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

“Sonofabitch!” The strap hook drew tight and he nearly lost hold. “Holy! Holy!”

Cary wasn’t listening, or couldn’t hear, or just had too much else going on. Despite the mud and the prickly thistle, Rusty had come close enough for the strap to reach. Cary hooked the handle of the clamp over the highest corner of the front end of the freezer and then dove out of sight to get to the plug. Rusty tugged at his boot, his right arm straight out and steady, his focus on watching the bobbing freezer remain in place, though, at very best, the strap kept a precarious hold. The water might not be quick, but it looked about as cold as Cary had shouted. November, in Southwestern, Ontario, Canada, that river had to be close to freezing.

Cary popped up, arching his back and flicking his head in reverse like a swimsuit model before grabbing the handle of the strap and shouting, “Pu-ull me-ee in-nn!”

Rusty turned and reefed his hips in a corkscrew motion. The mud farted out his booted foot and he spun the rest of the way, reeling in the strap as he made it back to the mostly clear space by the corner of the bridge where it was rocky and comparatively clean.

In the river, the freezer was sinking. Splashes jumped now and then as air was forced out of the hollow walls as water filled the gaps. By the time Cary was crawling over the muddy shallows and onto the rocks, the freezer had all but disappeared.

Shaking, arms tight to his sides, the fur of his chest pelt matted to his pale skin, Cary turned to watch the final moments. A great stream of glub-glub-glubs rose and the last remnants of white beneath the surface of the black water disappeared.

“Freezing!” Cary started running up the hill then. Once he got to the top, he reached into the truck bed and grabbed his clothes. “Freezing!” he said again as he slipped out of his underwear, his cheeks so bright they seemed to aiming at taking the moon’s job.

Rusty waited until Cary was covered and then climbed the hill after him.

“You drive. I’m fuh-freezing,” Cary said.

They climbed in and thumped their door’s closed simultaneously. Rusty turned the key and the reliable truck came to life. Cary rubbed his hands together after spinning all the dash fans in his direction.

Before going anywhere, Rusty tapped the clock on the stereo. “How we doing for time?” he said and pulled the shifter, and rolled in reverse until the road and ditch evened out at the bottom of the big hill where he could turn around.

Cary played with dials as if there was a secret combination to getting the maximum heat available in a minimal amount of time. “Fine. Fine.” Cary’s teeth chattered like someone had wound a wing crank on his back.

Rusty had to drive slowly up the rutty hill and tried his best to keep from touching the brakes too much on the way back down. That road bared every warning of the sign that marked its entry.

Only a few minutes after midnight, they were right as rainclouds circling a drought. They were again at the drive-in.

“Follow me and we’ll get us some money,” Cary said.

He kicked the door behind him and Rusty scooched across the bench seat. Cary was climbing back into the rig, no longer chattering, but still chilled.

“We’ll get some money,” Rusty parroted to his reflection in the rear view mirror as he started a U-turn.

 21

The red lights glowing amid the black paint on the trailer, above and within the grey steel of the bumper, became something of a hypnotist’s coin. Rusty kept his eyes tight and his grip firm, for the most part. The road hardly deviated once onto Highway 76, so Rusty could free a hand and pull out his cigarettes without sacrificing his attention. He smoked one after another, tossing butts out the back window, letting his mind drift. It seemed highly unlikely that anyone would find Dwayne in the near future, if ever, and by then, there’d be mountains of plausible deniability. Somehow, they appeared to be on the home stretch. If nothing came of Jim McManus, they’d be fine.

Additionally, there was no way Christine would face trouble for Dwayne as his killer. For one, the investigation would likely fall into Landon Lawrence’s lap as its starting point lay firmly in the town of Andover, and never in a million years would he look into Christine…even if she wasn’t his. Her as the killer was simply a poor fit to consider. On top that, what was her motive for being at the warehouse? Dwayne nor Linda had ever sent her there for anything.

Rusty dragged a long inhale and let the smoke leave his lungs slowly through his nose. Dwayne being dead might better the situation, in the short run anyhow.

“Things might work out,” he said and then thought, kind of. Then again he’d been wrong and naïve before, blind even.

It wasn’t until his late teenage years that he understood his grandmother didn’t like him, and that in needing her, he’d cramped her existence. He’d always thought she was simply stupid, which she was, and bitchy, which she was. No way to suggest otherwise on either point. But she’d been just about as lucky as Rusty had been. Rusty’s grandfather impregnated her when she was twelve and he was twenty-one. There was a shotgun wedding and a miserable marriage to a pervy older man who never lost track of a cute minor’s ass on a busy street. He’d been dead three years and she had her freedom for the first time in her life, then Rusty came along and stole it from her. He couldn’t be mad at her in hindsight, knowing