Trin

by J. M. Snyder

  Blood. Dark as death, lifeblood, splashed on the metal flooring like paint. He steps in it and slips, his arms pinwheeling at his sides to find balance. One of the gunners grabs his shoulder but Trin almost goes down anyway, his knees weak. Blood squishes between his toes, splatters his ankles, no. His mind refuses to believe what he sees.

  A man stretched out along the length of the truck bed. Clothes drenched black with blood, shirt ripped, face hidden. Trin recognizes the pale chest hair, one tip of a blonde moustache, and little else. A sob rises in his throat and he chokes it back. “Is he—”

  Someone speaks, “Not yet. Terrible accident. Shooting with one hand on the wheel, the same as he always does, but the truck began to buck beneath him.”

  My fault, Trin thinks. In his anger, he tore the shocks out and broke one while replacing it.

  “Didn’t even see the culvert,” another gunner offers. “Axle snapped when he hit it, threw him out of the seat. Caught the steering wheel in his balls, just about tore ‘em off, I’d imagine.”

  Falling to his knees, Trin takes one cold, bloody hand in both of his. “Gerrick,” he sighs. His fault. His.

  The truck shakes beneath him and then Blain is there, pulling him away. “Medic’s here, Trini,” his brother says. Trin nods, numb. He can’t take his eyes from the prone man at his feet, his weekend lover, Gerrick. Blood masks his face—the only sign of life is the way it bubbles around his nose with each shattered breath. Stepping in front of Trin, Blain tries to block his view but it’s already too late. Still, his brother murmurs, “He’ll be alright.”

  How can you promise that? Trin wonders, but he just nods again. He should’ve never torn into the truck or let Gerrick leave when it wasn’t ready to drive. He should’ve told Blain he fucked with it before his brother chased the gunner out. He should’ve—

  Too late. He wipes sweat or tears from his face, he’s not sure which. His hand leaves a smear on his cheek in Gerrick’s blood.

  * * * *

  It’s a few months down the road before any of the gunners will ride through Arens. Mostly it’s because of what happened—these men are a superstitious lot. In the aftermath of Gerrick’s accident, rumors settled like dust over the outposts. Broken now, riddled with pain, a shadow of the man he used to be…that’s what the other gunners say. They talk about how his truck gave out during a devlar attack. How his brakes died as he flew down one of the runs. How his windshield shattered his face into a network of scars when he hit a ravine and was thrown from the cab. The men who found him say they barely managed to pull him away from the wreckage before it went up in flames.

  Every gunner knows trucks don’t just blow up. When Gerrick drove into the outpost, he needed a few shocks, new brake shoes, a good hosing off. But by the time he left his truck was running ragged, like an old horse laboring to breathe its last. In common rooms around the wastelands, gunners look at one another over mugs of icy beer and don’t have to put into so many words what’s on their minds. The mech in Arens might be Blain’s baby brother and gunners take up for their own, but they agreed to stay away from the outpost just the same.

  Trin doesn’t let their talk bother him. Worse than chore girls, gunners are, his brother’s always said as much. But he notices the waystation isn’t as lively as it’s been in the past, and there’s a deep furrow across his brother’s forehead that wasn’t there before. Most of the time the books don’t balance, and it’s not just because Blain’s bad with numbers. The gunners are their business. If the men would rather ride around the outpost instead of bunking down for a few nights, there isn’t really much point in carrying on. Late one evening, when the only person at the bar is Blain himself, Trin wrings his hands in a dishtowel and starts, “I want you to know that I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be,” his brother says, waving away the apology. His eyes flash in warning but his voice stays level and low. “Don’t go taking the blame on this, Trin, on none of it. You had nothing to do with what happened to that bastard, you got that? Nothing at all.”

  Despite the days and weeks that melted away behind them like ice in the blistering sun, Blain still refuses to call Gerrick by name. It’s always the gunner or that bastard or, if he’s in a particularly foul mood, that fucking goddamn son of a bitch. “But I—”

  “But nothing.” Blain stares at him until Trin has to drop his gaze. His brother’s eyes are hard and unyielding, unforgiving. “How many people know what you did to that truck? You told me, Aissa, who else?”

