Stealing Sturgis

by Matthew Iden

  Everyone was sure their mechanic would screw them, given half a chance, and he had to admit the reputation was deserved by some. There was a guy that ran a shop in Grundy who would take a shock from an old lady’s car, bring it to her in the waiting room, and push on it real hard. He’d go red in the face trying to make the rod go into the shock, saying, “See how stubborn that thing is? Now can you imagine going down the road at sixty and it taking that long?” He’d scare her into paying five hundred dollars to “fix” it, when all along that’s exactly what a shock was supposed to do.

  But that was some con man in Grundy. The Baylor family had been in Brumley as long as the Howells. Lee had hoped that fact, and a couple years of honest service—along with charging near rock bottom for all of his jobs—would show people where he stood.

  Apparently not. It had taken three days, even with Randy’s help, to finish the job and it had set him back on two other cars waiting on the lot. If he was lucky, he stood to make about a hundred dollars on the deal. And still, Lucinda Howell was trying to talk him out of that much profit, saying he was all but a thief.

  Randy’s scheme kept resurfacing as he sat on the phone, eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose while trying to remind Mrs. Howell of the price they’d agreed upon. Finally, unable to take it anymore, Lee said, “If you want your car back, the price is eight hundred dollars. Pay it, or I’ll put your Camry at the front of my lot with a For Sale sign on it,” and slammed the phone down.

  Lord, but people were a pain. He told Randy to lock the place and knock off early, then he grabbed his keys, hopped in the tow truck, and headed down Palmer Street. He needed to think. Soon he was on the edge of town, turning onto Backlick Road in a cloud of dust, racing along like he had in high school. Thinking about school days brought a small smile to his face, the first time he’d smiled in weeks. He and his buddies used to raise hell on Friday nights, pull some stupid stunt, and have to outrun cops who were hardly older than they were. They got caught a few times for drinking or making too much noise.

  Getting busted back then meant getting chewed out twice. The first was from Tom Bradley, the sheriff, whose cross-eyed look was hard to take seriously. He’d wag a finger at them and send them off with a warning. The second, worse than the first, was the hiding he got from his mother, her cold gray eyes making him want to shrivel up like a leaf and blow away. Later, when it was just him and his grandpa, it was no big thing. His grandfather would try to look stern and ask him if he’d hurt anyone or damaged anyone’s property. Lee would say, “No, sir” and then his grandpa would lean in with an eager look and with a whisper ask if he’d been drinking shine and, if so, where’d he get it? Lee would have to admit they’d been drinking Lone Star, possibly the worst beer ever made. Grandpa would get a disgusted look on his old face and shoo him away with a flap of his hands.

  What about now, Lee? he asked himself. You going to get a chewing out for stealing a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of motorcycles? Tom Bradley going to come out of retirement and give you a lecture on grand theft auto? He imagined Grandpa asking him if he’d done any property damage. No, sir, no damage. I just stole their bikes is all, sold them on the black market so I could keep my house and business. More likely, they’d get caught and he’d do hard time, just like Randy. He could see himself walking Palmer Street in ten years: dusty sneakers, carrying a duffel bag, heading for Snyder’s old garage—his old garage—to see if anyone would be willing to give an ex-con his old job back.

  Lee drove on and took a right onto Sunflower Road, a country lane so steep it and twisted it gave him room to think about nothing but tight turns and blind curves for a minute.

  What would Randy’s scheme be worth? He’d said those movie stars brought a couple bikes with them to the Rally, each one worth a hundred thousand dollars. No, probably not all of them, but they’d still be worth a bundle. He and Randy could fit four on his trailer, assuming they could even safely steal that many. His share might be a hundred thousand dollars. What would he do with a hundred thousand dollars? Well, not quite that much; that was the legal auction rate, probably. Selling them illegally, they’d be lucky to see a little more than half that.

