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

out over the deep, black water. He huffed and gripped the edges of the doorframe tight where they synced up to the truck’s body. He put his feet on the steel of the bridge, shuffling sideways with his hands on the roof of the truck though it probably wasn’t necessary. Far enough, he slipped his feet in next to the freezer. Cary stood on the girder frame of the bridge and pulled the strap from the ratchet clip until it reached its knotted end before freeing the hooks. He climbed around the back then for a better angle.

The freezer was still on the castor pads, but they’d slipped sideways, meaning they wouldn’t roll, but it left plenty of room to fit hands in beneath. Finally, some forethought going right; finally, some luck.

Cary squatted and put his muscular hands beneath the freezer. Rusty squatted, put his average boney hands beneath the freezer.

“Feeling strong?”

Rusty shook his head. “Hell no.”

“Too bad. One. Two. Lift.”

The freezer rose a foot and the men grunted a long, low growl before letting it down. Cary straightened his back, wincing, and looked around the truck bed until he found the length of pipe he’d sought. Nothing in the truck bed had one particular reason, but stayed in there because it might eventually become handy. For something, anything.

He shoved the pipe under the middle of the freezer. “Grab this and pull when I push.”

Rusty did and stretched out the fingers of his right and then his left hand as Cary squatted and started another countdown. “Three, two, one, go.” The freezer levered upward and Dwayne tipped inside, fortuitously, sending the freezer onto the lip of the truck bed. Cary was panting at the effort once the freezer proved secure enough that it wouldn’t tip back.

“Okay, just a wee push now,” Cary said.

They pushed a hell of a lot more than a wee sum. The smooth white steel against the rough and rusty steel made a nasty grinding sound, but it was all over in a few seconds. The freezer splashed below, leaving behind startlingly pale paint crumbs on the browned steel of the bridge like a reverse skid mark.

Cary straightened and said, “Huh, that wasn’t so bad.”

“No, but it’s floating,” Rusty said.

Cary scrunched up his face and said, “The danged drain plug.” He slapped his head.

“Uh, what’s that mean?”

Cary groaned. “Can you swim?”

“What?”

“Can you swim?”

“Where the hell would I learn to swim?” Rusty was wide-eyed, ready to blow. There was no good luck, just the foreplay before things went to hell.

“In a river? In a pool?” Cary stripped as he spoke. “I don’t know.”

“I lived in town…then nowhere on the farm…by the time I got a chance…I just never learned, okay?”

Cary was in his tighty whities, gorilla furry in some spots, smooth marble in other spots. “Back this up.” Cary climbed onto the railing. “Don’t go nowhere, now.” He balled up, knees tight to chest as he dropped into the river very near the freezer.

Rusty leaned over the bridge, watching the gentle ripples, until he saw Cary pop up. “Man, Christ,” he whispered and got moving. No slipping, no sliding, but plenty aggravating to the injuries he had already harbored, Rusty got behind the wheel and reversed the truck. Gravel spat and rutted as he dropped the three inches down to the road. He kicked the brakes and jerked the shifter, thumping the transmission when he slammed it into park. He popped out and looked at the river again. Cary wrestled with the freezer about twenty-feet from the bridge. The river wasn’t in any rush to whisk them away, but given enough time, they’d be up to their eyes in shit if they couldn’t sink the thing.

Nobody along a river was apt to watch a freezer float by without stopping it, and what happened when enough water did leak in and sank the freezer somewhere shallow, maybe next to a school playground, or better yet, a police station?

“Crazy. Crazy,” Rusty said, grabbing the ratchet strap, and then tearing down the ditch to the riverbank. His feet skidded and his arms pin wheeled, but he kept upright as he hit soft level at the shore.

Cary was on the far end of the freezer, kicking against the gentle current. He began shouting. Rusty couldn’t hear him until he reached the mucky lip where the ground seemed to fall off and he turned his head.

“Throw me the danged strap!”

Rusty wrapped one finger over a hooked end and threw the heavy ratchet end high in the air. He missed the mark by several feet and Cary immediately dove under the surf, letting the freezer drift further. Cary popped up waving.

“Pull it in and try again!”

Rusty yanked and yanked, soaking his jacket and jeans until he had the cold steel ratchet in his grasp. Cary hadn’t returned to the bobbing freezer, instead waded in place, in the deep river, with his arms like football goal posts. Rusty aimed and underhand pitched the ratchet. It sailed over Cary’s head until the hook around Rusty’s finger lost slack and the ratchet—all three, jagged pounds of it—dropped and arced back, conking Cary on the top of his head like gag reel footage.

“Ouch!” Cary said and then disappeared with the ratchet end.

Rusty had visions of a second corpse joining Dwayne’s freezer body. A slapstick demise. But Cary emerged two seconds later.

“Come down stream!” Cary said.

The riverbank was all burdock thistles and uneven ground where it wasn’t pure black muck—the kind of muck that ate boots right off the feet. Rusty high-stepped, thorns and burdock balls clung to his pants and jacket.

“Hurry up! It’s freezing!”

Rusty tried to hop over the bright pink eye of a thistle that seemed to aim and narrow a target on him. It landed. Its thorns jabbing into the crotch