by C.G. Banks
*
Dan Sidworth had been a trouble-shooter for DEMCO, the local electricity monopoly, for only four months, but he’d been a licensed electrician for the better part of two decades, mostly working for himself. Right up until the lawsuit now almost a year in the past. He tried not to think about it too much but there was really nothing he could do to keep his mind from circling back. And as he sat in the company truck a half mile out in the woods which ringed the new subdivision (he still couldn’t fathom why the powers-that-be had decided to stick the transformers so motherfucking far out) it all came back to him like an unwelcome nightmare. He laughed at the thought. His mother always thought he should have been more than he was. Of course she didn’t say it but he could read it in her eyes. His father, on the other hand, had just never given a big shit. But his mother…he could still remember her reading him stories before he went to bed as a child, her holding his hand and praying when the story was told. Praying for him to be a doctor, a lawyer, all the standard shit uneducated women wish on their children though they knew no one themselves engaged in any such profession. She would hold his face in her hands on those nights, look him straight in the eye and tell him he would do GREAT THINGS. Her prophecy had seemed inevitable. So much so that he’d never amounted to shit.
He looked down at the sandwich in his hand and shook his head. Marlo always made the same fucking thing. When you said ‘sandwich’ in front of her it meant ham with bread barely grazed by mustard. That was it and it said a lot about her; a lot about him, too, if the truth be known. His mother’s child prodigy amounting to no more than a hired man with a dull, stringy-haired wife who’d never even made it out of high school. Every year or so she’d talk about getting her G.E.D. but he knew it’d never happen. Couldn’t figure any reason why it should. It wouldn’t mean shit in the long run.
He rolled down the window and chunked the sandwich out to the long grass sprouting up inches back from the well-worn track. Fucking pathetic.
His mother had died right before the lawsuit and that was a good thing. It would have killed her just as dead to have her only child broke and hustling change like a nigger. Because that’s what she’d’ve thought of this job.
And it was the work; he had to admit it. Maybe he had been born for greater things than tinkering around with wires and relay switches. It’d grown so old he’d lost interest years back. He’d gotten lax, so fucking lazy. Even now he wanted to kick himself in the ass but it was too late. What’s done is done and fuck you very much.
Thank God the kids had managed to get out.
If they’d have burned...
“Fuck it,” he said and snapped the handle on the door, stepping out into the sunlight. His life was nothing but a huge, gigantic WHAT IF. He needed to grow up, quit acting like a fucking baby. If he’d run herd on his hired men when he had a business he wouldn’t be in this fucked up situation right now. Wouldn’t be a hired man himself. When you got right down to it that was the only truth that mattered. He could cry into his beer all he wanted and it still wouldn’t change a goddamn thing.
He put his hands in his pockets and felt the work order. He could just see the transformer from here, almost hidden behind a bank of scrub brush about twenty feet away. It’d been giving off some weird readings lately and he was supposed to run a check on it with his instruments, try to hunt down the anomaly if there, in fact, was one. He turned back to the truck and snapped open the wrap-around toolbox. DEMCO had every damn gadget in the world back here at his disposal and it almost made him feel important again, but only for a second. And then it was gone and he was just another number, busting his hump for a bi-weekly paycheck.
In the midst of this melancholy the lid of the toolbox slammed down on his fingers and he howled loud and strong. In the process he ripped his fingers free and left most of the nail from his right middle finger somewhere in the box. It hurt like ten bastards and he gripped it, tears welling in his eyes, cursing under his breath as he squinted to see the large drops of blood spattering to the dirt. Making crazy little patterns there.
“Ohyoumotherfuckingsonofabitch!” he yelled and grimaced, his face pointed up at the sun. He almost dared not look. Blood always made him woozy and the damn finger already felt like a balloon getting ready to sail away. He swallowed back the nausea and tried to focus on the cause. He remembered the sudden claustrophobic chill and looked around, his mind momentarily free from the pain. Then it washed back in a wave. He closed his eyes, counted to ten, tried to steady his breathing. When he opened them he felt better. The blood wasn’t dripping anymore. The pain was choking back to a more manageable place. He squeezed his lips together and decided to take a look. Held his hand up like a claw and didn’t feel his bile rise. Yeah it hurt like hell, but it didn’t look too bad. Most of the nail had been clipped away but there wasn’t any bone showing or anything like that. There was a First Aid kit behind the driver’s seat (standard issue from a company that liked to brag about its safety record) and there were plenty of band-aids.
