Jynx hung back beside the panel van, tucked into the shade. When Austin took a stool beside the Lazy Boy, Jeremiah raised a lazy fist bump without looking away from the screen. “The fuck are you guys doing out in this heat?”
“Had to go back for the truck.”
“How’d you do that?”
“The Pony.”
“Thought that thing was busted.”
“Fixed it.”
“Finally.” Jeremiah pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and placed it to his lips. “You got my jump box?”
“In the truck.”
“It’s about time.”
Austin nodded.
“You want a beer?” He reached towards the mini fridge without waiting for an answer.
Austin glanced back at Jynx. “Nah, probably shouldn’t.”
Jeremiah shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He watched the TV, waiting for the next game show question. “Put the box back,” he said.
Austin nodded, but he didn’t move.
On the TV, a contestant named Dave with horrible handwriting picked another Jeopardy! category. “I’ll take ‘Deans’ for 500,” Dave said. Trebek consulted his prompter. Jeremiah waited for Austin to go away, but it was obvious that he had something to ask. “What’s on your mind, friend?”
Austin fidgeted and glanced back at Jynx. “I think we found something good out there.”
Jeremiah lit his smoke and waited for the next question; Austin’s or Trebek’s, it didn’t much matter. “What is it?”
“It’s pretty big. Not too badly corroded. No rust, but a lot of dust.”
“Well, what’s it look like?”
“It’s like a big roundish sort of chunk of something. There’s a big, shredded section. Looks like a torn-off wing tip or something.”
Jeremiah sat up a little, chewing on the filter of his camel wide. “You’re telling me that you found a piece of an airplane?”
Austin shrugged and nodded. “I think so. It’s a big piece of metal, whatever it is. Pretty sure it’s aluminum. One side’s a little jagged and shredded out. Maybe it crashed.”
Jeremiah shook his head and sat back. “Bullshit.”
“Just let me take the flatbed for a few hours. I’ll be right back.”
Jeremiah nodded and ashed his cigarette into the blown-out cylinder of the V8 that sat on a piano dolly beside his chair. “Famous last words.”
“Dude, just let me go for a minute.”
“What the fuck am I supposed to say to Manny and César if we get a call for a flatbed tow in the next however many hours it takes you to go winch a sandblasted fridge out of the wash?”
“Dude. It is definitely not a fridge.”
Jeremiah smiled. “This time.”
“Not this time,” Austin nodded and shrugged, glancing back at Jynx.
Jeremiah seemed to notice her for the first time. He smiled and waved. “Hey, kid.”
Jynx bobbed her head and gave a weak wave. “Hey, Germ,” she called back.
“She still fucking hates me.”
Austin shrugged. “Her mom made us go to Ala teen meetings for like, a year.”
“I didn’t even know that was in the saddlebag.”
“You know how she gets.”
Jeremiah nodded. He popped the handle on the Lazy boy and sat forward, stamping his cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. “Why don’t you just ratchet strap it into the back of your truck.”
“Too big.”
Jeremiah raised an eyebrow. “That big?”
Austin nodded.
He lit another smoke and blew a cloud over their heads. “Aluminum?”
“Pretty sure. Like I said, a lot of dust but no rust.”
Jeremiah nodded. At twenty-five cents per pound, aluminum generally wasn’t worth the effort it took to drag a bag of beer cans down to the scrapyard in Bakersfield. But, a couple hundred pounds of aircraft grade aluminum, on the other hand-- “That’s probably worth a few bucks.”
“We don’t want to scrap it. We want to see what it is.”
Jeremiah sat forward, draining the last of his bottle, and reaching for the little mini fridge beneath the screen. “I already got a fridge, but I could always use some beer money.”
Austin glanced back at Jynx. She shook her head and turned away.
“Come on, man. Just loan me the truck.” He didn’t want to beg, but there was no way to make them both happy. “Look, we’ll have it back in two hours.”
Jeremiah stared at him over the top of a cheap pair of scratched aviators. “If you scrap it out, I get a cut.” He reached down to unclip a wad of keys that hung from a chain on his belt. He flipped through them for the flatbed keys and tossed them to Austin. “And if you leave it on my lot for more than a week it’s mine.”
“Thanks, Jeremiah.” Austin smiled over his shoulder at Jynx. She just rolled her eyes.
“And put twenty bucks in the tank when you bring it back,” Jeremiah called after them.
Austin waved. He followed Jynx out to the old flatbed tow truck parked in front. Jynx climbed into the passenger seat and put her canvas sneakers up on the dashboard, arms folded across her chest. Austin hoisted himself into the driver’s seat, inserting the key into the ignition, checking his mirrors and knobs before he started up the old diesel engine.
“I don’t understand why you still hang out with that guy.”
“Whatever, Jynx. He loaned us the truck.”
“He practically made you dance for it.”
Austin pumped the gas twice and flipped the key. The engine rumbled to life, rattling the cab. “Oh, come on, he’s alright.”
Jynx slid her sunglasses down. “He’s a skeezy fucktard.”
