Salvage Rachel Michele Lopez Hohenshell Iowa State University

Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Graduate Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2011 Salvage Rachel Michele Lopez Hohenshell Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, and the Rhetoric and Composition Commons Recommended Citation Lopez Hohenshell, Rachel Michele, "Salvage" (2011). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 12156. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/12156 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Salvage by Rachel Lopez Hohenshell A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Major: Creative Writing and Environment Program of Study Committee: Dean Bakopoulos, Major Professor Barbara Ching Mary Swander Kimberly Elman Zarecor Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2011 Copyright © Rachel Lopez Hohenshell, 2011. All rights reserved. Rachel Lopez Hohenshell Page 1 Salvage Zuck asked Old Walt to lock up the garage and tromped in oil-stained boots through the ashen evening air, across the dry dirt and through the gut-rot smell of the meat packing plant just east of the salvage yard that now belonged to him. No wind to lift that east-side funk. It had become, through the years, part of his skin. Sometimes, years ago, his mother had cried after a day at the yard, her head bent into the kitchen sink with six different bottles of drugstore toilet water lined alongside it. She could rinse the contents of every one through her dark curls—until her hair smelled of Lilies of the Valley, White Shoulders, Shalimar, and who knew what else—she swore the stink stayed on her scalp. It would probably kill her to know that Zuck thought of her whenever the smell nudged at him. Mostly he pretended the stink didn't exist, like people he preferred not to remember, like his mother: they evaporated. Wished he evaporate his sister. But Jenny was always with him, her small, cold arms around his neck. Her white bones in a box. The wide blue eyes that were forever sleeping but wide open, trained on Zuck. The yard would have been hers too. Traffic grumbled across the viaduct that stretched over the yard and toward the golden dome of capital building, which he could just barely see from strategic locations around the yard; he'd mapped them out as a kid. Now those posts were useful only to see what was coming. Something was coming. The last light glinted over a thousand glass and metal surfaces of the yard, angles stretching out to the horizon. A mosaic of junk. Fourteen acres of ripped steel and smashed glass and cancerous rust that spread across entire ruined bodies. When the air vibrated just right, all Harmon Zucker Junior could see was possibility. Most of the time the snake that was his dread coiled around his body, slithered up his spine, and wrapped its scaly skin around his shoulders. He should shake it off. He 2 knew this. It was over. The suspicion, the cool inertia he felt when the fear got hold of him, should have shattered with the glass pipe he dropped on the cement floor the day they finally got him. But like Jenny, it was always there. Something still crept toward him. Today, though, the air vibrated just right. Today, after a day‘s work in the garage, he was strong, was a straight-up man, the hustle was behind him. He flexed his arms and the burn was pleasant. He was Harmon Zucker Junior. He knew how to build a machine that could drive down the road, or over an obstacle, or through a wall. He knew how to smooth the skin of a crumpled el Camino or Buick Regal or Ford F150 to look like it was birthed fresh from assembly the day before. He knew, like he knew how to destroy things, how to fix them. Inside the trailer he scuffed off his boots and at the kitchen sink he scrubbed his hands with steel wool until they stung red. They never got clean enough at the garage sink, even with the degreaser he rubbed on and slathered and wrung around and around on his hands. Satisfied at his pink-clean fingers, he perched on the edge of the nubby old couch, elbows on knees, clutched the remote and punched at the buttons. There had to be a game show or a cop drama but all he found was news, and other people's bad news was old news to him. Wasn't nothing he hadn't done or seen. In every scenario he saw himself, the other self. The one he'd been. The one he wouldn‘t be now. He turned it down, and took the small book from the table. It is a common misconception that pigeons are dirty animals; in fact cleanliness is crucial the bird's health, and so the care and keeping of their food area is of great importance. Because pigeons drink by suction, it is important that the water bowl you provide is at least 2-1/2 inches deep, which will allow the bird to immerse its beak in the bowl. The book went on to tell him that pigeons will eat almost any kind of seed, but that a mixed diet of corn and 2 3 soybeans was ideal, and their food and water must be kept separately from their bedding, for optimum cleanliness. Jenny had loved birds, had chased them, clapping her hands as they flapped and squawked and lifted away from her. She would chase them into the street, Zuck or his mother screaming after her, running to bring her back. But these birds would come back to you. These birds did not fly off in fear of human hands. He put the book down. A steak and some buttered green beans and some applesauce sounded good for dinner. Meal planning was still a pleasure after the monochromatic gruel he'd slopped down for dinner over the last three years. Now he would sometimes think a week in advance what kind of breakfasts and dinners and lunches he‘d like to have, what he would buy at the brand-new Aldi store that had opened while he‘d been inside. Sometimes he'd make stew. Haagen Dazs hadn‘t been around when he went in; now he kept a half-dozen little cartons of the sweet stuff stacked up in the freezer. Vanilla shouldn‘t have been his favorite—he wasn‘t a vanilla-type man. But it was. It was perfect. He had a stack of porn videos in the TV cabinet, which occasionally interested him. He‘d push one in the VCR after dinner, smooth his dark moustache with his hand and suck at his teeth. He‘d keep the volume off so he didn‘t have to hear the stupid chatter, but sometimes he chuckled at them anyway, like watching silent cartoons. Other times he just unbuttoned his jeans and sat back. Sometime he fell asleep there on the old couch, which irritated him. He was fond of his queen-size waterbed, which he‘d bought right off the furniture store showroom when he made the first sale at the yard. He would deck out the whole rest of the trailer 3 4 with brand-new furniture, he was thinking slick black lacquer, just as soon as he could buy the lift. Just as soon as he could get the units, and the money, moving a little faster. Tonight he ate his dinner and watched a rerun of Hardcastle & McCormick and lifted 250 on the press he‘d set up in the laundry alcove by the back door. He pushed until he could lift no more, arms numb. Eyes closed. Breathing. The night would end, and it would end fine. But the pressure behind his eyes was coming. He squeezed them tighter, as if his clenched lids could protect him but here it came. It happened sometimes when he lifted, like the good chemicals that crackled to life in his body set off something sinister in his nervous system and electrocuted him with the muscle-memory of the high which would ping and vibrate in his skull, the dull shriek ringing his ears, a far-off train whistle, an endless gash in the night. He panted. From the workout or the jones, he did not know. Mexican beans jumped in his arms and legs and neck. He wished for the millionth time that he still smoked, then remembered how much cigarettes made him want to get high, too. He could never get high again. This idea, this resolution, was a wild bull that surged through him, a scream in his sleep, a gasp now. Again. Never. Again. He had to stop thinking of it like that, had to get the one day at a time through his head, slow his body to a minute-by-minute clock, quiet the ache. He jumped from the bench and walked in circles around the couch and coffee table, then turned up the TV to drown out the noise in his head and wandered into the kitchen, which formed a shallow U on the south end of the trailer. Three neat stacks of papers lay at the end that faced the door, and on the floor beside his chair were several stacks of files.

Load more