Can't really decide.

[unburiable]

I.

Most hot August mornings started out with somebody’s hen crowing into the city, waking up the dead.

On this morning, however, nothing happened but the chirping of distant birds, and just to make it a little less like the ordinary run, there was a cool breeze crawling through the streets that could bring a smile to someone’s face without taking care to note that there really wasn’t much to be smiling about.

DeLemore Street served as the hub of the poorest borough in all of East Palomino: Gabriel; a tiny little maze that couldn’t confuse a half dead rat, yet the few streets and boulevards that claimed any importance whatsoever ziz-zagged and collided with each other in a way that seemed to beg an honest explanation from the city planners (not that you’d get an answer back). Were they just kidding? Were they laughing at the taxpayers? Did most people even really keep jobs long enough to get sucked into paying these taxes?

Just in case one got the feeling that maybe it was all just a coincidence, Gabriel had but one entrance, which also doubled as its only exit. So Gabriel, in the very fairest terms, was a dead end. If one were to take the DeLemore Street branch at the end of the Mercy split, it was like getting swallowed by Gabriel; if leaving (lucky enough to, anyway), a person could rightly say Gabriel had only spat them out because they tasted worse than the bilge it had already grown used to and loved; indeed, was probably even built for.

Mercy Street darted out of the downtown East Palomino industrial sect, a skulking, shabbily comprised spider’s web of abandoned iron works, some rusty old textile mills and a glue factory. As the road weaved along on its path like a dying earthworm would, it ripped through a patch of rotten forestry the city never bothered to do a damned thing about. And finally, after a twenty minute drive of rattling gravel splitting up automobile tires with their sharp, spear-like edges, Mercy Street came to a fork in the road.

This tear in Mercy’s fabric, despite the shit towns its divergence led to, was a somewhat hotspot in East Palomino (if you could call it that), subject to moderate cash flow and the occasional set of pretty strangers strutting their stuff from bar to bar like they understood what sort of danger they were in. Known as “the other downtown” by know-nothin’ outsiders, Mercy Street’s split end was officially hailed as The Fork by those who knew it and belonged there. Every so here and there a pack of snotty rich kids from West Palomino would rumble in with their fast cars and big wallets, hoisting pretty blond girls who were hanging on their sleeves, and about half those times there would be a clash, or a bar fight, but mostly the Eastside kids just wanted to ignore the foreigners and get on with their lives, because to anyone who had any right being there in the first place, they knew it was neutral ground. Which meant no fights with strangers, if it could be avoided; and under no circumstances whatsoever would two gangs roll, no matter how mean they had it for each other.

The two unwholesome branches offered by The Fork were DeLemore Street and Cable Park Road. Spread out over what should really have been five lanes but reduced to four with lazy unevenness, The Fork was pinpricked at its v-shaped crust with various pubs, unhappy or usually closed bars, rank fish markets & magazine stands & lost motels, and alleyways that smelled like dead people pissing. Why the strangers from the West side would want to show up to a fucking trash heap like The Fork was any sensible person’s guess, but it was long suspected that they just cruised in to have something to laugh at and drink, at the native expense.

Which is exactly what Henry and Lyle were talking about at the front booth of Junderson’s Café, the dingiest place on The Fork but, as it happened, the only sit-in eatery. The two were sharing a bagel, as neither of them could really afford their own servings, and were about to head back to the pub next door to have a few more drinks, which was the only real consumption they took part in because gang finances were low.

Forking the last bit of bagel into his mouth and mixing it with the last swig off a warm bottle of cheap local Palomino beer, Lyle tossed the plate onto the floor and stuck the metal fork into the wall. “Let’s go get some fuckin’ beer,” he said through a mouthful of the first meal he’d taken in for three days.

Henry nodded, looking through the grimy front window of the café, out onto some dingy looking convertible that went out of style two decades ago, passing slowly by the pubs, looking suspicious.

“The fuck d’you suppose that was all about,” Lyle asked, standing at the open door, watching the people in the car watch him back. “Those gentlemen weren’t Crushers.”

Henry stood behind Lyle, keeping his silence. They stood there at the threshold until the car suddenly cut across lanes and took the right side of Mercy, heading toward Cable Park.

