Skeleton Crew

They opened their beers and chugged them. It was a dead heat; both dropped their cans to the cracked concrete and raised their middle fingers at the same time. Their belches echoed off the walls like rifle shots.

"Just like ole times," Bob said, sounding forlorn. "Nothing's just like ole times, Rocky."

"I know it," Rocky agreed. He struggled for a deep, luminous thought and found it. "We're gettin older by the day, Stiffy." Bob sighed and belched again. Leo farted in the corner and began to hum "Get Off My Cloud."

"Try again?" Rocky asked, handing Bob another beer.

"Mi' as well," Bob said; "mi' jus' as well, Rocky m'boy." The case Leo had brought back was gone by midnight, and the new inspection was affixed on the left side of Rocky's windshield at a slightly crazy angle. Rocky had made out the pertinent information himself before slapping the sticker on, working carefully to copy over the numbers from the tattered and greasy registration he had finally found in the glove compartment. He had to work carefully, because he was seeing triple. Bob sat cross-legged on the floor like a yoga master, a half-empty can of I.C. in front of him. He was staring fixedly at nothing.

"Well, you sure saved my life, Bob," Rocky said. He kicked Leo in the ribs to wake him up. Leo grunted and whoofed. His lids flickered briefly, closed, then flew open wide when Rocky footed him again.

"We home yet, Rocky? We—"

"You just shake her easy, Bobby," Rocky cried cheerfully. He hooked his fingers into Leo's armpit and yanked. Leo came to his feet, screaming. Rocky half-carried him around the Chrysler and shoved him into the passenger seat. "We'll stop back and do her again sometime."

"Those were the days," Bob said. He had grown wet-eyed. "Since then everything just gets worse and worse, you know it?"

"I know it," Rocky said. "Everything has been refitted and beshitted. But you just keep your thumb on it, and don't do anything I wouldn't d—"

"My wife ain't laid me in a year and a half," Bob said, but the words were blanketed by the coughing misfire of Rocky's engine. Bob got to his feet and watched the Chrysler back out of the bay, taking a little wood from the left side of the door.

Leo hung out the window, smiling like an idiot saint. "Come by the laundry sometime, skinner. I'll show you the hole in my back. I'll show you my wheels! I'll show y—" Rocky's arm suddenly shot out like a vaudeville hook and pulled him into the dimness.

"Bye, fella!" Rocky yelled.

The Chrysler did a drunken slalom around the three gas-pump islands and bucketed off into the night. Bob watched until the taillights were only flickerflies and then walked carefully back inside the garage. On his cluttered workbench was a chrome ornament from some old car. He began to play with it, and soon he was crying cheap tears for the old days. Later, some time after three in the morning, he strangled his wife and then burned down the house to make it look like an accident.

"Jesus," Rocky said to Leo as Bob's garage shrank to a point of white light behind them. "How about that?

Ole Stiffy." Rocky had reached that stage of drunkenness where every part of himself seemed gone except for a tiny, glowing coal of sobriety somewhere deep in the middle of his mind.

Leo did not reply. In the pale green light thrown by the dashboard instruments, he looked like the dormouse at Alice's tea party.

"He was really bombarded," Rocky went on. He drove on the left side of the road for a while and then the Chrysler wandered back. "Good thing for you—he prob'ly won't remember what you tole him. Another time it could be different. How many times do I have to tell you? You got to shut up about this idea that you got a fucking hole in your back."

"You know I got a hole in my back."

"Well, so what?"

"It's my hole, that's so what. And I'll talk about my hole whenever I—" He looked around suddenly.

"Truck behind us. Just pulled out of that side road. No lights." Rocky looked up into the rearview mirror. Yes, the truck was there, and its shape was distinctive. It was a milk truck. He didn't have to read CRAMER'S DAIRY on the side to know whose it was, either.

"It's Spike," Rocky said fearfully. "It's Spike Milligan! Jesus, I thought he only made morning deliveries!"

"Who?" Rocky didn't answer. A tight, drank grin spread over his lower face. It did not touch his eyes, which were now huge and red, like spirit lamps.

He suddenly floored the Chrysler, which belched blue oil smoke and reluctantly creaked its way up to sixty.

"Hey! You're too drunk to go this fast! You're..." Leo paused vaguely, seeming to lose track of his message.