Michigan, Ten Cents

by

Doctor Gaines

“I AM THE FATHER OF

EIGHTEEN-WHEELERS,

THE BROTHER OF YOUR

BROKEN HEART,

I AM THE GOD OVER

THE STREET HEALERS,

I AM THE LOVER

THAT YOU TORE APART.”

-paraphrased from “Goldie’s Torn Locks,” by H.I.L.

I’ve got it all figured out,” Leon said, “and it’s gonna make me goddamn rich.”

“Oh yeah? How the hell you figgur that?” Rickey asked.

The two men sat in the dim light of the honky-tonk bar, each tossing back one Lone Star after another. Their boots knocked against the wood above the sawdust floor. Some long-dead smooth-faced country star jangled away from out of a tinny jukebox in the corner.

“I’m gonna rent me one-a’ them big rental trucks, the biggest they got, fill that sucker up with glass bottles, and haul it up to a magical place where them bottles is good as gold!” Leon said.

“Glass bottles? What the hell’d you wanna do that for?”

“Lookit the side-a’ yer bottle there,” Leon said, nodding the neck of his bottle towards Rickey’s beer. “On the label where they put all that government warning shit in the tiny letters, right underneath that.”

“Okay, what’m I lookin’ fer?” Rickey said. He held the bottle at arm’s length and squinted at the label in the glow of neon beer signs.

“Tell me whatcha see.”

“Buncha tiny letters, that’s what!” Rickey said. “C-A, M-E, V-T, N-Y, I-A, what the hell are these? States, right?”

“That’s exactly what they are, my friend,” Leon said. “Now lookit Michigan; the M-I.”

“Okay, it says ‘M-I, ten cents.’ So what?”

“Michigan pays ya a shiny new dime fer every glass bottle ya bring em!” Leon said with a chuckle and a slap on the bar.

“What? You sure that’s what it means?”

“Hell yeah! I looked it up on t’innerweb and everything. Them boys up in Michigan got a law about recyclin’, and they’ll pay ten cents, cash money, for every bottle gets turned in. They even got little machines where you chunk in your bottles and it spits ya out some cash!”

“Bull-shit,” Rickey said.

“Nah, boy, it ain’t!” Leon said. “So, the way I see it, why not go gather up a whole truckload a’ bottles, haul em all up there at once, and make a shit-ton a’ cash. It’d be the damnedest thing them boys had ever seen!” He laughed big and drank.

“Aww, that ain’t never gonna work,” Rickey said with a drunken wave of his paw. “How you expect to get all them bottles in the first place? You gonna drink all that beer y’self? You already got a gut the size of a pregnant heifer.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Leon said and chuckled. “You ain’t exactly Mr. Skinny-Jeans neither.”

Leon slugged off his beer and wiped his big beard. He held up the empty and wagged it in the air to signal the barkeep for another. “Here’s the plan: I’ma just take my pickup ‘round the bars real late at night while they’re hoppin’ and partyin’ and carryin’ on, drive on back to their dumpsters in the rear and gather up the bottles they thrown out. Matteruhfact, I’ve already started. Hell, these places throw out thousands of bottles a night after everybody’s done drinkin’ and partyin’ and carryin’ on! I reckon I could fill up a whole trailer in no time. You can help me if ya want, I’ll even give you a cut once I cash in.”

Rickey snorted at this. “You expect me, a grown-ass man, to go shufflin’ in my boots through the trash, diggin’ through all the shitty diapers and junky-needles to snag a few bottles? Thanks, friend, but no thanks.”

“Suit y’self.”

Rickey studied the liquor bottles lined up behind the bar, tipsy and zoning off in thought. “Say this thing works, how much you figgur you can make? Ten cents ain’t much, you’d have to have a helluva lotta bottles to make it worth ya time.”

“I’ve got that all thought out too, all mathematic-wise and everything. See, the biggest truck ya can get is a twenty-six footer. Biiig mother. Seven feet wide, eight feet tall, twenty-six long. The rental place said it’s two hunnerd and eight square feet inside that truck. Multiply that by eight feet tall, it gives ya 1,760 cubic feet.”

“Woah, woah, cubic feet? ‘Da hell is that? You’re losin’ me on all this math shit,” Rickey said. “Just tell me plain, how many bottles can ya get in there?”

“I’m gettin’ there, I’m gettin’ there! Pitcher it like two hunnerd and eight little square boxes, coverin’ the whole floor of the trailer bed. Then pitcher stackin’ up boxes on top of those ones, eight times over, way up to the ceilin’. That’d be 1,760 square boxes. Now I’m still workin’ this part out, but I figure you could cram forty, maybe fifty beer bottles in a box that size. ‘Cept in my truck there ain’t gonna be no boxes; just bottles piled high, to save space. So the way I figgur, fifty bottles times that many squares, that’s 88,000 goddamn bottles! Divide that by ten cents and you got 8,800 bucks, cash money.”

“No sheeyit,” Rickey said, wide-eyed.

“Now a’course, there’s the truck rental to pay for and gas clear from San Antone to Jackson, Mish, which I reckon’ll be at least a thousand bucks altogether. But hell, even then I’ll make off with better’n 7,500 bucks! For hardly doin’ nothin’!”

“Jeee-sus, Leon,” Rickey said. “That’s one wily-fuckin’-idea, but I gotta say, it’s purty damn smart.”

Leon laughed hard at this and slapped his friend on the back. “Hell yeah it is!” The barkeep set a fresh beer in front of him, and he sloshed off half of it in one happy gulp.

“Why Jackson, Michigan though? Ain’t there cities closer?” Rickey asked.

