Landscaping and Catering

Morning in the Neighborhood

Photo by Kael Bloom on Unsplash

Detroit History Tours continues to make it possible for me to post this week’s stories outside the paywall. They aren’t responsible for any content, I am. This is only loosely based in Detroit in my head, and could probably be any city in America.

***

Knuckles hit the water glass and it wobbled.

Scanlan scooched to a position to catch the glass,  to stop it from spilling, but it didn’t go over. 

He was on one knee on the old mattress, one eye open, looking at a water glass that was teetering back into place.

He shifted his weight and a muscle in his ribcage vetoed that idea.

Scanlan let his head flop back onto the pillow.

It smelled like smoke.

Eight years next month without a cigarette, no way it smelled like…

All the air smelled like smoke. 

Scanlan spun, muscle in his torso still raising strong objections to movement.

Straight to the kitchen, nothing. TV room was fine. If anything it smelled less like smoke.

He relaxed.

Not his place.

Back in the bedroom he raised the blinds with his left hand, because the muscle still seemed annoyed.

Guillermo’s Landscaping and Catering Truck. 

Scanlan looked at the clock.

9:10.

Why was the damn truck still here? He didn’t love that Guillermo’s truck blocked the view out his bedroom window, and he didn’t hate it either. Might deter break-ins overnight. 

But the truck was usually gone before 8:30 am.

The truck wasn’t on fire. The catering trailer wasn’t attached, the landscaping one was, and the mowers and blowers, chained to the trailer looked fine.

Scanlan wanted to see what was burning. It was either really close or really bad. The air in his apartment was beginning to look like the stage of that shitty British band Ellen liked.

He turned and went through the kitchen toward the backdoor.

The dehydration from last night started to kick in.

Scanlan began to turn and his ribs groaned.

His head shook.

What if it’s Moiseley’s place? What if Moiseley and his angelfish are trapped and…

Scanlan made it to the porch and realized he was barefoot.

What if it’s Kister’s place? Polish cocksucker still owes me two hundred and change, what two nineteen? Three years. Fuck him. Not running over there barefoot.

There was a pair of old gym shoes on Scanlan’s small porch. He used to wear them to walk Tesh…damn she was a good dog… in case he stepped in dogshit cleaning up dogshit.

He slipped the shoes on, didn’t bother tying them and jogged around the front of Guillermo’s truck.

Smoke was coming from the back of Rosemont Court. 

Looked like the first floor.

Muyton lived in the Rosemonts. First floor. Stalked Ellen after the divorce. Ellen showed  Scanlan some texts when they ran into each other at Tomboy Market, by the frozen pizza. She hated frozen pizza. She must have followed him down that aisle just to show her the texts from Muyton.

Fucking perv. My ribs hurt. That guy can burn to death for all I care.

No one was outside the Rosemonts.

Are they all at work?

There were no sirens.

Scanlan thought Not my job and turned to go back in the house, find a Vicodin to go with that glass of water.

Feels like my rib muscles are held there by one of them Batman hook things. Grappling. Yeah. This shit hurts.

Scanlan felt a panic pain.

That lady across from Muyton’s apartment. Daughter’s handicapped. She doesn’t work. Just takes care of…

Scanlan turned and sprinted toward the Rosemonts. One of the untied dogshit shoes flew off. He hesitated for a split second and kept running.

“Where’s the fucking fire department!” he yelled to no one,in the middle of the street.

He cut left across Varjo toward the back of  the Rosemonts, holding his ribs.

Could I lift that handicapped girl out the window? No way I could lift the mom. Fuck. It better be Muyton.

Robert Kenner Scanlan turned in the alley behind the Rosemont Court Apartments on the closest he would ever get to a full-on,top speed one-shoed sprint. 

Thirty Six eyes stared back at him.

He had almost run directly into a very recently extinguished 1986 Ford Aerostar.

Scanlan didn’t know it, but he was blushing underneath the red cheeks from his run.

He backed away from the van, walked around it as though he had known it was there all the time.

The van had a wheelchair liftgate. The paint was melted off and it was charred metal.

Looked like the fire had been extinguished with blankets and kitty litter.

Young guy, looked like Packer’s nephew, was closest.

“Wha happen?” Scanlan asked.

If someone had asked him that, Scanlan would have answered “Someone’s van caught fire, ya dumbass, what does it look like?”

The young guy said: 

“Muyton fell asleep smoking in that van.”

Scanlan started to laugh until his ribs demanded he stop.

He looked around at the crowd, some of whom were still staring at him. He knew most of the faces, the names, the stories.

“What an asshole,” Scanlan said.

“For real, Mr. Scanlan, he is. His girlfriend needed that van to transport her kid and her wheelchair.”

“Fuck was that idiot doing smoking in her van?’

Young guy shook his head and did this weird whistle. It was Packer’s nephew for sure. Packer did the same whistle.

“She kicked him out because she caught him smoking in the apartment.”

Scanlan balled a fist.

“Where’s Muyton? I’m gonna whup that loser’s ass.”

Some of the crowd looked over at Scanlan again.

“He went to the hospital,” Duty Free Willie said.

“Dumbfuck get burned?”

“Naw, Mr. Scanlan. My uncle took him to urgent care. Muyton said he pulled a muscle carrying kitty litter out of the basement.”

Scanlan spit between his teeth and tried to convince himself he didn’t need that Vicodin.

***