Gun Pit Drifter by Mark Carpineta I parked the truck in a gully about five miles from the state highway. There were no markings on the road, no gates to keep anything out or in. The gully was full of old kitchen appliances, car bodies, and used tires. My driven half to death Chevy pickup fit in perfect. I spent the night there on my way from Denver to Boise. I had just finished a Coleman breakfast, and a sponge bath from a pot of cold water. It was mid July and about seven in the morning, things were already starting to warm up and I figured it for another hundred plus day. I was sitting behind the wheel using an electric razor plugged into the cigarette lighter when a beat up green Dodge with a camper shell drove down through the gully. I quietly gave the dog a "Lay Quiet" command and covered him with a T-shirt. At first it started to drive past, then brake lights went on and it backed down crosswise across the road blocking me in. I couldn’t see the driver, but a man in a corduroy jacket came around the passenger side and walked up to my window. I kept shaving. "Where you headed?’ "Idaho" I replied, he had a friendly face, but wasn’t well kept, needed a haircut and a shave, and from the smell of things had recently quit chewing tobacco and started chewing dog shit. I was just noticing the remarkable stench when I saw the wheel gun in his hand. Hardly any blue left on the thing, pawnshop special. He cocked it. "Get out, turn around" I got out slow and closed the door with my hands up. Looking through the window I could see the dog peaking out from under the T-shirt. I felt a handcuff slap on my wrist. "Am I under arrest?" "Shut up!" he yelled, and shoved the barrel into the base of my skull. Yanking my arm down to meet the other one. I didn’t resist, just let him do it. He seemed less friendly now. "Alright, in the back." He walked me around to the back of my pickup and opened the camper shell. "Man, you got a lot of shit in here, whadya live out of this thing?" the man in the corduroy jacket cackled at me. Then he shut the rear door on the camper shell, closing me in, and walked off. Who’d have thought roadside camping in Nevada could be so dangerous. From the looks of things, he was in the same business as me. Drifter. I didn’t answer him, just slowly fidgeted with the handcuffs, and tried to feel around for something to get into the lock. Being handcuffed in the back of my own pickup wasn’t the way I wanted to die, and if he wanted to dispose of the truck that’s when I’d get to play my Ace in the hole. * No pun intended, but Ace is my dog. Sixty-five pounds of the toughest Pit Bull ever bred. He’s all muscle and bone, but all that bulk exists only as the transportation system for a set of jaws. The kind of jaws you don’t fuck with. This guy was too sloppy to be a pro, he didn’t even frisk me. He wouldn’t have a chance against the dog. I found an old bent up cotter pin from when I repacked my wheel bearings in the KOA parking lot. I’ve been living in my truck ever since my girlfriend, er I should say ex-girlfriend, ran off with my ex-best friend and my credit cards. The Credit Card Company said they hadn’t been stolen since I knew her. They had been "embezzled". Great for them, shitty for me. Ace was under my T-shirt on the floorboard of the truck, he’d stay there quietly until Christ came back if he had to. I’ve been training him since the day I found him. Beat and left for dead in the Dumpster behind the Golden Coral on my way through Kingman Arizona. I had just eaten what was possibly the best bacon and egg breakfast of my life, served by what was possibly the hottest waitress in the history of waitresses. Maybe I was just more hungry and horny than usual. I walked out the side door of the place out to my pickup. I parked where I could keep an eye on it as everything I had left was packed inside. I heard a squeaking noise as I walked out the door. It was hot and windy that day and the first time I heard it I dismissed it as the door squeaking. Then I heard it again, longer this time, I turned to look, and the door was closed, so I started to look around. I followed the noise around the back of the place to a Dumpster. That’s where I found him. He looked like a piece of hamburger with patches of bay red fur in it, if he hadn’t been making noise I’d have thought he was already dead. I climbed in the Dumpster and picked him up. His eyes were barely open and he tried to raise his head to look at me. He was about three months old. I got some help from a local vet whom I wrote a bad check to, the dog has been with me ever since. "I’ll give you a home." I promised him. He doesn’t know that a pickup truck isn’t a regular home. Dogs don’t know the difference. I gave him the name Ace when he chewed up a deck of cards, my last deck, the ace of hearts was the only card he missed. If it had been a queen I’d still refer to him as Dumpster dog. * I wiggled the cotter pin in the lock, I used to work for a guy re-possessing cars and picking locks was something I picked up along the way. I could feel the lock give for a second and the handcuffs slipped loose one notch. The man in the corduroy jacket was talking to another guy now, in front