“Jus’ gotta good feelin’ ‘bout Jackson, couldn’t tell ya why.” Leon said. “The locals call it Jack Town. I like that, Jack Town.”

Rickey shrugged.

“Fair ‘nuff. Where you plan to get rid of all those bottles once ya get there? They really gonna take that many at once?”

“Oh, yeah, I know they will,” Leon said. “They got big recycling drop-off stations all over the state, and you just unload your haul onto a big scale, and the boys weigh how much you got. Then they get out their fat government pocket-books and count out the cash into your hand. Simple as killin’ a hog without legs.”

“Whew, boy,” Rickey said, shaking his head. “That sounds sweeter’n stolen honey. You sure that’s how it works up there?”

“Believe me, friend, that’s really how it works. When I get home from that load, I’ma wrangle up another buncha bottles and do it all over again. So whaddya think, feel like helpin’ me now?”

“Gosh, I dunno, Leon,” Rickey said. “I jus’ don’t know if it’s gonna pan out like ya say.”

“You jus’ watch,” Leon said, “Ya boy’s gonna get paid.”

Leon slunked out to his maintenance truck the next morning, work orders in hand, lighting a Marlboro (his third already at 7 in the AM). He had punched in for duty with a mild hangover, but the Jim Beam in his coffee was helping take the edge off. He had found some years past that when you wake up with the whistlebelly thumps and the skull-cramps, it’s best to give your body just a little bit more of what it’s riled up about in the first place. Calms things down quicker than coffee or water.

Leon tapped along to a Bob Seger cassette as he drove to different job-sites. He rewired dead light fixtures, cleared gunk out of gutters, set rooftop pigeon-spikes, smoking all the while. As he worked, he was daydreaming of bottles, fat stacks of cash, and the open road.

It became a regular habit for Leon to make bottle-runs on his lunch hour, filling a cardboard box in the bed of his work truck. He had been setting aside cash at home to rent the trailer (rolling up the green bills in a rubber band and shoving them in the bottom of an unused boot in the closet) ever since the idea came to him one drunken night in his living room recliner.

Leon had been watching Smokey and the Bandit (a film he and Rickey considered a documentary) for the zillionth time and laughing his ass off all by himself, hooting and hollering at Burt Reynolds on the screen, killing a case of Lone Star by his recliner in the meantime. The movie finished and Leon was feeling drowsy, but dandy; high and floaty and chuckling to himself. He stared intently at the beer in his hand, finding a simple thing fascinating as drunk folks often do. He read and reread the label closely, squinting and pulling it ever closer to his bloodshot eyes, making sure the double-vision wasn’t playing tricks on what he saw. He sat up in a flash, feeling no small sense of ‘Eureka!,’ and the idea was born.

In the weeks following, Leon’s garage quickly started filling with beer bottles. They made a hell of a mess, even empty; haphazard and tumbling around, some of them smashing as they fell from the cardboard box he used to gather them. He had moved all of his shelving and tools into the yard so the garage could be totally empty and more spacious. The bottles he dumped in the corner didn’t pile easily and rolled around a lot, for he made no effort to stack or organize them, but he had a pretty good stash going so far, and it pleased him to watch the collection grow.

* * *

The night after telling Rickey the idea, Leon pulled his ‘78 Ford F-100 around the rear of The Firehouse, a spot he hadn’t hit yet. A real pussy bar, Leon thought, for wannabe cowboys to come skip around in their shitkickers with their chubby dates to dorky-ass music.

The parking lot was crammed full of dusty pickups, and the place was still slammin’, even at 2 in the a.m. A colorful vinyl sign hung from rope at the corners advertised ‘Buckets-o-Bud, $12.00 EVERY NIGHT.’ Leon could hear a live band inside playing a George Strait song so loudly it was making the adobe walls buzz.

Leon backed his truck up to the dumpster and flicked his cigarette butt into the dust, letting out a great cloudy breath from the last big drag. He leaned over into the dumpster and grinned, finding piles of shiny black trash bags, each stretched tight with cylindrical shapes inside.

Leon had been clever enough to seek out only the bars that didn’t serve food, so as to get the greatest volume of bottles without having to dig through the greasy remnants of chicken-finger baskets or hamburger wrappers. He stood on his truck’s rear bumper, leaned his big gut over the dumpster edge, and started grabbing the clanking bags from the garbage with both hands, chunking them over his shoulder into the truck bed. It didn’t disgust him to reach into other people’s garbage like this; the bags were clean and easy, stuffed full and tied off tight with the plastic handles making a stringy yellow bow like little packages left just for him. Hell, the trashmen were coming for them in the morning anyhow, so what did anyone care if he hauled them away first?

Leon was still half inside the dumpster when he heard a screen-door creak open to his left.

“The hell you doin’, boy?” said a gruff voice.

Leon wriggled himself off the lip of the dumpster, red-faced and panting. A big man stood outside the backdoor of the bar, carrying two more full trash bags. An employee of The Firehouse, no doubt. A cook, from the look of him, in his sweat-stained white shirt and greasy apron. But they don’t serve food here, do they? Leon thought. The man was built more like a bouncer, big enough to throw out any asshole causing trouble if the need arose. He was wide-chested, bald, mustached, and angry. His thick, hairy arms were fully flexed holding the heavy bags of glass.

Leon told the man straight, “I’m takin’ all these bottles you throwed out, fer recyclin’.”

“You’re pfftckin... you’re doin’ what?” the mustached man said. “Why the hell ya been in my trash, ya fuckin’ weirdo!”

“Like I said,” Leon said cautiously, “just takin’ these here bottles, then I’ll be on m’way. No harm done.”

