LAST BUTTON ON GABE’S COAT
Gabe must’ve thought I was a chump, how he’d breezed in again with his lame dad routine. Like usual, he’d shown at the apartment while Mom was off shacked up wherever. Probably he’d followed me home from my afternoon shift at the Dollar Post. He hadn’t knocked. He appeared below in the parking lot when I was filling the balcony bird feeder. Textbook Gabe, him and his gray hair tuft and his brags about seeing the world, or Georgia and Mississippi anyhow.
“My Jessup,” Gabe said. “Fruit of my loins. A man now, almost.”
Gabe sold the dad thing hardest when he was after a handout. Next would come a story about car repairs or owing a bank. Or he’d start with his bets, like ten dollars that he could skip a rock across the creek or get our neighbor Mrs. Douglas into a two-step, twenty if a tango. Sporting wagers, he called them. Gabe never paid when he lost, and Gabe never won.
Today, though, Gabe leaned against a new truck. He swore it wasn’t boosted. He had a new job, not as easy as long-haul driving or as fun as juggling matched bets online, but it paid great and let him experience God’s creation.
“This world,” Gabe said, “is grand and glorious. A father must impart that upon his child.”
Whatever. Mom said she’d shacked up with him around when she got pregnant with me. He’d been Gabriel to her. Gabriel, the no-account gambler. Believing I was his kid test or no test was his deal. I didn’t look much like him, and I hoped it stayed that way. Otherwise, I might end up a loser like him.
Gabe smiled with that weird spark of his. “This kind of distance is a two-man job, at my age. Still pays fine as a split.”
“With me,” I said.
“Who else can a man trust but his seed? We swap turns driving. Your momma taught you a gear stick, didn’t she?” Gabe reached into his jeans pocket and showed me a wad of cash. “This is for starting. You watch, we build us a king’s nut.”
“For how long?”
“How long you got? Son, I know you’re hearing it. A call. That’s the divine road of life beckoning.”
I don’t know why I said okay. It wasn’t the money, or I didn’t think so. Maybe something did call me. A summer road trip was better than sitting here and sneaking hot dogs from the Dollar Post. Mom wouldn’t complain about my being gone, either, if the food stamps kept coming. I left a note in case she dumped this month’s boyfriend and swung by the apartment. And no, Mom hadn’t taught me a stick shift. All she’d taught was that I needed to get out of here.
I packed clothes and snacks and grabbed my few dollars saved. I got more from trading in my phone, Gabe’s idea. He bought us prepaid flip models, and we were on Nolensville Road before I could change my mind.
“Let it be written,” Gabe said. “Man and his lucky button have answered the angelic horn.”
I turned down his country music. “That twang stuff is crap.”
“Sacrilege. One thing, Button. This job ain’t for talking about to nobody. These phones maintain earthly communications only between us contractors. You don’t speak with a soul, even if you see me conversing with them.”
“I have to be back for August.”
Gabe turned the station up a notch. “August. The dog days. Why, pray tell your old man?”
“High school. Senior year.”
“Christ. Sure. Schooling does feed the mind. Tell you what. Ten dollars, kin to kin, that I have us in Atlanta by dusk.”
“Deal.”
“Shoot, yeah. Easiest stack I rake this year.”
I laughed at that. Everyone knew about Atlanta traffic. And if I was good luck to anyone, I hadn’t ever been before.
#
We got to Marietta an hour after dark. Gabe didn’t pay my ten bucks. He talked instead. The whole ride. He claimed the only thing in life to fear was getting bottled up, whether behind a desk or at government camps and rigged trials thanks to R.F. eavesdroppers. Gabe said this trip wasn’t going to be the Ritz Carlton, not yet. We slept under a highway overpass and in the morning washed up at a rest stop. Before we got moving again, Gabe let me grind his transmission and pop his clutch learning a stick shift.
Later, Gabe drove us to this scrapyard place near Macon. “I have an important parley,” Gabe said. “A fellowship huddle. Keep possession of our necessaries.”
Gabe eased out what looked like an empty suitcase from the back. He wheeled it inside a tin garage and stayed there while I searched loops around the radio dial for anything other than cornbread stuff or talk show loudmouths. After Gabe’s thing ended, the case was so heavy-as-hell that he could barely stuff it under the bench. “Work supplies,” Gabe said. Next, he dropped me at some Batter Hut off a state road and handed me a twenty for meals. “I shall return,” he said, “once I make our drop. It might could be sundown.”
