“Well,
here’s problem number one,” Nash remarked as he pointed out a belt that looked
chewed all to hell. “I’m willing to bet the missing pieces have wedged
themselves places. Fortunately, if the radiator and fan are shot, I spotted a
Challenger with its front end in pretty good condition the other day. I marked
it out on a makeshift map in case I wanted to harvest parts out of it, but it
could be you need it more.”
“A
map, huh?” Justice remarked, trying to keep the bitterness out of his tone,
though it was hard with how easy Nash had diagnosed the problem, despite
claiming not to be a car guy. True, the light made it much easier to see and he
really should have hunted up a flashlight before getting started and he could
have found it himself. “Worried about getting lost out there with the goats?”
“Nope,”
Nash replied as he leaned over a little further to check something out. Justice
heard him tinkering, but Nash’s head was blocking his view, and he was
whistling “Hotel California.” “I just
figured it would save time, make it easier to find things when inspiration hit
or I got the sudden urge to do backflips off a Buick.”
Okay,
that was it, that was the very last straw. Justice couldn’t take it anymore.
Shoving away from the car he let out an explosion of expletives loud enough to
scare a flock of birds from a nearby tree. “Fuckin’ Christ, every time I think
I’ve gotten you figured out, you go and say or do something that comes
completely out of left field.”
“Maybe,
or maybe you’re just used to spending time with assholes,” Nash grit out. “Yeah, radiator’s toast, we gotta pull it.”
Groaning,
Justice waited for Nash to emerge before glaring daggers at him.
“What?”
Nash shot back. “You’re acting like you didn’t want me to figure out what was
wrong. If we hurry up and get this done, you might be able to make it to
wherever you were going. From the look of that wicked pair of jeans, I’m
guessing you’ve got a hot date waiting for you. Wouldn’t want to disappoint
him. Wanna hand me a five-thirty-two socket wrench and I’ll get this out? I can
tell you where the other car is if you want to go grab the pieces.”
Justice
searched his face for any signs of mockery or jealousy, but Nash was as relaxed
and serene as ever, eyes darting from Justice to the car like he couldn’t wait
to get back under the hood. Nash’s words rolled through his mind, about
spending time with assholes, and yeah, maybe he was on to something there. The
guys he hooked up with in the city were self-serving and cared about one thing
and one thing only: having a good time. Which included getting off. Not that
Justice had ever minded, that had been his goal, too. Hell, the only selfless
person he’d ever known in his lifetime had been his old man. Even Jude could be
stubborn and demanding when things didn’t go the way he wanted them to, and
yet, there was Nash, giving, giving, giving. It was almost as if he felt he had
to give Justice the earth, sun, and moon just for allowing him to stay with
them. Only, the last thing he wanted was Nash bending over backwards for him
out of gratitude. Now bending over forward … the stray thought had come unbidden,
but once it was there, Justice found himself looking from Nash to the car and
back again.
“Fuck
it, I ain’t goin’ nowhere tonight,” Justice muttered.
“Dude,
don’t scrap your plans over this, it’s an easy fix. I can have it out of here
in no time,” Nash remarked, pulling his t-shirt off and tossing it aside. When
he bent over the hood, it gave Justice his first fully detailed, close up view
of the massive piece on Nash’s back. The black and white shading made all of
the details of the octopus pop, but the closer Justice looked there were other
images that emerged from amongst the tones, tangled in the tentacles. A
tombstone with a name and dates etched in it, some type of flower peeking out
from between two suction cups. Justice was almost certain it was a type of
lily. Some kind of medical symbol was there too, with the wings and two
serpents, Justice had no clue what it was actually called but he’d seen the pin
on doctors and nurses a time or two. A big eared cat with expressive eyes was
clutched tight against the octopus’s body and of all things, there was a
phoenix gripped in the tentacles as well.
Justice
whistled low. “Holy shit, that’s a lot of ink. Bet that wasn’t cheap.”
“Nope.
It didn’t tickle either; those phoenix feathers and tentacles down my lower
back hurt like hell.”
“I’ll
bet,” Justice remarked as he reached out and brushed a fingertip over one. He
heard Nash’s sharp inhale of breath, a low exhale, then a clatter, like he’d
dropped something, but since he didn’t pull away or tell Justice to stop,
Justice kept up the slow, gentle tracing over the very intricate piece.
