by Dan Dillard
CHAPTER TWO
Rusty Clemmons
Rusty Clemmons fanned steam away from the hood ornament on his 1972 Buick Riviera. The car was held together with rust and the residue of many drunken nights spent out on the beach. In high school, his friends all called him Strings because he had long hair and played electric guitar in a band that placed second in the school talent show. That show won them a gig at a bar on the island which proved to be the band’s undoing. Just like back in high school, he hadn’t bothered with any sunblock and the skin on his face was already pulling tight in the glaring afternoon heat.
“Why don’t you ever break down at night?” he said, sweating.
His real name was Russell, but aside from the writing on his birth certificate, he had never been called Russell that he remembered. Even his driver’s license said Rusty on it. He had been Rusty for a long while, just like his car.
The car was dubbed The Bat because his friends always thought it would’ve made a good Batmobile and the fact that when it was running right, that 455 V8 with dual four-barrel carbs was a nasty piece of machinery that could fly like a bat out of clichéd hell. Even in high school, it had been rusted and old, but it was still mostly green with an orange vinyl top that wrapped around that weird bubble of its rear boat-tail window. Now it was mostly rust, primer where the rust had been sanded down or filled with various brands of filler, and it had a blue driver side door he’d picked up in a junk yard. The motor still had some balls, but he paid for it every time he opened her up. This was one of those times.
He hadn’t been home since high school in the mid 1980’s. Rusty was thirty-eight years old and his once thick, down-to-his-shoulders hair was now respectable, receding and shaped with a #2 razor guard by the local barber back home in Chicago. He was thin. In the mirror, he saw an adult version of his former self…but it was a ruse. He was still the same eighteen-year-old on the inside…and he still played one of his dozen-or-so guitars on a daily basis, even giving lessons to some of the kids in his neighborhood when he wasn’t at his miserable, bean-counting day job. It gave him hope so the crazy wouldn’t set in, like it had when Alzheimer’s stole his grandmother.
He always loved his guitars. The sexy curve in the body was convenient to rest on your leg, but he knew it was designed to look like a woman. He loved the feel of the neck, the weight of the instrument…even the stink the strings left on your hand after you played. A stint in the marines in his twenties had dashed Rusty’s dreams of being a musician…of being a rock star, knee-deep in pussy, drugs and cash, but he would always love guitars.
He stared down the black ribbon of highway and watched a mirage ripple in the distance. The sun made him wonder why he’d left the Midwest. Sure, it got hot there, but the breeze from the lake was cool. The Windy City. Culture, people, open all night…he had a high-paying job—at least for a single guy, he had a nice apartment, he had friends…and he had another car that would’ve made the trip without any problems. “Fuck.”
Perfectly flat land reached as far into the heat haze as he could see.
“Nothing but fucking pine trees,” he said.
The pines clung faithfully to the length of the road except for a small stretch where a forest fire had wiped them out in 1982. The skeletons of those trees still poked up through the Green Swamp but were covered in green growths of parasitic weeds. It was a place where the uninitiated got lost forever and those dead, burnt trees looked like the fingers of a last-gasp drowning victim sticking up through the waves of a still ocean. The sky was a blue backdrop without as much as a single cloud to break it up.
Rusty thought about his high school dreams. They’d been on his mind ever since he’d received the invitation.
Twenty years? Has it really been twenty years?
The tow truck, silver with its red and white AAA TOWING sign magneted to the door, showed up at 6:15 pm, only an hour after he’d called. It was a Thursday, so it was no problem to find a wrecker, but he was scared of the cost. After hours calls in Chicago could put the average corporate slave into financial ruin, and being stranded fifteen miles away from town there were sure to be surcharges. Rusty leaned against the hood of the Buick with his arms crossed. He’d grabbed a second t-shirt out of his duffel bag and tied it around his head, looking like one of those camel jockeys he’d seen overseas during the Gulf War. Hadjis, they called them sometimes, or sand-niggers…or worse. He’d grown past that even after 9-11…even amidst all the talk of terrorism in the United States. Killing was never in his blood and neither was hatred. The military—at least the part he was familiar with—seemed to breed and thrive on both.
