Free A Busted Afternoon by Pepper Espinoza

Chapter 1
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June 1, 1972
Sixty miles west of Wendover, NV
     
    When it started to rain, Sammy Neff
laughed. A full-throated, resonant sound. One that came from deep in
his body and erupted from him in a sort of orgasm of joy. Only, to Ed
Sorenson’s ears, Sammy didn’t sound very amused. There was a sort of
tinny, annoyed quality to the laughter. One that betrayed Sammy’s
undeniable frustration as the sky opened in an angry torrent. The
entire drive from Evanston had been uneventful, the two of them
enjoying a companionable silence for most of the journey. Just an hour
before, they had been humming along with “All the Young Dudes” and the
sky had been clear across the salt flats.
    “Get in the car!” Ed shouted, sticking his head out the window, becoming drenched in an instant.
    “It’s not running yet.”
    “You’ll get sick if you stay out in the
rain.” And the last thing either of them needed was to catch pneumonia.
Ed didn’t want to die on their first trip away from home, and all the
warnings from his mother echoed through the years. She would have a
heart attack if she saw Sammy standing without a coat in the rain. On
the other hand, it was probably bad enough that her eighteen-year-old
son, her only boy, had decided to take off without more than a day’s
warning.
    “I won’t get sick. I’m not sugar, I won’t melt.”
    “Just get in the damned car before you
catch your death. If anything happens to you, I’m going to be stranded
out here. Probably ‘til I die.”
    Sammy looked around the lifted hood, and
now he had a genuine smile. His blond hair hung in his face, and he
looked distinctly like a wet puppy. If he had a tail, he would be
wagging it. “You’re not going to die out here.”
    “I will if you’re not here to help me!”
Ed was forced to shout over the roar of the water. He wouldn’t be
surprised if there were flash flood warnings in the area. He thought
about making a crack about needing an ark, but the jokes could wait
until Sammy wasn’t being bombarded by the rain. Ed hadn’t even thought
to pack a slicker. He wouldn’t need it where he was going, and the last
thing he had expected was to be stranded on the side of the road, in a
flash flood, in the desert.
    “You’ve got a point.” Sammy slammed the hood down and trotted over to the passenger side.
    His thin T-shirt was already soaked
through, the material clinging to his shoulders and his chiseled chest.
His nipples were hard peaks from the cold water, and Ed knew he
shouldn’t be staring at them, but he couldn’t help himself. Especially
when his mouth watered to taste the rain on that hard flesh.
    “So…do you know what’s wrong?” Ed asked, once Sammy settled in the car.
    His clothes dripped on the leather seat,
but Ed wasn’t worried about him harming the old station wagon. He had
picked it up for a few hundred dollars, and there were several good
reasons Mr. Henderson was so willing to part with it for hardly
anything. Ed found himself almost painfully distracted by the way the
stray drops of rain still rolled down the curve of Sammy’s ear.
    “I have a pretty good idea.”
    “What?”
    “It’s your alternator.”
    “Is that a bad thing?” As soon as he asked
the question, Ed knew the answer. Old Man Henderson had fucked him
over. The old bastard had probably thought it was a hilarious joke.
Send the stupid kid off with the piece of shit car nobody else would
pay to buy. He had probably figured it wouldn’t make much of a
difference anyway, since Ed’s number had been so high in the lottery.
Ed wouldn’t need the old station wagon in Vietnam.
    Sammy snorted. “Pretty bad. And not the sort of thing people usually have a spare for in the trunk.”
    Ed dragged his gaze from Sammy and looked out to the sheets of rain. “What are we going to do?”
    “There’s a garage back a few miles back.”
    Ed frowned. “You mean Wendover? That’s more than a few miles. And we can’t walk that in