My tires crunched onto the gravel driveway just as the late summer sun was starting to set behind the Appalachian Mountains. I opened the trunk and pulled out the shit-green duffel bag, pissed off about the fact that carrying it up to the house was only going to make me sweat more.
Burke was sitting on the porch, drinking beer. He reached into a tattered cooler and threw me one. I greedily drank it and collapsed onto an old hanging rocker. My clothes started to cling to me like an unwanted second skin.
“You’re late. Any trouble finding the place?” Burke asked with a whisper of a grin. Small drops of beer fell from his mustache darkening his shirt.
“Some better directions would have helped, considering it took me two god damn hours to get here. Half of these roads weren’t even marked,” I said, wiping sweat off my face.
“Well, I’ll keep that in mind for the future. Let’s say we get on with business.” Burke handed me a banded stack of twenty-dollar bills from next to the cooler. “What do you think?”
I took one of the bills out of the stack and held it up to the porch light. Andrew Jackson stared back at me. The dead president was calm, confident and slightly off- centered. Tiny blue and red strands were peppered throughout the currency. The Federal Reserve seals were sharp and the serial numbers were crisp.
“You weren’t kidding about the quality. This is some of the best queer I’ve ever seen.”
Burke harrumphed proudly and took a swig of beer.
“I assume you have more?” I asked.
Burke quietly pulled himself off the porch chair and ambled his lanky frame into the dark front doorway. I followed with the duffel. The inside of the farmhouse was dimly lit by an old oil lamp, its shadows distorting the room. Burke led me further into the house and down a flight of stairs into the basement. He pulled the cord on a single light bulb. The light illuminated several tall stacks of banded fake twenty-dollar bills.
“Here it is,” he said.
I let out a low whistle and set the duffel down with a thud.
“How’s thirty cents on the dollar sound to you?” Burke asked, finishing off his beer and throwing the can in the corner.
“I think I have a better offer.” I reached into the duffel bag and retrieved a sawed- off shotgun. “Tell me where the printing plate is and I won’t paint this shit farmhouse with your brains.”
Quick as a rattlesnake, Burke reached under the table and pulled out a nine-millimeter. He got two shots off before I realized what happened. The first shot hit the wall behind my head. The second got me in the right shoulder, knocking me back. I hip-fired the shotgun and destroyed his left leg below the knee. He went down and his gun fell out of his hand. It bounced over next to his beer can. I bent down and started packing the stacks of bogus cash in the duffel. Once the bag was mostly full I went over and asked Burke where he was hiding the plate, getting close to his ear so he could hear me over his own screaming.
With a bloody hand, Burke gestured over to a cabinet on the other side of the basement. I walked over and opened the cabinet door. The printing plate was inside.
“Thanks.”
“I’m going to fucking kill you for this,” he whimpered.
“No… you’re not,” I said. I blew his head off with the shotgun, dousing a few remaining twenty-stacks with his blood.
I slid the shotgun in between the money bundles in the duffel and winced as I threw it over my wounded shoulder. I grabbed the oil lamp as I passed through the living room. Outside, I dropped the duffel in the trunk and pulled out a can of gasoline. I doused the house, pulled a beer from the cooler on the porch and threw the oil lamp into the dark living room. Wiping off my forehead with a dirty forearm, I watched the farmhouse burn and opened the beer. The beer tasted good; earthy with a rich flavor.
by 
Zachary Wilhide
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