Floyd County Moonshine, LLC, 720 Christiansburg Pike, Floyd, VA 24091-
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Rob Neukirch
Featured Author Issue 2.4 Summer 2010
Recently a long-
Appeared in Issue 2.2 Winter 2010
The Bob and Larry Show
He was straightening the picture above their bed when his wife, phone in hand, walked in.
“Bad news,” she said.
He took the phone from her but kept his hand over it. Bad news for him? For them? Why couldn’t she take it?
“It’s Bob,” she whispered. And then, with a dismissive wave added, “He’s not dying or anything.”
He put the phone up to his ear.
“Bob? What’s the matter? What happened?”
He and Bob had been boyhood friends, same bus route, same Little League team, and, much later on, same girlfriend. Except that he, Larry, had married her.
“You’re kidding? Must have hurt like hell.”
Now here they were, a hundred years later, Larry only days younger than Bob, listening to this latest, horrible medical emergency. Except, Bob was telling him, it wasn’t a medical emergency at all.
“You’re kidding.” Larry shrugged at his listening wife. “They don’t consider something like that an emergency? But you couldn’t walk!”
In an effort to impress his second eldest’s, second wife, during a backyard volleyball game Bob had gone up high for a kill shot and landed in a heap. Larry winced again at the phrase, “exploded Achilles tendon.”
“Like a fucking bomb went off, in my frigging foot.”
This was not the first contemporary of Larry’s to succumb to such an injury. In the past year alone, two close friends (closer, now, than Bob), one of them a doctor, had done the exact same thing; one while playing tennis and the other on a basketball court. Exploded their Achilles tendons. Now that he thought about it, both of them also had to schedule the surgery, even his friend the doctor.
“I’m just old and I know it,” Larry said. “I don’t screw around.”
Bob let him have it for that, reminding him of what a great athlete he’d been, All-
“I did play in college,” Larry reminded him. “Sat on the bench.”
Bob got mad all over again, telling him like it was yesterday instead of thirty-
“Maybe so, Bob, but anyway, you can’t go back.”
His wife, mouthing the words “Tell him goodbye!” turned and left the room.
Every phone call, no matter how infrequent, went like this and he knew why he wasn’t
more in touch with Bob; he always had them reliving the past. Good god, they’d be
old men in wheelchairs, still having this ridiculous conversation about a non-
“Bob, are you stoned?”
“No,” Bob said, holding his breath. He let it out. “Okay, now I am. Now I’m stoned.”
“You’ve got to grow up, man.”
“What for? Hey, what kind of shape you in, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Larry said. He unconsciously sucked in his stomach. “Maybe a pound or two over my playing weight…” Why use that phrase? “And I don’t do a damn thing except walk. Every morning I parade around the neighborhood. I know every goddam crack in the sidewalk.”
Why was he swearing? It was Bob’s influence, of course. He heard his old friend’s voice and they were teenagers again, swearing and talking sports. He listened while Bob told him that, yeah, first he’d had to wait and even then, because of some other joker’s “emergency,” the surgery was rescheduled.
“Some fucking moron blew his knee out in a pick-
“Son of a bitch,” Larry said.
Later, the phone call finally over, his wife caught Larry staring at the picture over the bed. It was a large, horizontal print of zebras, galloping over a spare savannah, black and white with highlights of gold.
“What?” she said.
“Why does it keep going crooked?”
“Must be the rodeo sex.”
He looked at her. They still had sex, occasionally, though he wouldn’t use the word “rodeo” to describe it. She never asked to have rodeo sex, whatever that was.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
She turned and, on her way out of the bedroom, swatted provocatively at her rear end.
“Yee-
She’d never done that before.
Nearly three weeks later, Larry stood at the kitchen counter. His coffee mug was
in front of him, his favorite, the one with the outward curling lip. Each morning
he pre-
“A car…” his wife said, absently.
