Same night, different story.
"Shit." Brian said, followed by, "Shit-shit-shit-SHIT!" and then, "Dammit Tim, ease up on the gas!" as the big white disreputable stakebed truck began careening down the quaintly meandering street in the wealthy neighborhood just north of Salem proper, going around a corner with increasing speed as his recovering addict business partner wrestled with the cracked steering wheel.
"Mumblemumblemumble, CAN'T!" was all Tim said, brain fried from years of prescription drug abuse when he couldn't get crank, followed by: "Won't!"
"Why the hell not?" Brian stared at the big, elaborate mailbox decorated with pumpkins and corn stalks for Autumn they barely missed as it shot past his side out of the darkness.
"Mumblemumble – goddamned engine fell out!" They careened around another tight corner – this time on two bald tires, settling with a CRASH of loose tools and looser broken shingles. Why the hell couldn't rich people have flat, straight streets like everybody else?
"WHEN?" BANG! (This time they didn't miss the mailbox, something that looked like a big trout made of brass, or, well it had…)
"Mumblemumblemum—five seconds ago."
"Son of a bitch, so that's what that noise was – so use the goddam brakes!"
"Mumblecoughmumblemble – they're with the engine!"
Their rusty rolling pussy magnet once again decided to fall apart halfway through a job hauling old shingles to the nearby landfill for Wolf Brothers Construction.
Big surprise there, the battered hulk existed long before they were born and wanted to kill them – all part of the excitement – even if it meant occasionally crashing out of control through a wealthy neighborhood on a darkened street modeled after a drunken snake – GRRRRRRIIIIIIINNNNNDDDDD - Splat - clatter-clatter-clatter! Their shared rolling deathtrap sideswiped a Tesla, flattened an obscenely large pumpkin, while losing a few hundred broken shingles along the way. Face grim, Tim gripped the steering wheel, using the weight of his entire scrawny body to steer their landbound Queen Mary as it skidded around yet another inconvenient but picturesque turn, slamming down on all four bald tires with a crash...
...only to swerve around a Land Rover, forcing them to jump the curb and point right at a house. Tim, mumbling around a mouth full of random pills yanked the wheel hard right as Brian, wondering if this was it for both of them, braced himself for impact when the truck lumbered through a huge Fall display, missing a fountain made up of naked babies (clearly male) frolicking around what might have been a big drooling bronze caterpillar standing on its back end. Brian exclaimed a few choice four-letter words, thinking they'd survived...
...only to experience what happens when two ton's worth of 1/2" thick Detroit steel comes to an abrupt halt against a centuries old Douglas fir that the property owner and his husband doubtlessly paid an awful lot of money to some developer to preserve when their Lincoln log McMansion was built last year.
Accompanied by the unmistakable sound of a ton of broken cedar shingles hitting the ground all at once as they slid out of the back, the Douglas fir slowly tipped over with a long, drawn out groan, missing the neighbor's house by inches before flattening their perfectly restored Cherry Red 1960s Corvette — followed by a long silence.
Whooping, Tim and Brian, staggered out of the truck in a cloud of beer and a shower of random pills. Awesome!
Awesome was awesome, Brian reflected as he and Tim slowly, painfully rolled the big truck backwards up out of the remains of the McMansion's highly manicured lawn to the tune of approaching sirens, but this was the last time they let little cousin Toby help them in their attempt to keep their self-propelled dumpster of a truck street legal— even if he was good with a welding torch and worked cheap!