Best Foot Forward: Brass Knuckles & Tattered Wings, #1

By Martin Svolgart

After a freak accident kills his wife and son, Pritchard slips into alcoholism and spends most of his time at a blue-collar bar nearby to avoid the dead and empty house.

 

A teenage girl sometimes comes into the bar to try to get her drunkard dad to come home, but it rarely works. One day, in his intoxicated state, Pritchard accidentally trips over her scooter, breaking it. He promises the distraught girl that he'll pay for it, but she's used to being lied to by drunk men. To follow through, he gives her his business card.

 

A few days later, she calls him out of the blue, afraid, begging for his help. Her dad has gotten into a card game with bad people, and the debt collectors aren't stopping with him.

 

The selfless act of responding to the young girl's plea upends his world, leaving him only one way out: A walk in life he knows well, but one he thought he'd left behind. A life of crime.

 

Best foot forward, his late wife would always say. That was how she urged a man with a spotted past to strive to become a better man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MarLau Publishing
• Release date: May 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9788793966062

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Best Foot Forward

Brass Knuckles and Tattered Wings #1

Season One

by

Martin Svolgart

AFTER A FREAK ACCIDENT kills his wife and son, Pritchard slips into alcoholism and spends most of his time at a blue-collar bar nearby to avoid the dead and empty house.

A teenage girl sometimes comes into the bar to try to get her drunkard dad to come home, but it rarely works. One day, in his intoxicated state, Pritchard accidentally trips over her scooter, breaking it. He promises the distraught girl that he’ll pay for it, but she’s used to being lied to by drunk men. To follow through, he gives her his business card.

A few days later, she calls him out of the blue, afraid, begging for his help. Her dad has gotten into a card game with bad people, and the debt collectors aren’t stopping with him.

The selfless act of responding to the young girl’s plea upends his world, leaving him only one way out: A walk in life he knows well, but one he thought he’d left behind. A life of crime.

Best foot forward, his late wife would always say. That was how she urged a man with a spotted past to strive to become a better man.

With danger around every corner, Pritchard must decide, will going back destroy him, or will it bring him full circle?

Copyright © 2020 MarLau Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

ISBN: 978-87-93966-06-2

Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.

Cover design by Juan Padrón

Edited by Avril Steopowski

MarLau Publishing

Denmark

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Table of Contents

Day 191

Day 192

Day 193

Day 194

Day 196

Day 198

Day 199

Day 201

Sneak peek of Trailer Park Princess

About the Author

Day 191

ONE-HUNDRED-NINETY-one days. That was how many days ago he’d lost his way. Like the truck whose tire blew out and crossed into oncoming traffic. Three cars were hit. One was pancaked between two trucks. One behind them, and the one whose tire blew out.

The middle car held his entire world. The middle car took the most damage.

They didn’t suffer, the coroner said. They never saw it coming.

One-hundred-ninety-one days of waking up, going to work, paying the bills, avoiding going home to an empty house, and drinking to dull the inevitable pain of meeting that emptiness anyway, to sleep and start the same inane cycle of pointlessness.

The grief counselor, appointed by his workplace, had urged him to keep a sense of rhythm. To not alter his day to day too much as he worked on finding his way back from grieving.

The shrink didn’t know how silent a house, once inhabiting an eleven-year-old boy, could suddenly be.

But he’d followed her advice and hadn’t changed his habits too much. He’d only altered one thing. Instead of hurrying home to be with his family, he parked the car in the driveway, walked down the street to the bar, and ordered a straight up whisky with a twist and a beer. Cheap stuff. He didn’t care. It was an acceptable numbing agent.

Around nine, he’d hear her voice.

Best foot forward, Pritchard.

So he’d pay the barman and put his best foot forward to go home and stand in that silent hallway, his heart pounding as he willed a shrill child’s voice to sound from upstairs, followed by thundering footsteps and the weight of his son crashing against him for a hug.

But there was nothing but the ticking of the old clock on the mantle, the hum from the fridge, and sometimes a radiator pinging.

He hated going home to that, so there he sat, looking at another empty glass at the bar. He wondered how many of those he’d had over those one-hundred-ninety-one days. An average of three, but the first three weeks, he hadn’t come there. Three whiskeys, three beers, and half a pack of smokes. That was how long it took to get himself home. Except on what would have been little Zack’s twelfth birthday last month. He hadn’t stopped after three that night, and his boss hadn’t even call to ask why he hadn’t come to work or called in sick the next day.

Pritchard was on the second round of scotch and beer that evening, contemplating some of the others in the bar. He knew why he was there, yet sometimes he found it...pleasantly distracting to try to imagine why the others hung out there. He liked to think that he wasn’t the sorriest SOB there. He was probably the one feeling the most self-pity, though. In fact, he was more than aware of that. But he didn’t care because at least he didn’t share it like some of the others.

He didn’t get so drunk that he’d sit and bawl the same sob-story in the last glass of the evening every night. In fact, he rarely spoke or interacted at all, suffering his grief alone.

He wasn’t the only regular there, and he’d come to know more about some of them from listening in on conversations. There were mainly three kinds, not counting himself. Some were so damn social they came there for the friendships, and they really seemed close. All with rough edges, but they were inclusive, and he usually liked that bunch. Mainly because they quickly got the drift, left him alone, and sometimes included him in a round.

Sometimes, a younger clientele would come in and shout and play darts, loudly, and they’d drink too much and at times brawl over a girl.

Pritchard didn’t mind them, either. They reminded him of his own youth. He’d been a troublemaker, and his mother-in-law, rest her soul, had literally dropped her teeth when she opened the door to meet Monica’s new boyfriend.

He chuckled at the remembered sight and how many times he and Monica had laughed about that expression and dentures flapping out the lady’s mouth.

Pritchard flagged the bartender down for the last set of the evening. He’d been there enough times for the bartender to not have to ask what he wanted. Sam merely served a new