She got up with her own coffee mug and walked across to the bay window that looked
out on the lawn and driveway. Their house was located at the end of a cul-
“Just someone turning,” he said.
He stirred his coffee and watched it become the perfect shade of brown. At night, the image of his morning coffee is often what he fell asleep to.
“I don’t think so,” his wife said. And then, “Oh my god…”
“What?”
She looked at him with what could only be described as an accusatory stare.
“It’s Bob.”
They all met on the brick walkway, each talking wildly over the other.
“I don’t believe it!”
“Luckily, I can still drive!”
“Bob, do you still have a ponytail?”
They had a quick and awkward three-
“So, your leg…”
“Yeah,” Bob said, “just got the staples out, they put on this fiberglass thing. Nice, huh? Sleek and sexy.”
“And you need…” Larry’s wife pointed.
“Crutches, yeah. Big pain in the ass but these, Canadian ones they call them, are the way to go. Better than under your friggin’ armpits. Great way to score some pity sex. They haven’t worked so far but, hey, I’m back in action. ”
Even with the crutches dangling from his forearms Bob was able to smooth back his
hair – Larry noticed there was a lot more forehead and a lot less hair now – and
redo his ponytail. There was definitely some gray in his mustache and goatee. The
gold wire-
“How did you…I mean, how long…”
“Straight through, it’s probably eleven hours but I spent the night near Harrisburg.”
“Pennsylvania?” she asked.
“You know another Harrisburg?”
“Of course Pennsylvania,” Larry said.
Bob had draped an arm and a crutch over his old friend’s shoulder and there they stood, just like the old days, the boys against the girl. Inside, the phone rang.
“Of course Pennsylvania,” Larry’s wife said, mimicking his voice. She shot him a look and headed toward the house. Seventeen again, Bob and Larry snorted and clapped one another on the back.
“You made her an honest woman,” Bob said, “an honest, angry woman. But that’s good, that’s fine. I sure couldn’t.”
Larry didn’t know what to do with that, so he moved toward the car.
“Do you have…”
A bag? Was Bob here with a bag? Had he driven for most of two days just to come here or was he passing through? On his way to…Florida? Didn’t he used to go to Florida sometimes?
“I brought a couple things because I didn’t know. Listen, I can stay for a little
bit and get right back on the road. I just had to get out of town, you know? It
was pure impulse is what it was, pure im-
Larry hesitated. He couldn’t recall the name of the town Bob had gotten out of. He didn’t know much of anything, anymore, about Bob. But aside from that, to just show up, unannounced? Uninvited? It was something Larry wouldn’t have done, couldn’t have done, not in a million years.
“Hey,” Bob said, waving a hand and a crutch at him, “don’t worry about it. We’ll catch up a little and then poof, I’m off into the sunset.”
“Bob?”
Larry’s wife was at the door holding the phone receiver.
“It’s for you…”
She held out the phone and Bob half-
“I better take this inside,” he said.
When the screen door shut behind him, Larry’s wife strode toward him.
“It’s a woman,” she said. “I couldn’t get her to stop talking. Apparently, she’s a big fan of plastic surgery.”
They stood in silence, looking at the strange car parked in their driveway. From under the hood came an exact imitation of a belch. Larry’s wife, arms crossed, stepped directly in front of him.
“Is he staying?”
Larry shrugged.
“Don’t ask me,” he said.
“Maybe this is too much for you?”
“Don’t be silly.”
Larry was walking, slowly, in order for Bob to keep up. This mid-
“It’s not a walking-
Bob stopped a moment and reached in his pocket. He wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief and then waved it in the general direction of the neighborhood.
“Wonderful, Larry, what you two have got here. I spent my entire life running around like an idiot and maybe all I really needed was something like this.”
“I don’t think so,” Larry said.
“No,” Bob agreed, “drive me nuts, all this fucking regularity. To me, it’s death.”
They started up again, the two of them side by side, creeping along.
“You never had a regular moment in your life, Bob.”
