Beauregard finished his coffee. Once upon a time, he had dreamed of living in a house like this one. A house with running water and a roof that didn’t leak like a sieve. A house where everyone had their own room and there wasn’t a slop bucket in the corner. He put the coffee cup in the sink. He didn’t know what was sadder. That his dreams had been so modest or that they had been so prophetic. That was in the days before his father had disappeared. Seeing him again had taken over the top spot on his wish list. But after all these years, he had learned to accept that some dreams don’t come true.
He grabbed his keys and his phone and walked out of the house. It was only ten and it was already as hot as hell. When he stepped off the porch, he could feel the sun beating down on him like he owed it money. He hopped in his truck and revved up the engine to get the AC cranking. He backed up, turned around and drove down the driveway, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake.
He hit the main highway, but instead of turning left toward the garage, he turned right toward the outskirts of town. He cut through Trader Lane and drove past the desiccated husks of several deserted houses. A little bit farther up the road, he passed the abandoned Clover Hill Industrial Park. Years ago, the Powers That Be of Red Hill County tried to reinvent the former farming community as a mecca for manufacturing. They offered fat tax breaks to the corporations, and in turn the corporations offered the town hundreds of jobs. For a while it was a mutually beneficial relationship. Right up until the 2008 recession hit. This was right about the same time the corporations realized they could ship their plants overseas and cut expenses by half while doubling profits.
The empty buildings stood like forgotten monoliths to a lost civilization. The ice plant, the insulation plant, the flag factory and the elastic plant were hardly discernible anymore. Mother Nature was reclaiming her land with steady, implacable persistence. The pine trees and the dogwoods and the honeysuckle and the kudzu were slowly but surely enveloping the old buildings in an arboreal embrace. Beauregard’s mother had worked at the elastic plant from the time it opened until its untimely demise. Which just happened to be two years before her retirement, but only a week after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. A month later, he had taken his first job. Boonie had set him up with a crew out of Philly who needed a driver. Since he had been the new guy, his cut had only been five grand. That was the going rate, or so they had told him. He had only been seventeen so he didn’t really question it. That was a mistake. He would learn that the going rate was a full share or nothing at all. He didn’t really dwell on it too much. A mistake is a lesson, unless you make the same mistake twice.
As he got closer to the county line, fields of corn and beans began to dominate the landscape. Residential encroachment hadn’t yet reached this part of town. Eventually some enterprising developer would drop a dozen or so narrow rectangular boxes out here and call it a trailer court.
He rolled through a narrow curve and spotted the sign. A five-foot-wide saw blade attached to a three-foot-tall metal pole. RED HILL METALS was spelled out on the sign with sections of rebar painted bright red. The saw blade had been painted white, but the paint was peeling like a bad sunburn. Beauregard turned down the gravel driveway. The driveway was buffeted on both sides by enormous blue and white hydrangeas. At the end of the driveway was a set of fifteen-foot-tall chain-link gates. As Beauregard approached, the gates began to roll on large metal caster wheels. Boonie had attached a motion sensor to the gate a few years ago. He’d gotten tired of having to stop working every time someone pulled up with their mama’s old wood stove. Rusted razor wire topped the gate and the equally tall fence that was attached to it. Two dark-skinned men nodded at Beauregard as he drove past them. They were both wielding massive reciprocating saws. A mangled AMC Gremlin appeared to be their intended target.
Beauregard drove over the ten-foot-wide scale that was embedded in the ground, took a hard left and parked in front of the main office. He got out of the truck and immediately started sweating. The heat had gone from volcano to Hell in the span of twenty minutes. Metallic screams of agony filled the air as the two compactors crushed cars, trucks and the occasional washing machine. Cubes of steel and iron were stacked across the yard like giant dominoes. A graveyard of vehicles rose up from behind the office building as they waited their turn in the maw of Chompy Number One and Chompy Number Two. Kaden had named them on a summer day long ago.
Beauregard’s Daddy had taken him, Kaden and Kelvin out riding in the Duster that day. “Gotta go see ya Uncle Boonie for a minute, then we can go to the Tastee Freez. Y’all want some whiskey with your milkshakes?” his father had asked with a wink.
“Yeah!” Kelvin had spoken up. Of course it was Kelvin. He had even raised his hand.
Beauregard’s father had laughed so hard he had started coughing.
“Boy, your Mama would have both our asses in a sling. Maybe in a few years.”
When they had pulled into the yard the three of them had leaned over the front seat to watch the belching, groaning claw crane drop a car into the crusher. It tumbled trunk over hood before slamming into the compactor.
“Chompy Number One, finish him!” Kaden had howled. Beauregard’s Daddy had told Boonie and the names had stuck. They’d never had that shot of whiskey, though.
The word “OFFICE” was spelled out on the door using lengths of copper tubing. Beauregard knocked three times on the door in quick succession. You never knew what kind of business was being conducted in there, so it was best to knock.
“Come on in,” a raspy voice said. Boonie was sitting behind his desk. A slab of iron on four wide metal cylinders. A ragged AC wheezed from the window over his shoulder. It was making more noise than cool air. A smattering of file cabinets and shelves ran along the walls. Boonie smiled.
“Bug! How the hell you doing? Boy, I ain’t seen you in what? Six months? A year?” Boonie said.
“Ain’t been that long. Just been busy at the shop.”
“Aw, I’m just fucking with you, boy. I know you working your ass off over there. I ain’t mad atcha. I just … just seems like you ain’t around like you used to be,” Boonie said. He took off his oil-stained baseball cap and fanned himself. His iron gray flattop contrasted with his coal black skin.
“I know. How things been around here?”
“Aw, ya know. Steady. People never run out of junk.”
Beauregard sat down in a folding chair next to the desk. “Yeah, always got shit to throw away.”
“How you been? How’s Kia and the boys?”
“They alright. Darren had to get some glasses and now Javon gotta have some special kind of braces. Kia doing alright. Coming up on five years at the hotel. Anything else going on?” he said.
Boonie replaced his hat and cocked his head at Beauregard. “You asking?” he said.
Beauregard nodded his head.
“Not that I ain’t glad to see you cuz you know I am, but I thought you was done,” Boonie said.
“I’ve just hit a rough patch. Things been kind of tough ever since Precision opened up,” Beauregard said.
Boonie entwined his fingers and laid them on his prodigious belly.
“Well, I wish I had something, but things have really dried up these last few years. The Italians got pushed out by the Russians, and the Russians only using their own crews. Shit, Bug, it’s been real quiet. Them Russians coming through sounding like Ivan Koloff trying to be all scary and shit,” Boonie said. He made a face like he had bitten into a rotten apple.