Theives find an easy way to break into a store but have one hell of a time finding a way to break out. Lots of action! Some adult language.
BREAKOUT
by
Roger A. Wehage
A few miles north of Poughkeepsie, Arkansas in a small ranch house on the banks of the Strawberry River, old Duncan, the family dog, lay beneath the kitchen table, twitching and dreaming of days gone by. And a gray-haired woman, who much resembled Beth Marie Carson, tossed and moaned in her sagging bed as a rust-covered van smoked into her worst nightmare and lurched up the driveway, stopping inches from a Dodge D300 with CARSON WELDING painted on the sides.
* * *
Sensible farmers around Brazeau, Missouri were already in bed when the multicolored van rattled past Torkelson's abandoned Sinclair station and parked behind Jurk's combination hardware and rental store. On the van's left sat the decaying corpse of a three-toned Gremlin whose many body parts had been replaced over the years from Schaupert's junkyard. Its owner, Phillip Garwich, known as Phug, hadn't moved that relic since the head gasket blew a month ago.
Alan Slater, alias Slat, grabbed a family-sized bag of Doritos and a case of Pabst beer off the van's torn passenger seat and kicked open the caved in driver's-side door, severing the Gremlin's mirror. He jammed it back on the fender and dashed toward a rotting stairway leading to an apartment above the store. The defiant mirror promptly toppled into the weeds while Slat pounded on the doorbell button.
"Get that, Phug," BM yelled, "I'm pinching a loaf." Around Perry County Beth Marie Carson was better known as BM.
"Hold your horses . . . Slat," Phug said, struggling to benchpress 550 pounds. "BM's . . . taking a shit." Phug was average height and a muscular beer gut protruded between his tight T-shirt and cut-offs. Straight, brown hair matched his moustache and complemented his many tattoos. He lived with BM and she'd been supporting them for more than a year.
BM waddled past, struggling to zip her overstuffed jeans. "Damn it, Phug," she said, "the door's ringing." She was four inches shorter than Phug and heavier. A striking brunette with a doll's face, she wore the finest clothes her money could buy, giant T-shirts and blue jeans, all from the Salvation Army store over in Perryville. Her shapely body sported an assortment of pierced accessories and tattoos, including a silver eyebrow ring she especially adored, a gift from Slat.
She yanked the door open and greeted a gangly man in his early twenties with a silver eyebrow ring matching hers. Slat had a large nose, scraggly beard, and unruly blond hair, and wore a ripped T-shirt, tight blue jeans with a large belt buckle, and cowboy boots. A big grin revealed gapped, yellow teeth.
"Slat," Phug said, hanging up his barbell. "So nice of you to come." He eyed the Pabst. "Beasts? Christ, Slat, you broke again?" Money didn't come easy in these parts, and Slat was always broke around Phug.
He tossed the beer and chips on the couch, grabbed BM, and their lips and bodies locked together like sticktights on wool socks.
"Watch it," Phug said, handing around cold ones.
"How's my BM?" Slat said, as they peeled apart.
"Dick-head Jurk's gonna boot me if I don't make rent. You got any extra?"
"I'm ass out," he said. "Sell some weed."
"Nobody's buying," Phug said.
Slat flipped on the TV and X-Files came up. Then he went to the fridge. "What's to eat?" He could down three times what a normal person did and never gain an ounce. He stared at empty shelves and some green, fuzzy stuff. "Jesus. What you guys live on? Love?"
"What should I do?" BM said, "I can't find a job and Phug won't get off his ass." She'd been a cashier at Perryville's A&P before Phug's car broke down. Then she had to quit.
"I got a charge card," Slat said. "How about pizzas? What you want, BM?"
"Two large pepperonis with triple cheese," Phug said.
After the pizza girl left, Slat and BM sat on the couch, and Phug leaned against his weight bench. Smoking joints, chugging beer, and eating pizza, they were half baked by the time Monster Trucks, starring Bigfoot, came on. The show was a rerun, so Phug fell asleep and Slat and BM made love. Everybody was happy until Dynomyte tried to outdistance Bigfoot in the long jump and crashed, jolting Phug awake. He heaved a warm beer at the gyrating couple, and it smashed against the wall above their heads. The can dropped behind the sofa and spewed foam over the carpet. Laughing, Phug headed for the bathroom.
"Fucking idiot," BM said, "I'll lose my deposit." They got dressed and dragged the couch away from the wall, uncovering beer-soaked dust balls that looked like drowned mice. As BM scraped the crud into a wastebasket, the floor sagged and made metal popping sounds beneath her feet. Slat ripped back the carpet and found a two-foot square plate fastened to the floor.
"What that?" Phug said, cracking open another beer. BM dug out a Phillips screwdriver from their junk drawer, and Slat removed a dozen or so screws, exposing a large hole that gave them a birds-eye view of the store below. They took turns staring at shelf after shelf of expensive tools and hardware until Invasion of The Body Snatchers came on. Then Slat got hungry and ordered two more pizzas.
BM, bored with that old black and white movie, started fretting again. She told Phug he'd have to move out unless he looked for work. "Okay," he said, "I'll leave in the morning."
