'Show me some cash. Then we'll get serious.' Tyson turned back to the grinder.
Lewis glanced around again, spotting nothing of interest. The mechanic might be a grouch but there was none of the evasion expected of a thief. Lewis turned to go, thinking he might try Abby next and worrying she'd be more annoyed than helpful.
He was no investigator. This entire fiasco was a waste of time…
'Tyson!'
Rod Cameron was stalking into the garage toward both of them, looking sleepless and angry.
'Jesus fuck…' The mechanic turned, stiffening. The mechanic's grip on the blade tightened and Lewis could see the knuckles whitening. He looked at Lewis accusingly, as if he'd led the station manager here, and Lewis shook his head in denial. What the hell was this about?
Cameron strode up and stopped, rocking slightly on his ankles, his mood stormy. 'What the hell are you doing here?' he asked Lewis.
'Talking with Buck while my computer defrags.' He raised his eyebrows, trying to prod Cameron's memory. The investigation.
'Oh.' He looked at Lewis curiously and Lewis shrugged again. Nothing. 'Well, go poke around somewhere else, Lewis. I need to have it out with Tyson.' The manager's eyes darted back to the mechanic. He was gathering himself for a fight.
'Sure.' Lewis took a step back.
'You don't have to leave, fingie,' Tyson said quietly. 'No secrets here.'
Lewis hesitated. He was curious. Cameron glanced at him, waiting for him to go, but Lewis thought Tyson might let something useful slip. 'Maybe I can help.'
Cameron blinked. It might help to have a witness. 'Okay. No secrets.' He turned to Tyson. 'What're you doing, Buck?'
Tyson looked sourly at his boss. 'Stuff.'
'You get this Spryte fixed?'
'The machine's a piece of shit.'
'We need it anyway.'
'It's fucking dangerous if it breaks down.'
'It's fucking all we've got. And I thought you were a good mechanic.'
Tyson looked from Cameron to Lewis, wondering how belligerent he could afford to be, and spat, deliberately, the spittle hitting the floor. 'I'm working on it.'
Cameron looked at the big man's fist. 'What's that, then?'
Tyson looked at the metal in his hand with apparent surprise and then held it up, the sharpness glinting in the light. 'Piston rod,' he said, deadpan.
Cameron looked at the hoisted knife and then back at Tyson. 'I looked at the water budget this morning. Do you know the daily ration is off fifty gallons?'
'Why no, boss, I don't.'
'It's because of your damn showers, isn't it?'
'Beats me.'
'I do. I've been timing you.'
'Then you've got more time than I do.'
'You're using as much water as six other people!'
'So melt some more.'
'You know the Rodriguez Well is slow!'
'Two months ago you were complaining I was too dirty.'
'That's because you stank every time you came to meals! You'd clear an entire table, like some goddamn wino! Are you insane, or what?'
'Don't you wish you'd sent me home?' Tyson smiled.
'You know I couldn't find a replacement, you goddamn butthead!'
Tyson pointed at Lewis. 'Sparco did. You could, too. There's still time to get a plane in here, maybe. For an emergency. I feel appendicitis coming on.'
'I'm warning you, Buck…'
'Because I wish you'd send me home.' The mechanic tossed the knife aside onto the metal workbench, where it rang like a bell. He raised his big hands. 'You want to compare hands, Rod?'
'Don't you threaten me.'
'You want to compare those soft, white, thin-fingered paws of yours, which hardly ever get out of your warm fucking office, with mine, which get so hard I gotta soak 'em in Vaseline and wear gloves to bed? You want to spend a day under this Spryte or the Cats, where the metal's either so hot from the stinking engine, spewing carbon monoxide, that I burn my hands, or so cold that I burn 'em again? You want to work on shit so brittle that it shatters like glass, and string extension cords so stiff they snap like a twig?' He glowered as he spoke, like a looming thunderhead. 'Don't talk to me about your fucking precious water! It's the only damn thing keeping me sane!' His volume had grown to a roar.
Cameron instinctively stepped backward. The big man was at the barest edge of control. The station manager was sputtering. 'I've about had it with you.'
'No, you haven't, you ineffectual snot!' The mechanic seemed to expand with frustrated rage, like an inflating balloon. He filled the garage, dark and hairy, and Lewis felt nervous, too. Tyson was losing it. 'You haven't had it with me for another eight, fucked-up, gloriously boring months! You can't get away from me, and I can't get away from you, and so you can take your lunatic work calendar and cram it like a suppository up your soft supervisory ass!' The mechanic waited defiantly for a response, quivering with rage, and yet there was none, Cameron momentarily speechless at this outright defiance. The station manager had gone rigid. Then Tyson turned arrogantly back to the workbench, picking up the knife.
'That's outright insubordination!' Cameron finally managed.
'You need me, I'll be in the shower.'
Cameron looked at the mechanic's back with a mixture of disbelief and hatred. 'This time you've gone too far,' he choked, trembling with outrage.
'So fire me.'
'I'm writing you up in my e-mail report.'
Tyson laughed. Cameron looked bitterly at Lewis, who was embarrassed at this exchange. The manager knew he couldn't let this one go. Couldn't risk losing control. Couldn't bear the humiliation.
'This time, Buck Tyson, you're toast.'
We Decide as a Group
Kids come out of their childhood thinking they'll be taken care of. Kids show up in college with this sorry-ass misapprehension of helplessness glued between their ears like slow-setting concrete, as hapless as clams, as dim as donkeys. Fix me. Be fair.
Fat Boy had been carried his whole life, I'm sure of it. Instead of being forced to get fit to survive, he'd always found a place on the team, always convinced the others to wait up, always whined his way into some kind of second-class acceptance. Fat Boy always got bailed out. And now he needed to be bailed out by me.
Who knows why the hell he unroped himself? To rest, to pee, to make the rest of us wait- what does it matter? He'd insisted on joining the group and was now slowing the group he'd joined, defining our chain by its weakest link. The end of his rope lay trailing on the snow like a foolish scribble. Somewhere he'd unleashed himself and was gone.
I looked at the summit, pink and swollen in the dawn light. I looked at the clouds to the west, which were beginning to mound into a grayish wall. If he cost us too many minutes, he'd cost all of us the climb. Unacceptable.
I wanted to take my team and Kressler's team up to the top. Let Fleming find him. He'd lost him. Why ruin it for everyone? Why ruin it for me? But Kressler sided with his friend and they insisted the entire class stay together. So down the tracks we went, the other kids grumbling and cursing, looking for the point where our chubby little moron had decided to wander off by himself, and myself so potentially eruptive that I knew better than to say anything. I half hoped Fat Boy had already found a crevasse and was gone for the next ten thousand years, frozen