  Okay, say half that. Fifty thousand dollars. It sounded like a ridiculously small amount of money. Cops and robbers shows made it seem like it wasn’t worth your time if you weren’t trying to steal a million bucks or more. But fifty thousand dollars was a hell of a lot more money than he’d ever seen. That much would pay off the trailer and take a chunk out of what he owed on the garage, too—put him on solid footing for once instead of playing catch-up like he always had. He laughed, a harsh sound. He was contemplating doing ten years of jail time just so he could be at zero, at break-even, a place everyone else seemed to take for granted.

  He made the last turn onto Brumley Mountain Road, a hard right you had to know about or you shot right by it. The truck bounced over familiar ruts and Lee had to slow down to fifteen or twenty in spots to keep it in one piece.

  You couldn’t pay everything off at once, he decided. That would be too obvious. It galled him to think he’d be risking his neck to steal for his future, the irony of having it sitting there in his pocket while he continued to pay interest to the bank on his mortgage, but that would be the only way. Maybe he could pay off the trailer, make like he’d made a fortune selling his Harley. No more Harley, then, but that’d be a small price to pay. He’d bank the rest, maybe in Roanoke; if he did it locally, it wouldn’t be two days before everyone in town knew he’d put a small fortune in his savings account. Anyway, it would be enough to know that that money was there if he needed it, instead of living every day deeper in debt, just like the song.

  He slowed as he crested the final ridge, then took his foot off the brake and let the truck’s momentum take him to an outlook with a view of the entire valley. It was his thinking spot. His grandpa’s house was still there, though not for long. A developer was coming along soon to knock it down and build some kind of mountain retreat or hotel. It was his own fault, selling it after the old man had died. But it had been the only way to get a head start, the only one he thought he’d need. Not quite enough of one, evidently.

  For right now, though, the spot was all his. There was a rock in the back—a cliff, really—that you could sit on and look west towards the Appalachians, the gentle line of the ridge just going on forever. Grandpa’s house was built so high that it appeared to float over the valley where Brumley lay tucked into the folds of the mountains. When things were tough, his grandpa would bring him here, the sky purpling at dusk. Look down there, he’d say, pointing to town, a big hand on Lee’s shoulder. You could just glimpse the First Baptist Church, its white spire pointing at the sky like a rocket. Town Hall was at the other end of Main Street, with the high school nearby, along with some homes and businesses, all of them looking like little matchboxes arranged on a tabletop.

  Them kids bothering you again? his grandpa would say. The ones that get on you about your daddy being gone and your mama having to work? Well, take a look down there. Those kids don’t seem like much now, do they? Whenever you have a care, come here, Lee, and look out over the valley. Or, if you can’t make it, just think about how tiny those buildings are. And remember, the people inside are even smaller.

  Lee smiled, thinking back. When he was fifteen, Lee had started tinkering with his grandfather’s 1955 F-100 and got it to turn over after eight years on blocks. He realized he’d found his calling and, with a little work, talked Donnie Snyder into giving him a job down at the gas station. He’d pumped gas more than he’d worked on cars, but he quietly absorbed everything they were willing to teach him. He supplemented that with training at the local vo-tech, avoiding fights and booze for the most part—a serious young man who knew that he’d be working the day after graduation.

  He thought at that point that he’d been in control, that he’d be directing his path in life. He’d been wrong. Just when you thought you had it figured out, somethin
g came along and set you straight. You’d didn’t have control of anything. In the hospital, his mother—with a wet, racking wheeze—joked that Philip Morris would owe him a bundle of money someday, but how it would barely cover the cost of the cigarettes she’d smoked all those years. Her hand had felt like parchment when he’d held it. His grandfather, broken and tired by the time his little girl had died, slipped away quickly after that, hoping he’d at least helped his grandson into manhood.

  Lee sat on the rock and stared at the valley, knees tucked against his chest. Cars moved along like beetles far below, swallowed by the mountain gaps as they made their way south. His garage was barely visible, a tin-gray box sitting on Palmer Street just taking up space. Lee sat for a long time, feeling the heat, waving the bugs away. Finally, he shook his head and stood, knees popping. He stood still for a moment, memorizing the picture, then stooped, grabbed a stone, and chucked it as far as he could into the valley towards the town. He turned and walked back to his truck, no wiser than when he’d sat down.

