Chapter 7: Crushed Dreams
The morning air was cool, heavy with the promise of heat later. Essie fired up the old skid steer, the diesel engine hacking to life with a sound like grinding stones. She settled into the cracked vinyl seat, the machine’s familiar rumble a vibration up through her spine. For a few seconds, she just sat, looking at the graveyard.
Yard queens. That’s what Jed had called them. Dozens of cars, trucks, vans, surrendered to the kudzu and the rust. A ‘78 Trans Am, its eagle hood decal flaking away. A Ford Fairlane with a tree growing through the floorboard. A huddle of minivans, their sliding doors gaping like shocked mouths. Potentials, every one. Projects. Tomorrow’s work. The lie Jed told himself for thirty years.
“Not anymore,” Essie said to the empty yard. Her voice was flat, lost in the diesel thrum.
She worked the controls, the hydraulic arms whining as she swung the scrap grapple around. The steel claws, stained black with grease and age, bit into the rear quarter-panel of the Trans Am. Metal screamed in protest. She lifted, the car’s unsecured weight making the skid steer lurch. She dumped it into the feed chute of the car crusher, a massive, yellow-painted hulk Jed had won in a poker game a decade back and never used.
She hit the lever. The crusher’s chamber closed with a deafining, hydraulic sigh. More grinding, a catastrophic crunch of glass and sheet metal and sixty years of history. When it retracted, what tumbled out onto the growing pile wasn’t a car. It was a dense, misshapen brick of compacted metal, roughly the size of a washing machine. Weeping fluids darkened the dirt beneath it.
One after another. She worked methodically, a calm, destructive rhythm. The Fairlane. The minivans. A Civic with a rainbow bumper sticker. A Corvette with a shattered T-top. Each one fed into the maw, each one emerged anonymized, rendered down to its base value as scrap. The air filled with the smell of crushed interior plastics and released gasoline. Dust coated her skin, her hair, the inside of her nostrils.
She saved three. The ‘67 Mustang fastback, a skeleton but with a good frame. The ‘49 Chevy pickup, all curving fenders and promise. The BMW 2002, the one Erin had just signed off on. These she nudged with the grapple, her touch almost gentle, pushing them into a protective huddle near the garage. Jed’s ghosts. The ones he’d actually laid hands on, talked to, dreamed over. She couldn’t kill them. Not yet.
The sun arced overhead, blistering. Sweat traced lines through the grime on her neck. She worked without a break, the physicality of it a relief. There was no thinking here, just grabbing, lifting, crushing. An extermination. By the time the sky bled into oranges and purples, the yard was a scarred field of bare dirt and oil stains, punctuated by a stack of twenty-three metal bricks. The graveyard was gone. The weight of all those deferred dreams felt… lighter. Or at least, contained.
She killed the skid steer’s engine. The sudden silence was a ringing pressure in her ears. Dusk settled, the first fireflies blinking over the crushed remains.
A shower. She needed a shower.
The trailer’s bathroom was a closet of cracked linoleum and mildew-speckled caulk. She stripped off the filthy coveralls, letting them fall in a heap. The water, when it came, was lukewarm at best, sputtering from the ancient showerhead. She scrubbed with a bar of generic yellow soap, watching the water at her feet turn gray, then brown.
She stepped out, reaching for the towel hanging on the back of the door. It was stiff, rough, like cardboard. It scraped against her skin. How’d she let things get like this? Jed had. Jed had lived with stiff towels and lukewarm water and the slow, grinding decay of everything. He’d accepted it. Essie balled the towel up and threw it into the corner. It hit the wall with a dull thump.
She stood naked before the dirty bathroom mirror, the glass clouded with age and splattered water. She wiped a clear circle with the heel of her hand.
There she was. Smudges of dirt still clung to her hairline. A long smear of grease decorated one perfect, hairless thigh. But the body beneath the grime… it still stopped her. The breasts were a miracle she was getting used to, their weight and curve. But the stomach. That flat plane, the subtle, defined ridges of muscle tightening as she breathed. Abs. Jed hadn’t seen his own feet in twenty years, let alone possessed a defined abdominal muscle. She flexed, watching the cords of muscle tense and roll under the flawless, peachy skin.
Goddamn.
