Tear It Down

by Nick Petrie

  “Nice truck,” said the kid. Looking not at the truck, but at Peter.

  “1968 Chevy C20,” said Peter. “Restored it myself. Very few original parts.”

  The kid was maybe five feet six, built like a string bean, skin so dark it seemed almost blue. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen, but his hollowed-out face looked like it had seen way too much already. He wore a black Fender guitar T-shirt, dirty knee-length denim shorts, and enormous no-name sneakers with a ragged hole above the left big toe.

  His T-shirt was soaked at his chest and shoulders, the slender collarbones showing through the thin fabric. He was a good-looking kid, but his face shone with sweat and something else, something darker. Like he was seeing ghosts.

  In his right hand, the kid held a black plastic trash bag by its bunched-up neck. His left hand was tucked into his back pocket, out of sight.

  He looked the truck up and down. The shining green paint, the mahogany cargo box built onto the back. “How’s it drive?”

  “It’s a little slow to get going,” said Peter. “It definitely doesn’t corner very well. But once you get it up to speed, it’ll go seventy-five pretty much forever. I’m Peter, by the way. What’s your name?”

  The pump handle clicked, the tank full. Peter turned, put the nozzle back in its socket, and took his gas cap off the top of the pump. When he turned back to the truck, the kid had taken his left hand out of his back pocket and pointed a snub-nosed revolver loosely at Peter’s chest.

  Lewis, as usual, had been right about finding a gun.

  In some neighborhoods, it was just a matter of time.

  The revolver was a smaller caliber, maybe a .32, and badly neglected. The bluing was almost gone from the steel, and rust bloomed at the barrel, frame, and cylinder. Peter didn’t want to think about the last time it had been cleaned. The effective range of the two-inch barrel was about ten feet. It wasn’t a weapon he wanted.

  “Hands up,” said the kid. “Don’t make me shoot you. I’m taking your truck.”

  Peter sighed and measured the space between them.

  He had to admit, the kid had pretty good tactics, whether by accident or on purpose. He’d caught Peter in the narrow aisle between the vehicle and the pump island. The trash can and the squeegee bin filled the space between the two pumps, so he couldn’t go sideways without crawling under his pickup or climbing over a bunch of crap. The only way out was forward, toward the gun, or back, essentially giving up the truck.

  Especially when he’d left his keys in the ignition.

  Peter really liked that old Chevy.

  He screwed the gas cap down tight and held his hands out, elbows bent. “I’d be careful with that little pistol,” he said. “You pull the trigger, you might just blow your hand off.”

  The kid looked Peter in the eye. He was trying for dead-eyed and resolute, but his face still gleamed with sweat, or the thrill of armed robbery, or something else.

  “I pulled this trigger not half an hour ago,” he said. “It’ll put a hole in you just fine.”

  “Okay,” said Peter. He wondered what was in the trash bag. “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  The kid raised his eyebrows, maybe wondering why the white guy wasn’t running away. Clearly, this wasn’t how he was expecting things to go.

  “North Memphis years? Shit, pops, I’m a old man.” Then he shook his head, as if shaking off a fly. “Hell’s the matter with you, Saltine? This ain’t a conversation. This is me stickin’ you up. Now empty your damn pockets and step back before something bad happens to you.”

  “Sure,” said Peter. He took his wallet from his hip pocket and held it out. “Here you go.” Hoping to lure the kid closer. The kid would get distracted, would have to put down that trash bag he was holding on to so tightly. Maybe Peter could get hold of the little gun and nobody would get hurt.

  The kid just shook his head, not taking the bait, not even considering it. A natural.

  “Put it on the seat. Phone and keys, too.”

  Peter tossed his wallet and phone through the truck’s open window. “Keys are in the ignition.”

  “Now start walking.” The kid waved the barrel of the gun in a quick go-away gesture, then pointed it directly at Peter. “I’m not telling you again.”

  The kid was only seven feet away. The gun had a two-inch barrel, and Peter figured even odds it would misfire if the kid pulled the trigger. Even odds again that if it did fire, the round wouldn’t come close to hitting him. At least not someplace important.

  Peter weighed his options. Easiest was to step inside and push away the gun hand and take the kid down with a quick strike to the stomach. Most people wouldn’t react quickly when faced with an unexpected attack, and most people with guns didn’t think anyone without a gun would make a move. It wouldn’t be difficult to leverage his own hard-earned combat skills against a skinny, untrained kid. Peter would probably have to pull his punch not to kill the kid outright.

  On the other hand, Peter had no illusions about the lethality of youth and inexperience. He’d fought against armed teenagers in two different war zones. Anyone could pull a trigger. This particular kid had decent tactical instincts, and he was wound up very tight.

  Peter had no desire to get killed at a Texaco in Memphis, certainly not over a goddamn pickup truck, no matter how he felt about the Chevy.

  If the bullet didn’t kill him, June Cassidy would.

  He certainly wasn’t wearing the armored vest she’d bought him. It was still in the back of the truck.

  He’d have to hurt the kid. He didn’t want to.