“How illegal is this, anyway?”
“Illegal? I told you, we’re duly employed. Ridge and Valley Processing, LLC. A genuine two-man job.”
“Seems fair you explain,” I said, but Gabe smiled and drove off.
For hours, I drank Cokes and picked at a cheese melt and let greasy air coat my skin. It was past dark when Gabe came back. He saw my texts with this girl from work and broke the flip phone in two. Chucked both halves out his window.
“Are you listening, boy?” Gabe said. “Our earthly communication remains solely between father and lucky button.”
So. Pretty illegal, then.
All June we moved through Georgia, the Tennessee mountains, South Carolina, swapping out burner phones and turns driving. Gabe didn’t have a route. He went random places and left with a full suitcase. I drove the morning legs, before dawn sometimes, on back roads to his parleys. He drove the afternoon legs without me, to Savannah from the receipts left on the truck floor. My afternoons were Batter Huts, with grease bomb meals and leftovers for him. To kill time, I counted and re-counted the loose change I was banking up. Each coin had a dead president with a crag face. I had Mom’s face, mostly. Someone else’s, too. It wasn’t from any president type.
Some days Gabe left the suitcase with me while he did a short recon drive. “Shepherd the flock,” as he termed it. “At all hazards physical and spiritual.”
If I was shepherding, I took a booth and rested one leg against the suitcase to keep it gauged. I worried about whether these other diner people noticed me, if they believed I was a dealer or hick bomber guy. I had to come off way shady, even with that huge suitcase tucked under the booth. Anyone here could’ve guessed I had something worth taking. That scared me some. And felt a little cool. No one had ever trusted me to do more than stock shelves.
One night outside Scottsboro, Gabe picked me up looking sweatier than normal, whiskey on his breath. He’d bought a twelve-pack of Millers and announced we were headed to Saltpeter, Alabama. “Beside a lake so gorgeous it ought to be deemed sacred,” Gabe said, but he’d said it funny, like he was stressing. He had the suitcase with him.
“Good. That’s good. Posthaste and as sworn, our evening accommodations shall improve.”
We took farm roads to Alabama and this lady Val’s place, a prefab double trailer where rich people lake houses became gravel and cow fields. Val was Gabe’s age, the best I could tell. She frowned at Gabe and hugged me and microwaved us chicken. Then, she and Gabe went into her bedroom, where a heated argument turned into getting-it-on grunts not muffled by thin walls. I found a blanket for the couch and stayed up drinking Millers and watching movies. Val’s wasn’t luxury, but it wasn’t a moldy apartment.
#
Val had a job morning shift at the State Park lodge. Before she left, she poked me awake and fixed us eggs and toast. She said, “What’d that fool promise you?”
“Nothing I believed.”
“Smart kid. What’d be smarter? You getting on home.”
Easy for her to say, like the half-bored stuff you hear from clueless guidance counselors. Val didn’t know me. She wasn’t my mom. And as for Mom, I hadn’t seen my picture on any missing kid poster or Amber Alert, so I guessed I had her answer about wanting me home.
Gabe slept in until after lunch. He fidgeted and checked the windows and kept asking if I’d heard something.
“Yeah,” I said. “You clomping around.”
“Outside, I mean.” Gabe opened a beer and swigged it hard. “Listen, Button. We’ve taken out what let’s dub a loan. I mean, we’ve taken the road less traveled. Devils will seek their due.”
“There’s nothing here except cow pies.”
“Devils,” Gabe said, but to himself. Poker came on the sports channel, and between his pacing, he snapped at what players had a tell or folded too quickly. I couldn’t get into B-grade dudes in sponsor get-ups and wraparound shades looking like rodeo extras.
Things went like that for a week. Eggs and toast with Val, Gabe’s slow roll off the couch, three p.m. storms. At dinner, Val tried showing me basic cooking stuff like slaw or beans. I told her I didn’t need to learn. She would kick us out soon, and I’d be back to Batter Huts or pocketing frozen sliders. I helped with meals anyway since I was there and Gabe wasn’t paying her for food.
The worst part was being stuck in the middle of nowhere. Gabe’s truck was under a tarp and off-limits other than for him and his runs to town. Solo runs, and he did more of them. I took walks along the lake and bird-watched egrets and gulls at the communal dock. Val said Washington dammed the river through here, but to me the water always seemed like it was rising, every day rising. The shoreline was all mud and fire ant hills, dumb ants waiting for a flood to drown them dead.
