Running on Empty

by Don Aker

  Ethan picked it up, turned it over, and then realized what he was looking at.

  “Boots don’t have a lot ‘a money,” she said, “which is why he always orders the cheapest thing we got. And why I deduct the quarter for the tomato he never eats.”

  “You’d think a guy without a lot ‘a money wouldn’t waste what he has on these things.” Ethan tossed the paper on the table.

  Lil picked it up and handed it to him. “They’re not for himself. He buys these dollar lottery tickets to leave as tips when he comes in here.”

  Ethan scowled. “Someone should tell him about probability.”

  “Probability?”

  “We learned it in math. The odds of winning anything big on these are, like, one in nineteen million. This isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. I’d rather have the buck.”

  It was Lil’s turn to scowl. “He may get the cheapest thing on the menu, but Boots has too much pride to leave only a buck for a tip. With the ticket, he’s leavin’ you a chance for a whole lot more.” She looked at Ethan for a moment, and he sensed a story coming like the one she’d shared about “the girls.” He was right.

  “Boots is a sweet man, Ethan. A real good guy. He worked hard all his life paintin’ houses until his back gave out on him, and now he gets by on his old age pension. His wife died a couple years ago, so that cut his income in half.” She lowered her voice. “Just between you ‘n’ me, he came in here once on his way home from grocery shoppin’ and all I saw in his bag were cans of soup. Dented cans, the ones stores sell real cheap just to get rid of ‘em. Can you imagine eatin’ soup three times a day?”

  Ethan felt his stomach shift uneasily.

  “He only comes in here when he’s saved up a few bucks,” she continued. “It’s not much, but it’s a big treat for him. He gets lonely.”

  Ethan looked at her, dumbfounded. “How d’you know all this?”

  She shrugged. “People got a whole lot to tell you if you take the time to listen. And you don’t just hear it in what they say.”

  Ethan thought for a moment. “Why do you call him Boots?”

  “That’s how he introduced himself to me when he first come in here. I don’t even know his real first name. I asked him about it once, though. Kind ‘a sad.” She looked out the window at the harbour. The passenger ferry was halfway across to Dartmouth, a white wake churning behind it. “He grew up dirt poor in Sydney Mines. His parents couldn’t afford to buy a growin’ kid shoes all the time, so they bought him those black gum-rubber boots. You probably don’t know what I mean.”

  “I know,” said Ethan. He’d often seen them lined up on shelves in Canadian Tire.

  “His feet had more growin’ room in those, so he wore ‘em most of the year, except in the summer, when he went barefoot. The kids at school took to callin’ him Boots, and the name just stuck.” Lil looked at Ethan sharply. “He didn’t tell me this in a feel-sorry-for-me way. He was just answerin’ my question about his name, tellin’ me what I wanted to know.”

  Ethan nodded.

  “So if he comes in here and leaves you a lottery ticket, you gotta know that’s a bigger tip than a lot ‘a these jokers throw on the table, okay?”

  Ethan nodded again. He pulled his wallet out of his jeans and slid the ticket inside, then returned it to his back pocket.

  On the way to his bus stop after work, Ethan thought again of Lil’s story about Boots’s childhood and how, in some ways, it was like his old man’s. Jack Palmer had grown up in rural Hants County, the oldest of three children whose father cut pulpwood and whose mother stayed at home caring for their growing family. John Palmer Senior had died without life insurance in a logging accident when John Junior was nine and, as Jack liked to tell people, his still grieving mother had immediately begun cleaning people’s houses and taking in laundry to make ends meet. It had been a struggle to keep the family together, but she’d somehow made the mortgage payments on their tiny home—most months, anyway—and kept food in their bellies. Barely, Jack said, but she always managed. And she never once complained. She was, as he frequently described her, “the epitome of grace under pressure who taught her children by example the value of honest hard work and the importance of education.” Although Jack was the only one of the three kids to go to university, his sister, Carol, had gone to business school and now worked at an accounting firm, and their brother, Paul, had a good job at the shipyards. Ann Palmer had been proud of all they’d accomplished and so were her children. Jack especially.