“Boy, get th’hell outta my sight before I chunk you in that trash with a broken back!”

“Okay, sure, sure,” Leon said, stepping backwards, his palms up in a ‘hey, everything’s cool’ gesture.

But he hesitated.

“Lemme have them bottles though, in ya hands. Just toss em in the truck here, and I’ll move along. You ain’t need em anyway.”

The big man’s face flexed into a hideous contortion of pure, red bafflement, like a bull about to charge. “Did you not hear what the fuck I just said, you dopey fat ass?”

He began to advance on Leon, only ten or so paces away.

Leon reached quickly behind him and produced a heavy six-shooter tucked in the seat of his jeans. He held it steady with both hands, pointed at the big man’s chest.

This scenario was going just a little too fast and too far for Leon’s comfort. Pulling the gun was probably stupid, but now it was out and he was in this thing, no going back, so he figured he’d better just tie one on and roll with it.

“Now you just slow y’self down there, brother,” Leon said. “We don’t need to make a thing of this, friend,”

The man stopped in his tracks.

“Now, now, just listen to me a minute,” Leon said slowly. “Just gimme them bottles, nice and easy into my truck here, and then we can both of us go have ourselves a nice evenin’.”

“Boy, you gonna pull a fuckin’ gun on me?!” the big man said, teeth gritted. His reaction was more furious disbelief than terror at having a pistol trained on his torso.

“Easy,” Leon said, growing impatient himself. “Calm y’self down. Just gimme them goddamn bags, and I’ll hit the road. How many times I gotta say it?”

“Calm down?! Don’t you tell me to calm down, YOU COCKY-MOUTHED COUNTRY-BOY PIECE’A SHIT!” He dumped the bags at his sides with a crash and rushed at Leon.

Leon shuffled backwards in surprise, slammed into his truck, and pulled off three quick shots; big, commanding booms, all square into the mustache man’s huge target of a chest. It wasn’t until the third round had pierced a red hole into the greasy white shirt that the man faltered, fell to his knees, and crumpled facedown right between Leon’s feet. He coughed a couple of times; deep, gurgling, ugly coughs, spraying dust and blood on Leon’s boot. Then the man’s back convulsed and arched, then relaxed, and with a last puff of dust, he was still.

Leon stood stiff, waiting, listening to the muffled blare of country-rock from inside and the thrum of locusts buzzing around him. All else was silent; the gunshots hadn’t drawn any attention.

Leon stepped over the hulking body at his feet and wiped the blood and spit from his boot onto the dead man’s shirt. He jammed his pistol back into his jeans, tip-toed (as well as one can in boots) over to the bags the man had dropped, and hauled them into the bed of the pickup.

He climbed in, lit a fresh Marlboro, inhaled deeply, and pulled out onto the highway.

* * *

Two months passed and the bottles in Leon’s garage grew, covering the floors and climbing in untidy heaps up the walls. He had a two-car garage, which he had measured after getting the truck dimensions, and he figured when the garage was nearly full, crammed to the very rafters, it should be part-near a perfect amount to fill up the moving truck. He kept the big roll-down garage door closed once the cement floor was covered, lest the bottles run themselves all over the driveway when he opened it. He busted out the small square window in the garage’s side-door and dumped bottles in one bag at a time; a slow, but effective process. Leon watched with growing excitement as the bottle level rose like a shiny amber pool of glass; a round and rollicking surface with tooty bottle-necks pointing up every which-way.

Leon steered clear of The Firehouse bar after the... incident, but there was no shortage of drinking spots in San Antonio. He worked his day shifts faithfully but with increasing preoccupation. Most nights after work, he’d go out drinking with Rickey, talking only of bottles and money and Michigan.

“I’m getting’ a little tired a’ hearing ‘bout them goddamn bottles,” Rickey would say, but always with the hint of a grin. Apparently he never got quite tired enough to get up and leave the table.

Leon would pay his tab after just two beers (always taking the empties with him), slap his friend on the back with a big smile, and hit the night with an empty pickup bed, not stopping until it was piled high.

By late Fall, the bottles were heaped right up to the brim of the tiny garage window, and threatened to spill out despite Leon shoving them back towards the corners with a snow shovel. Leon celebrated his garage crammed full of bottles by enjoying a Lone Star, leaning in the little door window, admiring the spoils of his months of hard work. He finished that beer, tossed the bottle in, had another. He couldn’t stop smiling. It was finally time for the truck, and the trip.

* * *

Leon signed the paperwork for the twenty-six footer from Billy’s Cheap Move on a Saturday morning. It cost him $837.00 for five days rental, even after the week-long discount. Damn... Leon thought, walking out with the keys. Little more than I expected to pay. But the hell with it, I’ll make it all back.

Rickey had finally been persuaded after their many barstool talks to at least help Leon load the truck, and as he backed the rig up to his garage, there Rickey stood on the lawn, smoking a cigarette. He waved to direct Leon up to the garage door, holding up a hand when he was close enough. The air-brakes chuffed as the truck came to rest.

Leon hopped out and said, “Good mornin’! Hallelujah, today is a beautiful damn day, by my eyes!”

“Mornin’,” Rickey said, chuckling. “Damn boy, you really need a truck this big? How many bottles you got in that garage?”

“A few,” Leon said, smiling. He unlocked the rolling door on the rear of the truck and threw it open. “I got us some plywood, so’s we can stand ‘em up horizontal, wedged between the side panels, and make little square bins inside the trailer. I figure every five feet or so oughta do it. Then we’ll stack the plywood up on top of itself almost to the ceiling, fill that space in with bottles, then build another bin. That’ll keep the bottles from spilling all over Creation once we shovel ‘em in.”

