The Tow Truck Driver Who Collected the Breakdown With His Body

Cándido’s truck had gone silent a while ago, but the air on that lonely stretch of road still vibrated, charged with dirty electricity. Raquel and her daughter Noelia waited beside the broken-down car, two silhouettes cut out against a dusk that stained the sky purple, like a huge bruise over the plateau.

The silence was broken again, now not by the modern roar of a lorry, but by a rough, asthmatic, limping sound. Old iron, loose belts. Around the bend came the tow truck: an ancient vehicle, repainted by hand in a faded orange, with a bed full of rusty chains and grease stains like black islands. On the door, hand-lettered in shaky capitals, it read: “SATURNINO TOWING AND REPAIRS — WE FIX WHAT CAN BE FIXED.”

The vehicle braked with an agonized screech that kicked up a cloud of dust and stopped a couple of meters from the car. The engine coughed one last time and the cab shook, like a big animal shaking off flies.

The driver’s door opened and for an instant it seemed the truck would tip from the shift in weight. First came into view a safety boot with a worn steel toe and a sole caked with dry mud. Then a leg as broad as a column, wrapped in blue overalls begging for mercy at the seams. And at last Saturnino climbed down.

If Cándido had been a cold predator, Saturnino was pure brute force, animal traction. An enormous man, broader than he was tall. Bald, his skull gleaming oily under the headlights, the weathered, ruddy skin of someone who has spent forty years under the sun. His neck was so thick that his head seemed to grow straight out of his shoulders. And hair everywhere: a black carpet burst from the buttons of his overalls and climbed up his neck almost to his eyebrows, two wild thickets.

—Christ, it’s hot! —he bellowed in a voice like gravel pouring down a pipe. He wiped his forearm across his brow, leaving a smear of grease—. Are you the friends of Cándido, the horny ones?

Raquel nodded, unable to speak. That man was overwhelming in a different way. Cándido was frightening; Saturnino gave off inevitability, like a boulder rolling downhill.

He came closer with a heavy, swaying gait, scratching his belly: a hard, solid sphere, taut as a drum, the kind strong country men have.

—What a breakdown, beauties —he said, slapping the hood with a crack like a gunshot. He didn’t even open it—. Smells like a blown head gasket from here. Cándido told me: “Go on over there, there are two girls who need a fix and pay well, with the good stuff.” And that bastard has a good eye for these things.

He planted himself in front of them with small, dark eyes sunk into the flesh of his face, glittering with childish malice. There was none of Cándido’s cruel calculation in him; only a simple, direct lust, the kind of man who looks at a ripe watermelon and thinks of smashing it open on a stone to eat it right there.

—Holy Mother of God! —he exclaimed, hands on his hips, looking them up and down without a shred of subtlety—. The bird wasn’t lying. A bit skinny for my taste, I like them with more to hold on to, but you’ve got good shape.

Raquel tried to compose herself. She felt ridiculous: no underwear —Cándido had kept hers and her daughter’s as a souvenir— filthy, with her dress put on wrong.

—Mr. Saturnino —she said, trying to sound dignified—, we need you to take us to your garage. We’ll pay whatever it costs.

The man let out a laugh that made his belly shake.

—Pay? Forget it! What am I supposed to do with money out in the middle of nowhere, woman? Cándido already warned me the payment was in kind. And I’m easy to satisfy. One favor for another, isn’t that how the world works, girls?

He stepped closer, invading their space with a strong smell: diesel, stale sweat from hours behind the wheel, strong tobacco and that musky, animal reek of a man who doesn’t bother to hide it.

—Besides —he added, giving them a grotesque wink—, I’ve got the tool hot. And I’m not talking about the tow truck.

Raquel and Noelia looked at each other. There was no way out. And in the back of their minds, broken and reshaped by what had happened to them hours before, that dark spark emerged. Saturnino wasn’t attractive in any conventional sense. He was an ogre. But he exuded such archaic masculinity, so free of pretension, that it sent a shiver through their groins. It was the pull of the forbidden, of the dirty, of letting yourself be used by something that doesn’t think, only acts.

