The Scrapyard Dungeon Chapter Four: Hot Dogs and Dreams of Driving Away (Patreon)

I had to dogsit today with a small laptop to work on. Hard to write the other two stories, where I usually have three or more windows open with background material. So I fiddled around, and a fourth part of the upcoming story formed out of the chaos.

This is the story I write when I can't write the other two. :)

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The power was still out when Huck pulled into the scrapyard. Three times the stoplights at intersections had come back on, only to go black a moment later, snarling what little traffic was on the roads. Huck just drove slowly, and people would naturally get out of the way. A '57 Ford wasn't a big truck, but the cab sat high and, with the dents and rust, projected an aura of 'nothing to lose if we have a fender bender.' After locking the gates, he pulled over to the machine shop to see if the generator was working today.

The shop was in the center of towering piles of flattened cars and bales of scrap metal. The cinderblock building had originally been a filling station in the 1920s. Two rusting gas pumps that might have once been red sat in front of the two-story building. Next to that had been added a repair shop with three large bays for repairing cars and light trucks. Huck remembered two mechanics working here when he was small but couldn't remember their names. A two-story roof at the end of the building kept some of the rain off the car crusher. Huck could operate it by himself and had when he needed to turn cars into much smaller bundles of scrap. Charlie didn't like him operating it alone, but Charlie wasn't around to help or say no.

He pulled the '57 into the first bay, leaving the rolling steel door up for now. The wrecker was in the second bay, squatting like some rusted beast. It had started out as a 1961 Mack B61. It had been towed into the yard by a newer tow truck after an accident and left for crushing. Over the next two years, Charlie and his Dad had replaced parts and repaired them until it could be used around the yard to move vehicles and heavy loads on flatbed trailers. Part of the missing body had been replaced with steel plates, and the windshield was still missing. It wasn't licensed or street legal, but sometimes they got calls from the police in need of someone to clear a nearby accident, and they drove it outside of the yard for a pickup, the illegal exhaust system belching black smoke.

The third bay was empty except for Charlie's motorcycle. It was another salvage job after it was totaled in an accident. Charlie loved it, claiming it was the best way to go riding. He and Ginny had taken the Harley Davidson Electra Glide across the US and up into Canada after he had restored it to working order. Huck looked at the pictures in the scrapbook that sat in the living room of their trips and imagined going somewhere himself. He took off the tarp and looked at it for a moment, then tied it back down. He'd come into the bay for a generator, not to waste time dreaming. Finding the small gasoline generator, he put it on the flatbed, then went back for a can of gas. Something on a workbench caught his eye. It was an older pry bar, thick with rust. It had been made to pull up railroad spikes, and the head was angled to go underneath the spike, and the four-foot bar gave leverage to pull up the spike from the wood. It was heavy, weighing over twenty pounds, and made of good iron or bad steel. Huck hefted it and swung it around. Not good in a tight spot, but when you wanted something to stop moving after one hit, this was the tool for it. He tossed it on the truck with the generator and drove to the house, parking near the tunnel to the back gate.

Huck had used the generator to power part of the house before. Twice during long outages when storms took down the wires, and once when Charlie neglected the bill for too long. Huck didn't know how long the power would be out, but with the bat-shit-crazy things happening, he didn't want to walk around a dark house with just a flashlight, and Charlie would miss his TV shows. After plugging in the extension cords going to the first and second floors, he unloaded the truck and plugged in the lights and TV. Charlie was sleeping fitfully when he got home but woke up when he heard Huck and complained about being hungry. That made dinner the next priority. The stove was electric and not working, but there was a propane grill in the backyard and a pack of hotdogs from today's shopping. Hotdogs were always popular with Charlie, even on the worst days. The ball game would be on soon. There was always some type of ball game on. Charlie didn't care if it was football, baseball, pro, or college. He and Charlie could watch whatever was on and eat hot dogs for dinner. "Just like being at the game," he'd always say.

The Steelers were playing the Raiders tonight. The Eagles only played an hour down the turnpike from them, but the Steelers were Charlie and Huck's favorite team. Allentown and Pittsburg had a lot more in common than rotting steel mills taking up the skyline. Both were working-class towns, and people weren't as fancy or rich as they were in Philly and Harrisburg. Not that there was anything wrong with heading to an Eagles game and getting cheesesteaks afterward. Huck remembered the half-dozen times the three of them had made the trip down to see the birds play someone at Veterans Stadium. Hank would just announce they were heading to a game, and he and Charlie would pile into his car. They always ate in South Philly beforehand at one Italian restaurant or another; Hank had a lot of friends down there. Then onto the vet, many hotdogs, and they still had room to stop at Jim's steaks on the way home.

Charlie was talkative tonight and feeling better, asking Huck about his day. Nervously Huck told him about the extra money and spending it on the jacket and pants. Charlie seemed upset at first, not about buying them but about where the money had come from. He covered it up by asking Huck to show him the leather gear and then wanting to see him wearing it. "Those look good on you, Huck." He thought for a moment. "Just promise me you'll get your license and get tags on that old thing before you take it too far." Huck nodded; this was going better than he'd expected.

Charlie looked at his old, taped-up sneakers. "And you need better than that on your feet. See if one of my old pairs will fit you." Huck rummaged in the closet finding three pairs of riding boots. Two were shiny and black, going up to just below the knew. Uniform boots Charlie had worn when he was still on the police force. Huck put those aside and pulled out a worn pair of brown boots that had seen a lot of miles. They were still sturdy and covered up to mid-calf. Huck got them on and walked around, breaking them in. Then the teams were running back on the field, and they settled in to watch the second half. Huck would always remember the opening play as Buffalo's quarterback dropped back, heaving the ball long, with a receiver downfield but covered by a defensive back. Whether it was intercepted or a touchdown, he never found out. As the ball was in the air, the lights went out, and he heard the generator stop running, leaving the house in the dark.