San Anto

By Mike Duron

Mikie just wants to be drunk again, but the Prophet's warriors have other plans in this fast-paced novel about a group of hedonistic friends living, loving, and laughing in the face of an escalating, inexorable clash of ancient rivals. This first of three novels in the "Rivals" trilogy will surprise you and leave you wanting more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Duron
• Release date: Feb 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301293186

Mike Duron

Mike Duron lives in a dark, dank cave, somewhere in Texas. He survives on a diet of pork rinds, pumpkin seeds, Busch beer, bologna, bread, and the occasional dollar burger from McDonald's. Beyond this, how does one say what this author was, is, and may some day be? Will the great St. Francis de Sales intercede as a patron for this flagitious fiend of fiction? Likely not. Will the sad, raging beast, Grendel, return for his cave some spooky night while the author is tapping away at his keyboard? Perhaps. Still, the author will tap, tap, tap, tap away ... as he tries to ignore the faint conversations of Nona, Decima, and Morta echoing in the darkness above him.

Book preview

San Anto

MIKE DURON

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 Mike Duron

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781301293186

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and locations portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

DEDICATION

For those who fight for liberty, peace, and Reason.

It Starts...

San Antonio. San Antone. The Alamo City. San Anto. Call it what you want. I call it The Shit-Hole I Can't Escape. The Place I Never Want to Leave. I run away to Alaska and people ask me if I'm an Indian. I come home and my people think I'm white. People like this hot little morena waiting beside me for a bus in front of the Payless downtown. The girl who's been eyeing the smokes in my shirt pocket as she speaks on a cell phone. She looks up at my eyes and smiles at me. I hand her a cigarette, since it's my shirt pocket she's been glancing at over and over again and not my crotch.

Soon, a bus arrives and stops in front of us. Then another arrives, and another, and they line up along the curb. A tall, plump man wearing an olive-green Army raincoat and a green baseball cap is calling out the bus numbers and route names as the buses arrive. He's waving around a little red flag attached to a long stiff wire -- about the length of a coathanger. He carries a briefcase in the other hand, but his clothes are faded and dirty. 76! Kel-Lack! he yells at one point. His voice booms through the area like he's some sort of classically-trained opera singer and, despite the fact I'm wearing earbuds and listening to music, I hear him clearly. The seventy-six. That's my bus.

Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 is whistling happily in my ears. The sky's a beautiful blue dome of serenity, the breeze is gentle and cool. When I get to the bus, which is a few spots down the street, the driver opens the doors and smiles at me. I smile back, pull my wallet out and open it to show him my monthly pass. As I walk to my seat I drop my wallet while returning it to the back pocket of my jeans.

I stoop down to pick it up and, of course, that's when I first notice her.

That's when I notice her legs I mean, which I can't help since my wallet's fallen at her feet. I notice immediately they're perfectly manicured, the nails coated with a nacreous polish that makes them look like somebody's inlaid them with mother of pearl. Her legs are white, smooth, and shapely. I imagine myself running my fingers along that skin of hers as my eyes follow the curves of her perfection up to the loose-fitting khaki shorts she's wearing, up to the flare of her hips, the tender-looking skin of her exposed midriff, up past the ripe fullness of her breasts, the cleavage exposed by her bright-yellow summer blouse.

Standing up straight, awkwardly, holding my wallet in my hand, I smile at her but she looks past me -- out the window. I realize immediately she's only about fourteen. Being forty, I feel a blush of embarrassment warm my face. I look around but there's no one else on board except for the driver, who's actually been busy re-arranging some transfer slips the whole time and hasn't even noticed I've dropped my wallet.

I take a seat in the back.

The bus starts moving forward but somebody runs up beside it and repeatedly bangs on the side. The driver hits the brakes and the bus lurches forward as it comes to a stop. The front doors open with a hiss. A skinny young kid wearing a wife beater and carrying a backpack jumps on, drops some money in the box and takes a seat facing the girl. He's wearing ear-buds and the music is loud enough to catch a glare from the driver. I shut my own music off and, immediately, even through my ear-buds, I hear exactly what bubble-gum rap song he's listening to. The kid's oblivious to the fact the bus driver is sitting there staring at him. He's too busy smiling at the girl while she blushes, re-adjusts the way she's sitting in her seat and flirts back.