Henry put his hands into his pockets, flexing the muscles at the side of his arm. The long sleeves on his cowboy shirt pulled tight. “Let’s go,” he said softly.

As they left the café, the old man behind the counter looked from the fork in wall to the two youngish gentleman walking out of the front door, both dressed in tight, dirty jeans and longsleeve button-down western-style shirts, one of them wearing a cowboy hat and the other a greasy ball cap. He spat on the floor and turned his back before they could round the corner to disappear first.

II.

One of the gentlemen at the bar saw the two new arrivals, and he perked up. “Holy Christ, Henry. You see those fuckers out in those old style cruisers? They was lookin’ for somebody, that’s for damned sure. You think they’re Crushers?”

Henry shook his head, certain they weren’t. “Nah, Crushers know the score. No clashing in The Fork. ‘Sides, our truce don’t crack, so even if they were Crushers, you know to play it smooth.”

The hyper one took his cue to wipe the smile off his face. Lyle, who was standing behind Henry, kept his high, though, itching to throw someone.

Lyle, first thing to know, was the wild-eyed prison escapist you only used to see in movies, only he never spent more than a week in lock-up at any one time, and he never actually did manage to escape, even though he almost cut some guard’s face up by hurling a bathroom mirror at the man’s head. The Mercy DeLemore Pitchforks had been Lyle’s brainchild, essentially, but he lacked the reserve that true leadership demands to pull a band of ruffians together and make them into gentlemen.

He’d met Henry while the two were both casing the same bank in East Palomino, and before long they’d started The Pitchforks, running as a small-time gang of four. That was five years ago. Now, the Pitchforks were 22 strong and there weren’t nobody in town who could show them up.

Fundamentally, The Pitchforks were from Gabriel, but there weren’t suitable places in the town proper to hold meetings or serve as honorable representations of what the gang stood for, so instead-and also as a symbol of how tough they really were-they looked to the outskirts of Gabriel, took over and claimed The Fork as their territory. Truly, it was a long hard battle-lasting about twelve months-against the Cable Park Crushers, who were from down Cable Park Road, the other branch off The Fork. The Crushers hadn’t even been around as long as the Pitchforks, but they sure acted like they owned the place, and it put a sizeable dent into almost everyone’s patience. Granted, some of those Cable Park boys were good throwers, and they did pull together like true gentlemen for each other, but when it came time to really put fists to the street, the Pitchforks proved too well that they were the dominating class.

It was Lyle, actually, who made the final blow that ended the battle and gave complete ownership of The Fork over to the Pitchforks once and for all.

Seven Crushers and Six Pitchforks were throwing it out on a baseball diamond behind an elementary school in Cable Park after two Crushers were seen spray-painting inverted Pitchforks on walls in The Fork. It was supposed to be an ambush, but only half the Pitchforks could make it to the fight, and it was only too difficult to catch the Crushers altogether at once since nobody could find out where they held meetings. But all that really mattered, as the Pitchforks saw it, was that Jerome was there-and at least a good number of his gentlemen too, so that taking him down couldn’t be construed as a cowardly move by a whole gang against one man.

Henry, the leader of the Pitchforks, had started rolling his sleeves down after all the Crushers were on the ground (two of them dead, with their eyes sunken from Lonnie having pushed them in). Jerome, who fronted the Crushers, was trying to drag his sorry body off the playing field, but he about-turned, cackling like he was on something wild, pulled a pistol from his jacket and opened fire on anyone left standing.

Nobody was hit. Not even the surrounding willow trees.

But Lyle came flying out of nowhere, seemingly an angel sent in from the sky, burying a garden hoe in Jerome’s leg, crumbling him like ancient ruins. Jerome tried to swing the pistol toward him, but Lyle swung faster and took Jerome’s hand clean off. The pistol fell to the pavement and went off one last time, still not hitting anyone.

That gun is hanging now from a noose in a cracked, scuffed up trophy case at the Pitchfork town hall (an abandoned wing of the Bullhard Textile Company just off to the side of The Fork).