  When people had asked her how she’d been able to keep going after her husband died, how she’d managed to raise three children all on her own with so little income, she’d apparently responded with the comment about obligation that had become Jack Palmer’s mantra, although Ethan figured his grandmother probably said it a lot more simply—You do what you have to or some garbage like that. He wondered if all parents prettied up their past to cram down their kids’ throats. Probably.

  Ethan thought again about Boots, thought about the irony of two guys starting out with nothing and ending up so differently, then froze momentarily on the sidewalk, looking at his reflection in a convenience store window. Christ, he thought, shaking his head, the old man’s got me doing the life-lesson thing now.

  Grinning at his own foolishness, he glanced at his watch and saw he still had ten minutes before the next bus arrived, so he turned and headed into the store. He had a physics test the next day and knew he’d need a boost later that evening when he finally got around to studying, so he headed toward the cooler at the back and pulled out a couple cans of Red Bull. Opening his wallet to pay for them, he found the lottery ticket stuffed between two fives.

  Impossible odds, yeah, but somebody wins those jackpots, right?

  As he handed the clerk his money, he thought again about how different the lives of his old man and Boots now were. He worked hard all his life paintin’ houses until his back gave out on him, Lil had said. Which pretty much proved that his father’s line about “honest hard work” was so much happy horseshit. Maybe what Boots had really needed all along was to catch a break, a chance that would really make a difference. A single run of good luck. Ethan looked again at the ticket in his wallet, then glanced around and saw the lottery scanner to his left. Because he was seventeen (and a half), he knew he couldn’t cash a winning ticket, but there were other people lined up behind him so he was pretty sure the clerk wouldn’t care who used the scanner. He took the change she offered him, then stepped aside to make room for a pimply-faced kid with a fistful of chocolate bars.

  He walked over to the scanner, turned to see if anyone was interested in what he was doing, and was satisfied the roof would have to cave in to get this group’s attention. He held the ticket’s bar code under the red light but nothing happened. Then he realized the bar code was facing the wrong way, and he turned the ticket around. Holding his breath, he slid it carefully into the beam and saw a message appear in the scanner’s display.

  Not a winning ticket.

  Big surprise. One in nineteen million. He shook his head in disgust, crumpled the paper in his hands, and tossed it into the garbage can beside the scanner, a can he now saw was nearly filled with other crumpled tickets. He was glad no one had seen him make a fool of himself.

  On his way out the door, though, he suddenly had the feeling he’d been wrong about that. He sensed eyes staring at him, tracking him, but when he looked back the only person turned in his direction was the pimply-faced kid, and he was busy cramming a Butterfingers into his mouth.

  Weird.

  Chapter 11

  Stretched out on his bed, his physics textbook open on his lap, Ethan took a final swallow of Red Bull then deftly tossed the can across the room into the wastebasket where the other one already lay empty. He turned again to the material in front of him, scanned it, and flipped the page. His pencil drumming against the book, he read aloud: “The maximum possible friction force between two surfaces before sliding begins is
the product of the coefficient of static friction and the normal force. Assume that a curve with a radius of 60 metres is properly banked for a vehicle weighing 1338 kilograms travelling 100 kilometres per hour on dry pavement. Using 0.8 as the coefficient of static friction of a rubber tire on wet pavement, calculate the speed at which a car travelling that same curve on a rainy day will—”

  Ethan halted the drumming, scanned ahead, frowned, then closed the book with a thump. What a frigging waste of time. It all made about as much sense as that crazy Find-out-what’s-important assignment that Moore-or-Less had given him that afternoon. Well, one thing for damned sure that wasn’t important was this crap. He pictured himself explaining to a cop how the coefficient of static friction of rubber on asphalt helped him determine the appropriate acceleration of his car, taking into account both the horizontal and vertical forces acting on the vehicle. It wasn’t the math that bothered him. It was the fact that all of it was such complete and utter bullshit.