#
Val fixed hot chicken on July Fourth. After dinner, she wiped down the kitchen while Gabe started into his beers and channel surfed. He ended up on a poker tournament again.
“This junk sucks,” I said.
Gabe nudged my shoulder. “Look at you, in manful voice. Look at him, Saint Val. My own seed. Last button on Gabe’s coat.”
I sipped my beer. Val didn’t scold me for sneaking one unless I made a production of it. “What does that last button stuff even mean?”
“It means you’re his youngest,” Val said. “And leave Jessup be, fool.”
“Last button,” I said. “Like there’s only one? What good is a coat with one button?”
“What good is one button?” Gabe said. “What good? One strong button spares a man from pneumonia. And here I speak of an angel’s button. Why, I bet you twenty dollars each that I save your astray souls with this very lesson. That’s twenty each.”
Distant pops drifted in from over the lake. Fireworks, or rednecks night shooting. The pops sped up and started Gabe jittering, and he edged out onto the front deck. Night air rushed in, muggy from more rain. Val’s porch light got swallowed in dark pasture, that dark I hadn’t known existed before here.
Val said, “He’ll be moving along soon. He’s always chasing something bigger than life, too big ever for catching. You see that, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Stay here a while, till I get you home.”
“I should talk to Gabe,” I said.
“Fine. Stay or go where you will. You’re grown enough. But child, some places in this world aren’t for going. Not with him or any angel God made.”
Gabe slipped inside, a part-frown on him. He turned the deadbolt. “Where was I?”
“How we’d gone astray,” Val said.
“These hillbillies you got. Sneaking on your land, I think.” Gabe about paced straight into Val’s TV. Here he went, rubbing his chin, acting like he’d meant to stumble. “Sinners, permit me to set you right. In the beginning, there was only God, and that was almighty lonely. So, God made the angels for company. Gabriel was top angel. Got him a boss horn for blowing. But it was lonely still, so God goes about making you and me and this best of possible worlds.”
“Fool,” Val said.
“I heed that not. Us people, though, newly formed of clay, roam around baffled where we came from all of a sudden. God sees that and sends Gabriel down to spread the joyous news why we got made.” Gabe sat facing the door, gulped from his beer. “Now, Gabriel alights among us sinners. He blows that horn but doesn’t draw much crowd for it.”
“Why not?” I said.
“Why? Because, Doubting Jessup, everyone had gone astray like you. Lost and wayward among serpents. Finally, Gabriel gets an idea. To prove we’re God’s children, he plucks buttons off his heavenly coat, gives them around as reminders we’re saved.”
“No coat has that many buttons.”
“Boss angel coats do. Many buttons of many colors. If I may finish, Gabriel hands out his buttons until he gets to his last one. His very last and most special button, and he gives it to the youngest child on Earth. That’s a damn lucky button. And that’s you, the last and lucky button on my coat.”
#
The rich neighbors hated me hanging around the boat ramp, even though it was mid-July and I hadn’t seen anybody once fish or go swimming. Every walk I took, this fat Bermuda shorts neighbor guy cruised through in his golf cart and shot me looks.
Soon, Gabe disappeared every day after he straggled out of bed. I wondered where he went, besides a bar and losing money on lotto tickets. I’d seen the scratch cards on his truck floor. I wondered if his parleys involved fast talk or guts and if I’d be decent at it. I didn’t wonder what was in the suitcase. We were getting cash from somewhere.
One afternoon, I headed down to the boat ramp, and Bermuda Shorts was beside his tree line and talking with this woman in a business suit and wide-brimmed cowboy hat. Flat Brim waved at me and came across the pasture not even worrying about ant mounds.
“Howdy,” Flat Brim said. “Mind if I ask a question or two?”
“I might mind answering.”
“It’s about your pa.”
“My dad ran off before I was born. Wouldn’t know him if he bit me.”
“Fair enough. The gentleman with whom you’re traveling. Goes by Gabriel.”
I cupped my hand against the sun. “Him? He’s not around.”
“Yep. Well aware.”
“No clue when he’ll be back, either.”
“Up in Rogersville at the tonk, at last report. These questions, though. You could do me a total solid.”
