Abbey's World
J Micheal Blue

If someone asked me what I learned, I would tell them that I now know that each of us has a place in this world where we understand the rules and know the game. It can be dangerous to leave that place, even for a weekend.
We arrived on a Saturday, a gray, windy October afternoon. Raskin's Uncle Vic lived in a shiny new, blue and white manufactured home that sat well off the highway on tall piles of concrete blocks. The driveway of gravel and river rock ended far short of the building, as though someone had exhausted his supply of ambition or stone before completing the project. A wide set of black metal steps, flanked by a pair of brass lamps, led to the front door, and near the back fence, a new Corvette sat low on a bed of dying weeds. No one could walk from the car or the driveway to the house without wading through an ocean of boot-sucking mud.
"Did they just move in?" I asked.
"Nope. Vic's been here for as long as I can remember," Raskin
said. "He and his first wife, LouAnne, had a ten wide trailer, but he couldn't have gotten Abbey to live in that old tin shed."
I parked behind a scarred and rusted green pickup, and hoped the river rock would keep my car from sinking out of sight.
We opened our doors and stepped out, trying to find a firm dry place on which to stand. It didn't matter. As soon as we took a second step we sunk shoe-top deep in mud. Raskin pulled our bags from the back seat and as we turned toward the front door I saw Abbey watching us from the open doorway.
Tall, long-legged, and slender, she looked like a dancer standing with one hip cocked and a hand raised in greeting. Her wide smile made her high cheekbones seem higher yet, and her eyes looked deep enough to bathe in. She wore a blue knit turtleneck top, an open plaid shirt, and a body-hugging pair of jeans. Despite the cold, she was barefoot. I was certain she could be no more than twenty-three.
"Y'all better get in here or you'll freeze," she said. "Don't worry about the mud. Vic don't mind it, and I've given up fighting it."
We made our way to the front door, Raskin slogging along unconcerned, and me tiptoeing from soft spot to soft spot, trying to avoid the inevitable. Abbey waited until we reached the steps, and then retreated inside.
"Uncle Vic, this here is Danny Carver," Raskin said. "He's the guy I told you about, taught me them karate moves."
Vic looked like an aging bear dressed up in dirty laundry. He hadn't shaved for days, and food stains peppered the bib of his pinstripes. He wore a soiled John Deere cap, a blood red wool shirt, and beneath the shirt, some seriously sweat stained long johns.
"Mr. Barnes," I said, "I want to thank you for having me. Ather said you were in the Army, so you know how good it feels to be out."
"I was in the Corps," Vic said. He looked at Raskin. "Ather, you know I wasn't in no goddamn Army."
"Uncle Vic was in Nam," Raskin said. "Killed him a bunch of gooks! Cut the nuts off of more than one of them."
"Should've killed some others," Vic said. "Left way too many walking around."
"Oh," I said. "I misunderstood."
"And nobody calls nobody 'Mister' in my house. Rich or poor, there ain't no 'Sirs' around here."
"Okay," I said. "I'm Dan." I could feel my face grow hot.
"You don't have to call me 'Mister' neither." She smiled as though to say that her husband's rudeness shouldn't be taken seriously. "I'm Abbey."
"Get us some beer," Vic said to his wife before I could respond to her. "And Ather'll prob'ly need food before long. He pushed Raskin in the chest. "Drop them bags and find a chair before you fall over."
"I see this place still looks like an armory," Raskin said. He spun in a circle and pointed to the tiered rows of gun racks hung on three walls of the living room, each rack loaded with shotguns and rifles.
"You never know when you'll have to shoot something," Vic replied, "and I'm liable to squeeze one off at you if you don't park your butt someplace."
"Come on," Abbey said. "I'll show you where to put your stuff."
I picked up my bag where Raskin had dropped it and followed her through the kitchen into a small windowless bedroom with its own tiny half bath, and built-in closet. A brown shag rug covered most of the tile floor, and a standing lamp leaned precariously over the narrow bed.