“You’re
making it very hard … to get things … loose,” Nash complained, little grunts
punctuating the space between words.
“Color
me curious, but does this have meaning or did you just like what you saw on the
wall of the shop?” Justice asked. At first, Justice wasn’t sure he was going to
answer, there was a lot of grumbling, then Nash came out from beneath the hood
with two bolts and a smudge of grease on his cheek. “Octopus symbolizes
creativity and unpredictability, phoenix is self-explanatory. I wanted it there
to remind me that no matter how many times I crashed and burned I could pick
myself up and try again long as I was still breathin’.”
“And
all those pieces tangled up in the tentacles?”
“Represent
someone I know or knew.”
“Wow,
that’s pretty deep,” Justice remarked after several seconds spent trying to
wrap his brain around it all. One thing it showed him was that for all his
traveling, Nash really did have a deep regard for the people he’d known and
left behind, to carry them on his body that way.
“Well,
I figure it should be if I’m going to wear it on my body for the rest of my
life.”
“Good
point.”
“You
got any ink?”
Chuckling,
Justice opened his fly, undid the zipper, and peeled the right side back to
reveal an impressive stream of gold tipped black feathers running from the
inner junction of his thigh, disappearing deeper into the denim. Words flowed
along with the feathers, and Justice hoped Nash looked close enough to actually
read them. If he did, he’d see how aroused Justice was getting and maybe he’d
do something about it.
Justice
almost forgot how to breathe when Nash went to his knees right in front of him,
putting him eye level with the tattoo.
The road to hell is paved with
absinthe and chrome, blackbird feathers dipped in gold. From truth, vice, and
dreams, all our stories unfold.
Nash
whispered the words, his breath tickling Justice’s inner thigh and making his
cock twitch.
“Where
are these words from?”
“Song
a buddy of mine wrote right before he left here,” Justice replied. “Sometimes I
hear from him, but in a lot of ways he’s kind of like you. Feels the need to
keep going and going and going. One day, I’m afraid he’ll burn out completely
and I won’t even know. Whenever he goes too long without getting in touch, I
start wondering if it finally happened. When he pops up, I’m always relieved,
but then it’s like the roller coaster of emotions starts up again and I’m back
waiting for the crash.”
“Is
he touring, like with a band or something?” Nash asked, still looking up at
him, lips inches from Justice’s cock.
“Naa,
nothing as formal as that. He doesn’t really believe in the whole band thing.
Always said music was a solitary thing, between him and his demons. But he
shared that song one night when we were both drunk and pissed off at the world.
Those words were kind of engraved in my mind, so when I thought about getting a
tattoo I decided that if I got that I would always carry a piece of him with
me.”
“Why
put it there where it would rarely be seen?” Nash asked, and Justice could have
sworn he detected a slight hitch in his voice, a breathiness that hadn’t been
there before.
“Jude
wasn’t eighteen yet. Didn’t want him to see me with one and get any bright
ideas about getting one himself. It failed, of course, the little shit. He got
one on his hip thinking I wouldn’t see it. He was sixteen and it was a shitty
stick and poke. I ended up taking him to the tattoo parlor to get it covered up
with something good. It was his eighteenth birthday present, one of them
anyway. I’d have taken him regardless if he’d just waited, but I remember being
impatient as hell when I was that age too, so I didn’t yell too much.”
Good morning, Justice and thank you for agreeing to sit down
with me today.
I’d have loved to do this interview a little later in the
day.
I’m sure. Well there is a freshly brewed pot of coffee if
you’d like some.
Why didn’t you say that in the first place?
For someone used to getting up early in the morning, you’re
far grouchier about it than I expected.
Shouldn’t I be? You’re grouchy in the morning, everyone
you live with is grouchy in the morning, hell, everyone you know is grouchy in
the morning. Don’t you always tell people that you base all of us characters on
people you know?
Yes, but…
Well then you can’t really expect any of us to be balls
of sunshine in the morning, now can you?
Point taken. Shall we move on?”
Yeah, we can do that. This is good coffee by the way.
Thanks. So tell me about your reaction when Jude pulled up
in the two truck with a motorcycle on the back and a perfect stranger in the
cab beside him. Looking back, do you think that maybe you were a bit harsh
under the circumstances?
