He gave it to me.
“You owe me.”
“Thanks, Kenny.”
I went into the kitchen and downed it with three glasses of water. In that moment I swore to myself, on my grandmother’s holy grave, that I would never, ever, ever again drink or do any kind of drug or narcotic. I felt good about this. I felt the glowing kernel of a fresh start. Now it was time for some coffee.
Farns’ old van had all kinds of punk rock stickers on the back: Black Flag, D.O.A., Dead Kennedys. Was this guy a redneck or a punker? I gave up on trying to figure out what kind of alternate universe I’d fallen into here. As I crawled up into the seat, the smell of ball bearing grease and peat moss hit me like a heavy death fog. My eyes stung. The hot air was brutal. No breeze. I couldn’t get comfortable in the seat. Even my ass hurt.
Farns cranked some psycho punk metal on the stereo and hit the gas. The reckless way he drove and the grinding noise of his van made me feel like I was on a beat-up carnival ride that had broken loose from its moorings. We finally stopped, sitting there rumbling at a stop light. It seemed out of character for him to stop. Anything less than screeching tires and his van up on two wheels seemed too normal. We pulled up to another intersection and he pointed at an old hardware store on the opposite corner. It sat in a row of stores that had to date back to 1903.
“That’s one of my signs there,” he yelled over the music, pointing to the sign above the big plate glass window. Roys’ Boys Hardware. The retro-looking black letters were set in bold contrast against a white background with shock-red trim. It really screamed at you.
“Roys’ Boys, huh? That’s, like, a mom’n’pop place?”
“No. It’s a billion-dollar conglomerate chain. Duh.” I couldn’t believe he was able to string together such a clever set of words. I was starting to get this sick feeling that Farns was a lot smarter than I had been giving him credit for. I don’t know why it bothered me, but it did.
“The apostrophe isn’t in the right spot, though,” I said.
“What?”
“It should go after the ‘y,’ unless there’s more than one Roy.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m just saying. I did a lot of proofreading at my last job.”
“Proofread this, motherfucker.” He flipped me off.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by—”
“That’s how the old sign was.”
“No, it’s a great sign. Really.”
“Glad I have your approval.”
He hit the gas hard. It hurt. I couldn’t wait for the red brontosaurus pill to kick in.
“Hell, if you want I’ll show you the best sign I’ve ever done. Or what’s left of it.”
“Can we get coffee first? I’m dying.”
“Won’t take long.”
I didn’t want to see his sign. I didn’t want anything. I didn’t feel anything but pain. We drove for a while and the houses started to get nicer. Actually gorgeous. Beautiful turn-of-the-century brick homes with white columns and giant porches. It seemed like a part of town that Farns wouldn’t be allowed in. We kept going and not talking and it was starting to bother me.
“So, I heard about your boat, driving the boat around with the people in the back? That is one cool story.”
His lips tightened. His eyes zeroed straight ahead. He looked pissed.
“Well, what the fuck is so funny about that?”
“I dunno—it just—I didn’t say it was funny, really.”
“I dunno,” he mocked me.
I must have really sandpapered a sore spot. He looked like he was getting ready to spit. Then he threw his head back and laughed. He was just fucking with me. I felt like a moron.
“You sonofabitch,” I said. I meant to sound playful, but it came out too hard. He gave me a shit look. I guess I didn’t know him well enough to call him a sonofabitch yet. But then I thought: and he knows me well enough to stick his nose up the ass of my personal business? Farns is a sonofabitch.
We came to a traffic circle at the center of which sat a huge statue of a Civil War dude on his horse. It said Stonewall Jackson on the white granite base. Wow, I thought, I really am in the South. If only Ben the Cowboy could see me now, riding around in an old van with a redneck punker, cruising by giant Confederate monuments. He wouldn’t last five minutes down here with that goofy-ass cowboy deal of his. Either that or he’d be a big hit. We pulled out onto a main drag, Broad Street, and cruised through a few intersections. Then he pulled into the parking lot of a big Lowe’s hardware store and stopped.