"We'll put you in here," she said. "It's kind of a cold room at night, but it's more private. I've slept here a couple of times and its nice."
"I'm not sure about this," I said. I don't think your husband is too pleased with having me here."
"Don't worry about it," she replied. " Vic treats everybody that way. It's how he makes sure nobody gets to like him without having to work at it. "
"I see."
"Ather told Vic you're a rich kid and that probably didn't help much. Vic has a problem with rich people. Thinks they must have gotten something he was supposed to get."
I shook my head in disgust. "My family isn't rich," I said. "My dad runs a furniture store and my mom is a teacher."
"Maybe so, but it's easy to tell you're not from around here." She went to the closet and pulled down a stack of bedding. "I better make this up or you'll be staggering around in the dark trying to do it when you get back from partying tonight."
I moved closer so that I could help. "Ather tells me you're a newlywed."
She shook out one of the sheets. "Eight months," she said. "Not long enough to brag about, but we're tryin'."
"Abbey! Where's that beer?" Vic yelled from the living room.
"Put a pebble under your tongue, Honey," she called out. "It'll help cut the thirst." She sighed. "Can you finish this without me?"
"If there's one thing the Army has taught me, it's how to make a bed."
When she got to the door she turned back. "How would you feel about Vic and me tagging along when you two go out tonight?" she asked. " Vic won't go out if it's just me he's got to go with."
I smiled. "If you go, do I get a dance?"
"With me or with Vic?" She gave me a sly smile. "He might object either way, but I'll see what I can do if I'm the one you're after."
*
We spent most of the afternoon drinking beer and watching college football games on TV. Vic pulled one of his weapons, a new shotgun with a polished wood stock and a unusually long magazine, off the wall for Ather to admire, and the two of them took turns hefting it to their shoulders and sighting into a mirror hung above the couch. When Raskin racked the slide and a live shell popped out of the ejector I couldn't believe my eyes.
"Are all your guns loaded?" I asked.
Vic looked at me as though I'd confirmed his worst suspicions about my character. "Are they loaded?" he said. "Hell yes, they're loaded. What the hell good is a gun that ain't loaded?"
"I don't know. Seems kind of dangerous. Keeping loaded weapons in easy reach of everybody that comes around."
Vic shook his head and grinned at Raskin. "Your rich kid pal here is worried we'll all going to shoot ourselves," he said. "Tell him what would happen to someone that messed with one of my guns."
Raskin snorted. "Wouldn't live to mess with anything else," he said, and both of them laughed.
When the football games ended, we moved our chairs so we could look out toward the highway. "When're you going to plant grass in that yard?" Ather asked his uncle.
He winked at Abbey who had come in to sit on the floor next to her husband's chair.
Vic scowled at his nephew, but said nothing.
"I think the grass'll go in about the same time we put a foundation under the house, fence in the animals, finish the driveway, get me pregnant, and watch hell freeze over," Abbey said.
Raskin exploded with laughter and punched his uncle on the arm. "God, Uncle Vic, you ain't changed nothin' since the day you moved in," he said. "Why don't you scatter grass seed around? A bag of seed won't break you."
"Don't make sense to plant grass," Vic said. "It washes away or the chickens dig it out."
Ather wouldn't let his uncle off the hook. "I don't know how Abbey gets her Corvette through all of that mud. She probably wonders why you bought it for her."
"I do," she said. "But it don't really matter. Vic thinks I'm going to run off if I'm gone from here more than fifteen minutes without him."
Vic looked unhappy. He got out of his chair and started for the front door. "I've heard enough of this," he said.
"Hey, come on, I didn't mean nothing," Raskin said. "I was just raggin' you a little."
"She don't need no help complainin'," Vic said. "She thinks bein' married is playin' house and runnin' around like a damned teenager."
Raskin rose and followed his uncle out the door. "Be back in a few minutes," he said to me as he passed my chair.
