The Scrap
Byrd can’t see Rocco, but he can sure smell him. Musk and coffee breath sting him from four feet away, trapped in the pre-morning fog pocket that enshrouds them both. They’re never going to spot scrap thieves in this mess, if any are here in the yard at all, but Rocco keeps whispering “stay alert” and “keep your gun cocked” from behind the forty-foot volcano of stainless as if Byrd’s going to take a blind shot at a vague footstep with a service pistol he hasn’t fired in fifty years. And for what? To keep some punks from running off with brass pipes, copper wire, and, if they’re especially ballsy—and especially strong—bales of tungsten carbide? Your foreman’s a month from seventy, Rocco should be handing him a retirement check, not more bullets.
The damp air beads the nylon shell of Byrd’s quilted vest. With the back of his gun hand, he wipes the chilly dew from his forehead.
“That thing even real?” Rocco says, tapping Byrd’s shoulder from behind. His voice, even in low tones, is gruff in a way he reserves for underlings.
“Praying we don’t find out,” Byrd says.
“Think it’s smarter if we split up,” Rocco says.
Byrd nods. “By the way, I get time and a half for Sundays.”
He’s half-joking. He won’t see an extra dime for sacrificing a day off because he’s here out of loyalty to Rocco’s father, not to the idiot son he left in charge. And while he has no financial investment in the yard, Byrd feels a responsibility for the company he’s worked for half his life—from the scrap heaps to the guys who work here. And that, unfortunately, includes Rocco.
“Pay you double we catch those sons of bitches,” Rocco says.
Right. “I’ll take care of you” has been Rocco’s tired mantra on the subject since he took over his father’s yard ten years ago, in ’68, and started chewing into the cash reserves to help erect, expand, and maintain a sprawling lakefront house near Andover. Fine, it’s your company, your money.
Rocco points to the dim silhouette of a pickup fifty feet away, the ancient one they use for in-yard transport and muck work only since it hasn’t been street-legal in years. He crouch-walks toward it, keeping his eyes and his .44 pointed toward some unseen enemy to his left until Byrd can barely make him out.
The bran muffin is a blessing. Shirl stuffed two of them into Byrd’s vest last night after another Saturday bakefest, but he isn’t sharing. Right now, Byrd wishes he were still in bed—where any human ought to be at this hour—stirring to the comforting aromas of fresh breads, pastries, and fudge bars his wife donates to the church bake sale and shares with family. The muffin isn’t as tasty as it ought to be because of the guilt Byrd feels for sneaking the old service revolver out of their safe.
He’s kept other secrets from her over their long marriage—usually concerning the too-often precarious state of their finances, but a larger one, the worst one, involving a woman in the payroll department for now-defunct Ber-Lin Fabricators. Occasional, mild flirting preceded an opportune circumstance. As spontaneous as it was senseless, their merging happened just the once, over twenty years ago. Rarely does a week go by, however, that Byrd doesn’t regret that sin or recall, despite himself, the wicked delirium that accompanied his moment of release. Carrying this secret so long has given the encounter weight Byrd did not intend, making it two sins, really. The second, and possibly more egregious, is never having confessed it to Shirl. Even after all this time, his mind bears two lives—the man he is with Shirl and the man he is not.
Byrd wishes he had brought a camp stool. There’s one down in the office, but Rocco wouldn’t let him grab it. They met a block away, over on Dietz Road, and slinked in through a narrow, never-used side gate that’s hidden by wild growth. No thieves—and no employees, for that matter—seem to know about it. Evidence points to them coming in through the back of the yard where dense rows of trees parallel the eight-foot security fence. These guys climb or use ladders.
Rocco wanted to electrify the fence, but the city told him uh-uh. He won’t spring for a night guard, even for just weekends. Cameras and motion sensors are out because he doesn’t live close enough to rush over here in time if he gets an alert. He tried dogs for a while, but those got stolen, too.
Mostly, from what they hear, these are drug addicts turning scrap metal into quick cash. They steal from one yard, sell to another. Sometimes, Rocco unwittingly buys back his own stolen metal. When he figures that out, it never helps his already-sour disposition. He tries to carry himself as if he’s a blue-collar Joe who happens to own the business, act chummy with his dozen employees, get his hands dirty here and there. No one buys it. You don’t cry poorhouse every time someone asks for a raise or better medical when you just purchased a vacation cottage up in Put-in-Bay.