This will never end, Raquel thought. And the worst part is I don’t want it to end.

—Right, less chatter and more work, it’s getting dark —Saturnino said, tossing away his cigarette and crushing it with his boot.

***

Without warning, with surprising speed for such a mass, he grabbed her by the waist. His hands were so big his fingers almost touched over her navel. He lifted her as if she were a little girl, or a sack of feed.

—Hold still, mare! —he laughed, carrying her toward the truck’s nose—. You look too tense. Let’s grease your axles.

He set her down on the metal bumper, rusty and hot, at his waist height. Saturnino stepped between her legs, prying them apart with his own thighs, hard as oaks beneath the fabric of the overalls.

—Let’s see, let’s see… —he murmured, yanking her pants down in one sharp pull without unfastening anything, popping a button that rolled across the asphalt—. Damn, what a sight! You’re practically begging for it. Makes things nice and easy.

He didn’t undress. He let the straps of his overalls fall to the sides and pulled the zipper down. What he had was anything but aesthetic: a rough, thick, heavy-headed piece of flesh, dark reddish in color. A work tool, ugly, brutal and efficient, hanging heavy between his hairy thighs, already dripping.

—Look at that beauty! —he exclaimed, weighing it in his hand, proud as a man showing off a zucchini from his garden—. It may not have all the fuss city ones do, but it gets the job done. It’s like a tractor: slow but sure.

He looked at Noelia, frozen as she watched the hairy giant.

—You watch and learn, girl. That’s how it’s done in the village. No faggoty foreplay. We come to do what we came to do.

He grabbed Raquel by the hips, digging his fingers in, spat into his own hand and rubbed the saliva over the glans. Without further ceremony, he pushed in. He didn’t look for the angle, he wasn’t careful. It was like forcing a log into a keyhole.

Raquel let out a scream. The entry was rough, painful from friction and the disproportionate width. Saturnino filled her with casual brutality, stretching her walls in a way Cándido, for all his calculated cruelty, had not managed. This was different. He fucked like a man digging a trench: with rhythm, with weight, dropping all his hundred kilos into each thrust.

—Take it, woman, take it! —he kept repeating, his belly slapping her stomach with a dull sound—. This is meat! This is a female!

The smell wrapped everything: country, earth, sweat, black tobacco. His three-day beard, rough as sandpaper, scraped her face every time he lowered his head to bite her shoulder without the slightest delicacy.

—You like it, huh? —he shouted in her ear, hot breath washing over her—. You like Saturnino plowing your garden?

Raquel, legs spread and crushed against the metal, back aching, found herself moaning. Not from refined pleasure, but from an atavistic submission. The man was so vast, so primal, that he shut down her intellect. His thrusts had no technique, only power. A constant, tireless piston motion.

Noelia watched, fascinated and horrified. She saw the hairy belly rising and falling, the gorilla arms holding her mother splayed open, the bald head shining red with effort. There was something hypnotic about seeing a man so indifferent to all aesthetics, so purely functional.

—You there, skinny! —Saturnino suddenly shouted, turning his head without stopping his pumping—. What are you doing there, stunned? Come here!

He stretched out a long, thick arm like a branch and pulled her by the T-shirt toward the tangle of bodies.

—We share here, because where two eat, three eat —he laughed with a snort—. Let’s see that little mouth, I’ve heard you’re a naughty one.

Noelia found herself on her knees beside the giant’s leg, the musky smell hitting her nose. Saturnino took one hand off her mother’s hip, grabbed his dripping cock and planted it in the girl’s face.

—Clean it off, it has to go back in! Let’s not have it said that country people are dirty!

Noelia opened her mouth and he shoved it all the way in. It tasted of salt, of body, of raw life. The flesh was rough, with veins like thick cables, and the flavor was intense, dizzying.

—That’s it, girl! —he panted, moving his hips to fuck her mouth while keeping her mother immobilized with the other arm—. What a talent the girl has!

