One Last Good Day

By Kimberly Coleman

"A story filled with characters so raw and exposed to the elements of their own lives that you are practically forced to turn the page and read on..." from a Goodreads review. 

Two small-town businessmen thought they'd just get richer dealing with these East Europeans...instead

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kimberly Coleman
• Release date: Nov 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9780991413201

Kimberly Coleman

Kimberly Coleman is the Creator and Designer of the Bestselling Calendar For Writers Series, now available worldwide with an expanded line for 2018 and beyond. She is a former Managing Editor of Europa Media, the small press noted for publishing émigré works and English translations of Polish, Hungarian, and Lithuanian writers. Her latest book, Writing & Art, goes on sale in late November. The third book in her critically acclaimed dystopian series, The Blind Girl's War, publishes early Winter 2018. She lives in Ireland.

Book preview

One Last Good Day

Kimberly Coleman

VOLUME ONE

Eelings’ Rare Earth

Copyright © 2015 by Kimberly Coleman

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. All the characters within are pure fiction, created by the author; any similarity to anyone living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Based on a screenplay written by the author,

‘Eeling’s Rare Earth’ in 2009 with the role

of Warren Eeling for Tom Hardy.

ISBN: 978-0-9914132-0-1

Photo Credits:

Cover: © stokkete www.fotosearch.com

for my little Alex

2003-2015

‘Yes, now you know. Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know — that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness.’

― Thornton Wilder,

Our Town

Moira, Texas

Funny all the things you remember when you find yourself dying one day, lyin’ on your bedroom floor and bleedin’ out, all kinda unexpected.

The thought that keeps doublin’ back is why I stayed in this chickenshit town so long. Nothing’s changed here except the pumps and prices at Diggs’ service station.

Only thing ‘thriving’ in Moira would be Aus Merchant and his store.

‘Austin’, as he prefers to be called, is in his seventies now, and has spent most of those years siphoning the town’s lifeblood into his pocket, selling people everything from stale taco shells to raccoon traps at double and triple his costs.

Can’t imagine what he needs with all that money: no wife, no kids, and no ‘significant other’ as the city folk say...just his own tight ass to tend.

Besides Merchant’s, there’s a church (Baptist, of course), a gas station, and a savings bank (zero interest rates)...life’s barest necessities. Like so many small towns I see now on the TV news, downtown shops are outa business, kids ride busses to schools over in Corker County, and nobody who ever gets a chance to get the hell out moves back.

Nothing else here but a few farmers, like Orden Rawls, tryin’ to dig a living outa watermelon, peanuts, and soybeans.

Almost forgot: Moira has a funeral parlor, for those who stay too long. Surprised to realize today I might be one of those.

Used to have this black-and-red plaid shirt and every time I wore it, something bad would happen. Took me awhile to realize it was the shirt causing those things.

I threw that shirt out but now I gotta see if it’s something else I’m wearing, something I did, or maybe something I said, that caused all this shit.

It’s really gonna piss me off if I die before I get it all figured out.

Yesterday Morning…

One final polish to Pa’s finest Winchester….

My younger brother stands like a sentry peering through the living room window at our neighbors, or rather, our neighbor’s wife.

‘Mighty fine weapon. You done with yours, Rich?’

‘She still got the truck idlin’, Warren. Gonna run outa gas! She just throwed another box in, looks like more books. What the fuck people like her and Ross Cowart want ownin’ so many books?’

It was a long-standing joke in Moira that every time a delivery truck drove into town, Ross Cowart had ordered more books. He always said he wanted to open a library. If it was picture books these people here might be interested. 

Early dawn light hits the bad tattoo on Rich’s right shoulder where the so-called ‘artist’ misspelled ‘Texas’. She inked ‘Toxas’ instead.

‘Finish cleaning your gun and put it away.’

But he’s twitching at the sight of Ree West loading the backend of their truck…so little excitement for his type of nature here in Moira.

He was probably twitching gettin’ that tattoo. Hell, I guess if I was tattooing him I might get it wrong, too. Had to bail him outa Corker County Jail after some idiot pointed out to him Texas isn’t spelled with an ‘o’.

‘I said, clear away your mess and get cleaned up for breakfast.’

I set our coffee down on Ma’s pine table with a batch of baking-powder biscuits I stirred up last night.

‘Smells good, Warren!’

‘Thought oven baking would get your attention. Put away the oil.’ 

I take the rifle from him and check that the chamber’s empty. ‘Pa told us if we didn’t tend our weapons like he taught, one day they’d disappoint us.’

‘You soundin’ more like him every day.’ He tosses his cleaning kit where it belongs on the bottom shelf of Ma’s hutch.

‘Do what you know to be right and you won’t have to hear me. Now put on your t-shirt before you sit back down.’

I remount his rifle atop the ancient RCA TV…and I see Ree in her tail-high cutoffs toss a