  If Allie were here, he’d buckle down and slog through it.

  He always worked better when she was with him. There was something about her that kept him grounded, focused, made him want to do better.

  But Allie wasn’t here. He lifted the textbook to eye level, estimated the required force and angle of entry, then sent the book sailing across the room toward the wastebasket. It might actually have made it had it not opened halfway through its arc. The heavy cover bounced off the rim, and the book banged against the wall and landed in a heap under his poster of a fire-red Cobra SVT.

  A moment later, his bedroom door opened and Raye stuck her head inside. “Construction or demolition?” she asked.

  “People’s choice,” he replied.

  “I’ll get back to you with the survey results.” She entered the room, noting the physics textbook on the floor. “Test tomorrow?”

  He grunted.

  She moved toward his desk, saw the ads displayed on his laptop’s Web browser, and sighed. “Car porn. You’re pathetic.”

  He grinned at her, but then his smile faded. “The one I told you about? Sold already.”

  She shrugged sympathetically. Bending down, she scrolled through the site. “Lots more here.”

  “No other Cobras, though.”

  She kept scrolling, then stopped when a midnight blue Mustang GT appeared. She bent over the laptop, then whistled when she saw the price. “People really charge that much for old cars?”

  Ethan swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. “The owner’s done a ton of work on her. Check out the specs.”

  Raye leaned closer to the screen and, as she read, Ethan saw her squinch her eyes.

  He sighed. “You gotta tell him, Raye.”

  She ignored him, continuing to scan the specifications the car’s owner had posted.

  Ethan recognized a stalling strategy when he saw it. He knew she didn’t understand half of what she was reading. “If you don’t—”

  She whirled to face him. “You promised you wouldn’t say anything.”

  “Only because you said you’d do it yourself,” said Ethan.

  “And I will.”

  “Any time this decade?”

  She turned back to the screen.

  “What’s the big deal anyway?” he asked.

  She scrolled through the site at hyper-speed, not even pretending to read now. “There’s this guy in my class,” she said finally.

  Even from the side, Ethan could see his sister’s neck—unadorned by Jazz’s artwork this evening—begin to redden. “What guy?” he asked, trying not to grin.

  “Brad Clahane.”

  “What about him?”

  “I think he likes me.”

  Ethan felt a familiar surge of protectiveness move through him. “So do you like him?”

  Raye turned toward him, and Ethan could see the colour in her neck now blooming in her cheeks. She picked at a thread on her Canadiens jersey, which reminded Ethan of their father—she seemed to be considering her next words. Then, “He was going out with Celia Johnston until last week and—”

  “Isn’t she the one you said gave—”

  “Blow jobs to half the junior boys’ soccer team? Yeah, that was the rumour.”

  “And?”

  “Turns out it wasn’t a rumour.”

  Ethan raised his eyebrows. “Brad find out?”

  She nodded. “Brad’s on the team. The other half.”

  “Ouch,” said Ethan.

  “Yeah. Ouch.”

  “So what’s this got to do with you not telling the old man about your eyes?”

  Raye glanced at the laptop, its screensaver now sending random images of Mustangs hurtling across the display. “Jazz heard Brad tell Colin McAvoy he was thinking of asking me out.”

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “I hope he’s not expecting—”

  She punched him in the shoulder. “Brad’s a nice guy,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, I’m a nice guy, too, but—”

  Raye stuck her fingers in her ears. “I can’t HEAR you,” she said, humming loudly until Ethan waved his surrender. Lowering her hands, she said, “Give me a break, okay? There’s only so much my impressionable young brain can handle.”

  Ethan grinned. “You still haven’t told me why—”

  “Brad Clahane isn’t gonna ask out a girl who wears glasses.”

