Wrecked

by Joe Ide

  “Are you having fun? Because this is getting boring.”

  “What was that other bit? Oh yeah. Taking me into your confidence, telling me your little secrets. Was that supposed to make me feel grown-up and special? Because it didn’t, Gordo. I’m a kid but I’m not a moron—and San Francisco? Really? What were you thinking? That I’d eat a shrimp taco on Fisherman’s Wharf and get horny?” Gordo was staring at the floor, his arms around himself, lips pursed and nodding. She looked at him with loathing wonderment. “What is it you really want? Do you want to be in charge, is that it? Be the man of the world and teach the innocent virgin a thing or two? Blow her mind? Give her her first orgasm?”

  He shook his head and put his palms out. “Okay, Grace—”

  “It’s a fantasy, right? I’m the pretty girlfriend you never had in high school or the bitch that gave it up to the cool guys but not to you? Or maybe you’re just a dirty old man who wants to see some teenage tits.”

  “Are you finished?” he said like what she’d said was nothing of consequence.

  “This shit is fucked up and pitiful, Gordo. You’re fucked up and pitiful and do you want to know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it makes you a pedophile.”

  His head jerked back and he wagged it like a ratchet wrench. “What? No! Now really, Grace, that’s over the line.”

  “You want to fuck a fifteen-year-old kid and I’m over the line?” She went up to him and hooked a finger inside his shirt, her face inches from his. “Do you know what the law calls it, Gordo? They call it sex with a minor. They call it statutory rape.”

  “That’s it!” he said, pissed off. He grabbed her arm and yanked her toward the door. “You’re outta here.” She twisted away.

  “Get off me, asshole.” It was almost five o’clock. They heard Margaret’s car pulling into the driveway.

  “I wonder who that could be?” Grace said.

  “Oh shit!” Gordon said. He hurriedly closed the door and locked it, Mickey’s eyes wild and unseeing. “Okay, okay. Calm down.”

  “I’m as calm as I could be,” Grace said calmly.

  “Gordon?” Margaret called out.

  “I’m going to go out there and you stay here,” he said. Grace kept her gaze on his as she unbuttoned the rest of her buttons. “What are you doing?” he said. “Don’t do that!” He was sweating dark circles under his armpits; a cowlick popped up all by itself.

  “Gordon!” Margaret said sharply. “Where are you? I need you.” Grace’s shirt was all the way open, her sports bra visible.

  “What do you think, Gordo? Hot, huh?”

  Gordon looked like a T. rex had stuck its head in the garage. “Cut it out!” he said.

  “Gordon?” Margaret said, annoyed now. “Are you in there?”

  His voice went up an octave. “J-just a minute, honey.”

  Grace said, “I’m in here too, Mar—” Gordon clamped his hand over her mouth. She laughed at him with her eyes.

  “Shut up,” he whispered. “Are you crazy?”

  “Gordon?” Margaret said. “Is somebody in there with you? Answer me!” Grace peeled his hand away from her mouth.

  “Better answer her, Gordo.”

  “Uh, no, honey. I, uh, I have the game on. I’ll be out in a minute, okay? I’m doing something.”

  “You sure are,” Grace said. Margaret tried the door, rattling the knob.

  “Why is the door locked?”

  “Could you give me a minute, please?” Gordon said. “I’m busy.”

  “Busy with what?” Margaret said heatedly. “Oh God, you’re not doing that again, are you? You are so disgusting.” They heard her walk away.

  Gordon shook his forefinger like a maraca. “That wasn’t funny, Grace. Not funny at all! Now I’m going in the house and I better not hear a word about this ever again.”

  “Sorry, Gordo,” she said. “We’re not done yet. I haven’t told you what I want.”

  “What you want?” He paused a moment and sneered. “Oh, I get it. This is a shakedown, is that it? Well, it’s not going to work. I’ll tell Margaret you tried to seduce me, I’ll tell her you’re a slut and you fucked all the guys at school.”

  She hopped on the bench and swung her legs. “You’re forgetting about the pictures, Gordo. The ones we took a few minutes ago?”

  “You bitch!” He grabbed her phone. “What’s the passcode? And don’t fuck around, I’m serious.”

