• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Richard Prosch

Award-winning Writer

  • Western Fiction
  • Crime Fiction
  • About Richard
    • Bio
    • Blog
    • Contact

Uncategorized

Free Crime Story: Jolly’s Boy

July 7, 2019 By Richard Prosch

The Model T truck turned down a dirt lane leading to the Gus Hanson acreage, and Tom Olsen could see Jolly’s boy in his mind, could make out the gleaming puffy face in a trick of sunlight on the windshield. Tom had been allowed to join the threshing crew only once before, and he’d felt awkward and inefficient. Like a tagalong kid.

Tom was barely aware of the cold and the deafening rattle of the engine as his father shifted down into first and they climbed over the last water break, the frosty tops of the barn and corn crib appearing through the sunlit fog.

He glanced over his shoulder at the Marlin .22 hanging in the truck’s rear window. Tom had saved all his money for a year, and after he bought the little rifle, he was allowed to keep it under Dad’s big cowboy gun.

Wouldn’t Jolly’s boy, with his scuffed denim jeans and fresh scraped face, be impressed. He would be impressed by Tom, too. The last time, Tom had been a baby. He’d grown at least two inches since then and now weighed a great deal more. He would really measure up, show that he could be trusted, even counted on in their farming community. They pulled in beside Walt Schultz, and his black gelding stepped quickly back, though Walt held the reins tight.

“Heya, Walt,” said Matt Olsen as the motor sputtered to a stop.

Tom ratcheted back the hand brake for his dad, then stepped out into the cold gray dust of the farmyard.

“Anybody else here?”

Schultz shook his head, and they watched the sun climb from behind the trees and shine across the surface of Jolly’s gray threshing machine, crouched on wood spoke wheels, a wonder of technology covered in sprockets and iron aprons. Tom couldn’t help but think of the War and the swift and invincible tanks he’d read and marveled about. Tanks, of course, moved by themselves, but Tom knew the threshing machine was powered by Jolly’s gas and oil tractor and a heavy rolling belt.

He drew circles in the dust with his foot, and his dad finally said, “Jolly ain’t been along yet?”

Shultz cocked his head. “He pulled the machine over here day before yesterday. Told Gus he’d be here this morning.” Everyone disliked Jolly, knew that he drank too much, but he owned the only tractor and threshing rig in the county.

“You ready to work today, Tom?” said Schultz.

The boy nodded.

“Big job.” Schultz wasn’t looking at Tom or his dad when he said it, but was staring out across the tree-rimmed valley into the last remnants of mist. “Yes sir, a big job,” he said again, and Matt Olsen nodded.

Nobody spoke for a while.

Tom stepped toward the black horse and placed a gentle hand on its muzzle. “You give Fritter any apples this morning?” he asked. The horse circled its long head down and around Tom’s touch.

“Ain’t he always the spoiled one?” Walt reached into his thin coat and passed a white apple slice to Tom, who put it within the horse’s greedy reach. While they watched the sliver go down, Gus Hanson stomped over from the house.

“The sonna bitch is still half asleep,” he spat, then tipping back his hat, he apologized. “Sorry, Tom. Didn’t see you there.”

“It’s okay,” said Tom, his eyes flicking up to meet the old man’s gaze.

“Evelyn finally got him on the phone about five minutes ago. Says he’ll be here when he’s damn good and ready. That’s a quote.”

Shultz and Olsen stood with their hands in their pockets and stared at the threshing machine. “What’s he think we’re gonna do ‘til then?” said Schultz. “I didn’t bring a deck of cards. Did you, Tom?”

Tom glanced at his dad, and Matt Olsen smiled back. For just a minute it was like he was grown up and one of them, jawboning over the price of cattle or the latest news from the local Exchange. “I didn’t bring a deck of cards,” he said.

“Jolly told Evelyn he’d send his boy,” said Hanson. “I was hoping this morning he wouldn’t.”

“It’ll be alright,” said Schultz. “We’re all here. Evelyn can feed him some breakfast.”

“I imagine so.”

While they stood waiting, Hanson took a dry twist of tobacco from his pocket. When the old man offered Tom some, his dad nodded and he took a small bite. The juice was heavy and bitter and his eyes watered, but he didn’t immediately spit, didn’t want to show his inexperience. Schultz laughed at him anyway, but it was a good-natured laugh, and his dad clapped him on the shoulder. The tobacco made his head spin, but it was good to be among the men, visiting and chewing and laughing.

He would be right here when Jolly’s boy drove up. In the cedar grove to his right, Tom again imagined the face. The wood showed each scar and every badly healed bone. Tom imagined he could see the black eye from earlier in the spring, and the red cheek inflated to twice its normal size. The boy seemed to be accident prone.

Tom knew there was more to it than that.

They all did.

Finally, the sound of a motor: Jolly’s Avery tractor turning onto the lane.

“Bastard expects too much outta that boy,” said Schultz, and the men nodded. “How old is he, anyway? Tom? You know?”

“I think he’s thirteen,” said Tom, firing a stream of tobacco juice into the dirt. “He’s thirteen.” Older than Tom.

