This War Paint

Butch


I was trying my best to look repentant as I stepped into Bill’s mechanic shop at seven thirty in the evening. I was trying but it just wouldn’t come, not the expression on my face and certainly not the feeling in my gut. In fact, the only thing I could feel, taste it on my very tongue, was a joy at having spent a good three hours in a boys’ bathroom with Jane Hathaway.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her – as if I ever had been able to. Now, however, it was all just ten times worse. I’d been so close to her; on several occasions I could have stuck my hand out just that bit further and felt for myself how smooth her marble cheek was. It was surreal really, I’d spent so much of my time dreaming about being with her and it had happened, albeit not how I had always imagined. The setting could have been cleaner, or at least sanitary, and the amount of clothes she had been wearing would preferably have been fewer but it was thrilling nonetheless. My body still felt alive from it. I could almost trace the electricity running through my veins, coursing through me like I’d been hitting up for the past few hours. I’d spent it much better, though. No drugs had ever affected me as much as cleaning a toilet a few metres away from Jane had.

Fuck, I was in so deep. And I couldn’t even pretend to myself that I gave damn about it.

Every sentence with her, every bit of conversation, had always turned back into something serious. As if we had so much to talk about that we couldn’t even make small talk. Inevitably, it always circled back to her, or me, my past. I had come alarmingly close to telling her just what I thought of her a few times, barely able to restrain myself, knowing I would only scare her further away.

Because I had seen the moment that she had tried to withdraw. Jane didn’t know it but she was so easy to read. It was as if I watched the second she tried to step away just through her blue eyes, the movement she tried to put distance once again between us. She had fumbled for an excuse to leave and I could only laugh. She hadn’t any idea how adorable she was.

I wasn’t going to lie to myself and pretend that I could possibly have had Jane Hathaway jealous for a single second. But the feel of her hands on my wrist and the hurt expression which had consumed her at my tattoo had my stomach twisting in knots. Baby Brianna was nothing but my car, she was important because without her, fuck, I would be sleeping on the streets. She wasn’t a threat to Jane though. Nothing could ever be a threat to her. Especially not another girl.

Weaving through the broken cars, I remembered clearly just how close I had come to kissing her. I regretted it now as all I had was the oily air to wrap my lips around, but I was still glad that I had pulled myself back together in time. She shouldn’t be allowed to look at me as she did then, though, just after I’d told her not to let people walk over her, just after I’d confessed that I didn’t want her to be hurt. Not anymore. Her eyes and proximity had been so close to pushing me over the edge.

I spotted Bill’s thinning mop of black hair from across the garage, and he spotted me around the same time. I grimaced at the look her was shooting me, eyes narrowed so dangerously it seemed as if he would like nothing better than to wallop me over the head with the wrench in his grubby hands.

Now, I wasn’t an easily intimidated guy. I was built like a football player even though I hadn’t played the game a day in my life, I was weathered enough by my past to trust nobody and suspect everybody, I was tattooed in so much ink I could easily have been the poster boy for every guy parents in the world wanted their little angels’ to stay away from. I was brawn like nobody else in this shitty town, but I respected my boss.

He had given me a job which had saved my life more than once, in more sense than one. While he had never been nice to me, he’d also never said a hateful word. He allowed me to leave the outside world outside while I was at work instead of bringing in the whole town’s disgust every shift. I knew I wouldn’t find another job like the one he gave me, so I worked hard and didn’t expect any bonuses. But Bill had never looked at me as he did then, that wrench still clutched tightly in a white fist.

It was enough to send my good mood away so fast I could still feel my insides reeling. And instantly, I was prepared for a fight. I knew fights, I was good at them, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that whatever my boss was about to lay on me I could possibly counter.

“You’re late, kid.”

He refused to call me Butch and I don’t think he even knew my real name was Fraser, so kid it had always been. It didn’t matter that legally I was just as much an adult as him or even that I was easily twice his size. I hadn’t been a kid for a long time, if I had ever been one at all. Most of the time I hated the nickname because I knew Bill only said it to make himself feel better about my employment. Sometimes, though, I preferred it to Butch. I felt more like a kid than a Butch.

“I got detention,” I replied simply, facing the old man with a car safely in between us. The hood was flipped and even from this angle I could tell what was wrong with it but I remained where I stood.

“Again? You didn’t think to call me to tell me? Hell, did you think when you were committing whatever crime you were committing that this might jeopardise your work? Of course you didn’t. You never think a damn thing through,” he said angrily.

