Jason Jones: Trailer Park Zombies

Fannie Mae was wearing one of her dad’s old army jackets. It was about ten times too big for her but it’s what she always wore whenever she could. He’d died a few years back in some freak accident at the plant. His arm got pulled into a machine. Apparently the safety inspector forgot to inspect the machine for safety cause the automatic shutoff didn’t automatically shut off and half his arm got yanked in before anybody noticed. By the time they got the machine shut off the only thing left was the glistening knob of his shoulder bone. He’d bled out right there on the floor.

According to my dad, anyway. He was the safety inspector.

She didn’t hold that against me, but Fannie Mae really didn’t like being around my parents. Not that she did before that, anyway. I didn’t either, obviously.

She tried to huddle up against me for warmth but every time she did I kept scooting my butt a couple inches away. If she kept this up I’d have to get up or I’d run out of porch. Barrett was late, of course. He was one of those people who had no sense of time. Tell him to be somewhere at 7 P.M. and he’d show up right on time at 8:30. Grinning that shameless grin and shrugging his shoulders and not even acknowledging his lateness. I’d long ago given up on yelling at him about it.

It was only a week to Halloween and usually we could count on it being warm for at least a little bit longer. But there was just something in the air that promised change. A taste of something on the back of my tongue. Change was coming and I could feel it my bones. The pregnant clouds made my head hurt with anticipation.

Barrett roared up in the convertible with the radio blaring rap and the top down. He skidded to a stop in front of us, spitting gravel in the air. You could hear it pinging off the metal side of the trailer. Fortunately they all missed me and Fannie Mae. He grinned and waved us to the car.

“Are you nuts?” I yelled at him. “Turn that shit down before someone calls the cops.”

“If it’s too loud you’re too old!”

I put my hand on the passenger door and yelled at him again. “Turn it off!”

“What?” He said, turning it down. “Come on, Duke, get into the spirit of things. It’s your 16 birthday, we’ve got a hot car, and it’s time to go celebrate.”

I leaned forward, “And if one of the old biddies around here gets upset by your music and calls the cops on you, so much for my birthday and my driving lessons, dumb ass. Come on. Please?”

He pointed at the nearby trailers. “You know as well as I do that if anyone is home in the Acres tonight they’re probably watching Deal Or No Deal and getting hammered or stoned. This is a trailer park, man.”

I shook my head in disgust at him while I held the door open for Fannie Mae to get in the backseat. I slid in the passenger seat and barely had time to put my seatbelt on before he took off with another squeal of the tires.

“Dude,” I said, “not everyone here is a stereotype. It’s entirely possible to have normal people living here.”

He looked at me with an eyebrow raised and said nothing. Even Fannie Mae giggled in the backseat. I raised my arms in defeat. “Okay, you got a point,” I said.

The next two hours were full of hooting, hollering and much screaming from the back seat. In other words it was a grand old time. Litchville, Kentucky, isn’t very big and isn’t really known for having tons of stuff to do. There was a movie theater two towns over and a bowling alley one town over. About the only thing we had going for us was a Wal-Mart on the outskirts of town. There were a bunch of people in the trailer park who thought that made us somewhat special. They were the largest employer we had and if it wasn’t for them and the factory Litchville would have just blown away in the dust a couple years ago.

The only thing we had in abundance was the bars and we were just chock full of those. Of course none of us were old enough to go near those so on weekends kids around town mostly just hung around in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart or went out into the woods to make out, booze it up, and party. There wasn’t that much else to do. None of the adults seemed to understand that the high rate of pregnancies might have something to do with that.

Regardless, Barrett zipped us up and down a bunch of back roads and even ventured onto the highway for a short bit. He’d only had his license for a month or so himself so he was as happy as the rest of us to go hotrodding everywhere. I think Fannie Mae was just happy to be included. Happy enough that when Barrett pulled out a bottle of his dad’s whiskey and passed it around she didn’t even complain too much. She even had a nip or two, though each swallow was followed by a coughing fit as the whiskey burned its way down her throat.

I didn’t want to have a drink myself. I’d seen enough of what the poison did to mom and dad (hell, the entire trailer park) that I didn’t want too much to do with it but Barrett finally convinced me that since it was my birthday I had to take a hit or two. Not to mention that if I didn’t he wouldn’t teach me how to drive the car.

He could be an ass at times. But I took a couple swigs. God, did that stuff burn. Though I managed not to cough like Fannie Mae. A man has to have his pride, if nothing else.

It took about two hours for me to convince him to take us over by the cemetery so that he could teach me. I’d never driven a stick before but I knew the basic mechanics. I’d only been behind the wheel of an automatic a few times and those were only when dad was feeling nice enough to let me drive down the Acres main road. Which wasn’t very often, truth be told.

So it was about ten o’clock by the time we got to the gravel lot behind the cemetery. There were only a few lights back there so it was pretty dark. It hadn’t started to rain yet but the clouds were still threatening to. The lot was a good makeout spot so I was glad to see there was only one other car parked there and it looked like it was empty.

Barrett turned the car off and looked at me, that shit-eating grin on his face. “You ready?”

“Yes, I’m ready, dammit. Can I drive now?” I started to get out of the car but he grabbed my wrist.

“Listen,” he said. “You need to be very careful. This is my dad’s car.”

“I understand -.”

He cut me off. “I’m serious. Driving a stick is a little tricky so I want you to pay attention before you get behind the wheel.”

“Okay,” I said impatiently.

He ran me through all the steps for how to start the car: clutch in, little bit of gas, car in first. How I needed to have the clutch in every time the car was stopped, or have the car in neutral. How to get the car moving I needed to let the clutch out just a little bit until it caught while pressing the gas just a little bit until it started rolling. How to tell when I needed to shift into a higher gear and how to quickly let the clutch in, shift, then let it out again. He said as I did it more and more I’d get used to the whole process and wouldn’t think about it anymore. Blah blah blah.

Finally I said, “Now?”

He grinned and said, “Oh, yeah.”

We quickly switched places and I just reveled for a minute behind the wheel. All this power was going to be controlled by me and I would be making us go. It was awesome.

It only took three tries for me to get the car going without killing it. Give me a break, it was hard to remember to leave the clutch down all the time. The car would just jerk and shudder to a stop, slamming us all into our seats. I finally told Fannie Mae that if she didn’t stop muttering she could go ahead and get out and walk home. It didn’t stop her running commentary but she did at least finally start doing it under her breath.