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When he touches the metal parts of the Takata harness to buckle in, it
burns. His aviator sunglasses were in the sun and are too hot to put on. The car will be staying hot too because
his dad took out the air-conditioner to lower the weight of the car. Ham cranks down the windows. The car also
lacks carpet so when a rock or whatever is spun up onto the bottom of the car it clankity-clanked-clank-clanks.
He starts the car, the sound is marvelous. This Civic is a lightweight beast and he knows it. He backs onto Madison
St where all the houses were built using the same blueprint.
The quest for employment has begun.
He passed Phil who is bouncing his way back home; his shirt soaked and clinging to him. Phil waves, Ham waves and
shifts into second; there is a metallic snick as he moves the shifter down.
The Civic has a special place in his heart and he has become accustomed to all of its inhuman attributes. When
he got his license his dad let him drive it from time to time. He was given his mom's old car, a purple Pontiac
Sunbird for daily driving. Then later that same year his dad went on a routine business trip to an unnamed place
in China and never returned or contacted anyone.
Then about a week later Kyle Sutter, a local news personality, moved in. Kyle Sutter is a very tan, very greasy,
twenty-six-year-old asshole and there were instant tensions between Ham and his mother's illicit lover. So much
so that Kyle Sutter gave Lisa, Ham's mom who was also forty-two-years-old at the time, an ultimatum that he was
going to leave if she didn't kick her son out. She chose Kyle Sutter and Ham had the choice of getting a job and
an apartment or going to his dad's parents in Havelock, a small insignificant town in southern Ohio. He knew that
no one would rent an apartment to a sixteen year old, since he couldn't even get a hotel room. He knew this because
he had tried and was told he had to be eighteen. Besides, he didn't want a job even if he could have rented an
apartment. It was a tense scene at the Bates' home when his mom kicked him out.
Before he left though he backed the Sunbird into Kyle Sutter's yellow Toyota MR2, took a rag, soaked it in gasoline,
stuffed it into the gas spout of the Sunbird and lit it. There was a terrific explosion as he sped off that evening
two years ago.
He is now driving down SE Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Stone Bridge, Ohio looking for signs of help; thinking
about how different things would have been if his dad had come home. He always scours the internet for information
about his father, but has never found anything. Ham has one of his dad's business cards and calls the phone number
on it from time to time. The woman at Northrop Grunman always says, "I am sorry sir, but we have no record
of an employee with that name." Maybe billion dollar weapons companies make all their employees disappear
after twenty years, Ham concluded.
At least he could have left him some money.
His mind fell on: his bitch mom, the pretty boy Kyle Sutter, and his girlfriend Aubrey (who he hasn't seen for
two months which was the last time he went home to Cincinnati and had to sleep in his car because no one would
let him check into their hotel). Aubrey is going to Ohio State via a basketball scholarship. They don't have much
of a relationship anymore, especially after he left with out telling her. They send the occasional e-mail and that
is about it. Ham is starting college soon too and the plan is that five years from now he will have an electrical
engineering degree, like his dad.
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