Yellow Mama E zine

All Good on the Homefront

 

by Ryan Hight

 

     Three hours of sleep a night was just about all Teddy could get. Three weeks' worth of planning kept him on edge and he was surprised when he found himself dozing off so easily, but feeling so much relief when it happened; a brief shut-eye and then the added jolt of awakening with a nervous sweat and adrenaline racing through him, all to play out the cycle again until he was dead.

     The night before, when he was about to doze off in a regretful vertical position on the couch, his phone buzzed. He reached for it and let the bright blue light burn his eyes.

     The message read, "NO GO."

     He popped off the couch knowing there was nothing he could do to change those two words. He wanted to message back but they'd said there would be no need for that. It was a one-way kind of thing. He stared at the phone for a few more moments, hoping for a revised message. It was just a mix-up, he hoped, and it was back to business as usual. A message of assurance was all he was asking for, one simple "ALL GOOD ON THE HOMEFRONT."

     He put on the clothes he had worn the day before. Outside the day had yet to begin. The sprinkler system in his neighbor's yard was spraying Teddy's car. Teddy didn't like his neighbor and thought the neighbor's attitude put the whole neighborhood in a bad place.

     In the kitchen, he started a pot of coffee. Unconsciously, he stared down at his phone but nothing had changed. He scrolled through his contact list—just a set of numbers with no accompanying names—and found Carlyle's number. It took a few rings for the big man to answer.

      "What's the hold-up?" Teddy asked, quietly, as though there was someone else in the room with him, listening along and holding their breath.

      "You know as much as I do, bud," the big man said. It sounded to Teddy like the big man had been up for a while.

      "What does this mean then? Does it mean the job's off?"

      "For the time being, I suppose."

      "What am I going to do, Carlyle?"

      The big man didn't have an answer for him. Teddy assumed he either shrugged or had put the phone down and found himself some much-needed rest.

      After another moment, Teddy could faintly hear the big man snoring.

      "Worthless," Teddy said, and hung up.

      He went outside and watched the sprinkler continue to soak his car. He had a solution inside of him, one that could only be solved by ripping the sprinkler from the ground and hurling it through his neighbor's window.

     That would make Teddy's life easier. The neighbor would be swayed to force Teddy to move out; it was a blessing because he would then not have to pay the ridiculous property taxes or adhere to the strict community standards by keeping his lawn cut on a regular basis. He could live somewhere out-of-the-way and cheaper and have money in his pocket at the end of the day. He had stood there on the front porch long enough for the sun to rise and the sprinkler system to shut off.

 

           ---

 

     Outside of freelance work like stick-ups and back-ups and the occasional bag-man, Teddy had been on a regular and prosperous streak, of being able to insert himself into any established crew. Nothing too elaborate but they were quick hits on smaller backroom poker games and he had been party to plans of a hit on an armored truck that never once materialized. He had been lucky enough that most of the jobs proved bountiful; enough so to keep him afloat and not on any unsavory people's radar.

      Through Carlyle, he had someone to vouch for him. Teddy was never too greedy and offered to take a small share of the score. Just enough, he reasoned, never too much to be a problem to those unsavory folks.

      He had accumulated enough to sustain himself and move into an upscale neighborhood. He never strived for anything bigger.

      But the weeks' worth of planning for such a middling job, the whole thing nonetheless irked him. He understood that plans fell through. But the sting didn't wane and the excitement that raced through his bloodstream wasn't leaking out as fast as he wanted it to.

      He drank a cup of black coffee and watched the sun shine through his curtainless windows. On the other side of the street, the garage of the house across him yawned open.

      The woman who lived there with her husband and two college-aged kids carried out a plastic table. She reentered the dark garage and returned with a cardboard box and started distributing items from it onto the table. Soon, her husband came dollying out small pieces of furniture, staring down at them with a sense of loss. He said something to his wife and she raised her hands and Teddy could read her lips saying "Whatever you think's fair." The husband pulled out a marker and a roll of tape.  He wrote something down on the tape, tore it from the roll, and placed it on the dresser-drawer.

Teddy drank the rest of his coffee and then poured another cup and walked outside.

       By the time he walked across the street, they had brought out more items. The husband was dragging out an exercise bike and made a whole show out of it to his wife.

      "Morning," Teddy said.

      "Did you want to buy something, Ted?" the wife said. "Or are you just here to bother us for the hell of it?"

      Teddy ignored the woman; instead, he found himself picking through a stack of magazines dated back to the nineties.

      "Nice day for a garage sale," Teddy said. He picked up one of the magazines and began leafing through it.

      "This was a last-minute thing," the husband said, breathing too hard for a man his age. "Brandy wanted to get out of town for the weekend, so we're just trying to get some extra walking-around cash."

      "Where are you two headed this weekend?" Teddy asked.

      "I don't think that's any of your business," the wife said. She looked at the metal bedframe her husband was pulling out of the garage. "You know no one's going to buy that. It's all bent up."

      "Then why the hell do we still have it?"

      "It belonged to me when I was younger, so just put it back and we'll find something else."

Teddy looked through the rest of the stuff the woman had brought out and nothing seemed of any interest to him.

      When he got back over to his house, he immediately checked the phone. Still no change.