She half-smiled, a little bitterly. Still no Wolverine claws. Just… this. This impossible vessel.
Her gaze drifted to the small plastic bag on the sink counter, from her Mega-Low Mart trip. She ripped it open and pulled out the scrunchy. It was a spiral of silver and holographic threads, sparkly, undeniably girly. The kind of thing Jed would have scoffed at. Too fussy. No function. Not enough hair to hold. But Essie liked it. It caught the weak light from the bare bulb and threw it back in tiny, brilliant spears.
She gathered her wet hair, heavy and dark, and pulled it back. The scrunchy held it secure in a tight, high ponytail. It felt… correct. A small, deliberate choice. Hers.
ice. Hers.
Steam curled off her shoulders in the damp trailer air. She padded into the main room, leaving wet footprints on the linoleum, and grabbed the Mega-Low Mart bag. She shook out the contents onto the narrow bed: a pair of boot-cut jeans with rhinestones on the pockets, a lavender t-shirt with a faded graphic of a cartoon owl, and a pack of cotton panties.
She held the jeans up. They were a sad, washed-out blue. The rhinestones were plastic, already chipped. She pulled them on anyway. The fabric was stiff, forgiving in a way that suggested elastic and faded dreams. The shirt was worse. Soft from too many washes, the owl smiling blankly. She caught her reflection in the dark window glass.
The woman staring back was a stranger dressed for a PTA meeting in a town she’d never visited. The outfit screamed ‘single mom’. It was a look that would have rustled Jed’s naughty bits on a lonely night, all practical and touchable. But she wasn’t looking to entice Jed. Jed was gone. She was thinking of sharp red hair and a kiss that tasted like expensive coffee and ambition. Jez would be lookin’ for something more… more wanton, more… interesting.
“Nope.” The word was final in the quiet trailer.
She shimmied out of the jeans, the cheap rhinestones scraping her hips. She tossed the jeans and the owl shirt back into the bag. She kept the panties, a simple black cotton, and put them on. They sat high on her hips, hugging the new curves there. Better.
Her eyes scanned the cramped space, landing on a pile of clean-ish work clothes folded on a crate. Luke from WorkWear had tossed in a few extras for free. She dug through and pulled out a shirt. It was charcoal gray, a sturdy poly-cotton blend. Over the left breast, ‘Essie’ was embroidered in a swift, red cursive. It was a real stitch job, not a print. Professional.
She tugged on the too-tight cut-offs she’d rescued from the lost-and-found bins at the garage—denim so threadbare it was nearly gossamer, the frayed white threads brushing mid-thigh. Then she pulled on the work shirt. The auto-tailor at the store had done its best, but it was a fight. The buttons over her chest pulled, turning slightly sideways against the tension. The fabric strained. It was almost right, but it felt constrained, like a uniform.
She looked at the ghost of herself in the window again, then at the mental image of those old, sun-bleached posters that had hung in the garage bay: women leaning over engines, oil cans held like trophies, their shirts always strategically undone. A slow smile spread across her face.
Her fingers went to the buttons. One. Two. Three. She undid them down to her sternum. She grabbed the two shirt tails, pulled them taut, and tied them in a firm knot just under her breasts. The neckline fell open in a deep V. The knotted fabric cinched her waist, lifting and framing her chest, putting everything on display. The embroidered name sat proudly over her heart.
She chuckled, a low, private sound. It was stupid. It was obvious. It was perfect.
The last decision was boots or flip-flops. Her heavy work boots stood by the door, crusted with mud. A pair of cheap, black rubber flip-flops were kicked under the bed. She slid her feet into the flip-flops. The plastic strap settled between her toes. She took a few steps, the casual slap-slap of the soles loud in the quiet. Boots were armor. This was an invitation. If Jez wanted a statement, this ought to give it to her.
She gave her reflection a final, appraising look. The woman in the glass was a collision of intentions: the official name, the industrial fabric, repurposed into a flag of pure availability. It was a costume, but it felt more honest than the owl shirt ever could. She grabbed her keys from the hook by the door, the metal cool in her hand.
The night outside was complete now, velvet dark and humming with insects. She walked toward her truck, the flip-flops slapping a steady rhythm on the packed earth, the knot of her shirt tight against her ribs.