Young Writers Society

Oil Heads

Prologue

Understanding rules in life is the first step to not getting killed. If you don’t know how to do something, it might come back to bite you. Sometimes it doesn’t, and those times are the riskiest moments you’ll ever experience. Let’s put it this way, I didn’t want to kill Jackie Arcdale, and I knew damn well he didn’t want to die either. It was a heat of the moment kind of situation. I knew Jackie was either gonna stab me or punch me to death on that rooftop, and so I did what I had to do to keep on living. Using a heater was unfair, even for me. Shoving Jackie off of the movie house that cool January night was one of the best and worst things I ever did. And all the Arcdales know I did it, they just can’t get any dirt on me. Even though they quite literally own El Dorado, they can’t put a sleazy greaser away in the pound for killing their son.

El Dorado is a small town in South Arkansas that’s known for one thing: Oil. Some odd 70 years ago, Benjamin and Harold Arcdale, immigrants from England, came here to make money, and make money they did. Striking that good old black gold made them go big. They created rigs upon rigs throughout the city that they had built using their earnings. El Dorado was already here twenty years earlier, but they made the place rich.

Except for the South side.

You would think that Downtown would be the nicer part of the area, when the only nice part is that the snotty rich kids don’t come onto our turf as much. The Perimeter, as we call it, is Main Street. The Arcdales are in the North and we’re in the South.

They’re Arc-Ds.

And we’re Oil Heads.

The Oil Heads.

Chapter 1

I work in an automobile repair shop in downtown El Dorado. Ever since Pop was gone, I had been running it, fixing up cars and trucks. I always liked cars, I liked everything about them. Racing, fixing, modifying, anything really. And since my shop was the only one in town, we had cornered the market in El Dorado. We're still poor, living in a one story house with three beds in one room, a small TV room, and an even smaller kitchen. Sure, I could pay the bills fine, but money was tight at times. Especially when Ma and Pop died on Valentine’s Day last year. Police said they got mugged, and killed. Since then, I’ve been running the shop. As well as keeping Lenny and Kenny in school, which wasn’t too hard, considering both of them fancied it pretty well. I dropped out when I was 16, because I already knew I wanted to be a mechanic and I already knew enough stuff from Pop. Leonard and Kendrick are my two kid brothers. Both real smart too. Our parents got real witty naming us three. You would think naming your boys Dennis, Leonard, and Kendrick would be fine. Until you realize you can call them Denny, Lenny, and Kenny. And soon enough, that’s all you’re known as. Dennis is a good name as is, Denny’s just catchier I guess. And it’s a great way for folks around town to get to know you. Almost all the people in El Dorado know me. Anyone who has a car has seen me at least once before. And those who know me either love me, or they hate me. Despite my good nature in the shop, I run a local gang consisting of my brothers and some other friends. I started it not long after Ma and Pop got shot. I wanted to rid the other hoods from E Dorado. There’s only seven of us, but we’ve made ourselves well known in El Dorado as a group of greasers. But we don’t like being called greasers, we prefer being called Oil Heads, because it has a bit more meaning to it. We’re Oil Heads for three reasons, one, we use oil to slick back our hair into ducktails. Two, we love working with cars, especially me, and getting into that black gold is heavenly. And three, El Dorado is known for its oil production from A&A Oil, so pretty much anyone in El Dorado is an Oil Head, we’re just the ones who make ourselves known as them.

I’m setting some tires up on a rack when Lenny comes through the door, the bell at the top making a soft ding.

“Hey, Denny. Me an’ Kenny just got outta school.”

“Well, I ain’t been too busy today. So I might take off early an’ we can go do somethin’ fun.” I said as I put up the last tire.

“There’s a drag race up on the Northside just out of town,” He says as I lock up the shop and turn the open sign over.

“Lenny, you know who’s on the Northside. Those damned Arcdales will get us rumbling and fighting again.”

“Awh, you’re still hung up on killing Jackie, aren’t you?”

“No,” I said quickly.

“C’mon, Dennis. That was over half a year ago. We had our scuffle with the Arcdales and we won, they haven’t bothered us since. We ain’t got nothing to worry about.”

“I just don’t want them going after any of us,” I said nervously.

“If you’re thinking they’re gonna go after Kenny, they won’t. He’s much too fast for any of the punks in their gang,” Lenny says as he opens the door to our cyan Volkswagen Beetle.

“I guess you’re right. Is he back home?” I ask.

“Yeah, I told him I was gonna come get you. He said he would stay at the house ‘til we came back,” he says as I rev up the car.

“Good,” I say. “We don’t need him wandering ‘round town.”

———

We drive up to our old wooden house. It’s an earthy brown with touches of red. The lawn is sparse and dry, and the bushes match the desert yellow that is Lenny’s hair. Lenny looks like the lawn, bright tan, with subtle browns in his hair. His skin is tan and darker than most. His eyes are the dirty puddle water, a light brown with green accents. I’m the house, dark brown and red highlights in my oily hair. The cream colored shutters with the salmon pink windows match my somewhat pasty skin. The only defining feature of mine are my sharp cyan eyes, about the same color as the Bug. Kenny was like the inside, green furniture for eyes, and copper of the pipes in the kitchen for wavy hair. His skin is the same color as the peachy carpet and walls. Kenny looked like Lenny, and Lenny looked like Pop. I looked like Ma and Ma only. Ma was an auburn haired woman, that’s where I got my reddish hair. Pop always used to say Ma’s red hair is what gave me my temper. And Ma sure was a fiery woman. The only thing I got from Pop was mentality and strength. Pop was hefty and I turned out the same way.

“Hey, Kenny boy!” I say. “How was school today? You beat up any punks?”

Lenny hits the back of my head. “Dennis, don’t encourage him.”

“I’m just joking is all. Kenny don’t get himself into trouble as much as I do.”

“You got that right, I only rumble when I need to,” Kenny says as he grabs a Nehi from the fridge.

“Hey pass me one too, Ken. I’m beat from working on Mr. Lee’s new Chevy Bel Air. And boy is that hot rod a beauty,” I say as I catch the pop and crack it open with my switchblade.

“Lenny was talking about a drag race in town. Can we go to it?” Kenny begs.

“I don’t know, Ken. Them Arcdales are gonna be up there. And I don’t wanna have to deal with them,” I say as I crack my knuckles.

“Oh, you worry too much, Dennis. We should go, it’s been over two months since we’ve run into them. Take a rest,” Lenny says as he puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Okay. We’ll go,” I say. “How much are the tickets?”

“We’re gonna pay? ‘Cause I ain’t forking over five bucks a piece.” Kenny says.

“Five?” I shout.” Yeah, we ain’t paying 15 dollars for that. We’re sneaking in. Which venue is it at?”

“New one. Seems real nice. Everyone’s calling it the Dirt Ditch,” Lenny says as he slips his jacket on.

I open the door and start the Bug up. “Alright, Oil Heads. Let’s grab the rest of the gang and get going. We don’t need to get into a rumble tonight.”