  “No one,” Trin whispers. Blain frowns at him, waiting. Trin glances up at his brother, sees that frown, and ducks his head again quickly. “I swear it. No one else knows.”

  For a long moment, silence. Then, in a gruff voice, Blain says, “Don’t tell anyone, you hear?” Trin nods. “He got what he deserved. Let people say what they will about it, kid. You can’t stop that. But Lord knows you don’t have to encourage it, either.”

  Aissa tells him the same thing. Leaning over under the open hood of one of Blain’s jalopies, she peers through the cables at Trin while he’s on his back beneath the truck and says, “Stop dwelling on it, Trini. It’s not like he died or anything. So you messed him up good, so what?”

  “So what?” Trin echoes. Her attitude doesn’t surprise him—she doesn’t like Gerrick, never has. He frowns at the bottom of the oil tank he’s working on and tries not to look at her. The tank leaks something fierce from a knot it in like a bullet hole where a stone knocked through. He was hoping to caulk it shut but now that he’s under here face to face with the problem, he sees that the entire bottom of the tank is encrusted with lacy rust. He doesn’t know whether he should simply patch the hole or replace the whole damn thing. What if the patch doesn’t hold? his mind whispers, a voice that’s grown stronger since the accident. It questions everything he does now, every repair he makes, every part he installs. He thought he had put Gerrick’s truck mostly back together after he tore it up and he hadn’t. What if he makes the same mistake again?

  Aissa starts, “Don’t worry about it—”

  Trin drops the wrench he’s holding and it clatters to the concrete floor, cutting her off. “I’m not talking about this anymore,” he says. His fingers fumble over the floor, feeling for the wrench. To be on the safe side, he’ll replace the tank entirely, unbolt this one and drop in a new one, so there are no doubts. Unless you don’t secure it right, that damn voice whispers, or the hose splits off. He pushes those thoughts away. Finding the wrench, he tries to loosen the bolt that holds the tank to the undercarriage. But it’s in there good and when the wrench slips off, it hits the tank with a hollow thunk that showers him with rust. “Aissa!” he cries, spitting out dry flecks of coppery rust. “Just go away already, why don’t you? You sure as hell aren’t helping me here.”

  She tosses her hair back over her shoulder and rolls her eyes. “All I’m saying is ignore them—”

  “I’m ignoring you.”

  In frustration she shoves the dropcloth that covers the front of the truck, showering bolts and tools down into the engine cavity. Trin twists away as the smaller items clink down through the gaps to pelt the floor by his head. “Oh, you’re dead,” he promises, scrambling out from under the truck. With a contemptuous laugh, she kicks over the pan he drained the tank into earlier and dirty oil splashes the floor, under the truck, through the towel he’s lying on. Cold wetness seeps through his jeans and he hits his head on the bottom of the tank when he tries to pull away. “Iss! Jesus!”

  By the time he gets to his feet, his pants are drenched. The heavy denim clings to his ass and thigh like a second skin, greased with oil. “Look what the fuck you’ve done!” he yells, gesturing to his leg. Aissa giggles and takes a step back as he advances. Her hand hits a small cardboard box that sits on the far edge of the truck’s bumper, knocking the spark plugs inside to the floor. Anger swirls through Trin. “Get out of here!”

  A low rumble fills the air. Blain, he prays, let it be Blain. Earlier his brother
took one of the rebuilt trucks out to feel how the shocks were holding up, even though Trin had wanted to go instead. That way if the truck died or exploded, Blain wouldn’t be the one to get hurt. But his brother shook his head as he climbed into the cab. “Trust yourself, kid,” he told him, swinging the door shut. He leaned out the window and gave Trin a wink, a rare gesture of affection that made him choke on sudden emotion. “I do.”

  Since then, Aissa’s been hanging around the garage, pestering him. Trin hopes it’s his brother’s truck heading this way. Pointing behind him at the open bay doors, he warns, “If that’s Blain…”

  He lets the sentence trail off, unfinished. She laughs again but there’s little humor in the sound. If that’s Blain, he’ll tell Aissa to find something else to do and she’ll listen, she’ll have to. “He wouldn’t be back so soon,” she says. She doesn’t sound too convinced, though. Her eyes dart from Trin to the bay doors as the sound of an engine winds closer in the still afternoon heat. Another step back and her shoe crunches on the spark plugs she just tipped over. “C’mon, Trini. I’m not bothering you much.”

