Wear Your Home Like a Scar by Nik Korpon

Author:Nik Korpon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

Something about that smell threw Edgar back a few years. He could hear the frantic screech of foreign birds, of voices screaming in guttural tongues. He remembered learning to tell the difference between a hops field and a wheat field when it burned, that you had to breathe deeply and watch the smoke. He remembered one of the other infantrymen saying it was hard to tell because sometimes the farmers trapped in the field put out their own smell while on fire. In his mind, they had known what was coming and should’ve moved faster, and if they didn’t, well, there’s one for Darwinism.

Edgar pulled himself up using the one of the counter stools. The burn spread through his shoulder, causing his fingers to loosen and slip from the stool’s back. He caught himself before falling back to the floor, pulled through the pain until he found his feet. Applying a little pressure around the wound told him it was an in-and-out and blood-loss was the only real thing to worry about.

The restaurant was not a world for the living. Poor Irma was piled not three feet from him, blood radiating from her like a gruesome sunset. He shouldered open the door to the kitchen, found Big Al slumped across the griddle. Wrapping his good arm around the big man’s waist, he heaved him back, off the steaming griddle. Blood burnt black, pocked with bubbles. The front of Al’s torso looked like the remains of a campfire the morning after a rain. Edgar grabbed a spatula meant for flipping burgers and set it on the steel, then searched through the kitchen for a towel or rag. Only ones he saw hung from the edge of the sink, soaked with grease water, so he pulled off Al’s hat and rolled it into a cylinder. He took a deep breath, then set it between his teeth and picked up the spatula.

It’d been a long time since he’d heard that sizzle. At least he didn’t have to worry about getting Kraut disease in it this time.

When his shoulder was cauterized, he made his way back through the dining room over to the back booth. His nephew lay face down on the table, a corona of blood ebbing toward the edge.

Damn shame, that kid. Bad enough his momma named him Lindsey and gave him clubbed feet. And now shot down like a stray dog.

Edgar’d tried to do right by his sister’s boy. Lindsey wanted to follow in his uncle’s footsteps and fight the good fight, but he’d been kept out of the service on account of his Palsy. Edgar had a few friends around town and did some favors to get the boy a badge and a gun, give him something to inspire a bit of respect.

He knelt down and closed the boy’s eyelids, then took the car keys from his pocket and walked outside.

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