He often wonders if Shirl knew, if she could sense what he’d done. In the days following, the thrill of his conquest still fresh in his mind and body, he tried to disguise the hate he was then feeling toward his wife, which erupted through no fault of her own. How could she not know that his sudden animal need for her again, his quiet tears of absolute love, were the by-products of betrayal? He hopes he has been the husband she deserves ever since. He hopes this every day.
Wait. Is that clanking?
Byrd grunts to his feet and listens out. Whatever he thought he heard was faint. Could be somebody nearby, could be an echo from Dokes Foundry a quarter mile east. The flashlights Rocco armed them with are useless beyond five yards in this mess. He’ll have to use his ears. If there are thieves, they won’t be able to see much either, so Byrd feels he has an advantage knowing the lay of the yard he’s walked a million times over—where every cluster of shavings drums and turnings pallets are positioned, where the rutty dirt roads are most treacherous for footing.
The plan is to freeze them until the cops get here. Then share their names, faces, and license plate number among the other dealers in the Ohio-PA border counties. No one buys from these locals again. No market, no theft.
I don’t like it. Tell him to get someone younger—or do it alone.
He doesn’t trust anyone but me, Shirl, and I don’t trust him. I need to make sure nothing bad happens.
That gives me less comfort. You don’t go anywhere near trouble. You stay in your seat and call the police from Rocco’s car phone. This isn’t your job.
Of course. I’ll be home for mass.
There it is again. Definitely metallic. Definitely in-yard.
Has to be the bundles of brass and copper piping stacked near the rail crane seventy yards off. Twenty-two and fifteen tons of it. They’ll need a torch or a saw with a carbide blade to make some portable. Maybe they’ve already dug in, though it wouldn’t be a quiet operation. No logic in stealing a single armload either. Wouldn’t be worth their while. One or two guys can’t carry very much unless they make multiple trips or dragged in some kind of cart. There were no vehicles parked along the front, the only street on this industrial stretch that faces their property, which means they somehow navigated thick woods in the dark to bring a truck or van along the fence line. It won’t make for a quick escape, especially in a panic.
If Byrd were in charge, he’d let the petty pilfering go. Focus on expediting turnaround and finding new buyers. Instead of investing in aggressive sales, Rocco adds another bath to his house or leases another company car for his sons to drive—and they don’t even work here. He won’t invest in employee retention either. They wanna leave, let ‘em. Any dope can run the baler or drive truck.
Byrd flashes three shorts, three longs, and three shorts toward the pickup. If Rocco knows any Morse code at all, which is unlikely since he avoided the draft, it’ll be S-O-S. Regardless, he’ll know a signal when he sees one.
No reply comes. Rocco had to hear the noise. Byrd’s sure of it. He’s probably already closing in. Hustle down to the office. Make the call. Byrd takes a breath, marches into the soup.
Rocco was right about one thing: tonight is the perfect time to steal. No one can see you even from ten feet off. Sound is all that can give you away, and Byrd isn’t hearing any right now. After those two metallic noises moments ago, silence. That doesn’t mean nobody’s here.
When he reaches the single set of tracks that bisects most of the length of the yard, Byrd crosses over and follows them to his right. In case the thieves are following them as well, in his direction, he parallels just far enough to one side not to lose sight. He ran crane for eight years, jumping between bucket and magnet depending on the load and the health of the other operator, Lenny Kowalchuk, who spent more time on disability than in the cab. Back problems from the awkward posture and constant vibrations, he claimed. Byrd never experienced such issues back then.
On breaks, he’d take long walks down Dietz Road to grab a pack of Lance Sandwich Crackers and a can of RC inside the Packard Electric lobby, shoot the breeze with whoever was around. He made friends all up and down the industrial strip that way, not to hit them up for better jobs if he should ever need one, but just because he enjoyed their company. There was a camaraderie among the guys at these plants, especially twenty years ago when business was better for everyone. Whether they were sweat labor or management, the handshakes were robust, the humor a bit blue, and the visits genuinely appreciated. After Byrd became foreman, some of the guys would send their teenage kids to him for summer work. Over the years, some stayed on. Byrd has always been proud to offer such mentoring and support.