“See the L on that Lowe’s sign?” he said.
“You made the sign for Lowe’s? Yeah, right.”
“No. I made it better. Look at the L. See those two little marks on the side?”
“Yeah.”
“I made a big fake B and painted it blue and hauled it up there one night. Welded it next to the L.”
“Um…okay. I don’t get it.”
“So it said: BLOWE’S.”
“No you did not.”
“I swear on my mama’s bible. I got a picture of it somewhere. It made the paper.”
“Nuh-uh. Why would you do something like that anyway?”
“Wouldn’t let me return these shit two-by-fours.”
I didn’t believe him. Those big stores always take stuff back.
“So why’d you buy them in the first place if they were so shitty?”
“I’ll give you some advice.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t ever send Wallace to Lowe’s to buy two-by-fours.”
“I’ll make a mental note.”
“So where’s this pervert guy live? Let’s go check him out.”
“I thought we were getting breakfast. Coffee.”
“All in good time. Let’s take care of business first.”
“There’s no business.”
“We gotta case his place out, dude. You can’t just fall up into this thing blind.”
“Farns, with all do respect, this is my own personal thing. I’ll handle it my own way.”
“I’m just trying to help you out, man.”
“Can we just get some coffee? I am dying for a cup of fucking coffee.”
“What’s the guy’s address? What street?”
Farns wasn’t budging. I wanted nothing to do with any of this but my tank was empty. I just wanted to get one last cup of java and die.
“2214 Glade Farms Way.”
“Glade Farms. That’s on Southside.”
I shrugged, which hurt.
We got to Motorcar’s neighborhood in about twenty minutes. Richmond isn’t that big. As we turned into the subdivision, I was starting to get really nervous. My stomach was a squirming pile of swamp knots. I felt totally exposed. I wasn’t hyperventilating, but I was close. Thankfully the blue landmine had started to kick in. My seventeen headaches had gone down to about five, and three of those were from caffeine withdrawal.
We took a left then a right then another left. I left my map in my backpack back at Shred’s. Farns just drove around Glade Farms until he found the right street. I saw the limousine from about ten houses away.
“This is it coming up,” I said. “The one with the limousine. Up here.”
We stopped about three houses away, across the street.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. He drives for a limo company.”
“How you know all this?” he said with one eye cocked.
“I used to work at a law firm. You can find out anything about anybody.”
“Huh,” Farns said. He smiled. “Maybe you’re not such a dumb-ass.”
Then it occurred to me that if the limo was out front, that meant Motorcar was probably home.
He was in there.
It started freaking me out.
“That’s it,” I said through my swollen face. “That’s all I need to see. Let’s get out of here.”
“You sure? You don’t wanna stake him out first? Make a p
ositive ID?”
“I’m positive. That’s gotta be his house. I’ll come back later and do what I need to do.”
“You want to be sure, though. You don’t want to end up killing the wrong guy.”
“I’m not going to kill anybody.”
“Positive ’bout that?”
I was starting to feel panic. My neck was hot. Now I was hyperventilating.
“Please. Can we just go? Thank you for your help.”
“Look, man. I’ll tell you something that nobody knows. If you promise not to tell anybody?”
“Okay.”
“Seriously—promise?”
“Fine! I promise.”
“I’ve got a gun under the seat here, Jerry. You want to go in there and do this now, you can use it.”
“No! And my name’s not Jerry, it’s Jarvis.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I know my name. And I’m sure I don’t want to kill anybody. Jesus—you have a gun in here?”
“Well, it’s just a flare gun, but it could really fuck him up.”
“Jeez.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Why do you think the limo’s here at his house. He work nights?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s on lunch or ‘on call’ or something.”
“Or he’s taking the day off to hide in the bushes and molest cub scouts.”
“Come on, man—that’s sick.”
“Damn right it is. The truth is a sick fuck.”
