Skeleton Crew

'—and she just about had a heart-attack —'

'You two can laugh,' Leo said morosely, and farted.

Bob blinked at him. 'Huh?'

'Laugh,' Leo said. 'I said you two can laugh. Neither of you has got a hole in your back.'

'Don't lissen to him,' Rocky said (a trifle uneasily). 'Kid's got a skinful.'

'You got a hole in your back?' Bob asked Leo.

'The laundry,' Leo said, smiling. 'We got these big washers, see? Only we call 'em wheels. They're laundry wheels. That's why we call 'em wheels. I load 'em, I pull 'em, I load'em again. Put the shit in dirty, take the shit out clean. That's what I do, and I do it with class.' He looked at Bob with insane confidence. 'Got a hole in my back from doing it, though.'

'Yeah?' Bob was looking at Leo with fascination. Rocky shifted uneasily.

'There's a hole in the roof,' Leo said. 'Right over the third wheel. They're round, see, so we call 'em wheels.

When it rains, the water comes down. Drop drop drop. Each drop hits me—whap!—in the back. Now I got a hole there. Like this.' He made a shallow curve with one hand. 'Wanna see?'

'He don't want to see any such deformity!' Rocky shouted. 'We're talkin about old times here and there ain't no effing hole in your back anyway!'

'I wanna see it,' Bob said.

'They're round so we call it the laundry,' Leo said.

Rocky smiled and clapped Leo on the shoulder. 'No more of this talk or you could be walking home, my good little buddy. Now why don't you hand me up my namesake if there's one left?' Leo peered down into the carton of beer, and after a while he handed up a can with Rocky Blier on it.

'Atta way to go!' Rocky said, cheerful again.

The entire case was gone an hour later, and Rocky sent Leo stumbling up the road to Pauline's Superette for more. Leo's eyes were ferret-red by this time, and his shirt had come untucked. He was trying with myopic concentration to get his Camels out of his rolled-up shirt sleeve. Bob was in the bathroom, urinating and singing the school song.

'Doan wanna walk up there,' Leo muttered.

'Yeah, but you're too fucking drunk to drive.' Leo walked in a drunken semicircle, still trying to coax his cigarettes out of his shirtsleeve. ' 'Z dark. And cold.'

'You wanna get a sticker on that car or not?' Rocky hissed at him. He had begun to see weird things at the edges of his vision. The most persistent was a huge bug wrapped in spider-silk in the far corner.

Leo looked at him with his scarlet eyes. 'Ain't my car,' he said with bogus cunning.

'And you'll never ride in it again, neither, if you don't go and get that beer,' Rocky said. He glanced fearfully at the dead bug in the corner. 'You just try me and see if I'm kidding.'

'Okay,' Leo whined. 'Okay, you don't have to get pissy about it.' He walked off the road twice on his way up to the corner and once on the way back. When he finally achieved the warmth and light of the garage again, both of them were singing the school song. Bob had managed, by hook or by crook, to get the Chrysler up on the lift. He was wandering around underneath it, peering at the rusty exhaust system.

'There's some holes in your stray' pipe,' he said.

'Ain no stray pipes under there,' Rocky said. They both found this spit-sprayingly funny.

'Beer's here!' Leo announced, put the case down, sat on a wheel rim, and fell immediately into a half- doze.

He had swallowed three himself on the way back to lighten the load.

Rocky handed Bob a beer and held one himself.

'Race? Just like ole times?'

'Sure,' Bob said. He smiled tightly. In his mind's eye he could see himself in the cockpit of a low-to-theground, streamlined Formula One racer, one hand resting cockily on the wheel as he waited for the drop of the flag, the other touching his lucky piece—the hood ornament from a '59 Mercury. He had forgotten Rocky's straight pipe and his blowsy wife with her transistorized hair curlers.

They opened their beers and chugged them. It was a dead heat; both dropped their cans to the cracked concrete and raised their middle fingers at the same time. Their belches echoed off the walls like rifle shots.

'Just like ole times,' Bob said, sounding forlorn. 'Nothing's just like ole times, Rocky.'

'I know it,' Rocky agreed. He struggled for a deep, luminous thought and found it. 'We're gettin older by the day, Stiffy.' Bob sighed and belched again. Leo farted in the corner and began to hum 'Get Off My Cloud.'

'Try again?' Rocky asked, handing Bob another beer.

'Mi' as well,' Bob said; 'mi' jus' as well, Rocky m'boy.' The case Leo had brought back was gone by midnight, and the new inspection was affixed on the left side of Rocky's windshield at a slightly crazy angle. Rocky had made out the pertinent information himself before slapping the sticker on, working carefully to copy over the numbers from the tattered and greasy registration he had finally found in the glove compartment. He had to work carefully, because he was seeing triple. Bob sat cross-legged on the floor like a yoga master, a half-empty can of I.C. in front of him. He was staring fixedly at nothing.

'Well, you sure saved my life, Bob,' Rocky said. He kicked Leo in the ribs to wake him up. Leo grunted and