The Metal Shredders
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Unbridled Books
Copyright © 2002 by Nancy Zafris
First paperback edition 2003
First Unbridled Books paperback edition 2013
Unbridled Books paperback ISBN: 978-1-60953-107-2
Electronic edition E-ISBN: 978-1-60953-108-9
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not
be reproduced in any form without permission.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zafris, Nancy.
The metal shredders : a novel / by Nancy Zafris.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-399-14922-8
1. Family-owned business enterprises—Fiction. 2.
Scrap metal industry—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—
Fiction. 4. Columbus (Ohio)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3576.A285 M47 2002 2002018571 813'.54—dc21
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Sam and Jim
I would like to express my gratitude to Betty McDaniel who introduced me to Freddy Loef, a generous man who shared his amazing knowledge of the scrap recycling business with me. I also want to thank my editor Greg Michalson, my agent Gail Hochman, Michelle Herman, Gretchen McBeath, Anesa Miller, Michael Sweeney, and my father Stephan Sydor—with a special thanks to Heather Schroder. For editorial advice and emotional support, I am fortunate to be able to rely on Julian Anderson, Keith Banner, Sharon Dilworth, Joe Freda, Bob Harrist, David Lynn, Jean Reinhold and, last in the alphabet but first in everything else, Jim Zafris.
Portions of the manuscript were written under the financial support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Greater Columbus Arts Council. Aspects of this novel were based on the short story "The Metal Shredders," published in The People I Know (University of Georgia Press), and The Flannery O'Connor Award, Selected Stories (Charles East, ed., University of Georgia Press).
Prologue
John Bonner is the only living John Bonner currently on the scene, so it's his job to solve this problem: Allman's Nightrider is blocking the entrance to the church parking lot.
It's a humongous thing, this twenty-two-wheeler, Allman's little bitty baby, and inside its cab is a regular apartment—bed, hot plate, coffee roaster, interloan library, camcorder, gun rack—nearly everything a bubba hippie of the road and proud owner of Franklin County's biggest overload (forty-two thousand pounds' worth of an infraction) could want. But it's blocking the church parking lot, that's the main thing right now.
John has leaped out of his pickup and is already sprinting down the sidewalk. Fortunately Allman is early, so the assembling cars are few in number. John spots a Pennsylvania license plate idling in front of United Methodist. Pennsylvania must mean Murray Kempleton has arrived. Soon the other metal shredders from the tristate area will be here, and they are strange wealthy men for whom the wide world is either ferrous or nonferrous. Nothing else. Except on special days like this, when things can also be alive or dead.
The Nightrider has corkscrewed itself into hopelessly stuck. Why did Allman think he could wend his parade float of a truck down a side street, much less into a small church lot? Probably due to the imagination built up through long hours of night driving, and other things. Enough time on the road, John has noticed, and the independent haulers start thinking their big rigs are Fiats. John is relieved to see that Tony, always ahead of time for work, has the same habit for funerals. He is here, he is one leg up on the running board and shouting over the engine noise to Allman behind the steering wheel. "We're backing her out!" Tony yells over to John, and then he does something he probably shouldn't, but it doesn't matter, nobody sees him, he stands on someone's car roof. His vigorous semaphore indicates he has seen a way to untangle the knot. The suit Tony is wearing hides the welding burns up and down his arms, but John can see a burn on the back of his hand, maroon and perfect as a caste mark, while Tony summons Allman two hand waves forward, straightens him, then motions him backward. The truck bucks in place, moves one crashingly loud inch after another. The noise turns everything else into a silent movie, and John finds himself watching it, the only sound the flapping of the sixteen-millimeter film, it seems so dated and jumpy and everybody looks a little weird, as if the ancient technology can't capture how things really are today. Tony has wet-combed his dark hair straight back, and the stark white forehead makes him look like somebody else. John has the sensation he is someone else, too. And he guesses that he is, actually. From this day forward he is sort of somebody else.
John turns to find his father silently by his side.
"What's going on?" the Senior asks.
John doesn't answer. It doesn't really need an explanation. Does
it? The Nightrider is so loud that maybe the Senior will think he has spoken.
"I see," the Senior says.
John is about to ask where his mother and sister are, but realizes if he speaks the illusion that he has already spoken will be ruined. He pulls his tie out of his shirt pocket and begins to loop it around. He's just read about eighty-five ways to knot your neckwear. He mentioned it to his dad—just something interesting—and all the Senior said was, Eighty-five ways to tie a tie. That's eighty-four things you don't need to know.
As John straightens the knot and pushes it into place over his Adam's apple, he's aware of the Senior studying him. All of a sudden he feels this tremendous urge, it overtakes him. What the hell are you looking at? he demands of his father. He wants to say it so badly. He just wants to say it, that's all. His father is looking at him as if he can't recognize his own son, and now his son simply wants to say what the hell are you looking at?
But he doesn't, of course.
John and his father are still out in the middle of the street, keeping it clear for the violently bucking but hardly moving at all Nightrider. Then, miraculously, like a wedding ring soaped off a finger grown too fed up, the truck slips clear and free and escapes. Except it doesn't run off to Telluride, Colorado, where it decides to live with its sister and get a job substitute teaching. It goes down the street to a Columbus, Ohio, grocery store. The Big Bear supermarket has plenty of parking room for Allman's Nightrider.
With Allman gone, the cars pour in.
"That was easy," his father says. They head toward the church. They won't get inside, however, without properly acknowledging the tattered summit flags waiting for them at the top of the steps. The old guard, down to three. And a zealous three