I didn’t say anything. He started to pull off. We drove slowly by the front of Motorcar’s house.
“Fucking pervert filth,” Farns said under his breath.
We headed out of the subdivision. Farns said breakfast. I said yes. We turned onto a main drag, a road with all the same identical plastic signs and logos as every other cross-town main drag in the nation—fast food chains, retail chains, restaurant chains. It was comforting somehow. Farns whipped onto a side road and started hauling ass. Before long we were in an industrial area. Everything was so old, we could easily have been spit out of the other end of a time machine. Looked like an area where people were brought to be killed. I saw big white rusted oil tanks and fuel truck fueling stations, concrete supply houses, warehouses with slumping loading docks running along their backs. He finally pulled into the gravel parking lot of this dive country restaurant. It didn’t look like a restaurant—just a box. Farns was already out of the van before the dust cloud he’d made even settled down. It took me a while just to make a move for the door handle.
The place was a total shack. Looked like it was built out of leftover wood and metal scraps. On the side of the building there was sloppily painted sign that said: Sallys. Again with the apostrophe mistakes.
We went in. Could have been 1968 in there. The scuffed and chipped tile floors, the ancient chairs and tables, the old Coca-Cola clock stuck at 9:37. The weirdest thing though was the mismatching patches of fake wood paneling on the ceiling. An older black man sat at the end of the counter. He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt—in this hot weather! There was an old air conditioner up in a tiny window, but it was exhaling like it had asthma and barely getting the humidity out of the room. There were a few other people in the booths, then I realized—everyone in here was black but me and Farns. They all seemed friendly but they were still looking at us funny. I thought Farns was this blue collar Southern redneck, and here we are in this place? Nothing made sense anymore.
The sizzling sounds coming off the grill and the smells of bacon and butter and coffee gave the place a real grandma feeling. Part of me was starting to feel alive.
“Hey, Pearline,” Farns said to the lady at the grill. She turned her head to see us.
“Hey, sweetie,” the lady said. “How you doin’?” Her voice poured out of her mouth with the most syrupy Southern accent I’d ever heard in my life.
“Oh, not too bad,” Farns said. “’Bout yourself?”
“Pretty good, pretty good.” Pearline looked at me and smiled, then went back to her cooking. Didn’t seem to phase her one iota that my face was smashed all to hell.
I couldn’t believe this Farns. He could hang with the punkers, the rednecks and the sweet black lady at Sallys. Like he had a secret passport to everywhere. I never knew such a person even existed. We ordered bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches with coffees to go. She wrapped up our sandwiches in wax paper, put them in bags and gave us our coffees in big white styrofoam cups.
“Thank you,” I said to Pearline.
“You’re welcome, sweetie.”
I got called “sweetie!” This day was actually starting to get better.
When Farns and I got back into his van, the waves of deliciousness were rising off my sandwich and calling me. I tore in. About a third of the way into the first bite, I knew that this was easily the absolute best bacon, egg and cheese mother mcfucking breakfast sandwich I had ever tasted in my life. The hot golden cheese mixing with the farm fresh egg and crisp bacon flavors, the giant fresh-baked biscuit—oh my lord!—I thought such experiences only existed in dreams. Yes, it hurt my jaw to chew and hurt my neck to swallow, but I’m talking hands down, the best in the history of the solar system.
“Man,” I said, chewing. “Pearline’s a goddess.”
“You got that right.”
“A bacon goddess.”
“She’s the breakfast sandwich queen of Central Virginia, no doubt.”
We rode on as I devoured my sandwich and coffee. I had no idea where we were. Farns turned down some alley. He pulled in behind this building, a big, ugly cinder block thing with a rusted steel bay door. Weeds were coming up in between the cracks of the asphalt, exploding into weed bushes.
“I need to go into my shop real quick.”
“Sure. I’ll just wait here.”
“No. Come in.”
“That’s okay.”
