To Repair Man
by Jay Lake
Ever wonder why barbecue joints always show a pig on the sign? Me neither. I mean, if those Twilight Zone aliens showed up to serve man, would there be a happy picture of Emeril Lagasse on their restaurant signs? Homie don't think so. Like the t-shirt says, if God didn't mean for us to eat animals, why did He make them out of meat?
So I got me a little workshop down by the county line which I got the bright idea one day ought to be the shape of a car. They got those big Cat dump trucks out at the quarry, about the size of a building each. Pops McGinty backed one into a trench a while back. They had to get the dragline to haul it out, and it's been up on blocks ever since. This gave me an idea.
When I ran into LeFarge drinking down at the Coon Dog, I made my move.
"Brandy," I said. His real name was Brandeis, but nobody called him that except the IRS and his probation officer. He also was the site manager for the quarry. "You going to do anything with that busted out Cat dumper Pops wrecked?"
LeFarge stared at me with his squinty eyes. "You got any idea what the parts value on that thing is?"
"Not a clue. I mostly work on Fords. I don't want none of that shit anyway. Just the body shell."
"Could sell it to the scrap cutters for good money," LeFarge mused.
I toyed with my Lone Star, the cold beading out on it like flop sweat on a twenty dollar hooker. "Could fix your pickup for free the next two years."
"You got a tow truck that big?"
"No," I said with a laugh, "but you do."
Two weeks later it showed up in three pieces on some heaver hauler flat beds down from Luling with new buckets for the drag line. I paid the drivers off with beer and reds, and got me a fine new building. Took some doing to get it in place, but my service bay is under the dump bed, and my business office is in the cab.
Big Yeller, they're calling me down at the Coon Dog now. Weird part is I'm getting some real goddam strange repair jobs in. Just this week feller came by with a Dymaxion car. Least that's what he said it was. I got my doubts — old Bucky Fuller never did put laser turrets on his, I don't think.
Feller asked where he could get some good haunch around here. I sent him down to the Long Pig.
© 2008, Joseph E. Lake Jr.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.