Burn Scars, Eddie Generous [read full novel txt] 📗

said again. “How about you watch your mouths before your mommies have to yell at you about getting bloodstains out of your good school clothes.”

The skinny boy turned red. Rusty huffed, humorlessly. There was a good chance these boys had sets referred to as good school clothes, stuff that didn’t come near their barn clothes.

The big one said, “Yeah, your blood.”

“Good one.” Rusty turned back to his frog and lab partner.

“This isn’t very much fun for you, eh?” Alley whispered to him, pushing in very tight to his side. “Me either.”

She smelled like girly perfume, something sweet as bubble gum and future diabetes. Something that perfectly scented her age and maturity. This happened every time he returned to school. Some girls dug an older guy, even if he wasn’t cool, sometimes because he wasn’t cool. The older, wrong side of the tracks boy to take home and shock mommy and daddy. Like rescuing a pit bull from a dog-fighting ring.

“It’s okay. My girlfriend helps me with anything I suck at.” Which was a lie, though she would if he ever asked for help. He was not the asking for help type.

Alley said nothing else for the final forty minutes of the period, but didn’t make space, kept tight against him—even when he moved—as if it might cast a lasting spell or he’d get stuck to her and have no choice but to follow her home.

—

“Sonofabitch!” Rusty said, face in a grimace, hand yanked out of his bag like it was on fire, frog guts clinging to his fingers, dripping gooey tendrils. In the hallway by his locker, a few students stood around, looking disgusted for him. More were simply shocked. The two country boys from his science class laughed with six others in matching purple windbreaker jackets—they hadn’t won any championships, so the team never sprang for celebratory leather jackets. Rusty set his jaw then and reached back into the bag, grabbed onto the brunt of the dead thing and charged at the fat one from his class. The boy remained planted in place, surprised expression budding over his ugly mug, as if nobody had ever charged him without his pads on for protection. Rusty slapped his face, smearing the nastiness on kid’s chins before he stepped back and said, “Eat it, fatty.”

The shock wore off quickly and the kid took a step, fists clenched while the other footballers grinned. Rusty squared up, hadn’t been in a fight in years, but he’d won that one, so what the hell.

Before a fist flew or the crew in their cheap team jackets rushed Rusty, Mr. Beaman appeared and ordered their dispersal and separation. He then grabbed the fat one’s shoulder and spun him. “Let’s go.”

“He put frog on me!” the boy shouted.

“Where’d the frog come from?” Mr. Beaman said.

“He had it in his backpack!”

Mr. Beaman yanked the kid hard enough to make him stumble. “And you put it there. I have zero doubt.”

Rusty didn’t watch them go and stopped listening before they stopped arguing the origin of the carcass. Over the trash can, he took out his binder, bundle of pens and pencils held together with an elastic band, and travel mug, and then dumped the remainder—arrant guts, a leg, a head, two pens, and a couple loose handouts—into the black garbage bag. A girl with braces and thick glasses handed him a wad of tissues from a pocket pack she must’ve had in her purse. He nodded to her, trying not to look at Mr. Beaman who’d come back and continued to buzz around the periphery, attempting to clear away looky-loos. The teens continued watching him despite the effort, whispering to one another. One voice rose above the hum: “Get a job, scar face.”

“Got a job,” Rusty whispered and started off in the opposite direction from where Mr. Beaman sent the footballers. He went to the can at the end of the hall and was surprised as he backed through the door that the teacher hadn’t followed him in.

As he washed out his bag, he laughed humorlessly, quietly. He was a grown ass man and this was real life. Somehow.

 4

“Box up those units.” Dwayne pointed a handful of drooping McDonald’s fries at the three boxy 32-inch televisions with sales receipts taped to their rear casings. He had two empty wrappers from Filet-O-Fish sandwiches on the desk in front of him, a third still had its grease-sweaty goods wrapped and waiting. “Make sure you get the right boxes this time. Think you can handle that?”

Rusty took a breath. What Dwayne alluded to was a time when Dwayne brought the boxes down himself and gave Rusty two minutes to pack the TVs while the other delivery truck idled out the back door.

“Well?” Dwayne said, mushed fries in clumps on his tongue.

“Yeah. Got it.”

“After, I want you to take a van and grab the electronics delivery.”

The warehouse was large and had wall-to-wall appliances and electronics—aside from the spaces to roll dolly carts. Some of the appliances were used, but for the most part, the stuff was brand new and boxed up.

“Will it fit in one trip?” Rusty asked of the electronics.

Dwayne pouted his lower lip, cheeks bulging like the world’s ugliest chipmunk as he nodded.

“Any big TVs that I gotta grab? Do I need Craig to help?”

Dwayne swallowed, but only enough to speak around a chewed mouthful. A real classy dude to work for, to be around in general. He tipped the scale at 350, was about 6’2”, wore untucked button-up shirts, most threadbare and translucent, revealing his thick black hair, and sometimes the massive brown rings of his nipples. “He’s doing a dryer. No stairs.”

No stairs. Stairs or no stairs, delivering a dryer wasn’t a job for one man. The worker’s compensation people would eat Dwayne alive if they knew half the stuff