  Now he has to laugh. “Bullshit,” he mutters, setting his wrench on the hood of the truck. When he picks at the side of his pants, the fabric pulls away from his leg with a sucking sound and he can feel oil runneling around his knee. “Look at this!”

  Her eyes flash with mirth. Trin is glad someone’s enjoying this because he isn’t, not one bit. “I’ll wash it out—” she starts, then cuts off as the engine dies in a pneumatic chortle. The squeal of hinges drifts on the hot air, followed by boot heels clicking on the pavement outside. Lowering her voice, Aissa murmurs, “That’s not Blain.”

  Trin turns to see a gunner standing beside the truck. He’s younger than Blain by a good ten, fifteen years, but still older than Trin. Black curls peek out beneath a dusty strip of burlap tied around his head like a pirate’s bandanna and his tanned face is lined where he squints in the sun. He shuts the door to his truck with a hollow clap then looks around, grimacing. When he sees Trin and Aissa, he straightens the guns on his hips to make sure they notice them, large pistols crossed low over the front of his jeans. “It’s a gunner,” Trin whispers as the stranger steps into the shade of the garage. Out of the sun he seems to diminish slightly, shrink a little, become real. A gunner— “Go tell the others.”

  “Trin…” Aissa trails off, doubtful.

  “He’ll want to eat,” he explains. Closer now, the gunner flashes them a bright smile that Trin feels in the pit of his belly, a cocky, sexy, grin. Not taking his gaze off the man, he says, “There’ll be others right behind him. Go.”

  She hesitates. The gunner’s eyes flicker over Trin’s shoulder, register her presence without really seeing her, then find Trin’s face again. One hand comes out in welcome. “Hey,” he drawls, that grin never slipping. Trin finds himself clasping the man’s hand in greeting. A strong hand, sure and steady. Hands that would feel right on his body. As if thinking the same thing, the gunner’s smile widens. “You the mech here?”

  “Yeah.” Behind him, footsteps race away and Trin chances a look over his shoulder to see Aissa disappear out the back door, running for the kitchen. With a nod at the truck beyond the bay doors, he asks, “What can I do for you today?”

  This close, Trin can see the gunner’s eyes are a bold blue, bright, like the morning sky before the sun burns the color away. Their sharpness remind him of Gerrick’s eyes, or rather how Gerrick’s used to be. Trin is vaguely aware that the gunner hasn’t let go of his hand yet. Where their skin touches, his palm has grown sweaty. “Sir?”

  The stranger takes a step towards him, creating an intimate air between them. “I’ve heard tell you like gunners, boy,” he purrs. “Quick to service them, so they say.”

  Trin thinks he knows where this is headed and laughs, hoping he sounds amused. “I’m talking about your truck.”

  Those eyes harden. “I’m talking about tonight,” the gunner says, his voice low. He searches Trin’s face for understanding, then adds, “I could fill your pallet.”

  Disgust roils through Trin with a sickening lurch. Taking a step back, he tries to free his hand from the gunner’s and can’t. “My pallet is already taken, sir.” He emphasizes the sir. He wants to keep this formal. “If your truck needs work—”

  “I’ve heard the things you’ll do,” the gunner interrupts. Another step presses him against the side of the truck he’s been working on, and the gunner’s knee eases between his thighs to rub against his crotch. Despite his resolve, he feels the beginnings of an erection filling his jeans. “Gunners talk, boy, and they say you’re hot and tight and willing. They say—”

  Trin shoves him away. “I don’t care what they say,” he growls. Another minute or two and he won’t even look at the damn truck, just tell the man to get the hell out of here no matter what Blain would say. Haven’t had a gunner come through here in ages, he thinks, glaring at the stranger in front of him, and the first one to ride in is just looking for a fuck. Christ almighty. “Look,” he tries, “let’s start again, shall we? I don’t care what you’ve heard but I’m with someone at the moment. As in I’m not going to screw around on him. As in—”

  The gunner interrupts him again. “I could take you now,” he threatens. He runs a finger down the center of Trin’s chest, a chilly touch that raises goosebumps on his arms. Trin slides a little further down the truck and slaps the hand away. “Bend you over here, boy. You couldn’t stop me. You wouldn’t want to. I saw it when I came in, you’d like it if I fucked you raw.”

