Finish it or you don't go home!"
    The noise knocked out most of the order. So Warz stopped feeding the machine to see who was hollering and at whom. What he saw was the old forklift shaking with fresh stock and lumbering down the aisle toward him.
    The shouter came from behind. "Get 'em all done!" he said over the racket. A toothpick bounced on the lower lip. He got closer, on the attack to scare Warz from arguing, and his nose touched Warz' ear. "You got time!"
    He was a big kid, too young to buy himself a drink legally; still, he was the foreman. He knew the machines, knew the whole operation, and the gaps where his front teeth used to be showed he had the right people skills for that kind of place. He made no effort to learn names. Why should he? You wouldn't last. Only the rats had more seniority than he did.
    Warz didn't answer, didn't assume he was supposed to, simply returned to the mig welder, slapped the last part on top of another in the cradle and punched two big, yellow buttons at the same time to keep his hands out of the way. Sparks flew, sizzling like grease as the machine came to life, though its hum was barely audible over the pressroom crashes and roaring overhead heaters. To deaden the noise, he plugged his ears with toilet paper wads. His own invention, discovered at one rock concert too many.
    Not trusting his glasses, he squinted against tiny slag beads that shot past his face in the beige-gray air. Then there were the gloves. They gave him the most grief. Torn, cool and damp from somebody else's sweat, they lay in a pile at the start of the shift. They made him feel he was pulling on flayed skin. The shop stank like dirty socks.
    Warz picked up an air gun, faced the vents and closed his eyes as he pulled the trigger. The blast ripped off sweat in a screaming massage.
    He checked to see which of his fellow employees looked as if they knew how to read. As usual, the shop had low life. Warz amused himself with the idea that if anyone wiped them out, murder charges wouldn't stick once the saliva was put under a microscope.
    Curious thumb-size bruises spotted the upper arms of several women while hot, dirty air ruined make-up on the ones that wore it, making them appear ready to go all the way on the first date. Warz had no doubt a few would. Not, however, the one that was a beauty. In better times, her type wouldn't even be working, but now she had to be there like him, for the two dollars an hour minimum wage the nonunion jobber was paying.
    Warz was angry about that. He had an education. Warz. It used to be Warszawicz, legally simplified by his grandfather so that the family would fit in America. The Z kept it Polish.
    You could always tell how well a place paid by what was in the employee lot, but even the cars in the factory's reserved spaces made it hard for Warz to park. He worried his car might get the cancer the other models were dying of. The yellow Cutlass was a head turner. However, the company wanted him to feel welcome. That was one reason the yes box on the lobby's job app blow-up was checked under "Ever been arrested for a felony?" The example coaxed, "If yes, please explain." And the company did. "Armed robbery. Ten years Jackson State." A real equal-opportunity employer.
    He removed the finished part and clapped it on top of a stack he was building, turning its construction into a goal to maintain his interest and let him finish the day, maybe even the week. A car payment was coming up. But three hours into the afternoon shift and it seemed as though he'd been there a week.
    One person, however, really stood out, a longhair about his age with a Fu Manchu mustache. He wasn't letting the place get to him. Anything was better than the other job he had. The boots he wore on it gave him away. Functioning artifacts ragged out and wasted like their war, they were tied low and lazy just above the ankles.
    The green nylon tongues lolled out of the tops like those of dead animals. The nylon was faded and the leather was scuffed as raw as the memories he was trying to destroy by wearing out the last pieces of his uniform in a sweatshop in Detroit. Work clothes then and now, still on the job but in the shop. The shop. In Detroit, you knew when they meant a store.
    Warz bought his own jungle boots at Epps Surplus and scuffed them to resemble the veterans' footgear. When he was in grade school, he would visit Epps with friends. The wobbly pots, the helmets, were too heavy, but there were helmet liners with backgammon-board patterns, so they'd try them on, or play hot potato with hollow pineapple grenades, and all of them wished they were old enough to handle the rifles kept behind the counter. One kid would always jab at a spot on a liner and insist, "My dad had one hit right here. It went around and came out the other side. Honest!"
    Warz envied the veteran, even the nightmares.
    The forklift roared in from behind, gassing Warz with propane flatulence as it dropped off its loaded skid to pick up the empty one. The truck rotated to leave and its rear motor heat-treated the back of his neck.
    Warz raised his shoulders to his ears until the lift was gone before he reached into the new stock to pick up a part. He came up with a long branch of dove-gray steel curved and edged all over like a fantastic sword that was going somewhere in a new car when the supplier had it trucked down Nine Mile to the Chrysler plant that was still working a shift. No matter how bad things became, some people always had money.
