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Always a good morning for truckin’. Not a good morning for busting a degen nest, though, or a drug den, or – what was it Dary had said? – a coyote fighting ring. Now, how would you go about running a coyote donny den, you may ask? Why would anyone think in the first place that coyotes would be a good thing to put in the ring, you may also ask?
Wayne had asked. In the following discussion they’d established that, if anyone had gone so far as to obtain and house and put the coyotes in front of each other, all they’d have on their hands would be a couple of pissed-off coyotes.
So, maybe Wayne was about to bust a pile of coyote-mauled bodies. Most likely, it was degens or drug dealers.
The abandoned barn is on the edge of their property, and at least since Uncle Eddie could remember, no one could agree whether it was theirs or the neighbours. So it’s stayed abandoned. Until everybody started talking.
“Say, d’you hear that someone’s been in that barn round Wayne’s?”
“I heard old McGary saw the light on in there, last week.”
“Couple kids were sneaking ‘round and heard something in there, I heard.”
“What were they even doin’ there in the first place?”
“Oh, it’s almost not worth thinkin’ about.”
Gail says ghosts. There’s the coyote ring, from Daryl, course, and Glen reckons there are satanists in the woods.
In the end, a few too many people had been musing about how it could be a secluded enough location for ostrich-fucking for Wayne to sit by listening any longer. Better pump the brakes on that rumour before it got any closer to his property.
It (allegedly) isn’t his pig, but it is kind of his farm. Which is why he’s trucking out here in the grey before sunrise, hoping whatever he finds won’t dip into choring.
They hardly use the tracks back here, ‘cept for chucking the stones they’ve picked, so the truck bumps and tilts along between the high grasses. Wrestling a bit with the steering wheel, Wayne squints at the dim road ahead – then slams the breaks.
“Fuckin’ degens,” he curses, before opening the truck door.
Only, it’s not a degen that stumbles out of the grass like a pathetic horror flick jumpscare. Their dark dungarees are stained with dust from the track, boots caked in it.
“Skid?” Wayne’s eyebrows shoot up, eyeing Stewart up and down, unimpressed, as he leans on the door. “…How’re you now?”
Stewart hops around like a startled rat. His red-rimmed eyes are wide as they find Wayne, like he’s only just noticed him and didn’t hear his fucking truck crunching up the track from a mile away.
“Hick?”
Wayne rolls his eyes, staring away from the kid.
“Good, n’ you?”
“Is it really… it is you…”
Wayne turns his sceptical gaze back to the skid, who’s shadowy shape is now creeping forwards towards him like he’s some plaid-clad mirage.
Wayne lets go of the truck door and stands up straight.
“Holy fuck. You sure could do with taking… maybe even fifty percent off there.”
Slowing, Stewart stares, marvelling at the truck with a slow, dazed smile creeping onto his face.
“It’s a kind of poetry, wouldn’t you say? Through the mists emerges a noble shirt tucker with his chariot.”
“Kayyyy, now I’m thinkin’ more than fifty, n’ that’s my record. Figures it’s be a skid that pushes it.”
There’s a snort from Stewart, who steeples his fingers together. Swaying a little, his eyes wander off into the grasses.
“Would be a skid. Heh. I did it.”
“Alright, bud, I’ll give it to ya – an’ it’ll be your biggest fuckin’ achievement since you came second in playground tag in the third grade. You need to take a full seventy off ‘er there, okay? Sort yerself out, fer fuck’s sake. What the fuck’re you doin’ out here at ass o’clock in the middle o’ fuckin’ nowhere?”
“The fix…”
“Now, I don’t wanna call you one dimensional, but–”
“No!” Stewart raises his voice, then realises himself and steps back, jamming his hands under his armpits, shoulders hunching. “The fix. There were… tweaks.”
Wayne raises a brow at Stewart’s twitching left eye.
“Yer fuckin’ telling me–”
“Adjustments,” Stewart hisses, ignoring him. “Minor mishaps. Modifications. Much better than the mediocre quality meth from my mother’s…”
Having had just about enough, Wayne marches forwards a few paces to reach him.
“Pitter patter, skid. Are you cookin’ fucking meth in my barn?”
“Your barn?”
Stewart pauses for a moment, then bursts abruptly into laughter, dropping his hands to his sides. Wayne grinds his jaw.
“You’ve had wayy too much sugar cereal, there, bud. No one’s doin’ fuckin’ meth on my property. Yer coming with me.”
Weighing up what he might catch from Stewart against getting his cooperation during whatever fucking trip he’s on right now, Wayne grabs his wrist.
Immediately, Stewart shuts his mouth and stops laughing. Same moment as Wayne lays eyes on the skid’s fingers – properly.
“The fuck happened to your hand?” He asks slowly.
Dawn is coming too slow, and through the milky grey he can’t see it right, but Stewart’s pale hands are covered in blackened patches. His skin is cold, and he tries to pull back, but Wayne holds firm and turns them over. Stewart’s palms are charred, the skin has melted and warped like wax.
Wayne just snaps his mouth shut.
“Don’t make me– we don’t need to go to the barn! Don’t trouble yourself with that dump!” Stewart whines then, and Wayne’s head jerks up to watch him incredulously. “Not your pig, not your farm?”
“Pipe down about the fuckin’ barn, what about yer–” Wayne’s lips freeze mid-sentence.
Stewart’s face. The black patches are there too. A stark streak slashes across his cheek, below his left eye.
Wayne’s eyes widen. How long has the kid been out here like this? His hand really is freezing.
“Where are we–”
Stewart is cut off by Wayne tugging him towards the truck, marching to the side door and bundling Stewart inside. He falls back against the seat, staring, startled, at Wayne, who only slams the door and stomps back to his own side. Throwing an arm over Stewart’s seat, he reverses faster than is sensible, not caring about the stones thunking against the bottom of the truck.
When he turns around, his back tires throw up a cloud of dust, glowing in the dawn. Doesn’t take his eyes off the tracks until he’s roaring up next to the farmhouse.
The door’s already open. At the sound of his engine growing closer, Katy all but runs down the steps, dragging Roald by his ear. He staggers into her when she stops at the bottom, and stays there, whimpering and cowering like a chihuahua.
“Hey, big brother. Guess who’s been using our fucking barn as a fucking meth lab?” Katy calls the minute Wayne opens the door.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Roald babbles, “but Stewart didn’t come back last night, he said he was going to work on it and there’s bears and coyotes and–”
Katy shakes him and his voice dies away with a whine.
“I know about the lab,” Wayne sighs, “and I found…”
Looking back into the truck, he stops.
“What?” Katy pushes, expectant. “What’d you find?”
The truck is empty. There’s no dust on the seat from Stewart’s overalls, no boot-prints in the well.
“Pitter patter!” She raises her voice.
“Skid?” Wayne says, almost to himself.
He must sound insane. Must look insane, too, but he marches to the back of the truck and stares down the lane. It’s empty.
“Well, fuck a duck.”