  He touches one of the guns, his fingers caressing the handle lazily. “Blain,” Trin croaks. Suddenly he’s very much aware of the fact that he might find himself held over the side of the truck, bare ass in the air as this man forces his way inside of him. I don’t mess with gunners anymore, he thinks wildly. Fear makes him promise, “Do it and my brother will find you. He’ll gun you down like a dog in the street and you know it.”

  Thunder rolls in the distance, storm clouds drawing near with the coming evening. For a moment the gunner stares, gauging the fight in him. The thunder churns again, louder this time, and beneath it Trin hears a sound as glorious as an angel’s song—the rumble of an engine, heading this way. Blain.

  As if he hears it too, the gunner’s grin disappears into a bitter scowl. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Trin starts, “Now if you want me to look at your truck—”

  With a cruel laugh, the gunner shakes his head. “You kidding? I’m not letting you near my truck, boy—you got that? I’ve heard the shit you pulled a while back, who was it? Gerrick?”

  Trin winces at the name. He doesn’t care that this is the only gunner to ride through Arens all summer, or that the waystation is hurting for some of the coins in the man’s purse. This stranger is the first person to put his own guilty thoughts into words and even though Trin’s apologized for what happened, even though Blain says it’s not his fault, the truth stings nonetheless. “Get out.”

  “You tried to kill him, didn’t you?” the gunner asks with a smirk. Trin’s hand closes over the wrench he set aside earlier. Tightening his fingers around the cool metal, he measures the distance between them. Had there actually been a brief moment when he thought of this man touching him? Those blue eyes are hard and icy now, those large hands frightening. Trin hefts the wrench so the gunner sees it. “Going after me next, is that it?” he taunts. “You’re not worth the trouble, boy. You couldn’t pay me to get with you.”

  “Get out,” Trin says again. He wishes he were taller, like Blain, with wider shoulders, a heavier swing. Intimidating, that’s what he wants to be, without the wrench in his hand.

  But when the gunner steps back, it’s because the engine’s growl has grown louder and Blain is almost upon them. Still, he can’t resist a final jab. “You know what they say about you?” he hollers as he walks backward, not taking his eyes off Trin. His voice echoes in the hot garage. “Fuck ‘em and kill ‘em, like you did wi
th Gerrick.”

  Trin lunges forward. “He’s not dead!” The gunner skips away, his eyes wide like he thinks Trin will peg the wrench at him from across the room. “Get out of here!” he cries. His breath hitches in his chest and his fingers whiten in anger around the wrench as he raises it above his head. Maybe he will throw it, he doesn’t know. It wouldn’t hit his target if he did—the gunner’s already clambering up into the cab of his truck, the engine roaring to life. Raising his voice to be heard over the racket, Trin shouts, “I didn’t try to kill him! It was an accident!”

  The gunner shakes his head, unconvinced. Trin sees his lips form a single word that drives straight through him, a spike through the very core of his soul. Killer, the stranger labels him, killer. Trin’s face crumples as the truck pulls out of sight. “An accident,” he sighs in the empty garage. The very walls seem to agree with the gunner—they echo the fading sounds his truck makes as he drives away. Trin doesn’t even hear Blain anymore, and Aissa hasn’t returned. He’s never felt more alone, and his own words sound like lies. “I didn’t mean it.”

  * * * *

  Aissa tells Blain about the gunner, in hushed tones by the sink so Trin doesn’t overhear. He concentrates on chopping an onion and tries to convince himself that the stinging in his eyes is from the pungent smell, nothing more. He wants to believe this afternoon didn’t happen—Aissa bothering him, the gunner’s proposition, his own anger, none of it seems real. Every now and then Blain looks over, tries to catch his eye, but Trin keeps his head down. He doesn’t want to meet his brother’s gaze.

  After the onion is reduced to a small stack of rings, he slathers mayonnaise on a few slices of bread. Adds tomatoes, lettuce, some kind of white meat that might be chicken, might not. Adds the onions, his eyes watering. Not from tears, though. He’s not crying over this.