Abbey watched them leave without expression. "I never thought much about playin' house. I just wanted a safe, quiet place to lie down."
I turned to face her. "Were you in some kind of trouble when you got married?"
She sighed. "Oh, no more than usual. I was knocked up and the bum I was living with torched our apartment trying to kill me. He did kill my little girl." She stared out the window as she spoke.
"You had a daughter?"
"Debra Lee," she said. "I didn't protect her the way I should
have, but she was mine for thirty eight months and twelve days."
"I'm really sorry," I said. "What happened to your pregnancy?"
"For the first time, I thought she was going to cry. "Still born," she said quietly.
The sun had dropped behind the hilly tree line across the road and the room lay in shadows. There was a floor lamp beside Abbey, but she left it off. Cars on the highway sped past, their headlights blazing. I would have liked to be inside one of those cars riding away with her, on our way to somewhere.
"So why did you get married?" I asked. "When I see the two of you together...."
She sighed. " Vic's always worked hard, and he don't drink as much as some others."
It hardly seemed enough.
"Not getting knocked around every time the sink stopped up or the Cardinals lost a ball game had some appeal, too. He told me he would never hit me and so far he's been as good as his promise.
*
Raskin convinced Vic to go to town with us that night, by promising that the subjects of grass seed, building foundations, driveways, children, and Corvettes were off limits for the evening. I changed my shirt and washed up while Vic and Raskin finished off the last of the beer, and Abbey fixed our dinner.
After we ate, she asked Raskin and me to wash the dishes so she could get ready, and twenty minutes later she emerged from the bathroom, doused in perfume and looking like a dangerous woman. She had given up her jeans for a short, tight, black leather skirt, and her turtleneck had been replaced by a clingy white bodysuit with long sleeves and a deep U neckline. Her legs shone sleek and bare above her black high heels, and her face had taken on color from lipstick and eyeshadow. "Well, Ather, what do you think?" I looked up as she entered and she watched me when she asked him the question.
"Abbey, you could get arrested for the way you look," he said.
Vic stared at the generous display of his wife's cleavage in her scooped neckline. "I'd say you ought to be stayin' home," he said. "You'll damn sure get cold if you go out like that."
"Could be," she said. "If I do I'll have to find me somebody to dance with so I can heat up." She spun around and clapped her hands. "It's been a hundred years since I've been dancin'."
We took my car and Vic's truck. He said he didn't want to be stuck all night in some lowlife bar because we didn't have sense enough to go home. I backed out of the driveway and waited so he and Abbey could lead the way.
"I hope you ain't havin' too bad a time," Raskin said once we headed toward town. "Uncle Vic's kind of funny 'til you get to know him."
"Uh-huh."
Raskin turned toward me and put his back against the passenger side door. "Abbey's a great looking woman, but long as I've known her she's been wild as hell, and that family of hers is nothin' but trash."
I didn't know what response I should make to that. How far could Ather Raskin stare down the social ladder?
He paused as though considering whether to say more. " Vic took her in and paid her bills, and he got that scumbag she'd been living with off her back for good. That guy killed her daughter, you know."
"Yeah, I know."
" Vic went to see him in jail. Told him if anything ever happened to Abbey, now or a hundred years from now, he was a dead man."
It wasn't hard for me to picture Vic as a killer.
" Vic's real jealous of Abbey," Raskin said. "Especially if she's getting too much attention from somebody. For a while there every time I come up here he got snarly with me 'cause he thought I paid her too much mind."
I wondered whether this had become a cautionary tale. "I don't think he's got any worries," I said. "She seems loyal to him."
"That's easier to say when she ain't your wife," Raskin said.
I wanted to change the subject. "Does Vic want kids?"
"He says if Abbey really wanted a baby, she could have kept the last one."
I was dumbstruck. "How was she supposed to keep a dead baby?"
"That baby wouldn't have been dead except for her," Raskin said.
"What are you talking about?"
