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

signing in, Rusty wasn’t officially there, or whatever. A proof to offer a detective when Rusty went missing.

Rusty thought, holy shit, he’s gonna kill me! but said, “Okay,” and took a step toward the van.

Dwayne climbed in the driver’s side and Rusty looked back to his car, as if seeing a last chance there in the grey gleam banking off the windshield. The van shifted as Dwayne moved around, rocking the squeaky shocks: ree roo ree roo.

Against his survival instincts, Rusty opened the passenger’s side door and climbed in. The clank of the door meeting doorframe was that final nail in his coffin. Dead man, dead man riding here!

“So what’re we doing?” Rusty asked, trying to sound light, like he was simply curious.

Dwayne turned the key. The stereo was off and the heater blew in loud, dusty gusts, suggesting the battery wasn’t quite up to a smooth flow.

“Heading out to Chelsea,” Dwayne said and pulled the shifter into reverse while simultaneously strapping himself in.

Rusty pulled the loose belt around and tried to get it to snug tight to him. “A delivery?”

“Sort of.”

Dwayne pulled into McDonald’s first thing. Rusty’s life for the last week had revolved around the place, an unexpected side effect of stress, small town living, and the promise of a future windfall. Dwayne ordered three Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. He asked if Rusty wanted to order anything—not asking if he wanted something, certainly not offering to buy him something—but Rusty said no. As soon as they were on the road, Dwayne had a sandwich halfway unwrapped so as to tear into it as he steered. Rusty watched the drive-thru window shrink in the distance, like he should’ve ordered something, a last meal maybe. He hadn’t had nuggets in years. Oh my god, what if I never eat another McNugget?

“What’s in Chels—?” Rusty started.

Dwayne interrupted him. “You live alone. No family, not divorced or separated, nothing like that, right?”

Rusty’s heart pitter-pattered, not quite at torrential downpour speed, but the clouds would break at any second. “Uh, yeah, that’s right.”

“You’re dating Christine though.”

“Yeah, but she lives at home still. Saving for college.”

Dwayne balled up the wrapper from the first sandwich and tossed it into the bag yawning between the seats, then grabbed the next. “You were a runaway. When I hired you, you were a high school dropout runaway and nobody else would hire you, right?”

They reached the two-lane highway leading out of town and Dwayne accelerated to the posted maximum, but didn’t go any higher. Maybe avoiding potential police detection so as to perpetrate a murder. Rusty watched the gravel of the shoulder, thinking about front rolling like in ninth grade gym class and how the side of the road wasn’t soft as a mat and how he’d never picked up any speed like that on the mats and how he never was so good at the gymnastics parts of gym class anyhow and just how many years ago was ninth grade? He exhaled a heavy breath and touched his pocket.

“Okay, probably. Mind if I smoke?”

Dwayne spoke around a mouthful, a glob of tartar sauce plopping onto his lip like a burst whitehead. “While I’m eating? No, you can wait a minute. Soon it’s going to be illegal in work vehicles. Maybe you should get used to that…but not on the clock, so.” The sentence ended there, Dwayne torn between paying for a break and having to smell smoke.

“Right,” Rusty said, his hand staying steady over the rectangular curve in his pocket. He’d at least get a last smoke, dammit.

“You’d probably be homeless if I didn’t give you a job and keep you on.”

“Maybe,” Rusty whispered.

Dwayne balled the next wrapper and swiped a hand across his lip, catching the nasty glob and licking it away with an orange soda-stained tongue—he wasn’t even drinking orange soda. “So you doing right by me? Now that you’re back to school. You doing the right thing by me? It sure don’t look like it.”

Rusty didn’t dare turn. His heart was going a million beats per minute. “What?” he said.

Dwayne set his thrice-bitten sandwich on the dash and reached into his pocket when they stopped at a set of rural intersection lights where two highways crossed and pulled out a jackknife—blade about five inches long, dirty with tape grime from electronics boxes.

“You doing right by me?”

Rusty put his hand on the door handle and pulled gently. Locked.

Dwayne put the knife down when the light turned green and picked up his sandwich. The shoulder of the road started burning by again and Rusty glanced at the lock plunger and then weighed breaking his neck against being bled out by his employer.

“What?”

“Are you doing right by me?” Dwayne looked at Rusty then. He had tartar sauce gunking the corners of his mouth like snow against the goal posts, and a large bun crumb clinging to his chin. His eyes were wetter than normal, not quite teary, but possibly emotional. “You ever stop to think about doing right by me? I give you a chance because Cary’s pulling for you, sure, but I keep you on all this time and what do you do to repay me?”

Rusty didn’t know how to answer. The moisture in Dwayne’s eyes was the biggest tell of all. The man knew and he was taking Rusty out of town to get the facts straight. He imagined trying to fight Dwayne. The big man was more than double his weight. There was no chance.

“What do you mean?” Rusty asked, looking away quickly.

Dwayne took a huge breath, and then sneezed twice. “Ugh,” he said, wiping his eyes, nose, and mouth. “There’s about a thousand kids at that school. A bunch of them have cars. You telling them to check out my automotive stereo selection? Come on, Rusty, I do right by you, you can