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

amazingly, cranks right up, and he drives that over to the side of the lot. A woman in a huge red duelie starts toward the pine bark, but Butner waves her off, holding up both hands. Wait , he mouths at her. He pulls a book of matches out of his pocket, gives Jack a quick grin to let him know what’s coming. Jack wraps his arms around Hen again, pulls him back. Butner strikes the match, tosses it into the puddle of fuel from the loader, and there’s fire five feet tall. Jack can feel the air being sucked into it. Hen shrinks into him, away from the heat. They watch it flame out, smolder a little. Some of the spilled mulch is on fire. This all just dangerous as hell. If Beth had been here to see this, she’d have beaten him to death with the broken bumper. Hen’s talking into Jack’s arm, saying, It’s gonna be a scorcher, folks. He’s saying, Your local forecast is next. Weather on the ones. Butner starts waving to the woman in the red truck now, saying come on, come on, come on, and while she backs up against the mulch pile, he gets the loader going again, sending the bucket deep into the bark, coming back out with a full load, turning, tumbling it into the truck bed. It’s choreography. It’s air traffic control. It’s everything all at once.
    Jack walks Hendrick over to the office and gets him set up—they’ve got a couch in there, a little mini-fridge, a radio Hen likes to play with. Ernesto’s ringing people up. Fifteen dollars. Fifty. Thirty-two. “Thank you so much,” he’s saying. “Please come and see us again tomorrow.” Hen watches him key in the prices, enthralled. He loves the register. Jack stands in the doorway, just out of the sun. Randy drives away, taps the horn on his way out. The lot smells like fire, like cedar, like fuel. Jack thinks about Canavan up in some tree, about Beth over there rinsing out her cereal bowl, her coffee mug. He wonders whether they’re taking showers together or one at a time. Out on the lot, Butner’s gotten hold of a guy in white slacks, is showing him the three kinds of compost they have. Jack turns to make sure Hen’s still watching Ernesto run the register, tries to clear his head, heads out onto the yard to help whoever’s next.

    They go like hell all day. They’re selling everything on the lot. After her class, Beth takes Hen to lunch, drops him back off again. Where’d you eat? Jack asks her.
    We just went to Mike’s, she says . We had sandwiches. He had most of a PB&J. He’ll need something later.
    How was it? Jack asks Hen.
    Right now, Hendrick says, a forty-year-old nonsmoker qualifies for a $500,000 life insurance policy from Colonial Penn for just $19 a month.
    The TV was on, Beth says. She frowns, looks around the lot, watches Butner toss bales of pine straw into a truck. I guess I better get back, she says. Be careful, OK?
    We always are , Jack says, and she drives away before either of them can say anything that matters. Midafternoon, a landscaper who comes in two or three times a month to do business specifically with Ernesto buys every rose they’ve got, twenty-two plants. Four hundred dollars right there. A couple buys a boulder that’s been out front for a year and a half. Somebody even buys the lighthouse he and Butner had a bet about. Five feet tall, wooden, black and white barber pole stripes, electric lights inside. Meant to go in your front yard. Jack doesn’t know why. An old German guy from McLeansville showed up one day asking them if they’d buy it for $75. Jack said no, but told him if he left it on the lot he’d try to get $100 for it. Like a consignment. He felt bad for him. Butner laughed and laughed. A hundred dollars , he said, over and over. A hundred goddamn dollars. That motherfucker will be sitting right there when you die. And it was a young guy, standing in front of it toward the end of the day, frowning, looking a little desperate: Well, he said, I guess this is what she was talking about , and bought it. A