“I don’t know about that.” He got quiet. “Just let me think.”
“At graduation that plane flew over.”
“What plane?”
Larry gave him a look and Bob laughed.
“Wasn’t that great? Buzzing all of us and pulling that banner, ‘Way to go, Bob! Onward and upward!’”
He raised a crutch in the air and shook it for punctuation.
“How much did that cost you?”
“I don’t know,” Bob said, “maybe three hundred, including the sign?”
“Jesus,” Larry said, laughing, “three hundred bucks.”
“I think so. That included the sign.”
“I know, I know, you told me. Jesus H. Christ!”
Larry put his hands on his knees and laughed while Bob made the sound of an airplane and waved his crazy crutches, like wings.
“Look at those kids,” Bob said. “What are they, ballplayers? They’re not ballplayers.”
This part of Larry’s walk took him through a small park and past an ancient, black-
“What are you doing?”
“Hey, fellas, over here! Pass it one time!”
“What are you doing?”
The “fellas” looked over. They were shirtless, with lean, hairless chests, gold
chains and tattoos, two massive heads of endless hair. The shorts they wore hung
dangerously low on their hips, the leg-
“Right here,” he shouted, “one shot.”
The ballers said something to one another that was inaudible to Bob and Larry and then, in a slow and easy motion, they sent the ball bouncing over. Bob stuck a crutch out to no effect and it bounced right into Larry’s hands.
“Show ‘em how it’s done,” Bob said. He turned to the young men. “Watch this, amigos.”
“I don’t think they’re Hispanic, Bob.”
“Sure they are.”
Nothing felt right to Larry, not the ball, not his own body, nothing. He hadn’t even held a basketball for…how long? Let alone shoot one.
“Let it fly, Loose.”
“Loose” is what they used to call him because of the way his young body had looked,
held together, each joint like a string puppet’s; it might bend this way and it might
bend that way. Larry, wishing he could disappear, took a half-
“Whoo-
They hooted, both the young men and collapsed into each other as the ball fell short by a good five feet.
“Okay, all-
“Come on,” Larry said, sweating from embarrassment, “let’s go.”
But the ball was already on its way back to them and the two long-
“Punks,” Bob said. “Show them how it’s fucking done.”
Larry shook his head slowly, wondering what in the hell he was doing standing in his neighborhood park with Invalid Bob, with a basketball in his hands? It was some kind of freakish dream but here he was and the time was now.
“Right down your throats!” Bob shouted.
Larry bounced the ball, held it and then bounced it again. He moved a step to his left and elevated. That used to be his shot, though now when he moved he felt like he was wearing a snowsuit. His left foot slid and the ankle rolled slightly as he released the ball, came down on his right foot and watched its flight.
“Golden,” he heard Bob say.
Jesus, Larry thought, a butterfly must have flapped its wings in Formosa because somehow the goddamned ball sailed right in, nothing but net.
“That’s how you do it!” Bob shouted. “One more, one more...”
But Larry, laughing and knowing that lightning wouldn’t strike twice, had already started limping away. He motioned, laughing despite the pain in his foot, for Bob to join him.
“Yeah,” Bob said, hustling as much as he could, “that’s the way you do it.”
When he caught up to Larry they gave one another a high-
“Fuckin-
“Loose as a Goose!”
Larry moved his arms, herky-
“Fuckin-
When she came back from running errands, they were in the kitchen. Larry had his foot up on a stool with a bag of ice on it.
“What…” she started.
“He’s still got it,” Bob said and rubbed his hands together. “Still Loose the Goose with the killer rainbow.”
She looked at Bob with complete confusion on her face.
“Killer rainbow?”
“I sank a twenty-
“Twenty-
“At the park. I tweaked my ankle, though.”
“Thing of beauty,” Bob said, “those punks are probably still talking about it.”
“It was one shot, Bob.”
“You hurt your ankle?”
She put the packages on the counter and stood by Larry’s foot.
