“The Salvage Yard” by Emma Burcart

One evening, on the way home from the bowling alley, he stopped in at the bar off Old

Mill Road. He wanted a beer and didn’t feel like going to any of his regular places, or like sitting at home in front of the TV for yet another night. He needed people. He needed a distraction. So he picked a stool toward the end of the bar, close enough to the dart board to be a part of the action without stepping up. He put money on the game and chatted up the guys at the small table across from the bar. One was a mechanic he knew of, but didn’t really know, and the other was the older brother of a guy he went to high school with. There were only about three degrees of separation in a town as small as theirs; no one was a total stranger.

José was two beers in and deep in a conversation about horsepower and torque when a flash of light caught his eye. An older man stood at the bar, leaned over the gap in stools and said something to the bartender. The man held a wad of cash in his right hand, and when he moved light bounced off the silver money clip in the center. José shrugged away the stab of recognition in his gut. Many of the older generation could not be forced into the modern convenience of a wallet or joining Triple A. Old Timers Roxanne called them, but they helped pay the bills—usually in cash. José was about to turn his attention back to the dart board and his own growing pile of bills when the man reached his other hand out to grab his glass and there another flash, more recognition. José knew that watch. The accordion spring of the silver wrist band, the lines in place of numbers that had impressed him the first time he saw it. But it was the missing piece of silver in the center of the band, near the watch face, that made him sure. That watch belonged to his father. He remembered the moment that piece knocked loose on a pipe beneath the sink he had been working on, and how his father refused to get it fixed or buy a new one. It was the first thing he’d bought once he paid off the trailer, and he wasn’t going to replace it because of one crack. He’d worn it every day. And it had been buried with him.

José grabbed the man’s wrist. “Where did you get this?” He squeezed his fingers tight

around the bone so the man couldn’t pull free.

“What do you care for?” The man didn’t try to pull away, but he let go of his glass and

relaxed back against the bar.

“I know who it belongs to.”

“Maybe it used to, but it belongs to me now cuz I bought it in a pawn shop.”

José let go. It didn’t make sense but he couldn’t argue either. He saw the watch in the

plastic bag of his father’s belongings after the accident, streaked with blood but not a scratch on it. Then he saw it, cleaned, in the box of important things to go into the coffin with his father. He felt the tick of the time still passing after death when he leaned down and placed the picture of the two of them in the box, scooted the watch to the side and slid his copy of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel underneath. He knew what he knew even if it didn’t make sense and he couldn’t prove it. Even if the man at the bar had squat, meaty hands nothing at all like his father’s. Even if he was the only one who felt that something was not right in the world.

He couldn’t sit at the bar any longer and he didn’t want to go home. He knew he probably shouldn’t have driven, not because of the beer—two beers wasn’t much different than water—but because of how off-kilter he felt. How alone. There was only one place that would make him really feel better, so he drove to the shop, grabbed a couple more beers from the mini-fridge in his office, and climbed into his truck. Not into the cab with the cushioned seat and stereo. He hoisted himself up onto one of the big tires and over the side of the truck, where he landed in a heap. He scooted around the lift and leaned against the back of the cab, his head just under the window that looked inside to his usual spot. He was having a hard time feeling usual. He popped open a beer and tipped back his head, let the liquid wash over his tongue and rush down his throat, cold and bitter.

The sound of Roxana’s voice woke him. She was close, saying his name over and over. It

took him a moment to realize it was her hand on his shoulder, shaking him, that made his body slosh. He opened his eyes. “I’m awake.” He shook himself free and pushed away from the side of the truck, from slumping to sitting. He blinked and rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands. His skin smelled like stale beer. Everything smelled like beer. Empty cans were scattered around him in the truck bed, some crushed like he might have tried smashing them against his forehead and one still half full with warm beer pooled beneath it.

“You’re a mess.” Roxana tossed a towel at him, one of the old ones they kept in the

garage for cleaning. Then she turned and walked back into the office.

It wasn’t the time to try and talk to her, to apologize and explain. She wouldn’t listen

while he was covered with beer and yesterday’s uniform. Nobody would. He had to get himself cleaned up and then clean the truck; a pot of coffee and a bucket of soapy water would set them both straight. He hosed down the truck, soaped it up, and rinsed off again. The work was quiet and there was a rhythm to it that sobered him up and steadied his sloshing mind. Physical labor was good for the body and the brain, his father used to say. It’s all one system. He felt restarted, like the hum of an engine after the jumper cables shock it back to life. He walked to the far edge of the yard, where the concrete ended and the shaggy grass began, stripped down to his underwear and turned the hose on himself. Cold but clean. And when he shut the water off and the sun warmed his skin, he was new again.

