by Joe Meno
“What happened to your cheek?” she asked, staring at me.
“I got hurt at work,” I said, which was both a lie and not a lie.
“Thank God I don’t like you for your looks,” she joked.
“Thank God,” I said.
“Take my bra in your mouth and pull,” Charlene giggled, pressing her chest to my face. I shrugged my shoulders and removed it with my teeth. There was the smoothest softest plane of flesh I had ever seen. There was something there that lit a fire under all my skin, that made all my past disappear, that made me think I could do just about anything as long as she was close by.
Charlene managed to keep a permanent smile on my old tired face. Even when she wasn’t beside me. Even when her sweet perfume wasn’t in the air and her kiss wasn’t close by.
Then there was a thing or two that felt kind of out of place about the whole blessed thing. Mostly, Earl Peet’s sturdy white fists slamming into my teeth.
The Gas-N-Go gave me a minimal warning sign. I finished stocking the sundries and cookies and crackers shelf and hopped on back behind the counter, when the tiny silver bell above the door gave a little ring. I turned and stared right into Earl Peet’s face.
“You’ve been with Charlene,” Earl grunted, shaking his head. “I told you what would happen if you saw her again.”
“Christ, Earl, she’s a grown woman. She can see whoever the hell she wants to see.”
“Naw, you got her all confused. She don’t know if she’s coming or going.”
“I don’t think Charlene would see it like that. I think she’d say something about you not knowing when something’s over.”
“That so?” Earl grinned, turning his loose fingers into steady white fists.
“Maybe not.” I smiled. “Maybe I don’t know her so well.”
I began looking behind the counter for something to defend myself with. There was the old .22 stashed under the cash register drawer. But shooting him would only create more problems for myself, one of which would be the certain end of the romance between me and Charlene.
“Come on out from around that counter,” Earl muttered, looking me hard in the eyes.
“Christ, Earl, we already seem to know how this is all gonna end. Mostly with more of my teeth on the floor. Don’t you think we can settle this some other way?”
“No,” Earl grunted. “Now come on out from behind there.”
“I’m working here, Earl, I got a gas station to run. Can’t you come back some other time?”
Earl lunged for me and grabbed hold of my blue work shirt, gripping it hard. Then he spat right in my goddamn face. There was something so sad, so pitiful stocked-up there in his eyes. Hurt, I guess.
“Now you come out and around before I tear you and this place all up.”
I nodded, then reached for the pistol and shoved it right in his face. “Get the hell out of my store.”
Earl didn’t move at all. He stared right at me from over the barrel of the gun, looking at me hard with those cold black eyes, shaking his head real slow.
“I ain’t afraid of dying, Luce Lemay. You should know that now. But you oughta be afraid to go anywhere without that goddamn gun.”
“Get the hell out,” I mumbled, still holding the gun to his forehead. “Don’t come on back, either. We don’t appreciate your business.”
He stared at me hard once more, then turned and walked out through the double glass doors. He left behind a notion that this was the beginning of something worse.
It all hit me like a head-on collision as I walked on home alone, humming to calm myself. I saw the headlights coming from down the road.
There was nowhere to run. That road was long and straight and narrow, and as soon as I made for the shoulder I realized it was just as flat and plain as the highway itself.
I closed my eyes and the pickup’s engine roared and then I felt the side of the front fender slam hard into the back of my left knee, knocking me clear off my feet. I rolled along my face and side of my head in the dust. The pickup braked and parked cockeyed along the road, and then sped off. I lay there a long while, holding my sore side, unable to move.
I made it on home and crashed through my door and fell beside my bed, hitting my head on the floor with my face. Then Junior came in right away and stood over me, mumbling something, lifting me up. All I could say was that intolerable name.
“Earl Peet.” I coughed. “Earl Peet.”
Junior helped me into my bed and laid a cold rag on my face and took off my shoes and closed the door and turned out the light. Then he grabbed his tools from his room and took a little walk all alone in the dark.