  Something else held him back, too. Something in that young face, something ravaged and desperate. The kid hadn’t lost his soul, not yet. He wasn’t dead inside. He should have been learning geometry, trying to kiss a girl. Not taking this wrong road, carjacking a stranger.

  “Listen,” said Peter. “You ever actually shoot somebody? It’s not like the movies.”

  “You’ll be my first,” said the kid, his face shining brighter now. Stress and sweat and the other thing, whatever it was. “Prob’ly not the last, the way this day’s going.”

  “Pulling the trigger isn’t the hard part,” said Peter. “It’s what comes after. What you see when you’re asleep.”

  The kid’s eyes slipped to the side, just for a moment, and Peter caught a glimpse of what lay beneath the attitude. Some hidden wreckage the kid was managing to float over the top of, at least for the moment.

  When the kid could no longer stay afloat, things would be bad for him, Peter could tell. He’d seen it before, too many times, although never on someone so young.

  Peter had been there himself.

  The kid’s eyes locked onto Peter again, and his face changed. Desperation hardened into resolve. His pupils dilated with the spike of adrenaline.

  Peter saw the moves he’d have to make.

  He saw the way it would end for the kid.

  He made a decision.

  “Okay.” He raised his hands higher. “I’m going.” He stepped backward and away. “Just do me a favor, please? Be nice to my truck?”

  “My truck now, Saltine. Keep walking.” The gun still pointed at Peter, the kid opened the driver’s door with the hand holding the garbage bag, then slung the bag inside. Peter could hear a complicated clank as it landed.

  “Damn.” The kid’s voice, quieter. Talking to himself. “Three pedals?”

  Peter walked around the rear of the truck toward the passenger side. Keeping his distance from the open window, he said, “It’s a stick shift.”

  The kid looked at him, muscles jumping in his jaw. “What’s that?”

  “Manual transmission, not automatic,” said Peter. “You don’t know how to drive stick?”

  The kid pointed the gun at Peter. It was still in his left hand. “Tell me how.”


  Peter suppressed a smile. “You’re stealing my truck and you want me to teach you to drive it?”

  “Forget it,” said the kid, his face a mask. “I’ll figure it out. You best keep walking.”

  He turned the key in the ignition and the truck lurched forward with a crunch. The engine didn’t start.

  “Wait, shit,” said Peter, walking closer. “Okay. The left pedal is the clutch. When the truck is in gear, you have to push down on the clutch to start the engine.”

  “What about the other pedals?”

  “Gas and brake, just like a regular car. Pushing down on the clutch disconnects the engine from the wheels. So push the clutch and turn the key and give it some gas.”

  The kid did as he was told and the big V8 roared to life. He gunned the perfectly tuned engine with a faint smile on his face, something changing there. The truck began to drift slowly forward with no foot on the brake, the concrete pitched slightly toward the street.

  “Now I let up on the clutch, give it some gas, and go, right?”

  Peter imagined his engine overheating, seized pistons, the gaskets blown. He put his hand across his face. “Not quite,” he said, following the drifting truck. “You’re in first gear now. You have to shift into second if you want to go faster than five or ten miles an hour.” The glass ball holding the hula dancer that topped the Chevy’s shift lever didn’t have the shift pattern printed on it. “Once you’re up to speed, push in the clutch and move the lever down, staying to the left, for second gear. That’ll get you to fifteen or twenty miles an hour.”

  Peter liked how the kid’s face turned younger, some of the loss and desperation falling away as he thought his way through the problem. “How many gears total?”

  “Four plus reverse. Push in the clutch and pull the shifter out of gear and it’ll find neutral. Straight up from neutral is third, for city streets. Straight down is fourth, for the highway.”

  The kid frowned at the dashboard. “Man, this piece of shit don’t even have a radio.”

  Peter walked beside the truck as it drifted forward faster. “Why don’t you let me drive? I’ll take you wherever you want to go, no questions asked.”

  The kid looked at him sharply. The revolver came up again. “You must be stupid or something. Can’t you see I got a pistol in my hand?”

  What exactly was wrong with Peter was a much longer conversation than he was willing to have at that moment. A whole lot of people had pointed guns at him over the years. He didn’t exactly enjoy it, but maybe it didn’t bother him the way it should, either. Peter had a complicated relationship with adrenaline.

  Regardless, there was something about this damn kid, something Peter didn’t want to let go of. What was in that black plastic garbage bag, anyway?

  “I’m just trying to keep my transmission from turning into shrapnel,” he said. “Take my wallet, take my phone. Shoot me whenever you want. Just let me drive.”

  “Man, why you want to drive something that’s so hard to work?”

  “It’s the hard that makes it worth doing,” said Peter. “And it’s not that hard, really. Just takes practice, like anything else.”

  “Is that all? Practice? Shit,” said the kid. “Guess I better get started.”

  He hit the gas and popped the clutch and somehow managed to chirp the tires on the Texaco concrete.

  As the truck rolled toward the road, Peter heard the distinctive sound of grinding gears as the kid searched for second and found it. He was in third by the time he came to the intersection, and didn’t even slow for the light as he rounded the corner.

  Peter had never told him where to find reverse.

  Something told him the kid wasn’t going to need it.