  Grandpa’s advice had always been good. Except now he was one of those little people, stuck in one of those tiny boxes.

  Lee slowed down as the ruts in the road rocked the truck gently from left to right. He let his body go with it, one moment bouncing his shoulder off the frame, the next leaning almost all the way over the passenger’s seat. It was six o’clock and the late-afternoon sun sent shafts of light across the road and between the trees, highlighting motes of dust and pollen that hung in the air like sprites. It would stay light for a few more hours, but the sides of the valley were so steep that sundown for most of Brumley was long before the sun actually set, the mountain’s shadow covering the valley in a premature dusk. He headed for home, feeling unsatisfied and unsettled.

  He and Raylene lived in a thirty-year-old Schultz Valiant single-wide trailer in Mandy and Roy Biggins’s trailer park—the “Oasis”—outside of town. There were twenty-seven trailers in the park that were lived in year-round, an RV lot off to one side for the random travelers and birdwatchers, and a meadow for tent campers doing the Appalachian Trail or hobos down on their luck and sitting out their misery.

  The exterior of the trailer was a dirty yellow siding that held on to stains that couldn’t be washed off, and not-quite-white trim around the windows and doors. Once, while cleaning, he’d found the original pamphlet that had come with the trailer, wedged behind a drawer in the kitchen. He had to laugh when he saw the official color of the siding was called “mustard” and the trim, “mayonnaise.” He and Raylene had done what they could with it, planting flowers in raised beds, screwing vinyl lattice to the sides to hide the ugly underbelly of the trailer. Several of the fake shutters had been missing when they’d bought it and Lee hadn’t been able to find any replacements. The trailer didn’t look like a face, like some homes did—windows for eyes, a door for a mouth, and all that. But for some reason the missing shutters gave the trailer a gap-toothed look, like a three-year-old not quite into his full set just yet.

  Lee parked the tow truck next to his pride and joy, a 1984 Harley Softail. He’d bought it for a song from Trey Hanley when he’d gotten married and had to swear off tearing up country roads. Trey had beat the hell out of it, but it wasn’t anything Lee couldn’t fix. Since then he’d taken good care of it.

  He hopped out of the truck and patted the bike, reaching underneath the tarp to check for moisture on the seat. Satisfied, he pulled the tarp down snug and walked to the door, taking time to wave at Mrs. Reynolds who watched everyone through the blinds. Sure enough, they snapped shut when she saw him look her way. He booted the Salinger kids’ bouncy ball back to their fifty square feet of space next door and went inside.

  He sensed trouble as soon as he walked in. Instead of leaping to her feet and squealing, with a big hug for him, Raylene was sprawled on the couch watching TV, a box of Russell Stover chocolates balanced on the cushion beside her. She didn’t bother glancing his way as he came in.

  He tossed his keys on the table and looked at her. She’d gained a little weight around her tummy from eating too much fast food and, apparently, boxed chocolates, but she was still hot stuff, all right. Not more than five-two in her socks, she had strawberry blonde hair and clear blue eyes set a little too far apart. Even though she didn’t like it, he often teased her that she was descended from inbreeding mountain folk. But he couldn’t complain about the rest of her—full lips, pale, almost translucent skin, and an ass that boys in three counties had fought over. Right now she was decked out in a tight little number that said “Daddy’s Little Girl” in pink letters across her chest, which wasn’t bad, either. She had on a pair of matching white short shorts with pink satin trim.

  To break the silence, he said, “You look good enough to eat.” A mistake, based on the look she shot him. He should’ve known better. It didn’t take a genius to see she was steamed about something. He’d bet she was just waiting for him to ask her what was wrong, just to get her going. Or, better yet, putter around the trailer and not say a word, so she could sulk. Looks like he’d broken the rules again. Maybe she was still mad about this morning.

