Page 205 of Ride With Me
“What did you start out in?”
“Old school 70’s Shaggin’ Wagon,” Keely admitted.
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“Picture the A-team van with a bed in the back.”
“I can only guess how they got that name.”
“Exactly.”
“So, what happened to it?” Taz asked, curious about the wonderful misfortune that had thrown Keely into his path.
“I’ll tell you that after you tell me what happened in Tussle Bug.”
“Fair enough.”
With the rain still beating against the roof and windows, it was truly starting to feel like they were the last two people on earth. Taz stroked Keely’s hair as he debated where to begin the story to not look like a complete moron by the time he reached the end.
“My brother is an asshole, that’s what happened,” Taz began, hoping to preface it with that and save face a little. “We were supposed to keep the Caddy on the back of the flatbed. That was the only instruction besides the name and address of the person we were delivering it too. You can’t get any easier than that. All we had to do was drive and switch off when he needed to, so wedidn’t have to waste money on a motel somewhere, but do you think my brother could stick with that?”
“Apparently not.”
“First he starts showing off for some girl, just on the edge of Oklahoma,thenhe decides to take her on a date in the car,thenhe showboats and obliterates the mayor’s mother’s prized rose bushes,” Taz explained. “No damage to the car though, at least not any we could see. He’d managed to duck down a backroad and avoid the cops, so there wasn’t a ticket to deal with or anything fines to pay, so we loaded the Caddy back up and got our asses to Texas.”
“I since abutcoming.”
“Several.”
“Those make for the best stories.”
“Of course they do,” Taz said as he mussed up Keely’s hair a little.
Damn, but he could picture them sitting on a couch this way, a couple of beers on the coffee table, some disaster movie on the television, the volume turned low.
“I should have known things would go to shit the moment my brother insisted on staying behind at the motel while I dropped the car off with the owner. He claimed the food we’d had the night before didn’t agree with him and he wanted to stick close to the crapper. What he’d really wanted to do was avoid being on the scene if anything went wrong.”
“Which it did.”
“Like shit rolling downhill with rotting swamp water at the bottom.”
“That doesnotsound pleasant.”
“It wasn’t,” Taz assured him. “It was a royal shitshow. Remember when I said that we didn’t see any damage? Well, we might have, if we’d though to look underneath the damn thing.”
“Ouch.”
“Naa, the ouch comes later.”
“Oh, this is gonna be good,” Keely giggled, rubbing his hands together.
Taz wondered if he was the type to watch someone play video games and cackle with glee every time they got killed. If so, then he hoped they’d have the chance to play, because he’d been known to do a bit of heckling too and was curious to see how Keely would respond to it.
And what lengths he’d go through to exact revenge.
“So, I get the car where it’s supposed to be, make sure the guy is there and have him sign the paperwork for delivery,” Taz explained. “Then I go to get it down off the back of the flatbed, with the guy standing there and watching as I put it in gear, so I’m being super careful with everything I do. Only instead of easing back like I’d planned, it zips backwards off the ramp and rolls. I’m damn near standing on the brake and nothing is happening, then a horn blares and the momentum of everything changed. I’d rolled it right into the path of a UPS truck and got creamed.”
“Holy shit!”