"Abortion. Vic tried to talk her out of it, but she said she wouldn't carry that bastard's child one step further and that was it."
*
The town of Union had a Redi-Mart with gas pumps and a video store, a volunteer fire department, two churches and three taverns scattered among darkened houses and vacant lots. We cruised through town and pulled into the crowded gravel parking lot of a large one story wood frame building. The windows of the T Tap Bar and Grill had been painted black and a sign out front promised "Live Entertainment On Saturday Night!"
Inside, the party had begun and it appeared we had arrived late. A young woman standing near the front door could have been a poster girl for the establishment. She had four earrings in each ear, and a high collared man's shirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders. A tattoo of a single ripe cherry and the words "Here's mine, where's yours?" covered her left bicep. She looked us over and gave Raskin a big bad toothed smile as we passed in review.
The overflow crowd surrendered little space to us. There was a perma-cloud of second hand smoke that could satisfy the hungriest habit, and music, shouts, and laughter, soared above each other at an earsplitting level.
"Where do you want to sit?" Abbey mouthed the words to Raskin.
"Find a place," he shouted.
She led us through the crowd and every male patron in her path leered or gawked as she passed. Vic trailed behind, rigid and stone-faced. At the rear of the building she paused beside a table the waitresses had been using as a collection point for dirty glasses, empty bottles, and loaded ashtrays. I could smell deodorant blocks in the nearby men's rest room.
"How's this?" she asked.
"There ain't no chairs," Vic said, as though this fact alone was reason enough to leave.
"Hang onto it, Abbey," Raskin said. "Me and Uncle Vic will find something to sit on."
"Let's clean this off." Abbey began moving glasses from the tabletop to the floor, lining them up against a nearby wall. "After we get something to drink, I want to take you up on your offer to dance with me. I'm going to have a good time tonight, 'cause there's no tellin' when I'll get out of the house again."
We corralled a waitress and ordered beers all around. Raskin and Vic returned with chairs and soon our drinks arrived. "Who you going to dance with, Ather?" Abbey yelled over the din.
He looked around at the nearby tables and shrugged. "Can't see nobody worthwhile," he said loudly.
"What about that little cutie we saw at the front door," Abbey teased him. "I saw her lickin' her lips when you walked by. Bet she's got some other tattoos you might like to look for."
Raskin blushed. "Maybe," he said. "I prob'ly couldn't find her now."
"Go look for her!" She turned to me. "Come on, Danny, let's dance."
I hesitated, and looked at Vic. He stared silently into his glass of beer.
"He won't dance with me. I've asked him a thousand times," she said. "He says he don't know how and he's not about to learn." She was already out of her chair.
"Do you mind, Vic?" I said. Either way I intended to dance with her, but I gave him a chance to say how he felt.
Raskin shook his head in disappointment. He probably believed his warnings had not been understood.
"Let's go," Abbey said. "This is a good song."
I rose from my chair and went with her toward the dance floor. "I'll be lucky if he doesn't make me sleep in my car," I said.
She laughed. "Maybe I'll be lucky and he'll make both of us sleep in your car. That might be fun."
Not surprisingly, the band was devoted to the outlaw music of Hank Williams Jr. Abbey bounced onto the dance floor looking like a kid who had escaped from the schoolhouse to the playground. She laughed and wiggled and flipped her hair from side to side.
We boogied through a final chorus about Hank's rowdy friends, and the lead guitar player announced his intentions "to get into some belly rubbin' music." As the beat changed and the music softened, Abbey stepped forward and folded herself into my arms, and once I felt the soft pressure of her breasts and the stirring of her breath on the side of my face, I knew I wanted the band to keep playing that same slow song until the night was over.
"You're a wonderful dancer," I said into her ear.
"One item on a very short list of things I do well," she replied. "Too bad I can't make a living at any of them without taking my clothes off for strangers."
"I think I'd pay you to keep dancing with me."
She laughed.