  Ethan looked at his blue-haired, tongue-studded, frequently fake-tattooed sister and couldn’t believe this was the same kid who, years ago, used to follow him around like a puppy, her short legs pumping madly to keep up. A lot of older brothers would have minded, but Ethan hadn’t. He said he did, of course, but most of the time it was just an act for his buddies. He actually liked having Raye around. Some of it, he now knew, had to do with their mother dying; they had filled a void for each other at the time. But the rest of it had to do with Raye. Even as a little kid, she’d been her own person, never the annoying cling-on that so many of his friends’ younger siblings were, probably because she intuitively knew how far she could push a moment, could always read people better than most adults he knew. Certainly better than their father could read Ethan, anyway.

  Ethan wanted to reach out and put his arm around her now, wanted to tell her that if this Brad Clahane was the nice guy she said he was, he wouldn’t care about the glasses. But he didn’t. They were, after all, Palmers. Hands off. “There’s always contacts, you know,” he offered.

  “Yeah, but they like to start you with glasses first.” She nodded toward the Mustangs racing across the laptop’s screen. “I still have that money if you need it,” she said, changing the subject.

  “Thanks,” he said, “but your brother got himself a job. One that pays tips.” He told her a little about The Chow Down and how Lil had offered him weekend shifts and at least one during the week, depending on the other part-timer’s schedule.

  “Sounds great,” she said. “Dad know?”

  “He didn’t ask.” And why would he? Jack Palmer was the centre of his own universe.

  “What about school?” she asked, pointing at the physics textbook on the floor.

  “Got it all under control,” he said, getting up and retrieving the book. He laid it on his bed and then turned to her. “It might be better, though, if, you know …”

  “If I don’t say anything about it?”

  “I don’t need the extra grief right now,” he said, thinking of what his father had said: You’ll have to start applying yourself in school. It was a sure bet his old man wouldn’t react well to news of his son working even more hours than he did at the pool.

  She smiled slyly. “And you won’t say anything about me needing glasses?”

  Ethan’s eyes widened. “Sounds a lot like blackmail to me, Rayelene Palmer.”

  As he knew it would, his use of her full first name drew an elaborate eye-roll from his sister. Rayelene had been their grandmother’s middle name, and more than once Raye had complained to Ethan that it sounded like it belonged to some
Arkansas housewife with big hair and ten kids. “We got a deal?” she asked.

  He looked at her for a moment, then nodded slowly. “As long as you tell him yourself. You need to get those eyes checked out.”

  “Got it all under control,” she echoed.

  “Okay.” Just as she was turning to leave, he added, “When do I get to meet this Brad guy?”

  “We’ll see,” she replied, then left.

  A moment later, Ethan could hear “Smoke on the Water” floating across the hall, but this time it had an oddly upbeat tempo. He sat on his bed, leaned back against the headboard, and flipped his physics textbook to the page where he’d left off, but it wasn’t long before his attention wandered to his screensaver. He reached for the laptop and tapped the space bar. The Mustangs vanished, revealing the specs for the car that Raye had been looking at. Ethan skimmed them, then clicked his browser’s Home key. In a moment, he was scrolling through mustangcobra.com. Although he knew the features of the 1996 Cobra SVT by heart, he scanned through them anyway, imagining himself inside the vehicle they described. He was no longer in his bedroom on Seminary Lane. He could smell the leather, could hear the pavement whine beneath his tires, could feel the powerful engine pulling him forward. Just as he was ready to really open her up, the textbook lying on his lap slid sideways and fell to the floor. Sighing, he picked it up and tried once more to care about the physics behind friction coefficients.

  After a moment he snapped the book shut.

  Got it all under control, he thought.

  Chapter 12

  “So how’d you find it?” asked Allie as they left the physics lab. Already the hallway was filling with people heading toward the exits.

  Ethan shrugged. “Okay,” he said, but the nonchalance in his voice sounded false even to him. Though he’d tried every question on the test, nearly half of them made him wonder whether he’d looked at the right chapter in the textbook the night before. He’d guessed his way through the whole last section.