  12

  Peter turned toward the little brick Texaco building.

  He was thinking about Wanda, and the Dumpster coming to her house, and the lumber delivery, and the fact that all his tools were in the back of his truck, when he noticed something on the pavement.

  Right about where the kid had been standing when he took the gun out of his back pocket.

  He bent down and plucked it off the pavement. A deep blue guitar pick. Slightly bent from use, the name printed on it worn and faded. JERRY’S GUITARS, MEMPHIS, TN.

  The kid had been wearing a Fender T-shirt.

  Maybe the kid was a musician.

  When he’d asked the kid how old he was, he’d said something about North Memphis years.

  It was somewhere to start, anyway. Peter put the pick in his pocket.

  How many places could there be to play music in Memphis, anyway?

  Right. He’d just start knocking on doors, looking for young black guitar players.

  This was not what he needed right now.

  * * *

  • • •

  He opened the door of the little convenience store, and the white static crackled up his brainstem. The flickering fluorescent lights and the bright, crowded shelves always set him off. His allergy to the modern world. He took a deep breath, then let it out and stepped inside.

  He saw the usual supplies for beater cars, including motor oil, brake fluid, and radiator-leak-stopper, along with a wide variety of synthetic non-food snacks that would probably outlast the zombie apocalypse. The sales counter was next to the door behind a thick slab of scarred security plastic that had already seen its share of abuse. A curved steel tray was set into the counter to pass your money or card through.

  Behind the battered security plastic, amid the pump controls and security monitors and lottery ticket dispensers and high racks of cigarettes, stood a middle-aged man with a sagging brown face and a Grizzlies sweatshirt worn thin with washing. Cradled in his arms was an over/under shotgun with a scarred wooden stock, old and cheap and perfectly functional.

  The man looked at Peter, a smile implied in the lines around his eyes. “That’s why you pay for gas in advance.” He had a slight lisp.

  Peter tipped his chin at the shotgun. “You couldn’t come out there and give me a hand?”

  “Oh, no,” said the man, shaking his head. “You chase one off, they just come back in a mob, shoot the place up. Memphis ain’t playin’, son.”

  A small television was turned on behind him. It showed a row of police vehicles with lights flashing parked at a large pale building with the Macy’s logo. The crawl at the bottom of the screen read, Breaking News: Shooting at Wolfchase Galleria, two dead.

  “I’m starting to get that idea,” said Peter. “Can I borrow your phone?”

  “Against company rules,” said the man. He glanced out the window toward the road, then back to Peter. “They let me call 911, if you want. Nobody got hurt, so the police might be a while.”

  Peter shook his head. He’d need a police report to collect on his insurance, but that wouldn’t bring back the truck he’d found in a barn in central California and spent years restoring between deployments. The project had kept him sane, more or less, and that old Chevy had taken him a lot of places.

  In a way, it was his home.

  He’d track it down himself. Hopefully before that kid sold off all his tools.

  “You ever see that kid before? You know where he hangs out?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  The man cracked a gap-toothed smile, more space than teeth, which explained the lisp. “Depends,” he said. “But truth is I never got a look at him.” He gestured at the monitors. “I mighta got him on the cameras, but they’re acting up again.” He shot another glance out the window. “You want to call the police, we can check the tapes.”

  It was strange, but Peter didn’t want to get the kid in trouble. He had the feeling the kid had enough problems already. Peter just wanted his truck back. “Don’t bother. But thanks.”

  “You really don’t want
the police?”

  Peter stopped at the door. “You think they’ll help?”

  The man shook his head. “That ain’t my experience.”

  “How about a pay phone?”

  “They all gone,” he said. “Here’s what you do. Walk out that door and down to the stop sign. Turn right just like that jacker did. In eight or ten blocks, you’ll come to a place called the Wet Spot.”

  “That’s really what it’s called? The Wet Spot?”

  “They sell ice cream, soda, beer, you know. Tell ’em Fat Rudy sent you, maybe they let you use the phone.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” the man said. “Piece of advice. They might be some hard people there. Act respectful, you’ll do fine.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Outside, the air was thick and threatening rain. Spring in Tennessee. Peter strode across the wide concrete apron toward the road.

  Go to Memphis, June had said. Eat some barbecue, listen to music, have some fun.

  So far there had been no barbecue and no music.

  Was it wrong that he might be having fun?

  13

  On Watkins, the sidewalk was hard up against the street. Peter had barely reached the crossing at Delano when a sleek black Mercedes SUV, freshly washed, coasted through the red light, pulled a perfectly executed U-turn, and pulled up onto the sidewalk beside him.

  A door opened and a brown-skinned man watched Peter from the back seat. He had round cheeks and small ears and a neat tuft of beard at his chin. His hair was crisp on the sides and stylishly shaggy on top. His smile showed a pair of shining gold eyeteeth, slick with saliva. His eyes bulged slightly, like he had a thyroid condition.

  “You need a ride, friend? Look like you might be a little lost.”

  Peter had sidestepped automatically when the big SUV bumped up on the sidewalk, so he stood on the Texaco apron again, looking over a bus-stop bench at the other man.