The gentlemen of the Mercy DeLemore Pitchforks then proudly and loudly claimed The Fork as their turf. But since the only way for Crushers to get in and out of their own territory was to pass through The Fork, it was agreed later that a truce would be called, because while they may have it mean for one another, they were still gentlemen. From thence forth, not only would there be no more clashing between the Pitchforks and the Crushers, but no gang would ever raise their hands or throw it in The Fork ever again.

III.

Evening was almost up for grabs. That meant the prowling would start. The boys were dead broke, so it was time to turn someone else’s wallet into a Pitchfork paycheck.

Hanging out at the café again, two smarmy church-looking boys and a really pretty girl in a short skirt sauntered in while Henry, Lyle, Joseph, Caleb, Hex, Lonnie and Peck sat bunched up on a table discussing the night’s game plan, waiting for other Pitchforks to arrive. The old man at the counter had tried to get rid of them numerous times, but Lonnie and Lyle started casing the old man’s granddaughter right in front of him, making eyes that made threats.

“You thinkin’ what I am, Lyle?” Lonnie asked loud enough to sound like he had a megaphone.

“I sure am, Lonnie. This old fuckin’ sap’s settin’ his little girl up for somethin’ real nice.”

The two winked at each other and shrugged in unison, ogling the girl standing by the freezer with her apron stained dark colors from grease and pig’s blood, and then they shifted their attention back to the old man, abruptly scrapping any hint of humor in their faces. The old man got the insinuation and left them alone. Nobody sets themselves up for something nice when the notion is put out on the table. Anyone knew that.

Except maybe the jerks who just rolled in.

They huddled together with their hands on each other’s shoulders, like in a fucking football game. Most of the gentlemen were looking the girl over as she bent down for the huddle. Half of them suspected this was a sneak attack, but then there was the strangers’ manner and dress to consider; they wore their preppy collars and neatly pressed slacks like high-schoolers at the prom committee meeting, ready to argue that it would be better to provide several flavors of punch than just one. The hair was coifed, pruned and had the scent of lilacs; the gentlemen could smell it all the way from the other side of Junderson’s dirty café.

All of a sudden the trio slapped their hands together, yelled “Hurrah!” and one of them stepped up to the sales counter to order hamburgers and fries for everyone. They smiled, politely paying for their food with an almost exaggerated sense of civility.

The money, however, wasn’t right for who those kids were; it was ugly, crinkled, old and soiled. Dirty bills. Something was up, but what?

Hex rolled his eyes and slapped his hands on Henry’s shoulders, whispering into his leader’s ear, “We’re fuckin’ going on ‘em, ain’t we, Henry?”

But Henry didn’t move. His shoulders tensed and he glared at Hex until the man put his hands down again. Something was surely up, anyone could see that. Henry looked over to Lyle, licked his lips as the signal, at which point Lyle hopped off the tabletop he was sitting on. His wrangler boots clicked on the ruddy tiles even though there was so much smeared-in grime there that a person could slide across without cutting themselves open.

He stopped in front of the trio, putting a cigarette behind his ear, not bothering to hide his razor-cut grin. His breath told much of gin and beer, as he liked it that way. “Excuse me, lady,” he said. “I couldn’t help but notice that when you bent over just a second ago you were giving me the signal to step in and have this dance the way the other two ain’t makin’ the rug get cut. So why don’t you ditch these two fuckin’ lame pilgrims with their parent’s bank accounts leading the way and let’s show you what the Devil really made girls for.”

Neither of the two guys said a word, but the girl spat in Lyle’s face. The way she did it, though, had the corners of her mouth turned up a little. The gleam in her eye let Lyle know that even if she didn’t want to break her act for the two runway models here, she was definitely picturing something provocative in her head, just like all the gentlemen’s girls do. Lyle felt his heart pounding and his fists ready to knock all three of these lying bastards clear across the room.

Where were their fuckin’ marks, he thought. He took the greasy ball cap from his head, wiped the spit away with it and then slapped it back on. “That’s right, darlin’, and I see what’s in you. Can’t well hide it from all of us, even if these waste-off runners you’re with don’t see a goddamned thing the way things are set.”

Lyle was, of course, talking about the proved suspicion that these guys were in a gang. Something that was going to break the fucking room.

IV.

“We wait for more Pitchforks,” Henry said against Lonnie’s insistence that something was going down. “If we leave here there’s no tellin’ what might happen outside those doors.”

