splat chapter twenty

Bright and early next morning, around ten, Suzie snuck down to the shop the back way, driving down Georgia 54 to Riverdale rather than risk being spotted on the Interstate. She was wanted by the police. The thought made her itch. She felt allergic to her car, suddenly. Like it was a bad luck amulet - cursed, producing misery upon misery for the occupant; who, even knowing this, cannot rid herself of it.

She walked in to see Nelson and another guy standing with their backs to her, a big black dude in a long red t-shirt and long black shorts. He was standing stock still in the middle of the emissions bay with his right arm cocked, holding his cellphone near his ear, set on speakerphone. Their heads were next to each other listening over the noise of the shop. To Suzie they looked like a praying mantis bending down next to a ladybug. They were getting numbers. The dude was nodding, 1,200, 'And the other?' he asked. 2,700.

Nelson tried to back off and head over to another part of the garage to take care of some other business, but the guy hung on the phone and so he had to keep circling around, jittering and fluttering. Finally, the guy still on the phone, Nelson waved to him and said, 'Go ahead and bring it over real soon,' and walked off past the emissions console.

'Nelson Nelson Nelson' came from three different directions as soon as he reached the middle of the garage. The black dude stayed in the same spot and raised his voice slightly to ask when would be a good time. Nelson waved him off, absorbed in the next thing on his to-do list. 'Tomorrow.'

Suzie had gone to stand by the wooden worktable separating the emissions bay from the Goat. 'Well,' she spoke up, as the dude turned and noticed her for the first time. 'Tomorrow is Saturday. Tomorrow's going to be jammed from eight-thirty until they shut at three. You should come early if you want his attention.' He looked at her like she was a snitch, and smirked like he was sure Nelson would always have as much time as it took. She shrugged as he left the building and went for his car.

She sidled up to Nelson as he stood watching over his flock. He gave her a quick squeeze.

'Hey, Baby, what's up?' he said, glancing down at her. She fidgeted.

'Nelson, do you think I could paint my car in back of your shop or something?' She felt panicky. Nelson was the first place she went when she felt like this, because he loved to save the day.

He looked at her indulgently. 'Honey, have you been up to no good?'

'Um, they're kind of looking for my car? Because I kind of caused an accident?'

He slapped his knee and leaped into the air. 'Well, God damn. I thought that was your car I saw on the news last night. I said to Paige, Hey that's one of my customers. Bet her five dollars.' He rubbed his hands, anticipating the payback.

Suzie felt like she was begging. 'Well, I've got to do something about my car. Can you help me?'

He squashed her to his chest and rumpled her hair with his grimy hands. 'Oh, that's simple, Sweetie. We'll just get you a loaner from off the lot here, and you'll be fine.' He scanned the parking lot over her head. 'You can use that one,' he said, pointing to a black BMW with a sunroof.

'Okay,' she agreed, a little bemused. He sure must love her. He turned to go see about Nathan, and she tagged along beside him so she could tell him her story.

'They're kind of looking for my car? Just they don't know who I am? I mean I think they know my car, but didn't get my license number, so I just can't use the car for awhile until they stop looking for me.'

He looked at her a little puzzled, and she mouthed I'm The Sniper and he nodded wisely, like, I know.

'I've been going after bad drivers?' she said in a low voice. It sounded silly to her to admit to this, like she was bragging about hiding cookies under the bed while dieting.

He smiled, 'Uh huh?' She wasn't sure he was listening, but he appeared to be paying attention, looking her in the eyes and nodding seriously.

'That guy on 400?' she kept trying. He winked. He must know all about it, because he was acting like he'd heard it already and was tired of it.

She wanted to turn to him with her mounting guilt and unload her burden, but he was being unresponsive, aloof, as if the subject embarrassed him. 'I know I know,' he muttered when she rested her head on his shoulder for comfort. Then he detached himself and went over to the shop phone to call somebody.

She was feeling really bad about her actions. She desperately wanted to talk to him about what she'd been doing, to get his advice on things like hiding from the cops, and how to take precautions so she didn't get caught riding around with a deadly weapon in her car. She was beginning to lose her nerve for murder, and came to him for another way of looking at it. He could twist anything so it sounded good, and she needed some sweetness and light to keep her mission going.

