Cut to the Bone (5 page)

CHAPTER 7

Tyler

TYLER LOCKED THE BONE
lab behind him and hustled out the stadium's lower door. He'd parked his truck right by the door—a prime spot, except for the fact that it was illegal.
Just for two minutes,
he'd told himself; just long enough to drop off the strip-mine girl's bones, which he'd carefully boxed after photographing and measuring them. But the two minutes had turned to ten, then thirty. He scanned the windshield, didn't see a ticket.
Whew,
he thought.
That's lucky.
Then he saw the figure on the far side of the truck. It was a man, standing on the running board, cupping his hands against the driver's window so he could peer inside. “
Hey!
” Tyler yelled reflexively, wondering whether he was about to plead with a traffic cop or punch out a thief. The man straightened; the man was . . . his
boss
. “Hey,” he repeated, still feeling trespassed against; puzzled, too. “Uh, what's up, Dr. B?”

“I was just looking to see how many miles you've got on this thing.”

“Last time I looked, the odometer was showing ninety-nine thousand eight hundred and change,” Tyler said. Dr. B lifted one eyebrow—his trademark expression of skepticism. The man was no fool. “I thought you had a meeting with the dean today,” Tyler went on, uneasy about Brockton's interest in the truck—interest that seemed not just intense, but somehow invested. “You said you were gonna ask him for some land closer to campus.”

“I do, but he was running late. I'm headed there now.”

Tyler pointed at the glossy dress shoes trespassing on his running board. “You should be wearing yesterday's boots to the meeting,” he said, “not that fancy footwear. Grind a little pig shit into the dean's carpet, so he knows what it's like for us out here.”

“Good idea, Tyler. Antagonize the boss—always a great strategy when you're asking for a raise or a favor. You're wasting your gifts in anthropology. You'd make a hell of an ambassador.” Dr. B stepped down from the running board but lingered by the truck, looking thoughtful. “Automatic or stick?”

“Stick, course. Three on the tree.” The term was archaic—slang for a three-speed gearshift on the steering column, the prehistoric predecessor to four-on-the-floor and five-speed manual transmissions—but Brockton was plenty old enough to know what it meant. “You couldn't
pay
me to drive an automatic.”

“See,
that's
what I'm talking about,” said Dr. B.

“Huh?”

“Oh, nothing. I'm just having an argument with Kathleen and Jeff.”

“Your son?”

“He just got his driver's license, and he's badgered us into helping him buy a car. Me, I didn't have a car till I was out of college, but that's a different argument, and I've already lost. Anyhow, Jeff and Kathleen are dead set on an automatic. But I say he needs to know how to drive a stick shift. What if he needs to drive somebody else's car in an emergency, and the car's a stick shift?”

“Uh, right,” said Tyler. “Or what if a meteorite shower wipes out every automatic-transmission factory on the entire
planet
?” Brockton frowned, unhappy to have his point undercut, and Tyler figured he'd better throw his boss a conciliatory bone. “But it
is
a useful skill. Especially if he's gonna travel overseas—hard to rent anything
but
a stick, most places. Just the opposite of how it is here.” Dr. B nodded. “Main thing, though—and maybe he'd listen to this—is that you've got so much more
control
with a manual.
I
want to be the one that decides when to shift. Automatics drive me crazy, especially on hills.”

“Exactly,” said Brockton. “All that downshifting and upshifting, every five seconds? Don't get me started.” He ran his eyes over the truck again. “Tell me, what year is this?”

“Unless I'm mistaken, this is 1992.”

“Ha ha. Not the
calendar,
smart-ass—the
truck
. What year is the
truck
?”

“It's a 1950.”

“Amazing. You'd never know. How long you had it?”

“Me, only a couple years. But it's been in the family from the get-go.”

“No kidding? Since 1950?”

“October '49, actually. My granddaddy walked into the showroom, pocketful of cash from his corn crop, and drove it home. Drove it for the next twenty years, then gave it to my dad. Dad had it for twenty, too, but some of those, it gathered dust in a shed behind the house.”

Dr. B appraised the truck again. “
How
many miles you say it's got?”

“I didn't. I said it
shows
ninety-nine thousand and some. True, far as it goes.” He hoped the conversation was over, but his boss waited expectantly. “The
whole
truth would take another digit—another
one
on the left side of those numbers.”

“A
hundred
ninety-nine thousand?”

