Page 3 of Truck

TRUCK

Honking the horn outside Rum’s house, I waited only a minute before the door to the small house opened, and Rum walked out, locked the door, and quickly headed towards the truck.

“Good morning, Truck,” Rum quickly says as he jumps into the vehicle.

“Morning, Rum. Are you ready for a day of paperwork, organization, and whatever else?” I ask with a hint of here we go.

“I’m ready. It took me a while last night to come to terms with what Cilla said at the diner. But you know, if the love of my life is watching and wanting me to live well, then that’s what I’m going to do.” Rubbing his hands together, he turns his head to look at me. “I’ll make sure you have all the information you need. I’m going to teach you how to be a manager of that place, and a damn good one.”

Taking my eyes off the road for a moment, I look at Rum, who is now looking forward, but has a look of determination on his face. “Okay, Rum. Let’s do it.”

Opening the door and stepping inside the building, I feel like turning and walking away. Rum slaps his hand onto my shoulder and squeezes. “First things first. Let’s get the exterminator called in. Yesterday you removed a lot of stuff from the office and the store. The dumpsters come this morning, and if you can get them to help you toss all that stuff outside into them, they could take them away too.” Rum walks toward the office and I follow a step behind.

I run my hand over my bald head and think I’m lucky I don’t have hair because it would probably have fallen out with the stress of this place.

I watch as Rum grabs a box from one corner of the room and literally scoops every piece of paper he can find into it. Shoving the box into my chest as he smirks.

“That pile is for burning. With what we burned yesterday and this, I reckon we have finished. Now, let’s see about cleaning this office and setting it up so we can get some actual work done,” Rum states as he takes control of what we are doing.

It doesn’t take me long to burn the last of the paperwork we had not gotten to yesterday. As I’m about to enter the front of the building, I look up when Ghost pulls into the gas station.

Great, now we can move all this stuff from where I dumped it. But again, it’s going to take a while. It doesn’t take long for Ghost to get the dumpster dropped and ready for me to fill it.

“Is all that going in, Truck?” Ghost asks as I throw the first armload into the dumpster.

“Yeah, all of it. There will probably be more, but this is the start of what I’ve emptied from the convenience store area.”

Ghost nods and starts to help, all the while talking about one thing or another. “Hey, did you see Cilla and Finger following Tracker around last night? He’s playing silly games with them two, and they are suckers because they can’t see it. Tracker is going to be a fantastic godfather to Ayla, but he’ll be teaching her shit that they don’t want her to be taught I can bet.”

“Yeah, I reckon he will. He’s been playing Finger by keeping suggesting Cilla is the kind of woman he wants. Have you seen Finger’s face when he says it?” I chuckle.

“He is fascinated with all this ghostly shit too. It’s not for me, but I admit there is something in it. I’ve seen Cilla say too much for it to be made-up shit.” Ghost laughs. “Fucking odd I say that with my road name don’t you think?”

“Well, you earned your name when you saved our asses more than once. How you could and can stay out of sight and be a ghost figure I don’t know. But maybe one day when you are a genuine ghost, you’ll be the best one there is!”

“Too right, I’ll be the best there is. You hear that Bono? I’m gonna be a better ghost than you are,” Ghost looks into the air as he speaks.

What we don’t expect is a can of soda to fly from the pile we are moving toward Ghost who ducks just at the right time for it to sail over his head. Ghost looks at me, and I smirk while shaking my head. But you guessed it. I keep my mouth firmly shut.

Rum appears in the doorway of the building. “Truck, I’ve spoken to the exterminator, and they’ll be out later today. I know the man, and he owes me one, so I call it.”

Nodding, I acknowledge he has spoken, then slap the dirt off my hands as I turn to look at him. “Great, that’s a job organized. We’re done here for now. How many more dumpsters do you think we’ll need?”

“You will need one permanently on-site. It can be left on the other side of the store’s loading area. You will always have trash and cardboard boxes to get rid of.” Rum doesn’t hang around and re-enters the building.

“Okay, I’ll arrange for one to be left here, and we’ll have to watch how fast it will fill and need to be emptied. Beside that one, which I can organize to start when you open, I’ll bring another for you to continue throwing all the crap in that you need to get rid of.” Ghost doesn’t wait for me to reply, but quickly loads up the dumpster, gives me a wave and heads out.

Walking into the office, I’m surprised how clean it looks now. Rum, has it swept and the office furniture is pushed to one side of the room.

“Ah, Truck. How about I go to the hardware store and grab some paint? We can freshen this place up and put everything back ready for the start of the new business.” Rum, I’m not sure even needs me to agree because he’s got that look on his face that says, a man on a mission.

“Okay. I’ll get the counter out front cleared. I’m going to build a new one and have it much more functional than this old one,” I follow Rum out of the office and walk over to the counter. Now, I wonder if I have a sledgehammer in the truck?

I have half destroyed the counter when Bull walks into the building. “Hi, Bull. Are you here to make a start out the back?” I ask, wiping the sweat from my forehead with my work jacket's sleeve.

Leaning against the door frame as he answers, his eyes are all the while scanning the room. “Yeah. I’m going to check out what needs to be removed and what we can keep. I also need to mark an area for an office. We need it large enough, as it is a control room really of where each truck is, who is on the recovery route, etcetera.”

“Hm, have you considered a modular office? You can get one large enough for all the maps you need to pin up, and all the equipment used, and have the three computer stations that you have now. It would be a better purchase I think, as it’ll be new and as you have a brother in the building 24/7 you won’t need to go overboard with security. It will be worth the cost and save a lot of space inside the repair area you are setting up.” I threw out the idea as I know from working the recovery since we started the business how much office space is needed.