Nelson hung up the phone, and Nubby accosted him with a clipboard. He was working up a bill for the job he'd just finished, and had written numbers on the back. 'This is our part cost,' he said, pointing with his pen to $249 underlined twice and doodled on while he was on the phone with the parts store. 'And this is their recommended total including labor,' pointing to $509.

Nelson looked at the numbers for a moment, then turned away and gazed out over the shop. 'Put $389 and $295 for parts and labor,' he mumbled. 'We'll take care of the details later.' Nubby turned and walked back to the office.

Nathan pulled a car up over an oil bay. It was a big boat of an American car from the '80s. Nathan popped the hood and rested the clipboard on the edge of the frame. Nelson came over and ordered him to switch on the engine, so he got into the front seat and cranked it over. And accidentally turned on the wipers. It took him several moments to find the switch and turn it off. 'Turn on the headlights,' Nelson called, but Nathan was busy searching for the wiper switch and didn't hear him.

Nelson gave an exaggerated shrug, and walked to the driver's side door, muttering about having to do everything himself, looking like a daddy longlegs. He reached in and found the light switch and pulled it on. Then he leaned further in and found the wipers.

'Nathan, you're so stupid,' he said, pulling himself upright again. 'You've got a car just like this,' he exclaimed, and stalked back to stand and observe the engine.

Nathan got out of the car and went to stand next to Nelson. They listened. They looked down at the lights. 'I don't think there's anything wrong with the battery,' Nathan said hopefully. 'Right, Nelson? It's started every time we've tried.'

Suzie noticed a black guy, middle aged, in a Hawaiian shirt and a cap, standing silently at the east end of the shop, next to the rack of parts books and manuals. He was just watching what was going on in the shop. One of these cars was his, and he was keeping an eye on it. Everyone ignored him, and he stayed there, drifting out of the way whenever anyone came over to that side of the shop.

Nelson looked around. 'Aight. It could be the starter, but it's most likely the alternator. Let me go talk to the customer. Maybe we'll replace them both.' And he went off to the waiting room to confront the dude with the bad news. The boys couldn't find a problem, but the customer insisted that something was broken, so they were going to make a clean sweep of it and hope for the best.

This was one of those days when the owner wasn't there, and in her absence Nelson was treating the place like his own personal property. It was Nelson's nursery school. Beset by ex-juvenile delinquents, he set simple tasks for the boys to keep them occupied. It was Nelson's fleece joint. Customers, especially those paying cash, got the full treatment, and the boys gathered around for their bonus after work. It was Nelson's French Connection. Free from observation, he wheeled and dealed with flair.

It was Nelson's magic show. Nathan got stuck prying something off underneath a car up on the racks in the south bay, and Nelson came sashaying over to save the day, making a great show of getting Nathan to fetch him the pick, and then beating the car into submission with it. Then he walked over to where Nubby was tussling with a piece of the engine compartment, told him to stand aside, and with his bare hands wrenched out parts and pieces of parts, and slung them across the floor.

'They don't need that, I guess, huh?' Nathan asked as he passed by Suzie heading to the sink. The guy in the Hawaiian shirt stood there taking the whole thing in.

Suzie realized that Nelson was showing off for the Hawaiian guy as well as her. Nelson was the brightest light in that shop, and he wanted everybody to notice. And truly, he did stand out. He was whole feet taller than everyone else. He was levels of magnitude smarter. He was obviously cut out for bigger things, and it was sad to see him wasted in this dead end, back woods, back alley, back suburban strip mall environment where ripping people off was as good as it got.

The phone rang. 'Nelson,' came Nubby's cry from the office's sliding-glass window. He loped over by the hand-sink and picked up the shop phone, and started bugging around at the end of the cord like a skinny three year old, dancing and spinning, skipping around on his heels like a twirling ice skater. Then he ran out of spin, and stopped, standing halfway out the bay door, looking down at the ground. Then he started twisting and digging his foot into the grime on the cement ramp. He was nodding his head and listening. Then he started bugging his way back to the phone cradle.

'Hey, I'll get me a whole one of those,' he chuckled. 'He says this is some shit.' He looked around to see who was close enough to hear, and said, 'Let me slip in here where I can talk,' and ducked into the parts room and closed the door.