“Purty smart idea,” Rickey said.

“Yeah, I’m ‘bout as bright as a goddamn new penny,” Leon said with a wink. “You wanna haul open that garage door? It’s unlocked. I’ll go grab us a couple’a shovels.”

“Yuh, sure.”

“Oh and pull real hard,” Leon added, snickering, “it might stick.”

“Pff,” Rickey snorted, “think I can handle it.”

Leon went around the corner of the garage, stifling chuckles. Rickey had not yet seen just how full the garage was with bottles. Leon heard Rickey twist the handle grip on the roll-up door and yank hard, then a thunderous tumult of clanking glass spilling out.

“JEEE-ZZZUUSS!!” Rickey screamed.

Leon ran around the corner, no longer containing his laughter.

Bottles were dumping in droves through Rickey’s legs, then covering his waist and he yelped as the weight of them sent him ass-over-teakettle.

Leon slapped his thighs and yipped on the sidelines, face red and guffawing hard. This turned into a scratchy smoker’s cough, then back into great wheezy laughs.

Rickey had begun a wailing string of profanity since tumbling over, and even buried upside-down in bottles, it hadn’t ceased. His head and torso were buried under glass, and his limbs whipped back and forth as he swam back to the surface to finally find his footing again.

“GOD-DAYUMIT, LE-YON!”

Leon still chuckled, wiping away tears. “Oh boy... we are havin’ fun now!”

“I’ll show you fun when you’re shovelin’ these fuckin’ things on ya’own!” Rickey yelled, hat missing and beard frazzled.

“Come on now, don’t be that way,” Leon said, giggling. “Beers’re on me tonight.” He tossed Rickey a wide-mouthed snow-shovel.

“Sonuvagoddamn...” Rickey said under his breath, shaking his head. Then he started to giggle.

The men chuckled as they started scooping tumbly heaps of bottles into the truck.

Leon was up early on Sunday, sore from the previous day’s work, but anxious to hit the road. Rickey was crashed out on Leon’s couch. Packing the truck had taken them until after two in the morning, but it was full to the brim, and sitting low on it’s suspension springs.

Leon smoked a cigarette on the porch as the sun started peeking over San Antonio. He stamped it out and went inside to grab his packed suitcase and a cooler full of beers. Rickey stirred awake as Leon nudged open the screen-door with his boot.

“You, uh, headin’ out?” Rickey asked, groggy.

“Yup. Meet me for beers on Friday. We’ll have some celebratin’ to do,” Leon said.

“Sounds good,” Rickey said. “Good luck.”

“Don’t need it,” Leon said, smiling big. “But thanks.”

Leon loaded the suitcase and cooler into the passenger seat and climbed into the cab. He released the E-brake and started rolling, nice and easy, down the driveway. In the center seat between him and the cooler was a green and grey fishing tackle-box. He unlatched it and inside were cassette tapes. He dug around for something good to listen to.

“Can’t hardly have a roadtrip without some classy-ass tunes!” Leon said to the empty cab. He popped in a Johnny Cash tape.

Johnny sang about his buddy Porter while Leon smoked and sang along, tapping ash all over the floor as he drummed on the steering wheel. He pulled onto I-35 North and vamped the truck up to sixty-five, leaving San Antone in the rearview and feeling damn good. He belted out with Johnny about railroads, black shoe-shine boys, cryin’, lovin’, and leavin’. He sang the loudest when Johnny and the lovely June Carter Cash performed “Jackson.” Even though Leon was pretty sure they were talking about Jackson, Mississippi (or was it Tennessee?), it still charged him up because after all, he was going to Jackson too. He felt so giddy he cracked open an icy beer from the cooler, bonked the horn twice, and gave a high-pitched little ‘yee-haw!’ The lovely Texas morning and the wide open road, it seemed, belonged all to him.

* * *

The moving truck full of bottles passed through Austin, Temple, Waco, and reached Dallas by lunchtime. Leon grabbed some lunch at Angry Dog, a burger joint that looked right up his alley. He treated himself to a big ole’ Double Dog Dare burger, a heart-attack in a bun that contained two patties, chili, bacon, ham, grilled jalapenos, and, no foolin’, even a hot dog. He chased this behemoth of a burger down with a couple of frosty Lone Stars.

By one o’clock Leon pulled the rig onto I-30 East, belly full, a little tipsy, and high on adventure. He flipped through his tape box and decided on Tres Hombres by ZZ Top. Wouldn’t be a true Texas-boy if I ain’t listen to some Top, he thought, lighting up a cigarette.

Leon drove and smoked and drank and sang.

Sulphur Springs came and went, Mt. Vernon, Mt. Pleasant.

At first, he’d been soaking up the view, but eight hours of nothing but flat, dusty landscape was making him drowsy. He stopped in Texarkana for more smokes and decided on a whim to try one of those energy drinks in a tall can with neon lettering. It ended up tasting like carbonated donkey piss, so he dumped it.

He crossed into Arkansas, put on AC/DC, got annoyed with it, switched to George Thorogood and the Destroyers. He drank another beer, wishing he had the bourbon and scotch to go with it.

Leon chuckled at the sign for the city of Arkadelphia.

“What a goofy goddamn name!” he said aloud, to no one. “That’s worse’n Texarkana!”

The sun set around 7:15 that evening. Leon was yawning, and still 45 minutes outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. He was surprised at how cold it was getting as he went further north. Late November was mild in San Antonio, but he hadn’t expected, or packed for, the cold. He steadily turned up the weak heater inside the cab.

