Stress Test Ch. 36

By the time Billey and Elwood got home, Otis had already parked the big truck down by the tank. Otis sat high up in the cab with his feet propped against the open door like he thought he was the King of Trucks. When Billey parked the pickup alongside the truck, Otis flicked his cigarette butt and watched it trace a bright orange arc through the night.

"What the hell you sittin' on your ass for?" Elwood hollered, jumping out of the pickup.

As Otis climbed down, he muttered something Billey couldn't understand. His legs bowed and wobbled like a baby's when he touched the ground.

Elwood pounded the sides of the big truck with a wrench and cocked his head to listen to the deep, metallic tone. "Ain't that just music, Billey? Ain't that just the sweetest noise you ever heard?"

"I dunno," said Billey who was still sitting at the wheel of the pickup.

"What?" Elwood bellowed.

"I dunno."

Otis staggered nearby with a hose as big around as his leg. Billey saw him snorting like a pig in the darkness as he let the end of the hose swing down from beneath his belly. "Hey, Billey!" Otis called like a ghost with no one to haunt. "Hey, Billey. How's this for a peter?"

Elwood sneaked up from behind and planted a kick on Otis's butt that sent the big man stumbling forward, wheeling his arms for balance. "You get yourself busy or I'll make you piss your peter inside out."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Otis fastened the hose to the tank and fiddled at the side of the truck.

Billey stayed in the pickup and watched his daddy and Otis swap the flat bottle back and forth. They cussed and sang and weaved around in a slow, drunken dance while the tank filled. Billey's thoughts drifted to Black Wolf and to whether his daddy had lied when he said he shot the truck driver, or when he said he didn't.

He thought about what that man would look like, spread out in the spindly grass and mud with no more than a bloody jaw bone where his head ought to be. He wondered what that man must have felt like, driving down the road one minute in his big, shiny truck and the next minute having Otis and Elwood poking guns up his nose.

In a funny way, Billey felt lucky to have Elwood for his daddy. It made him feel safe the way burrowing under his dingy blanket in the camper used to make him feel. At least he knew that nothing could ever sneak up and make his life worse than it already was.

Billey sat like a statue in the pickup until Elwood pounded the door and scowled at him. "Get your butt up there with Otis right quick-smart now," he snapped. Then he began mumbling. "Things gonna be different from now on. You sonsabitches are gonna have to start living up to your 'sponsibilities if you 'spect to stay around."

Billey climbed up the passenger side of the big truck and saw bleary-eyed Otis drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

Otis nodded as Billey slid in the door, but he bolted upright when Elwood clanged his wrench against the truck's tank again, producing a deeper sound than before, like metal thunder. Otis wrestled the gear shift into place and rocked in his seat as the truck stuttered across the field.

When they wallowed onto the road, Otis worked his way up through the gears, cursing each clash of metal. He veered onto the shoulder and mowed down a speed limit sign.

"You see that?" Otis slapped the steering wheel and buried his shoulder blades deep in the back of the seat. He ran his right hand along the wheel's rim. "This is some pow'ful rig. Makes a man feel like his peter's got two hundred horsepower and not a pig in sight."

"That all you got anymore, Otis? Two-hundred horsepower?"

Otis gloated over the light coming up from the dash. "Power's smashin' up whatever you want, whenever you feel like it and nobody askin' why you did it." He swiveled his head back and forth. "I'm gonna get one of these myself. Gonna get me a lot of things now."

Otis sent gravel flying when they got to the place where they'd stolen the truck. Billey drove the bugmobile and followed him as they went along roads that became narrower and rougher with each mile. Otis slowed to a crawl as they wound along a dirt track that took them past burnt-out cars, abandoned refrigerators, heaps of trash.

When Otis climbed down from the cab, Billey killed the engine and walked up to see what was going on. Otis had pulled up near the edge of a vast quarry. It looked like the hole Billey had dug except its walls were solid rock. It would have taken a million Billeys a million years to dig it. In the starlight, Billey could see the skeletons of a few old cars that had fallen to the rocky floor a hundred feet below.

The darkness played tricks with Billey's balance. The bottom of the quarry tried to suck him down, along with Otis and the bugmobile and the big truck. That big old hole might just reach up, grab you by the ankles and pull you on down there before you ever knew what happened. Billey's stomach twisted in his belly and he felt like he was peering over the edge of hell.

"Last stop for Billey," Otis said, wrapping his arms around Billey's chest and lifting him off the ground.

Billey's legs pedaled high above the pit. His elbows beat against Otis like the wings of a bird knocked out of its nest.

Otis used to pull this shit all the time, but now that Billey weighed two hundred pounds, it wasn't so easy anymore. Billey caught a sickening whiff of the fumes from the flat bottle that still clung to Otis. He held his breath as the big man stumbled back and forth on the edge of the cliff. Everything seemed to slow down and get bigger so that each of Otis' misplaced steps took a thousand years, his boots dug into the gravel with the sound of mountains tumbling, his breath smelled like an ocean of puke.

Billey's heart drummed as loud as Elwood's wrench beating on the tank. He felt his insides turn sour and push up through his throat so that he couldn't even scream. He knew that Otis was too clumsy and drunk to keep his balance much longer, but he didn't know if Otis knew.

The two men lurched as one and the world spun beneath them. Billey kicked high, trying to push them back to safety. Otis wobbled and fell on his back. Billey landed on top and knocked the wind out of Otis in one big grunt.

Billey rolled off Otis and pressed his cheek against the sharp gravel, fighting his dizziness while Otis's chest heaved. Otis's head rolled toward Billey and they stared at each other for a long time, like each of them wondered if the other knew a secret. Billey heard the diesel churning behind them and realized that sound had been there the whole time, like frogs on a summer night.

"Aw, shit, Billey," Otis whispered at last. "I's just funnin' ya."

Otis turned onto his stomach, pushed himself up from the ground and studied the dimples the rocks had left on his palms. He patted little clouds of dust out of his jeans and spat over the edge of the quarry. "You're just as ornery as your daddy, Billey Elwood. Just as goddam crazy, too."

When he climbed into the cab, Otis goosed the throttle a couple times. Then he popped the clutch and sent the truck chugging toward Billey and the cliff. As the truck picked up speed, Billey dived out of the way. He saw Otis bail out of the cab just before it went over the edge.

Billey heard the awful crash and twist of metal a moment before the explosion. He scrambled to the edge of the quarry on his hand and knees, but shrank back from the ball of fire that rose from the floor. He heard Otis standing over him, breathing heavily.

"I'm gonna get me a rig like that, Billey. You wait and see."

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Go back to Chapter 1 of Stress Test.

Read the next chapter.

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