He bends down to dig something out of the dirt, a disk-shaped chunk of metal his boot just found. Every scrap belongs in a pile somewhere, and every scrap has its worth. He’s forever picking up strays and finding their rightful homes until they’re sold off. Usually, he wears a pouch at his side to collect such minor treasures as he manages the yard from one end to the other. This one he doesn’t need the light for, a thick piece of rough aluminum diecast he can identify by weight and feel. One and a half cents, he calculates. He slides it into the zipper pocket of his vest and keeps walking. After a few steps, he pockets the revolver, too.
A breeze chills him, clears some of the fog. He can make out the cab of the rail crane up ahead now, but only about twenty feet of the lattice boom angling skyward into the gray. If the fog’s this thick tomorrow morning, it’ll mean delays with much of the work. Right off, he’s got six flatbeds coming in from a smelter in Akron they’re to load with scrap steel. Slows things down when the operator can’t see what he’s grabbing or where to put it. Byrd can’t imagine it’ll be so bad after sunrise, though.
Focus now.
If Rocco stayed the course, he’d be coming at them from the Guillotine, the workers’ pet name for the massive gantry shear that slices through pretty much anything they feed it. Byrd cuts between twin peaks of scrap siding to give himself additional cover.
Thirty yards from the bundled pipes, he sees sparks. They did get a torch in here. How about that? That’s how I’d do it if I had the luxury of privacy and logistics, Byrd thinks. Most of the piping is too long for anything but a flatbed. They’re bound with steel straps, stacked, and contained inside an open frame of vertical beams. As he draws nearer, Byrd sees a bulky, helmeted man doing the cutting—from a bottom bundle—and another man standing by a squat wagon. These guys came prepared for a good haul.
Byrd ducks behind drums of brass fittings to observe and assess. It’ll be open space between them once he commits to an approach. With the fog thinning here, he’ll have no cover but night. He circles behind one of the peaks to reach the tracks. From here, in the dark, the rail crane looks like a tentacled sea monster reaching toward the black sky. In much younger days, Byrd climbed the lattice all the way to the jib tip sheave and back for sport and betting cash, besting the time of anyone who challenged him.
Easing close, he peeks around the counterweight and pulls himself a few feet up onto the deck. The thieves are about twenty yards ahead right along the tracks, which end not too far beyond. They’re focused on their work.
The cab’s empty. If there’s a third member of this group, a lookout, he’s either down at the front gate or by the back fence where their truck must be. Another body would cut into their take, though. All this effort, they’re probably hoping to make off with seven or eight hundred pounds, more if their luck and patience hold out. A buck sixty a pound for the piping, Byrd figures they’d split twelve hundred or so. Pretty good for a night’s work—long as you don’t get nabbed trying to sell it. If they plan on dumping it all at once, they should drive south of Columbus or well toward Toledo. Otherwise, small doses over time to closer yards might do.
They won’t get that chance.
From the deck, just as Byrd decides to hustle down to the office phone, he notices that the second man looks off to his left, suddenly startled. Seconds later, he taps his partner on the back. When the cutter looks up, he flips open his visor, switches off the torch, and stands.
“Come on in, Byrd,” Rocco yells, entering the scene from the right. His flashlight and pistol are trained on the two men, who remain vague figures from Byrd’s angle.
Too late for the cops. He reaches ground again. Instead of continuing up the tracks directly into the encounter, he heads, stealthily, back around the big mounds of siding.
“Byrd?” Rocco grumbles.
Wish he’d pipe down, Byrd tells himself, quickening his pace. You don’t know the full scope of what you’re dealing with, you don’t go sounding off. Soldiering teaches you that. After a moment, from well behind the thieves, he signals Rocco with three quick bursts of his lamp. He repeats it a couple of times as he continues his arc north. It’s open space up here toward the end of the yard, flat area they keep clear for new loads and truck turnaround. In the corner just ahead, and jutting through the still fog, sit the fractured remains of a Vietnam-era F-4 Phantom II. Rocco’s father acquired it before his stroke back in the ‘60s. They were going to scrap it out—it was already hollowed and came with just one wing—but the weathered fighter jet became a kind of mascot despite the fallen pieces strewn about its oxidized fuselage.