 

         ---

 

      There wasn't much in the house to choose. He had only lived here for a year and change. Much of what he had accumulated he had given away just as fast he had procured it. The cabinets were bare of any food since he ate out every night. A simple mattress and cheap frame; the only thing he spent a considerable amount of money on were the silk bedsheets but they were turning out to be not worth the price tag. He had a beige leather couch and no television. One foldout chair sat by itself on the front porch, positioned in the shadows so his neighbors couldn't see him when he wanted to sit outside and enjoy himself. He was taught to live a Spartan life and a Spartan life he studiously lived. He lived knowing that he could upend his current stake without the burden of leaving anything behind.

      In his closet, he found the expensive jackets he was gifted by one of Carlyle's connections. He laid them out on the bed along with a bottle of wine and a watch he didn't know the value or origin of. He figured this kind of stuff wouldn't stick out in this neighborhood, so he threw the jackets over his shoulder, sheathed his wrist through the loose band of the watch, and stuffed the bottle of wine under his armpit and took it outside to his driveway.

      He hung the jackets along the porch railing. The watch, he decided to keep wearing so he could showcase it off to the customers, and hope they wouldn't lowball him on either of them.

       His neighbors on the other side of the street were sitting in lawnchairs, watching Teddy. The wife lathered her arms and legs with suntan lotion while the husband changed out of his sweaty clothes and replaced them with a grey sweatshirt and blue basketball shorts. Teddy leaned against his car. He watched the end of the street as a couple of cars were on their way to the competing yard sales.

           One of the cars parked at the end of his driveway and when the person stepped out, they took one look at the paltry selection of Teddy's and shook their head.

         They went marching over to his neighbor's house instead.

          By noon Teddy was getting hungry. He never felt this way before a job so he was looking forward to this newfound feeling of hunger as a sign of relief; one he would spend the rest of this beautiful Friday dwelling in. He went inside and made scrambled eggs and toast with strawberry preserves. He brought it out to the porch and ate it there while he drank from the bottle of wine he didn't particularly enjoy. His neighbors across the way had gone down significantly on their prices. And with what money they were making, they would be better off just giving it away to every person who came by.

           Teddy got his first customer a little while after that. It was an old woman who had become quite smitten with the jackets.

        "Will you take twenty?" she asked.

       "Do you know how much these jackets are worth, each?"

         "All I've got on me is a twenty."

          "Let me see it then."

           The woman reached into her purse and pulled out a crumpled twenty. Teddy looked at it, then held it up against the light. He exchanged glances with the jacket and the old woman.

           He pocketed the twenty but made the woman carry the jackets by herself to her car.

          As the woman was pulling away, he looked off down the street and spotted a silver Crown Vic. It slowed a few yards from his mailbox. The two men inside watched him with the car still running. After another moment of sitting there, they rolled off down the road. Teddy walked casually back into his house and went to the bedroom to retrieve the .45 he kept on the nightstand.    He hated keeping weapons in the house, but he anticipated situations like this that warranted having one around.

         Back outside he saw that his neighbors had sold the exercise bike and the husband was loading it into the back of a pickup. He held up the ten dollars he got for it to his wife and she shook her head in disapproval.

       The Crown Vic crept back around from the other end of the street. They didn't stop this time, only kept driving until they reached the entrance and turned around.

Teddy had the gun pressed against his leg, waiting for the car to pass again. He didn't feel uneasy with it. He figured it was his contribution to the neighborhood watch. From the only time he had attended a homeowner's meeting, the speaker of the group had issued a statement that Teddy found quite profound. Even if we do not reside in the security of a gated community, the speaker had said, we live in the next best thing: a neighborhood of armed citizens.

         The Crown Vic drove down the street and stopped in about the same spot as before. Teddy couldn't place the men sitting in the front. He walked down the steps over to his car and moved around to the driver's side, fiddling with his keys in his pocket with his gun-free hand. The man behind the wheel finally killed the engine and the two men stepped out.

        "You two looking for anything in particular?" Teddy yelled over to them. The men started toward him. "You looking to talk to me about something?" he asked the two men. He could only guess that one of them noticed the gun hanging at his side after one of the two men pulled out their own. He heard the woman from across the street before he heard the bullet leave the gun. It hit somewhere on the hood of his car. Teddy returned his own shots back, a quick two-pulls, and nicked the side mirror on the Crown Vic. Teddy backed up from the car and started racing across his neighbor's slick lawn. He made it only a few inches before his legs slipped out from under him. The gun flew from his hand and he fell flat onto his back. He heard the woman scream for a second time and then a bullet went right through his left leg. With only a sliver of consciousness left he heard the woman scream for a third time before one of the two men was standing over him and the next bullet went through Teddy's right eye.

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Ryan Hight is a writer living in North Georgia, USA 

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     Darren Blanch is an Australian digital illustrator who constructs immersive visual illusions designed to linger long after first glances. Driven by a classic Norman Rockwell appreciation for raw human emotion and showing "life as life," Blanch infuses deep character depth into a portfolio that refuses to be boxed into a single genre. His work effortlessly bridges the gap between gritty pulp-noir, playful conceptual surrealism, and cinematic character studies. Navigating a progressive visual disability, he treats digital tools as a vital creative bridge - pushing the limits of contrast, color, and texture to craft complex visual narratives that move the mind and perfectly capture the spirit of a story. Portfolio: www.ivsma.art | FB: @IVSMAart | Insta: @IVSMAart