“You should have seen it.”
Bob was up on his crutches and, with one of them, tracing a line through the air.
“Whoosh,” he said.
“I thought it was ‘swish’?”
The two men looked at her. Thirty years ago they would have laughed and sent her out for sodas.
“Listen, darling,” Bob winked at Larry, “how about whipping up some lunch for the two favorite men in your life?”
She didn’t miss a beat.
“How about if I just stay here and make lunch for you two, instead?”
They were whispering, fiercely, like a couple of kids.
“How long is he staying?”
“I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Maybe tomorrow?” She got herself up on one elbow and hoped that he could see her face. “What if it’s maybe next week?”
“He wouldn’t stay that long.”
“Why not? He’s got his old pal, Loosey the Goosey, and free food.”
“Loose the Goose. He paid for the take-
“After his first two credit cards were rejected. It was humiliating.”
“I thought you said he laughed about it.”
“Humiliating for me, Larry.”
“Oh.”
They breathed, in the dark, while the laugh track from the tv floated up through the floor.
“He watches nothing but garbage,” she said.
“It’s all garbage.”
“Why are you defending him?”
“I’m not defending him.”
“You know he patted me, in the kitchen.”
He thought it best not to ask her where, exactly, her kitchen was located.
“Oh, come on,” he said.
“He’s turned into the quintessential, dirty old man.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, I do.”
She rolled onto her side with her back to him.
“You’re stoned.”
“Oh come on, I took maybe two hits. Bob smoked most of it.”
After their take-
“I forgot how much I hated that smell, yuck. He just makes me…”
He missed the last word. Did she say a last word? Oh well. She was right, of course. He was no more comfortable with Bob, really, than she was. On the other hand, he looked at his old friend and was instantly fascinated with trying to see the boy he’d known so long ago. He kept thinking of all the stunts Bob pulled, growing up, how nobody liked him back then anymore than his wife liked him now. Their brief relationship, Bob and his wife’s, had been, like most things, more in Bob’s mind than anywhere else. She’d kissed him, a couple of times. When he tried to feel her up in a movie theatre, that was the end of it. Larry smiled because right in front of his face, in the dark, was Bob’s face that day in the cafeteria saying, “I’m officially handing her over. Good luck, man, you’ll need it.”
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” he said. He giggled some more.
“Oh no,” she said, “you’re not stoned.”
When he couldn’t stop, her hand flew over and whacked him under the covers.
The next morning, Larry and his wife moved soundlessly around the kitchen. They were both, he knew, afraid to ask the same question, afraid of the answer anyway. Being the best friend, he couldn’t ask it. He sat with his coffee and put his foot up.
“Maybe you should get an x-
“It’s fine. I’m just putting it up as a precaution.”
He was sure it was fine and, besides, under their current policy an x-
Upstairs they heard footsteps and then the unmistakable sound of Bob, urinating. Larry looked up from the paper just enough to see if she was looking at him. She was.
“He can’t even close...”
She couldn’t finish the sentence because they both started laughing. They were still
laughing, or trying not to, when he entered the kitchen. He was wearing big, baggy
shorts and a heavily-
“What? What?”
“Bob,” Larry’s wife said, “that shirt.”
“Yeah,” Bob said, holding the hem of it out in front of him, “it’s nice, huh? I get them at this place, four for fifty bucks.”
Larry had a moment of admiration for his friend, invulnerable as ever to criticism.
“I de-
“Our computer?” Larry’s wife asked but maybe Bob didn’t hear her.
“I need coffee,” Bob announced.
Larry and his wife looked at the empty pot. Their habits were so strong they hadn’t thought to make extra. Bob lowered his foot and headed for the freezer.
“Half caffeinated, half de-
“Not for the living. Give me the high-
Larry fished for the specialty blend, medium-
“Let’s do something fun today,” Bob said.
