“It’s not dead.” Jamie kneels on the floor, scooping the remains of my Walkman while I sniffle into his Monster Jam bedsheets. He smashed it to pieces. Jamie hates punk rock.
He drags me out back, to the junkyard that his old man guards at night (when he’s half-sober). We dig a shallow grave and bury the Walkman.
We’re asleep head-to-toe when The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” starts blasting. I glance out the trailer’s window. A mud-covered jukebox wobbles around, its dome opening and closing in rhythm.
Jamie’s toe pokes my cheek. “See? They always come back.”
The skunk he shot out of boredom with his father’s Winchester .32 reincarnated into a spray paint can. The dog he ran over—speeding with no license, then sobbing all through my hopeless CPR attempts—now guards the junkyard, tinbox jaws clanking atop an ottoman body.
“What would you return as?” I ask Jamie one night. We’re too old to top-tail, but we do it anyway, for old times’ sake.
“Grave Digger.”
“The monster truck?”
“Yeah, man.” Jamie’s knuckles draw serpentine race tracks down my shin. “You can be the driver.”
That day came too soon.
“You never learned to drive for shit.” Crouched in a pile of rust and dirt, I sob as Tin-Tin sniffs at the empty urn.
“That’s why I got you,” says the tow truck beside me.
While Skunksy graffitis “MONSTER JAMie” across his bumper, I climb onto the flatbed. We fall asleep, head-to-tow.