the small grin on Chaffin's lips when he stumbles forward.
The guards grab both of them by their collars and there is screaming going on all around them, officials giving orders and convicts catcalling, but Gabe's attention narrows on that small grin.
For a moment they are standing face to face and they are sharing a grin. Then there are heavy hands and heavier clubs making sure that they are very aware of how inappropriate their behavior was. Gabe doesn't listen, though, because he is a thousand miles away in his mind, planning a getaway. Now that he has someone to invite along.
-
After that, everyone from the guards to the convicts to the warden himself expects Garza and Chaffin to make each other's lives fucking miserable. The first time Chaffin jostles Garza in line, Garza almost believes what the others believe, that they are going to be arch rivals, and its disappointing. Then Chaffin cuts him in line and he turns back to look at Garza, who is thinking about punching Chaffin square between his eyes, Chaffin grins at him. Weird teeth and wrinkles around the eyes on full display.
And, as it turns out, the first thing Garza learns about Chaffin is that he hates being predictable as much as Garza does. So they become best friends instead, which works just fine for the both of them. Neither of them wants an enemy on top of the shit-situation that being in prison represents. And, besides, it nearly gives the guards a conniption when Chaffin calls Garza derogatory names that would shame anyones' mother and instead of Garza punching him, he just calls Chaffin out on his nappy-haired half brothers.
-
Chaffin's roommate is a kid named Stafford who was pinched for a theft gone wrong. Rumor has it he laughed at the arresting officer before he'd said with a grin pulling his lips up wide, “What seems to be the problem, dawg?” Stafford had come into the prison a week after Chaffin and Gabe with his rotator-cuff completely fucked up and a hand shaped bruise marring the left side of his face.
(The real story is a rap of repeated accounts of petty theft and a judge who had wanted to make an example out of Evan.)
All of the black eyes and sprained limbs that the guards expected Garza to ration out on Chaffin are exacted by Stafford. And Chaffin gives as good as he gets, so most days the two cellmates wander around with darkened eyes and insults bitten back behind pursed lips. The only reason Chaffin and Stafford get away with it, and aren't thrown in solitary, is because they only beat on each other when the lights are out. And the guards couldn't give a fuck in the middle of the night.
Gabe brings that up, one day in the yard. He's lying out on the bleachers, staring at the sky, while beside him Chaffin is re-breaking the ring finger on his left hand so he can set it with the medical supplies he traded for.
“I heard that solitary used to be time spent in a solitary cell,” Gabe says, trying to make it sound offhanded.
Chaffin snorts and says, “Maybe fifty years ago, brother.”
Gabe frowns, but he doesn't disagree. He could let his mind wander to the boom of robotics and the darkened alley ways in his neighborhood. In the past he and Chaffin had exchanged the tales of “before” that they had heard growing up.
But today that is the last thing Gabe wants to dwell on. Instead he rolls over on his side so he can stare up at Chaffin. He broaches the topic of their getaway with, “So...”
“Wait,” Chaffin interrupts. He looks up, eye narrowed against the harsh, desert sunlight. When he finds who he is looking for, Chaffin cups his hands around his mouth to amplify his shout and the broken finger sticks out perpendicularly.
“Q-Tip!”
Chaffin's cellmate looks up with a disgusted look, but he does toss the half-inflated basketball at another prisoner. Catcalls follow Stafford as he presses a hand to the top of his bandana as he jogs across the dirt of the courtyard toward the bleachers. Gabe looks up at Chaffin in question and Chaffin drops his head to chuckle, amused.
“Kid has snow-white hair. Like a baby, I shit you not,” Chaffin offers up willingly. His lips are curled up in the corners and Gabe smiles at the sight of the grin. Stafford, who is close enough by that point to hear what Chaffin says, sticks his middle finger up at the pair of them.
“Fuck you, dawg.”
“Fuck you,” Chaffin quips with a grin. “We have a proposition for you.”