of the pickup where I couldn’t see them. The lock gave again and I was almost free. I heard a door shut and the engine of the other pickup start and fade away as the other vehicle left. I wondered for a minute if they’d come back. The last notch gave and I was loose, then I heard footsteps. One of them still here. I managed to shuffle my shotgun out of the blanket where I kept it wrapped. It’s always loaded with one in the chamber, you just never know when that will come in handy. I heard the door to my pickup open and before I could get to the "c" in "Ace Sic" the dog was on him. The man tried to make a noise, but Ace had a mouth full of windpipe and all that came out was a gurgle noise. I could hear them shuffle around on the ground for a while, ace growling. As I came out the back of the truck I could see the man still struggling. "Ace OUT" I said and he stopped, as fast as he had started. Walking calmly to my side and sitting. I kept the short barreled Remington on Corduroy jacket. "You know what this is?" His eyes were glassed over and he tried to nod, he wasn’t breathing too well, and blood was draining quickly from tears in his neck. "Hell, you’re not gonna make it." I frisked him, while Ace watched I told him he was a good boy. He growled back, letting me know he still wanted more of this guy. "Maybe they’ll think the coyotes got to you" That would be no good, his partner was still out there, he’d know the real deal. I trained the shotgun on his chest. He tried to raise his hands and wave me off, made a noise like a kitten, under the Ace’s growl it sounded like a kitten going through a lawn mower, then he started to hyperventilate. I put a round of double ought buck in his chest. That made him stop. I gave the "Mount up" command to Ace. He was in the truck sitting patiently on the floor by the time I got it started. I took off as fast as the old heap would go. Dust flowing behind the truck like a vapor trail from a seven forty seven. A mile up the road I had him in sight, I started flashing my headlights off and on. A half-mile later he was pulled over to the side of the road. I started to fiddle with the choke knob, put the sun visor down, and sat up so he couldn’t see my face. About a hundred yards out I started dumping it in low gear and playing with the throttle to make it sound like the truck was dying. He was out of his truck by now and starting to walk towards me. I killed it for good and rolled to a stop, then started cranking it with the choke all the way out. Flooding it on purpose, I rolled down my window and waved him towards the truck. When he got close enough to see my face I let Ace out, he was on him before I could get out of the truck. The man was smaller than the first, and heavy set. I guessed about five four and one eighty. If he was armed he didn’t get a chance to draw before the dog got to him. I let Ace finish him while I checked out his pickup. The back was full of small plastic totes. I cracked a few open and there were twenty or thirty neatly wrapped bundles of weed. I took three pounds worth for myself and wiped everything down, no prints. I pulled the now limp heavy body into the brush and grabbed a couple of tumbleweeds to cover my tracks. Then tied them to the underside of my rear bumper to cover the tire tracks too. I know a guy in Winnemucca that will give me cash for the weed, no questions asked. The local authorities wouldn’t investigate a drug-related homicide real hard. I’d have enough to pay off the credit cards and get back to the legitimate world. Credit card companies don’t care where you get the money to pay them, neither does a vet when you pay off a bad check. "We’ll be home soon," I said to Ace. He gave me a Pit Bull smile and licked his lips. Mark Carpineta tells us, "I've moved around a lot, I suppose there's a little bit of drifter in me. I've resided in various places, and on occasion been forced at gun point to leave some. I currently reside in the beautiful city of Boise Idaho where I've so far been able to remain fairly anonymous. I'm a sucker for beautiful women. Color me a chauvinist pig, but I like looking at a sexy girl in a short skirt and high heels. I don't know if it's the fact that they smell good, or that they're so soft and curvy, but I'm a sucker for them all. So I suppose ogling beautiful women is one of the things I do most. I'm a fine arts major, majoring in Illustration and Printing. My full time job is Technical Support for the LaserJet Division of Hewlett Packard. When I'm not in school or working I like to write, chase women, work on hot rods and spend time with my dogs. I also keep a rather large garden full of roses, hot peppers, and other garden type vegetables. I'm currently working on a short novel based on my experiences in Southern California as a driver for out call strippers. This is my first publication. I welcome all feedback and questions, people can reach me at Mad_Marx@Hotmail.com " And then he said, "I like to beat the heat by heading down to the local university and waiting for the Cheerleaders/Drill Team to finish with practice, then I hand out Chocolate covered Bananas. Cheerleaders really seem to dig the chocolate covered banana."