By Little Rock, Leon was down to a quarter tank and decided to fill up. Diesel was $4.29/gallon. He opened his wallet; two hundred bucks and a few singles left. Shit. Shouldn’t have spent so much on lunch, he thought. Leon owned no credit card; he liked to do things the old-fashioned way, with cold, hard cash, only now he was realizing he had way undercut himself in guessing how many dollar bills to bring along.

The truck’s tank held 57 gallons, and as Leon stood at the pump he realized gas alone would clear him out if he filled it up all the way. He settled for three-quarters full and decided dinner would have to be cheap. He ate a gas station burger on a yellow plastic bench under stale fluorescent light. The high spirits and excitement that had held him through the day seemed to have drowned all at once, and drowsiness was creeping up quickly. Still, he wanted to make it to Memphis, another two and a half hours, before calling a night.

Back on the road by 7:45, Leon merged onto I-40 East. He couldn’t decide what the hell to listen to, so he just drove in silence for a while. With nothing to stimulate him, he just felt drowsier than ever. He shuffled his hand around the tape box, pulled one out at random, pushed it in the deck.

Willie Nelson.

Shit.

Leon blinked constantly as he drove into the night. He slapped himself, chain-smoked, tried to stay alert. It wasn’t working, so he pulled off, defeated, to a thirty-dollar motel in some dumpy-ass little town called Lonoke.

The room smelled like a thousand decomposing cigarettes. Dark orange carpet. An ancient TV with a dial. Fake wood-paneled walls. Piss and moth-ball smelling bed.

He slunked over to a liquor store next to the motel and bought a 750-ml of Jim Beam. He knew he shouldn’t spend the cash, but fuck it, he reasoned, been a hell of a long day. He finished off half the bottle while watching a black-and-white John Wayne movie on the staticky TV, and fell asleep.

Leon jerked awake with a snort. Light cut thickly through the curtains. The bedside clock said 10:17 a.m.

“Ahh, sheeyit!” Leon said, angry at himself for sleeping so late. He kicked his boots over the side of the bed and stood. His forehead throbbed instantly. “Ooooh, boy, overdid it, didn’t I?” he said, wincing.

He scrambled around the room, ignoring the headache. He peed, changed clothes, rounded up his shit and was out the door in minutes.

Leon checked out, grabbed a big coffee, a couple six packs of chocolate donuts wrapped in cellophane, and a bottle of Tylenol at a nearby gas station. He threw back four pills and gulped em down with watery coffee. The truck rumbled into gear and he picked Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Second Helping out of the tackle box. He felt flustered and grumpy and had a wretched headache, but the Skynyrd boys plunking out “Sweet Home Alabama” and lighting a fresh smoke improved his mood a little.

* * *

Leon reached Memphis, TN around one o’clock, but felt too much in a hurry to stop for lunch. Instead, he finished his donuts and nipped on the Jim Beam.

Significant amounts of snow were piling up on the landscape.

Charleston, MO came and went.

I-55 met I-57.

He cycled through cassette tapes.

Passed through West Frankfort, Benton, Salem, Effingham.

Leon saw nothing, felt nothing.

Daylight left in a blur.

Crossed into Indiana around eight p.m.

Dinner in Terre Haute; something quick, cheap.

Two bucks left.

Less than half a tank.

Indianapolis, IN.

I-70 E to I-69 N.

Five hours to Michigan (at least).

Through Anderson, through Marion.

Slaps himself awake, sips on cold coffee.

Through Huntington, Aboite.

Exhausted, eyes drooping.

Found a couple No-Doze pills in the glove compartment.

They’re expired.

Downs them anyway.

Have to keep going.

Have to keep moving.

Gots to keep on keepin’ on.

Three hours left, maybe only two.

Two hours to Jackson.

Jackson...

* * *

Occasionally, Leon would hit a bump in the road and hear a nasty crash-tinkle from the trailer. He’d cringe a little every time, hoping only a few had broken. Ah hell, bound to lose a couple. Two or three ain’t gonna matter. Gonna make it all back, Leon. You’ll make it all back.

Leon pulled the truck full of bottles into a small, crummy gas station on the outskirts of Fort Wayne, Indiana. He parked at a diesel pump and saw that he was the only vehicle on the lot. The fuel needle on the dash had been dancing damn close to the red zone for a while now. His wallet was nearly empty, but he had to get gas somehow. Michigan felt so close. He could nearly smell those dollar bills, nearly feel the weight of them stacked in his palm. Couldn’t give up over a couple gallons of gas.

He took a deep breath, patted down his beard, sniffed, and walked determinedly towards the gas station, swinging his fists back and forth like a soldier marching.

“Evenin’, friend!” Leon said cheerfully as he burst through the door.

“Hey,” said a stalky bald man sitting behind the counter. Big gut, dirty shirt, thinning goatee, flipping through a skin mag.

“Damn, cold night, huh? Shoulda packed mah thicker skivvies!” Leon said, chuckling.

“Mm,” the bald man said, unamused.

“Well, uh, anyway,” Leon started, slapping at his gut nervously, “Need some fuel fer my rig out there. Doin’ a big job in Michigan, yessir, big job. I’m goin’ to Jackson! Come all th’way from San Antone, Texas.” He announced this like it was an impressive selling point.

“Mm,” the man said again, “Well, how much you want?”

“Well, need t’fill it all the way up, yessir, all the way up,” Leon said. He patted his thighs with his hands and shuffled on his feet. “But uh, here’s the thing, see: this job I’m doin’, they’re gonna reimburse me an’ all, the company, that is, but, uh, damnitall, I’m kinda low on funds and I can’t pay yer for the gas just yet. Now I’ll be back through here in just a-”

“You want gas for free?” asked the bald man, suddenly alert.