Larry heard the clap of hands behind him and then the brisk rubbing together of them that had, once again, become so familiar.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Drive me around this here Shangri-
Larry pushed the button on the coffee-
“You up for a drive?”
Knowing what he’d find there, he avoided her eyes. Her answer was half a smile and a shrug of her shoulders. Bob was still rubbing his hands together.
“Good,” he said, almost shouted, “the three of us, together again!”
The coffeemaker gurgled.
“Oh boy,” she said.
They drove past things like the post office and the shopping mall. Bob sat in front
with Larry and fiddled with the radio. If any kind of oldie came on he turned up
the volume and rejoiced. He made them stop for coffee, more coffee and he came out
of the place with Larry, who was carrying an overloaded to-
“I couldn’t stop him,” Larry said into the rearview mirror.
“What in the world is this?”
Bob turned to the backseat and took a look.
“Cinnamon Bearclaw.”
“It’s the size of Rhode Island.”
“She’s funny, isn’t she funny?
Bob poked Larry’s arm, the one with the coffee at the end of it and he barely saved it from going all over.
“I could definitely do something with her,” Bob said, “get her a gig.”
“Are you still doing that?” she asked him. “Is that what you’re doing, still, for a living?”
Up until now, the topic had been completely avoided. Larry thought back, a couple of decades, to a phone call, when things were apparently going Bob’s way.
“It’s Bob…,” she said and gave him that look.
When he put the phone against his ear, Bob was singing.
“Eli’s coming, hide your heart, girl, Eli’s coming…”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m backstage, man, backstage! Three Dog Night! I’m a promoter, man, a promoter! And…” he whispered into the phone, “I’m definitely going to get my hum, dingered tonight!”
“Like the comedian said, you call that living? But yeah, I still got my finger in it, somewhat.”
They sipped coffee – well, Bob gulped his – and devoured the donuts. At least, Bob and Larry did.
“If we’re going to sit here,” Bob said, “then I’m getting my free refill.”
Larry watched his loud shirt as Bob hobbled past the front of the car.
“He’s a maniac,” his wife said, “and the coffee is lousy.”
Larry smiled and nodded his head. This lousy donut-
They drove out to the lake, to the small collection of double-
“Hope he closes the door,” she said and then, after several minutes, “Did he fall in?”
“You’re funny,” Larry told her. “Did you know you were funny?”
When Bob came back, accompanied by a server, a laughing server, he waved them further into the dark.
“Talked them into an early dinner,” he said.
“Oh no, no…” Larry’s wife began to protest.
“Too late,” Bob told her, “it’s already in the works. This okay? You tell me.”
He’d scooted over to a window table looking out on the lake but was turned now to the server who, while no longer laughing, was smiling like no tomorrow. Larry wondered if she and Bob had partaken.
“Take it, sure, go ahead and take it.”
Bob was holding one of her hands in both of his and balanced on his good leg.
“Thank you, my sweet, and just bring it all out, whenever it’s ready. Just pile it all on the table.”
Her unrelenting smile erupted back into laughter. She pulled away from him and disappeared through a swing door and into the kitchen. Bob beamed at them and Larry could see, yep, stoned all right.
“She’s funny,” Bob said, hooking a thumb in the direction of the parting server, “you know? Funny.”
By the time they left, nearly four hours later, they knew everyone and everyone knew
them. Bob kept introducing Larry and his wife as near-
They were also drunk, at least she was and she looked now, unbelievingly, to a spot
in the center of the floor where Bob, Larry and a very large, sunburned man from
another table were singing, sort of, “Under the Boardwalk.” The response, when they
finished, was something out of the Three Tenors notebook. It had to be the crutches.
No, no, she thought, not another one and she half-
“Taking it on the road,” Bob said, “we’ll make millions. You…” he pointed at her, “open with a couple of jokes, we go on and knock ‘em dead.”
Larry drained his wine glass and put it down in the center of his plate, so hard he almost snapped the stem.
“Life on the road is tough,” he slurred.
