Between Wrecks Read Online Free

the importance of car junk yards in the South. I’d try to make a connection between junk yards and Antietam, or Bull Run, or Andersonville Prison. Then I’d send it off to Dr. Crowther and he’d say it wasn’t a very good idea. By that time I’d have another dream, or begin obsessing more so on Abby and the child I thought she had but never really did, et cetera.
    Doc said, “I got an idea. I got a great idea. Since most of my valuables got stolen, and since I got some insurance money for them, why don’t I give you all these lighters here. You make me a special chair or bench—yeah, make a bench so I can get rid of this telephone pole stool—and then I’ll let you go out and get another sack of lighters for free. How’s that sound?”
    Bobby Suddeth said, “You should make a chair that only has one lighter sticking straight up from the middle. It could be called the Happy Chair for Women, you know.”
    â€œOr the Happy Chair for Bobby Suddeth’s Ass,” Doc said. He exhaled loudly.
    Bobby Suddeth said, “Y’all been drinking without me? I smell it on both y’all. Where’d y’all get the liquor? I didn’t hear y’all leave.”
    I started laughing. I said, “We got it over by the collection of kickstands Doc has piled up.” I felt like I had the right. I felt like I belonged in the club. “Hey, I got a thermos of bourbon out in my truck. Let me go get it. Damn it to hell, I know better than to start. If I start drinking, I can’t stop until I’m asleep.”
    â€œYeah. I’ll drink some bourbon,” Bobby Suddeth said.
    I looked at Doc. He took up his limp again and scooted two stand-up ashtrays against the wall. He said, “I guess. Normally I’d say ‘no,’ but this seems like a different kind of day.” He took his leg and scooted the loveseat back against another wall. Was he expecting us to need room for a bigger dance floor? I thought. Was he later going to sweep his office?
    When I got to my truck I could hear Bobby Suddeth saying, “You crazy, man. Doc, Doc. You crazy, you old crip.” It was what they might call, in the Southern culture studies world, a “plaintive cry.” He yelped it out quickly.
    By the time I picked up the thermos—this was one of those nice ones, with the plastic cup that screwed to the top—I expected to hear two pistol reports. Instead I only heard some pings. Ping, ping, ping. Ping-ping-ping-ping. Because I’d not lived long enough with car cigarette lighters in my possession, I didn’t connect the sound with that of lighters being thrown hard and ricocheting off of Bobby Suddeth’s forehead, the cash register, windows.
    My first thought, of course, was to get in my truck and drive off fast. I’d done it before. I had sprayed gravel out of the Modestine Duncans’ trailer park with all their weird Book of Revelation quotes printed on their mobile homes, and out of the barren fat lighter farm, and out of the He’s Out Casting bar when I got the pet monkey, all in the name of a low-residency master’s degree. I’d been spraying gravel directly or metaphorically since birth, I realized, and it didn’t seem to matter. It was like I took off out of one trouble spot only to arrive at another. I could never find a place to flat-out hide.
    But I didn’t drive away. I sauntered back inside Doc’s Salvage to find Bobby Suddeth smiling—was there a trick being played on me?—and Doc picking up my car cigarette lighters from the floor. He said, “I’m just frustrated, you know. You imagine how frustrating all this can be.”
    Bobby Suddeth said, “Hey,” to me, as if we’d never met before. I could tell that he almost said, “You looking for a carburetor?”
    I said, “Here’s some bourbon.” I said, “What’s going on in here?”
    â€œSo