No.
Care to elaborate?
Yeah, as long as you don’t mind me answering a question
with a question. How would feel if one of your kids showed up on your doorstep
with a dusty stranger and a busted up old motorcycle?
Curious, but then, I love old bikes and would jump at the
opportunity to help work on one. As for the stranger, well, considering he
looked about as lively as a wrung out dish rag, I’d like to think I’d have been
cautious, but welcoming.
Goody for you. I’ve been looking out for Jude since we
were kids. I’ve seen all of the impulsive shit he’s gotten into and the
aftermath too. In that instance, I couldn’t help but feel like he was being
gullible and we were about to be taken advantage of. You watch true crime
shows, you’ve seen how it works. The good Samaritan who pulls over to help a
stranded motorist and ends up getting car jacked, beaten, robbed or killed. The
concerned individual who, out of the goodness of their heart, invites the down
on their luck drifter to stay with them for a couple days, and ends up murdered
in their bed. There’s a lot of good people in the world, I know this. But there
are plenty of bad, too, and I for one would like to make it through the rest of
this lifetime without becoming a statistic.
Fair enough, but if you felt so strongly about it, why not
have Jude drive him into town, drop him off somewhere and be done with it. Or
do it yourself if you were so worried about your brother? In the end, you let
him in and offered him the couch to sleep on and you were the one, not 24 hours
later, who made the decision to let him stay with you guys until he could get
that bike back on the road.
I’m also the one who went ahead and did a background
check too, don’t forget.
True.
Look, by the time he got done cooling off in the shower
and getting dressed, he was shaking, bad, so I sat him on the couch and went to
prep some sides for dinner. By the time Jude came home with the food, he’d
passed out. He was pale, and when I tried to wake him so he could get some food
in him, he didn’t even twitch not one little bit. Now, I can’t say that I slept
so soundly that night. I spent half of it listening for signs of him moving
around downstairs, poking into things, and there wasn’t a peep. Not even a
creek of floorboards to suggest that he got up to use the bathroom, and that
backpack of his that I brought in for him, well, you can be damn sure I
searched it for weapons before I left it in the bathroom for him.
Kind of figured. So are you implying that getting a peek at
some of his ink had nothing to do with your change of heart.
Did I say that?
No.
Then don’t imply things I didn’t say. The ink had me
curious, no doubt, but the conversation we had in the office that following day
helped a great deal too. So did all the things I learned about him through the
background check. The things he didn’t say.
Understandable. He does tend to play his cards a bit close
to the vest.
As outdated as that saying is, it’s especially true of
him when we’re playing cards. Not only that but I’ve yet to figure out any of
his tells and he can bluff with the best of them. I enjoy the challenge of
playing with him and he’s added a new dynamic to the game.
So, if I was to paraphrase a line from one of my favorite
novels, which would he be. Someone who goes, or someone who stays?
The jury is still out on that.
And you?
What? Going or staying? A year ago that would be easy to
answer. Staying. Always.
And now?
At the very least my eyes have been opened to the
possibility that there might be things away from here that I would enjoy seeing
or doing. But this will always be home. I’m just coming to see that I don’t
have to live in it fore the rest of my days for that to be the case. I don’t
have any plans at the moment to go any further than Virginia, but my mind is
more open to the possibility than ever before, and I’ve even begun poking
around the internet, looking at photos and checking places out.
I’d be curious to see what comes of it.
You and me both.
Now that some time has passed since Nash’s arrival and a few
things in your life have settled down as much as they can in a small town like
yours, what’s next?
No clue, but there won’t be a dull moment, that’s for
certain. Honestly though, the possibilities are limited only by the
imagination. There’s a salvage yards
full of parts and pieces and a stream of ideas that some days more closely
resembles a flood. I’ve been getting better at writing them down when they come
and it makes for some good conversation around the supper table each night.
That’s always good to hear.
So are we all set?
Just one more, question, if you don’t mind.
Fine, but let me refill my coffee cup first.
Better?
Much.
What’s the deal with you and that challenger? You came up
with some pretty intriguing ideas involving it and a particular someone in
various stages of undress. How did that
all work out for you?
And on that note, you can consider this interview over.
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