    He turned to the mig welder to give it stock again but noticed the part was splashed with something. The whole skid was. Rust inhibitor, trannie oil, cough syrup, Ripple wine, he wasn't sure what it was. Did he wipe it off? he wondered. Not without permission. Guess wrong, he could be fired, and the next job could be worse.
    A hot slag bead landed in his hair. Warz scratched at the pinprick burning his scalp and shouted for the boss. The toothless kid ran over from a knot of huddled men. Worry triple-creased the space between his eyes and laid it out that he didn't have problems, he had crises, he had a corporation to run, goddammit. His eyes pleaded with Warz not to tell him about more trouble.
    Warz held out the part and yelled, "What's on this?"
    The toothpick he still had bounced faster. The kid took the thing but didn't study it long before the jack-o'-lantern maw widened and he laughed and dipped his chin. "Him!" he said.
    Warz followed the gesture to the huddle. The men broke up and headed toward the exit. One of them was bleeding badly from an arm. The veteran was holding the limb straight up. Dark blood dripped from beneath a sodden bandage of paper restroom towels. The shop had nothing for anything serious. The injured worker was pallid. Warz guessed shock. Like old times for the veteran who was moving fast in a habituated crouch and trying to stay dry. He left with the injured man too. They weren't waiting for an ambulance.
    "Didn't even know he got hurt," the kid said, proud he bossed a risky place. "Shit's sharp!" He returned the part to Warz, standing there akimbo, taking in his domain, the supreme boss, as if the swirling floor dust was invasion-beach surf and he was MacArthur. But he lost composure when he realized he had one less body now. "Dumb fuck's gonna cost me production," he remarked, computed fast and turned to Warz. "You want overtime?"
    Warz dropped the part. It clanged hard and close to the foreman.
    The toothpick fell from his mouth as the kid skipped back and yelled, "Hey!"
    Warz grabbed his surplus-store BDU shirt from a bin where it was draped and walked off cursing. He hadn't slaved in one factory after another to put himself through school just to keep winding up in them. Warz flung the battle shirt over a shoulder, pulled off the rotten gloves and slapped them on his legs. Dust exploded on the jeans. He made a show of dropping the gloves. He wanted everybody to see it was beneath him even to have touched them.
    The foreman suspected the part hadn't slipped. As Warz reached the exit, the kid called out, "Whatsa matter, can't stand the sighta blood!?"
    Stepping over the injured worker's wound trail, Warz crossed the lot toward a '72 mustard-yellow Rocket Olds Cutlass Supreme. Piled close was a dirty ice hill, which kept the passenger side safe from door dings. Cold air smacked his bare arms and prickled his chest. The cold was invigorating, so he didn't put on the battle shirt. Warz took out his keys, but he wasn't going anywhere yet.
    "Place sucks."
    Warz pivoted to find out who was talking to him now. He saw a player in his mid-20s leaning on a long-nosed Vette that wasn't there at the start of the shift. Big-collar shirt, Lord Byron hair. He was dressed and groomed like a coke dealer or record promoter. The sportsman approached Warz, making the widely flared pant legs undulate instead of bang into each other the way U.S.-mades liked to. Warz imagined a hut full of women chewing soft the endangered species hide the coat was made of. Only the Vette was domestic.
    The sportsman watched the emergency exit being made and connected the dots. "You just quit, right?"
    "Why don't you go in and find out?"
    But the guy held up his hands. "Hey, man, I'm on your side. I have to show here to check on things. My father owns this hole."
    Warz sized him. Affable as a puppy that wanted to be taken home. Already showing good breeding, he wasn't too proud to be unable to ingratiate himself with the rank and file. The technique helped keep a union stay unwanted.
    The owner's son looked Warz over, lingering on the Nam boots, and Warz knew the costume was working. However undeserved, the recognition made Warz feel good. It brought him closer to being what he wanted to be, what he believed he could have been. Pretending to be a hero let him get along with himself.
    "Welcome home," the junior executive beamed and extended a hand, as much in gratitude for not being run off. "I'm Roger," he announced. "I was in high school," he added to establish innocence. Too young to be drafted way back then. "When did you get back?"
    "I'm not sure I did." Warz pointed at the accident evidence spotting the lot, hoping he was making his admirer see medals on his chest.
    "I hate this place," Roger said. His coat sighed as he reached for something in an inside pocket. He came up with a black and silver ballpoint the size of a tire gauge. Next, he brought a business card from his wallet and put it on somebody's peeling vinyl roof to write. When he finished, he gave the card to Warz. "Executive vice president" read the embossed side. When Warz turned it over to see what he wrote, there was an address and a little map.
    "That's how you get to my house," the kid explained, "if you got nothing going on for Saturday. Don't bring a date. You won't like it if you do." He looked behind him at the family business and muttered, "One day I'm gonna sell it." And he left to go to work for a few minutes.
    Warz unlocked the Cutlass and, in case Roger was looking, put the card in the glove compartment instead of dropping it on the tarmac with the pizza parlor flyer he picked from under a wiper blade. "Fucking haves," he sniffed under his breath. They never understood the little guy, even when once upon a time they were have-nots themselves. He needed a job not a lay. Hell, he needed a life.
    Almost in one motion, Warz turned on the motor, snapped on the radio and pushed a button. The needle flew left to the wilderness where classical was exiled along with one special rocker. The rest of Detroit's FM rock was clumped in the middle. Shortly, one or more would celebrate the end of the workday with a party anthem. But the jocks at CJOM liked a blast from the past by Tallywack, a vanished local band that played to play not make money and never got airtime stateside. The name alone guaranteed they wouldn't. Only CJ played them.
    The radical rocker was just across the river in Windsor, Canada, light years from the FCC's blue laws. Warz fine-tuned to get it, hoping Roger hadn't made him miss the song.
    The toke whistle hanging from the rearview mirror tapped the windshield with each gear change. A promo gimmick from CJ, the whistle had a miniature pipe bowl screwed into the barrel. The bowl was big enough for a gram. Blow dope or blow the whistle. Your choice.
    He turned hard and went a block down Gratiot until he merged with rush-hour crawl and CJ's station ID ended. Warz recognized the first chords. Tallywhack. He turned up the volume: "Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!"
    He put spurs to 455 horses.

Go to top.

East Detroit. Not the "east side," residents were quick to clarify. One day the suburb would have to change its name to protect property values because a block from where Warz lived the world-famous inner city's real east side slammed on the brakes at Eight Mile. East Detroit was blue collar, but Warz' street was indigo. He turned on it.
    The house where he roomed was right on the firing line. One of those small, frame tract jobs put up right after World War Two. The concrete drive was stained from years of do-it-yourself popular mechanics. Snowball grenades and dirt-clod bullets hurled by make-believe cowboys and GIs had taken a toll of the asbestos shingles.
    His landlord's car wasn't in the driveway or by the curb. That cheered Warz a bit. The agreement was whoever got back first didn't have to park in the street. Once inside, Warz bombed a basement step with his boots and made for the bathroom.

Warz turned off the shower and stepped out. The underside of his wrist began to sting, a thin, sharp pain that made him think of knives. He had a look. There was a five-inch line of scored flesh, too shallow to have bled anything measurable. He wondered how he got it. Rubbing steam off the medicine cabinet's mirror, he showed it his wrist to see it from that angle.
    The cut marked where the cuff on the work glove ended. The shop, he decided, the only place it could have happened. Something to remember it by. Probably the damn part he left with the foreman. All this time, and he sensed it only now? The cut was too long for a bandage. He licked and sucked so that it would hurt more and he wouldn't get tetanus.
    It was a good quit though, he grinned, turning his arm in a search for more injuries, wishing that instead of his next job app's asking only for a reason for leaving, it asked how he quit. Some places, he heard, didn't want to hire you if you'd never been axed. Quits could mean initiative.
    There was a little bottle of mercurochrome in the cabinet. Warz would put the red antiseptic on his toy soldiers when they became casualties. But it wasn't to fight their infections. And because mercurochrome stained, when it was his turn to play wounded, he'd pretend his spit was blood.
    Combat was played better in winter. Then he could make his nickel guns smoke with his breath. Thunderstorms were good too, especially if there was lightning. He would crouch by a window, and if he was lucky, a flash would dazzle him followed by the artillery boom of charged particles. But he liked the Belle Isle flower house best. Let the upper class call it a "conservatory." He would sneak into the tropics exhibit to prowl around giant leaves and a couple of 60-foot palms. The risk of being caught substituted for the danger of being shot by a Japanese sniper.
    High on the right arm was the tattoo. He didn't have enough money for a bigger one that day. Usually you waited until you finished Marine boot to get yourself tagged with the eagle, globe and anchor. The tattooist said a design its size looked better on the ball of the shoulder. Usually, Warz wasn't out of a sleeved shirt. Out of sight was out of mind. Removal meant disfigurement.
    He wrapped himself in a towel, careful to avoid the landlord's greasy work pants hanging on the back of the door and smelling up the little bathroom like a shop john.
    Warz picked up his glasses. Wet eyebrows steamed the top half of the aviator-style lenses. More than one girl had reminded him how much he resembled Steve McQueen--features, build, even with the glasses. He leaned on the sink to be closer to the mirror to make sure he still did.
    A bundle of wet hair flopped down his forehead. He shoved the lock in place and pushed himself off the sink to go to the basement. Once there he hooked a big toe in the plastic netting of a laundry basket and scared out a millipede that went skittering away to vanish behind unopened cans of government-surplus peanut butter. Old strike rations. Then he went to an ancient Hudson fridge where the pop and suds were stored and got a bottle of beer.
    Upstairs again, Warz found a note taped to the door leading to his attic room. The message said Hofer called and would be at the old-guys bar at nine.
    Warz padded up more stairs and collapsed on the bed. The 8x10 photo of his twin daughters faced him from the top of a desk. He took the color picture himself with a snapshot camera, but a wedding photographer called the composition professional. Summer dusk gilded the white dresses amid dandelions that were almost as tall as the girls were. Leaning far back on the headboard without taking his eyes off the photo, he angled the bottle carefully to his lips and took a swig, smug with satisfaction. He did good work. Taking pictures too.
    His useless college diploma rested in its leatherette folder, another knickknack sharing a varnished pine board with somebody's bronze Boy Scouts paperweight and a plastic 12-inch knight in jousting armor. The knight's blue pinfeather helmet plume disappeared long ago.
    Again, he looked at the twins but now he frowned, realizing his ex-wife was already conditioning the five-year olds so that they wouldn't have trouble attracting guys with money. With her, certain facts of life were never too early to learn. A rush of soft memories made him smile. He brought the picture closer and wondered whether Sami would become a brunette like Kim. No matter. They made the world beautiful.
    He closed his eyes to bring on a nap before he met his friend.

Go to top.

The Eastgate shopping center sign glared above a mess of strip-mall neon, and the empty Marine Corps substation came into view. Out of business now, in the 60s it did fine at the edge of the parking lot, right on Gratiot where you couldn't miss it. A catsup-and-egg-yolk-colored carnival booth giving away free tickets to the greatest show on earth at the time but big enough for only the recruiter and two candidates. The Marines knew some couldn't go in without holding hands. Yet, in his senior year in high school, and with his new tattoo, Warz went alone in the best heroic tradition.
    An echo came out the back of his brain: "The only reason anyone joins the Marines is to tell people he used to be one." It helped to hear the opinion again. The tattoo was trying to itch.
    Warz could still make out the ribbonned sergeant hoisting himself from behind his desk like a flag. Red inseams gashed blue trousers. "You wanna clean it, cook it or kill it?" he boomed. The grapeshot greeting blew Warz' priorities to pieces, but what really got to him was the thought that Mijalyczyn signed up in the same little place, and Mijalyczyn came home in a locked casket they wouldn't open for his parents. Remains unviewable. Trust us, the government told them, he's inside and you don't want us to prove it.
    "I thought the Navy was in here too," Warz told the recruiter. "You guys go around together." And Warz left the little shack to go to college any way he could. Then the following Saturday at a rural airport near Ann Arbor he went up in an airplane for the first time, and jumped out of it. When he did, he knew he wasn't a natural coward. He never told anybody about going parachuting. Warz changed lanes.

Al's was a VFW Hall with no charter. There was a good crowd for a Monday. Five regulars. Near the lake and in the middle of Grosse Pointe Farms' faux manors, it used to be a general store for folks that lived on the long-gone real farms. The bar was so nondescript, if it wasn't for the small neon-blue window sign that glowed "Al's," you would assume it was out of business. The long windows were painted black. Muskie heads and pictures of Al with his buddies holding prize walleye were nailed to the bar's backstop along with a framed, 48-star, hanky-size U.S. flag. Al raised it himself on an atoll he claimed he forgot how to pronounce. Anybody in deck shoes that strayed in immediately realized he'd made a mistake coming there.
    Most of his customers were retired or soon would be. A few years shy of 30 and out at the car plants. Only a few were Grosse Pointers, meaning most of their names weren't on a plaque in the Grosse Pointe War Memorial that listed the ones that returned along with those that didn't.
    Al's guys didn't care about being remembered. They had nothing to prove anymore to themselves or anybody else. They already took care of that, risked their lives in big-bore combat, taken lives, become complete. One even caught himself on "Victory at Sea." Long ago, the blurred tattoos stopped shouting for attention. Now they'd slip out of shiny UAW or Knights of Columbus jackets as matter of factly as an old Benrus wristwatch. But war stories were rare. The vets adhered to an etiquette. After the time and place, the images they painted had less suggestion than old road-kill stains. Still, the tales amplified Warz' frustration of having none of his own to keep secret. What helped was assuming some of the vets believed he too used to have to sleep with the lights on.
    Hofer went there because Warz told him to. The regulars didn't seem to mind Hofer's long hair. Hofer's white-whale Imperial was beached in the parking lot, the back seat stuffed with rollers, brushes and buckets, tools of the trade.
    Warz entered the bar and pushed air out of the way, heavy air aromatic with beer, not necessarily great beer but cold beer, onomatopoeic, monosyllabic American beer named for the moment it was opened. Busch, Schlitz, Pabst.
    Hofer's elbows stayed on the bar as he stretched his throat rather than raise the bottle and make it easy on himself. White latex caulked his fingernails. He watched Warz enter the mirror near him. The stool beside Hofer's was dragged back squeaking on 40-year-old black and white checkerboard tiling.
    They'd known each other since high school when Warz would let him cheat off his tests. Hofer wasn't slow, but he wasn't fast and he liked hanging out with a smart guy to feel more like one. For his part, Warz liked being around him because Hofer wasn't complicated.
    Warz sat down beside Hofer who didn't turn to face him. He could see in the mirror Warz had a great day. "Why don't you call in sick tomorrow?"
    "Don't have to."
    "In that case, I got a four-car garage. Needs to be scraped first. Pay's two hundred. Split the day and the pay. Pick you up at seven." Hofer tried for another sip.
    "It's not painting season yet."
    "This year it's early."
    Warz pleaded for reason. "They're predicting sleet!"
    "Won't happen."
    Warz rolled his eyes. "You told him you had special paint, didn't you?"
    Hofer shrugged. "Customer wants to cancel, he can call me. 'Sides, the guy can afford to have me do it with a Q tip. He says he's gotta make an impression."
    "You did tell him they made special paint."
    Finally, Hofer faced his friend. "What do you know about business? I get a jump on the season, and he'll pass my name around Lochmoor to his country-club buddies. Business will take off. Free advertising."
    "A hundred bucks, and he knows I'm overqualified."
    "Okay, I'll just get somebody else."
    "Thought as much. You don't need help. You just want somebody that looks smart." Warz studied him to see if he was lightening up. He wasn't. Hofer could have been Quasimodo and knew it, but Warz didn't want to lose the job. "Come on, ragging on you is how I get over feeling sorry for myself."
    On cue, Al showed up with Warz' brewski. No glass unless you requested one. The cap tinkled on the bar.
    "I got it." Warz dropped 60 cents first. A matter of pride. He was broke, not destitute.
    "So what are you going to do?" Hofer asked.
    Warz brought the beer to his mouth but stopped. "Leave town. Leave the whole state. Nothing around here. Man, I want my own place to screw in!" He tugged hard on the bottle a couple of times and burped an affirmation. It was good.
    "Why don't you teach?" Hofer asked.
    "I'd suck. Anyway, I hated school."
    "Then why'd you keep goin'?"
    "Varicose veins. I'm not getting legs that look like they're full of bugs because I stood still 27 years grinding roller bearings or something."
    "You got a college education. Get a job sitting on your ass."
    "What do you think I've been trying to do?"
    "Just what did you study?" Hofer asked as though he should remember.
    "English."
    "Oh," he said as though that was the problem. Hofer tore off a strip of caulk that was weatherproofing a fingernail. "Well, at least you learned something."
    "Yeah. The library's free."
    Al scooped up the coins.
    "Well, you can be an officer," Hofer said.
    "Forget being a cop."
    "I didn't mean cop."
    "Hey, career counselor, see these?" Warz put down his bottle hard. The mouth foamed. When he finished calming the bottle with a few quick tugs, he tapped his glasses.
    "That was then. Now they got officers that wear glasses, and I don't mean old generals."
    "There's no war on. Who wants to put up with military crap when you can't kill people? Anyway, why don't you go in? Somebody paints all those tanks." He raised the bottle for another sip.
    "They had their chance to get me. I didn't run."
    Warz brought the beer off his lips. "You saying I did?"
    Hofer looked stunned. "That stick you got up your ass? I didn't put it there, okay?"
    Al reached high and turned up the volume on the TV's hockey game, letting them know he heard them and they better behave.
    Warz rubbed his forehead, moving to his hair which he plowed for a few seconds. "Okay, okay, I'm a dumb jerk."
    "Fuckin' A. Remember Belle Isle? The picnic?"
    "We were nuts. It must have been 50 below. Why'd Mule bring the BB guns?"
    "You know how he is. With him nothing has to make sense. But the duel was your idea! 'Hey let's have a duel,'" Hofer lisped effetely while faking a sitting pirouette.
    "You went along with it," Warz grinned
    "I was drunk."
    "And I wasn't?"
    "Walk ten paces, turn and shoot. Like gentlemen." Hofer preened to get under Warz' skin. "Only targets were the face. But that was okay. I lose one eye, I got another," he announced cheerfully, then changed. "You could have put my eye out!"
    "Always thinking about yourself."
    "You're really into that shit, you know."
    Warz slowly traced a line through the bottle sweat. "Got the name? Play the game."