The man was in his element. Two city women serving him like disposable tissues, and he felt like king of the world. There was no malice in his insults, only a rough description of reality as he saw it: he was the male, they were the females, and that was all that mattered.

—Right, change of scene! —he announced. He pulled his cock from Noelia’s mouth with a wet sound and shoved it back into Raquel, this time turning her over, with her ass up against the truck.

—That’s it, like goats on the mountain! —he celebrated, admiring her ass—. Now there’s something to grab onto so you don’t fall.

He leaned over Raquel’s back, crushing her with his weight, and drove into her harder, almost lifting her feet off the ground with each blow. She felt as if he were splitting her in two. His belly hit her buttocks, the hair on his chest and belly scratched her bare back, sweat dripped over her like rain.

—I’m about to come, for Christ’s sake! —he warned with the subtlety of an earthquake. He began to growl, guttural sounds, almost unintelligible—. Gnnnnh!

He accelerated until the act turned into a meat grinder. Raquel clung to the bumper, knuckles white. Then Saturnino stopped dead, a spasm running through his massive body.

—Here comes the load! —he roared. He pulled his cock out and, gripping it, unloaded over Raquel’s buttocks, over the metal, over the ground. An absurd amount, the result of weeks of drought.

He stood there gasping, hands on his knees, catching his breath like an ox after hauling the plough.

—Holy Virgin! —he spat on the ground—. I feel brand new.

***

He cleaned himself with a greasy rag he took from his back pocket and pulled his overalls up with the same calm as a man who has just pissed behind a tree. Raquel slowly straightened, her legs like rags, feeling the warm, viscous trail running down her thighs. Her body was beaten to pieces, as if a truck had run over her and left her sunk in the dust.

He came over to Noelia, who was still trembling, and gave her a loud smack on the ass.

—Nice ass. But you’re off the hook for now, skinny —he told her, laughing—. Old Saturnino isn’t twenty anymore and needs to recharge. But don’t worry, the road to the garage is long.

With mechanical skill that contrasted with his social clumsiness, he maneuvered the tow truck, hooked up the car and lifted it in a couple of minutes.

—Come on, up you go! Both of you with me. Tightly packed, there’s room.

The cab was a cracked vinyl bench seat. Saturnino got in last, taking up more than half of it. His hot thigh pressed against Raquel’s; his arm, as he grabbed the huge steering wheel, brushed against Noelia’s chest.

—This is going to be an entertaining ride —he said, shifting into first with a crunch of gears that sounded like pain—. And if you get bored… —he touched his groin, where the bulge was already waking up again, lazy but inexorable— …this little hydraulic jack is always ready.

The truck lurched forward, coughing black smoke, and merged onto the road. The two women, bruised, smelling of billy goat, with Saturnino’s taste in their mouths, looked at each other. There was no fear in their eyes. There was resignation, yes, but also that sick spark, that attraction to the abyss.

***

The ride was an experience neither of them would ever forget. The truck had no suspension: every pothole became a jolt that ran up their spines and made them bounce against the vinyl and against the immovable bulk of the man. The engine, beneath the cab, separated by a thin sheet of metal hot to the touch, roared like a beast with bronchitis, filling everything with noise and heat.

Saturnino drove with one hand. The other had a life of its own. Every time he had to change gear, the choreography was humiliating: the shifter, a long iron rod with a worn knob, ended up dangerously close to Raquel’s groin, and he took the opportunity to let his huge hand drop onto her thigh “by accident.”

—Sorry, sorry! —he laughed, not taking his hand away—. With so many lumps one confuses one lever for another.

—Hey, girl —he shouted to Noelia, pointing at the knob trembling furiously—. Hold this for me, I’m losing the gear. Grab it tight, like it’s Cándido’s.

The girl reached out and grabbed the vibrating knob. The transmission sent a constant electric jolt through her arm, and for a moment, to her own shame, she didn’t want to let go.