  “There is no passcode. You need a fingerprint—and please don’t break the phone. Everything backs up automatically.” Gordon paced in a circle, running his hands through his hair.

  “You bitch, you goddamn bitch.” He stopped, trying to gather himself. He ran his hands through his hair again and sucked in a sharp breath. “Okay. What do you want?”

  “Money,” Grace said. “All five grand. Now.”

  “Out of the question. I worked hard for that money. I’ll give you five hundred.” He glanced worriedly at the sports bra. “No, make it a thousand. And that’s final.”

  “You know who could settle this?” she said thoughtfully. “Margaret. Tell you what. Let’s go see what she thinks.” Gordon stood there, slumped and humiliated, Mickey’s eyes sliding down his Dockers and onto his deck shoes. Grace took the metal box from its hiding place. “Say, Gordo. Do you think I could have the key?”

  She turned sixteen the day she took the bus back to Bakersfield with five grand in her backpack. She promised her Uncle Alex she’d give him the house if he would take care of everything until she came back. Then she got the GTI out of the garage, locked the door with a heavy chain and padlock, and drove the hell out of town at a million miles an hour.

  Three years went by before she returned. She signed the house over to Uncle Alex so he could sell it. “What are you gonna do with all the furniture and stuff?” he asked. She was staying in Cherokee’s one-bedroom apartment, where she had half a closet, a drawer in the bathroom, and a bookshelf all to herself. Everything in the house had to go. There were piles and piles of books, some Sarah had read to Grace while they swayed in the porch swing. She donated those to the library, the furniture and clothes went to the Salvation Army. Everything else went to the dump. It was torment. There were favorite coffee mugs, letters in shoe boxes, photo albums, a wooden burro from a vacation in Mexico, pots and pans, dishes, lamps, collections of knickknacks, two TVs, Christmas lights, a stereo, the bed her parents slept in, the blankets that kept them warm. She put her mother’s favorite nightgown and her dad’s coveralls in a garbage bag and piled it in with the rest. She couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else wearing them. There were a million other things, meaningless now that they were gone. She wondered why the stuff had mattered at all and why they’d squandered so much of their time on life’s detritus instead of each other.

  She’d always believed her mother was alive, but her dad was gone forever. His belongings were the only evidence that he’d existed and that he’d loved her and that they’d watched Steve McQueen movies together in his car. She had to keep something of his, a talisman, an enduring lucky charm. She had to keep him. There was only one choice. It would be a hardship but she would make it work. She had to.

  It took an hour and a half to strip the Dodge pickup down to the frame. Grace sat next to TK in the crane and watched him working the levers and pedals as easily as riding a bike down a bike path. A disk-shaped electromagnet was suspended by chains from a thirty-foot boom. TK deftly lifted the five-hundred-pound engine block out of the pickup. Grace was nervous, hugging herself.

  “What’s the matter with you?” TK said.

  “I don’t like that thing. I feel like it’s gonna yank me out of here by my belt buckle.”

  “It’s strong, all right. But you’re safe. Just don’t stand underneath it with a metal plate in your head.” TK swiveled the boom around and set the engine down between two others as gently as a fresh egg.

  Later, they were back in the lawn chairs, drinking cold beers and
eating takeout pizza. “So there’s these three old men, you see,” TK said, “and one of ’em says, ‘Sixty is the worst age there is. You feel like you need to pee and nothing comes out.’ And the second old man says, ‘That ain’t nothin’. When you seventy you can’t even take a dump without eatin’ a bran muffin.’ And the third old man says, ‘You boys don’t know about trouble ’til you’re eighty. I pee and take a dump every morning at exactly six a.m.,’ and the first old man says, ‘Well, if you can do all that every morning at six a.m., what’s your problem?’ And the third old man says, ‘I don’t get up ’til seven.’” Grace spit up her beer and laughed for the first time in recent memory. It felt good. It felt great. “Okay, your turn,” TK said.

  “My turn for what?”

  “To tell a joke.”

  “I don’t know any jokes.”

  “Everybody knows at least one joke,” TK said. “Now, come on, girl, out with it. I’m putting a roof over your head. You owe me.”

  Given all the other things that were happening, Grace felt a surprising amount of pressure. “Okay. Here goes.”

