Читать книгу South of the Pumphouse - Les Claypool - Страница 17
ОглавлениеEd pulled open the screen and banged on the door. After a bit of time and no response, he knocked again, this time turning the knob and poking his head in as he cracked the door open.
“Hello?”
He stepped a single foot into the room.
“Hel-looow!” he shouted.
He heard music coming from inside. He had always liked traditional or classic country music, but this sounded like contemporary country, and he had no taste for any of the genre’s music that had come along in the last decade or so. For Ed, country music still meant rugged yet stylized crooners like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Hank Williams Sr.
Stepping the rest of the way into the house and closing the door behind him, Ed gazed across the room. The décor was a throwback to the ’80s. The couch was the same one that his parents had offered him years ago when he got his first apartment. He had opted not to take it at the time, since his first place didn’t have room for anything more than a futon and a desk. The couch had been a replacement for the big green flowered monstrosity that he and Earl had grown up with in the family home. The boys had built many a fort with its velvety cushions, fought many a wrestling match on its surface, and left many a chocolate milk stain on its fabric over the years.
Earl’s house was surprisingly neat, a place that had been graced with what Ed’s mom used to call a woman’s touch. Though the empty beer bottles and other debris on the coffee table were a telltale sign of his brother, the random knickknacks and whatnot that dotted the shelves showed signs of Denise, Earl’s sweetheart since high school and subsequent wife.
“Earl?” Ed called out as he wandered down the hallway toward the back of the house.
“Earl!”
Ed poked his head into the bedroom, spying the alarm clock on the nightstand, the source of the music. The room was empty and the bed was neatly made. Ed spun around, moving back down the hallway toward the kitchen. He heard more music coming from behind the door leading to the garage. Opening the door, he shouted again, “Earl?”
The garage was filled to capacity with automotive bric-a-brac. The space reminded Ed of his father. Every inch of every wall and shelf in his father’s garage had held some type of tool, part, or random treasure. Forty years of continual, well-organized use had gradually transformed his father’s garage into a veritable mechanic’s paradise. Earl’s garage showed the same markings. Not enough years had passed to fill each nook and cranny, but just like his father, Earl had a place for everything, and everything had its place.
In the center of the garage was Earl’s ’78 Trans Am. Ed remembered well the day his big brother pulled into the driveway with that big, aqua-colored muscle car. His father beamed proud, having co-signed the loan after Earl was made assistant manager of the local tire shop. Earl had kept it, and kept it well, after all of these years. The car was raised, sitting on jack stands, and Ed could see the shine of a hook light coming from underneath.
Over the music, Ed shouted again. “Earl!”
“Yo!” Earl rolled out from under the car on his creeper. “Eddy boy! You made it!” he said, wiping his hands as he got up.
“What the hell you doing working on this old piece of shit?”
Earl laughed. “Just tunin’ her up, bro. Just tunin’ her up. Givin’ her a little lube there, bro. Got to keep her lubed up. That’s the key to these women, I’m tellin’ ya.”
They both laughed. Ed examined his brother’s face, taking note of how old he looked. His face was gaunt, and his eyes appeared further set back into his head than normal. He was alert, a little bit too alert, by Ed’s reckoning, for a thirty-six-year-old man at 7 o’clock in the morning.
“I see you got Mom and Dad’s old couch.”
“Yeah, thing’s not in too bad a shape neither. Denise keeps after me to get us a new one, but I tell ya, bro, lot of good memories on that couch. Besides, it’s damn comfortable.”
“Yeah, I remember when Dad nearly kicked the shit out of you for spilling ice cream on it right after they first got it.”
Earl laughed. “Well, he’d have really kicked the shit out of me had he known it wasn’t ice cream. Me and Denise used to bone on that couch all the time during lunch break back in high school.”
“Yer kidding me,” Ed chuckled. “All this time I thought that was an ice cream stain. You told Dad it was. Ah, you fucker.”
“Well, it was cream, all right, just not ice cream. Hell, we were like bunnies back then; we left our marks all over that house.”
“Man, I don’t want to think about it,” Ed laughed.
“Well, yer looking good there, bro.”
“Thanks,” Earl responded. “Life treatin’ ya okay?”
“Oh, yeah, just plodding along, doing my thing,” Ed muttered as he gazed around the garage at a collection of posters featuring semi-clad, full-figured women holding miscellaneous tools, mufflers, and whatnot.
“Well, you look like a hundred bucks.”
“Thanks, bro,” Ed said, slapping Earl’s belly. “Looks like you been putting away them Budweisers pretty hard.”
“Shit. Silver Bullet, buddy,” Earl retorted, holding up a can of light beer. “Had to. You should have seen me a month ago. Donny started callin’ me Ol’ Johnny Gut.”
Ed pondered for a moment. “Donny? Not Don Vowdy …”
“Yep.”
Stepping up to the dispenser on the workbench, Earl pumped some hand cleaner into his greasy palms.
“You still hanging out with that fucking guy?”
“He’s just a good ol’ boy.”
“Good ol’ dipshit’s more like it,” Ed muttered.
“He ain’t that bad. Ya gotta know him,” Earl said, rubbing his hands together as the abrasive cream squirted between his fingers, making wet farty sounds.
“Shit. I knew him well enough. He was such a dick to me when I was a kid. Man, you don’t even know.”
Ed remembered Don Vowdy clearly, though he hadn’t thought of him in years. Donny had been Earl’s best friend as long as Ed could remember. He had also been a source of considerable torment to Ed throughout his childhood.
“He’d flick his lit cigarettes at me when you guys used to sneak them from Dad out in the tree fort.”
“Eh … it builds character,” Earl answered with a shrug.
The brothers walked from the garage into the kitchen. Earl peeled a handful of paper towels from the hanging roll.