He was the best friend any man could have.
He placed the claw-hammer against that shiny silver door handle and pried it off, catching it in his huge white palm.
He put the ratchet against the bolt on the door and turned.
It began to come undone right in his own hands.
He went right to work and opened the door and slipped the gear into neutral, then gave that red pickup a push. He pushed it all the way out and down the street, then behind the Fleckens’s woodshed way out in the back of their property, all alone, shaded by the weeping willows in the dark. Then he took it apart. He took the whole fucking thing apart. He worked all night, with the hammer and ratchet and wrench and his tools, then left a message in Earl Peet’s yard using some black rubber hoses and part of the grill and some of the transmission and radiator parts and the muffler and some bent wheel rims. He left a message there in the dark using the oil from Earl Peet’s red pickup truck, left it right along his gray driveway in huge black letters that fucker would be able to read.
HE
WITHOUT
SIN
When that bastard Earl stepped out of his yard to go to work, his whole face sunk right in and he fell to his knees, shaking his head.
“No,” he whispered. His pretty red truck was gone. In the space where it had been parked there was nothing but torn-up truck parts.
I wish I could have seen his slack-jawed face.
It was right then, dreaming of Earl gawking at the truck parts on his lawn, that I was sure Junior Breen was the most loyal, truest man I would ever know. Hell, that big fool was on parole, too. But he hadn’t cared. He had seen me, had done a thing for me without thinking. Without thinking, he had risked being sent back behind bars.
If anyone I knew deserved something sweet and true, it was him.
Three days later, it arrived. I stepped out of the Gas-NGo and smiled, staring at one of the prettiest sights I had ever seen.
There was ol’ Junior behind the wheel of the most beautiful car I could dream.
It was a big black Monte Carlo SS, maybe an ’86 or ’87, with the roaring 305 V8 and glasspacks underneath and huge silver rims, jacked up in the back like a real hot rod, kicking up dust and exhaust where it was parked between the Number 2 and Number 4 pumps.
“Sweet mother of God,” I mumbled over my dry gums. “Now that is a goddamn car.”
Junior just grinned and gunned the engine some more, listening to it growl like a jungle cat.
“How the hell did you afford that?” I asked.
“I didn’t,” he mumbled. “I’m taking it for a test ride.”
“A test ride?”
“Sure, sure. Mr. Dulaire down there at the dealership let me take it for a spin.”
“He let you take it for a spin?” I muttered.
“Told him I was new in town and just bought a farm a few miles away.”
“You thinking of buying a car?”
“Nope.” Junior smiled. “Just saw it sitting there on the lot and it reminded me of a car I wanted when I was seventeen.”
“Hell yeah it does. This is the goddamn car every seventeen-year-old kid would want.” I ran my hand along the smooth black hood, feeling it glisten under my skin.
“This car is prettier than most girls in town.” I grinned.
“Sure is.” Junior smile
d. “Hey, do you wanna go for a ride?” he asked, revving the engine again.
“A ride …?” I mumbled. “What about the gas station here?”
“Heck, ol’ Clutch won’t mind if you take a little break. Five minutes in the sweetest ride of your life.”
I gave a little chuckle and pulled down my cap and stared at Junior there. Behind that wheel, he was a changed man. He was free. You could nearly see it in his face. His blue eyes were shining bright and his teeth were stuck together in the biggest smile I’d ever seen him make.
“Guess five minutes won’t hurt,” I said. I went back and locked up the front glass doors. Then I touched that car’s silver handle and got on in and felt myself disappear right there.
Junior took it out on the highway and we tooled along, taking 101, spinning past all the farms and fields and barns out there, blowing past it all.
“This car is hell on wheels,” I howled, holding my head out the passenger window. “It’s a goddamn hell on wheels!”
Junior nodded and smiled warmly to himself. Then his eyes got dark and he mumbled something to himself.
“This is what it must feel like to be free.”
