Salvation via the salvage yard

[stoneange]

Pulling into the auto salvage yard, I saw some kind of mixed mutt staring down from on top of the trailer's tin roof.

"I keep 'em up there so he don't get hit by a car." The salvage man said, and then, "Do ya wanna beer?"

I declined and we climbed into his broken down little pickup, tearing down the slender dirt road between the stacks of mangled autos.

Up on a rusted metal pole there was a miniature coffin and head stone "We buy dead cars!" it proclaimed, and I started seeing the ghosts of former owners in every car we passed.

How did this one wreck?
Did anyone die?
Was it a lover on his way to marry?
Or the long awaited baby they had tried for so long to have?
Maybe it was grandma and everyone at the funeral said, "It's really for the better, the cancer was eating her up anyway."

I looked down and to see the top of a Playboy sticking out from under the seat and I wondered if this guy beats off in the truck, and I tried not to think about it.

We found the part my dying Mazda needed and Barry the check out man checked me out and he wasn't wearing a shirt and his beer was resting comfortably on a Buddha belly.

On the way home I got behind a tiny car.
The bumper stickers said,
"Nobody knows, but I'm really Elvis." and "TCB",
and in her side mirror I could see the woman with thin mousy brown hair, the kind of girl who just doesn't get asked out very often and falls asleep every night with a worn pillow between her legs and a picture of David Cassidy, and I'll be damned...
if she didn't have a genuine pair of gold Elvis wrap-around glasses.

On the corner, two blocks from my house, I saw an old man standing perfectly still.
He was wearing a broken cowboy hat and something like uniform, I'm sure he pieced it together at the Thrift Way, and his pointed beard made him look exactly like a shabby General Custer, waiting for his ride to go Stand.
He never looked left or right, just straight on, until I passed by and I swear he looked me right in the eye, his face saying plainly, "Like I could give a shit what a cheap piece of white bread like you could think."

And I sit here wondering what I look like….

[lizzytysh]

An amazing piece is all I can say at this moment. The shortest of short stories. Now, I have to leave. Thanks for the curious vibrancy you packed into this piece of writing, stoneange. I've had fleeting moments of thought regarding the lives that inhabited these cars; yet, they were fleeting and not nearly so detailed. I'm kinda surprized at that, too, when I think about, just knowing how I am... and that's one [but only one] of the reasons I really enjoyed this.


~ Lizzy

[JiminyC]

Beautiful Stoneange, I will now never travel anywhere again without wondering where men beat off, for that I am not going to thank you, for everything else, thank you.

Wondered if you'd actually experienced a funeral service where someone actually said that, had the feeling it was true which is what makes it work, terrible.

I'll think about this a long time, I am sure of it. Beats my prose hands down. Thanks again,
James.

[stoneange]

You are far too kind and it warms my heart. Thank you!