  “Lay it on me,” TK said, leaning back in his chair.

  “What did the elephant say when he came down to the riverbank and saw Tarzan naked and doing the backstroke?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How in the hell do you breathe through that thing?”

  There was a moment of silence and then TK busted out laughing and so did she. She wanted to thank him but didn’t know how.

  TK handed her another beer. “Isaiah said you’re an artist.”

  “Yeah, I paint,” Grace said. The pizza had bacon on it and there was cheese melted in the crust. It was really good.

  “What do you paint?”

  “My feelings, memories, dreams.”

  “Feelings, memories, and dreams, huh? Y’all should paint mine. You’d need a canvas as big as the sky. If you don’t mind my asking, who are you hiding from?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said, “but they’re scary people. If you ever want me to go, just say the word.”

  He lit a Pall Mall, squinting as he exhaled. “Shoot, girl, scary ain’t nothin’ to me.”

  TK told her he grew up in Fontana, about sixty miles from LA. At the time, it was an industrial center because of the steel mill. “They let us black folks work in the mill, but we always did the dirtiest work and lifted the heaviest loads.” When TK was a toddler, a family friend named O’day Short started building a house in the white section of town. TK’s dad helped him out. “The Klan came around and threatened O’day, told him to get the hell out,” TK said. “He reported it to the sheriff, but he told him to get out too. The goddamn chamber of commerce wanted O’day out so bad they offered to buy the place. He turned ’em down flat.”

  A few days later, TK’s father was just arriving at O’day’s house when it exploded into flames. O’day, his wife, and their children were killed. TK’s father got blown into a ditch. He suffered third-degree burns that crippled him for the rest of his life. “Fire department said it was an accident,” TK went on. “Said O’day was lightin’ some kinda lamp. Shoot. What kinda lamp blows up like a goddamn bomb? They had one of them arson experts come out and he said somebody did it on purpose—and you know what the DA did? He closed the case.”

  TK’s family moved to Long Beach because there was work there. His mother was a maid to some of the local businesses, including a used car dealership. At nine years old, TK was washing and waxing cars for ten cents an hour. There was a black mechanic who let him help out. Changing oil and tires and flushing out radiators. He learned to use tools. He learned to love cars. Then one afternoon, out of necessity, he used the salesmen’s bathroom. The owner strapped him with a fan belt until he bled. He got fired and so did his mother.

  “I worked on cars for twenty-five years ’til I could afford this place,” TK said. “Never made as much as a white man for doing the same work and never met a white man who was as good as me.”

  “I believe it,” Grace said.

  “I’ve had the gangs climbin’ over my fences, thieves pointin’ guns at me, cops shakin’ me down. There was a real estate fella wanted this land. Sent his thugs over here trying to intimidate me. I introduced them to my friend Mr. Brown and they never came back.”

  “Who’s Mr. Brown?”

  The wrecking yard was in a desolate area. People who didn’t want to pay the landfill fee used it as a dump. Bums stayed warm around trash can fires. People abandoned their tires and appliances. Dead bodies were found here. Isaiah drove into the yard. He was worried about Grace, wondering if she and TK were getting along. There were other things weighing on his mind. He’d done some research and what he’d discovered was as bizarre as it was disturbing.

  Grace’s father, Chuck, had been involved in a long-standing feud with a next-door neighbor, a truck driver named Kyle Munson. The feud had started small. Who was responsible for trimming the tree that hung over the fence, your dog crapped on my lawn, could you keep the music down please, the property line is here, not there, and like most conflicts between men, it turned into a contest for virility and control. There were loud arguments. Threats were exchanged. Once they got into an out-and-out brawl. Munson got the worst of it. The police came and arrested them both.

  One night, a masked gunman attempted a home invasion. Chuck tried to fight him off and was killed. Sarah escaped unharmed. Grace, not named because she was a minor, was asleep in an upstairs bedroom. The next day, Kyle Munson was shot to death in his garage and within hours of that, Sarah fled for parts unknown and a murder warrant was issued for her arrest.

