We Were Artists by Timothy Tarkelly

We weren’t junkies; we were artists. While the quiet homes in Buffalo Grove silently snoozed through the exciting dark, we rode the night, lived each possible moment. We’d wring the world dry of all its beauty, write love songs to the streetlamps and sing to the sewers, our heads buzzing on benzedrine, tea, or alcohol. We slept through the day and its meaningless labors. Sure, call us lazy, but we were too busy living to hold a job. And we worked. Typed until our knuckles were stiff, pushed our typewriters to their mechanical limits, scrawled prophecy on every scrap of paper we could find, painted city sidewalks like chapel ceilings. 

    But yes, every lifestyle, even this lifestyle, costs money. Ernie was the one who came up with the idea, and I think he had this guilt about him because he’d been funding us for so long. He had this check coming in every month from his publisher, but they folded, and the money stopped coming. It’s like he thought it was his job to provide for us. 

    It was his idea to rob the soda fountain. He said it’d be their fault because they were kids and they shouldn’t have been spending their parents’ money like that. He said it was a temple to fallen gods, the hollowed ruins of American idealism, this pitiful, chromium place where our next generation comes to blow the spoils of the consumer class. 

    The guns were easy enough to find, and the plan was simple: drive to the suburbs, go inside the place, demand the till, have everyone empty their pockets into a sack, and run like hell to the car. We’d be back in the city before their pathetic cops would have any idea what was going on. 

    What we didn’t consider was juvenile strength and the intensity of young love. The place was packed with kids. It was some kind of surreal, sock hop nightmare. All these Mirandas and their Bradleys sipping malteds out of tall glasses with two straws. There were lots of letter jackets draped over shoulders, smooth words, and puppy-eyed wonder. Then, in walked this band of sleepless speed-fiends in our ragged white t-shirts. I hadn’t eaten a real meal in two days. I was tired, spacy, and very much in the wrong state of mind. As soon as the boys saw the guns, they crowded us, hoping to save their Miranda’s life, be a hero, take out their pubescent frustrations on Ernie, me, and the whole crew. I got out of there. Bolted through the door and took off down some alley, but I could hear the gunshots. I could hear the screams and the sirens as I hid between a couple trash cans. 

    Ernie and some poor girl were dead before the cops came, but we were the only ones who got arrested. I got picked up almost immediately. Whoever owned the house, owned those trash cans, came running out their back door with a bat and a loud whoop for violence. I went to the ground and waited for bruises and handcuffs. Those boys killed Ernie, but they’re heroes for it, big shiny jocks, wardens of America’s peace. Ernie was a junkie. That’s what the papers said. Ernie and his friends were just a pack of dirty junkies hoping to score their next fix. Bastards. He was an artist. We were artists.

​© 2025 Timothy Tarkelly

​About the author:
Timothy Tarkelly is a poet and author from Southeast Kansas. When he's not writing, he teaches High School English and Speech to students with much more potential than he will ever have.