FIN // ONE // DIESEL JONES

there's a hole in my neighbourhood

down which of late i cannot help but fall

"Alright, alright, but what's your real name?"
"I just told you, it's really Diesel."

She doesn't look up at the technician who's the latest in a tedious history of men to dispute her claim to her own privacy and history. They wouldn't tease a man like this, would they? Not even if he was a pretty young thing, too. Instead, she passively wipes her small hands once again on the thighs of her baggy work overalls, leaving oily smears like black bridal trains where her filthy, untidy fingernails smear across their fabric. These overalls were never meant to be worn by a woman - especially one as small-framed as Diesel is - like everything else in this metalyard, Diesel's had to make it work for her by herself. Talk about a man's world. She's learnt to ignore the lewd magazines left in precarious stacks in the recreation room; trained herself to tolerate encountering men mid-piss and vulnerable as she laments the absence of a female bathroom; but she clearly hasn't yet mastered rising above their flirtatious teases and jokes, still falling into the self-conscious trap they set her every time they approach her workstation, over and over again.

"Yeah, but what's your real name? Like, what your daddy gave you?"
 
Unable to hold herself back from it any longer, she slams down the bonnet of her latest project, which groans like a sick elephant, and fixes the technician with her signature glare. Instantly he shrinks away - a weed suddenly withering under the burning suns of her eyes, which shine hotly despite how dark they are. Somewhere behind another workstation, a man laughs heartily in their direction, eager to see the firecracker do what she does best. Diesel's wide, upturned nose wrinkles in disgust and her thick, cracked lips curl into a sneer.

"Are you deaf, Foray, or just fuckin' retarded?"

She neither cares about the political incorrectness of her hostility, nor the slurring drawl that creeps into her voice when she's angry, and instead continues to focus on making Foray feel as small and weak as possible. Although Diesel has never formally trained as a Career, she's picked up a wide range of skills in intimidation and domination in her five years working as a mechanic - and heavy lifting and days full of hard labour have made her quite handy with weighty objects, too - she could bash a man's head in as easily and guiltlessly as she bashes a dent out of a door. Foray clearly knows this, grinning bashfully and waving his dirty palms as he tries to excuse his joke for being just that, and Diesel becomes sure that the boys have been talking about her again; mostly likely in the bar they frequent after the sun goes down, a workers' tradition that Diesel always passes. Usually, they would put up at least a bit of a fight, desperate to assert their masculinity and not be shot down by a woman so quickly, but Foray backed away without even a throwaway comment. She breathes out from between her straight teeth, which glisten with an excess of saliva that's the only sign that confronting the technician made her nervous (thank god her dark brown skin covers the flush that rises underneath it), and she tries not to think of what they could have said about her over their beers and between the naked girls who serve them.

Wiping the sticky sweat from her large, round forehead, Diesel is almost certain they told each other the One About The Gun again. She can almost picture Foray's eager, ratty little face as the other men laughed and cheered each other on: "tell him the one about the gun! Tell him what her daddy did when she came here!" Unlike some of the other bullshit they say to each other - I heard she sleeps in one of the trucks 'cause she ain't got nowhere else to go - well he told me she's got a kid, and it's a Peacekeeper's - yeah well everyone knows she fucks like an animal, and I know that first hand - the gun story is undeniable, because almost all of the veteran mechanics saw it happen. Diesel knows that that's what makes it so much harder to bear - and to block out of her frequent nightmares - than any of the other stuff.

Diesel's father had been a gearhead for as long as she could remember. Part of her suspects that the fact he talked more about vehicles than he did about his wife is what drove her away, and part of her can't help but think that he did it on purpose. As he stood once with his daughter watching the Victor procession, he turned her pointed chin roughly with his large hand, forcing her gaze away from the dazzling blonde boy and onto the belching, thundering trucks that went before him. "Isn't it amazing, kiddo?" Without looking at the way his fingers firmly held her face, anyone standing nearby heard the tender softness of his voice and assumed he was simply imparting knowledge to his beloved daughter. The juxtaposition of that thin voice always made Diesel's skin crawl - for someone whose interests were as rough as his treatment of his child, it always sounded like a smaller man was standing behind him, saying his words for him. Diesel is thankful that was a trait she didn't inherit, for as her interests also turned to big metal contraptions and the engines that powered them, her voice got grittier, deeper and more engine-like, too.

Despite his partiality for discipline and his forcefulness when he wanted Diesel to behave a certain way, he never beat his daughter, and neither did Diesel's mother. She'd sometimes see other kids come to school with red hand-marks still hanging on their cheeks like starfish, but she never faced a similar treatment - even on the occasions when she did "step outta line", as he put it, she always stood her ground and argued her case until the man calmed down and left it. That's what made what happened on the first day Diesel accompanied her father to the Vehicle Restoration Centre (affectionately known as the place where good cars come to die) that he owned and ran, around two weeks after Diesel's mother left, so horrifying. 

