The Wooden Nickel by William Carpenter

Author:William Carpenter [CARPENTER, WILLIAM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316076517
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-06-27T04:00:00+00:00

DON’T LIKE THE TIMBER INDUSTRY?

TRY WIPING YOUR ASS WITH A PLASTIC BAG

“What are you going to do?” he whines. “My mom bought me that shirt.”

“Give me that jug of outboard mix,” Lucky says.

They stuff as many striped buoys as they can into Norton’s enormous T-shirt, then they splash on a decent amount of outboard fuel and set the bundle back in the bed of the Nissan, and top it off with a coil of poly rope. They scout around and find some newspaper and wad it up. He says to Norton and Clayton, “OK, I’m going back to Ronette’s car, so she don’t freak when it goes. You wait three minutes then light them papers and toss them onto Norton’s shirt, then run.”

Norton Gross takes out a Bic lighter and gets it ready by lighting up a cigarette but then he says, “Clayton should do it, it’s his first time drunk.”

Clayton reaches way down in his pocket, pretty near pushing his pants off in the process, and comes up with his own Bic lighter.

“Just wait three minutes and light the newspaper, Clayton, then set it on the shirt and run like hell.”

Lucky walks back past the Chevy Tahoe that smells of new car paint and human piss, then stops to check out the toolbox in the bed of the Dodge Ram crew-cab next door. It’s unlocked and he can stand on the running board and feel around in there till he gets his hand on a stubby little crowbar that ought to do the job. He tries it out on the left rear door, just soft at first, case anyone’s around, then he gets going and whacks the passenger window on the crew-cab, makes a nice spiderweb on the second stroke, then moves up forward and takes out the two lights and the ram’s head in the center of the grille. He turns and backhands the left headlight of the Tahoe, then takes out the windshield right above the wheel and brings the crowbar down on the center of the hood, nice strong Detroit steel at first, but a few sharp whacks and it’s pretty much stove in. He’d dearly love to take out the Tahoe’s grille, but he doesn’t have the heart for that first whack on the Chevy emblem, too close to home, so he wedges the prybar in the driver’s side door and bends it hard till he pulls the hinges out and leaves the tire iron inside on the floor: a little present from three generations of fishermen on Toothpick Ledge.

He crosses the uncut field between the main parking lot and the annex and joins Ronette in the Probe.

“I was so worried for you,” she says. “I ain’t even supposed to be smoking and look at this.” She lights a new Marlboro from the one still burning and throws the half-smoked one out the window.

“You want to worry about something, look over there.” He turns her head to stare into the darkness out of the left quarter window of the Probe.

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