We cut back down the highway and along La Harpie Road past the cemetery gates and those poor sleeping souls and then straight through downtown, the two of us fool ex-cons on parade in the most magnificent car of all time, driving past all the gawkers and needle-eyed gossipers with the biggest smiles either of us ever wore. Then Junior hit the gas and we were off again and back out on La Harpie Road heading toward the Gas-N-Go, and then he blew right past, past that beatific little filling station there like he was blowing right into the future, blowing alongside it all and straight ahead, the both of us moving fast.
This car was fast.
This car was maybe fast enough to outrun all of our pasts. Junior spun the car around and headed back.
“How much does this baby cost?” I shouted, leaping out in front of the Gas-N-Go as soon as Junior came to a stop.
“Too much.” Junior frowned.
“Too much? How much? How much could it cost?”
“Five grand.” He sulked.
“Five grand?! We can get five grand!”
“All I got is three,” Junior mumbled. “I don’t wanna wait another eight months to save up the rest of the cash.”
“What about a loan?” I asked. “Maybe you could get one, huh?”
“Not with my record. Mr. Dulaire’ll take a look at it and have himself a good laugh.”
“Huh,” I muttered. “Huh.”
Then it hit me. “Hell, I’ve got a few hundred bucks. Maybe if we throw in and give him what we got now, he’ll let us pay him the rest as we go.”
Junior stared at me, then smiled.
“This is Charlene’s old man, right?” he asked.
I nodded and spat in the dirt. “What about Clutch? Maybe he can spot us the rest and we can pay him back.”
Junior looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. “Couldn’t hurt to ask.”
“That’s all you’d have to do.”
“You think?” Junior smiled.
“Sure as I’m standing staring at the prettiest car in the world.”
It worked. Clutch lent ol’ Junior and me the rest of the money and the three of us went down there to pick the car up. When goddamn Mr. Dulaire saw me standing there, he nearly dropped the shiny silver keys he was holding.
“What … you taking that car?” he mumbled, rubbing his thick greasy chin.
“Yes, sir.” I smiled. “Maybe I’ll come by and cruise past your house in it tonight.”
Milford Dulaire kept his composure. He straightened his thick brown tie and handed Junior the keys and Clutch the registration and all three of us howled and went outside and started that car up and drove, we just drove on and on until the sun had about set and then we went by the Gas-N-Go to fill that sweet car up again, and at about that time is when I noticed little Monte Slates, the kid who liked tossing water balloons down onto the interstate, sitting out beside the gas station there, crumpled up in a little ball, burying his face into his knees, hiding between a stack of used tires and some old cardboard cases of Valvoline and grease.
“Monte?” I mumbled, standing over him, trying to get a look at his face. “Monte, pal, you OK?”
He shook his head, still crying to himself. He stunk of dirt and sweat and that salty-sweet breath of tears.
“Monte, pal, you wanna talk? You come here to talk it out?”
He shook his head, still keeping his face buried beside his legs.
“Come on now, pal, look at me. You OK?” I asked.
He shook his head, then lifted his chin and I caught sight of something horrible on his face. There was a burn right on his cheek, the exact size of a cigarette tip, bright and red and blistered in his poor white skin. His face looked so old and round and sweet and his little cheeks shimmered with tears, slipping past that little burn.
A cigarette tip.
I gritted my teeth together and shook my head, turning my hands into hard fists at my side.
“He threw me out,” Monte cried, his eyes burning red with tears. “Now I got no place to stay.”
Junior and Clutch came up behind me and kept quiet, looking stern and serious and staring at the cigarette burn on poor Monte’s face. They peered down at the boy, then at me, and then shook their heads slowly, trying not to let Monte see how pitiful, how small and sad his poor face seemed.
“It’s gonna be OK,” I mumbled, trying to think of something better to say. I placed my hand on his tiny shoulder and helped him to his feet. “It’s gonna be OK, pal. You’ll see. We’re gonna take care of this right away.”
