Kenny Jacobs stood in the shade cast by the detached garage in the door yard for a brief pause. Nine in the morning and already a sweltering summer day. Insects broke the calm silence as the heat of the day mounted and already the humidity had caused his shirt to become nearly soaked through.
He pulled the leather work gloves tight on his hands and went back to clearing out the side yard of the house. Years of neglect had left the patch of earth devoid of grass but completely overgrown with vines, weeds, poison ivy, saplings, sticker bushes and a whole host of other scrub plants. Sweat poured from his forehead as he cursed his father-in-law. His mother had met and fallen for the man years ago while Ken had been in college. Tim Tomlinson had moved in with his new wife, Marie, Kenneth's mother, and was a nice enough fellow from some backwater town in the north country of Missouri.
Chillicothee, or some such town, Kenny didn't dare try to spell it. After he'd graduated from college, his mother had decided to leave the lights of Chicago for a while and live in the country with her husband. The house had not been lived in for five or six years, and while it was in relatively good shape, the yard had been completely invaded by all manner of plants.
Plants, Kenny had realized upon arrival to spend part of his summer here, that had become his responsibility to eradicate.
He'd tried a weed eater already, but the growth was too thick even for the tough plastic cable. He was toting a sling blade now on his shoulder he had just sharpened in Tim's work shop.
As full of junk the shop contained, Kenny liked being in there. There were boxes of tools and odds and ends that Tim had collected through the course of his life.
He started back in at the growth, swinging the large blade at the plant matter and muttering movie quotes under his breath.
"Some folks call it a Kaiser blade, I call it a slingblade, mmm hmmm."
"Kenny!"
His head snapped up as his mother called to him.
"Yeah?"
She came around the side of the house in a sun dress carrying a small cooler.
"Tim and I are heading out, we'll be back in a week."
"Okay mom." Kenny said, taking a long pull off a large bottle of Gatorade.
"The emergency numbers are on the fridge, and no parties."
"Jesus, Mom, I'm not fourteen, I think I'll manage." He said, giving her a hug goodbye. They were taking a camper down to Smithville Lake for a week of camping because apparently living in Po-dunk, USA wasn't country enough.
"Oh for God's sake, you're covered in sweat!" She said after a brief hug goodbye.
"It is a little hot out here." He said, picking the blade back up. He hoped to be done by lunch, then he had the place to himself for the rest of the week with nothing to do. He planned on enjoying every second of it.
"Alright, we'll see you later, sweety."
"Bye Mom, have fun." He said, and watched her leave. Turning back to the yard, he grimaced at the foliage and took up the blade once more.
"I'ma get me some of 'dem biscuits wit da' mustard, mmm hmmm."
By noon the yard was all but cleared, and he was pushing a large pile of the tangled plant debris to the burn pile. It was blazing hot now, and he'd been chugging water from the hose like crazy and now was fighting the urge to urinate. Storm clouds looked to be building up, so he wanted to get done before it started raining. The idea of dropping trowel there and just going never crossed his mind.
He'd gotten the stuff on the pile when he heard a car horn beep from the front of the house. His curiosity got his mind off the call of nature as he went around the side of the house to investigate.
"Oh shit." He muttered to himself. There in the gravel driveway was Abbey's cherry red Chevy Cavalier. And it looked as though Liz was with her. Sisters from Tim's brother Nate, technically his cousins. He had only met them once before he had come to Tim's with his mother this summer, they had been 14 then. Now, four years later, they had constantly nagged him about coming out and partying with them. He had finally succumbed and let them take him to a bon fire party two weeks ago, where they had begged him to buy them booze, then both out-drank him on moonshine and left him asleep on Tim's driveway at four o'clock in the morning in nothing but his boxers. He'd had a sneaking suspicion that a lot more went on from what they'd told him.
As far as he was concerned they were crazy; a pair of loud mouth trouble makers. He tried to keep his distance from them, but they seemed bound and determined to stay under his skin either to just annoy him or to fulfill some form of weird self indulged entertainment. When they saw him they stepped out of the car.
Both were about five foot even, skinny, and each wore a pair of tiny track shorts, white track tee-shirts with CHS stenciled across the front and an over sized pair of sunglasses. At this distance they were virtually indistinguishable save for their hair. Abbey had a long wash or dirty blond hair that she never wore up, Liz had a short crop of thick black hair that framed her cute face.
Maneaters, was all Kenny could think of. He pitied the men at the college they would be heading off to come September.
"What's up Ken-doll?" Abbey shouted up the driveway. Kenny grimaced. This had become their nickname for him since they stripped him down that night at the party. They had told him he'd stripped himself, and never took off the boxers, but he had his suspicions, especially since he had awoke that morning with his underwear on backwards.
The fact that he was a looming six-foot tall lacrosse player didn't improve their taunts either.
"Not much." He answered.
"Where's Uncle Tim?"
"You missed him by a couple hours, he and my mom went to Smithville for the week."
"Son of a bitch." She sighed, "Really?"
"Really really." He answered, "Why?"
"Oh, I was going to see if he'd change the oil in Phyllis today."
"Phyllis?"
"Yeah." She said, gesturing to her car.
"You named your car Phyllis?"
