The Scar Boys

Rip Off

Richie's dad--Alec, Mr. McGill, Mr Mac---was a retired mechanic. He was a gruff man with thick hair shining an unnatural black from Grecian Formula, and skin turned to leather from years spent absorbing car exhaust.  

Mr. Mac barely came to Richie's shoulder, but his hands were rough, scorched, and enormous. They were a source of wonder to me, large like a basketball player's, but nimble like a pianist's. He was the only one of my friends' parents who didn't seem uncomfortable with my deformities. He treated me like he treated any other kid, and I loved him for it.

"You're not gonna get much with thirteen hundred," he told us. Mr. Mac was on his hands and knees, his head under the sink, the sound of wrench twisting, scraping, banging metal. I can't remember a single time at Richie's house when Mr. Mac wasn't busy working on something.

"Yes, sir, we know," Richie said. "Except, we already bought the van. It's out front. We're hoping you'll take a look." 

The banging stopped and I could see Richie tense up. His relationship with his dad--a blend of respect, fear, and adoration---was so unlike the relationship I had with my own father that it was kind of inspiring.

Richie's mom died when Richie was still in grade school. Stage four ovarian cancer. They say it doesn't strike women who've given birth, but someone forgot to tell Richie's mom's ovaries.

Mrs. Mac---none of us had ever met her, but we all thought of her as Mrs. Mac anyway---woke up one morning with a pain in her back and a bloated feeling in her belly. Thinking she'd eaten something bad, of maybe tweaked a muscle, she did her best to muddle through the discomfort--going to work at the post office, picking Richie up after school, keeping the house clean, and resting when she could find time.

The hectic schedule of a suburban mom managed to hide, in very plain sight, her growing sense of fatigue. Richie's dad used his magical hands to massage her back, but that only seemed to make it worse, whatever it was.

Then one morning, Mrs. Mac woke up to find that the pain in her back had subsided, that it had faded to an echo of pain, there but not there. She figured she was on the mend.

Three days later Mr. Mac came home to find his wife in bed with chills, aches, and fever, barely able to acknowledge his presence. Four weeks later she was dead.

The pain in her back, Richie and his dad would later learn, was from a cantaloupe-sized, cancerous tumor pressing against her kidney. If Mrs. Mac had tended to it before it burst, the doctor explained, she might have had a chance.

Once that softball of poisoned pus ruptured, and the cancer infected her kidneys, liver, and pancreas, it was game over. They tried surgery but it was too late. Richie's mom died on the operating room table. 

There can never be a silver lining when something like that happens, but Mrs. Mac's absence did forge a bond between Richie and his dad that was unique among my friends, and I guess that counts for something.

"You did what?" Mr. Mac's head was still under the sink, and it was getting weird having a conversation with his butt.

"We bought a van. A Ford, sire. It's in the driveway."

"You bought it? A Ford?" Mr. Mac finally backed away from his work. "What the hell'dya do that for?"

"It was a great deal, Mr. Mac," Johnny chimed in. "Only 40,000 miles and the engine sounds real good." Mr. Mac looked at Johnny, then at the rest of us.

"Where's the girl?" We knew he meant Cheyenne.

"Not here, sir."

"Cars and shit are for boys," Cheyenne had said when we invited her along. "I'm going to treat myself to something 'girly' today." 

None of us knew what that meant, so when we caught up with her later we were surprised to find her crying and hiding her hands behind her back.

Johnny coaxed her arms free and we found ourselves staring at two-and-a-half-inch long, pink polished, buffed nails protruding from each finger--faux extensions of the real thing. 

"I can't even make a fist," Cheyenne sobbed. It took Richie and an acetylene torch forty-five minutes to remove them. How he didn't burn her hands to a crisp, I'll never know.

Mr. Mac sized us up and shook his head. "All right, let's go have a look."

In the McGill's driveway was a 1976 Ford Econoline van. It was powder blue, with two or three rust spots along the running boards. 

Inside were bucket seats finished in black vinyl, with a hard bench in the back that was flanked on each side by smallish windows. The spacious cargo area in the rear was more than enough room for the drums, guitars, amplifiers, and luggage we were going to bring on tour. 

We'd found the van through an ad in the Pennysaver. "Cargo van. Runs good. $1300." Simple, direct, and the right price. Johnny called the number, and before we knew it, we were forking over what was left of the bands fund to an older black woman in a fine blue dress.

She told us her husband "used the van for his flooring business, God rest his soul," and that "he never drove without it, as the good lord is my witness, more than thirty-five miles per hour." For some reason, we believed her.

I bit my cuticles---a nasty habit I'd picked up from a need to keep my fingernails short for the guitar---while Mr. Mac rooted around under the hood of the Econoline.

"Start it up," he called to Richie, who did as he was told. Listening to the van's engine at Richie's house, under the scrutiny of his father's expertise, it didn't sound quite as good as when we'd driven it home. It sounded. . .congested.

"All right, kill it." Mr. Mac emerged a minute later, wiping those enormous mitts on a filthy rag. "Well, it's got 140,000, not 40,000 miles. And the catalytic's gone."

"Shit," Richie said, and then quickly looked at his father. "Sorry, sir."

"What does that mean, 'catalytic's gone'?" Johnny asked.

"It means we won't pass inspection," Richie answered.

"How much to get it fixed?"

"More than we have." The color drained from Richie's face and the room grew graveyard still. 

Mr. Mac's frown softened and he rubbed his chin. He seemed to be staring at a blank spot in the sky. "I shouldn't do this," he said, "but there is another way."