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

the rental rooms. The paleness of the envelope stuck out in the shadows like something radioactive, stark against the green velvet of the chair and dim panelling and brown flooring. RUSTY TALBOT was written in dense black marker. Beneath that, in the fluid scroll of the landlady, was the name Todd Beaman.

Rusty took the envelope to his room and fell into his brown chair, too addled and too tired to think about schoolwork. He tossed the envelope on the floor next to two empty toast dishes. After work, he’d gone back to McDonald’s—strange what the notion of an impending windfall had on the assumed value of the coins in a pocket. Maybe not strange at all, and he needed the mental nutrients that came with fast food, which more than made up for the lack of physical nutrients.

He switched on the TV and began untying his boots, working on muscle memory without looking. Freed, his feet ached and he groaned. The sour workplace sweat made him remove his socks as well and he rubbed his feet on the carpet to work out the lingering feeling of funk. As he did so, he looked around, considered a few things, but chose nothing over something. Only nine-thirty, but he was done. He switched off the old tube TV—belonged with the room—and stripped to his boxer shorts. All bones and sparse dark brown hair, muscles defined but skinny, like ropes. He stepped over the tossed around life that pretty well represented the sum of his existence, moving on his toes in hopes to avoid disrupting anything.

His towel hung over one of three racks in the shared bathroom. The two other men weren’t messy and that made the situation agreeable enough, but the shower stall was black with grime. Years and years of men cleaning after themselves went only so far. They covered the messes they noticed, but not the larger group mess that mounted a microbe at a time.

Rusty was skinny enough that not even his elbows made contact when he bent to wash his feet with his soap bar retrieved from one of three small ledges. His shampoo was in a corner on the floor alone, same with the bottles belonging to the others. The fourth corner housed the slimy shower curtain when the stall was out of use.

Both of the other renters worked at an electrical conductor factory in town, both were immigrants from different continents, neither had ever said more than a few words to Rusty, which was all right too. No borrowing sugar. No swapping recipes. No socializing. Most times, the men did not acknowledge one another at all.

Damp and in a towel, Rusty returned to his room. He hung his towel on the door and sat naked amidst his mess. So worn out that his arms were a strange mix of wood and rubber as opposed to the bone and flesh he was born with. He yawned and plucked the envelope from the floor. He flipped it to see the blank back. The seal was tight and he gouged it free with an index finger. Inside were a note and a CD in a slim jewel case.

Rusty yawned again and withdrew the note:

Please listen. Important.

—Todd Beaman

Assuming, of course, that it was school related, Rusty set the note and disc on the floor because even just thinking about doing anything else threatened a headache. He grabbed his cigarettes and lighter, extracted a smoke, lit, and inhaled. The TV went back on and he flipped channels while his cigarette burned before he hit the light and crawled into bed.

 10

Out the window, farms crept up and then passed beyond fields, homes of people less than ancillary, people who meant nothing to the ever-encroaching plan that refused to leave the forefront of Rusty’s mind. He woke two hours before work in a sweat, having dreamt something he could not remember, only that Cary was there, Linda was there, and so was Christine’s father. In uniform, with cuffs out. Things had gone sour enough that he didn’t need to remember a lick more than that to have it rattle him, even from a deep sleep.

He’d spent the morning thinking up ways the heist was apt to go sideways and just about all of them ended with his ass in the can. The whole crew would be there. Not a life worth consideration, but he couldn’t knock it out. His damned head refused him that small comfort for even a minute. The thoroughness had him imagining how rough the toilet paper was and how nasty the food might be—surely not as bad as the stuff they’d shown on the doc’ he seen about private prisons in the States, where the only goal was to make money. Hopefully not that bad.

Rusty rode with the delivery truck window cracked, smoking twice as much as normal between stops. The seemingly unbothered Cary Watson was next to him, singing along to the country tunes coming through the horrendous stereo system that came factory in the Ford cube van. Cary kept the country station locked except during the lunch hour; he’d flip to AM and listen to the hog report. Usually they’d be parked by then, eating from pack lunches. If the price of hogs mattered to him one way or another, he never did say, he hardly mentioned anything personal, never complained, and could laugh off anything Dwayne said, as if the wisdom of age made him immune to that fat bastard’s words.

Lunch had come and gone. Rusty, despite having plenty of time to fix something from the meagre mix of groceries he kept at home, or grab something on the way, managed only to bring a partial bag of Oreo cookies and a thermos and travel mug of coffee. Liquid was typically enough for during the day. He’d worked out existing like that naturally, by financial necessity, his body reluctantly cooperating with