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

what he knew. He’d come to terms with the reality that blood was more an inconvenience than a benefit. It was a long time until he figured out the world did not rotate on an axis pinned to his back and that his economic destiny had been tattooed to his forehead at birth.

After the grandmother came his foster parents. He was one of six foster kids, another government check for the family account—taking kids to earn only worked if the parents took in several and had gardening space. There were three hereditary children, too—all older and on their way to living elsewhere. The relationships in the home were cold and the pecking order was harsh. The foster kids received nothing new, instead cycled through the unwanted belongings of the natural children. Five boys and four girls, and Rusty didn’t get along with any of them. He was too easy to pick on: dead family, scarred face, short fuse.

He made friends at school once he struck out on his own—a junior pioneer dirt bag—and moved into the boarding house. Being able to write his own notes and suffer by his own terms sprouted a level of high school acclaim. At Logic, he immediately developed a friendship with Cary, but the only person to love him—even if she had been reticent to say it before recently, and even if he felt it necessary for her to say it first—was Christine.

If only Mr. Beaman had let him be.

If only he’d ignored the suggestions.

If only Christine could’ve been someone else’s daughter. It made sense that her father was against the relationship in general—what prospects did he really have?—but this was too much. Of course he loathed them together as he did, forbade it even. What they were doing was an abomination fit for an Amish erotica novel.

A sudden ache to see her, touch her, kiss her made his stomach roil. He imagined yanking the steering wheel, barreling over the shoulder and guardrail, dropping down into—

A beep from the walkie-takie saved him from his reverie.

“Heya,” Cary said.

“Yeah?”

“How about you pull ahead and zoom on up to Tim’s and get us some coffee and bagels. I don’t want to screw around finding some decent parking, better if I only stop for a minute.”

“Right. Onion?”

“If they don’t have’m, get me an everything.”

“Can do,” Rusty said and pulled left into the oncoming lane for a peek.

“All clear up here,” Cary said and Rusty hit the accelerator.

The truck’s engine purred and the raucous whip of current through the broken window mingled with a trailing draft pulling alongside the transport truck. Rusty had to stiffen his arms to keep the wheel straight until he was out front.

—

The lights were too bright as Rusty stepped inside, squinting hard and navigating with his fingertips and ears. It helped that he’d been inside this very Tim Horton’s a half-dozen times before and that every location followed about one of five different layouts.

“Everybody does that since the lot lights went out.” The woman behind the till was grinning at him when the spots finally started clearing. “Been out two nights now.”

“That sucks.” Rusty blinked to speed the process.

“Sure does. Makes everybody look drunk.” She paused, then added, “You’re not drunk, are you?”

“No.”

“Look like you’ve had a night though.”

Rusty touched his blood and mud crusty clothes and got to thinking. “Uh, hit a deer.”

“Looks like it hit you back.”

Rusty nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”

“My brother had a deer jump out of a ditch into the backseat of his convertible once. Tore all the leather and broke two windows trying to figure on how to get out. Conked my brother a good one on the back of the head, too. He was dizzy for a week.”

“Crazy.”

The woman was nodding, looking off into space and then turned back to Rusty. “Lucky it was just a LaSabre and not something fancy. Imagine if he’d had a Mercedes?” She smiled then and said, finally, “Anyway, what can I get you?”

Rusty made his order.

“No onion bagels,” she said.

“Make it everything then.”

“Sure, just the coffee and bagels?”

“Uh, better get me a twenty-pack of Timbits. Mix’m, just nothing with raisins.”

“I hear that,” the woman said and gave the sum. “Few minutes for the bagels.”

Rusty pulled out his wallet and found exact change, nodding as he did so, as if things were starting to come up roses. The woman repeated herself that it would be a few minutes and Rusty headed to the can. Before he swung the door open, he saw a transport truck’s headlights and then trailer lights pull to the side of the road. The bulbs along the body of the trailer were the elements of a red constellation against the heavy dark of the night.

“Oh, excuse me,” another employee said as she pulled a mop and rolling bucket out of the washroom. She looked at Rusty, then at the trail of mud he’d tracked in. “What did you get into?”

“Some mud, I guess.”

“And you wanted to share it with me?”

Rusty lifted his arms, palms up. “Sorry.”

“Somebody whoop your ass?”

Rusty shook his head. “No, it was an accident, a deer,” he said and pushed through the washroom door. Another brick, they’d remember him if some future investigation followed the invisible trail. “Sonofabitch,” he whispered as he pissed into the room’s single urinal, didn’t dare look at the mirror on his way by.

—

Rusty had handed up the coffee and bagel through the open door. Cary came only down as far as the first stainless steel step.

“Ride nicer than your brother’s truck?” Rusty said.

“This thing is almost too new for me.”

Rusty nodded. “Maybe we’d better not stop again. How I look kind of made me the center of attention in there.”

“Good call,” Cary said, as,