“Well, no, no, see I’d pay ya for it later. I just need it on loan, see.”

“Buddy, are you messin’ with me? You pay for your gas like everybody else or get the hell out. I’m in no mood tonight.”

“Now, now, just hold on, friend. I ain’t no freeloader. Just need to borrow some gas, and I will pay for it when I come back through, scout’s honor.”

Leon pulled out his wallet, showed the man his two dollars. “Ya see, friend? My wallet’s on a damn diet. Just need a little hospitality here.”

“Man, get out. Get on outta my shop, right now.”

“Damnit, friend, are you sure?” Leon said, looking pained.

“Don’t call me friend again. Turn your ass around and get the hell out, man!”

Leon sighed with a look of true disappointment and produced the pistol from the seat of his jeans. “Ya just had to go and make a thing of it.”

The bald man’s eyes flew open. He jumped off his stool and backed against the wall, hands up. “Whoa, what the hell? Come on, man! You gonna shoot me for doin’ my job?”

Leon licked his lips and glanced outside.

Still no cars. Good.

“Just want the gas, friend, and nothin’ else, like I said.”

“Ah, man, this is fucked up!” he yelled. “I don’t get paid enough for this!” He slapped his magazine on the counter and started to blubber and cry.

“Shut up, now. Just turn on that gas pump, nice and slow, and there’s no need for this to get any uglier.”

The bald man started quickly towards the cash register.

“AY!” Leon yelled, “I said goddamn slow.”

The bald man jumped, frowned at Leon as if struck, and shook his head. He muttered a curse under his breath and continued much slower.

“That’s better,” Leon said.

The bald man reached under the counter, flipped a switch. “There, it’s on, alright? Take your gas and leave me be,” he said, then added, “Please.”

Leon waited a beat, observing the man.

Had to be safe. Had to be smart.

“Come on out with me,” Leon said. “I can’t have you callin’ the police before I’m finished.”

The man’s face fell. “Ah, man, come on, please, please, I’m not gonna call em!”

“Do what th’fuck I say,” Leon said darkly.

The bald man continued to cry and shuffled his way slowly around the counter. Leon kept the pistol trained on him as he moved.

He licked his lips and shot a look outside again.

Still clear.

The man had paused at the far end of the counter, farthest from Leon, behind a tall lottery ticket display.

“Now boy, don’t you go tryin’ anything fun-” Leon started.

The bald man ducked and did a clumsy roll behind the counter. Leon heard him scramble and grab for something, then drop it. A heavy, metallic clunk on the tile.

“Shit, shit, shit!” the bald man said.

“Son of a-” Leon said.

The tinkle of small, plastic items tumbling and spilling.

A green plastic shotgun shell with a shiny bronze cap rolled around the counter and into Leon’s view.

Leon heard the smooth shucking sound of a gun being cocked.

All this in the space of seconds.

Leon rounded the corner with his pistol outstretched, saw the man crouched against the wall, fumbling with an ancient-looking grimy shotgun.

The bald man swung the barrel in Leon’s direction.

Leon had already aimed, and three commanding booms rattled the convenience store.

The bald man convulsed and gurgled, slumped, and was still. The shotgun slid into his lap. His blood began to run quickly and widely. Green and bronze shells were scattered around him on the white tile.

Leon stood taut for a moment, hand still outstretched. Hot gunsmoke curled in the air. He looks like a little shrine, Leon thought wildly, observing the arrangement of the man and the bullets and the blood.

Pistol re-holstered, Leon yanked his jeans up, rubbed his nose, and sniffed. He walked calmly over to pour himself a big cup of coffee, then reached behind the counter and helped himself to two cartons of Marlboro Red 100s. He grabbed a plastic bottle of Tylenol too.

Blood was beginning to pool out from behind the counter now, reaching into the aisle between the chips and coolers full of soda pop.

“There just weren’t no other way, friend,” Leon said softly in the direction of the dead man, almost somber that he had had to administer such a judgement on the poor soul.

He lit a smoke, then tucked his last two dollars into the tip jar and walked out.

* * *

Leon listened to Bad Company while roaring ever closer to the Michigan state line. He sang loud about being born with a six-gun in his hand. He crooned that with a gun, he’d make his final stand. Hell, bad company, he pondered, smiling. That’s me! Baddest company there is. Bad-ass-motherfuckin’-company. He laughed big at this, descended into a deep cough, hocked something green up, spat it out the window.

The truck chugged along through Auburn and Angola, IN. The landscape had become nothing but fresh snow and the outlines of icy lakes in the dark. Flurries came and went, threatening to blur the windshield.

Leon crossed into Michigan at four a.m. The sign at the state line beamed, WELCOME TO MICHIGAN: GREAT LAKES, GREAT TIMES. Leon tipped his hat to the sign. “Amen!” he said.

In Coldwater, he cut off of I-69 onto US-12 E. Just thirty-five miles of two-lane pitch-black middle-of-nowhere Michigan, then it was onto US-127 N.

“The final stretch into Jack Town!” Leon yelped.

As the first gloomy light was rising in the overcast sky, Leon arrived at Rose City Recycling Inc. in Jackson, Michigan. It was a nondescript green warehouse in an industrial area. He parked the truck in a small lot outside a barbed-wire gate. A metal sign indicated they didn’t open until 7:00 a.m. Reckon I can get a bit of shut-eye then.

He turned off the ignition, slumped down in his seat, and promptly fell asleep.

* * *

Leon jerked awake when someone knocked hard on his window. It was fully light out. Leon felt distant, disoriented, unsure of how long he’d been asleep. A heavyset black man in a dark jumper suit stood outside his window, fists on his hips.