Hex crushed a soda can in his hand. “Fuck that, man. What if somethin’s happenin’ to our gentlemen back on the home streets?”

It was definitely something to worry about, and they were all burning inside their hearts and fists over what should be done. Henry gave the signal to start slowly rolling their sleeves up. One by one they worked at it, little by little, sharing turns of movement in counter-clockwise form, starting with Henry, but skipping Lyle because he was too angry to move. They did it without taking their eyes off the prize; drawing the curtain on the first act that mattered, The Mercy DeLemore Pitchforks were ready.

The foreigners were finishing their horseshit little meal, patting the corners of their mouths with napkin ends, folding up the ones in their laps, smoothing out the wrinkles in their tweed jackets. Every move they made, from an eye wink to a simple shift of footing, lay planted in at least one of the Pitchforks’ peripheral vision. The gentlemen of Gabriel weren’t just going to let some lazy know-nothin’ jackasses from beyond the local territories come into their turf and try something untoward.

But they had to wait. Cracking truce over an uncertain suspicion was tantamount to losing cool, which wasn’t the way Pitchforks ran.

The mood in the room was tense. The old man at the sales counter had long since abandoned his post, taking leave along with his granddaughter to the back office, pulling a curtain over the window. Some of the halogens were flickering. The sun was almost gone. It looked like a battle field.

It was.

Lyle calmly excused himself to use the restroom, making sure everyone heard his slow Southern drawl curl around the word 'piss'. He started off toward the sales counter, making his way around it. Henry glared at Caleb-the youngest of the group-who was about to pipe up and tell Lyle the customer restrooms weren’t busted up anymore. Caleb, seeing the word in Henry’s eyes, zipped his lips before they opened, and a small hush fell over the Pitchforks while the invaders five tables over were quietly laughing amongst their circle about something nobody else could make out.

A squeal from outside sounded, snatching focus away from the Pitchforks in their endeavor to keep all eyes on the enemy, and pulling their stiff necks out of the freeze, toward the front door, they were just in time to see the old rusted convertible from earlier in the day screech to a curt stop by the front curb. All four doors on the convertible opened at the same time.

A sneak attack on neutral ground.

Hex was the first to catch the fire. “Fuckin’ gentlemen! All of ‘em! They're rolling!”

Before he could pull the switchblade from the waistband of his pants, something hard slammed into his cheek, knocking him backward. The lights flickered like a planetarium light show, making every fast movement seem like seductively haunted moves on the dance floor. Lonnie, Peck and Henry were on their feet first, but almost immediately after that, Peck was taken out too. Something awfully heavy hit him at the side of his head and threw him down against a magazine rack of outdated travel logs and women’s periodicals. It was Joseph who made the connection that sent shivers down everyone’s spine.”

“Holy Christ, they’re Flashlights! They’re fuckin’ Flashlights!”

The front door caved in and an uncertain wave of noise, bodies and heat flushed the room right down into the sewer as blood started to fly in streams. Screams went pitch-high and glass shattered.

Lyle was outside, two doors down from Junderson’s, waiting silently in a patch of darkness when the convertible pulled up. As the driver got out, he kneeled down to his pant leg, hitched it up and pulled a long black heavy-duty flashlight that was strapped to his shin. Lyle smiled in the darkness under the broken lamps, unseen, awakened to the rare opportunity set before him on this golden plate. He looked around for something heavy, but what caught his immediate attention was something even prettier. “Ain’t no fuckin’ Flashlights gonna show themselves like this in my fuckin’ Fork!!”

Four of the Flashlights had already entered the café by then, and from within the bashed-in front entrance Lyle could hear all hell breaking loose. Four these sons of bitches were still left out on the street when Lyle had yelled, and at his call they all looked directly at him. Ccoming out of the shadows with inferno in his eyes, Lyle's veins were popping from his neck, muscles tense; sweat dripped from the ends of his handlebar moustache, licking at the top of his chest through the few open buttons at the top. He was rolling up his sleeves. On the right bicep-just short of where he stopped rolling-was a gleaming black tattoo. Six inches in length, shining, proud, ready: Peck’s beautiful craftsmanship; the pitchfork. Their insignia, written into the flesh.