Byrd slaps the Phantom II’s disjointed nosecone as he passes. From about thirty yards away and hugging the back fence line, he can still hear Rocco’s voice. Whether he’s berating the men or saying something else is unclear, nor can Byrd tell if either of them is responding. He’ll be there himself as soon as he makes sure no one else is up here.
He finds the fence cut wide open and wonders why they didn’t just drive the Dodge pickup he spots on the other side to where they were working instead of dragging a cart back and forth. They’re not dealing with very bright boys, he decides. A quick reconnaissance turns up nobody else, so he hustles to the tracks.
“It’s me,” Byrd calls out when he’s closer. “Coming in.”
“About goddam time,” Rocco barks. “I’m running out of names to call these fuckheads.”
“Making sure these two didn’t have an accomplice.”
“Huh…that’s pretty smart,” Rocco says. “Let’s run them down to the office and get rockin’.”
“Sure,” Byrd says, arriving.
Rocco holds his ground ten feet across from the thieves, his gun aimed out from a cocked elbow. The cutter, paunchy and wearing overalls and a sweatshirt, still bears his helmet with the visor flipped up. His face and eyes are hidden. His partner, however—tall, skinny, and very young—looks sadly familiar.
“Ah…Logan,” Byrd sighs.
“Yeah,” Rocco says. “How about that? One of our own.”
“Sorry, Mr. Byrd,” Logan says, jerking his head in deference with each word. The teen’s voice squeaks with sincere remorse.
The grandson of Thurlo Zemanski, who owns Zemanski Tube half a mile down the road, Logan’s worked menial jobs in the scrap yard the past two summers once school let out. They didn’t want him laboring in the family business because he doesn’t have the constitution to absorb the “Momma’s Boy” digs the other workers there were giving him. The Zemanskis were hoping the kid, sensitive to a fault, would adopt some of Byrd’s easygoing nature and solid work ethic. Byrd would have him sort metals, build turnings crates, police the yard for insulated copper wire…. He needed little supervision but a lot of validation. Byrd was happy to give it to him in hopes of boosting his confidence. He thought he noticed some progress since last summer.
“Who’s this?” Byrd asks him, pointing to the other man.
“Cousin.”
“Shut the fuck up,” the man says, yanking off his helmet.
Logan cowers.
“Hey hey hey!” Rocco says, rushing toward them and waving his .44. “Nobody moves till I tell you to.”
“Fuck this – and fuck you,” the cousin says.
He’s older than Byrd thought he might be, at least forty, with a thick neck, two chins and a crew cut. Not an ounce of friendly in him. Nobody he’s ever seen around.
“What don’t you understand?” Rocco says. “I own this place.”
“Yeah, good for you,” he says. “I’m going home.”
When he starts walking, Rocco cuts him off.
“Wrong way,” Rocco says. “Byrd, help me out.”
Byrd considers taking out his revolver, but if they can settle this without added drama, without the threat of violence, he’d be all for it. The guys are caught, their identities are known. It’s over.
“Let’s just head down to the office, fellas,” Byrd says. “Right now, it’s just unlawful entry and some damage to the fence. Not too bad.”
“What?” the cousin says, glaring at Rocco. “You’re going to shoot me, motherfucker? I don’t think so.”
He starts off again. When Rocco blocks him this time, the man swings his arm around and catches Rocco on the side of the head with a cut section of pipe he’d been concealing in the shadows. Byrd won’t soon forget the sound of thick brass hitting bone.
Rocco goes down. From fifteen feet away, Byrd starts to charge, but the cousin snatches Rocco’s fallen pistol and freezes him.
“Stay put!” the cousin says. “Hands behind your head.”
“He’ll bleed to death,” Byrd says, slowly complying.
“Tough shit,” he says. “Load the pipes, Logan.”
“He’s hurt, Ricky,” Logan says.
The cousin grabs Rocco’s flashlight and shines it in Logan’s eyes, the gun still trained on Byrd. “Load the fucking pipes.”
Byrd can see Logan’s fear churning faster than his brain. Run, he tells himself the instant the cousin’s focus is compromised. If he were his younger, more agile self, he might somersault behind one of the nearby barrels or just flat-out race toward obscurity. He can hear Shirl’s warning to him on many a morning in recent years: Mind your age.
