A-Sides
Page 31
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Charlie Loflin, Joey Green, and Jim Thompson were huddled around Joey’s 1990 Saturn, sweltering in the summer heat and humidity. The shade of the Persimmon tree was better than nothing, but it did nothing to curb the stickiness. You tried to ignore it, but you never really got used to the bugs flitting around, and the biting flies landing on your neck and drawing blood the second you were distracted enough not to swat at them. It was rumored among the town’s people that these three seventeen-year-old future MENSA members between them might have been able to marshal enough brains to come up with the idea of hijacking a freight train to Cuba. Even at that, it was generally agreed that Charlie was the brightest bulb in the dim lot, while Jim was a smoldering powder keg that was best left alone. Written large in his ill-fated stars- seen in the hard, faraway glitter in his eyes- was a destiny of going out in a blaze of, if not importance, at least fury. People said you could almost hear the soft sizzle of the fuse burning towards ignition and when the day came that he blew up you just didn’t want to be anywhere near him. Joey had been cast by the town’s people into the unhappy role of Dog Villain, a hulking jock whose life experience could be boiled down, in decreasing order of importance, to three items: “Duh…. foo’ball….sex…. wimmin’.”
The car’s hood was up and Charlie was greasy up to his eyes. Joey helicoptered around him anxiously, while Jim stood slightly to the side, aloof, his eyes secret behind his mirrored sunglasses.
Charlie straightened up with a rectangular, plastic box with a wire connector on it in his hands. He snapped the plastic cover off, inspected the innards briefly, then pulled out a small, black rubber orifice which was plugged with grease and dirt. He blew through the orifice, then ran a wire through it, clearing it out. He did all this silently before reassembling the box and replacing it.
“Start her up,” he told Joey.
Joey climbed in and fired the engine up, noting with some surprise that the engine idled steadily, not racing up and down as it had so worrisomely before.
Charlie smiled with grim satisfaction and fished a cigarette out of the open pack lying on the car’s fender. He popped it into his mouth and lit it just as a bead of sweat dropped from his forehead and turned his non-filtered cigarette into a pulpy mass. He sighed and lit another.
“Just your MAP sensor plugged up,” he said to Joey. He took a long drag on his cigarette and gestured at Joey to help himself to one.
Joey reached over and snagged a cigarette. He fished in his pockets searching for matches and came up with something that looked like an origami napkin that had been run through a washing machine.
Joey looked helplessly at Charlie who sighed again and handed over his lighter. Jim took the lull as an opportunity to remove his sodden baseball cap and wipe his forehead, leaving a smear of grease. Jim had remained silent, a brooding, menacing obelisk as always, and the smear of grease on his forehead put Charlie in mind of the Mark of Cain. Charlie’s Sunday school lessons from long ago had been close to mind for the past several days, because he knew hard times were ahead, and redemption might be all that was left for them.
Charlie leaned against the car, taking advantage of the Persimmon tree’s shade. The three of them sat in silence for a while, perhaps thinking of what had happened a couple of nights ago, and wondering if they would ever be free of it.
Joey switched off the car ignition. The cooling engine started to tick almost immediately.
“I heard,” Joey said into the new silence, “about what Heebie did to your brother. Is it true?”
Charlie looked narrowly at Joey, disturbed that Joey would bring the subject up. The incident had been almost a month ago and his little brother, like all young kids, had rebounded as if nothing had happened. The bloody nose and bruises might have happened to some other kid.
“Yeah, it’s true.” He looked down at his greasy fingernails. He thought about how he could never get all the grease out from under them or from around the cuticles. No way to get your hands clean.
“Hurt ‘im bad?”
“No. Not too bad. He got a bloody nose and a hell of a black eye, but nothing broken.”
“Man, that’s bad enough. A grown man ain’t got no business beatin’ up on a little kid like that, it don’t matter what he done. Why didn’t your old man have him thrown in jail?”
“Shit, the cops gave him some dog and monkey show about how Heebie’s just a dummy and didn’t know what he was doing and how would you like it if Timmy had to go to juvie for playing on the trains.”
“What are you gonna do about it,” Joey asked.
Charlie didn’t have it in him to filter his amazed disbelief.
“Are you brain-damaged,” he asked, “or just as stupid as a lard milkshake? Do you really think it’s a good idea for me- for any of us- to be puttin’ ourselves in the cop’s cross-hairs right now?”
“Well, you can’t just let him get away with it. This ain’t the first time Heebie’s gone off his rocker.”
“What the fuck you think I should do,” Charlie asked, less a question than a testy statement. “Should I go over to the boneyard where he works and beat the shit out of him and say ‘this is for pulling my little brother off the train and keeping him from getting his head cut off’? Is that what you want me to do, huh?”
“Hey, man,” Joey said timidly. He backed up a step even though he was four inches taller and seventy pounds heavier. “Cool out, I didn’t mean to piss you off.”
Charlie ignored him, advancing on him and pinning him with an accusing finger.
“You got a lotta room to talk about right and wrong after that stunt you pulled the other night, and the way you dragged me into it. You’ve got no right to lecture me about any fucking thing. You got that?”
Jim shifted himself from his stoic silence and interjected himself like a cool and bombproof brick wall between Joey and Charlie.
“Cool off, Charlie. Joey didn’t mean nothin’.”
Charlie took his white hot gaze from Joey and glared at Jim. For a second it seemed he might launch into Jim and, had it been anyone but Jim, he might have. In that capricious moment the cloud that had hung over their heads for the past four days threatened to burst and rain down not water but knives. Jim stood resolutely, staring Charlie hard in the eye, though all Charlie could really see was his haggard face reflected in Jim’s mirrored lenses. After an endless second, Charlie swallowed hard and lowered his head.
“Sorry,” Charlie muttered. The situation had been defanged for the moment, but all three of them knew it was only a holding action. Hard times were ahead, but none knew how hard.