I pressed against the long line of her body, holding her as close as possible. I'm not a good dancer, but that night my lack of skill made no difference. Abbey needed so little direction, I could guide her as if I were walking alone.
We had been away from the table about twenty minutes when someone pulled us apart. I opened my eyes to find Vic standing beside us, holding Abbey by the arm. Raskin hovered a step behind, blank faced and wooden.
"Come on," Vic said. "We're going home."
She gave him a look of astonishment. "We just got here!"
"I said, we're going home! You're making a fool of yourself!"
Abbey shook her head. "I'm dancing with a friend. You're the one acting the fool."
Vic didn't look at me. "He's not a friend. He's another stray dog sniffin' under your tail. You might as well let him flip your skirt over your ass and screw you right here in front of everybody."
Abbey pulled her arm out of Vic's grasp and rubbed the spot where he'd been holding her. "Is that what you think?" she asked. "Is that what you think I ought to do?"
Vic said nothing.
She turned to me for the first time since he had stepped between us. "I guess maybe you're right," she said. "Maybe I should do that, if Danny has the time and the interest. I'm sure tired of sleeping with a man who lays down in his overalls, and stains the bed with machine oil and gravel."
Vic backhanded his wife with a blow as loud as a gunshot. With little effort, he split her lip, smeared her makeup, and sent her crashing into a couple behind her. Raskin reached for his uncle, and I lunged for Abbey, but no one else interfered. The couple she fell against sidestepped quickly, allowing her to stumble into my arms.
"Get your stuff," Vic said.
"Go to hell!" Abbey shouted. She touched her mouth and found blood.
Vic raised his hand again, but instead of striking her, he pushed me aside and he and Raskin went out the front door. The band played on, and those nearby checked us out one last time before turning to their own affairs.
"Are you all right?"
She began to cry. "Every time I don't do what some man wants me to do, I end up with a smashed face."
We began to dance again. The tempo turned upbeat, but we ignored the change. "I won't let him touch you again," I said.
Blood oozed from her mouth, but she smiled anyway. "Thanks, but I'll have to look out for myself once you're gone, won't I?"
I wanted to hold her close, to nestle against her as I had before Vic tore us apart. "Do you want to stay here a while?" I asked.
She sighed, and for a moment rested her head against mine. "I don't think so. The later I get home, the worse this is going to be."
"I can think of things that would be a lot more fun than taking you back to that trailer."
She shook her head sadly, and touched her battered lips to mine. "Sorry, but that will have to be enough for you," she said.
I reached out but she pulled away.
"Even that will cost me. By Monday afternoon, Vic'll hear about it from half a dozen people, and they'll all swear you were groping my crotch while I shoved my tongue down your throat."
We got back to their house in less time than it had taken to drive into Union. She rode in silence, dry eyed and composed, while I worked on the anger I thought I would need to protect her from her husband. I shut off my lights as I turned into Vic's drive and killed the engine as soon as I left the highway. The truck sat where it had been parked that afternoon and light shone through the drapes covering the front window of the trailer.
"Don't come in," she said.
"I'm going to at least get my stuff."
"It will be a whole lot better for me if I don't."
"I told you. I won't let him hurt you."
She shook her head sadly. "You have no idea what's going on," she said. She stepped out of her high heels as she opened the car door, and I followed her across the yard and into the house, my blood pumping hard and fast every step of the way.
"Get in here, tramp!" Vic grabbed her arm and tossed her aside as I reached the doorway. She cried out as she crashed into the far wall, and fell to the floor.
I tried to duck past him, but he caught me by the collar and clubbed me in the back of the head knocking my feet out from under me. When I went to my knees, it seemed to make him more angry, and he jerked me upright and clubbed me again.
"You need education, rich boy. You think you can come into a man's home and try to screw his wife."