Clutch took little Monte’s hand and went over and unlocked the gas station and led him inside and treated him to a nice ice cream sandwich, patting him on the head once or twice, showing the poor kid his old faded tattoo, making that sweet island girl dance longingly as he moved his wrist.
Junior and I got inside that black car and drove right over to the Slates’s place. It still looked rundown as hell. There were insects crawling around and the stink of dirt and ignorance seeping right out of the boards someone had used to build that white porch.
“What do you want to do?” Junior asked me, tightening his lips into a stern frown.
I wasn’t really sure what he was asking. I knew what I was going to do. I walked up on that porch and pounded hard on their faded white front door. Then I heard him. I heard that weak little man wobble to the door, shifting his weight on his black-handled canes, pulling himself along like a broken ol’ snake, until he was at the door and had it unlocked. He stuck his miserable gray face out and gritted his teeth, because he caught sight of me, because he saw the look in my eyes and the darkness in my own face. He didn’t turn away. He didn’t make a sound, just stood there looking back at me like I had just caught him doing something he shouldn’t have ever done.
“Plea …” he muttered, but it was too late. I tore that goddamn door open and slammed my fist into his thin grayed face.
Junior stood over me as I slapped that fucker in his face with the flat of my palm, pinning him down against his dirty floor, slapping as hard as I could because hitting him with my fists might have left a bruise for poor Monte to see. His pink plastic feet struck together, hitting the floor with a hollow, unholy sound, like the teeth in my head were grinding together, like all the blood in my veins was coming apart.
“I warned you!!” I shouted. “I warned you to leave that boy alone!!”
Mr. Slates’s face was beginning to swell around his thin gray lips, his sad yellow eyes were full of tears, he clutched at my shirt, trying to push me off as I slapped him again hard across his mouth. Then I wrapped my hands around his greasy little throat.
“Wait,” Junior whispered. “Just wait.” He pulled me off by my shoulder and backed me away. Mr. Slates lay still on the floor, wiping the blood from his teeth.
“Charity …” Junior whispe
red, shaking his head. “Charity …”
He went over and picked Mr. Slates up by the front of his oily blue flannel shirt, then dragged him into the kitchen and threw the bastard hard against the tiny white stove. Then he lit the range. The fire whispered bright blue along the black metal grate. Junior lit the stovetop and turned the gas on up until the flame burned there bright and blue and hot.
He turned to me, and suddenly I could see all the hard things he had ever felt lit up upon his face.
“I will put it right on his skin,” Junior mumbled. “Make sure it is a word he doesn’t forget.”
He grabbed Mr. Slates’s hand and pushed it toward the flame, holding it there as Mr. Slates began to howl and scream and struggle to try to get free, but Junior was too strong and too angry and too full of hate, hate for all the ignorance he had seen, hate for the ignorant things that had been done to people like him and Monte and even me. I just closed my eyes and turned away. I could hear Mr. Slates scream. I stood on the porch and watched as all the neighbors came out to see what was the trouble. Not one of them had noticed Monte’s face? Not one of them had seen that boy sleeping outside, curled up in a ball underneath his dirty white front porch because his father had thrown him out? No, no, it was too hard to believe. Especially in this town.
Junior stepped out on the porch and nodded to me, and I looked back inside and saw Mr. Slates lying there on the floor, moaning and sobbing and holding his hand, and Junior glanced around and saw all the neighbors, blank-eyed and standing on their porches, staring at us and past us into the dirty white house, and he just shook his head and got into the black car and I followed and we pulled away, me feeling like we hadn’t done a thing.
That fire spread from right outside the Slates’s door and from those careless neighborhood eyes right across the hood of the most beautiful car in all the world. Just as me and Junior slept in our beds in the hotel, and poor Monte Slates in a bed in the guest room at Clutch’s house, and Clutch stayed awake all night, watching that boy sleep, afraid the kid might try to run or the law or some vindictive fool might come after him, just as the night passed soundlessly and still and dark in the sky, a fire was lit and swallowed Junior’s and mine and Clutch’s brand-new car in flames.