I was itching to retort, tell him exactly where he could shove his misconceptions. But I knew I needed this job a lot more than I needed my pride. My pride wouldn’t help me feed Baby Brianna or even myself. My pride was part of what got me into this shit anyway.

“I’m not taking this from you anymore kid. I know you’re a good worker, one of the best here, but I can’t deal with your attitude or your tardiness anymore. You’re out. Collect your stuff from your locker and turn in your keys,” Bill closed his eyes at the end, not able to look at me any longer.

It felt as if someone had just punched me in the gut. This – losing my job – was a million times more painful than whatever spare punch Armstrong had managed to throw in. This was his entire fucking fault. David fucking Armstrong!

“Look, Bill, I know I screwed up today but after this I promise I’ll be even better. I’ll do double the work you give me; hell you can dock this weeks’ pay if you want, but you have no idea how much I need this job.”

Already, though, I was defeated. Bill was shaking his head, the grey in his mop of black becoming ever more apparent.

“You know I can’t keep making exceptions for you, kid. I get enough stick as it is from the rest of the town but I keep you on because you’re good at fixing up cars. This is the last straw though. I fired Dmitri last week for less than this and he was pretty good at his job too. I’m not a pushover kid and I’m not letting you push me out of this decision,” he said solemnly, real regret flashing across his face.

“I’ll give you this weeks’ pay and the next too but I want you to stop today.”

I wrapped my burly arms around myself, suddenly feeling very small, cradling my stomach as if that could protect me from understanding. I was out of a job. I was out of options. I had nothing, nobody, I didn’t even have a means to put food in front of myself anymore. I was pathetic.

I barely even acknowledged the old man walk around the car between us to stand beside me. I towered over him but he still settled a hand on my shoulder as if I was nothing more than a kid.

“You’re too young to be killing yourself like this, kid, you shouldn’t have to work this hard. Finish school, and stop getting detentions, then get the hell out of here. You’re talented with cars. You could make a real career out of it – just not in Florence. I know what all the neighbours say about you but I also know you’re a hard worker and you’re dedicated. If you had just kept your head above water in school instead of allowing them to drown you, I wouldn’t be doing this.”

He smiled at me sadly before walking off, picking up his wrench once again and returning to the old black mustang.

I stood there motionless; confused beyond anything I had ever been before. Bill had fired me and complimented me all within the same breath. He didn’t believe all of the lies, and admittedly some of the truths, that the town smothered each other about me. He wasn’t fighting my corner but he wasn’t fighting against me either. I didn’t know which was more shocking – that he wasn’t a part of the enemy or that I had just lost my only source of income.

The more pressing issue was that I had lost the one thing keeping me alive.

I fled the garage like the little child Bill always saw me as; I swaddled myself under the scratchy blanket in Baby Brianna and stared unseeingly at the dashboard. So I had lost my job, Bill finally having had enough of my tardiness because of the detentions I was always being handed.

And it wasn’t even fucking fair. Armstrong had walked away relatively unscathed from that fight while I had been giving a prison sentence of ten hours! Not even the memory of Jane, her soft hands and kind eyes, could lessen the rage boiling inside of me. I was a big pot of hate self destructing in on itself, and the only thing I could think to do was reach for my dwindling stash of drugs.

I shot up, hating myself and hating Bill and hating this fucking town. They hated me; they were all out to get me. It wasn’t enough that my father had despised me and branded me; it wasn’t enough that my mother had left me when I was so young. It wasn’t even enough that I was in love with a girl who could never love me back. Now, this town and its hate had messed up the one stable thing in my life.

Butch was nothing but a washout. He had no prospects. He had no way of getting food, no way of paying for gas. He was so far fucking gone, and it was heartbreaking to know that he was me. Jane had been wrong. I was Butch. I had always been him, and I always would be him.

I lay my head back against the car’s head rest, staring up into the dimness of a Florence summer evening. I couldn’t even remember what I had just injected into my system or how much, all I knew was that the edges of everything, the edges of the very world, were becoming blurry. I liked them blurry. I could deal with it when its edges weren’t so sharp. But they were always sharp.

I couldn’t do it. Not anymore. For a few fleeting minutes I didn’t give a shit if the drugs finally finished me off. Nobody would care either; they’d be glad that their town could be the clean, respectable place it had been before my parents had moved here. My father wouldn’t bother paying for a funeral; I’d be chucked off the end of the planet where all of the unwanted kids were dumped.

A soft tapping on my windscreen forced me to open my bloodshot eyes.

And looking up into the concerned face of an angel, I groaned loudly to myself. If only I had bothered moving the car off of this street before I had decided to lose myself to the substance.

Now just what would she think of me? Hell, what did I think of myself?