Flat Brim was smiling, no spark to it. A cop smile, the kind they tried if they wanted you narcing. Do her a solid, like anybody said that. Bermuda Shorts zipped across the pasture in that golf cart and gave me this screw-you look. His dog trotted behind in a stupid gape.
“Only a quick minute,” Flat Brim said. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Who’s asking?”
She flashed me cop credentials in plastic. FBI.
“Nice,” I said. “Anybody can get a fake badge printed.”
“Truth,” Flat Brim said. “But I didn’t. Have you seen Gabriel with anything odd or new? Like valuable items, small, transportable. Or loads of cash.”
“Nope. He’s as poor as this dirt.”
“Has Gabriel introduced you to anybody? Or mentioned unfamiliar names?”
“No. Why would he?”
“But he’s shared what he’s into?”
“Has he told you?”
“I wish he would,” Flat Brim said. “We don’t want him, kid. Him or you. You both get out clean if you cooperate.”
“Not following you.”
“I give, bud. You win for now. Let’s stay in touch. Buzz me pronto if Gabriel gets the unwise notion to run.”
Flat Brim pressed her card into my palm and strolled off. I waited until Bermuda Shorts tooled by again so he could watch me tear up her card and toss it into the water.
#
Gabe didn’t come back for dinner. Val and I made burgers and greens, but she wouldn’t let us eat until I drank some pot liquor for vitamins. I slurped a spoonful because I was starving. It tasted okay, like pepper soup.
I didn’t tell Val about the cop. After dinner, I wiped down the kitchen while she put her feet up. I said, “So, Gabe has real kids of his own?”
“None that’ll abide him. That goat ain’t nothing to no one but trouble.”
“But you think I’m his? I don’t see it much.”
“No use what I think. What’s your heart say?”
“Like it matters to him. Like I matter to him.”
“Mattering,” Val said. “Mattering ain’t the same as doing right. Ain’t the same as belonging. My offer stands. Stay. He’s in chest-deep, and let’s keep you from how that ends.”
I thanked her and pretended to get absorbed in her drama shows. After dark, Val conked out reading, and rifle shots thumped across the lake. Couldn’t tell from which side. Either way, I held onto Val’s scaling knife.
Later, Val went to bed, and I drank a beer and checked on Gabe’s suitcase. Still there, still locked tight. Not as heavy now when I nudged it. More rifles popped. For a distraction, I settled on a Hold ’em tournament on re-run. Eight yokels, no bet limits. I was understanding more about hand rankings and bets and how who had the worst cards could still win.
Headlights swept over the window. Country music filtered in behind. Gabe.
“A cop was here today,” I whispered when he stumbled in and bolted the door. He smelled like pure booze. “FBI lady.”
Gabe froze. “This is a problem, Button. A development.”
“She didn’t know anything. Just that you were working with people. I didn’t tell her squat.”
“Of course, I work with people. That’s what jobs are. Working with people.”
Gabe peered back out over the fields. I told him everything about Flat Brim’s good cop act, though he squinted like I’d left parts out. He muttered about parabola microphones and aerial spy machines and paced off into the bedroom. I hadn’t ever noticed how much bald spot hid under his combover.
I flopped in front of the TV and thought about Flat Brim, how it was she’d found us. I thought about Gabe having someone else’s money and what kind of someone else moved cash in suitcases. I must’ve nodded off at some point because Gabe was rocking my shoulder. It wasn’t even dawn.
“New plan,” he said. “Up and at this fine day.”
I groaned ragged. “Because of Feds or because you pissed Val off?”
“We’re rolling stones. We’re like Gabriel himself tasked to wander. It’s what’s in Scripture.”
“No way that’s in the Bible.”
“Get moving,” Gabe said. “Too much moss grown on us as is.”
I packed what I had, and Gabe tossed me Val’s keys and slid in low on her back seat. “This is stealing,” I said.
“Borrowing, and we buy Saint Val a Cadillac next week latest. We got surveillance to beat.”
I fought her car into gear and down the gravel lane. It hurt to leave, despite Bermuda Shorts and fire ants and floods. It felt like we were ditching Val. And definitely felt like stealing.
“Sweet Moses,” Gabe said and thwacked me with his cap. “Mind your ever-loving speed. Head for Tuscaloosa on Thirty-Three until I vouch we ain’t been tailed. And keep out of town. I’m known in that vicinity.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’re loving this, son. We need to build our nut, right? A replenishment. Well, I have an itch and a plan for scratching.”