“Hell of a nice ride you got there, buddy,” the driver said through a rolled-down window. One hairy elbow hung out as the truck slowed to a crawl. A cigarillo poked from the corner of his mouth, one of those with the plastic mouthpiece.
As the man stepped down from the truck, Rusty would’ve sworn he saw the wrecker raise up six inches. The driver was a large man in height and in girth. He wore tan work boots, blue cargo shorts and a short-sleeved button down shirt with the name TRAVIS embroidered on its chest in red thread. “You ought to paint that thing up, get it back to its original sexiness.” Travis wiggled his hips and fingers when he said the word sexiness.
Rusty looked back at his old car. There was a Ford Focus in his garage back home. Good on gas, dependable…it even had a working fucking air conditioner. There was just something about coming home after all this time—he just had to drive The Bat. He needed to prove to his friends—to himself?—that he still had her working, and even if she had to limp in dangling from a tow truck, it was good enough for him. They could park it in front of the old high school and light it on fire—a memorial to days gone by.
He’d kept in touch with some of those friends from back in the day. Some of them still lived in town. Fatter, balder, married and mellowed…they would appreciate seeing the old piece of shit Riviera.
“I guess. I’ve had this car for a long time.”
“What’s the problem?” the driver said.
“Overheated. At least I think that’s what’s going on. She started pouring steam.”
“How far you goin?”
“Smithville. Another fifteen miles or so.”
Travis nodded and stomped on his cigarette, grinding it into the pavement. “Mind if I give a look? Might not need a tow. Maybe just a couple gallons o’ water til you can get to a mechanic and let them take a closer look.” Travis motioned toward the hood and Rusty moved aside.
“Be my guest.”
Rusty reached in through the window and pulled the release handle with a CLANK. Travis stepped up and opened the hood. “Rush, huh?” he said.
At first, Rusty didn’t register what the tow truck driver meant. When he looked up, he saw Travis staring straight at his chest. A dozen things went through is brain before he realized what was happening.
Is it a mustard stain? A bug? A shit stain? Did I sneeze a bloody clump of snot onto my shirt? Have I broken some redneck rule and now he’s going to eat me?
He looked down at his chest. Rush, the band. Relief. “You mean my shirt?”
Travis leaned under the hood and looked around. He fiddled with some hoses, some wires and grunted as he leaned further in, his gut resting on the car’s guts. “Yeah,” he said. “Used to love those guys. In fact, buddy, you have inspired me to dig out 2112, Moving Pictures—hell, all of the stuff up to before they got old.”
Rusty rubbed his chin. Two day’s growth, it was scratchy and felt good. He never would’ve thought he’d find a bond with someone like Travis the tow trucker, but there it was, and all thanks to Geddy, Alex and Neil. He needed a friendly face. Even if it was ugly and missing whatever tooth was in between the front teeth and the canines. Even then.
Thanks Rush.
“I’m actually still a huge fan,” Rusty said. He’d spent months of his youth learning to play “Red Barchetta”, “Freewill”, “Spirit of Radio”, even “YYZ” by
ear, although he never did know a drummer in person who could keep up.
Travis stood up straight, played a riff on his air guitar while he sang the notes. “Dah na dah na duuuuh.”
Rusty somehow recognized it to be Tom Sawyer. He chuckled at the man and felt something like happiness. Travis wheezed a laugh and then spent thirty seconds coughing the tar from his lungs. When the cough settled, he said, “Looks like the road threw a rock through your radiator, bud. You got a hole in there I could stick my cock in, and that ain’t no small thing.” He winked. “Or, maybe somebody took a pot shot at you? You runnin’ from a jealous woman? Women can be bitchy that way.”
Rusty peeked into the compartment. It didn’t surprise him. He shook his head. “I don’t think anyone has been shooting at me.”
