No Rest for the Wicked
A short story
The tire service shop is busy today, and I stare out of the grubby window, watching cars and old pickup trucks huddle together in a haphazard line on the street as the stoplight takes its time to change. The flat waiting for me this morning when I opened the garage door was a nasty but not unexpected surprise, not when my husband whispered the warning in my ear only a few hours before.
“You’ll need to call off work today,” he breathed as I rolled my head from side to side on my mushy pillow, my eyes half-open as I struggled to get away from the words.
It’s impossible to get any rest in that house, always has been. My mother said it was cursed, and after Buck died the way he did, I finally believed her. Maybe the stroke she had in the overgrown rose garden out back decades ago was a fulfillment of the same.
I rub at the hard, tiny whiskers I missed when shaving my chin last night. Everyone says growing old is hell, but no one tells you about the facial hair you never asked for. A young man with a long red beard coughs as he steps in front of me, and I narrow my eyes, about to tell him that he should cover his mouth so as not to spread germs.
“You need a new tire, ma’am. Is there someone you can call?”
Call for what, I almost ask him. For permission? Money? Advice? Because I’m an old woman who couldn’t possibly have a mind or banking account of my own?
“It’ll be an hour or so, and you might not want to wait around.”
He smiles at me, his bushy eyebrows furrowed, and I shake my head. There’s no one to call, hasn’t been in years. Not since Buck died, not after the doctors screwed up the operation to take his legs when I backed over them with his truck.
It was one like that faded green one out on the road just now, a little rusty at the bottom of the driver’s side door. Hard to close, that one was, and it shook off a bit of old metal each time you did.
Buck never was quick on his feet, and after those big tires thumped over him, he had no feet at all.
I smile wistfully as the young man leans forward.
“You don’t look too good, ma’am. Maybe I should call someone?”
Why does he keep asking me that? Hasn’t he heard of women’s liberation? I can take care of myself, I want to tell him, but instead, I cough. It’s hard, the breath forcing itself out of my body like the winter wind.
When I was a bride, I used to get up early to shovel snow before Buck drove to work. We had a snow fence but that never did much to stop it from filling our gravel driveway overnight. The first time he hit me was on a spring morning when he pushed the lawnmower over a cluster of stones and one of them bounced up, cracking his glasses.
My fault, I know, for shoveling that gravel into the yard on snowy days, but damn, he threw a mean punch.
I hear voices and someone shakes me, my body even thinner now than it was back then, and my bones shiver beneath my sagging skin. Buck said I was scrawny, but he liked my perky boobs and the property that came with the marriage.
My mother, keen to have another living creature in the house to feed the curse, encouraged him with the promise of a home without a mortgage and land that carried on for ten acres. Too bad he never thought of having to take care of it, a chore he never took to.
“Ma’am?”
I don’t recognize the people surrounding me now, but a low voice trails through their inexplicable chatter. Buck reminds me that I need to call off work, but I remember that I retired twenty years ago. What a silly man, I think, but when I open my mouth to tease him, something steals the sound, lifting it from my throat.
He knew I loved him, love him still, as much as I can love a selfish animal who beat me like a dog. I’m not afraid, not when I know the curse is housebound, and I’m safe as long as I’m not there. Safe as long as Buck is dead, his ashes rotting, perched atop the puke green refrigerator he bought me for my twenty-fifth birthday.
My mother always said there is no rest for the wicked, but I’m tired now, and I think I’ll let these people talk among themselves while I lie down on this dirty floor, just long enough for that boy to replace the flat tire with a new one. Just long enough to catch my breath, to catch some of my old strength before Buck tries to steal it again.
When I returned to the
September prompt post to catch the link to include at the end of this story, I realized I wrote down the prompt a little wrong. Just a little. See what I mean?our prompt:
Your protagonist is a person in love who is also a ghost
Your story must include a family curse
Our “bonus” card said “flat tire”
Very moving story. Glad I read it (I read it out loud to myself which was very pleasant) - love the spare writing style too, and the way the past is constantly woven into the present moment. Really effective. Oh also, I think I picked up a typo? The sentence: "and it shook off a bit old metal each time you did" I think is missing an "of" as in "and it shook off a bit of old metal." :-)
This one has layers. I think I may need to read it a fourth time. I hope the puke-green fridge wasn't an autobiographical bit.