*
Jeremiah “String Bean” Jiménez’s love for automobiles began much like any other young American boy, with matchbox toys and remote-controlled cars. At an early age he started pulling everything with a working motor apart, and a few years later he learned how to put them back together. He began to learn basic mechanics before he was ten, but it wasn’t until his adolescence that he fell in love with the form of the car. When his father took him to a classic car show, Jeremiah got lost walking through row after row of vintage Detroit steel. He spent hours admiring the subtle curves of the hood, the not-so-subtle wheel flares, and the curvaceous rear fenders. While the other boys from the Tough Guys Club took to admiring Ashley’s newly discovered curves, Jeremiah developed a strangely erotic attraction to another set of curves entirely, one which mimicked the female form, but packed a Ford 427 big block engine and a single seat roll bar. While Jeff and Justin hung posters of girls they found in magazines, Jeremiah hung a poster of the Shelby Cobra, a car that he found impossibly sexy. Unlike Jeff and Justin’s centerfold delusions, he was fairly certain that he would never slide into a Shelby Cobra.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The first time that Jeremiah wandered into the Desert Sands Towing and Automotive, he followed his father into the shop, awaiting an oil change. Within a few minutes, he was in the back lot, wandering the broken-down carcasses of the rusted-out classics which Jack and Los Nudillos had collected over the years. A few of Los Nudillos found him behind the wheel of a Monte Carlo, making engine noises and deeply involved in racing a dead piece of American steel against invisible competitors. He bashfully apologized when they opened the door. Manny and César pulled him out threateningly, shaking his thin little body and cussing at him in Spanish until they thought he might cry, but started laughing, set him back on his feet and ruffled his hair. They showed him around the lot and a few other rusted out relics.
Los Nudillos Rotos weren’t a serious gang, and the desert was overrun with meth traffickers posing as bikers. Guys started carrying chains and padlocks knotted into bandanas dangling from their pockets. Bar fights were breaking out between rival gangs. Bikers started carrying knives and getting territorial. Los Nudillos weren’t that sort of gang. Most of the guys just liked working on bikes, and Jack’s service station was as good a place as any. They built a clubhouse into one of the service bays, and most afternoons they just gathered there to get away from their old ladies, sit around drinking beer, and poking fun at the Frijolito.
String Bean wasn’t a member of Los Nudillos Rotos so much as he was their miniature mascot. He got himself adopted early, before he was tall enough to play the Flight to Mars pinball machine in the corner. He rode his little BMX down to the shop after school and spent the first couple years soaking up the stench of WD40 and gear oil so that by the age of twelve he wore it like cologne, and it suited him.
When the locals discuss that night on the salt flats it is with both awe and disdain. First, that the youngest and unlicensed member of Los Nudillos led four cop cars on a high-speed chase through town and across the flats reaching speeds in excess of 130 mph, and second, that when they had finally subdued him, they discovered that he was carrying a brick of Mexican weed in his saddle bag. Under normal circumstances, Jeremiah might have gotten tried as a juvenile, and due to the fact that he had no prior record, he might have gotten community service or a shorter sentence, but the judge wanted to prove a point.
It was fairly obvious that the brick of dried-out ditch weed wasn’t Jeremiah’s, but he refused to cop a plea or roll over on Los Nudillos, so the Judge put him away for the maximum allowable sentence. Jeremiah was tried as an adult and sentenced to four years for excessive speed, reckless driving, drug trafficking, and ironically, child endangerment, as he was a juvenile who had put his own life at risk. Jeremiah just nodded his head at the sentencing, and when the judge dropped the gavel, Jeremiah glanced back at the few Nudillos gathered in the audience behind him and smiled. He mouthed the words: “outlaw biker,” raised a cuffed fist as high as the chains would let him and grinned as the bailiff led him away. While the rest of the kids his age were attending classes and planning for prom, Jeremiah was finishing his GED and playing board games with the rest of the juvenile delinquents.
The String Bean returned from his five years in the pen without much fanfare. His father picked him up from the halfway house and brought him home, but his father had a new wife and stepdaughter and limited space in a little two-bedroom apartment. Jeremiah slept on the couch and generally slipped out in the morning, wandering around town, looking for a job of some sort, or just trying to stay out of the way. After a few days on the couch, he quickly realized that he didn’t belong there anymore. His dad didn’t want to say anything, but it was fairly obvious. The new apartment was about an hour south of Arroyo Grande. About a week after getting out of juvie, he packed the few things he had into his duffel bag, borrowed a hundred bucks from the canister on the kitchen counter, and caught a ride out of town. The sun was near its zenith, baking Arroyo Grande when he stepped off the bus. He got his bearings, shouldered his duffel bag and started walking.
The Desert Sands remained suspended in time, probably preserved by the thin coat of ultrafine alkaline dust that covered everything that was close to the salt flats. The front lot was mostly empty except for a few cars. The garage doors were open and Banda music played softly from somewhere inside the bays, but otherwise, the place looked deserted. Jeremiah crossed the lot and strolled into one of the bays, marveling that nothing seemed to have changed. He dropped his bag near the side door and walked back to the water cooler in the corner. He pulled a paper Dixie cup from the tube on the side, little more than a shot glass. He filled it, drained it, filled it again, watching a few small bubbles burble up from the base of the blue tinted water cooler. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. All the years away, he finally felt at home again.
