Les Story

by Charles Mines.

Les was fat with crooked eyes and messed-up teeth. And he told me he’d died at age twelve. Died in a bike accident, revived, died again, and revived once more at the hospital. He was grown, but the trauma from the accident made it so I had to drive. “Take me to Waffle House,” he’d say. “Four more jobs before we go home.” He tried to monitor my every move too. Like when I took a call or got lunch. And he hated everyone: Black people, runners, bikers, fast-food workers, women.

Les called out so much, he needed hours when he worked. One time, I settled with him to do one more and he pestered me to take him home. The job was pulling a light at a fountain near a pool. It was some executive’s house and the fountain sunk like a torture pit. Curtis and Darrell were at the bottom, and the light hung about fifteen feet out of its socket. The rest of the chord snaked under the pool, up and around pipes, to a power source on the other side. By pulling it, we had to pull from the far side to force the light flush with the fountain.

Mr. Executive brought his wife and mother-in-law to watch.

After Curtis got the gunk out the conduit, I walked past Mr. Executive and his family to where I needed to pull. I gripped the cord at its base with pliers while Darrell stood behind me tugging with all his might. We got in the rhythm of grip, pull, yank—which exhausted us but got the light to set.

I drove Les home that day out of Buckhead and through the industrial parts of Smyrna. Les said what I used weren’t pliers but pipe grips. And after the long day, heat poured into the truck. We waited in traffic and time seemed irrelevant.

Our biggest client was a veteran quarterback. His pool was one of the goddamn worst things ever built. It was smaller than you’d expect, and the bottom was black so you never saw a thing. The yard flooded which brought shit and mud in the pool. And his kids shit in the pool all the time.

Les was always saying we needed to trade him. His favorite thing to do was play a video of him mic’d up during a game. He gets sacked and says, “He really rang my bell,” and Les would laugh like crazy every time.

One Saturday, Mrs. Quarterback called because the kids shit in the pool. There’s never much to do when this happens. Shit is small, and the pool’s how many gallons? All we can do is sprinkle chlorine and put on a performance. I remember getting there and the quarterback standing on the balcony. He saw us and immediately went in.

While we cleaned the pool, I thought about the videos Les watched. The quarterback took a lot of abuse during those games. The mic got all the cracking of the helmets, and the camera never panned away when he went down.

Soon after that Saturday, Les went on week after week that his brother got arrested for threatening to kill his wife. On and on that “that bitch just wanted money” and the brother “probably just screamed at her.” When he wasn’t bitching, he was missing work because he had to go to court with his mom. I spent fourteen-hour days listening to this shit. Apparently his brother’s cell was overcrowded and they weren’t doing anything because COVID.

His brother was a long-haul trucker and missing work as well. I never thought he was innocent. Les was awful and his mom was too. I dealt with her when I dropped him off. She was in the worst health and her yard was a mess. Because of her, Les always called out. Always something life or death: their deposit got stolen, she had chest pains, she was in court.

We had just cleaned the curator’s pool when Les asked if I’d do him a favor. His brother’s big rig was about to get towed. He couldn’t move it, and his mom wasn’t up for it either. I don’t know why but I told him I would. I met him Sunday morning in the Food Depot parking lot not far from where we got pool supplies. Les was in the passenger seat blasting the AC. He nodded, and I adjusted the mirrors and got the thing going. I pulled onto Dallas Highway and the sky was purple. It felt amazing in the big seat.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charles Mines is a writer based in Atlanta, GA. His fiction has appeared previously in 3:AM Magazine.