“Seriously, you can’t sit out here.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue. We went in through a regular door next to the bay door. Inside it was dark. He flicked on the overhead fluorescents. The smell of paint and paint thinner, grease and fresh lumber floated in the air. Farns threw his sandwich on a big steel work table and stretched out his back before he started eating. My sandwich was long gone, so I just looked around. It was a big place, cluttered with all kinds of junk, stacks of two-by-fours and plywood, paint cans and painting equipment, wall racks holding long steel rods and channel iron, all kinds of power tools, a giant jigsaw, welding stuff. Along the back wall sat five or six refrigerators.
“What’s with the fridges?”
“Huh?” he said, chewing.
“The refrigerators?”
“I like my beer and I like it cold.”
Wow, I thought, this dude is a real professional alcoholic, but nobody has five refrigerators full of beer. Body parts, maybe. Bodies of people he’d killed. Dead perverts, dead yuppies, dead store owners who didn’t pay for their Joes Coffee Shop sign. Dead proofreaders. He finished his sandwich and chugged his coffee and let fly a throaty wet burp. Disgusting. He seemed proud of it too. He turned on a dilapidated boom box and some old jazz from the 50s came bopping out. I guess it was from the 50s—what did I know? Then he got out some weed and starting rolling a joint.
“So, what are you gonna do to the pervo when you confront him tonight?”
“I don’t know if that’s gonna go down tonight. I feel like complete crap. Might just come back in a few weeks and do it then.”
Farns chuckled and lit his joint. He took a long, slow drag. Guy had mega-lungs. He held it in for a while and then blew a mushroom cloud of smoke into my face.
“What would you do, though, if you were going tonight?”
“I dunno, man. Yell some brutal insults at him. A couple of freezing hot zingers.”
He smiled. “Freezing hot zingers. I like that.”
“Thanks.”
“Tell you what. Nothing insults a man’s pride like an alumi
num baseball bat…”
“Violence isn’t the answer.”
“…to the neck.”
He offered me a hit off the joint, but I shook my head no.
“You sure?” he said. “It’ll make you forget about your face.”
“I don’t want to forget. Remembering will keep me from drinking again.”
He chuckled again. “So, you go back to little Maryland and get your beauty rest. Or in your case, your ugly rest.”
“Thanks.”
“Me and Shred’ll make sure this motherfucker pays.”
“What? Are you kidding me?”
“Know where he lives now.”
“But this is my…operation.”
“You think we’re just gonna stand by and let a pervert walk the streets of Richmond?” Farns squinted his eyes. He showed his teeth. “I have friends who have kids.”
I wondered how I could have let this happen. I felt so naked. Naked and beaten and splayed out for all to see. And trapped—I couldn’t even walk out of that place, I had no idea where I was or how to get back to Shred’s.
“Farns—this is something I have to do. Myself. In my own time.”
“Let’s do it tonight, then. Pretty sure Shred’s off work.”
“I don’t need help!”
“Okay, okay. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
“Look—this is something I have to do as a man. Face this sick perv ass-wipe as a man and do it on my own. Know what I mean?”
Farns seemed to respect that. He nodded. I was flooded with relief. But now I felt locked in to doing it that night, no matter how beat up I was.
“Pretty cool gig you got here,” I said. “You get a lot of business?”
“I’m the best.”
“I’m sure.”
“I turn business away.”
“That’s great.”
“You’re goddam right it’s great.” He exhaled with pride and held his head up like an alpha lion. He rode the moment for as long as it lasted.
“Hey, can you do me a favor?”
I said sure, and the next thing I knew I was holding these big sheets of plywood steady at the end of his work table while he drilled a hole in each corner. The plywood was real heavy and I kept losing my footing. He kept yelling: “Hold tighter! Hold tighter!” He had eight pieces of plywood to drill. When that was done, he had me help him move these heavy-ass steel rods from a pile on the floor up onto the wall racks. It was a complete bitch. My hands were filthy and totally sore. He made me work for like an hour.
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