Abbey gave him a 'D-uh' look. Liz spoke up at that point.
"Hey, you're a guy, right?"
"Oh you are a funny one." He shot back at her.
"No, I mean, you know how to change oil in a car, right?"
Kenny thought about saying no, but that would just add more fuel to the Ken-doll fire.
"Yes." He begrudgingly admitted.
"Do you think you could change the oil in Phyllis?"
He pondered for a long second.
"An oil change?" He asked.
"Yeah."
"Do you have all the stuff? Filter, oil?"
"Yes and yes."
Ken sighed heavily, "Bring it around to the work shop, I can change it for you."
Abbey drove the car into the workshop while Kenny scoured the room for tools he would need. The shed was hotter than outside, the aluminum walls and roof had turned it into what felt like an oven. As he searched along a workbench he spotted a dirt covered window with a small air conditioner in it. He cranked it on to max and the ancient unit rumbled to life, sending a puff of dust straight into his face.
"You guys owe me big for this." He said as he wiped the grime from his sweaty face, the cold air felt good, though it carried an odor of stagnat water.
He continued to paw through tool boxes and under tables until he found a set of sockets and a ratchet and an oil filter wrench. There was one thing he wasn't finding, however.
"I don't see a jack anywhere." He said. Tim had to have one, this workshop had two of everything, but he could not find a jack anywhere.
"I have one in the trunk." Abbey said, walking around Phyllis. When she produced it, Kenny rolled his eyes.
"What?" She protested.
"You're fucking crazy if you think I'm crawling under your car with nothing but a scissor jack holding it up."
"What's wrong with this?"
"There's a reason they call those widow makers."
"Well how else are we supposed to change the goddamn oil?" Abbey was getting frustrated.
Kenny sighed, "find me a cinder block or something to set the strut on."
"What?" Liz and Abbey asked in stereo.
"Nothing, I'll fucking get it." He swore, strolling past them, a string of curses trailing behind him as the girls giggled.
He found no cinder blocks, something else he was surprised Tim didn't have. If you couldn't count on hillbillies to have car jacks and cinder blocks around, what could you count on them for? He found a pile of bricks that were too small, so he settled for a thick log of hedge-tree he'd found on an ancient wood pile.
He made his way back to the workshop and tossed the log to the floor where the bark exploded off of the thick wood-chunk.
"Give me the jack." He said, taking the tiny thing and sliding it under the frame of the driver's side door.
He spun the lever, lifting the car to the desired height and slipped the wood under the strut.
Satisfied, he grabbed an oil pan and the wrenches and slid on the dirty concrete floor under the car. Hopefully he could get this done quickly.
He could hear the girls muffled conversation under the car, they would burst out into random fits of giggles every so often, and he couldn't help thinking they were laughing at him.
Pushing the thought from his head, he unscrewed the oil plug too fast and it fell into the oil pan along with a thick stream of black oil.
"Fuck!" He exclaimed.
"Everything all right down there, stud?"
He didn't bother answering, moving to the oil filter.
It took some doing, but he finally got it loosened and replaced with the new one. Once the oil was completely drained, he prodded the contents of the oil pan as best he could laying on his back until he found the oil plug and picked it up, trying to keep as much oil off his hands. He replaced the oil covered plug back into its place and tightened it up as best he could.
"All right," he said finally, "Pop the hood."
Abbey stepped over him and opened the door, leaning in to pull the handle for the hood release near the pedals.
That was all it took.
Kenny heard what sounded like metal grinding on rock, and looked down to see that was exactly what it was. The jack was folding at a weird angle from the shift in weight. His eyes went wide in alarm as the car's weight settled on the log, which quickly splintered and shattered, the rotted wood didn't stand a chance.
Frozen in shock, he watched the under carriage sink closer and closer to his face. A weight started pressing in his mid-section and he squeezed his eyes closed.
He opened them a second later when the noise stopped and the weight coming down on him stopped as well. The car's under carriage was about an inch from his nose, and the side of the car was pressing down on his stomach, just above his belt, but it was not crushing, but it did have him pinned and unable to move.
"Kenny!" Liz and Abbey shouted, looking under the car.
"I'm okay." He said, trying to slide out, move, do anything, but to no avail.
"I'm stuck." He said finally, "Can you jack the car back up?"
"The jack's all fucked up, Kenny, it looks like someone bent it half." Liz called under the car.
"Someone did bend it in half; Phyllis." He said, "Abbey, your car is a cunt. Look for another jack, something, please." He had a quick flash of an idea. His car was outside, but then he remembered he had lent his jack to a friend a year ago and had never gotten it back.
He waited under the car listening to their feet as they scampered across the shop floor. A few minutes later their faces came back into view as the knelt to look under the car.
"No jacks." Abbey said.
"Well what the fuck are we going to do?" Kenny asked.
"Um, we could go home and see if we could find a jack there?" Liz said.
"You're going to leave me under a fucking car?"
"Only one of has to go." Abbey said, "But we can't use my car."
"Obviously." Kenny was two steps ahead of them. He some how managed to dig his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pull out his key ring. He flipped the keys out onto the shop floor.
"Here! Take my car, it's the Mustang in the garage."
"Mustang?" Abbey said.