But that still didn’t explain…
He turned slowly in a circle. Holding his hand up. Trying to forget about the terrible throbbing. Because something wasn’t right. He had no idea why but something was…not…right.
Something was watching him. He did another slow turn, taking his time now that the pain had abated somewhat. Nothing stirred in the tall grass that grew alongside the road. For just a moment there he felt like a child again, afraid of some nameless something in the dark. It made him ashamed. Here he was, a grown man, jumping at shadows, and even this figure was ridiculous. The sun could not have been brighter. Even now it boiled down, running a rivulet of sweat down his back. Trying to draw his moisture up to the clouds that floated gently overhead. He heard a small laugh escape his lips. Looked again at his hand. Shook the wet droplets of blood free and held it closer. No, it wasn’t really that bad. Of course, he’d lose the nail, or what was left of it; that was a given, but weirdly, now, that seemed a good thing. Funny. Not ha, ha funny but worth a laugh all the same.
He shook his head and walked over to the truck. Opened the door and rummaged around behind the seat for the First Aid kit. Using his good hand he pulled it out from underneath the seat, set it down on the running board, and popped the top. Two band-aids later and a dollop of Neosporin and he felt himself again. He’d almost forgotten the chill and cursed his clumsiness.
There was still the work order.
He was new to the job and, experience or not, it wouldn’t look good to go running back to the shop with a bandaged finger claiming he was done for the day. This was a new, less understanding, world he inhabited. “Okay,” he said. He reached in his pocket again and withdrew the order. Pressed it out flat on the seat and read it through one more time. “Okay,” he said again. “No time like the present.”
He grabbed the toolbox he kept beside him at all times and made his way back toward the transformer. Ten feet away he stopped. “Fuck a truckload of monkeys,” he whispered under his breath. The transformer was new enough and sitting high and dry on a concrete slab that extended out about three inches past the metal enclosure box on all sides but its placement was terrible. The whole area was awash in mud, right up to the top of the concrete and extending out to the tips of his boots where he stood. He shook his head and moved forward, splashing over to the concrete pad. There was no room to work and stand. He’d have to keep one foot in the mud while he ran the checklist. It seemed his finger began to throb a little more as he stood there. He set the toolbox down on the pad and pulled the company key from his pocket.
He stuck it into the lock and turned…tried to turn it. Stuck. Motherfuck. He put his bad hand on the top of the box and leaned in to it. Sweat ran into his eyes and his wet foot squelched back in the mud. Cool water was edging into his work boot by the time he finally got the damn thing to let go and when it did he jerked it back violently, leaving the shop key in the lock. It’d be just his luck the goddamn thing would fall ou
t into the mud and he’d have to spend the next half hour panning through to find the motherfucker. His shirt was drenched, his hands slick with sweat.
Before him were roughly a godzillion wires and circuits running every which way. He squatted down on his haunches and looked at the schematics embossed in shiny white letters on their black background. This was going to take awhile. Like it or not. He spat on the concrete pad and edged closer to the writing, only aware at the last moment that it was upon him again, that curious, discomfiting feeling of being watched. Only this time much worse.
He was just beginning to turn around (the hair standing up on his neck all the way up to the base of his head) when he saw the shadow and felt a monstrous shove from behind. His foot slipped out in the mud and he lurched forward, his hands unconsciously shoved out in front of him to break his fall. He fell into the High Voltage box, realizing all too late it was over for him a millisecond before making contact.
He never heard the incredible whomping boom, never noticed his hair frying on his head as his eyeballs exploded, the force carrying him completely over the mud puddle and landing him flat and smoking in a band of weeds growing close by.
And at that moment all the power in every house on Leszno’s Farm went as dead as the body that was just then beginning to ignite the weeds ten feet away from the blown transformer.