away. Now, most people in this part of Maine aimed their shotguns to point the brothers in the direction of the exit to their property, but there were some—widows, the feeble-minded—who agreed to pay them a few nickels to cart away their old refrigerators, non-working snow blowers, rusty rakes, newspapers, chainsaws. The boys were strong and worked hard, and after school and on Saturdays, they would drive around and try not to get killed while they made a few dollars. After placing an ad in the Penny Saver, they discovered there was already a national junk company called 1-800-GOT-JUNK. This only fired up their cutthroat spirit. They flattered Hannah into designing their logo: THE HAUL BROTHERS HAULING SERVICES. “WE HAUL SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO.”
It looked pretty good. They got a decal made, slapped it on their father’s truck, painted the truck a hideous lime green—Blake said because it was the color farthest removed from the color of the crap they were hauling—used their rudimentary buttering-up skills to get Chloe to create a profit and loss statement, and figured out that if they worked full-time, hired two more guys, and bought another truck with a lift, they would make six figures at the end of three years. Six figures! They had an advertising plan: Yellow Pages, the North Conway Observer, local ads on TV, three radio spots—and then their dad’s Chevy died.
It was over twenty years old. Burt Haul had bought the V8 diesel powerhouse in 1982, before he knew he’d be having sons who a generation later would need it to start a fake business. Burt loved that truck so much that even after the accident that nearly ended his life, he refused to let it go and spent his own scarce money rebuilding it. “I drove your mother home from our wedding in that truck,” Burt told his sons. “The only reason I’m alive today is because of that truck. I ain’t parting with that thing.”
But now the truck engine was like Mr. Leary’s gas-powered block saw. Defunct.
No one had money for a new truck, even a used one. Burt and his boys were being shamefully carted around in Janice Haul’s Subaru. Were they even men?
Hannah and Chloe tried to console their disappointed boyfriends by reminding them that their business wasn’t really a business, it was just a business on paper, which is no kind of business at all. But Blake and Mason had fallen too far into the trap of a dream. Chloe knew something about that. The Haul boys had been so sold on their own pseudo-company that they decided to drop out of school in the middle of senior year and work until they got the money together to buy a truck, figuring that in their line of work a high school diploma was about as useful as watering grass during a downpour.
It was a challenge for the girls to keep their boyfriends in school. It was Chloe who had finally hit on the winning combination of words: “Do you think my mother and father would ever allow me to hang out with high school dropouts?”
That worked, though not as instantly as Chloe had hoped, alas.
So … the senior year passed, truck still broke, and Janice not only had to drive to work and shop for the family, but share her inadequate station wagon with two restless boys with divergent friends, interests and schedules. To make money, the boys shoveled snow, cut grass, did shopping for the infirm, Blake mostly, because Mason was at varsity. Fast forward to today when they were hopping off buses and yammering on about dreams. You had to hand it to them. Those two were single-minded in their pursuits. All their pursuits.
“Chloe, speak up. Listen to what I’m saying. Why isn’t it a good story?” Blake always got irked by her tight-lipped approach to his shenanigans.
“Because so far you haven’t told me anything I’d want to read,” she said.
“I haven’t stopped speaking!”
Chloe opened her hands in a my-point-precisely. “Who are the main characters?”
“It doesn’t matter who they are. Can I finish before you judge?”
“You mean you haven’t finished? And I’m not judging.”
“You so judge. That’s your biggest problem.”
“I’m not—”
Blake put his finger out, nearly to her mouth. “The premise of my story is—are you listening? Two dudes run a junkyard.”
“That part I got.”
“They do say write about what you know.”
“I. Got. That. Part.”
“Two dudes run a junkyard and one day they find something awful.”
“Like what? All you cart away is Wise potato chips and Oreo wrappers.”
“And condom wrappers.” Blake grinned, slowed down, and threw his big arm around Chloe’s shoulder.
“Hannah, control your boyfriend.” Chloe pushed him away. “But okay, even still. Where is the story?”
“Can there be anything more full of story possibilities than a ninety-year-old woman throwing out a Hefty bag full of used condoms?” Blake laughed.
“Not used condoms,” Mason corrected him. “Condom wrappers.”
Chloe glanced at the silent Hannah for support. “Can we move on? What else have you got?”
“We don’t know yet,” Mason said. “Hannah, you think it’s good so far, don’t you?”
“So far there’s nothing!” That was Chloe.
“He wasn’t asking you!” said Blake.
They had ten minutes before they reached home to hammer it out. It wasn’t enough time. Blake pulled them off road, away from home and onto the train tracks that ran through the woods and divided their small part of the lake from the better, larger part. Arms out, backpacks on, they balanced on the rusty tracks and skipped on the ties.
Writing a story for money! What a thing. Acadia’s first prize was ten thousand dollars. Chloe knew the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction had been around longer and was certainly more prestigious, but it paid only a thousand dollars, and you had to write at least forty thousand words for it. No matter how bad one was at math, dividing forty thousand words into a thousand bucks was an awful return. “All work and no pay,” said Mason, and laughed for five minutes at his own joke.
But here—ten thousand dollars for a novella. Blake didn’t even know what a novella was until Chloe told him. To the brothers, a sum that large was the lottery. It was a new truck and the start of their own business. It was the rest of their lives. They acted as if they found it lying under a tree in a suitcase. All that was left to do was count the money.
And little naysay-y Chloe was not allowed to even mention that:
1 They had no story.
2 They were not writers.
3 There would be at least five hundred other applicants, who a. might have a story and b. were writers.
4 One of those applicants might be Hannah who most certainly had stories, a number of them.
5 A new truck was more than ten thousand dollars.
Chloe couldn’t help herself. She had to say something. If only she could learn to keep quiet, like Hannah, or Mason, things would be so much better in her life.
“Who are the junkyard boys?” she asked.
“We are. Blake. Mason. We’re ambling along, asking for no trouble, and suddenly—wham! Trouble comes.”
“Wham,” said Chloe.
“Blake’s right,” Mason said. “We’ve found some awful things.”
“Like what?”
“Dead rats.”
“Rats are good,” she said. “But then what? Someone not wanting dead rats in their house is hardly a story. It’s more like a truism.”
“We found some jewelry too once.”
“Jewelry