He did a few dance steps in the emissions bay when he came out and hung up the phone. 'Come on, let's go for a ride,' he said to Suzie, winking and smiling a warm, friendly smile at her. She felt her heart swell. Several impulses flickered across her soul. Hell yes, let's get out of this place and go where we can be alone together. Let's go somewhere and do something. Let's make love. Let's not. Let's get high. Let's get away from these annoying people. You don't spend enough time with me.

He took her hand and led her into the employee bathroom seductively. But then he pulled a folded section of the paper off the floor and balanced it on the side of the sink, and fetched a rolled up bag of pot  from inside the hand-towel dispenser, and dumped an eighth of an ounce onto the paper.

'Here, Sweetie, roll us a big one, ' He said, and fished a pack of papers out of his pocket. 'I'm waiting on someone to bring me some more,' he apologized, ashamed he couldn't do better as a host. 'You could stick around, this is real good pot that's coming. Not like this stuff.' He licked and sealed the baggie and stuffed it back into the towel dispenser.

'Go ahead and sit down,' he waved toward the lidless toilet. Suzie looked over and saw where someone had neglected to flush. A layer of yellow floated around an island of disintegrating paper.

'No thanks,' she said. 'I might fall in.'

While she got busy breaking up the pot with both hands, he began to nuzzle her neck and rub up against her from behind, and they had a few moments of passionate friction. Handless - his were greasy, hers were full. The door was open and she saw Nathan go by and purposefully not look at them. Nelson began to nuzzle her neck and stroke his forearms over her breasts. She bumped him away with her hip, a little annoyed. He backed out of the bathroom leering at her in the mirror, then turned and strode off to see to the boys.

She continued in peace, crunching up the buds and picking the seeds out. She casually flicked them off the tiles; they made pings. Suzie looked down at the trash on the floor and saw a cellphone with its back missing. It was wet. The boys must have found it and ritually dropped it in the toilet in a moment of levity.

Suzie loaded the cleaned pot into a square of rice paper, and tried to fold it around into a tube. She felt so awkward. She lost so much out of both ends, it rolled up so skimpy and lumpy. She kept unrolling it and stuffing the dropped bits back in and rolling it up again. Until she had a bigger, fatter joint that kind of looked like the ones Nelson rolled. But it was still wholly unlike a cigar, and there were no two surfaces that had the same slope.

She thought about the phone while she was busy. She had an image of the cellphone glued onto her wig to further obscure her face. It would make her seem less suspicious. People would think she was in a cellphone-induced trance, when she'd be looking out of the corner of her enormous sunglasses at them the whole time. When she finished sealing the joint, she bent over and picked it up, shook the water off, and stuck it in her back pocket.

She tossed the newspaper back on the heap, gathered the joint and papers, and went to find Nelson. He was busy with his head stuck under an engine, telling Nathan what to do. He came away muttering, a few minutes later, 'If he finds a way to take off a part, he'll do it. Damned idiot.' He looked at her in passing. 'I'll be right with you, Darling,' and continued on into the office.

Suzie went outside. It was burning hot, so she scurried for the shade of a spindly bunch of loblolly pines behind the shop. Next to the Swamp of Doom. It was rank. The slime mold had died off and liquefied, and seeped a ring of blackish green around the shoreline. A gleaming tar slick clung thickly to the surface. And where fresh streams of effluent from the interior of the shop spilled their way to join the pool, there were swashes and carvings of bright green and rusty brown, with cat litter resembling ornamental pebbles in the swirling streams.

The smell encouraged Suzie to move away, so she did a quick turn around the lot, looking at bumper stickers. There were a couple she could switch out, so she trotted back to her car and pulled a sheaf of them out of her bag. Sitting in her car with the door open, she was mostly in shade, but it was the burning shade of a car being buffeted by a giant blow torch. She patiently cut out the appropriate stickers, enduring the sweat itching at the backs of her knees and around her neck.

Back out in the sun, She made a casual stroll among the cars in the lot, covered over a Bush/Cheney sticker with one of the 1984 War is Peace stickers, and slapped a Disgruntled Employee over a similar Student Of The Month. She thought about the next phase. How to print magnets.

Then Nelson was ready. He headed toward the BMW, to take her for a ride in her loaner, and show her all the features. 'Really, I just want to make sure it works well enough for you to drive it,' he assured her.