-
Their getaway involves a distraction and stealing one of the eighteen wheel convoys. The beasts are the only things that can run through the twenty-foot, electrified steel fence and still keep going.
Gabe has never been more appreciative of what he learned during the summer he spent hijacking cars with his cousin as he is during the five-minute window where Stafford and Chaffin are brawling to distract the guards. Gabe spends that window of time under the steering wheel, stripping cables and praying to god that the engine kicks in before either he gets electrocuted or his brothers get dragged into solitary.
Gabe shivers at the thought just as the engine decides to give him a rumbling purr.
Stafford and Chaffin drop their raised fists and race for the vehicle as soon as the sound perforates through their snarled threats. Stafford stops in the middle of a rant about Chaffin's mother and grins lopsidedly. His hand goes to his head, keeping his bandana in place as he raises for the gate. Chaffin is right behind him, already whooping as he shoves a guard from his way. Stafford makes it to the passenger seat first and then there are several voices screaming at Gabe to drive. His foot is on the pedal and he is already making a u-turn, watching Chaffin's arms wave in the rearview mirror.
Just feet from the gate, Chaffin leaps and makes it inside the back through the swinging door. Gabe hears him cry, “motherfuckers!” cheerfully back at the prison.
-
Step two in the escape plan is to crash the vehicle after they have gained enough ground to have a substantial head start. Gabe fulfills this task alone, and afterward Chaffin and Stafford pull him from the wrecked cabin and drag him away from the crash sight with him held between their two shoulders. Stafford is whistling and telling him how amazing it was to watch, but Gabe's head is spinning. So, Gabe just nods in agreement until his head feels to heavy.
He blacks out for a bit, but at one point he hears Stafford ask, “How the hell, did you guys end up in that shit hole?”
“We're what some would call rebels. Defactors of the new regime,” Chaffin says in the same tone that he uses when he shrugs and intones, “Weather could be worse.” Gabe doesn't remember ever telling Chaffin about what landed his ass in a cement cell.
“I was in what was once Arizona, but I don't know about this motherfucker.”
“Fuck homes.”
Stafford whistles again and Gabe decides now is as good as any to go back to sleep.
-
Gabe, Chaffin, and Stafford end up deciding to go East. Stafford says he has a friend near the new territory of Maine. Turns out, what the three of them have in common is a military background. Though, Stafford had spent more time on the bases than seeing action. And the John Christeson, from Maine, he swears up and down will help them hide, was in his troop back before the “dissolution.”
Gabe doesn't see why not, and Chaffin murmurs something along the lines of, “Pappy could bring the boys anywhere. Maine's as good as any place to meet up.”
They find an old, two-wheel diesel machine abandoned in a ranch house. All three men are dehydrated and tired from walking. Stafford and Chaffin fight over an old faucet and Gabe grins at the motorcycle like its an old friend. The engine revs when Gabe guns it, the wheels have air, and there's even a side car still attached.
Both Chaffin and Stafford look at him like he might be touched in the head. Then Chaffin drops his head in that amused way of his, shaking it bacak and forth as he chuckles into his chest.
“Q-tip,” Gabe calls, picking up the nickname for the first time. He's grinning at Chaffin when he says, “Get in the side car.”
“Fuck, dawg,. why do I have to ride bitch?”
“Because James has nicer breasts,” Gabe says. Q-Tip throws his head back when he laughs. Chaffin is grumbling dirty lies about Gabe's mother, but like Q-Tip, he's moving toward the motorcycle without substantial argument. Watching his brothers laugh and shove at each other as they clamber on, Gabe sees life there that he hadn't before. He hopes to see more.
Gunning the engine, Gabe points them out the bar and then toward the rising sun. His naked skin feels pricked by pins and needles, and his eyes burn at the hot air. Gabe grins through it all. Chaffin's arms are tight on his waist and the sun is heavy on their backs. At Gabe's side Stafford screams, “FUCK THE POLICE!” and they all laugh while the engine roars.