“Oye. What the fock you doeen?” Someone asked, from behind him.
Jeremiah turned to face the voice.
A few years grayer in the mustache, and a few pounds heavier in the gut, Manny stood framed in the back door. He folded his sunbaked brown arms across his chest to look a little more threatening at five and a half feet tall.
Jeremiah just smiled at him. “¿Que onda, Manny?”
Manny scowled for a moment, still dutifully protecting the shop. His eyes widened at first, followed by a grin, revealing a new silver front tooth. “Frijole?” He burst from the door, throwing his arms around Jeremiah, laughing and slapping him on the back. “Frijolito!” He held Jeremiah back, to get a better look at him. “¿Que chingados?” He hugged Jeremiah again, and without letting him go, hollered for César. A few minutes later, the three of them sat in the shade behind the shop, sipping cold beers and catching up. César texted everyone he could think of, letting them know that String Bean was back in Arroyo Grande.
Most of Los Nudillos Rotos had moved on, some to prison, some to practicality, some to parenthood. Jack remained the patriarch, still running the Desert Sands Towing and Automotive, although he had all but abandoned his post as the president of the club. To the aging members of Los Nudillos, he would always be in charge, and even the acting president came around to have a beer, shoot the shit, and ask him questions on particularly complicated matters regarding the club. Jack was the last person on earth that called Jeremiah by the nickname String Bean and took him back gladly. Los Nudillos had been Jack’s only sons for years, and the return of String Bean was as if a prodigal son had returned. He had maintained a strange affinity for Jeremiah since he had arrived on the lot, and some wondered if they might be distantly related.
“That night on the flats, Bean, that was something, huh? That was fun.”
Jeremiah smiled. “It sure was, Jack.”
“Yeah.” Jack smiled, “Yeah, you bet. That sure was something.” He squinted back towards the shack in the corner. “I got something saved for you, Bean.” Jack nodded his head and pulled a set of keys from a clip on his belt, fumbling through what looked like a few dozen random keys which probably fit locks or vehicles that had long since been lost.
Jack slid the shack door wide and waved an arm around, looking for the chain to flip on the lights. “I been saving this for you, eh, for a while, I guess. I just didn’t know when I was going to get it out again.” He pulled the chain. The fluorescent overhead lights flickered on, casting the dusty contents of the shack in a faint blue light. In the center of it all, pillowed in canvas tarps like a nested dove, sat the Indian Chief chopper, Jack’s ivory steed, the suicide stick stallion. “It’s going to need a cleanup. The tags are bad, but I’ve kept it up to date. I just have to find the stickers. I mean, it’s been here for all these years, so you’re going to have to check everything, of course. I’m sure the rubber’s no good anymore.” Despite years in the shack, it was as glorious a ride as ever. Dusty and cobwebbed as it was, there was something in the chrome and craftsmanship which demanded respect even as a retired idol.
Jeremiah glanced away. “Jesus, Jack. I can’t take the Chief.”
Jack frowned. “The Chief?” He shook his head. “Oh no. You can’t have the Chief.” He shook his head. “No, no. Wouldn’t do you any good now, anyway, right?” He reached over the Chief, leaning on his cane as he groped at the tarp covering the collection of junk against the sidewall. “I meant our Mantis, Bean.” He pulled the tarp away, kicking up a few years of alkaline dust and aluminum shavings as he did.
“Holy crap. You kept the Mantis?” Jeremiah eased past Jack, drawn to the metal fleck green paint of his first love like a man hypnotized. “How did you get her?”
“Well, the police auctioned it off, and nobody else wanted it, so I got it for a good price.”
Los Nudillos painted the thing green as an homage to the string bean. Jeremiah hated it, but he didn’t have much of a choice. Jeremiah pulled the rag from his back pocket, fingers hovering uncertain over her dials as if he were approaching a ghost. The last time he saw her he was face down in the salt flats, adrenaline high and laughing like a maniac with a knee in his back as he was cuffed and read his rights. She took a stand, key in the ignition still, and waiting for him to whistle. “Jack… I mean… The Mantis…”
Jack nodded and smiled. “I figured you were going to need it one more time, right?”
Jeremiah was already ignoring him, inspecting the slim green salt flat racer.
“You talk to Manny. He’ll get you a fresh set of treads on the next order.” Jack patted his pockets, absentmindedly looking for a pack of smokes that he’d quit twenty years earlier. “You can take the trailer for now, just until you take off again, and Manny will get you some work.” Jack tugged at his earlobe distractedly, trying to remember something elusive that slipped away, replaced by another thought that had nearly gone stale. “Yes, String Bean, that was one hell of a ride.” He chuckled. “Welcome home.” Jack wandered back to the service bay to say goodnight to the rest of Los Nudillos, leaving Jeremiah to the fluorescent glow of the shed and his beloved Mantis.
Almost a year later, reclining in a borrowed throne, Jeremiah “String Bean” Jiménez, Los Nudillos Rotos’ fool and mascot yelled at the discolored flatscreen on cinder blocks. “Damnit, Dave! Who is Richard Dean Anderson!”