It was the first time her father had ever taken her out of school, which puzzled Diesel but didn't lead her to resist his request like she might have done in a different context. However, the absence of his woman had taken a toll on him, and he had grown grimmer and more serious within that fortnight, and truth be told Diesel was even starting to grow a little scared of him. Or perhaps, if not scared, as she had sworn since being picked on at school to never be scared of anyone again, then cautious. She knew a substantial amount about gears, pistons, converters and all the other axels and levers that formed the skeleton of any sort of vehicle, from buggy to tank, even though she had never willingly pursued the topic before. Up to that point, Diesel considered that she hadn't found her life calling yet, but it was hard not to learn a thing or two when your father was the self-professed Truck Oracle of District One. As a result, she found the prospect of visiting Jones' Vehicle Restoration Centre quite exciting; maybe she'd even be able to show off a little bit.

They arrived to the hearty welcomes of the other men, the men that Diesel has grown to know and hate since. One at a time, they shook hands with the little lady, who didn't give her own name and didn't have it given for her, and some even made a mock bow, which caused her to smile wryly and roll her thirteen-year old eyes. When one man jokingly chided the father for bringing a girl into their Man's Den, Diesel couldn't help her fast tongue as she quipped back, "well by that criteria I guess half of you don't belong here either."  That was when what started as hearty, welcoming laughter turned into what would immortally be retold as the One With The Gun.

Diesel didn't even feel her head snap backwards until it had already done so, but as soon as the glare caused by pain and her face suddenly turned to the sun had passed, she became aware of two sensations at once. One was the feeling of her fathers hand bunched in her coarse, black hair, her scalp burning with pain where it felt like the strands could tear out at any moment. The second was the cold, hard end of a pistol buried between her teeth, pushing into her mouth. As she began to taste the gunpowder in the barrel of the uncleaned gun, her father's honey voice came again, soft as a cloud as he had no need to battle for volume over the dead silence that had befallen the group of onlooking men. "You're not here for fun and games, kiddo," it said, and Diesel desperately tried to blink back the tears that stabbed at her eyes, "you're hear because I'm the only damn person in this country who gives a shit about keeping you safe." Later, years later, Diesel would laugh grimly at the irony of those words, but at the time all she and anyone else could wonder was where on god's holy earth had he got the gun, and how long had he had it?

Clearly someone else was far more concerned about that sentiment than Diesel was, as it was barely a month later, the whole month spent by Diesel in horrified silence on the lot, that the Peacekeepers came for her father for bearing arms and threatening a child. Now, she doesn't know if she regrets not speaking out as they took him quietly away. Any feelings of remorse are soon chased away by the realisation that she might still be miserable, and never have asserted herself in this workplace, if he had stayed. But as it was, he was gone - Diesel had lost both parents in a matter of weeks, and she knew she couldn't just sit and cry about it. For one, she started carrying his gun, which the Peacekeepers never found, around with her at all times; ("but where does she keep it?" "Probably in that round ass of hers" was one rumour that usually triggered fierce laughter amongst the men). It both reminds her that she doesn't need anyone else to defend her, and that defending her is probably what her father was executed for doing, even though he most definitely didn't go about it in the right way. And so the One With The Gun was born, an immortal, notorious legend about the witty teenager and her crazy lot-owning daddy, and how crazy surely runs in the family because it turned that witty teenager into the cold killer she is today. Diesel found her place amongst the men, sticking with the younger technicians at first and then, when she found her feet and had earned some respect for working hard and taking no shit, being totally independent. For the first few years, while Diesel was still so young, she hardly ever slept, afraid that one of the men might go nuts and do something unforgivable to her, but now she considers that perhaps that's one of the advantages for being known to both verbally and physically shut men down over her time here.

She's not ashamed she lost her virginity to one of the mechanics. The only thing that embarrasses her about it is how she thought she was in love with him afterwards. Love has no place in a world where you have to keep climbing or get left for dead. Looking at Foray as he backs away from her, probably thinking of the gun she keeps hidden in unspeakable places or the one time she knocked 'Two-Wheel' Jimmy out with one well-aimed punch, Diesel snaps out of her flashbacks and can't help but think that the mechanic who lay next to her naked and didn't call her beautiful was probably very much like Foray himself. The thought repulses her, and she spits a thick glob of sour phlegm almost elegantly into the dirt before turning back to the car. Despite the string of poor or questionable choices she's made over these years, they're better than any alternative life could have been for her. She's her own boss and her own guardian, and that independence - whatever price it came at - isn't something that Trinity Diesel Jones would give up for the world. 

diesel jones - eighteen - district one