The cognac billboard was sunbleached, faded to the point that if you didn’t know the brand, you might think it was cologne. But this wasn’t a cologne neighborhood.
This was RefineryTown, not an official title, but that’s what it was called.
Dixon got a flat tire where 75 bent through RefineryTown like the bad stench had warped it.
He knew that most people who got a flat in RefineryTown would call for help while they wondered how to dry the urine in their pants, but Dixon had grown up here.
He didn’t want to go back, had no reason to go back, except his steel belt had sucked in a piece of scrap metal somewhere at the bottom of the bridge where the lights on the industrial smokestacks made the place look like Blade Runner at night.
When he was a kid the city put a bounty on rats, and every adult male and some of the women carried .22s in the backseat of their car under blankets.
The rush hour Fort Street traffic thinned because so many people were driving through the alleys trying to make a buck picking off rodents behind dumpsters, dumpsters that might have reeked of goulash if the smell from the refineries wasn’t so thick.
Dixon pulled the tire off and carried it, bouncing against his leg as he walked down Schaefer.
The Asian guy who spoke Hungarian was probably dead, but the lights were flooding the yard of the tire shop he once owned.
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