He opened all the compartments and had a quick look when he got in. Then Allen appeared and jumped in the back, and Nelson started up and drove off down the street. Susie had been there almost an hour, and this was the first time she'd seen Allen.

Being in the shop wound her up. She felt that even if nobody was paying the slightest attention to her, they were all watching her. She felt conspicuous, like the inevitable pinup on the wall, and every customer that came in looked at her accusingly. She got the feeling, every time she was there, that everyone knew everything about her. And she didn't like it.

He turned to go into a subdivision and she caught sight of green lawns and sprinklered gardens. The noise of traffic dwindled behind them. She heard birds. It calmed her to see the scenery change, and get away from the air hammer and the grease gun. She relaxed a bit.

Nelson motioned for the joint, and she dug it out of her pocket, along with the papers. Handing them over, she said, 'I've been reading about the Klan and race riots and stuff from the early 1900s.'

'Let me tell you about the Ku Klux Klan,' he said. 'Everybody knows their reputation, but it wasn't about race at first. Not at all.' He lit the joint and pulled a small drag off it, then convulsed a few times trying successfully to stifle a cough. 'It was all about resisting Reconstruction and killing carpetbaggers. Not black people.' He wracked a deep cough and tossed a lump of lung jelly out the window. 'That was later on. In the beginning, it was purely to rid the South of those fucking thieves.'

'It was really a social club,' Allen said, reaching forward to take the joint. 'Whole families used to go out to parades when my daddy was growing up. Used to have parades every Saturday right up Peachtree Street.' He took a lungful of smoke and paused. 'They was all good Christians, nobody minded much. They dressed kinda silly, but their hearts was in the right place.' He sat back and took another hit, then passed it to Suzie.

'Let me tell you about the Civil War,' Nelson turned to face Suzie suddenly. She almost handed him the joint automatically, before she'd had any. 'They like to say the war was about slavery. But only six out of a hundred Southerners owned any slaves at all.'

'I thought the War was as much about industry versus agriculture as it was about slavery,' Suzie replied, toking on the joint and passing it over. Something she'd read in her high school history book.

Nelson took a drag. 'No, the War was about the right to be Southern,' he said in a squeaky, airless voice. Cough cough cough. 'We got different ways.' He took in more smoke and held it. Southern hospitality is a real thing,' Hack hack. 'The gentle virtues are very important to us.' He started coughing for real and passed the joint back to Allen.

'Northerners never gave a fuck,' he continued once he'd caught his breath. 'Southerners got a code.' Nelson noticed Suzie's skepticism and winched his face to show wounded pride. 'A lot finer code of honor than any Northerner.'

He took the joint from Suzie and nodded seriously. 'When the South invaded the North, like at Gettysburg, we sent embassaries into the towns telling them we was coming. We never raped, pillaged, nor burned nothing north of the Mason Dixon line.' He took a lungful and brayed it out again in slow, racking convulsions. 'Out of respect,' huff huff, 'and honor.' Allen nodded his approval and took the joint from Nelson's trembling hands. There was silence while Nelson caught his breath.

After a few moments, as Suzie was deciding to take smaller hits in case she was getting stoned, Nelson sat up and took the joint, and took in another lungful of smoke. 'Southerners got honor,' holding it in front of his mouth ready to take another hit as soon as he could handle it. 'Not Sherman. Not carpetbaggers. Not the Federal Government.'

Suzie said, 'Well, winners do tend to be assholes about it.'

Nelson drove with his left hand, his right hand clutching Suzie's knee earnestly. 'Now, imagine after the war,' he said, his face showing desperation and agony. 'The war killed a whole generation of men. There was no food cuz of raiding parties on both sides. Some crops never got planted cuz the men were off fighting. The cows and livestock all got eaten. Didn't nobody have no money. People starved. There were three million freed slaves wandering around homeless, and a million soldiers coming back to burned-out homes, all of them penniless, stealing whatever they needed along the way. There was burning and looting everywhere, out in the country, and all over Atlanta.'

Allen piped up, 'It wasn't safe to go outside your door.' He nudged Suzie's left shoulder so she would take the joint off him. It was getting small and turning brown and tarry at the end.

Suzie thought maybe Nelson was painting post-war conditions a little melodramatically. 'Hmm,' she said, to calm his energy as she passed him the joint.