Hey! says the driver. Hey! You're gonna need to turn that down!

Oh. Sorry, says the guy.

The girl smiles shyly and looks away. The guy does the same.

With a little hiss and groan, the bus moves forward again.

Here I go, once more through the heart of the west side, all the way through to the Kel-Lack park & ride at the ass-hole end of the gut. It's a trip I've made drunk, sober, desperate, nigger-rich, penniless, morning, noon, and night. It's either that or the 64 express that rides the highway and spares the tourists trying to escape downtown and get to Sea World without having to suffer through the gut. The 76 Skip-Stop, which I'm riding, runs right through the heart of the west side -- like a ghost coach cutting through the heart of the heart of the woods.

The first stop we get to spits up an old white bum. He reeks of stale urine and whiskey. He smiles like an imbecile at everyone on board, starting with the driver who doesn't even wait until the bum is seated before he takes off with a lurch. Smiling the whole time, the bum saves himself from a fall by quickly grabbing on to a support bar. I wonder if I looked so much like an imbecile when I climbed aboard, smiling like that. Is that what that young girl saw? A creepy old imbecile?

It's a few minutes before we get to the next stop which is full of people. By this time, the girl and the guy at the front of the bus have been talking and, apparently, exchanging contact information -- coordinates. Funny how these young fucks never take off their blaring ear-buds unless it's either to set up a drug deal or a piece of ass, isn't it? When the driver opens the doors at the next stop, he has to lower the gimp ramp so an old one-legged Korean woman can be rolled on by her plump Mexican caregiver. They look like they don't like each other very much -- or like they're beyond even caring whether they like each other or not. Nobody smiles as the bus driver jumps off his seat and straps down the old woman's wheel chair.

After she's strapped in and the caregiver is seated beside the guy, who's taken the chance to sit beside the girl now, and the girl herself opposite the old Korean woman in the wheel-chair, the driver retracts the gimp ramp and several people file in. First comes a dark, hunched over little wisp of an ancient woman who smiles briefly at the caregiver and sits beside her without acknowledging the woman in the wheelchair. Behind her follows a chubby Mexican girl, who looks all of sixteen, with two toddlers in tow and an infant in a baby carriage that looks more like a transom or a smart car than a baby carriage.

The thing is almost as tall as the girl lugging it onto the bus. The girl and the guy with the wife beater get up and move back to a forward-facing seat so baby-carriage mami can have the seat across from the one-legged Korean woman. For her part, One Leg smiles with adoration at the kids and waves at them.

The kids run around wildly for a few seconds -- one of them actually makes it halfway to the back of the bus when his mother grabs his sibling by one arm and loudly smacks him on the ass. This causes the aisle runner to haul his own ass back to mami, screaming, No, mommy! No, mommy! Don't hit me!

During all this, a few more people file in and take a seat on this shit bus. I try not to look at anyone too long. They all look like people I've seen before -- over and over again, day after hot, sweaty, bright, sunny day. I've seen them all happy, sad, content, asleep, high, drunk, sober, in love, arguing on the phone with exes, going to the movies, the bar, home, to visit a lover, to score, to work, or just to the mall. I look out the window and let Bach's music soothe me again. I focus on the beauty of the day, the cool-blue sky, the sunshine.

As we move through the gut, the usual characters file on and off the bus. There's the old, conservative, Mexican couple who're dressed like they're on their way to church; there're the one, two, three, then five obvious heroin addicts who try to act presentable or else just stare out the window daydreaming until their stop at the methadone clinic comes up and they all file out like zombies; there's the clean-faced, latest-electronic-music-playing-gadget-owning college kid on his way to school; there's the forty-something bachelor with the pattern baldness and the paunch, carrying a backpack -- a throwback to when he too was once a clean-faced community college boy ... or else just a symbol of a dream of success he refuses to let go even though he knows he's way beyond being a young man with potential; there're the fast-food workers in uniform, the blue-collar honest guys with their names on a patch sewn onto their chest. The list goes on and on.