“Now!” the cousin says.
Logan jumps into action, stepping around Rocco’s motionless body to gather an armload for the wagon.
“Logan, it’ll be murder,” Byrd says. “Think about what you’re doing, son.”
Logan clearly hears him but doesn’t slow down.
“Good boy,” the cousin says, flapping his gun hand. “Run those to the truck. You – cut me some more pieces. The copper this time.”
Byrd doesn’t move. He looks at Logan, pleads. “Reach into my pocket, get the office keys, and call an ambulance.”
“He thinks you’re a retard, Logan,” the cousin says. “Unload that cart and get back here. Fast.”
“They’re in the left side,” Byrd says. “Unzip the pocket and slide them out.”
“After we’re done,” Logan says brightly, as if he’s found a workable solution. He drags the cart away.
“He’ll be dead!” Byrd calls, but Logan keeps going.
“Get the torch and cut me some pipe, old man,” the cousin says. When Byrd doesn’t move, he jams the pistol into his ribs and slew-foots him to the ground beside the gear. “The acetylene valve’s loose, so watch the mix.”
Byrd rights himself, weighs his options. Acquiescence is not among them. Slowly, he moves his fingers toward his vest, nudges the zipper.
“Listen,” he says from his knees, facing away. “I don’t care about the scrap. I’ve seen your truck. You can fit the longer pieces in the bed as they are. They’ll slide right out of these bundle straps with a little coaxing, and the two of you can load them at an angle.”
“Hands away from your pocket,” the cousin says.
“They’ll stick up and out some, but you’ll get out of here a lot faster, and I can get my boss to a doctor.”
“I said, move your hand away from your fucking pocket!”
Byrd has only a split second. When the cousin spins him around, he reaches in and finds the trigger. The cousin shoots first, but Byrd catches an organ. The body slumps against him.
In these first few seconds of the aftermath, his ears ringing, his eyes burning from the proximity of the flash, Byrd struggles to catch a breath. When he does, he squeezes out from under and retrieves the nearby flashlight. Rocco still hasn’t moved. A dark pond surrounds his head. Byrd tries to stand, but his right hip isn’t working. Shattered from the gunshot. His insides aren’t feeling too great either. Might be splinters of bone in his stomach…probably worse. He got me good.
“Mr. Byrd?” he hears.
Byrd lifts the keys out of his other pocket, holds them up weakly. “Get to the office,” he says, heaving. “Call for help.”
“Oh God,” Logan says, standing over his cousin.
“Call for help, son.”
Logan squeezes his head, frantic. “I can’t, Mr. Byrd,” he says. “I can’t.”
“There’s nothing else to do,” Byrd says. “It’s the only thing.”
“I’m sorry!”
As Logan runs off, Byrd feels a terrible sadness for him that briefly masks his physical pain. That returns quickly enough, however, as does his awareness of how much blood of his own is escaping his body.
Now he drags himself along, inches at a time, knowing he’s leaving a trail that will look especially gruesome in a few hours when the fog fully dissipates. It’s a hundred and fifty yards to the office, a distance he knows he cannot make, but less than twenty to the crane. He will get himself there alongside the tracks. He will muscle himself onto the deck and into the cab. He will fire up the diesel engine and navigate to the southern terminus. He will climb down and crawl into the office. He will call the operator, who will send help for whoever is left when they get here. Then, he’ll call Shirl and tell her he won’t make it home in time for mass. He will ask her forgiveness for his lapse in judgment today, for accompanying Rocco on such a foolish mission. It will trouble his mind to confess even more.
Clutching at the ground, Byrd scoops a small, cracked piece of metal with the dirt, identifies it by feel. Stainless fitting, 1.4 cents. Almost no value, he thinks. Who would profit from such a thing?
• • •
Mike Murray is the winner of Colorado Review’s 2022 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction. He was further recognized in Best American Short Stories for his Distinguished Story of 2022. His work has also appeared in OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, The Northern Appalachia Review, The Ecological Citizen, Buttonhook Press, Calliope, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A writer, web developer and book designer living in Pittsburgh, Mike’s one-acts have been produced for the stage.