". . . At first glance, everything looked the same," exclaimed Don Siegel from the TV. "It wasn't. Something evil had taken possession of the town. . . ."
Phug was busy examining seedpods that replicated and replaced human beings. BM was busy stewing over what they'd eat and where they'd live. Slat was busy downing slice after slice of pizza.
". . . I want to love and be loved. I want your children. I don't want a world without love or grief or beauty. I'd rather die," Becky cried out to Miles from the speaker. . . .
The movie ended and Slat, more alert now that he'd polished off a whole pizza, had a thought. "Hey, BM," he said, "let Jurk pay his own rent and buy your groceries too. And you can get bigger clothes, you deserve them."
"Shit he will," she said, cackling. "Finish your pizzas."
"Here," Slat said, handing Phug the other box, "we got work to do."
He lowered his skinny frame into the hole. "I'll open the back door and we can load my van two or three times. You'll live like a queen."
"You're shittier'n a duck," BM said. "Let's go to bed."
Phug liked the idea. "Think it'll work?"
"Hell yes," Slat said, wriggling downward. But his hips were too big and his jeans pockets snagged on the edges. He climbed back out, pulled off his boots and pants, and tried again. This time he squeezed through but lost his grip and crashed to the floor twenty feet below.
BM heard a thud and a loud moan. Then all was quiet. Sprawled on his back, he looked dead. "Slat!" she screamed. "You okay?" He didn't say anything.
"Phug, do something."
"What the hell can I do? The damn door's locked."
"I'll call somebody."
"Shit, and get us all in jail. Put the cover back on."
"Asshole!"
Slat groaned and BM rushed to the opening. "Fuck," he said, squirming around. "I crapped myself."
"What? You hurt, Slat?"
"Everything fucking hurts, and there's shit everywhere."
BM jumped up and down, bouncing the whole apartment. "Do something, Phug," she said.
"What? Change his diaper?" Phug leaned over the hole and yelled, "Next time, don't eat so much pizza."
She watched Slat struggle up in the store's faint light. "I gotta find the can," he said.
"Don't get lost," BM said, concerned for his safety.
"Lost?" Phug said, howling.
Ten minutes later Slat was back. "Shit's on everything. Jurk's gonna be pissed." Phug laughed so hard he couldn't get his breath, and BM clamped her hands over her mouth. She tossed down his jeans and shoes and watched as Slat slipped them on over his bare butt and zip- "Jesus Christ!"
"Slat! What happened?"
"I zipped my wanger."
"Quit screwing around and unlock the damn door," Phug said.
Slat put his shoes on and disappeared. "Let's help load," BM said. But before she could get to the door, another yell came from below. She rushed back. "Slat?"
"The doors won't open."
"They what?"
"They're all dead bolted and I need a key."
"I don't have one," she said and Phug roared again.
BM ran down the steps and around the building. She searched for an open window, for anything. But all she found was nothing. The windows were bricked solid. The doors felt like blocks of steel. Slat was trapped. She sat on the back step and cried.
Slat looked high and low for a way out. In the office he found a stairway leading upward, but it ended at a bricked-in doorway. He scoured the walls and found the same mortared-up windows. He entered a back room where shipments are received and unpacked. Behind a stack of boxes he discovered a door that led into blackness and a light switch that didn't work.
He grabbed a flashlight from the shopping area and descended into a basement. Hoards of cobwebs hung from the floor joists and rat droppings lay in piles along the rock walls. An abandoned coal chute hung below a mortared-up opening, and to its right stood an ancient furnace with several chopped off stub pipes. A two-foot diameter tube ran straight from the furnace into the basement wall.
BM returned to the apartment and found Phug piling his things on the floor. "I'm getting out while there's time," he said. "I got six months left and ain't sticking here."
"Damn it, Phug, what about Slat?" He dumped everything from her closet and drawers in a heap. "Stop it! I ain't going. Not without Slat." BM tried to put her stuff back, but Phug threatened to hit her. She ran to the hole and called out to Slat, but he didn't answer.
Slat pried the furnace door open and panned his light around the interior, looking for a way into that big pipe. He couldn't see much from the door, so he crawled onto the grates that still held clinkers and half-burned coal. The firebox had a single hole for smoke to exit and nothing more, so he climbed back out, covered in soot.
BM ran outside and circled the building several times. Along one wall she found a pit covered by a heavy grate, and nothing more. She returned to the back step and sat, crying, wondering what to do next.
Slat went back upstairs to look for hinge pins to knock out, but there weren't any. Frustrated, he heaved a fifty-pound box of half-inch bolts at the back door, and BM nearly wet her pants. "Slat," she said, "what happened?"
Shouting through the steel door, BM told him what Phug was up to. "He'll hotwire your van," she said, but Slat said not to worry. Then he told her what he'd found in the basement. "There's a big hole out here," she said. "Maybe you can crawl out."
"I can't get in the pipe."
"Can you cut it?"
"With what?"
"Wish Dad was here, he's got tools."
"Call him," Slat said, laughing, but BM wasn't.
"No. Wait," she said. "I helped Dad. Check what Jurk has." She explained what he needed to look for in the rental area.
Slat found a dolly with two large tanks and an acetylene torch with long red and black hoses, just as she'd described. A striker and goggles hung from one of the cart's handles. He borrowed two battery-operated lanterns off a store shelf and set them up in the basement. Then he wrestled the heavy contraption down the steps.
Phug was throwing stuff into Slat's van, and BM was yelling at him when a Perry County Sheriff's vehicle approached, panning its light across the ruckus. The car swung into the parking lot, but the officer, éclair in hand, didn't get out. Dressed in a pressed, somewhat undersized uniform, she advised BM to keep her voice down or she'd disturb the neighbors. Seeing that the situation was well in hand, the officer grabbed another doughnut and cruised on down the alley.
BM breathed a little easier and gave Slat instructions through the air duct. She explained how to open the gas cylinder valves, manipulate the torch levers, use the spark striker, and adjust the control knobs to get a blue flame. "Don't open the valves too far," she said.
"What?" Slat said, squeezing the levers. Gas and oxygen hissed through the nozzle, but the striker produced no sparks. Several times he clicked and nothing happened.
"Don't open the valves too far," BM repeated, just as a huge fireball engulfed Slat. He dropped the contraption and pranced around, swatting out smoking embers. Fortunately he wasn't injured, much. And with all the furnace soot, this inferno hadn't changed his appearance, except that he smelled more like smoldering rags.
"Damn it, BM," Slat yelled, "this thing's dangerous. I'm burned to a crisp." He cranked the valves shut and this time cracked them open a little as she'd instructed. Minutes later, after twiddling and fiddling and more instructions from BM, the flame turned from sooty yellow to clear with a sharp blue tip in the middle. It made a roaring sound. "I got it," Slat said, sounding like a kid. "Now what?"
"Hold the blue tip against the pipe." Then she explained how the metal would turn white hot and melt through, and that he should move it slowly, cutting away new material. "That's why they call it a cutting torch," she said, "and don't burn yourself, it's hot."
He started on the tube a few inches from the basement wall, and the metal began to melt. "Hot damn," Slat yelled. "It's making a hole." Twenty minutes later a four-foot section of pipe clanged to the floor. "Free at last," he said, staring into the pit.
With the van loaded, Phug was under the dash hot-wiring the ignition, and BM was screaming at him. Slat knocked off the bug screen and climbed into the pit. It was about five feet deep so he could move around. "He's stealing your van," she said.
"Don't worry," Slat said, pushing up on the grate, but it didn't budge. BM fidgeted and kept an eye on Phug while Slat crawled back inside and dragged the hoses and equipment into the pit. Quite an expert by now, he wasted no time getting the torch going. Phug was about to drive off when Slat called out, "Don't forget to check the gas." He chuckled and whispered to BM, "It's way below empty. Has been for years."
Cursing, Phug yanked his junk from the van, dragging half of BM's stuff with it. He twisted the Gremlin's rear door handle and it broke off, so he threw everything, including the handle and mirror, in through a side door.
The flame burned through the last bar and the grate dropped. Slat snaked up through the hole and yelled back into the pit, "Thanks for the tools, Jurk." Then he yanked the jumper wire, killing the engine, and helped BM load her clothes into the van. He didn't hold any animosity toward Phug.
From the apartment landing they watched Phug's Gremlin billow smoke, the engine limping along on four or five cylinders, sometimes three. It crept north on Highway C, taillights fading in and out, occasional backfires echoing off the hills. Then BM turned and tossed the keys through the door. "Up your deposit, Jurk," she said, laughing as they descended the stairs for the last time.
* * *
Slat's old van chugged south along Highway 61 toward Jackson, Missouri. BM sat in the passenger seat and watched him through drooping eyelids. She'd known Slat since Phug's car broke down miles from nowhere. He'd just shown up, hooked on his big chain, and towed them home. And they'd never thanked him. She leaned over and brushed her fingers along his sooty temple. "Thank you, Slat," she whispered. He looked at her and smiled.
The morning was getting warm by the time they pulled into the I-55 Super 8 Motel. Slat registered while BM rooted through her mess and his meager belongings. She managed to find enough. They got cleaned up and he asked if she was hungry. She was, but now all she needed was some rest and to feel Slat's body close to hers. He fell asleep the minute his head touched the pillow, but BM lay awake, thinking about her wasted life and what could have been. She slid her arm across his chest and whispered, "I love you."
* * *
Someone was pounding on the kitchen door. Old Duncan raised his left eyelid and perked up his right ear. Elmer rolled over and farted, jostling the gray-haired woman awake. She grabbed her bathrobe and stumbled down the hallway. The clock read 3:52 a.m. as she and Duncan stared, bleary eyed, at a strange man and a familiar face. "Woof," said Duncan, wagging his tail and jumping up to greet the best friend he'd ever known.
"Hi Mom, hi Duncan," Beth Marie said, smiling, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Stories Worth Wiping Your A** With
Whether you're making a deposit at the stank bank, dropping a return at the squat shop, or conducting a brown business meeting, these perfectly timed tales provide the literary fragrance your privacy deserves. F
BREAKOUT