“Yeah. Back in 1950, Detroit took it for granted a car wouldn't make it past ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine point nine. If by some miracle it
did,
all those nines rolled over—”

“Sure,” Brockton interrupted, “to zeros, all of 'em. Back to the beginning. Clean slate. Fresh start.”

Rebirth, or at least the illusion of it, long as you looked only at the numbers—not at holes in floorboards, or rusted-out fenders, or cracking, chalky paint, or rotted upholstery and shredded headliner.

Tyler had been a kindergartner the last time the Chevy's odometer had racked up so many nines, but he remembered the event with Kodachrome vividness.

IT WAS A SUMMER
Sunday afternoon, after church and after dinner, everyone stuffed and sleepy and still in their hot polyester church clothes. The truck was what his dad drove to work, or to the lumberyard or the dump or to Sears to get new appliances; everything else happened in the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, the big station wagon with the skylight windows. But that Sunday, the four of them piled into the sweltering, musty cab—no air conditioner, of course; the seat belts long since lost in the gap between the seat cushion and seat back. His parents perched on either side of the broad bench seat, with Tyler sandwiched between them, his baby sister, Anne Marie, age two, on his mom's lap. They'd driven the thirty miles from Knoxville to Lenoir City, to the white farmhouse on River Road where Gran and Pop-Pop lived. The whole way down, his father's gaze was glued to the odometer, and he nearly ran off the road—not once but twice, the second time provoking a gasp and a sharp “Wesley” from his mother. As they turned off River Road and crunched to a stop in the gravel driveway, his father tapped the instrument panel. “Look at that,” he'd said, “ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight point two. Perfect. Plenty of margin.” He'd then commenced to honking, laying on the horn for what seemed like forever, until Gran and Pop-Pop emerged at last, looking nappish and puzzled and maybe not all that thrilled at the surprise visit.

“What are y'all doing here?” Gran had said, then her cheeks turned red. “I mean, in that old thing? That bucket of bolts should have gone to the junkyard years ago.” Her flustered expression brightened when Tyler's mom handed Anne Marie to her.

“Bucket of bolts? Are you referring to this marvelous machine, Mama? This paragon of mechanical perfection?” Tyler's father had acted indignant, but even at five, Tyler could tell he was teasing, and he giggled. “Mama dear, we have come all the way from Knoxville to take you two for an old-fashioned Sunday drive. Get in. You'll like it.” Tyler's mom reclaimed Anne Marie momentarily, and Gran clambered into the cab, still looking baffled. Pop-Pop resisted, insisting he should ride in the back so Tyler's mom wouldn't have to.

“Are you kidding?” she'd said, handing Anne Marie into the cab, back to Gran. “I love riding in the back of a pickup. Makes me feel like a kid again.” She fiddled with the latch, and the tailgate fell open with a screech and a bang. “Tyler and I will be happy as hound dogs back here,” she said, boosting him up onto the tailgate. Tyler could scarcely believe his good fortune. Never—never—had he been allowed to ride in the back of the truck. “It's a death trap,” his mom would invariably say, any time his dad suggested that maybe, just this once, it might be okay.

With another screech and a bang and a sly wink at Tyler, his dad slammed the tailgate and got behind the wheel once more. Tyler's mom settled them in the front corners of the bed, frowning at the dirt and the rust. “Now you sit still and hold on tight,” she said, and Tyler nodded eagerly.

Driving far more slowly than usual, Tyler's dad pulled out of the driveway and headed farther out River Road, along a stretch that ran straight and flat between fields of dark, glossy corn. After a couple of miles, he eased the truck to a stop, right there in the road, and cut the engine. Then he shifted into neutral, pulled the emergency brake, opened the driver's door, and got out. “Come on around her and take the wheel, Daddy,” he'd said to Pop-Pop. “Ease off that brake and let her coast when I give you the word.” Then, walking to the back of the truck, he'd opened the tailgate and helped his son and his wife hop down. Motioning her toward the truck's right rear corner, he'd placed Tyler behind the center of the tailgate, then stationed himself at the left rear corner. “Ready, Daddy?”

“What on God's green earth are y'all doing?” squawked Gran.

“The odometer's fixin' to turn over, Mama,” he'd hollered. “One hundred
thousand
miles! Daddy, let that brake off so we can push this fine machine into its second lifetime.”

“Lord help, you people are nuts,” Gran laughed.

The road must have had a slight downgrade—either that, or the universe joined in the celebration—because the truck rolled easily, and soon the three of them were running just to keep from losing touch with it. As they ran, Tyler's dad began to sing. “Swing low . . . sweet chariot . . . comin' for to carry me home.” His strong, clear voice rolled out across the fields.