    The door opened. Cold charged in with a double-date foursome showing off spring-break tans like new paint jobs. They stood unsure on the threshold in deck shoes, searching for portholes and macraméd life rings.
    "Silver spoons," Hofer grumbled on seeing them. "You won't like it here," he fog-horned into his bottle almost loud enough for them to hear him. "We work for a living."
    The group shuffled outside without indicating they heard. Al didn't care if they had.
    "How's your kids?" Warz asked.
    "She makes sure their hair's combed."
    Warz leaned closer. "Tell me something, since you and Leslie split, was she getting it on with anyone else before the divorce?"
    Bad memories quickly doused the glow several beers had given Hofer. "Yeah," he muttered and scratched the tip of his nose, unsure if he should ask what he wanted to. He went ahead anyway. "Okay, you tell me something, since you and Charlene split." He raised an eyebrow. "How was she?"
    "She turned you on, huh?"
    "Matter of fact."
    Warz bowed his head and snorted, "You're something. I never wanted Leslie."
    "Screw you."
    Al placed a bowl of popcorn before them, a reward for staying under control.
    Warz played with the snack, studying his freak-show reflection on his drink's brown glass, wishing he could see the future on it to cheat it. "How long were you married? I forget."
    "Coulda' killed her and been out of jail before now."
    "When things were going bad between you, did she always show you her back when she got dressed?"
    Al came over again, this time with a towel to wipe the bar top. Warz lifted his beer out of the way. Hofer waited to answer until Al was gone. "Come to think of it, yeah. Did Charlene?"
    "Not at first. First, she used to call me other guys' names."
    "When?" Hofer leered.
    "When do you think?"
    "That'll wilt the willie."
    "How was Leslie?" Warz probed.
    "We don't want to know too much, do we?"
    "Why care now?"
    "Ah," Hofer swayed forlornly and gave in, "she was a screamin' acrobat. I was always afraid she was gonna break my dick."
    "I wonder what they say about us."

Go to top.

Hofer was doing push ups on a paint can, pressing down on an inverted wire-brush handle placed across the lid. The exercise warmed him up too. He was wrong about the weather, and the four-car garage was a carriage house he should have hiked his fee to do. He didn't explain how he got that one wrong. Warz mentioned the slave wages Hofer had asked for but didn't rub it in. Warz was at the open garage door, washing his hands of latex under a cascade from the roof. It was hard to paint wearing gloves. Now rainwater mixed with the paint on the drive like milk of magnesia. At Warz' feet was a half-empty quart thermos of Squirt mixed with vodka.
    Hofer came over and nudged him, but Warz didn't feel like a toke. "Throw a live fish out there, it won't die," Hofer joked as if he hadn't screwed up. Clouds were closing ranks all afternoon. Still, he insisted they wouldn't break open. What you didn't want to happen wouldn't. In business, you had to think positive. "Least it ain't snowin'," he said.
    More thunder rolled, then cracked. The roof seemed to split. Hofer ducked. "Tomorrow, if Mother Nature ain't on the rag, we'll come back and finish the job." Hofer went to the paint-spattered radio that always accompanied him on his jobs. He got a Detroit rocker playing the Doors and frowned. "Every time it rains, fuckin' 'Riders on the Storm.' "
    "Put CJ on."
    Cass retuned. "You believe he's dead?"
    Warz took a rag from his back pocket and dried his hands. He breathed on them and put them inside the pockets of his work coat. "I had a poetry professor that was a Doors freak. He said Jim Morrison was running guns and slaves and ostrich eggs in Ethiopia. Like Rimbaud." Warz waited for a bored look that would tell him to fill in the blank. It came. "He was French," Warz continued. "Rimbaud's Europe's most famous poet. Morrison liked him. Rimbaud got sick of everything and split for Africa just like Mister Mojorisin, the professor said."
    "That's what I want to do when I get sick of bein' rich. Ostrich eggs. He's deader 'n hell."
    "There've been sightings."
    "All they gotta do is open the coffin."
    "Romans believed souls were ferried across a river by a ferryman. The ferryman got to see everybody for the last time. When you die, you can ask him yourself if he saw Morrison."
    "I'll do that."
    More lightning. Hofer flinched, inclined to check for third-degree burns.
    "That used to be a mark of cowardice," Warz observed.
    "Man, you can get killed out there."
    "Beats how most people go, flat on their backs, tubes coming out of them like stripped veins."
    Hofer returned inside and assumed a defensive crouch on the paint can. "I can't leave it alone now. Thanks." He turned around to hide a tin-foil-wrapped gram of hash along with a safety pin. "I want to die in bed all of a sudden, in my sleep. Go nice 'n' easy."