She hung up and looked at him, blinked and tapped her pencil against her desk. “We have a pick up. Think you’re ready to get back out there?” She was talking about more than his sobriety, he knew that.

“I’m fine.” He took another gulp of coffee and set the cup down too hard. It made a loud

thwack against the counter. “What’s the address?”

“The salvage yard.”

He hadn’t been back on the narrow road since the night he dropped off the totaled car, the night he first felt something wrong in the air—the first time he’d been so near the cemetery since his father’s death. It seemed darker this time, even in the late morning as the sun was high in the sky. The light and warmth didn’t make it past the line of trees. His body went cold, his skin and hair tingled with chill. He couldn’t imagine why he’d have a pick up at the salvage yard—he wasn’t a damn taxi. The only explanation was someone who wanted to transfer their totaled car to a shop for repairs; someone who wasn’t ready to say goodbye and give up. He liked the sound of that.

The farther he drove, the less sure he became—about everything. The darkness appeared

to go on forever. And then the road opened up, out of nowhere. He remembered the gravel and dirt, the open circle in the center of the broken cars. Only this time there were no cars. No scraps of metal and no sounds. Open space and the figure of tree tops looming over from the graveyard side. That was all there was. Jose stopped his truck, but didn’t get out. He squinted and focused his vision in the distance, and surveyed the blankness in front of him. There was nothing except a shadow that moved in the building at the back of the yard.

He didn’t know what he expected, but all the way to his core he hoped it would be his

father who stepped out of the building. His heart beat his wish out to his limbs, which shook with hope. His father, pieced back together with stiches and scars. His father, alive somehow, and José here to reclaim him like the ending to a myth that didn’t send them all back to the underworld—although he’d gladly go if it meant he could see his father again. If it meant he could undo that night and make a different choice, a better one. If he could go back and pick up the phone the first time his father called him that night, from the side of the highway where his car had broken down. The car José had promised they’d fix together when he had time. Instead, he’d let his phone ring on the bar and focused on trying to fit in with the guys over the pool table. He’d had another beer and told another story, that wasn’t true, about picking up a woman along with her stalled out car and getting more than just a tip.

More than two years had passed and still that night played in his mind like it was

yesterday—when he let the memory in. Three missed calls from his father, more high fives at the table than he could count. He didn’t pick up a phone until it was the police calling, urgent, through the bar’s landline. By then it was too late—they were already scraping up the pieces of his father from the highway. A careless driver, they told him, not drunk but from out of town and going too fast when they saw something and swerved off the road, and right into his father’s car. The police told José it was over quick, that there wasn’t time for his father to feel any pain, there were too many pieces scattered too far for him to have felt anything beyond the impact—and then it didn’t matter. He didn’t have anything left to feel with.

His father had only left one message on José’s voice mail, to come pick him up or call

him back right away. It was unusually cold and dark that night. “You’re the damn tow truck, son,” his voice said. José had listened to that message at least a hundred times the first week, then saved it but didn’t play it again. His father had never much liked life by the highway—too far away to fit in, but close enough to feel the difference, to see the reminder that outsider is something they’d always be, he’d said. He told José he wanted more for him, wanted him to live inside the town lines someday, wanted him to be one of them. They could both prove his mother wrong. But that night he’d picked fitting in and given up his father—even though he didn’t make a conscious choice, it was a choice nonetheless. A choice he’d take back if he could.

José unbuckled his seatbelt and slid down from the truck. He stepped out into the open

space. “Dad?” He called to the shadows. “You there?”

“Sorry, just me.” A voice he didn’t recognize came from the building. Then a man

stepped out with it and walked toward José. It was the man he’d seen here before, no face visible under his hat. Now something shiny dangled from his hand. “I thought you might want your father’s car.” He opened his hand and it was keys he was holding. “It took some work and a whole lot of time, but I got it back mostly to good condition. I figured it was worth a shot.”

“My father’s car?”

The man nodded. “Gerald said it meant something to you, the night he brought it in.”

“I didn’t realize there was anything left.”

“There’s always something left, son.”

José nodded and took the keys before either of them could change their minds. “Thank

you,” he said, and followed the man a few short steps to where his father’s car sat.

It was just as he remembered from the day his father brought it home and parked it under the overhang next to the trailer. The car he’d always dreamed of, he’d told José, and they could work on it together. A classic was worth the effort. It was midnight blue, like the sky without any stars, and the silver edges gleamed as if they’d been recently polished. He stepped close and ran a hand along the hood, traced the line to the door and leaned his head into the open window. Leather bucket seats that smelled brand new and a steering wheel with a gouge missing that could only mean it was original to the car—a spot that had taken the impact. He opened the door and climbed inside, let the seat curve against his body. He put the key in the ignition and turned, listened to the loud rev lower into a purr. There was something left.