  Initially, the police thought Munson was the one who broke in and shot Chuck, but he’d been on a long haul to Des Moines when the shooting occurred. Police speculated that Chuck’s murder was random and that Sarah had retaliated against the wrong man. No wonder Grace didn’t want to talk about it, Isaiah thought. Who’d want to relive that ordeal, expose that horror show? It said a lot about her too. Why she was the way she was.

  Isaiah parked next to the GTI. He panicked when he heard the gunfire. He scooped up a tire iron and ran toward the sound and as he came around the mountain of tires, he saw Grace and TK. He was teaching her how to shoot skeet with a Browning pump-action, 12-gauge shotgun he called Mr. Brown. Grace was working the target launcher. TK had the gun in position and a Pall Mall dangling from his lips.

  “Pull,” he said.

  Grace pressed a button and an orange clay disk zipped over the yard as fast as a fleeing dove. TK fired, hardly moving the gun, the disk exploding like a saucer hitting a sky-blue wall. He hit the next seven in a row as casually as flipping pancakes.

  “Jesus,” she said. “You make it look so easy.”

  “I been at it a long time. Not a whole lot to do out here.”

  “Are you a hunter?”

  “No,” he said, “I’ll eat a bird but I don’t want to watch it die. Your turn.”

  Grace had trouble loading the gun, fumbling with the shells. “What’d I tell you?” TK said impatiently. “Push the shell down and then in.” When the gun was finally loaded, he helped her get it in the proper position, pressing her cheek against the stock and lifting her elbow. “Okay now, you been shootin’ too early, when the target ain’t nothin’ but a blur. You want to shoot when it comes into hard focus.” He pointed at a spot in the sky. “Right about there—no, no, don’t aim at it, don’t you listen?”

  Isaiah smiled. TK had talked to him the same way when he was teaching him how to drive. “You point the barrel about halfway between the launcher and the focus point,” the old man said. “Let your eyes follow the target, the gun will follow your eyes, you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said curtly. “I understand.”

  “Keep your movement short and smooth, and turn your shoulders, not the gun. Like a cannon on a battleship. You ready?” She nodded.

  “Pull,” she said. She missed five in a row. She was frustrated, her movement
s getting jerkier, the stock coming off her cheek. Every time the orange disk escaped into the yard she said Ahh shit. Isaiah knew the feeling. He always expected to be good at something right off the bat. “And I’m not a lezbo,” she added.

  “Maybe not,” TK said, “but you’re acting like a girl. Now stop all that moanin’ and bitchin’ and settle down. You know what to do, so do it.”

  She sulked a moment, took a deep breath. “Pull.” She hit the next three in a row. She was astonished. “Did you see that?”

  TK laughed. “I sho’ did. Makes you wonder if Annie Oakley was a lezbo.” Grace let out a whoop and they high-fived. Isaiah was envious. He wished he could make her feel that way.

  “Hi,” he said cheerily, trying to match their mood. She smiled wanly, like she’d bumped into him at a survivors’ group.

  “Want to join us?” TK said. “You’ll be up against a real sharpshooter.”

  “No thanks. I’m not much for guns.”

  “The dog don’t like gunshots,” TK said. “I’m gonna go see where he’s at.” He left, walking quicker than usual. Grace unloaded the gun, Isaiah looked at the dirt.

  “What are we gonna do about my mom?”

  “Keep looking.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s nothing in the present,” he said. “So we’ve got to look back.” Grace sighed.

  Laquez had come to the wrecking yard looking for an alternator. His elderly Corolla had died one of its many deaths. The broke-down piece of junk needed an alternator. Laquez knew what it looked like but not what it did. The problem was, Corollas were popular. Not a lot of them made it to the wrecking yard. It was Laquez’s favorite car to steal when he was into that. Now he was taking the bus to work—if that’s what you could call it; being Seb’s flunky, running all over the damn place, picking up money, smurfing from bank to bank, taking his ugly-ass suits to the cleaners and washing his Jaguar only to get yelled at and told he was stupid. There was no way to please that little Zimbabwe motherfucker. The other day, he’d hit Laquez with that goddamn cane, the third time in three weeks. That thing left a mark that hurt for days. Sometimes he imagined creeping up on Seb, wrapping some piano wire around his neck and yanking it tight. Be fun, watching his disrespectful face puff up and that one leg kicking around.