Junkin’
“The Gods of Smoke”
A Novel by Strat Douthat
Copyright 2012 Strat Douthat,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0939-9
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
The events and characters in this story are purely fictional.
ONE
Benny Eskdale sat slouched behind the wheel of his battered green pickup truck sipping a warm Budweiser and watching heat waves dance above the Ford's hood ornament, a chrome-plated nymph that seemed to undulate in the shimmering heat. It was a steamy July morning and the truck’s cab was fast becoming an oven, even though Benny had parked in the shade. He took a last swallow and tossed the beer can onto the faded asphalt parking lot, then yawned and drifted sideways, letting gravity pull his body down onto the seat.
Gravity fascinated Benny and had ever since he was a little boy. Some of his earliest memories were of lying in bed at night, pondering the mysterious, invisible force that somehow kept everything in its proper place.
Sometimes he would worry that gravity might someday begin to lose its power. Would the earth become like the moon? Would people have to wear lead shoes? Would his family have to tie down their house in order to prevent it from floating away? Would his dog be safe?
Now, nearly three decades later, he was still intensely interested in the powerful effect gravity exerted on the physical world. And just now, he was especially aware of its heavy hand pressing down on his bladder.
“One thing. You can always depend on gravity,” he told the scarred dashboard as his shoulder hit the seat.
The impact sent up a swirling dust cloud, a miniature universe that slowly floated about the cab. A slanting shaft of sunlight ignited the swirling dust motes as they passed through it, transforming them into tiny, brilliant stars.
Benny was tracking a particularly bright star cluster when a voice suddenly thundered through the heavens.
“What's the matter, Benny? Passed out already? Hell, it ain't even noon yet.”
Benny blinked and sat up.
“Fuck you, Dwayne,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his fists. “As a matter of fact, I was busy creating the heavens and the earth. And if it wasn't for you, I'd probably be making Eve right about now.”
The little man stuck his grinning face in the window. “Just took a piss over by the bathhouse. There's a copperhead over there long as my arm, I swear.”
Benny snorted.
“It's probably just a blacksnake. Anyway, there wouldn't have been any snakes in my world. Well, snakes maybe, but no poisonous ones, least not in these parts.
“Dwayne, did you know it’s gravity that keeps the stars in place?”
“Dang it, Benny,” Dwayne said, “don’t you think I know a copperhead when I see one? He reached for the .22 automatic in the truck’s window rack.
Benny slapped his hand away and grabbed the rifle. “Show me that fucker,” he said, stepping out onto the parking lot, a weedy expanse of broken glass and discarded beer cans.
Dwayne aimed a smoke-stained finger at a beat-up cinder block building half hidden behind a festering mound of garbage bags and loose trash attended by a billowing cloud of swarming flies. “He’s next to the doorway. See that wet spot on the wall where I took a piss? He's a couple of feet to the right, just under that big lizard.”
“Fucker's after the lizard,” Benny said, hustling across the asphalt toward the gray, windowless structure, his eyes glued on the snake. He had gone only a few steps when his foot grazed a beer can, sending it skittering off to the side like a metallic mouse and spooking the snake, which darted toward the open doorway. Two shots splintered the door jamb an inch above the thick, sinuous body as it disappeared into the building.
“You missed him.”
“I know it, goddamnit.”
He edged up to the doorway and peered into the gloomy interior through the buzzing cloud of flies. The stench of rotting garbage was overwhelming and Benny pinched his nostrils in an effort to ward off the smell. There was no sign of the snake but he squeezed off another quick shot at a vague shape scurrying along a grimy ledge above some badly mildewed shower stalls, stalls he was all too familiar with, having stood in them on many an evening as the hot shower rinsed away the grime from yet another long shift deep below the towering hills hemming in the small mining complex he and his friends had been cannibalizing off and on for the past several weeks.
The shower nozzles were gone now, as were the wooden benches and the pulley-operated wire clothes baskets. Charlie's cap was still there, though. Benny could see it perched on a high rafter where he had tossed it one evening several years earlier. It was only a few days later that a rock the size of a watermelon had dropped from the mine roof onto Charlie, mashing his head so bad they'd kept the casket closed at his funeral.
He stared at the dusty cap, watching himself snatch it from Charlie's head and seeing Charlie's expression of disbelief upon realizing his beloved cap was out of reach.
They'd just finished working the evening shift and, as usual, Charlie was trying to get him to go down to Ida's Place instead of going home.
“C’mon, Benny,” he'd said, “you can always tell Ruth you had to work overtime. You tellin' me you're so pussy-whipped you're gonna go home and crawl into bed beside a snoring woman when we could be drinkin’ a cold beer and talking up some strange?”
Benny had gone down to Ida's that night. He’d had a good time, too, but there had been hell to pay the next morning.
Funny how things turn out, he thought as he stared at the dusty cap…Charlie's gone, just a bunch of bones now, and Ruth's in Ohio. Even Ida's Place is gone. Wonder if Charlie’s getting any strange, wherever…
“Hey, Benny!”
Dwayne pulled at his sleeve. “What'cha lookin’ at?”
Benny didn’t reply. He spun away as Dwayne peered over his shoulder into the dark, gutted interior.
“Phew! It smells worse around here than an outhouse,” Dwayne said, wrinkling his nose. “Jesus, you couldn't pay me to take a shower in there now, you know? I bet...”
“Goddamnit, Dwayne!” Benny jerked down the bill of his cap, the old blue one he always wore when he was junkin'. He turned and quickly strode back across the parking lot, leaning into each stride so that his powerful chest
