Excerpt:

Randall Bush, Randy to his friends and those who either thought they were his friends or pretended to be, wasn't that bad of a guy when it came down to it. He got up in the morning, showered and put on clean clothes, then got in his truck and went to work down at the shop. He worked on the cars that came in from eight to five with an hour for lunch at one o'clock, where he usually would either go down to the diner and have some of Rosalinda's famous daily blue plate special, or eat a sandwich and chips that Leigh Ann fixed him before he left in the morning.

Today it was a cold meat loaf sandwich with crisp green lettuce and a thick slice of fresh tomato, picked just after the sun came up from the little garden patch out back behind the trailer. Vegetables always tasted better when they were freshly picked, at the perfect peak of ripeness when the flavors just burst into your mouth and made every other food they touched taste that much better. He had not grown the lettuce, though; couple years ago he put out some lettuce, but between the deer and the worms that were the blight of his existence, he decided never again would he bother with lettuce or cabbage-like vegetables, since the worms seemed to enjoy them just as well. This year it was just tomatoes, a few butter bean plants, a cucumber vine and two squash plants that had given them all the tasty yellow goodness that they needed for the summertime.

Randy's life was simple, and he liked the hand God dealt him. He went home every night to a woman who loved him, that he still loved even after almost twenty years, he had two kids that kept him on his toes that seemed to be growing up right, despite the leniency he showed them that his own father would not have (and let him know it every time he drove over from Macon, where him and mama moved after he and his brother Kevin grew up and were declared 'on their own'). He had nearly everything he could ever want, he thought, since nobody could ever have a hundred percent of what they wanted, since that would make their life perfect and ain't nobody perfect 'cept for maybe God and his Son, Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Randy thought about that for a moment. He didn't know why when one spoke of Jesus in this town, it was always in the long form with his title included, as if a body would be struck dead, or at least dumb, by calling him anything less. He smirked and thought, 'God forbid that anyone would call the man JC or something'. For all Randy knew, something like that really Was blasphemy like Brother Jacobsen seemed to like to impress upon his followers, if not in so many words, by using that tone that made you feel like shit under the shoe of a convict down at Reidsville or something of the sort.

Who was he to question the path of his soul anyway? Randy thought it was easier to toe the line, not talk about God like He was a good buddy, and make sure he always went to church on Sundays whether Leigh Ann went along with him and the kids or not. He loved his wife, but her soul was between her and her Creator, and there was nothing he could do about it one way or the other.

He dropped his lunch off in his locker and went into the men's to take one last whiz before he got down to business. He had to pull the engine out of a Chevelle and replace it with one that had a little more to offer than the 350 hp it was made with. The customer was one of these that had the need to be first one through the gate and always the first one to get there, no matter where he was going. For all Randy knew, after he got the bigger engine and all of the tweaks to the tranny that were needed to keep her in tip-top condition, the owner would find he was also the first one to wrap himself around a telephone pole some Friday night after leaving the Dew Drop or maybe that Flame place.

Likely the Flame, he reasoned, then turned on the country station on the box and got down to work. He promised the job would be done by six tonight, and he would have it done, by God. If he kept to it and everything went smooth, maybe he'd be done with it early and be all packed up and ready to head out, instead of just getting the Zep he used to get rid of the engine grease off of his hands. Then he could collect the money for the job and get on home to Leigh Ann and the kids. That was the best part of his day. After all, he truly was a simple man with simple needs.

They would sit around for a few minutes while Leigh Ann got the table set and then sit down to dinner. He was looking forward to that pot roast she said she was thinking about making, and he knew her well enough that she would mention what it was she was thinking about making, and depending on his reaction, that was what would most always be in the oven or on the stove waiting for him to get there so she could pull it out and serve it up to them all.

The only thing that would make it better would be if it was served up when Monday Night Football would be on shortly after it was all finished. Then he would go get a Budweiser long neck bottle out of the fridge and sit in his La-Z-Boy and not get up until it was time for the second quarter, when he would refresh his beer (maybe get two of them so his throat would not have the chance to get too dry before halftime), maybe take a leak and then get back before the lizards finished their last Bud... Weis... Errrrrr. It was an Art, and Randy Bush thought he had it down to a Science.

It was not Monday, though, so they'd eat and then watch whatever senseless comedy was on the Tube before they shoo'ed the kids off to bed and then Leigh Ann would fix herself some iced tea and get him that beer he had left over from Monday night's six pack, if there was one, and there usually was one, maybe two depending on how badly the team he rooted for that night was doing, so he would be set for Tuesday and sometimes Wednesday, but usually only Tuesday. After all, when it was football season, and you were a fan like Randy was, you were going to be plastered to the seat of your recliner until midnight, maybe later, and a man needed to get a little sleep even if he was going to be one brain cell better off than dog meat.

Randy woked steadily on the engine job and tweaked this and that, grabbed a bolt to put in place of one that had gone missing, and had his cold meat loaf sandwich for lunch with its leaf of crisp, green lettuce and thick slice of fresh tomato, which would have just a hint of salt, because what is a fresh, vine ripened tomato without a hint of salt? When he was just under halfway done with lunch, he got up and walked to the coke machine, dropping in a couple quarters so he could get that icy cold twelve ounce bottle of Coca Cola and pop the top off of it by holding it against the top edge of his workbench and use the free hand to snap the far side of the cap and listen to the familiar 'pop' noise when the cap became trapped between his hand and the countertop. That's how it was every time.

Damn, there wasn't anything better than Coke out of the glass bottle. They were getting some of the Coke in plastic bottles now, at the 7-11 or the Suwannee Swifty, but Randy thought that new idea wouldn't fly anyway, so why take one of the plastic ones when the bottles still remained? Sure, you were stuck paying that five or ten cent deposit for the bottle, but you got it back when you took the bottle back to the store. He supposed the deposit was to keep encouraging the people not to toss the bottles out in the trash or alongside a dirt road, but getting the nickel or dime back had been a pleasant surprise every time he took one of the bottles back to the store.