“Swi-ing low,” his mom chimed in, “sweet cha-ri-o-ot . . . comin' for to carry me home.”

“Here it comes, here it comes!” shouted Pop-Pop. “Point eight . . . Point nine . . . Zero!” His shout was joined by the truck's wildly honking horn—a trumpeting horn, a jubilant horn; a horn the Angel Gabriel himself would have been proud to blow, if only the Almighty had allowed him to turn in his angel wings and trade up to a 1950 Chevy half-ton: a bug-eyed, bona fide miracle of American engineering and mass production.

Fifteen years later, when Tyler graduated from college, his dad had surprised him by giving him the truck—but the truck as Tyler had never known it: a glorious, ground-up restoration of the truck, with gleaming new paint, leather interior, seat belts, and a stem-to-stern mechanical rebuild that rendered the rings, valves, and gearbox as tight as they'd been the day Pop-Pop had driven it out of the showroom. It was not so much a restoration as a reincarnation: as if everything else—everything but the odometer—had rolled over to zeros this time around.

“SORRY; WHAT'D YOU SAY,
Dr. B?” Tyler blinked, somewhat surprised to find himself in 1992, standing at the base of the stadium, his boss staring at him, bringing him back to the present—back from the sweet childhood memory to the grim realities of death and decay and unrelenting demands.

“I said, what would you think of selling it?”

“Selling what? The
truck
?” Tyler looked at Dr. B, who cocked his head, waiting. “You mean to
you
?” Dr. B nodded. “What, for your son?” Another nod. Tyler was startled by the question; no, more than startled, he was stunned and unmoored. Unhappy, too. He stared at the truck, as if it had suddenly coalesced out of thin air; as if it were some . . . alien . . .
thing,
rather than a steadfast fixture of his entire existence. Was Brockton trying to take over his whole damned life?

Finally he spoke, choosing his words carefully. “
This?
For a teenage driver? You gotta be kidding. No air bags, no shoulder harnesses, no impact protection. Hell, if he hit something head-on, the steering column would go right through his chest, like a spear. This thing is a
death
trap.”

Dr. B smiled slightly, looking . . . what? Wistful? “I don't blame you,” he said. “I'd hang on to it, too, if I were you. Twenty years from now, you'll be giving it to
your
son.”

Tyler hoped the subject of selling the truck was closed, but—knowing Dr. B—knew it would come up again. “Maybe not,” he said. Brockton looked hopeful for a moment, until Tyler added, “Maybe I'll be giving it to my daughter.”

CHAPTER 8

Satterfield

THE WAND AND HOSE
of the pressure washer twitched and swayed in the air like a living creature—
like a cobra,
Satterfield thought—as the water hissed against the long hood of the Peterbilt. Bright red water sheeted down the side of the truck's cab, a visual echo of the blood spilled inside the sleeper so recently. Fanning the seething spray back and forth in the morning sunlight, creating airy rainbows and red puddles, Satterfield envisioned the pressure washer's long, thin nozzle as a magic wand. “Abracadabra,” he murmured, liking the feel of the word in his mouth, liking the sense of power he felt as a sorcerer. “Presto change-o, red to blue-o.” As if in response to the spell he was casting, the Peterbilt was transformed, wand wave by wand wave, the red truck dissolving and melting—molting—to reveal its inner self, its true colors: gunmetal blue, with a fringe of orange flames edging the back of the sleeper.

He'd been watching the news—on television and in the newspapers—but he'd seen nothing about the woman's body being found. Apparently nobody even missed her yet, as there'd been no reports of a search, either.

He'd be in Birmingham by sundown tonight, and back in Knoxville by morning, his tracks fully covered. The fuel tanks still had a hundred gallons of diesel in them—at six miles a gallon, more than enough to make the trip—and he was ready to roll, as soon as he washed off the last of the paint.

Satterfield felt confident that no one had seen the woman get into the truck; I-75 ran right alongside Adult World, true, but the truck's cab would have hidden her from the view of the motorists whizzing past. Remarkable, really, how oblivious most people were as they went about their daily business and their little lives. Still, it never hurt to be careful, and if—
if
—someone eventually came forward to say they'd seen a woman—a trashy, slutty-looking excuse for a woman—climbing into a tractor-trailer cab, the police would start looking for a truck that was red.
Water-soluble paint
, he thought.
Brilliant. Long as there's no rain in the forecast.