    "Then your spirit will be confused. Is he sleeping or is he dead? And if it's confused, it won't let the ferryman take it across which means you wind up a ghost."
    "We better never die then. There ain't no good way out according to you."
    "There are ways, ways a moment or a few seconds long that'll make up for a whole lifetime. How do you want to be remembered?"
    But Hofer didn't hear. He was crouched over the portable just as the storm hit harder. "Ferryman," he muttered, bored with Warz' academic showmanship.
    Warz watched the wind moving through the rain on deep-sea currents, and Hofer found CJ. A guitar riff he never heard before slithered out of the plastic and coiled on top of the sound box, striking and retreating and striking again. Hofer unwrapped the cube, broke off a piece and stuck it on the pin. He went digging for his lighter. After blowing out the flaming chip, he closed one nostril and sniffed the smoke wisp. The rush wiggled the pigtail he always tied the hair in to keep it out of his work.
    Warz zipped himself to the throat and turned up the collar. The music ended, just in time for Hofer to open bloodstone eyes and see him walking on water, head down, arms folded against the rain that was raking the flooded yard like shrapnel.
    Hofer went to the threshold and watched him stop at a steel clothesline pole. Warz tugged on the crossbar, then swung himself up to straddle it and curled his feet around the upright for a secure perch.
    "Warz!" Hofer yelled.
    The dope was hyping Hofer's concern, but Warz couldn't hear him over the storm nor see him through rain-bubbled, paint-flecked lenses. He kept his head down and took the whip stings, flashing off and on with the rest of the yard. The couple that hired them were at a window, watching.
    A few minutes later the thunderheads were tumbling over them-selves to the next county, and Warz climbed down. He sloshed stiff and shivering to the garage. Hofer's pained expression demanded an explanation.
    Warz groped for one and found a little levity. "A good soldier never leaves his post, get it?"
    All Hofer could assume was drugs. "Don't you never take none of that crap again!"
    The couple were coming to them under umbrellas. The man looked pissed off, his wife concerned. She was carrying a bath towel. It started snowing.

Since Warz was well on his way to being sober, Hofer let him drive. Hofer lounged nervously, trying to enjoy the road-spray kisses being blown through the window he'd rolled down because Warz needed the heater on high to keep himself from freezing in his wet clothes. It didn't help there was a hole in the floor on Warz' side where road salt had eaten through. Skip dashes would blip in the cavity in synch with the wipers' clunks. That and the tires' hiss passed for music. The Chrysler's radio didn't work.
    Rain cellophaned the big houses like bake-show cakes. "You can't have any," Warz imagined lawn signs reading along Lake Shore Drive.
    The couple had paid in cash, half the agreed price for the half of the job completed. They were sorry, the couple said. Wasn't it a shame about the storm? And, oh, by the way, they didn't have to return to finish the work.
    Hofer exploded. "Were you high!? 'Cause if you were, I won't kill you!"
    Warz tried deflecting more fire. "Now you know why they call her Muh-thuh Nature."
    "Oh, no. You ain't blamin' the bitch. And you weren't stoned!"
    Warz tried for an answer that would keep Hofer from making him put the car in a mahogany-paneled den. Warz knew him. Hofer wouldn't ease up until he had the truth. Warz had to tell him, as much to justify the event to himself.
    Moments later Hofer was still waiting. He smacked the dash. "What got into you!?"
    "Okay, okay, don't piss your pants," Warz snickered, covering his own discomfort. "I wanted to know what it was like."
    "Sicko."
    "What?" Warz fired.
    "You and anyone else that gets off that way."
    "I used to think you were just stupid."
    "Don't call me stupid." Hofer meant it.
    Warz couldn't apologize.
    Hofer got tired of waiting again. "What was what like!?"
    "Getting shot at! Okay!? All right!?" Warz glared, back and forth, from the street to him. "Happy you know now!?"
    But Hofer was amused. He played with the knob on the window crank and began laughing. "That's not really why you pulled the stunt, is it? Like a fucking kid? Is that the real reason? Really?"
    "Every guy that's never been through it wonders. You wondered. You still do."
    "Oh, yeah, I wonder. I'm wondering right now. I wonder if I'm painting fire plugs from here on!"
    Warz looked out the side window a bit too long. He jerked the car back from the other lane. "Great, I'm probably going to give him cancer too." He turned to Hofer. "Screw being honest with you again!"
    "I was gonna get a spray unit!"
    "Is that all? I can fix that. No problem. Don't cry." Steering with his knees, Warz dug out his wallet. "Here!" He slapped his pay on the dash.
    Hofer grabbed the bills before they blew away and calmed down, satisfied Warz wasn't going to benefit from the mess.
    Warz reached low for his thermos that was sloshing on the floor with the news it wasn't empty. He loosened the cap.