'And Sherman.' He paused to take a hit, then started to cough. 'People say he loved the South,' and coughed again. 'But he was mean.' he paused to replenish the first hit, his chest swelling. 'Sherman came through and burned homes, and burned crops.' He held his breath and said with a squeak, 'And he burned the mills, so we couldn't make no flour or cornmeal.' He let the smoke out and curled up in his seat, his coughs sounding like someone hitting a concrete pipe with a hammer.

After a few moments, he passed the joint back to Allen and sat up straighter, clutching the steering wheel with both hands. 'We'd already lost,' he continued, in a pleading, raspy voice. 'All the men had been killed, and Sherman came through laying the place to waste anyway, starving the women and children.' He continued coughing, one eye on the road, the car weaving back and forth slightly with the rhythm of his hacking. 'It wasn't needful, but he did it anyway. I ask you. '

Allen sat with the sticky roach for a moment, then took a drag, and held it. Then he exhaled. 'All the Northerners were like that. That's why people here are so bitter. It was hell.' He took another drag and handed it forward to Suzie.

Nelson agreed. He broke into a song from The Band, a mournful, hungry look on his face, his hand pressed to his chest. 'Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest, but they should never have taken the very best.' His hand fluttered to his forehead and he sighed, almost sobbing. Nelson was a local karaoke champion, and he knew how to deliver a song.

'It was the Carpetbaggers' fault.' Suzie said, remembering what her dad told her. She took a tiny puff and passed it to Nelson again.

'Fucking outsiders come here to exploit the natives and enrich themselves at our expense,' he announced, taking a hit and holding it as long as he could. 'They came down here and levied taxes when people had no money to pay, and stole all our land.' He broke off to cough. 'All the while making a bunch of laws that took away all the whites' civil rights, and gave all the power to the blacks.' He coughed some more, his hand shaking while he passed the joint back to Allen.

Allen dropped the joint and spent a moment fishing for it on the floor. 'Yep. My family had some property down in Central Georgia and the Carpetbaggers came and took it.' Allen always had a relative who could confirm whatever story was being told.

'All this under military rule and martial law, and we couldn't do nothing about it.' Nelson shook his finger at Suzie. 'Let me tell you about Reconstruction.' The joint was starting to taste hot. Suzie passed it to him. 'It was a sordid time.' Hack hack. Suzie was feeling annoyed. It was hot out and Allen was stupid. 'All for revenge and punishment.' He passed the joint back to Suzie, because he was looking at her. She took it and handed it off to Allen. They were all getting pretty stoned.

'Reconstructionists told the blacks to go ahead and lord it over us, burn our houses if they wanted their forty acres, and steal our mules, too,' Nelson continued, as Allen fitted the roach sideways up under his walrus mustache to avoid setting it on fire. 'White people had no legal rights at all,' he pronounced, raising a finger in the air. 'It's the most inhuman period in American history.'

He pulled up into the parking lot with a screech. 'They'd call it genocide today. Ethnic cleansing.' He looked ashamed to be human.

The boys piled out of the BMW. Suzie sat for a moment in the sudden quiet, breathing clear air and thinking how nice it would be to drive an expensive car for awhile instead of her generic compact with no air conditioning and brakes that were starting to make noise again after Nelson fixed them the last time.

She sat there for a few minutes, waiting for him to come back and give her the keys, but the interior was black, and the sun came right through the sunroof, and she began to bloom into sweat. So she got out and went inside. Nelson practiced ignoring her while he managed everybody back to work. Suzie listened to a country radio station on the radio. Allen was grooving to the rhythm, a wrench in each hand like they were maraccas .

She stood around until Nelson noticed she was still there, and remembered that he was lending her a car. He came rushing up to her with his hand in his pocket, and very ceremoniously presented her with the keys to a late model Ford Taurus. 'I can't let you have the other car, Honey,' he said. 'The brakes are bad, and I wouldn't want to risk anything happening to you.'

She thanked him anyway, and promised not to mess the car up, and he shrugged. Then he said, 'Wait a minute,' and had Allen switch out the license tag for dealer plates. 'Don't be getting pulled over for anything illegal,' he warned, seeing her to the driver's seat and bending down for a peck.

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next, shit piles up at work