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

smoke, sit his ass down to appreciate the chill of a breeze. He leaned on the lip of the loading dock from where it butted to the rear of the van. KFC wasn’t visible, but was close enough that his mouth began watering.

In the opposite direction, next to the buffer hill, was an apartment building and a ball diamond. Beyond, and through three backyards of grass that, if he cut, would take him to his street and the boarding house. The warehouse really seemed as if on an island.

“To hell with it,” he said and aborted the cigarette consideration.

Rusty had thirty minutes until close when he got back to Logic Appliance with the first load. Dwayne watched him by the back door and said, “Where’s my Sony?” Meaning his Sony home theater stereo system. The one that, when sat next to a Pioneer system, would not fit in the van with the other items.

“Wouldn’t fit. Going now to grab them.”

Dwayne shook his head. “Cary would’ve made them fit.”

No doubt. Cary would’ve found a way, even if it meant he had to ride with the doors open and a TV on his lap and one of his long arms pinning a couple cabinet speakers to the roof. He was just that kind of guy, always put himself last.

“It’ll take like five minutes. Not a big deal.”

“You have to put all this away, too. I’m not paying overtime for that.”

Rusty turned and headed to the van, mumbling, “You bank the minutes anyway, you fat prick.”

 5

The dash heater blew like dusty radio static to fight the sundown chill and the condensation built on both sides of the windows—both front doors had gaps from slight bends in the hinges. Rusty bought the 1986 Ford Tempo two years earlier for $900, cash. He added a Pioneer CD stereo—purchased used for $25 from Dwayne—and a like new bumper cover. Aside from that, the car had been steadily rumbling to pieces and he had no grand repair plans. When he first bought the Ford, the machine falling apart bit by bit was funny. He was only eighteen and back then, he had different ideas about the future and where he might get to with hard work. These days the car was a sad pain in the ass and he understood that no amount of hard work was going to take him anywhere, not without smart focus. Not without goals. The car would go until it didn’t. He would go until he couldn’t.

He flipped through the tracks of a mix CD Christine made for him. Or rather, not exactly for him; she’d made it so she didn’t always have to listen to his music if they drove anywhere. When they took the Tempo. Christine’s Tercel was a couple years older and the body was more orange and brown than paint, but it ran nicer, was almost silent, even revving the engine high, the thing was like a steady mouse fart.

He continued hitting the button on the stereo faceplate until it landed on a Chilli Peppers track. He sat back and waited for the window to clear enough to see the parking lot. He tapped the wheel and picked up his cigarette pack. Thinking about school and the absurdity of his existence, and damn it would be nice to see those dumbass farm boys get it. Somehow.

He lit a cigarette and shook his head gently. For a week, Jim McManus had taken to calling him Billy Madison. They’d driven together four days in a row because Cary took a week off to bring in the hay from the few fields he didn’t rent out standing to bigger farm operations in the area. Rusty couldn’t be sure, but guessed Cary squashed that nickname when he heard it, because it was surprisingly short-lived and totally fucking apt.

Linda stood behind his car with a small box in her hands, looking at him through the rear window. She rarely spoke to him, didn’t seem to like his existence or that he worked for her husband.

“What you looking at?” Rusty said to his rear view.

As if hearing him, she tossed the box into the cardboard bin and walked around to the rear bay door.

“I’m a California king,” Rusty sang under his breath as the world became visible beyond the windshield. He pulled the light plunger and rolled in reverse to turn around. He cast a second look back to where Linda had gone, and now she sat in the shotgun seat of one of the Logic vans, staring straight ahead, as if avoiding looking at him.

It made him paranoid.

Town was mostly quiet. He passed the usual suspects that treated the length of Main between the theater and the Tim Horton’s as a runway; models on a catwalk, showing off the latest additions to their rides—the muffler tips and outrageous spoilers and unnecessary hood scoops, all the fast looking plastic. Rusty never beefed with greasers, had some friends in the ninth and tenth grades who lived and breathed gasoline—prior to his dropping out the second time—and who collected shop credits like pimps collected tricks, but friendships like that never lasted. Friendships of convenience were how most small town people lived, and since he wasn’t into Civics and Sunfires, wasn’t into getting Fast and Furious, they were doomed to drift apart. But even now, with all the shit he got, he didn’t really get it from them. Probably he got along with them a little better than others and for as long as he had because the foster family that took him in when he was nine—when his grandmother died—were farmers. They’d had him behind the wheels of a good variety of big machines, under the hood and chassis sometimes too. Rusty could swing with the motor heads, spoke their shop language, had grease stains on his hands some days; even if all the chrome tips