After he'd made two meticulous circuits with the pressure washer, perching on a stepladder to reach the roof of the cab, the water sheeting off was crystal clear, and only traces of red remained in the puddles and cracks around the concrete pad and drain. “Abracadabra,” Satterfield said again, giving the pressure-washer wand a final flourish before releasing the trigger.

Some things wash away easier than others,
he thought.

“BOY, YOU DROP THEM
britches and bend over that bed, and I don't mean in a minute.” His stepfather's voice was low but menacing, and Satterfield knew better than to protest. “How long you been spying through that peephole? How many times before?”

“None.” The boy's voice quavered. He wasn't good at lying, and he already knew what was coming. A hand gripped his neck and hinged him forward onto the bed. “I wasn't spying,” he pleaded. “I heard noises. I thought somebody was hurt. I was just looking to see if somebody needed help.”

“Somebody's fixin' to need help, all right,” the man snarled, unbuckling his belt and yanking it through the loops with seething, snapping sounds. He'd gotten home less than thirty minutes before, his arrival announced by the hiss of the Peterbilt's air brakes, and he still smelled of the road—a week of diesel fuel and sweat and stale cigarettes and greasy truck-stop food—topped off now with whiskey and something muskier. Satterfield heard the air hiss as the leather strap swung overhead and then down, gaining momentum as it descended. It struck the mattress with enough force to shake the bed. “Don't you lie to me, boy. That peephole ain't nothin' new. You been spyin' on us a long time, ain't you? Watchin' us in the bed?”

“No, sir,” Satterfield whined. “Never.” The belt swung again, and again the bed shook, but this time the belt struck the boy's buttocks, not the mattress, and he shrieked and began to sob. A few more blows, and suddenly the mattress grew warm and wet against him as his bladder let go from pain and fear.

His stepfather paused, bending over the whimpering boy, and sniffed the air. “Boy, did you just piss yourself?” His free hand slid roughly beneath the boy's belly. “By God, you did. Twelve years old, and still pissing yourself. You little sissy-boy. You little piece of dog shit. You nasty little faggot.” A pause. “You know what happens to nasty little faggots? I'm fixin' to show you.”

Satterfield heard the belt clatter to the floor, then heard his stepfather unzipping his jeans, then felt a searing pain.
It took the boy two days to begin to recover.

A week later, the Peterbilt had hissed to a stop in the driveway once more, and the man and woman had disappeared into the bedroom and locked the door, and the sound of their groans had drawn Satterfield again to the peephole.

The peephole that his stepfather had made no effort to patch.

SATTERFIELD STUDIED THE SUNSET
through the passenger side of the Peterbilt's windshield—the sky going red-orange and turquoise behind the silhouette of Birmingham's blocky Civic Center and the I-59 viaduct—as he waited to hear the verdict from the asshole sitting in the driver's seat.

“Drives okay,” said the asshole finally, but his tone was skeptical, as if what he really meant was “Drives like a piece of shit.”

The asshole—a beer-bellied, dumb-shit redneck of a prospective buyer—slouched behind the wheel, his hand rubbing the gearshift knob as if the truck were already his. They were just back from a twenty-mile test drive out I-59, which skirted downtown Birmingham on miles of elevated roadway, and they now sat idling beside the Sheraton and the Civic Center. To their left, traffic overhead rumbled and clattered across the viaduct's expansion joints; to their right, the blank end wall of the high-rise hotel echoed every clatter a quarter of a second later, as if, in some parallel universe, identical cars and trucks were rumbling and clattering along an identical viaduct, in almost-but-not-quite-perfect sync.

Satterfield wasn't staying at the Sheraton. He'd said he was, when he'd arranged the meeting with the asshole, but the moment the deal was sealed and the asshole was gone, Satterfield would jog beneath the roaring roadway to the Greyhound station, six blocks south, huddled beneath the forty-story BellSouth building. The next bus for Knoxville was scheduled to leave in less than an hour, and Satterfield was growing impatient with the slow-talking, slow-witted buyer.

“If it's so damned good, how come you're so hot to sell it?”

Satterfield shook his head, his eyes downcast.
Don't you even think about backing out on me,
he thought. “It's my wife,” he said sadly. “She's sick. Real sick—breast cancer. Doctor says she's got three months. Six, at the most.” He heaved a deep sigh, loud enough to be heard over the traffic and the clatter of the truck's idling pistons. “We've got a lot of hospital bills. Got a four-year-old, too, that I got to raise on my own pretty soon.” He turned to look at the guy now, his eyes full of ginned-up sorrow and anger, daring the asshole to do anything but sympathize and cough up the cash. “
That's
how come.”