“Hey bud,” he called gruffly to Leon, “You can’t park here! Your truck’s blocking all my parking spots!”

Leon shook his head roughly to try and snap himself awake. Damn, he felt groggy! He opened the door, tried to compose himself. “Oh, uh, sorry ‘bout that.”

“You need something, bud, or did my lot just look like a free hotel?”

“Oh, oh right! Sorry,” Leon cleared his throat. “Want to, uh, sell ya some bottles. Got em here in the truck.”

“Fine. Twenty-five bucks worth is the daily limit. And they were purchased in the state of Michigan, right?”

“Wait, wait,” Leon said, groggy, confused.

Why can’t I wake up already?

“You said twenty-five bucks? What if I brought a whole truckload?”

The black man blinked at him heavily from behind his thick glasses. “Jesus Christ, bud, are you telling me that whole truck is full of bottles?”

“That’s what I’m tellin’ ya. Come all the way from San Antone, Texas too. Been driving the past two days and all through last night, so what’s this you’re tellin’ me about only twenty-five bucks?”

“Oh man,” the black man said, putting his gloved hand to his forehead. “Holy shit. Uh, listen pal, I hate to break this to you, but we can’t take any bottles that weren’t purchased in the state of Michigan. We scan the barcodes on the bottles and it tells us whether it’s from here or not. Second of all, it’s state law we can only accept twenty-five dollars worth of recyclables per individual, per day.”

Leon stared at him dumbly.

This wasn’t happening.

He had done his research.

He had checked that he had his shit straight.

Double-checked it.

“You’re yankin’ my chain,” Leon said, squinting at the man.

“I’m afraid not,” the man said. He turned his attention away from Leon and looked at the truck with awe. “I’ll be damned,” he said, shaking his head. “You really filled this thing all the way up?”

Leon began to shake with rage.

He couldn’t stop it.

He couldn’t focus.

He felt like throwing up.

Only one solution came to mind.

Out came the pistol.

“Tell me you’re pullin’ my fuckin’ leg, right now,” Leon said.

“Wow, holy shit, man, what’re you doing?” the black man said, stepping back and putting his hands in front of him. “Jesus, man, that’s the rules, I didn’t make em! Just keep cool.” He shuffled backwards and glanced towards the office where the foreman was, hoping his boss would look out the window, and soon.

Leon was breathing heavy, shaking, fuming.

He kept blinking, fighting tears.

He felt cheated, deceived.

“I didn’t come all the fuckin’ way out here to get turned down, boy, so you best tell me in the next thirty seconds that you can take these here bottles, that you’re gonna take every last one of em, and pay me the goddamn ten cents apiece like you’s supposed to, or we’re gonna have to make a fuckin’ thing of it!”

“Okay, okay, calm down man. Let’s just get my boss out here, see what we can do for you, okay?” The black man was shaking. He tried to sidestep towards the office, kept turning his head that direction.

“Stop fuckin’ moving,” Leon growled.

He did.

“Tell me now that I’ll get paid what I’m due, or I will kill you right here.”

“Okay, you’ll get paid,” the black man said flatly.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Ah Jesus,” he sputtered, starting to cry, “I told you what you asked, man! What else do you want from me? You’ll get paid, goddamnit! You’ll. Get. Paid!”

“Get on your knees and tell me. Tell me like you mean it.” Leon cocked the hammer on the pistol, eyes wild.

The black man was openly weeping. He shook his head, furious. He slowly began to kneel towards the ground.

The foreman burst through the office door. “What the hell are you doing?!” he screamed.

Leon turned towards him.

The black man saw a split-second chance and lunged at Leon, knocking him onto his back.

The pistol went off, hit nothing, and was thrown clear of Leon’s hand.

The black man climbed onto Leon’s chest, pinning Leon’s arms with his knees, his gloved hands wrapped into Leon’s thick beard. He was crying and screaming and slamming Leon’s head into the pavement, again and again. He began to hit Leon in the face, sloppily bringing both fists down, one after the other.

The foreman picked up Leon’s pistol, then ran up to his employee.

“Jesus, Dylan, stop it! Stop! Leave him for the police!” the foreman said, his hand on the black man’s shoulder.

Dylan let his hands fall limp, still knelt over Leon. He wept and leaned his face towards the sky, then looked to his boss. “Son of a bitch was gonna kill me!”

“I know, I know, now get up offa him,” the foreman said, lifting Dylan under the armpit. He kept the gun on Leon. “And as for you, you crazy piece of shit, you don’t fuckin’ move. Cops are on the way.”

Leon’s face was a mess of bloody pulp. He lay still, dazed, looking dreamily up into the sky. He wasn’t even registering the pain of the many blows he had just taken. A little puddle of blood crept out from underneath his head where his skull had been smacked into the pavement.

“I... I had it all figgered out,” Leon told the men softly. They looked at him disgustedly, and confused.

Leon shook his head gently back and forth in disbelief, eyes glassy. He looked pained, as if he were the victim of some enormous deception on which he had banked his entire existence; the bumbling fool who had traveled so far and had so much faith, only to be swindled.

“I was...” Leon whispered, “I was s’pposed to get paid.”

* * *

The following Friday evening, Rickey sat at his usual place at the bar, trying to conceal his excitement about seeing Leon and hearing his story. He wouldn’t let Leon see that he was excited, oh no, he’d give him shit up one side of the street and down the other like always, but secretly he was proud of his friend’s determination. He nursed his first beer, sipping it slowly, checking the door, thinking any minute his best friend would bust through. He figured Leon was just running late, maybe he hit some weather or traffic.

