Alphabetic Karma, Part 6

Kim Goes Full Auto (Shop)

Over the next few weeks, we're going to serialize Alphabetic Karma, a short story originally published by Hawkshaw Press. Sign in every Wednesday and Sunday to get the next paragraphs. When we left Kim last, she was busting her knuckles under cars, learning auto repair, and feeding Zack green mac'n cheese.

***

The first summer was killer and not in a good way. On Sundays, Iʼd sit outside with Uncle Zach as he smoked and told me lies about his glamor crime days. We baked in the heat, like sweet potatoes in the oven. The September rains brought a huge relief, and weʼd hang in the living room and kill the time like it was just something to get through.

From the depths of his recliner, he asked me, “Theyʼre showing a marathon of Bewitched. Want to watch, eat popcorn?”

“Whatever.” I perched in the folding chair, by his arm rest in the lounger, within reach of the popcorn bucket.

“Donʼt hurt yourself with all that enthusiasm.” He flipped the tube on and we soaked up the fifty-percent magical mayhem and fifty-percent commercials—Zach had cancelled the cable. Falling back on old habits. He flapped a pudgy paw at the screen. “You could be one of those three witches. Maybe find you a waitress job in Hollywood, start auditioning some, look for an agent.”

“Huh. Who would fix you chicken salad and Frito pie?”

“Who would spend my Social Security?”

# # #

The day my mom came to visit, about a year in on my arrival, I pulled my first transmission. Chaki and the boys, they figured out how to catch the tranny in a modified engine stand and showed me how to use a couple of jacks to ease it down. The grease on my forehead and my cheekbone scrubbed off with the orange goo in the garage sink, but the pumice did rough my skin some. Even with coveralls, I had greased up my flannel shirt cuffs and the bottom inch of my jeans.

I should have known something was up when I discovered a Lincoln Town Car parked by Zachʼs trailer blocking the aisle. A man leaned against the car in a wrinkled blazer; he dipped his head but said nothing. I trooped in the trailer door like an oily zombie. Inside, I discovered my mother, in a pearl-colored pantsuit, her hair three carefully-sculpted shades of blonde, like shadowing in a painting. Dad would have to pay to fix the wattle developing under her chin.

I was pleased with how shocked Mom appeared. No grease in her world. She rose out of the recliner with a fragile lurch. Took two steps forward and brought her arms up. She wanted a hug and leaned forward to claim it.

I rocked back and retreated to the wall near the door. She appeared a lot older, tense, drawn thin. Living with Dad could do that to you. “Kimmie.”

“I go by Kim now. So you found me.”

She gave me this miniature grin, all rueful. “Donʼt be silly. Weʼve known all along. Zachary called us.”

I shot my best steely, threatening stare at my uncle. “You.” He looked truly woeful, like a puppy who got caught peeing on the rug.

Mom said, “He did the right thing, and itʼs for the best.”

“Thereʼs a phrase I donʼt miss. ʼItʼs for the bestʼ.”

# # #

Three years into this life, and the whole time I stayed clean — Zoe and the drug ghosted in the back of my mind. My mom texted once a week and I texted back, but she never dropped by again. Maybe too painful.

Uncle Zach seemed the same, all roly-poly in his chair, even though I had slowly melted forty pounds off him. But his breathing worried me—those short gasps with a dollop of mucus. His lungs worked hard, but he didnʼt benefit much from it. And all this was after he had quit smoking, the biggest damn struggle Iʼd ever seen. He wore patches like parks have trees. Even so, the whip antenna stood by the side of the door.

In two months I would be eighteen. Iʼd had two boyfriends, and that worked out so great I was thinking about trying out women. And soon Zach might be in the hospital, with the bills piling in. I kept thinking how the system was stacked against us, me working a second job behind the counter of a convenience store, him sliding towards shaky old age. No way to front any serious medical, besides the halfway house of Medicare. I decided Iʼd step outside the system.

It began with Tony Dabrowski, out of the blue. He sauntered up to me in the third bay. “Youʼre damn tough, near as brutal as Raven.”

I lay on my back on a creeper, under a Winnebago that wouldnʼt fit the lift. I stared up at him standing there with a cup of coffee. He had unzipped his coveralls and exposed his colossal chest masked by a T shirt. He showed off that roll of fat just above the zipper. Upside down from my point of view, it appeared ludicrous, like a Polack being squeezed out of a sausage casing. “Why thank you, Tony. You say the nicest things.”

“But the black lipstick, thatʼs kind of sucky.”

“Stick with the part about me being tough, Tony.”

“No, I mean it.” He crouched by my shoulder. “Iʼd talk to the other guys, but they got commitments. Family and shit.”

“Talk to them about what?”

“I got a sideline, but my boy, my driver, he quit.”

I sniffed deep, to catch a whiff of what this was about. The only thing I picked up was a nose full of rotting undercarriage from the Winnebago.

“I... liberate, thatʼs what. I ʼliberateʼ contents of trucks from their trailers and find a market for those contents. Cigarettes, computers, office furniture, once a load of canned crab meat. You name it and Iʼve moved it.”

He was offering what I was searching for, an alternative path to money. Tony was steady, quiet, and dependable, at least in the garage. “Tell me more, oh great liberator.”

“I cut you in for a regular percent of the take. I do the heavy work, ʼsecuringʼ the truck and driving it off. You follow me in our own semi or meet me and we unload and abandon the truck. Then I get to work selling the haul.”

“I donʼt know how to drive a semi.”

“I seen you do it, pulling one forward to unblock a bay. You just have to learn to back up and to swing wide at the corners.”

Tony wasnʼt dumb. Heʼs giving me the sales job. I asked, “Donʼt trucks have GPS trackers now?”

“I pull over in a couple of blocks and short it out.”

“What about drivers?”

“Prefer not to come up against them. Maybe. Sometimes.” Tony appeared bashful, for someone who had just confessed to armed truck-jacking.