Big Ned's Guest

By Jake Wilhelm

Big Ned died the way everyone assumed he would. Being a jerk. But no one ever guessed what sort of problem he would leave behind, that problem being...

Big Ned’s Guest, a novella by Jake Wilhelm

Left to handle Big Ned’s sins is his son. Little Ned is about to confront his father’s evils – the ones he knew about, and the horrors he didn’t know about. When he comes out of this, can he be a better man than Big Ned?

Or does the apple simply not fall far from the tree?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: May 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9783748705611

Book preview

TITLE

...the late, barely lamented Big Ned left behind a big secret....

Big Ned’s Guest

by

Jake Wilhelm

Front Matter

COPYRIGHT

Title: Big Ned’s Guest

Author: Jake Wilhelm

Cover design: Jake Wilhelm

ALL ITEMS (c) Jake Wilhelm 2019/EP Dowd Enterprises. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in shape or form by any means, including but not inclusive to electronic, mechanical, copying, recording, audio methods or otherwise without prior written permission.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book is dedicated to my father, for his inspiration and support...and for not being like Big Ned Atcheley...

Prologue

Big Ned Atchley died the way everyone assumed he would.

Being an asshole.

Big Ned Atchley spent the final hours of his life down at the local bar with some of his car club buddies. This little get together was, naturally, immediately after a meeting of the same car club. Big Ned was on a roll. At the meeting - oh boy did he ever have fun – he made Marge Hettinger burst into tears as he assured everyone the new upholstery job on her ’65 GTO was pure garbage; she had been taken by Ultra Auto. How bad was her car’s new interior – at least according to Big Ned? Well, Big Ned explained his opinion until, as noted before, Marge Hettinger burst into tears, so he must have been quite abrasive.

So. As has already been noted, Big Ned was on a roll, and such were the things that made Big Ned Atchley happy.

The old man was drinking beer, and he had been drinking lots of beer (and even more than that) when he took issue with Norm Emery’s stance on intake manifolds. Norm wanted to install an aluminum three-carburetor manifold in his hopped up ’52 Chevy and Big Ned said he should go with fuel injection instead.

Actually, Big Ned insisted Norm do so.

What are you, some kind of asshole idiot? roared Big Ned, hopping to his feet without managing to spill his beer mug (primarily because said mug was nearly drained of life). Using the mug for emphasis, he saluted God on High, or maybe he was just trying to hit the rafters overhead, and as he did this, he screamed Everyone knows that carbs are a thing of the past and-

Although this discussion had been going hot and steady for quite some time, folks finally got nervous when Big Ned made that first big step to get to his feet and most people scattered into their roles as helpless onlookers. They had already accepted their roles (each silently glad they weren’t tonight’s target) when Big Ned, his lips curled back over his teeth, screamed, I give up! Norm, you are the stupidest motherfu-

And that’s when Big Ned’s own carburetor, namely his heart, decided all this taking in blood from its upper ventricles was too much hassle and quit on Big Ned. Death claimed Big Ned Atchley in a split second. He fell face down, slicing his head open on the bar. There was so much blood that the first responding officers assumed someone finally beat Big Ned to death.

Amongst protests from the patient’s friends, the paramedics insisted on bringing Big Ned back to life. Those gathered in the immediate proximity of Big Ned’s second chance at life later remarked that all in all, it was a good lesson in how that CPR stuff worked and it showed folks that even you – yes, even you – could give some cranky old bastard the gift of life. Big Ned was breathing (but not yelling, praise the Lord) when he was placed in the back of the ambulance, but was dead for real by the time he got to the hospital.

No one was surprised. Dude was in pretty rough shape when they carted him off – he struggled to get the last word in the rudely interrupted fuel injection versus carb debate, telling Norm, you come by my place and I’ll give you all the fuel injection you need, dummy but these words were croaked so weakly that they were almost kind and that’s when, well, the guys pretty much knew they’d would soon be trying to Paper, Rock, Scissors their way out of being his pallbearers.

***

His widow Candace, however, was very surprised, perhaps even astonished, upon reading the letter Big Ned had left her. The folded sheet of paper had hovered in plain view for about a week now on the fridge, held down by a magnet advertising the local Cadillac dealer. Every day of his final week, Big Ned had been good about pointing to the note under the Cadillac magnet and telling her, If I die, you read that. Being well acquainted with the various positive benefits of following Big Ned’s orders to the letter, Candace didn’t read the letter until her son, Little Ned, called up and said Big Ned was no longer among the living.

***

Norm went with the triple-carb manifold. As Big Ned lay dead the first time, Barking Bob suggested he go with a triple-deuce Carter set up and Norm said he’d look into that and Barking Bob said he’d help him. Barking Bob was a pretty good guy even if he was into Mopars, AMCs and Japanese motorcycles.

Chapter 1

When Candace first read the letter, she was in shock. This shock lasted two days.

Then she recovered. Because, well, two days had passed and this sounded like a life or death situation.

She called Little Ned. Her son listened for quite some time before he finally understood what Candace was going on about. Let’s face it, ever since Big Ned threw her down the stairs that time, banging up her brain in the process, Candace’s various