Burn Scars by Eddie Generous (best novels for beginners TXT) 📕

a decade, a man who’d shared laughs and beers and inside jokes and countless trips to and from Logic Appliance. Cary kept his weight pressed for a four hundred count after Jim stopped moving before he finally got off.

—

“I scooped the coke out of the drawer and onto the Comet on the mirror then, and I wiped the pen on the couch. I draped Jim over the table and let him fall sideways, naturally.” Cary shook as he spoke. He’d just finished the third warm beer and reached for the fourth. “I swear to God I wore the gloves so I wouldn’t get drugs on me. I didn’t go there to kill him, but he was going to ruin it and worse, worse because there’d be no future with Linda. We’d never be free because Dwayne would figure out the debt, string it along for years. Cripes, Jim’s eyes were coming out of the sockets, man, and his teeth were starting to poke out. He was crazy with that stuff. It’s not my fault. I didn’t mean it.”

Rusty leaned, back against the wall. It was almost impossible. This was Cary, and Jim was Jim, hotheaded idiot notwithstanding. He barked a cough to force out a question. “Man, what are you going to do?”

“I put the everything back under the sink. I did that part right.”

Rusty puffed out his lips. “Cary. Cary.” Cary looked at him then. “What are you going to do?”

Cary turned his face and stared into the open mouth of the beer can. “Hope the cops think he got some bad stuff or mixed it with Comet himself, if they even check that close. I hope they see the scene and read OD, not go looking beyond that. He didn’t really have anybody who cared for him, so nobody should kick any stink about it. Plus he was running around like a whack job today.”

“What’d you do with the stuff? You put it back, right? That’s what you said?” Rusty was reeling some himself. This was all bad and took a great big step away from the perfect they needed.

“The Comet? Put it back under the sink. Didn’t I say? The window crack, I don’t know. I don’t think they can tell how long glass is cracked…might be nobody finds him until he starts stinking.”

Rusty blew out a breath. “Guess you had to, right? No choice. Maybe they’ll think Dwayne did it. Maybe they find it after Wednesday and just add it to what’s coming to him.”

Cary lifted his head and then tilted his chin. “Hey, maybe. Still doesn’t…I killed him, Rusty, freaking dead.”

“If he was going at the coke how you said, maybe he wanted to die. Maybe he didn’t and was going to overdose anyhow. Like, man, he sounded wild. It’s not your fault.”

“Maybe. You should’ve seen him. Right whacked out.”

“Man, you tell me how I play it and that’s how I play it,” Rusty said.

Cary nodded. “We be quiet. Linda will know because she sees everything, but we’ll just pretend he’s good until the police find him.”

“Works for me. I wouldn’t have seen him again anyway, right? Not if he quit.”

Cary stood and downed the last of the beer and set the can next to the TV on the dresser. “Thanks for the beers. I need to go home,” he said and left how he came—only quieter—before Rusty knew what to say.

He sat a few minutes. This whole mess was invisible acid, burning through them, one way or another. He lit a smoke and then thought of the door. He left the room to check. He turned the deadbolt and heard, “Rusty?” the voice was raspy and muffled. A light on the level higher lit and the landlady shuffled into view. She’d become a ghost, devoid of color, had streaky grey hair in pink curlers. She wore an oxygen mask and pulled a small tank on wheels. “Rusty, me and Gerald agree, you can’t be having friends over so late. We’re trying to sleep and the door wakes us up. It’s fine if your girlfriend comes over, we know her family, and they’re good people, but what kind of men just show up at your door in the middle of the night.”

“Right, sorry. Been a weird week.”

“You need to be more thoughtful.”

For no good reason, Rusty still feared eviction from that shithole, though much had changed since back when he moved in—those days, nobody else would rent to him. He wasn’t a kid anymore, but that stuff lingered and homelessness terrified him. “I will be. I’m sorry.”

“Well, okay then. Who was that?”

A voice in his head, clear as spring rain, implored him to say any name aside from Cary Watson, any name at all. “Jim McManus,” he said. The same voice seemed to finish the thought, also any name but the recently deceased Jim McManus, you dumbass. “I work with him…or did, he just stopped in to tell me how much he hated Dwayne. He quit today.”

“John McManus?”

“No, Jim.” Hell you correcting her for?

“He was a delivery guy and quit today. I think maybe he was sick, or drunk. I didn’t invite him. I don’t know exactly why he showed up.”

“Okay.” The landlady turned and started away. “Don’t let it happen again.”

Rusty raced downstairs, berating himself under his breath. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”

 15

A man named Mike Campbell turned from the till with a to-go cup of coffee and a brown paper bag. “Oh, hey Rusty, how’s it going?” he said.

Rusty nodded, chewing a mouthful as he picked at the corner of his left eye. He’d rolled from bed after a night of broken sleep and guilty dreams, ate the last two pieces of bread from the bag, but found them insufficient so he went to the Fall Street Café. He was almost sick with hunger by