Once You Break a Knuckle Read Online Free PDF Page A

said next time.
    The kid knocked on the window of his own truck and Kelly opened it from inside. Dumb bastard only locked the driver’s door. Ray got into the Bullet and lowered the window so he could smoke. The Bullet couldn’t play music. Mud used to haul ass from site to site with a portable stereo plugged into the lighter and bang his head to tinny rock and roll.
    THE NEXT DAY , as he pulled up to the fourplex, there was a brown van parked in one of the driveways. The side of it read Excentuate Painting .
    Three years ago he’d found that same van, or at least one like it, at the mountain resort he’d been contracted to renovate. His company, Straightline Electric, had to refurbish the condos; the job was to swap minor things like yellowed faceplates and broken light fixtures, work nobody wants to do even though it pays well. He’d been on his way home when he saw an Excentuate van parked at one of the places he’d renovated. Excentuate Painting had been, and still was, owned by a guy named Caine – not the smartest or the nicest, but the kind of guy who knew when and where to buy the beers. Tracey had worked for him but quit when he hired a team of highschool kids to blast through the houses as fast as they could – a kind of fuck-it-we’ll-fix-it-later type approach.
    Then, at that resort three years ago, Tracey had come out of one of the condos. She saw him in his truck as he rolled by. She waved. He’d pulled over. Caine came out the same condo a second later.
    â€”Afternoon, Ray. How are things?
    Tracey sidled up to the truck and opened the door. She hopped in as though he’d come to give her a lift, as though everything were hunky-dory.
    â€”I might go work for him again. He fired the highschoolers.
    After that Ray started asking around. It turned out Tracey spent a lot of time with Caine, and everybody knew it, so one day Ray pretended to go to work and instead sat outside his house in Mud’s Dodge. Caine picked her up in that same van and Tracey welcomed him inside. Ray timedit and could conclude nothing. They came out with coffee mugs. Tracey insisted they were making coffee. Business, she said, always business. Then, on a Friday evening, while Ray drank beers on his porch and watched his dog play, Mud came tear-assing down the driveway, chewing gravel in that Dodge. He stepped down, decked out in his Carhartts and steeltoes, all tans and browns, looking like a man with a secret to tell.
    And now, that memory still fresh, Ray couldn’t go inside the fourplex. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. There had to be a way for him to escape without freaking the hell out of Kelly and Paul. But he couldn’t leave them alone, either, or that’d be Mud’s ass.
    â€”You alright, Ray?
    â€”Need a second. Twenty-six-ounce flu, you know.
    He didn’t think she bought it, but she gave a nod and stepped out of the truck and started unloading. Paul asked what was going on and Kelly shrugged. The kid lingered for a second; Ray could see him in the rearview. He wanted to bark at him to get to work but he didn’t need to. They unloaded everything and began without instructions. The painters were in the first condo. They’d be warm and doped out of their heads and wouldn’t wander out to the cold or into the unfinished basements. If he stuck to the ground and to the open air he’d avoid them. He couldn’t see Tracey today. He wasn’t ready for that.
    Kelly appeared at the window, but before she said anything, Ray opened the door. He grabbed a spool ofwire and his tool belt and trudged into the basement of the last condo, as far away as he could get. Kelly carried two electric drills and a fifty-foot extension cord.
    â€”We starting on this one?
    â€”I am. Finish up over there.
    â€”It’s not pulled yet.
    â€”Pull it. If you get in trouble ask me. If Paul finishes the feeds, show him