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

was something about its atomic makeup that allowed it to bypass the usual waiting period. The pink puck at the bottom of the urinal was sliver thin and the plastic mesh had shifted sideways, pubic hairs decorated the rim like a Mennonite nanna’s beard. He tried not to think about them, or the occasional sprinkling splash back that dotted his hands and pants. Piss particles from who knew whom.

As he was shaking off, the door behind him opened. Before he could zip and turn, a quick clicking noise that went beyond recognition—a noise he should’ve known right away—buzzed next to his ear. A hand settled on his back and a cool blade pressed against his throat.

“Your life or your money,” a gruff voice hissed, the words hot and sweet-smelling by his cheek.

“What?” Rusty began turning his neck.

“Don’t you look at me. You see my face and it’s the last thing you ever see.”

The voice was unfamiliar, which made it doubly terrifying. The reality of the demand flashed then: he paid rent weekly, had the next three rents, grocery money, cigarette money, and gas money all in cash in his wallet. That money was his life, there was no real separation. He couldn’t afford to lose more than a few bucks.

“Man, I’m broke.”

“Bull. Give that cash.” The blade pushed harder against his flesh and the body behind him, leaned in tighter. The lips were right by his ear. “Move it, you ugly sonofabitch.”

The way the voice said ugly worked like pulling a plug from the drain and Rusty bumped his ass backwards. “Get outta here.” The box cutter—the blade had been pointed away from Rusty, dull side to flesh—clicked back to neutral. Rusty zipped up and turned to face his co-worker Danny Jacobs. Another of the geniuses from the Logic Appliance delivery crew.

“You were filling your diapies,” Danny said, smiling crookedly. He’d started at Logic about six months after Rusty, but climbed the social hierarchy ladder over him the first time Rusty went down to part-time to re-explore the grand offerings of public education in Andover. “Gonna need to wash your ass before the teacher gives you detention.”

“Man, piss off,” Rusty said, also smiling, but not feeling it. Going back to school sucked and ribbing him for it didn’t make it any easier. It was as if everyone wanted him to fail, wanted him to accept his shitty lot in life.

One time, not too far into the past, he’d applied for a different job, a better paying job on the line at the Butterball factory. A now drifted friend told him just to lie, that there was no way to check on graduation status. He had an interview and the woman was cold and condescending about every answer he gave. She wore a red jacket over a white blouse with a lace turtleneck. Whenever he spoke, she clicked the button on a steel Butterball pen. After ten minutes of giving him anxiety, she flat out asked him about school, the only question thus far needing a straight answer. She let him lie and then dropped that she saw his transcript, just to embarrass him. She’d called the school and a friend had no trouble digging through files. Every time he thought about how that woman made him feel it made him want to burn the place to the ground—a bit of his daddy in him, maybe.

A place where managers played jokes cruel as that deserved to burn. He needed to stick with Dwayne and the crew of idiots.

“Yeah. Yeah. What are you doing tonight? We’re having a little powwow at Jim’s,” Danny said as he settled in at the urinal.

“I work.”

“So does Craig, but after.”

“Who’s we?”

Danny huffed. “All us, Jim, Cary, Craig, and me.”

“Yeah, okay. Like right after work?”

“Nah, go home and shower first. Don’t wanna sit around smelling your stink.”

“You’re one to talk. You at work now?” Rusty ran the tap and rinsed, no soap, and then wiped his hands on his jeans. The inside handle of the door was grimy and it was best to have dry hands before touching it and stirring up any mysterious bacteria with a bus transfer.

“Of course,” Danny said and added, “Oops,” as he side stepped into the stall with his work hanging out of his open pants and plunked down on the can. Not a workday went by that Danny didn’t evacuate his bowels on Dwayne Siegenthaler’s dime. It was almost respectable in its reliability.

Rusty returned to his coffee and the final puff of his cigarette. Cary Watson stood with two polystyrene cups. He was tall and thin with big forearms, and hands like a first baseman’s mitt. He wore thick glasses and a thick black beard on the fast track to grey.

“Heya,” Cary said, an honest smile on his face.

Rusty fell into his seat and finished his lukewarm coffee. “You might want to sit. Danny’s dropping off the kids.”

“That guy,” Cary said. He was the oldest deliveryman on the crew, had worked fifteen years for Dwayne, and had grown kids, all older than Rusty. His wife had died sometime before Rusty knew him. He was the easiest going man Rusty had ever met, nothing ever got to him, and he always did his best. “You have school today?”

Rusty shot a look at the clock. “Yeah, another forty minutes yet.”

Jean came over and refilled Rusty’s cup as the main door opened and the hydraulic arm wheezed, letting out a squeak like a slipped fart. Three men from the Bohnert Construction team clomped through the door in permanently stained jeans, ripped hoodies, and cement crusty work boots. Big guys who obviously used their hands and backs all day rather than their heads. They filled in two of the small tables and Jean hurried their way with her coffee pot and a wipe rag.

Rusty dressed his third