“Come on!” Bob clapped him on the back. “Life on the road is a kick in the ass!”
He shifted his glasses to his forehead and studied the charge slip, pocketing the four different cards he’d offered up. He’d insisted on paying and then unabashedly asked the loyal, laughing server to split it between any two of the cards – “Whichever ones work!”
“Want to treat her right…” he mumbled.
He licked a finger and pretended to do some mental math.
“Here,” Larry said, reaching for his wallet, “I’ve got some cash.”
He handed Bob two twenties.
“Forty dollars?” she asked.
“Hey,” Bob said, carefully folding his yellow copy, “she earned it and then some.”
“I’ll say,” Larry sputtered.
“My god,” his wife said, “Bill Gates and Spielberg go to the lake.”
The two men practically split themselves open.
“Funny, didn’t I tell you? Funny.”
When they stood up to leave you’d have thought the Father, Son and Holy Ghost were, sorry, got to go, fleeing heavenward.
What’s worse than a phone ringing in the middle of the night?
When Larry brought it, fumbling, to his ear, he heard a woman’s voice and realized he didn’t have to say anything because Bob was already speaking. He carefully hung it back up.
She rolled over and looked at him.
“It’s for Bob,” he whispered.
She let a lot of sarcastic air escape and rolled back over.
The unasked question was answered: it was early the next day and Bob was leaving.
“You sure?” Larry asked him.
They were out in the driveway where Bob, with Larry’s help, had just finished depositing
his beat-
“Headed south, Lawrence, where the warm wind blows.”
“South?”
“You hear the phone ring last night?”
Larry decided to act dumb.
“The phone?”
“I play this right, in nine or ten hours I’ll be between the legs of something you wouldn’t believe.”
“Ah…” Larry hesitated, trying to come up with something. “Send pictures.”
Bob put a hand gently on Larry’s chest.
“Larry, are you getting laid?”
“Every once in a while.”
“Something needs to be done about that.”
He opened the car door and threw his crutches into the back. Then he hopped around to face his friend.
“Hey, what’s the qyickest way to that donut joint?”
Larry pointed down the cul-
“Excellent, my man, excellent.”
Inside the car, Bob adjusted his injured leg and rapped his knuckles on the fiberglass.
“Pity sex, here I come.”
“How you going to, you know… with that?”
“Where there’s a will,” Bob assured him, “there’s a fuckin’ way, double meaning intended.”
The engine roared to life -
“Say goodbye to the funny one for me.”
“Will do,” Larry said.
“And keep shooting the jumper, for Christ sake.”
Larry squinted into the early sun. His foot still ached. Maybe he should get it
x-
“Right,” he said.
Wow. Suddenly, in Larry’s mind, there they were, he and Bob and…Gina Rinaldi? He
thought so. It was after the State Championship and Bob had somehow talked Coach
Mitchell into letting Larry drive back in Bob’s car instead of on the team bus. But
then Larry couldn’t talk the cheerleading coach – Mrs. Tichnor? – into letting the
wife/then-
“I mean it, man,” Bob said, “you still got it.”
Then the name of the place came to him, and the memory of a long night of listening
to Bob and Gina having sex upstairs while he sat in kitchen and drank an entire six-
“Hey, Bob,” Larry leaned down into the window, “Stuyvesant Falls?”
The car was turned now and facing down the street. Bob peered back at him through
the open, passenger-
“Stuyvesant Falls? No, just this side of Gainesville. Did I say that? Stuyvesant
Falls? Never heard of it. Hi-
The car lurched forward, stopped and backed up.
“Stuyvesant Falls is upstate New York, isn’t it?”
Larry looked into the totally unsuspecting face of his friend.
“I don’t know, is it?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Why I know that, I couldn’t tell you.”
And then he was gone.
Two mornings later a puffy manila envelope arrived in the mail and sat unopened on the kitchen counter. It was now late afternoon. They were examining it, again, unsure of what to do.