We get to the Ingram park and ride and the bus empties out. I watch as Pretty Girl walks with Wife-Beater and they get on a bus headed back to town. Why in the hell would they get on an express bus going downtown when they just came from there? Not that I care too much, but, goddamn, was he a friend of hers or something?

Behind them, in the line to get on board their bus, a skinny Arab guy I recognize from a corner store near town, by my old-friend Vinnie's apartment, stands looking around nervously. He's sweaty in the hot sun, and carrying a huge backpack. Maybe he's going to school downtown, or else to work. I didn't know Ali was going to school, if he is. He's a smart kid. I wonder what he's studying. I have to ask next time I'm over at Vinnie's.

I haven't seen Ali in months, because I haven't been to the store to buy my beer there in months. I remember him because I've bought six-pack after six-pack from him since he first started there. The place is right next door to the quadruplex where Vinnie lives, just a couple of blocks down North Flores from my job.

As he climbs aboard his bus, my driver jerks out of the spot he's in and an old woman almost falls out of her seat at the front.

Why is it those seats for physically-weak people are always at the front and facing the aisle? Don't the people who design these vehicles ever ride them? Those are the seats that are toughest on your back. Any idiot who's ever ridden a bus knows that. Every time the driver jerks to a stop or lurches away from one, your upper body stays stationary for about half a second while your hips move with the bus. After a while, it can feel like the bus is ripping your back apart.

When we get to the Kel-Lack park and ride, I transfer over to the 64 Express. This bus takes me by Sea World, where my ex-wife, Mona, lives.

I'm going over to borrow some money from her. I've been having child-support deducted from my pay check for about fifteen years now. This, plus my limited pay from the Chile Picoso Press, keeps me pretty much in the red. With my net pay, I have enough to handle the rent, buy some groceries, and stay drunk. That's about it. The monthly bus pass finishes me off but it's really worth it when you see how expensive it can be riding the bus every day. Especially if you ride the express bus, which costs almost twice what a non-express bus ride will cost you.

Since the express bus is so expensive, it's usually not very full though. And the buses are newer so the ride is nicer. Today, there's only one other guy on board besides the driver, Robert Moll, an old red-headed vet I've known for years. He's a smooth driver. He's been with the company for seventeen years and doesn't need to jerk away from stops very much in order to make up time, or else sit at vacant stops with his hazards on because he's running too far ahead of schedule.

I stand at the front with him.

What's crackin', cracker?

Nothin' much, man. Where the hell have you been? He asks.

Working all the time, I say.

We shoot the shit for a couple of minutes and he tells me a story about a poker game he was at with a bunch of other drivers the other week.

So we're all sitting there, he says. "Now this guy whose apartment we're at had this huge-ass cat and everybody was pretty cool with the cat. Of course, everybody's drunk and we'd just gotten paid, so we were getting a kick out of it. I mean, it was rubbing up against our legs and shit like that. So, after we've been there a while, this one driver nobody likes cause he's such an asshole shows up. Nobody invited this asshole. He just showed up.

"So he takes a seat and the cat rubs up against his legs -- and he throws it across the room with his foot. Now the guy who's having us over got kinda pissed cause the cat hit the wall. It shook its head and kinda looked at the asshole guy who'd tossed it across the room.

"Anyway, we get to playing cards and I'm watching this cat and I see it kinda slinking around. Eventually, it ends up on a counter, on top of some phone books behind the asshole who'd basically kicked the shit out of it earlier. And this cat's staring hard at this motherfucker with his bald, shiny head and we're all sort of freaking out cause the cat looks fucking pissed and it's just staring at the top of this guys head, right? And just as I was