Free Dogfight by Michael Knight

his burner and looked at Gerald.
    â€œI don’t know. My Jap gets all the good shit. It’ll eat bananas,” Wishbone said. “It’ll scratch its ass. Shit, Gerald.
Will it be a spider monkey?”
    â€œSpider monkeys make the best pets,” Gerald said.
    â€œGerald, what the hell do you want with a monkey?” I said.
    Gerald started to answer, paused in his burning, white sparkssettling around his gloved hands, but Wishbone cut him off. He said to me, “Do not speak until you are spoken to, little man.” His voice was muffled and deepened by his welding mask. “A monkey Gerald wants, a monkey Gerald gets. Now, run and fetch me some cigarettes.”
    He stood and stretched his legs. Wishbone was one large black man. With his welding mask down and black leather smock and gloves and long, thick legs running down into steel-toed work boots, he looked like a badass Darth Vader.
    â€œWishbone, can you read?” I said.
    He snapped his mask up. His face was running with sweat and his eyes were bloodshot and angry. He was high on something. This was my second summer at my uncle’s shipyard, and the best I could tell, Wishbone was always high.
    â€œDid you speak, little man? I hope not.”
    I didn’t say anything else, just pointed at the sign behind him— DO NOT SMOKE , painted in red block letters on plywood. The torches burn on a combination of pure oxygen and acetylene and sometimes tiny holes wear in the lines from use. The welding flames themselves generally burn off all the leaking oxygen and gas, but shut down the torches and give the gas a little time to collect in the air, then add a spark, and the world is made of fire. A spark is rarely enough but why test the percentages? There’s a story around the yard about a guy who’d been breathing the fumes for hours with his torch unlit. When he went to fire it up, he inhaled a spark and the air in his lungs ignited. Afterward, he looked okay on the surface, nothing damaged, but his insides were charcoal, hollowed out by fire.
    Wishbone glanced over his shoulder at the sign, looked back at me, shrugged. He reached under his smock and came out with a rumpled pack of Winstons. He put a bent cigarette between his lips, struck a match, and held it just away from the tip.
    â€œThis is my last cigarette,” he said. “You have till I am finished to get your ass up from the floor and out to the wagon for a new pack. Let me be clear. If you are not back before I put my boot on thisthing, I’m gonna beat you like a rented mule.” He spoke real slow like I was his Jap connection and my English wasn’t so good. “Do you understand?”
    I got to my feet reluctantly. I didn’t want him to know that I was afraid. I said, “Gerald, you need anything?” Gerald shook his head and gave me a wave.
    I sidled to the ladder and climbed it slow and easy, no hurry, but once topside, I was gone, the fastest white boy on earth, dumping equipment as I ran, a jackrabbit, skirting welders and shipfitters on the deck, clanging down the gangplank, then up over the cyclone fence, headed for the supply wagon. It was ninety-five degrees out, wet July heat in lower Alabama, but after the hold, it felt good, almost cold. Goose bumps rose lightly on my skin.
    Wishbone got off on razzing me. White kid, sixteen, owner’s nephew, gone with the summer anyhow. I was his wet dream. We had worked together for a week last summer, my first time on a welding crew, and even then he had no patience for me. He ignored me for the whole week, just looked away whenever I spoke, concentrated on the skittering sparks and pretended I wasn’t there. The cigarette runs were a new addition, but I didn’t mind so much. Probably, he wouldn’t have roughed me up, if I had refused to play along. He would have been fired, maybe jailed, and he knew it, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
    Summers at the shipyard were a