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

Two cop cars headed in the opposite direction and Rusty kept his eyes forward, glancing down to the speedometer to be sure. Cops were a lot like high school meatheads, but they had the power to ruin more than his day.

He pulled up to the light behind a farm truck and a Harley Davidson. A half-second after the light flashed green, the bike barked a growl and was down the block before the farm truck’s break lights died and the wheels got to rolling, into to the left lane for the next set of lights.

Often, Rusty walked to work—usually cutting through fields—but most times, he just wasn’t up for it. Logic was tough enough to face without adding a walk to the equation. Lately, in the battle of saved money and mental well-being, it was the banked calories of not-walking that tipped the scale.

Out front of the boarding house, he parked behind his landlord’s bread truck. He was rarely around and mostly Rusty dealt with the busybody old lady whenever something came up. If he could, he avoided contact with both altogether.

—

Showered and fed, Rusty got back into his car, which had only fogged up on the inside in that short period, so rolling was almost immediate. Craig Duclas had a house with his wife and daughters across town. His wife didn’t work beyond the duties of mothering and keeping house, and it was an unconfirmed group assumption among the delivery crew at Logic Appliance that his mother and stepfather offered up a down payment for the mortgage. He wasn’t the kind of guy to put up with Dwayne unless he had no other choice, meaning if he could scrounge enough of money for the keys to a house, someone else had surely propped up his pockets.

Rusty arrived on the block and parked behind Cary’s beat-up Chevy Silverado. The porch light on Craig’s bungalow lit a yellow swatch over the walkway and the dewy lawn. The moon hid behind clouds and that light seemed doubly loud on the too dark street. It was only then, really looking at the house, that Rusty second-guessed the agreed upon assumption about finances. The place was capital R rough. The siding was cracked and discolored, cheap to begin with. Bubbled yellow spray foam filled dozens of nooks and crannies by the front door alone. The carport looked rotten and the driveway had as many cracks as Humpty Dumpty the moment after all the king’s men got to him.

A quick glance at the shadowy houses on that section of block suggested there were more parts of Andover that needed an update than Rusty had figured. Hell, between the bug-ridden and drafty boarding house where he lived and the rundown roach hotel apartments where Jim McManus lived, the town seemed to walk a tightrope between broke and wealthy with hardly any in-between.

And there were wealthy people, had big houses, updated pretty regularly. Dwayne and Linda lived in one of the former wealthy homes, the places left behind, snakeskins of the local equivalent to socialites.

Rusty pressed the dried plastic doorbell. Like strangling a cat. A dusty piece of the crumbling button came away on his finger and he brushed his hand against a pant leg. He waited a sixty count. When nobody answered, he knocked.

Seconds later, the door opened, it was Craig. “You ring the bell?”

“Didn’t you hear it?”

“No. Didn’t get a shock?”

“What?”

“The bell shocks everybody. Don’t warn people because it’s funny.”

Rusty shook his head and frowned. “Dick.”

Craig stepped aside and let Rusty pass. “We’re downstairs. Everybody’s not here yet, so we can’t start.”

“Start what?”

“Be patient.”

“Man, what’s this all about?” Rusty bent to slip off his Nikes.

“Take your shoes with you. You can smoke in the carport, get there from the basement door. That way you’re not coming up here and bothering the girls. They’re sleeping, or will be soon.”

Rusty carried the shoes over the patch of linoleum and then the pale brown carpet. Craig’s wife was on the couch watching Temptation Island, acting as if nobody had entered her home and the general hum of voices coming from the basement didn’t exist.

“Why we meeting here?” Rusty asked, rewording but looking for the same answer as before.

“Got to wait,” Craig said, and led the way to the flimsy door to the basement, but didn’t follow Rusty downstairs. “I’ll be down in a bit. Once we’re all here.”

The place was an organized mess, one of those spaces where the stuff seemed to breathe with regular use, even when nobody was touching it. The unfinished walls were part panelling and part vapor barrier covering pink insulation. Creeping dampness dotted the foggy plastic with promises of impending mold. The drop ceiling was off-white and had drooping spots and brown patches from water damage. The floor was cement with a huge rainbow-colored throw rug, stained to a greasy charcoal hue. Pushed to the edges were loose toys and books in piles, willy-nilly. Jim and Danny sat on kids’ beanbag chairs, almost comically small beneath them. Each held a Playstation 2 controller, and on the 32” Magnavox were digital football teams, lined up. John Madden was saying some pertinent about the plays, but was more white noise than anything else. Cary sat on a sloppy couch with a floral design and saggy folds. There was a dark brown coffee table centering it all and two interior doors. The basement was obviously where Mother Duclas relegated the kids and the hubby.

Cary pushed to his feet, reaching into a soft cooler set on the coffee table. He held out a Budweiser. “Heya. You look thirsty.”

“Thanks,” Rusty said and cracked the cap. Before he took a drink, he said, “So what’s up with all this?”

“Oh, just a little chat, but we got to wait for everybody.”

Rusty looked around.