An hour passed and he ordered a second round, finished it much more quickly than the first, then bought a third. He went out front for a smoke, scanned the parking lot, went back inside. Patrons came and went, still nothing. Every time Rickey heard the door swing, he would look up, always disappointed.

Rickey sat and drank and waited for his friend until last call. He slammed his money on the bar, drunk, discouraged, and a little worried. With a sigh, he stepped off his stool, got in his truck, and went home.

Irrelevant Thoughts from the Author

This is not a happy story. Downright dark, you might say, but intentionally so. The few family members and friends who I shared Michigan with during the drafting process all handed it back with responses like, “Well, that was a downer,” or, “I hope none of this was based on personal experience,” and even, “I don’t know how I feel about all the swearing.” Folks who know me well seemed surprised by the harsher content (and believe me, I toned it down from the original draft, big time). I believe there is a time and place for violence and harsh language in storytelling, but in this case I was careful to include those things only when necessary, not just for shock value (and does shock value even exist anymore?).

In recent years, I have become increasingly fascinated in stories (true and fictional) of people who, when left to their own devices, self-destruct. It is interesting to me how some folks on this earth can become fixated with the oddest of things (even though, to them, the things don’t seem odd at all) and will seemingly stop at nothing to see that idea or goal carried out. Leon’s story was my attempt to give an example of that concept in action, exaggerated though it may be. As the story carried on, I quickly began to realize that for someone to go to the lengths that Leon does, they would have to be of a very broken mind indeed.

Leon was, honestly, tons of fun to write, even the sinister parts (and maybe especially those). I wanted the story to begin with a good-ol’-boy lightheartedness; easy humor and country talk so that we as the reader really start to dig this Leon cat, then slowly we watch him come unraveled. The idea was for Leon to make you chuckle at the beginning of the story, then creep the hell out of you by the end.

I’m not sure how Leon ended up being from Texas. I’m not sure where most of this story came from, actually. I do have an odd fascination with Southern speech, so when Leon and Rickey got to talking in the opening dialogue, their personalities and surroundings just seemed to reveal themselves naturally. The only framework I had when sitting down to write this was the physical action of some unknown person transporting bottles from any state other than Michigan into Michigan. There was also a whisper-like thought that this could be a road-trip tale of sorts, so I wanted to pick the starting point somewhere geographically distant from Michigan.

As for the bottle deposit thing, the information explained by Dylan in the story is essentially accurate, with some slight fabrication to make things more interesting. Any major discrepancies are due to this author’s honest misunderstanding of Michigan state law. The idea for this story (the root of it, anyway) came quite literally when I once observed the bottle deposit information on a beer label and wondered if anyone had ever tried to cash in zillions of bottles at once. During the (minimal) research I did while collecting info for the story, it soon became clear that if someone was really going to try what Leon does, they would have to be pretty... well, dimwitted. Uneducated, even, or at least foolish enough to neglect checking the facts. Even though Leon claims he has checked the facts, clearly he is not the most reliable man.

Several people have pointed out the significant presence of particular albums, bands, and songs mentioned throughout the story. I honestly hadn’t realized it was so prominent that anyone would notice. For some reason, I just pictured Leon as a rock-n-roller; a badass who liked his liquor strong and his music loud. So the music references came from the sort of things I could picture Leon listening to on his roadtrip. Personally, I don’t always listen to music while writing, but on this particular story I listened to lots of AC/DC, Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, things like that, as if I were in the passenger seat of that moving truck full of bottles. Fittingly, I picture Leon basically like a heavier Billy Gibbons in a flannel shirt and trucker cap.

To wrap these shenanigans, I’ll confess: this story is far from perfect. It is not a timeless piece of masterful literature. It’s not going to change your outlook on life. My hope is that at least it was fun, held your attention, and mayhap even evoked some brand of emotion. I felt almost criminal asking people to pay a dollar of their digital mammon for something they can read in twenty minutes, so I thought including this afterword accounted for maybe an additional three cents of value or so. But hey, truly, thank you for buying this little oddity, or borrowing it, or pirating it, or Xeroxing every page at the library until you had a bootlegged hard-copy. However you got your mitts on it, thanks for taking the time to actually read the silly thing. This, Lord-willing, is only the first of many stories to come. Some won’t be this dark. Others will be darker still. Either way, here’s hoping they only get better from here.

Cheers,

-D.G.

Denver, August 2013

About the Author

Doctor Gaines (it’s a name, not a title) and his wife live in and operate out of one of the most magical hubs for creative energy in all the universe: Denver, Colorado. Doctor used to sell light bulbs. Now he writes stories. Doctor is a constant reader, enjoys bitter beer, and has never been to Michigan. His second short, titled Clara’s Quilt, is due out in late 2013.

© Searching for the Light Photography

Legal

This story is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn purely from the author’s vast imagination and should not be construed in any way as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental, or is possibly a figment of your clearly delusional mind. Should you encounter any person who behaves in any way, shape, or form similarly to the main character of this story, turn the hell around and run back to your homestead.

The opening quotation is paraphrased from original lyrics by Schuylar Croom on “Goldie’s Torn Locks,” which appears on He Is Legend’s album Suck Out the Poison.

All songs written & recorded by He Is Legend.

2006 Baby Genius Music (ASCAP)/Thirsty Moon River Publishing (ASCAP)

Lyrics written by Schuylar Croom

Music by He Is Legend

ASIN: B000I2ISG8

MICHIGAN, TEN CENTS. Copyright © 2013 Doctor Gaines.

All rights reserved.

Cover art © Caleb Davis. toothfeather.com

ISBN: 978-0-9899240-0-9

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