“Itch.”
“Lord, yes. Lord, Lord. An itch and a fine day and my own lucky Button.”
We drove way across Mississippi, Gabe cranking his music, to Vicksburg where the river flowed mud brown. I said, “I’ve never been this far west.”
Gabe play-punched my arm. “We’re officially outside the devil’s stomping grounds. Hot damn, Vicksburg won’t know what hit them until we’re in New Orleans having fat T-bones and high-dollar wine.”
Gabe bet twenty bucks he could wrangle a camper rental for less than a hundred a night. He got us a rat’s nest pull model at a bypass dealership for five hundred, no paperwork. “Fortress acquired,” Gabe said, and around when the heat broke, we rented a campground space across from a neon-blinged paddlewheel casino. The campground sat half-empty except for motor homes with sunburned families losing a fight against mosquitos.
“Double or nothing on that twenty I owe,” Gabe said. He’d changed into a wrinkled sport coat. “Tonight, we hit it and quit. Fast score and fare thee well.”
“We should buy a gun.”
“Gun? That’s a Commandment-type transgression, one of God’s children getting shot. That, and how we’d buy a piece gets us back on interested party radars.” Gabe tapped his sport coat button. “This world, our oyster. But first, son, it’s just I’m needing a moment with my case. Go partake of creation’s abundance. Thereafter, secure the holy fortress. My case accompanies you even to the facilities.”
“Gross,” I said, but I would do it. It was my job. I went to the clubhouse for chips. Gabe was gone by when I got back and sat under the camper awning. He would come loping up soon, cleaned out but smiling. I basked in the neon wash and listened to a billion crickets and imagined what went on across that river, if it was more than swamp and Batter Huts. If Val was doing okay. How mad she was at me.
Those bugs came in swarms, and I’d begun worrying about parabola microphones. If cops found us in Saltpeter, they could find us at an eyesore casino. I shut myself inside the camper and dropped the blinds. The built-in TV got terrible reception, and the satellite channels were all re-runs. My leg kept bumping against Gabe’s suitcase. It weighed half what it had.
Sure enough, Gabe was back already and muttering low outside. He was stalling, dreaming up a lie about beautiful lounge singers and his roller status. He would take more cash and probably lose that, too. But he would keep chasing that call he heard, crash and burn and on to Louisiana. He might even catch whatever it was he chased, someday. He wasn’t ever quitting. There were worse ways to live.
I opened a beer and flipped through satellite channels. Cars rumbled past on the highway. Muttering again outside, Gabe really stumped for an excuse about his losses being God’s plan. No, it wasn’t Gabe out there. Too deep a mutter, and from more than one somebody.
They came again, whispers and footsteps that failed to stay quiet. A slap at skin, a muffled cough. Whoever it was, they snuffled and brushed against the camper. I scrambled up into the sleeping compartment, for what that was worth. The TV was on. My beer was in plain sight. And cops would’ve announced themselves by now.
Someone tested the door latch. Then a whistle and a growl that barely carried above the television.
He’s at the tables.
The footsteps backtracked. A nasty taste rose up my throat. My heart felt like it wanted gone from my body. I stayed hunkered and dialed Gabe on his burner phone. He didn’t pick up.
Silence now but for crickets and the highway. Leaving could’ve been a trap, these devil people luring me out. The quiet scared me worse than waiting. I killed the lights and wriggled out the door with Gabe’s suitcase.
Nobody jumped me outside. Shoe prints ran all over the mud. Some bruiser guy was a hundred feet away smoking and engrossed in his phone. I hustled behind the lobby building, deep inside the pines and scrub bushes. Every broken twig must’ve sounded as loud as firecrackers, but nobody jumped me there, either. No campground worker asked why I was prowling around. I stashed the suitcase in overgrowth and ran for Gabe.
I spotted him before I reached the main road. Some guys had dragged him out onto the casino parking lot. Huge guys, pro wrestler huge, and they scruffed Gabe by his collar. Gabe was wheezing, “Watch my lucky coat. I done said I’d pay you back. Why else you think I’m beating this house?”
I couldn’t hear what the huge guys said, but they ended it with elbowing Gabe’s ribs. I’d only ever been in one fight and got my ass kicked, and these wrestler guys shook Gabe like he was a doormat.