The snow relented, and the war memorial's lit spire glowed over the tree line. Warz wasn't impressed. The only way you got your name in the other shrines was by not coming back. He checked on Hofer. The tires' swoosh had lulled him to sleep. The worst part of Warz' drunk had worn off, dulling the outer edge of inhibition. Then worn wipers smeared brake lights on the windshield.
    Two toy-sports cars fresh out of the box were stopped side by side, blocking half the street, an MGB and a bug-eyed Sprite. The second car was hogging the median. To Warz the frat letters on the ragtops' plastic rear windows certified the cars were playthings.
    Warz crossed the centerline to pass but noticed neither car was in trouble. If the drivers were having an argument, that was something he could respect. But they'd taken over the avenue to chat. Warz laid on the horn. Hofer snorted.
    As soon as Warz was clear, the Sprite pulled away. It came up fast in the rearview mirror, screaming like a thousand-pound bee. Warz knew the driver wasn't going to let him get away with the disrespect. The little car's brights came on and the driver began tailgating. Warz couldn't tell if there was a passenger to be impressed, or if it was just post-adolescent honor that had to be satisfied. But he began playing too, tapping the brakes, daring him to rear end the Imperial.
    Despite the bucking, Hofer kept on snoring, getting rocked deeper into sleep.
    The Sprite had enough and tore away to come alongside. It stayed clear by inches. Squeezed into the cockpit, the driver's beefy passenger tried to hit the Imperial with an ice scraper. But the rider reconsidered, saying something to the other that wasn't intelligible to Warz.
    Anyway, Warz didn't care. He was bored with the rite, cold and tired besides, and he yawned at the students that he was. So he accelerated to get away from them. But the Sprite tore ahead and tried to get in front to cut Warz off; only, it cut too close.
    Bang!
    The Imperial hit the toy's rear quarter and sent it careening into a lamppost.
    Warz floored the Chrysler.
    "What's goin' on!" Hofer was back.
    Warz bet his blood alcohol level was incriminating, turned off the lights and sped with Hofer yelling to stop. Hofer tried to pull the keys, but Warz kept him away from them and slipped into what he thought was the usual alley.
    They rumbled to the darkness at the center of a grassy lane where they got out. Hofer went over the front end while Warz reconned. Antique wagon wheels were set here and there to gentrify the path. The residents wanted the garbage truck ruts to look like the Chisholm Trail. Only a dog was out in a nearby yard. Some kind of big macho breed.
    Warz felt safe. He jumped and slapped himself for warmth when he didn't wave away exhaust as thick as smoke. The motor sounded worse than it did before impact. Red paint where the big front bumper was buckled made it seem to bulge with a split lip. It was loose now too. Hofer tried wrenching it free and almost pulled it off. One end thudded on the path and sprang back to hang over the ground by inches. Warz decided to help, but Hofer shoved him away. The dog saw the move and opened up.
    Warz stopped himself from jumping Hofer who he knew could break his jaw. "It wasn't my fault." Warz said.
    "I saw you hit 'em."
    "Because they made me, and you know what? I'm not sorry. Look, I don't care what they say, the meek won't get the earth. Well, tonight those assholes didn't get the street! You ought to thank me."
    "You know what?" Hofer shook his finger in Warz' face. "You're crazy!"
    He got too close and tapped Warz' chin. Instinctively, Warz clopped Hofer's jaws shut. The blow was a tap but unwise. Hofer could stomp him. Still, nobody touched Warz' face in anger. Yet now, Hofer looked like he was going to cry. He marched off rubbing his neck. Soon his car was lumbering away with its newest deformity clanging like a cowbell.
    Warz didn't expect to be abandoned, but he was wet, cold and on foot in enemy territory. What were friends for?
    Hofer shouted out the window, "Cops come for me, I'm pointing you out!"
    "I'll call 'em for you!"
    "You're hit-'n'-run! You ain't got the balls!"
    "Yeah?" Warz grabbed his crotch and shook it. "Come back here if you got a pair!"
    The dog was rattling its chain-link fence, wanting to get at Warz.
    "Shut up," Warz told it. He had to piss. Then he had an idea. Damming himself off, he stood squarely in front of the dog. The stream hit it full in the face.
    Now the animal flung itself against the fence, too incensed to see it could clear the top.
    The animal's owner poked his head out of his house. "In here!" He was angry.
    The dog didn't obey, and the man started marching toward it.
    Not quite finished, Warz stuffed himself in his pants. What the hell, he reasoned, he was already soaked. He jogged to keep warm. Somebody's trashcan lid became his umbrella. Back in the alley a big dog yelped in pain. It started snowing more heavily again. Fat, wet flakes. At least, they wouldn't stick. Home was only five miles away.

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