  She spared him a look as she popped a chocolate in her mouth, then turned back to the TV. He sat down at the end of the couch, careful not to sit on her bare feet with their red-painted toes. Raylene was watching Dr. Phil, who was giving bad advice to a woman with an eating disorder.

  Lee said, “You want to turn that down a bit?” Raylene made a face, then pressed the volume button so that it went down two notches. He sighed. Sometimes she was like a two-year-old. “More?”

  Raylene huffed and pressed the off button. “How’s that?”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “You want to tell me what’s bugging you?”

  Raylene picked through the chocolates, studying them, flipping through them with a long, press-on nail. “Man from the bank called today. Said you were late again with the mortgage.”

  A chill ran through him, ending as a hard knot in his belly, like a big fist had closed around his middle. “He say anything else?”

  Raylene found a coconut butter cream truffle and tried it, biting it in half. She wrinkled her nose and put it back in the box. “Nah, I sweet-talked him. ‘Gosh, Mr. Barnes, I didn’t know that. I’m sure Lee put it in the mail. I’ll talk to him about it tonight.’”

  “Dammit,” Lee said and went to get a beer from the fridge. He had to move fried chicken leftovers to one side. “I’ve been waiting for Mrs. Howell’s job to come through, but that old bitty damn near refused to pay today, now that the job’s done.”

  “What’re you going to do about it?”

  “I told her that I was going to sell her car if she didn’t pony up. For Pete’s sake, the lady knew my grandpa. Does she think I’m trying to cheat her out of a couple bucks?”

  “If she paid, is that enough to get us through this month?” Raylene asked, then said, “Is it?” when Lee didn’t answer right away.

  “Almost,” he said, taking a long pull from his beer. Here it comes, he thought.

  “Lee, almost ain’t gonna cut it,” Raylene said, her voice rising. “We’re already living like white trash. Don’t make me move back home before we lose this trailer.”

  He looked at her. “You think I’m not trying?”

  “I think you’re working. I don’t know that you’re trying. You already told me you’re going to make a hundred dollars from that job with Mrs. Howell. Well, Einstein, why don’t you double that? Do that for every job and you might be able to get out of the hole you’re in.”

  Lee noticed she hadn’t said we. “Raylene, I can’t do that. People expect a certain price for certain work. If I raised prices, everyone would know I’d just done it for profit.”

  Raylene threw her hands in the air, her mouth open in mock dismay. “My God. Making a profit. What the hell’s wrong with that, Lee Baylor? Is making a living a sin? I don’t know any commandment that says ‘Thou shalt not make enough money to pay off the mortgage e
ach month,’ do you?”

  “Honey, people around here know me, they know my family back to ought-six. They come to me because they know I’ll give them a fair shake. If I start ripping them off, I’ll lose the little bit of business I do have.”

  “Well, that didn’t stop Mrs. Howell, did it? She knew your grandpappy, but she’s more than happy to keep the money owed you. You said so yourself.”

  Lee gritted his teeth. She had a point. He never could compete with her in an argument, anyway, but this time what she said made sense. But now he was angry and he didn’t feel like giving in. “All right, I’ll think on it.”

  “Think on it? Boy, you better do more than that. I’m telling you now, I’m not going on food stamps and welfare for you. And don’t even think we’re getting married with this state of affairs.”

  “Jesus, Raylene,” he said. He stood and went back into the kitchen. The problem with a trailer, he thought, is that you can’t get away from each other. And they’re built so poorly, you couldn’t even slam a door for fear you’d rip it off its hinges. He rummaged around the fridge and grabbed the bucket of chicken.

  She wasn’t about to stop. “Daddy was right. He said I’d regret moving in with you. I should’ve listened to him.”

  Lee slammed the refrigerator door shut, making the bottles inside clink together. “Enough, Raylene. I said I’ll think on it. And, for your information, I’ve got a plan.”

  She rose to a kneeling position on the couch, eyebrows arched. “A plan? Oh, really. Do tell.”

  “You want sacrifice? You want a decision? You got it. I’m selling the bike.”