“Hey,” I yelled. They didn’t hear me over the traffic whizzing past, so I yelled again, and their beady eyes turned my way. “Leave him alone!”
A wrestler guy hissed into Gabe’s ear, and too loud Gabe said, “That kid? He’s nobody. Some campground bird dog. Pain in the ass is what he is.”
I blinked a second. Cars streamed past, and a wrestler guy cracked Gabe another elbow. After a hard cough, Gabe said, “I’m telling you, I work alone. What sort of man brings minors to gaming halls?”
Gabe took a shot to the kidney. Doubled him right over. He maybe glanced in my direction. “Let’s move along, boys,” he said raspy loud. “No use any of God’s children getting made roadkill.”
A wrestler guy smacked Gabe so hard he crumpled to the asphalt. I stepped onto the road and sent a pick-up veering off and blaring its horn.
“Get along now,” Gabe moaned. He was sprawled out and smiling through bloody lips. He might’ve winked. “For us angels, this whole world awaits.”
#
They took Gabe off without casino security doing a thing. One wrestler guy came after me. I lost him in the campground, and he stole Val’s car and the camper. Just hopped in and drove away. My flip phone rang. I almost answered it. This wasn’t Gabe. I pitched the phone into the river and buried myself deep inside those pines. At dawn, I bought a Coke at a gas station and breathed to stay calm.
I had money. That car dealer would sell a cheap ride no questions asked, except the dealer would recognize me from with Gabe. Anyway, this wasn’t my money or his or anyone’s now. I headed west for the bridge.
Thunderclouds formed across the river. After a couple of miles, the heat wore me out, and I tried thumbing a ride before I got soaked. I should’ve looked harmless, me alone in dirt-stained clothes. That lousy suitcase, though. Nobody as much as slowed until Flat Brim the FBI lady pulled up in a black sedan and slid her window down.
She had on her cop grin. “You have people worried.”
“How’d you find me?”
“Tough customers from east were converging here. And a credible tip said Gabriel hit Vicksburg whenever he had cash to blow.”
“They grabbed him. Goliath dudes.”
Her cop face slipped off. “Get in. Jessup, no bull and not asking. Gabriel muled for a heavy-duty outfit. Get in this car.”
I could’ve run. Gabe would’ve. Except he hadn’t run far or fast enough. I couldn’t, either. Nowhere to go, and I was already worn to nothing. I tossed the suitcase in back and fell onto her passenger seat.
I said, “I was his kid. I was supposed to be lucky.”
“You are. Insanely lucky.”
“Am I getting arrested?”
“Depends. Am I getting that suitcase without a hassle?”
I nodded. Flat Brim turned us around from the river and drove off toward I-20. Between her check-ins with her cop bosses, she explained how the FBI would put out a press release about a recovered suitcase in Vicksburg. She said that would stop the hunt for a while. She said the FBI would turn over every stone looking for Gabe. They didn’t need to bother.
“Where are you dumping me?” I said.
“Placing, Jessup. Placing you temporarily, and in Saltpeter. Ms. Val drives a hard bargain. Gabe for you.”
“Val? She wants me after what we did?”
Flat Brim shot me a side-eye. “Like I said, insanely lucky. Don’t worry. We have high confidence Gabriel kept her a secret. Kid, there’s a lot to go over. Testimony, social services, identity. You’re getting a new life, Jessup.”
I wiped sweat or something off my cheek. “Gabriel wasn’t his real name, was it?”
“We’ll talk when you’re settled.”
Vicksburg faded behind us. Birds circled away from the weather. I asked Flat Brim to put on country music. Gabe said we would see creation, and we’d gone right to the horizon. He’d gone over it. Maybe that made Gabe like his roaming angels, Gabe as free as spirits got. I hoped so. I’d mattered to someone for once, and what was more, he’d shown me a muddy lakeside where I might actually belong.
END
Robert Mangeot is the author of more than forty published short stories. His work has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, The Forge Literary Magazine, the MWA anthology Ice Cold, Lowestoft Chronicle, the Anthony-winning Murder Under the Oaks, Mystery Magazine, and most recently in the Sleuthsayers anthology Murder Neat. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and cat. He has been nominated three times for a Derringer Award. In 2023, his short fiction received the Claymore Award, and he was given SEMWA's Magnolia Award for service to the writing community.