The room felt hot and close, the air heavy with his anger and sweat. Vic's third blow sent me face down into the carpet, and as I tried to roll away I heard Abbey scream for him to leave me alone. He kicked me in the side and stepped over me as he went after her. Somewhere in the room, Raskin called for peace, saying he would get me out of there and never bring me back. He implored Vic not to hit Abbey again.
"Yeah, Vic!" Abbey said. "What happened to those promises you'd never hurt me?"
"You didn't tell me you'd act the whore," Vic shouted. "Shaming me! Tryin' to fuck this worthless peckerhead!"
I heard him hit her again, solidly, a sledge hammering soft tissue. She screamed and fell and screamed again. I rolled onto my side and saw Vic bending over his fallen wife, slamming his fists onto her back and buttocks while his nephew grunted and pleaded and tried to pull him away.
"Stop it, you crazy bastard!" I yelled. "What's the matter with you? She's done nothing!"
He spun around and came after me once more, his face red and puffy, his eyes wild and full of hate. I couldn't get up or get away quickly enough and he grabbed me by the hair. "You!" he grunted and he smashed me in the face. "You!" Another blow to the face. This time my nose caved in and blood squirted down my throat. I swung at him uselessly, and he drove his fist into me again. My left eye blossomed like a bloody mushroom, swelling shut in an instant.
I heard my own breathing, labored and heavy, and I smelled the musk of combat rolling off of Vic as he drug me to my feet and drew back his fist once again. "Teach you manners, you sumbitch," he whispered hoarsely.
Then someone fired a shotgun and time stopped. Vic's fingers relaxed and slid like a caress through my hair. He shifted his weight and turned slowly to his right, a look of amazement on his face. Another explosion from the gun, and this time he recoiled from the force of the blast. A third explosion and he fell backward, gripping his blood soaked chest with both hands.
"My God!" Raskin yelled. "Abbey, what the hell have you done?"
"Stopped taking it," she said.
"You crazy bitch! You've killed him."
And then she shot Raskin too, putting the full load into his neck and face. He spun back and away, his arms flailing. "I should have known it would come to this sooner or later," she said.
She held the shotgun loosely, as though it had restored her strength. She looked like an auto accident victim, but she showed no signs of fatigue as she stood over the two fallen men.
"Why did you shoot, Raskin?" I said. "He wouldn't have hurt you."
"He would have told the cops that I had no call to do what I did."
"No. He saw what happened. Besides, I would have backed you up."
"You don't count around here. You're the reason all of this happened."
I stared at her and wondered how the gentle girl I had danced with that evening could have done all of this damage. "So what happens now?" I said.
She smiled at me. "Well, I guess that depends, lover. You can get up here in front of me and put a bullet or two in each of them. That would be a start."
"Shoot them again? They're already dead."
"We don't know that for certain, do we? If you take a few shots we'll never be sure which one of us killed them."
"That's crazy, Abbey. We have to call the police."
She laughed. "After you shoot them, we can haul them out back and bury them in the woods. I don't think I can manage that by myself."
I couldn't believe her calm or adjust to the proposal she was making. The room smelled of blood and shit, and gunpowder.
I was scared and full of pain. I wanted to go home."
"And if I don't do that?" I said. "What then?"
"You don't want to know," she said. "I still have two live shells in this magazine and whatever else happens I'm finished knuckling under to men who disagree with me."
"I don't understand."
"I know you don't," she replied, "but that won't change your options. Stand up, Danny. This may not be the way things work where you come from, but you're in my world now. It's time to finish what you started by coming here."

J. Michael Blue turned to writing crime and mystery fiction four years ago. Since then his work has appeared in Blue Murder Magazine <http://www.bluemurder.com>, The Belletrist Review, Byline, The Timber Creek Review, The Concho River Review, Blue Fiction Magazine, The Flying Island, Papyrus, and The Unknown Writer, among others. A dozen of his short stories have won awards. Justified Crimes is his first novel, just out from Blue Murder Press. More information is available on his website at jmblue.com 
This is his second appearance in Plots With Guns