Gus: You're welcome. Have a nice night.
Lady: (flippantly) Ok. You too (rolls up her window quickly and speeds off).
Her '56 Chevy Skyline vanishes with perhaps the same speed in which she had plummeted into the ditch. The exchange was as cold as this January morning. The frost that Gus scraped off his truck just some 30 minutes ago matched the frostiness of the middle-aged lady as she handed him a $20 bill for his services.
Gus takes it in stride; he's used to it. Hell, he only put down his bottle of Old Crow just minutes before he left. His quick Listerine-gargle before starting up his truck surely couldn't mask his last four hours of devoted whiskey drinking. She must have been put off by the boozy stench, a stench that Gus all too frequently carries around like a child does a favorite blankie. Or maybe it was his slurred speech; either way, it doesn't phase him much.
Gus McHaliburton is a simple man, a tow truck driver in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It's not the most glamorous profession nor the one he went to school for, but he deals with it the best way he knows how: with drugs and alcohol, but mostly alcohol.
It wasn't meant to be this way; this was not the life he meant to live. But the minute he bought his Carhartt coveralls, he also bought into the seediness of a menial manual labor job that such a life can easily succumb to. With every vested purchase into his towing trade, he removes himself that much further from a career that utilizes his Associates Degree, a four and a half year achievement for the two year general business degree.
As much as Gus daydreams and sets his sights on other career-oriented jobs, he feels victimized by time and setting: having graduated in the prime of an industry recession, and living in a town with some of the highest snowfall rates in the U.S.. He often times laments that he didn't choose the profession, it chose him.
A couple years back, Gus was in pretty rough shape and sold his big rig to fuel a fortnight's long bender. His acquaintances and family are used to his 3-4 day M.I.A. drug-addled hibernations, but the two-weeker garnered more attention.
After slowly regaining the trust of his family and scattered acquaintances, Gus was able to borrow enough money to buy a smaller tow truck, one with the lift attachment in the shape of a cross. Now that he's back on his feet, he's scraped together a modest life for himself. He's got a live-in girlfriend, Edna, and a small two bedroom house.
On-lookers and passersby who gather a snapshot of Gus's life can't gauge if he's removed himself from his sordid past or still dabbling in it. He's worn a gruff exterior and ragged beard for as long as he's worn steel-toe boots; he's never been one to let anyone too close. Even his girlfriend is more like an accessory to him than a partner.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He met Edna at Shiverman's Port, a small wharf dive bar, one snowy night last winter. Their meeting was a fortuitous meeting of circumstance. Her car, spun into a ditch... his truck, a tow, and the only tow in town. Gus still recalls their meeting with vivid detail... as he approached her over-turned car to tell her of his $20 fee, his stoic exterior was softened by the pretty upside-down face staring back at him through the steam-fogged window. He tried for a minute to get her to roll down the window, to warn her of his $20 fee, but in her physically compromised state, she couldn't manage to do anything but stay pinned against the window. After a few minutes of contemplation, McHaliburton decided to forget his fee and instead pull her out to safety.
Edna is eternally grateful to Gus for that fateful rescue. What she remarks as him saving her life is just another dime-a-dozen hook 'n haul for McHaliburton. Edna all too quickly plays up the damsel in distress story while Gus only begrudgingly accepts his shining armor accoutrements. This has always been a sticking point for her, his need to discount her rescue not only highlights the imbalance between the pair on an emotional level, but thusly sparks a listless ennui within her that renders her at times: a Stockholm syndrome captive in the relationship.
What Edna struggles to convey, without as many words, is that when he found her on the side of the road, she longs to have been treated as a rare find, a precious gemstone; when in actuality, he treats her like an ordinary pebble, one which he only reluctantly bends down to pick up, only to perhaps skip across still water.
Their relationship is perhaps best survived by what also most hinders it: non-committal indifference. Knowing that each one of them could just up and leave at any time adds a much needed dynamic to the otherwise stagnant partnership. The catalyst for the stagnation is one which neither like to discuss: substance abuse.
It is when they are most alike, when they are using. Each try to hide it from the other, even though each aren't doing any fooling. Gus usually pours his Old Crow into a Coca Cola mug to alleviate the appearance of his intake and Edna has a tall stainless steel coffee thermos constantly at hand, so you never know what kind of cocktail is carrying her around.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tiffany arrives at the McHaliburton home, slamming the front door at 3:43 a.m. Gus awakens and already knows the nature of her arrival. Tiffany is Edna's younger sister who stays with the couple on a short-term basis while she mends things with her parents. She agreed to free room and board if she spends 2 hours a day scouring the roads for vehicles needing a tow.
From Gus's bedroom, Edna mumbles out a groggy, post-coital, drunken groan at being awakened by the sound of her sister's entrance. She slowly peels herself from the covers and sloshes her way toward Gus's overcoat.
Edna: I'll start your truck up (slurred out as if her sentence were one word).
It was more of a drunken Pavlovian reaction to the slamming of the door than it was a thoughtful gesture. She fumbles towards his keys on the sideboard then heads out into the frigid darkness. Gus moans incoherently. He scrapes his stiff back off his side of the bed and makes his way towards his outfit: a mud-dried, snow-stained pair of Carhartt coveralls that could surely stand up on their own if not draped over his weary frame. Upon Edna's return from outside, he grabs the jacket off her back and heads on his way.
He's made this ride a thousand times before. The coordinates were of no surprise to him: Interstate 41 just north of the underpass at 24 mile... deadman's ditch. And unfortunately, every so often in Gus's line of work, the grim reality of it is that an ambulance must be called in to the scene... and this was precisely that kind of night. Only, it wasn't for the imperiled motorist...
it was for one young Augustus Samuel McHaliburton.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------