“I wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to send it,” Larry said.
For the tenth time, she held the package at arm’s length.
“It is addressed in care of us,” she said.
Larry, in a fit of decisiveness, took it from her and, with the scissors from the junk drawer, cut it open. He pulled out a DVD, looked at the cover and snorted. He held it so that she could see the cover.
“Oh my god,” she said.
He jiggled it in his hand.
“I bet he got it on-
“With our computer?”
Larry looked at her.
“I’d say so.”
He turned the DVD over in his hands. Amazing. It was packaged just like any other DVD.
“Can you believe that guy?”
“Yes,” she said, “yes I can. Are you kidding?”
He looked at her and then took the scissors back up. He struggled mightily with the wrapping.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to put it in.”
“You are not!”
In their “media” room he closed the shutters against the afternoon light and then pushed the button on the DVD player, found the controller and put in the disc. He sat through the opening credits by himself but then she joined him.
“Oh my god,” she said, slapping the couch with her hands. “I do not believe we’re doing this.”
After a couple of minutes, he couldn’t believe they were watching people, doing that.
Upstairs in the bedroom, after they’d finished, he sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at his feet. Comparing them, he couldn’t tell if his ankle was still swollen or not but when he reached down and touched it, it felt tender, behind the bone and toward the back of his foot.
“What’s the matter?”
“My foot,” he said.
He turned to face her and noticed the zebra print.
“There it goes again.” he said.
She tilted her head straight back to look. The sheet was twisted between her legs and from the waist up she was delightfully naked. She caught him, looking.
“Rodeo sex,” she said.
He felt himself get a little red. He didn’t know about rodeo sex, specifically, but he thought that what they’d just done together might, in fact, qualify.
“Yee-
He leaned over her and kissed first one nipple and then the other. She reached and felt for him.
“Oh,” she said, “I think someone wants to saddle up again.”
“Wait,” he said.
She kept her hand on him while he reached for the print. He couldn’t touch the frame without getting up onto his toes. She slid over and really started going to work on him.
“Wow,” he said, “that is…keep doing that.”
Concentrating for a second, he let her do what she was doing. He had his left hand on the top of the headboard and thought, just let it be crooked. But then, steadying himself, he extended up hard off his toes and aimed his fingers for the far corner of the print’s frame.
That’s when he felt a tug and then something letting go and not pain, immediately, but a weird, spreading warmth. That, the ER doctor would explain, was simply the sensation of his Achilles exploding and, subsequently, the area above his left heel, filling with blood.
His cruiser was purring in the driveway behind him, and I began to construct, mentally,
an excuse for not donating while at the same time filing away the unexpected presence
of a local enforcement official as a great beginning to some future story. It was
early afternoon and I wished, suddenly, that I wasn’t dressed in my boxer shorts
and stained t-
Rob grew up in Westchester, New York, with eight female siblings. He notes that
the hand-
Rob Neukirch says if there is anything better than creating a story and almost getting it right, he doesn’t know what it is. The “almost” part is tough, but people live through greater hardships. His story, “A Buffalo Mountain Christmas,” was honored with second place in the Sherwood Anderson Short Story Contest this past year. “In the Latter Stages” was a finalist with Glimmer Train Press. His work has appeared regularly in The Endicott Review. He also stars as the real estate agent "Rob Bradley" in the upcoming film "House of Good and Evil" filmed in Floyd. Rob finished a novel this past spring called Summer in a Small Town. Rob and his family still reside in Floyd. Rob would like to thank Floyd County Moonshine for its continued support.
Links:
| Louis Gallo |
| R.T. Smith |
| Doug Ramspeck |
| Scott Hutchison |
| Mark Vogel |
| Richard Nester |
| Tim Poland |
| Casey Clabough |
| Chelsea Adams |
| Donald Secreast |
| Luke Armstrong |
| Rob Neukirch |
| Elliot Dabinsky |