“Should be an easy fix. Talk to Bill Shockley at the NAPA there in Smithville. He can find one. He knows the junkyards as well. Might be somethin’ there.”
“I know the place. Shockley, you said? I think I went to school with him.”
“Nah. Shockley’s old as snooty wine. He’s been manager there for years now. Ten maybe. Long as I’ve been drivin’ this truck. You from Smithville?”
“Yep. I’m headed back for a high school reunion. Twenty years.”
“Huh. Just missed my thirtieth out in Texas. Missed all of ‘em actually. There ain’t much back there for me. I’m happy where I’m at,” Travis said.
“No friends you want to see?”
“Aw, hell no. I don’t need a reunion to see friends. You call me friend, you’d have a tough time gettin’ rid of me. I ain’t much for writin’ letters or makin’ phone calls or sendin’ a fuckin’ email. I’d rather just hang out. I like to see people when I talk to ‘em, you know?”
Rusty nodded, not sure if he fully agreed with the statement or not. Travis wiped his hands on an old bandana which was stashed in the back pocket of his cargo shorts. He looked up from the Riviera’s engine to Rusty and his eyes brightened. He popped a cigarette into his mouth and lit it with a plastic lighter.
“Ya know, I used to roadie for a group in the 80’s. Metal band called Iron Rod. You heard of them, right?”
Rusty shook his head.
“They had that one song, “Stretch You Out”?” Travis said and started humming something with no melodic quality whatsoever.
“Yeah,” Rusty said, lying. “I think I do remember that tune.”
Travis nodded. “Thought you might. Played on the radio several times around here. Bass player’s sister was a local DJ. They could’ve made it, too, but Jack—the lead guitarist—he was too busy puttin’ the meat to Steve’s—he was the lead singer—wife.”
“Ouch.”
Travis spit on the ground and then got lost staring into the distance like he’d seen a mirage full of cool water and nearly naked, virginal beauties. “Come to think of it, so was the drummer. Hell, we did so many drugs back then, I might’ve fucked her. She was like that, ya know? Not happy unless there was a dick stuck in her.”
“Really?”
The mirage vanished and the driver shook his head. “Shit, you don’t wanna hear about that.”
Rusty chuckled. “It’s fine, really.”
“Name’s Travis. You play?” Travis stuck out a giant, pudgy hand and Rusty shook it.
“Rusty. Yeah, but not like I used to.”
“Never had the aptitude for it. Just couldn’t get these big-ass fingers to work the strings. Guess that’s why I lugged amps for them guys. You ever have dreams of rockin’ out arenas?”
Rusty smiled. He had. It was so many years ago, but the longing was still there, buried somewhere inside.
“Nope. Can’t say as I have,” he lied again.
“No biggie. Say, you need a ride or is somebody coming to get you? I can carry you into town along with your car. I’m goin’ that way anyhow.”
Rusty loved the southern hospitality. Not that the people of the great city of Chicago weren’t hospitable, just busy, hurried, different.
“That’d be great, Travis. Right now, nobody knows I’m coming home.”
“Home. You said you was from here. Where you livin’ now?”
“Chicago. I made it all this way… fifteen miles outside of my hometown and The Bat died.”
“Bat? I get it. Like Batman’s car, right?”
“Yep. That’s what my friends called it in high school,” Rusty said.
“High school? Twenty years, you said? Shit, you have had her a long time.” He slammed the hood and started hooking the car up to the wrecker. Rusty watched the man work the chains and pull the levers. In less than ten minutes, the Bat was hoisted, in neutral and ready to roll the last few miles of the journey.
“Hop in, Rush-tee,” Travis said and giggled to himself. “You see what I did there?” He produced a plastic can of Skoal from his shirt pocket and thumped it a few times before stuffing a wad into his mouth.
Rusty climbed up into the truck on the passenger side and pulled on his seat belt. His back twinged in painful, sweet relief as he sunk into the bench. The truck was clean inside and not what he expected at all. Travis hopped in next to him and put the machine in gear and in a moment, they were rolling away from the setting sun.