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

bit, but essentially that was like giving a stray mutt the Westminster Kennel treatment—no matter what, a mutt’s a mutt. An empty hummingbird feeder dangled by the door, the red plastic gone so sun-bleached it was almost white on the outward facing side while remaining a dark pink on the back. Tacked to the wall in the feeder’s morning shadow was a DeKalb seed thermometer. Above that, some wasps had built a muddy nest where the siding met the steel soffit. Rusty slowed his motion and quieted his steps, just in case. He tried the handle, and then remembered. Hurrying away like something was chasing him, he went around back to the other door.

He hated all sorts of stinging and biting bugs, too, almost as much as they seemed to love farms.

—

Sylvester Stallone, John Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis. Despite being big and strong, Cary was almost timid as a man in action, but the huge VHS and DVD selection wasn’t much of a surprise. Who didn’t like action? Rusty selected Deep Blue Sea, having only ever seen part of it and liked the idea of a horror lean to the thrills, also he loved Samuel L. Jackson. He stretched out on a corduroy recliner, in reach of his travel mug and the universal TV remote, which also controlled the sound system.

The movie began and Rusty let it take him away—runtime 1:45. After the shark was done going shark, Rusty took a mug from the cupboard and nuked a cup of Cary’s morning pot in the microwave. On the back porch, he lit a cigarette and stood a minute, weighing whether or not the battery was apt to kick the truck into life. On the short back lawn, a pair of crows poked at worms, bringing their heads up in what seemed practiced synchronization. Each carried a pink worm and each looked at Rusty while they slurped it down.

“Okay then,” he said and then carried on down to the barnyard.

The humming from the charger rode the warm late morning air in a way Rusty could feel in his teeth. The mug rattled momentarily when he set it on the machine’s steel shell. After the power switched off, the mug ceased its rattle and the truck’s battery readout was in the green.

He climbed the nose of the Freightliner and pushed open the hood far enough that he reached the first cable. Squinting against the tendril of smoke rising from the cigarette between his lips—this was a natural action, something he’d done with his face about a million times before, never had to think—he grabbed for the red handle of the second clamp. Battery disconnected from the charger, he tossed the cables into the dust of the path.

Rusty hopped down and took up his mug. The cigarette burned between the first two fingers of his right hand as he mulled the coming hours. After a sip, and another puff, the mug went onto the rust-pocked chrome bumper of the truck. He stood a moment to look around the empty fields and imagine a course, but decided he’d just go where the truck took him at first, simply try to keep it going without mowing down any of the distant cedar rail fencing.

He rolled the power cord around the battery charger’s handles until it went taut against the hold of an extension cord. Strangely, he could almost hear the hum still, like energy lingered in a cloud around his head. He followed the black cord’s tail until it reached the coupler connected to the orange extension cord.

The hum was even louder and he dropped the cord after separation, imagining a shock. Rusty scrunched his face, turned his neck to the limits, one way and then the other. He picked the cord up from where he’d dropped it and looked into the shadows of the coupler’s grooves, as if he’d catch tiny bolts jumping and come to understand the noise and sensation he felt in his teeth. The cows continued chewing, watching him like he was an especially rare bird. Rusty lifted the cord closer to his face, shrugged then, and dropped it again.

The heavy black coupler landed in a shadowy hole, puncturing an underground wasps’ nest. The humming became a steady buzz as angry occupants mounted an instant offensive. Before he had a chance to register the reality of the situation, a wasp had lit on his nose and plunged its stinger into his flesh. “Sonofabitch!” Rusty slapped a hand and stumbled backward, six more wasps landed on him: two on his arms, three on legs, and one on his neck, stingers plunged into skin and Lee’s denim alike, he slammed his palm at his neck and arm simultaneously, the wasps on his legs went unacknowledged, four more landed, two of which found his face: one on the eyebrow, one on the lip. Rusty took off, rocketing, running straight for the barnyard. The cows bent at their fore knees a moment before they scattered in a rumble of kicked shit and arrant hay stalks, and he hadn’t even reached steel tubing of the gate. The wasps continued plunging stingers as Rusty sprinted through the slick cow manure and dove headfirst into the four-foot-high water trough.

The relief was immediate.

He sat a minute with only his head above the mucous-busy surf before he considered the state of his cigarette pack. He popped up, huffing in frustration, and climbed out. The cows had gathered close, curious.

“What you looking at?”

The big animals went on chewing, cud rather than hay now.

“Thanks for your help, by the way. Could’ve warned me.”

No change, they kept chewing, kept looking. Filthy, shit-spackled things.

“I know you knew. Bet you think it’s real’ funny.”

He parted the excitable beasts as they bucked and jumped to give him space. He climbed the fence and then gave the wasps’ nest a wider berth than the