“Evelyn found him down at the branch last time we thrashed,” said Hanson. “Jolly busted him up pretty good.”

“As I recall, the kid was lolly-gaggin’ around,” said Tom’s dad.

“Ain’t no reason to beat hell outta him.”

“You’re right, Gus. We all know it.”

“I saw Jolly hit the boy with a wrench once, right across the chest.”

“We all seen it.”

Tom leaned into the horse and let more chew spill from his mouth. He didn’t like to think about his friend getting hit or kicked. That’s how he thought about Jolly’s boy, as his friend, though they’d never traded more than a handful of words over the water bucket. But weren’t they all friends? Weren’t they all gathered this morning to do a job? He stood straight as the belching tractor came down the water break.

Jolly had come after all, mounted on the iron behemoth like a greasy, fat possum, ten times larger than life, a sputtering cheroot bobbing around his unshaven face. His son, smaller than Tom recalled and frail looking, clung with both hands to the rear of the bouncing bucket seat, one foot on the tractor’s lolling hitch, one foot dangling free. Jolly didn’t turn, didn’t even glance at them as he clamored past. The boy dropped off into the dust and quietly limped toward them.

“How are you, Adam Wayne?” asked Walt, using the boy’s full name, but it wasn’t hard to see how the boy was. The black eye was back, but it was on the other side of his face and only a few days old, purple and yellow and green. The side of his neck had several round burns, the size of a nail head. Or a cheroot. Neither did his jaw seem to sit right. Like it had been broken. Then Adam spoke. “Ah’m fine,” he said, the sound almost lost in the roar of the tractor.

The men watched as Jolly drove around the thrasher in circles, like he’d never seen it before and wasn’t sure where to park or how to lace up the belts. Tom couldn’t stop looking at Adam’s face.

When Jolly finally found his position and set the tractor’s brakes, Gus Hanson reached out a hand. Adam winced slightly, not turning toward the touch on his shoulder.

“You should go in now, son. Mrs. Hanson has a bite of breakfast for you.”

For a long time the boy didn’t move, just stood beside Tom in the circle of men, staring at his clumsy, blustering drunk father who heaved and swore at the massive canvas belts he pulled from under the threshing machine.

At last, Adam turned and looked straight at Tom.

Tom smiled.

Adam smiled back, and Tom felt such a wash of gratitude and respect, it would take him days to describe it, even to himself.

Adam walked to the house.

Once the other boy was inside, Tom didn’t need to look at the three men to know it was time to go to work. He felt it through the cold.

Jolly had stopped worrying the belts and stood watching as Walt Schultz pulled his gun from the black gelding’s saddle boot. Gus Hanson drew a Colt revolver from his coat pocket. Tom’s dad opened the truck, got his cowboy gun, and Tom carefully took down the Marlin.

Was Adam watching from inside the house? Tom knew he was.

He worked the bolt action and, as they advanced, hoped Jolly’s boy would be impressed with his aim.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

On Highway 20

February 18, 2019 By Richard Prosch

My grandpa liked to tell stories about his life, and I’ve often cited him as a direct inspiration. And to say he exaggerated sometimes is an understatement. But once in a while, especially when trying to convey a message he thought was important, his voice would take a certain tone, and you knew the understated tale was as true as the rising sun.

The story that ends up in Stage Fright began when Grandpa and his brother-in-law, Herman, were driving back home after delivering a load of cattle to the Iowa stockyards. It was early evening, and with a few hours of two-lane blacktop ahead of them, they stopped at the truck stop for supper.

After splitting a piece of pie with Herman and getting his coffee jug filled for the road, Grandpa told me how he walked out to the parking lot. Near his truck he saw a young girl in the front seat of a luxury car with an older man. And something nagged at him.

I have a friend in law-enforcement who talks about those JDLRs. Situations when things “Just Don’t Look Right.”

Keeping his eye on the old guy and the girl, Grandpa told Herman to go to the truck and bring back something from behind the seat. Not exactly a gung-ho trooper, Herman was reluctant, but,”said Grandpa, “when I nodded at the couple, he got the picture.

But Grandpa couldn’t wait.

Before Herman could return, the guy behind the wheel of the car forced himself on the girl who desperately flailed and screamed.

Grandpa walked over and kicked the driver’s door, which got the man’s attention.

“What’dya want?” the guy said, rolling the window down part way.

“I looked right past him and addressed the young lady,” Grandpa told me. “I asked her one question.”

Do you want to be with him?

The girl shook her head. “Help me?” she said.

By this time, Herman was standing beside the passenger door with a tire iron. Grandpa nodded at him. Herman opened the door, the girl climbed out with what Grandpa called ”the biggest smile Herman ever got from a gal.”

“Made the poor fella blush,” he added.

“She’s bought and paid for,” the man said. “You can’t get away with this.”

Grandpa just grinned as they watched the girl collect herself and run back into the truck stop. “We already did,” he said. “Now you need to get the hell out of here.”

The man gave Herman and the tire iron one quick glance, then squealed out of the place.

Bought and paid for.

Gut-wrenching words.

