CHAPTER SIX
It was the middle of June and still chilly. The last of the snow had finally melted and little green shoots of grass were tentatively poking their heads out of the newly thawed North Dakota dirt, as if sniffing the air to make sure the temperature had risen to the point of survival. The large man was bent over a tire, snapping it to the rim. He’d finish and put the tire on the car, tightening the lug nuts and handing the keys to the lady sitting in the small waiting room.
He was glad to see spring. The frigid hours in the unheated garage with only a small electric space heater to break the grip of the freezing air were over for a few months. He was tired, his back starting to bother him already, months before his twenty-third birthday. What would he be like at fifty? Old? Like his dad, a man wasting away in this little garage in small town America, a forgotten village in a corner of the upper Midwest.
He finished the tire, went inside and took a credit card from the woman who’d taught him in fifth grade over at the town elementary school. They chatted a bit, mostly about other children with whom he’d grown up. Some had gone off to college or the military, and others had stayed in the dismal little town, eking out a living farming or working construction, what little there was of it, or carrying a badge, working for the local sheriff.
He’d always known that he wasn’t college material. He just didn’t have the head for it. He’d learned the mechanics trade at the knee of his father who’d run this one-man garage since he’d returned home from military service. It was now a two-man operation, with the old man working as hard and as long as the son. The business provided a modicum of income, enough to keep his mom and dad in food and shelter and now to pay a salary to the son. The boy had worked in the garage part-time since he could remember, and on the day he graduated from high school, he became a full-time employee.
The young man, whose name was Marcus, was looking forward to the evening. He’d been dating one of the Osburn girls for several months, the younger one named Riley, and today was her twenty-first birthday. On their last date the unspoken promise had been made, that on the day she turned twenty-one she would offer him her virginity.
He’d taken off early the day before and driven down to Minot, the nearest town with a jewelry store. He’d bought his girl a ring with a small diamond, bargaining with the owner and striking a deal that he could afford, agreeing to make weekly payments directly to the store. It was not an obligation he assumed lightly, and he would make those payments even if he had to forego food.
Marcus had been raised by parents who valued honesty and hard work and he’d learned the lessons they taught. Like his father, he was an honorable man and would pay the jeweler every penny owed.
The young man went to the bathroom and used something called Goop to clean the grease and dirt from his hands. His nails were cracked and jagged and grease seemed to accumulate under them with a vigor that even Goop couldn’t overcome. He shook his head. Riley didn’t mind. She had told him once that the grease was the mark of honest work, and a man couldn’t do much better than that. He smiled at the thought of her, and of the promise the night would bring.
The teacher with the bad tire was the last customer of the day. Marcus closed up the shop and walked the two blocks to the house he shared with his parents. They liked Riley and would be happy to know they were to be married. He knew he’d have to find another place to live. His meager salary from the shop would supplement Riley’s salary from the town’s only restaurant where she waited tables. They could make it, but would have to put off babies for a few years.
Spring days are long in the northern latitudes and the sun wouldn’t set until nine thirty. He showered, shaved, and dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a plaid long-sleeve shirt. The temperature was in the low sixties and would drop further when the sun went down. He pulled a worn wind-breaker over the shirt, slipped into his gym shoes, and walked toward the house where his girl and their friends waited.
It was only later, when Marcus didn’t show for the party, that Riley and her brother went looking for him. They followed the route along which he would have walked on the way to Riley’s parents’ house. And it was there, in the gathering dusk of a cool spring evening in the far north of America, in a ditch beside the road, that they found his lifeless body. The hard-working, honorable young man who loved a girl named Riley had been shot through the head.