This is Just Exactly Like You by Drew Perry Read Free Book Online

hasn’t quite been the victory lap he had in mind. Somewhere back there he fucked this up, he’s pretty sure. Somewhere back there he may have made things worse. Canavan gets down, and Jack starts the truck, drops it in gear a little too quickly, lurches down the driveway. Canavan watches him go. Jack looks dead ahead. Hen looks dead ahead. He doesn’t open or close anything at all.

    At PM&T, there is chaos. The line of cars is out to the highway, and there’s a little crowd of people standing at the office shed. Waiting to pay, probably, but it’s hard to tell. Jack parks the truck in front of the pile of crushed gravel and it’s only after he gets the brake kicked in that he sees what the problem is, why nobody’s doing much of anything: Butner and Ernesto have managed to roll one of the skid loaders over on its side. Full bucket, of course, so there’s half a yard of red-dyed pine washed out across the middle of the lot. Also, the loader looks like it’s leaking fuel. Butner and a kid who can’t be much out of high school are standing next to it, pointing at it and then back at what seems to be the kid’s truck, a Nissan pickup jacked about five feet up off the ground. Ernesto is tying lengths of chain off to the front bumper of the pickup, looping the other ends around the loader’s roof, around the bucket. Jack gets out and jogs over there.
    “ Jefe, ” says Butner. He’s proud of picking up Spanish from Ernesto. Slow days on the yard, Butner will sit there with him asking what individual words are, one by one. Ernesto, what’s “help”? What’s “dump truck”? What’s “pussy”?
    “Just tell me you didn’t hit anybody on the way down,” Jack says.
    “It was Ernesto, actually.”
    “Damnit, Butner, he’s not even on the insurance—”
    “I know. But you weren’t here yet, and things started getting crazy.”
    “There’s still no way you should have let him drive.”
    “It wasn’t so much ‘let,’ ” says Butner, “as me talking him into it. We were pinched. I’m sorry.” He shrugs. “Anyway, this is Randy, my buddy’s little brother. He brought over the chain.” The kid reaches out his hand, and Jack shakes it.
    “Thanks,” Jack says.
    “No problem,” Randy says.
    “How’s Ernesto?” Jack asks. “Is he OK?”
    “Cut his arm some,” says Butner. “Cherry came out and patched him up.” Cherry works behind the counter at the Shell most days. “He went over real slow. And I had him strapped in there pretty good. I made sure. He couldn’t have done any real damage.”
    “Other than crashing the skid,” Jack says.
    “Yeah,” says Butner. “But we’ll have it back up in a second.” Randy drops his cigarette on the ground, grinds it out with his toe, then lights another one. He’s got what looks like a tattoo of a litter of kittens on his arm. Butner says, “Once we’ve got it all rigged up, Randy’ll just back up real slow until the thing sits up on its own. Shouldn’t be much.”
    Ernesto finishes with the chain, comes over to stand with them. “I’m sorry about all of this, Jack,” he says. With his accent, it comes out Chack . Sometimes Jack wishes he had an accent, too.
    “It’s Butner’s fault for putting you in there,” Jack says. “How’s your arm?”
    Ernesto holds it out, some gauze and tape wrapped around it, a little blood seeping through in a couple of places. “It’s fine,” he says. “It really is.”
    “You don’t need to get it looked at?”
    “I think that would probably be a little much.”
    From the line, someone honks a few times, and Butner waves at whoever it is. He always seems to know. He points at the overturned skid loader, holds up his hand. Five minutes. The guy honks again, two little taps. OK. Butner turns to Jack. “We should probably go on and do this,” he says. “You OK with that?”
    “I guess so,” says Jack.
    “Well, let’s try this thing,” he says, and then they’re all moving, Ernesto toward