Pulling his filthy ballcap off just to re-fit it back over the familiarized curves of his skull, Lyle picked up the handsome weaponry he’d claimed by sight, which was a rattlesnake making its clattering way across the second lane on the street. In order to get there and snatch it, Lyle was forced into putting himself out in the open, readily available to any of the four Flashlights staring him down. The whole way toward the snake he glared at them, unafraid; pitchfork tattoo in plain sight. His desire pumped black blood into the pitchfork on his arm, making it stand out even more. This was Pitchfork turf, after all, and he was ready to show anyone that. Especially these rotten fucking Flashlight low-lives.

And so this is what these silly fuckers look like, eh? He thought to himself. Nobody had ever really seen a Flashlight; they were quite a notorious gang from the other side of the tracks, propping up a long-whispered-of legend drenched in mystique because, seemingly, they only showed themselves at night, and only from behind the battle-attack of lustrous flashlight beams that were so bright they could blind someone.

This trademark, as far as Lyle was concerned, was just a cowardly retreat from standing up like a man. And he wasn’t about to let some fucking lame out-of-town cowards come to their turf and break a truce that had lasted over a year. Fuck. That.

He snatched the rattler by its tail and darted toward the driver. The man was pulling a second black flashlight from his jacket pocket while the first one in his hand was wielded Lyle’s way in an attempt to blind him. But Lyle was much too quick; he gripped the rattler’s tail with both hands and swung with all the violence of a major league hitter. The snake’s body sliced through cool August night air with the sound of a lashing sword, and its head connected with the driver’s head, shattering the snake's skull at once, cracking the gentleman's beyond salvation. With no second breath left to find out what had happened to him, the driver dropped to the street, with bright white beams running amuck as the flashlights he’d held rolled to the curb unmanned. Lyle dropped the dead snake over his chest and spat on his face. Then he kicked the useless flashlights into a storm drain.

Inside, Joseph and Henry were wrestling two of the convertible ruffians down to the ground, screaming for Peck, Hex and Lyle. For anybody; it was a bloody mess on the inside, and nobody could see shit. There were flashlight beams everywhere, fists and blood and the gnashing of teeth.

The preppy girl came rushing past, scraping faces with her wildly lashing fingernails, not taking care to note whether she were mauling Pitchforks or Flashlights, all in a cowardly endeavor to get the hell out of the battle. That was horse shit. Lonnie wasn’t having that kind of spinelessness in a time of war, and just as the girl was about to escape his reach, his hand connected with her leg, closing his fingers around her ankle. He squeezed hard. The girl took a vicious dive face first into the sales counter, cracking the boards in, sounding the chime of the cash register. Lonnie tried pulling her closer, wanting to stick his thumbs into her face and push the eyes back. But a targeted flashlight beam washed out the blood waterfall that poured from her face while Lonnie pulled her in, and the next thing he knew he was knocked out cold.

Just then two shrill cries pierced everything, and for a moment the room went relatively silent. James, Flannery, Mike, Fran and Hubert were at the door, each with corroded, chipped and well-worn farm tools balanced against their shoulders.

James-standing tall at the head of the relief group, the pitchfork on his arm bared tough under a rolled-up sleeve for all to see-tossed a shovel to Henry, who caught it high in the air. “They got DeLemore Street proper, boss,” said James with an angry grin on his face. “They fucking fooled us.”

The din resumed and climbed quickly to fever level as soon as Flannery buried a steel rake into the upturned chest of one of the gawking Flashlights. When he pulled the weapon free again it had sections of flesh, bone and tissue hanging from the teeth. Swinging it around in tetherball fashion, it claimed the faces of three more Flashlights who were closing in on him.

Available light was becoming scarce, as the greater few of the moldy halogens above were by then either smashed in or covered over with blood, and the army of flashlight beams had now been reduced to random needles scurrying for their shallow and short-lived lifespan as the boys who swung them around were finally forced to fight like real gentlemen.

Lyle appeared in the doorway with blood covering his face, holding a patch of hair and scalp from the last of the Flashlights from out on the street. “I’m the fucking crocodile!” he yelled, and with a graceful swan dive, pitched himself into the melee, wielding a pocket knife he’d lifted from one of the dead gentlemen outside.