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

respect he felt, showing just what he thought of the two-time high school dropout, had him cut cardboard and vacuum the showroom when he could’ve gone home early on a Friday night. The carpet wasn’t dirty and the cardboard had a designated area, apart from anything critical, meaning it could pile up—it hadn’t, not by much.

Rusty very nearly quit, but Cary caught up with him before he left the parking lot on foot, seemed to know the score without having to be told, and said, “Better eat that anger, veneer plant’s closing, gonna be a lot of guys out looking for work in short order.”

That first meeting with Jean in the café, Rusty plunked down on a seat, dirty with dried sweat crusting the neck and armpits of his t-shirt. He’d had meant to say Dr. Pepper when she came by his table. He didn’t. He’d stared at a faded picture of a weeping beer bottle and asked for an OV instead. She hadn’t asked to see his mediocre fake I.D. and brought the glass to him where he sat. Grateful, he left a four-dollar tip and basked in the vibe of the joint and the heeling properties of a cold beer after a hard day, two cold beers after a hard day.

“You going back to high school?” one of the grocery clerks asked. “I hear that right?”

Rusty nodded, he yawned again, this time a fake yawn to hide the embarrassment he felt.

“How come you don’t do that test?”

The other clerk added, “The G-E-D. You know?”

Jean filled the mug on the table at Rusty’s seat. She had a way around the café, fluid and busy, but always fluttering nearby with a coffeepot. Patrons rarely had to wait long for anything.

Rusty shot her a glance and said, “Thanks.” He focused across the table then. “I had that stupid book right by my bed for years. I can’t do it. I don’t know. I read the start of it like ten times, never got past the third page. I need the classroom structure or something. Maybe it was just too damned boring. Books, they’re all boring to me.”

The first clerk nodded and the second clerk said, “My sister failed her test. Dumbass. Why take it if you ain’t going to pass it?”

“She still in jail?” the electrician asked.

“Yeah. Breach of probation and possession of illegal substance, or whatever they call meth when its law technical speak.”

It was Rusty’s turn to shake his head. He’d avoided meth, and ecstasy, and pot, was careful about drinking—nothing else was really available to him. Story was, his father was a drunk long before he was sent to prison, and that asshole was sure as hell drunk when he had burned his whole family alive. Rusty was only lucky his sister happened to be giving him a 1:00 AM bath. His grandmother told him that every time he’d fought her about getting in the tub. She also reminded him that he shouldn’t have been her damned responsibility. “I already raised my kid and that was enough,” she’d say and Rusty would have to take it because there was no leaving it.

Those shiny ridges of the scar tissue on Rusty’s face let nobody mistake who he was—part of the reason his fake I.D. hadn’t been reliable, not that he’d needed it for a couple years. It wasn’t until much later that he realized Jean was doing him a favor, maybe got that same bad day vibe Cary had and took pity on him.

It was also possible she simply didn’t give a shit.

Rusty dressed his coffee, stirred, and took a sip as he set his spoon back on the napkin where it had been, leaving behind a growing brown blotch. The percolated brew was infinitely better than the instant mix he fixed at home. Like two distant planets, sure, they were in the same universe, but Saturn wasn’t much like Earth. He pulled a cigarette from his pack and did his bit to replenish the smoke that had escaped when he opened the door to enter.

“You want any breakfast?” Jean asked.

“Nah, not today.” Rusty absently touched his stomach. He’d eaten a single piece of toast with spread-on Cheese Whiz before he left home. Budget eating was great for the wallet, but a tough reality for an active young man.

Jean nodded and returned to her spot in the kitchen doorway.

“When you coming in to do the new meat counter?” one of the clerks asked across the table, but not to Rusty.

The electrician burped without opening his mouth and then said, “Gord pushed it ‘til after Christmas because of the rush.”

“Yeah, busy as hell in December.”

“Meat counter’s always busy.”

The electrician held his cup a couple inches from his lips. “Right, but I could use a little extra at Christmas so I have money to spend at the meat counter. Know what I mean?”

One of the clerks pointed at him, “Touché. Gord’s funny sometimes, but a good guy to work for.”

The clerks and the electrician held their conversation and Rusty pushed out his chair, cigarette left smoking in the ashtray next to his coffee, and stepped past the jukebox to the hallway that led to the can. The walls were bare aside from a gold light fixture shaped in the vein of a set of juvenile elk antlers, bulbs rising from the tips like ET’s finger. The tiling from the floor had been scraped up sometime before Rusty had ever been there—glue residue remained on cement but was rubbed mostly smooth. Along the outer wall were two washrooms. Inside, both were almost blindingly bright compared to the rest of the joint. One featured a stall and a urinal; the other only had a toilet; and a working lock on the door.

He stood at the urinal and unzipped his jeans. The instant coffee departed his system. There