The asshole nodded slightly, working the tip of his tongue into the crevice between two top teeth, digging for the bit of food that Satterfield had noticed was caught there. “Hmm,” the guy grunted, “too bad.” Satterfield felt a flash of fury at the lukewarm response. So what, if his tale of familial woe was totally fabricated, his tragic characters spun out of thin air? This guy had no way of knowing that.
I got a dying wife and a motherless kid on my hands, and all you got to say is “too bad”? You coldhearted, little-dicked son of a bitch.
“And you brought the title?”

“Got it right here,” Satterfield said, opening the glove compartment and removing a fat folder. “Maintenance records, too.” He handed the folder across, and the guy riffled through it, glancing at the receipts. “I haven't put many miles on it this past year. Not since she got sick.”

The guy pulled out the title and studied the name on it. It was Satterfield's stepfather's name; it was the name Satterfield would sign, assuming the guy ever shut up and paid up. “And the title's clean? No liens?”

“Abso-fuckin'-
lutely
clean,” Satterfield snapped. “I gave you the damn VIN number. Didn't you check it? I told you to.”

“Yeah, I checked it. Came back clean. Just askin'. Just makin' sure.” His tongue began rooting around in his teeth again, fishing for more scraps—
Why's he stalling?
wondered Satterfield, and then he realized,
Ah, here it comes.
“Thirty thousand, that's a lot of cash,” the guy said. He chewed his lip and shook his head, looking pained—like he really wanted the truck after all but just couldn't quite scrape up the asking price.

“Thirty's a damn sight less than forty,” snapped Satterfield. “This truck's worth forty, easy, and you know it. If you want it, you put thirty thousand dollars cash money in my hand right now. If you don't want it, get your ass out of my truck and quit wasting my time.”
Don't you dare fuck with me, fat-ass
, the voice in his head hissed.
I will gut you like a big-bellied hog
.

“Easy, hoss,” said the guy. “I want it. But I'm a working man, and that kind of cash don't grow on trees.” He waited, apparently still hoping Satterfield might cut him a break on the price. Finally, when Satterfield didn't budge, he reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and brought out a fat manila envelope, as thick as a brick, the top of the envelope wrapped around the money and rubber-banded. Satterfield had already spotted the rectangle hanging heavy inside the coat; he'd considered killing the guy while they were out on the test drive—snagging the cash and dumping his body somewhere on the way back to Knoxville, maybe in Little River Canyon, up toward Chattanooga—but that seemed risky, given that the guy's wife was waiting for him at a McDonald's around the corner. No, better to take the money, let the guy drive away, and stay as far under the radar as possible. The truck could tie him to his
dead
stepfather, if
that
body was ever found, and it could tie him to the stripper he'd dumped in the ravine. The truck needed selling. Besides, the money would be useful; he could live for a year—two, if he had to—on the thirty grand plus the monthly infusions of cash his mother's Social Security checks provided.

Satterfield took the envelope in his left hand, reaching into the glove compartment again with his right, this time feeling for his straight razor. Flipping open the blade, he slid the tip lightly across the rubber band to slice it, then laid the razor on his right leg, still open. He pulled the stack of currency—also rubber-banded—from the envelope and riffled through one corner of the stack, as if the bills were a deck of cards. The number
50
fluttered past many times, jerking and shimmying in small movements, like an animated drawing in a child's flip-book. He tugged one of the fifties free and tucked it into his shirt pocket—he'd be paying cash for his bus ticket, so there'd be no paper trail leading from Birmingham—then tucked the rest between his thighs. He took a pen from his shirt pocket. “Okay, then. Hand me that title and I'll sign it over.”

“Don't you want to count it?”

Satterfield looked at him coolly, holding the stare long enough to make the guy squirm. “Some reason I
need
to count it?”

Even by the last light of the sunset and the first flickers of the streetlamps, he could see the guy flush.
Is he insulted, because he wouldn't dream of shorting me? Or is he worried, because he actually did?
“No reason, hoss. It's all there.”

“Good.” Satterfield picked up the straight razor and angled it toward the light spilling through the driver's window, sighting along the edge of the blade, inspecting it for nicks. He glanced up from the blade and smiled. “Be a real shame if I had to come back to settle up.”