lug nuts lugged

Excited by the prospect of having a pocket-full of loose change dumped onto his scabrous head, sometimes-local transient Frank 'Train-Track Eddie' Varudniwek, 56, spent the better part of the morning hauling buckets filled with rusty machine parts up one flight of stairs and back down another, setting them in neat lines alongside a crumbling brick wall out in the alleyway. The Louisville, Kentucky native huffed and puffed all the way into the early evening, missing the handing-out of food at the homeless shelter as well as his usual afternoon rendezvous with his mates down at the unused former utility-shed near that one bridge over Tussleville Creek that was never completed. Lamenting missing the rendezvous most of all, Mr. Varudniwek said while leaning against the railing at the top of the stairs, to catch his breath, “I hope the boys saved me some of the name-brand mouthwash, because the generic shit I got yesterday tastes like ass and don't even get me drunk.”

Wendie and Swekland Jonns, Train-Track Eddie's short-term employers, spent a few hours watching him work through a number of strategically-placed cracks in the rear hallway of the run-down theater they just bought, with Wendie kicking herself – and her spouse – for allowing the transient to see and to inspect the interior of the building they had recently purchased using some of the money Swekland inherited from his great aunt, who died from eating a spoon-full of powdered drain cleaner. “Now, he knows which windows have no locks, and which doors open when yanked hard enough,” Wendie said, twirling her greasy, straw-colored hair nervously. “I told you to hire a legitimate company to come in and clean out those basement rooms, but, no, you had to do the Right Thing, and hire a bum to do it. I told you this would happen, Swek – I told you.” Massaging his wife's sweaty shoulders affectionately, Swekland said, “Relax, Wen. He's costing us one twentieth of what a legitimate company would, and we can always come back tonight, or tomorrow, and re-lock all the windows and doors he unlatched and unlocked. Besides, we're tearing this thing down and turning it into a parking-lot, as soon as we've sold that metal for scrap and Frank has torn out all of the old copper wiring. So what if he and his buddies live in here for a few weeks? I sure won't miss sweeping up their empty mouthwash bottles and filthy cigarette nubs from around the loading bay out back; if they accidentally set the place on fire, we'll get tons of insurance money, and the town will have fewer bums, meaning that everyone wins.”

While creeping around and eavesdropping on the Jonns, Frank pocketed a large ring of keys he had found in a janitor's closet, with which he planned to open all the building's locked interior doors – once his employers stopped whispering to each other and finally left for the night, of course – so that he and his buddies could each have his own room to sleep in, for once.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit