The Savage(7)
“Friends?” Horace questioned. “You got me. What used to be has been banked into lies. Squandered at the price of persons like us, the working. Tell me this, how else we supposed to earn our keep?”
When money was flowing well, Horace’d splurge on a hotel, buy Van Dorn a book from a grocery, offer a good night of comfort, cable TV, and lamplight to read by. While he swam in a twenty-or thirty-dollar bottle of whiskey and their battery-powered tools charged.
“Couldn’t we get us jobs somewheres, move back into our trailer?”
Horace chuckled. “Your mouth plies my ears with ignorance, boy. You know they’s no such foolishness being offered. And we rent our skin for no man.”
“What about joining up with a militia? Mend with like-minded people, put our skills to good use?”
They’d heard the stories when fueling up the Ford and grabbing a local paper. Jobs had become scarce. Even getting part-time work washing down the lot at a McDonald’s was competitive. They’d spoken with families like them who’d become homeless and camped beneath overpasses in cities or within parks. Or joined up with rogue groups of working-class men and women, those who’d set their sights upon anarchy. Plotting to make statements all across the United States against their failed government at the right moment.
“How we know if we don’t look?”
They were closer to home than they’d ever been. Had crossed the Ohio River from Kentucky to Indiana two days ago. Paid a visit to the justice center in Corydon. Scribbled down some residences and pitched their tent at the Stage Stop Campgrounds. Mapped out their path. They’d been driving somewhere between Laconia and Elizabeth. Had entered a private area of housing, one road in and the same road out. Maybe this return to familiarity has brought on the boy’s discourse, the father thought as he fought back with his trail-worn wisdom.
“I’ve taught you better’n that, Van Dorn. I’ve never let you starve nor freeze. And I’m not about to join ranks with a group of martyrs on a pilgrimage to dismantle and shun the powers that be.”
“No, we’ll just lurk among the streams of decay, take company with human crustaceans.”
The father hung a right, and Van Dorn imagined Horace stomping the brake, laying a tread of knuckles upside his hard head, but his father had taught him to have a venomous tongue. To argue his point of view with strategy and facts. Hoping he’d grow sharper than he’d ever be. And for this Horace was proud.
Killing the truck lights, Van Dorn’s father let the moon navigate him into a half-circle driveway. Still rolling Van Dorn’s words around in his mind, Horace concluded that Dorn was correct in what he said, though there was little reason for him to treat his father with disrespect. The distance they’d traveled wasn’t easy for either of them. Horace missed planing and staining wood. Hammering nails and driving screws into treated boards to frame a deck or an addition. To create something of substance. Worth. And he’d not lain with a female in over twelve months or better. But the whiskey helped to numb those emotions of want.
The brick home sat lone, devoid of vehicle or light, with neighboring other dwellings standing over a football field away. Shifting into reverse, Horace backed down the lumped soil. Tucked the truck up next to the house and killed the engine. Van Dorn grabbed his flashlight, unlatched the passenger-side door. Horace reached for Van Dorn’s arm. Strained for words to better all that had been passed between them but found none as Van Dorn jerked free.
Outside of the truck, Horace stood opposite Van Dorn, fastening his tool belt. Dorn pouted, stared out into the night from which they’d come, and Horace told him. “Quit wasting the dark, get your cutter and bar, go around back, they’s supporting walls, looks to be a walk-out, try the doors, start on the basement pipes.”
From the Ford’s bed, Dorn pulled a battery-powered saw and hexagonal crowbar and said, “Yes, master.” Then disappeared around the corner of the house before Horace could acknowledge the salty-tongued reply.
Tasting the bitterness of truth, Horace knew there was no reward for the struggling. Seemed the harder one tried, the harder life came, and all one could do was keep dredging forward, hoping for a sign that acknowledged the accuracy for one’s direction.
He tried the side door before committing to prying. The knob turned and the door opened. Scents of mildewed lumber and chalky walls engulfed Horace’s inhale. Shining a light on the kitchen floor, he saw that tile and grout lay in pieces, had been plied or broken, coffee stains dotted the ceiling with jellyfish outlines, the countertops were scuffed to the particleboard beneath them. Cabinet doors had been sprung and removed from hinges.
Kneeling down, the father looked beneath the sink. A foul odor decorated the square space; he wanted to check the piping, see how it was connected, whether it was hard or flex. It was neither. It’d been gutted.
In its place lay the chalky bones of a small animal. Pieces of hide. Entrails. Specks of pissants and shells of dead flies. “What in the hell?” Van Dorn’s father muttered. Standing up, he walked to a set of doors and opened them, expecting to find the water heater, but it was gone.
Following the warped walls from the kitchen to the dining area, Horace glanced around the open areas of shadow. Decay lingered in the air and he listened for Dorn, could hear no jarring of metal teeth against mineral pipe. Took in the drywall that held smears of handprints, had been pebbled to the floor from wire being ripped out but not finished. Just frayed ends of copper hanging as if some scrappers had been halted of their actions.