The two farmers hung around another twenty minutes or so, drinking more coffee, sharing another piece of pie, and making sure the girl was safe with friends inside the building.

If in fact they saved her from a fate worse than death, as Grandpa often suggested, then you’ll see one more reason he was an inspiration to me.

Unfortunately, road crimes and human trafficking at truck stops hasn’t gone away in the passing decades.

If anything, such incidents are more common than ever.

The good news is that you don’t need a tire iron to help.

According to the FBI.gov web site, human trafficking is believed to be the third-largest criminal activity in the world. It includes forced labor, domestic servitude, forced marriages, and commercial sex trafficking and affects people of both genders, all ages, and every socio-economic status.

If you believe you know someone who is a victim of human trafficking or have information to share, please call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or visit www.humantraffickinghotline.org.


Filed Under: Uncategorized

Six Books That Set My Course

February 16, 2019 By Richard Prosch

Above all others, and there were plenty of others, these are the books that put me firmly on a course of lifetime reading.

Kon-Tiki for Young People – Heyerdahl and William Neebe (1964) In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl rode across the Pacific Ocean on a raft named Kon-Tiki, made a bang-up film out of the deal, and showed me for the first time that not all adults were the level-headed midwest stay-at-home types (read: squares) that I thought they were.

 

The Giant Golden Book of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Reptiles (1966) A handful of us passed this one around for an entire year during second and third grade. It gave me my first real concept of history, pre-history, and geological time.

 
The Boys’ Life Book of Outer Space Stories (1964) A really odd collection of not-necessarily classics. For example, “Load of Trouble” by Edward Wood (not that Ed Wood) seems to be the only thing the guy ever wrote. But it was my first Bradbury (“The Man”) so, nuff said.

 
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (1964) Along with Abrashkin’s Danny Dunn books, Eleanor Cameron introduced me to the concept of series SF. After I read it, I built my own rocket from a steel drain pipe and an old pickup dashboard.

 

Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbinders in Suspense (1967) That Alfred Hitchcock was some sly operator, packaging grown up suspense stories in big, hardback books aimed at kids. Genius! This one introduced me to Robert Bloch with “Yours Truly Jack the Ripper.”

 

Alfred Hitchcock’s Haunted Houseful (1961) Of the big Random House books, this one was my favorite. Not only did it have stories about real ghosts, but also, a curious story with an interesting main character: “The Red-Headed League” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Yep: first Sherlock Holmes.

 

By the time I was ten, I had checked out each of these books from the grade school library a half-dozen times or more. I remember reading Cameron’s book straight through in three or four nights. The anthologies I read over time.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Missouri Pickers

February 5, 2019 By Richard Prosch

Sometime around the age of 10, my son, Wyatt, became a serious collector.  

It started with toy trains, mostly Lionel and Marx O-Gauge, but soon grew to include other vintage curios. Like railroad keys. And cardboard dexterity skill games from the 1920s and ‘30s.

The more antique items he picked up, the more history we all learned, and the deeper we went—back in time.

The trains Wyatt searches for now are Ives windups from the early 1900s, and the blob bottles, coffee cans, and petroliana he collects always date back more than 100 years.

He’s become quite specialized in his interests, and along the way it’s rubbed off on me. Bitten by the bug, I spend our frequent weekend picking runs looking for men’s adventure paperbacks from the ‘60s and ‘70s and jazz records.

The first weekend in February found us knocking on a couple farm doors, though not wholly unexpected. Not having the same kind of production staff (or budget) as the History Channel’s American Pickers, we tend to avoid pulling in “unannounced” and schedule our trips around pretty sure things.  

This time we walked away with some vintage photos, a milk jar, and a Delft flower pot. Nothing that really fit our prize collections, but things we decided would enrich our lives anyway.  

The find we’re most excited about is a set of old metal porch chairs and glider. We refurbish much of what we bring home (which I think is one secret of the successful collector) and these’ll need  a lot of work. First we’ll have to take them apart, strip off the paint, and fix the rust holes. But reassembled, with fresh paint, they’ll be just the ticket for summer.

In my Dan Spalding series of mystery/thrillers, Dan owns a record store in the fictional Ozark City. 

When I first imagined the character, he ran an antique mall and was more of a general picker. The original idea had Dan getting into trouble as, with each book, a different dealer or collector brought his problems into the store.

I’m glad I went with the record shop. Vintage vinyl works well because it’s something I enjoy collecting, too, plus it’s something I already know a lot about. As I indulge in new interests, I can slip in a record review or some emotional gushing therein (right now it’s Milt Jackson —as can be seen in Stage Fright). 

Wyatt’s moving into old telephones this winter, saving up for a pay phone or even an entire booth. Where he’ll put it, I don’t know. 

What I do know is that we’re continuing to explore culture and history in a literally hands-on way.

And best of all, we’re doing it together.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Footer

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Richard Prosch
PO Box 105552
Jefferson City, MO 65110
richard@richardprosch.com

LOVE AUDIO BOOKS? MY BOOKS ARE ON AUDIBLE HERE!

Audiobooks
Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2021 · Richard Prosch