—Feels like it’s vibrating, huh? —Saturnino gave a yellow-eyed wink—. My late wife liked sitting there on long trips.

The journey went on like that for twenty endless minutes: dirty jokes, touches disguised as driving necessities, and that smell of stale humanity cooking in the heat. Raquel could feel the man’s erection waking up again against her hip, hard and persistent, as if it were recharging on the engine’s vibration.

***

The truck turned off onto a dirt road and stopped in front of a shed that looked like it had survived a bombing. At the entrance, a sign read “SATURNINO GARAGE” and beneath it, sprayed in paint: “BEWARE OF THE DOG.” The dangerous dog turned out to be an old mastiff covered in flies that didn’t even lift its head.

The garage was a chaos of scrap metal, stacked tires, oil stains like black lakes, and old calendars of naked women with corners curled by damp.

—Home sweet home! —he bellowed, turning off the engine—. Come to the office, we’re going to wet our whistles before the repair.

The office was a little glassed-in room full of greasy invoices, overflowing ashtrays and a sofa with Saturnino’s ass shape imprinted into it. He pulled three beers and a newspaper-wrapped package dripping grease out of a dying fridge: thick pork cracklings, the rind full of bubbles.

—Dinner of champions! —he announced, opening a beer with his teeth—. Eat up, you’re all skin and bones. This would bring a dead man back, and you’re going to need the energy.

Raquel looked at the crackling in disgust, but he stopped smiling for a second.

—I said eat. Don’t snub me, because when I get sad I get rough.

She took a piece. It was cold and greasy, and the fat filled her mouth. Saturnino smiled, satisfied, watching her chew. He had lowered his zipper again to the waist and sat in the swivel chair, which groaned under his weight, legs spread wide open.

—Well… Noelia, right? —he said, pointing at the girl with a piece of crackling—. In the truck you were left wanting. Come here, I’m going to teach you preventive maintenance.

He sat her on his lap like a doll and shoved his rough hand under her T-shirt, squeezing her breasts like he was checking the ripeness of melons.

—Small but deadly! —he declared. And he kissed her. It wasn’t a movie kiss, but a collision of flesh: a mouth of beer and tobacco, a thick tongue invading her with the delicacy of a concrete mixer. Noelia felt his beard scraping her skin, his hard belly against her stomach, and to her horror, she felt herself growing wet inside.

—Right, let’s get to it! —he said, lifting her and throwing her down onto the table with one smack, sweeping papers and invoices aside. The girl ended up on her back between an ashtray and the crackling paper.

—I’m christening the desk —he laughed, letting his overalls fall to his ankles. His cock was erect again, a dark, thick, threatening rod—. Open your legs, girl.

With no lubricant beyond the grease on his hands, he pushed in. Noelia screamed. Saturnino was broad, very broad; he entered like a forced cork, stretching her, cutting off her breath.

—Fuck, you’re tight! —he groaned through clenched teeth, and began pumping with a rhythm that was not passionate but industrial. The table creaked, papers flew to the floor. He fucked with his whole body, dropping his sweaty belly onto the girl’s flat stomach.

—Look, Raquel, look how I’m fixing the girl’s undercarriage! —he shouted, face red, sweat pouring down—. I’m leaving her chassis polished to a shine!

Raquel watched, hypnotized. Seeing that rural giant possessing her daughter with such animal naturalness churned her insides in a dark way. The man didn’t look at her with hatred, but with the satisfaction of a farmer watching his crop grow.

Suddenly he stopped, motionless inside her, breathing like a broken bellows.

—Wait… wait, I’ve got a cramp —he said, with a comic grimace, one hand at his lower back—. Jesus, the Virgin! Sciatica.

Noelia, who a minute earlier had been trembling under his weight, burst out laughing, breaking the tension in the office like an axe blow. The image of that gorilla complaining about sciatica with his hand on his back struck her as so absurd that she couldn’t help it. Her mother looked at her in horror, but the girl kept laughing, finding something strangely adorable, primitive, in Saturnino’s unkempt roughness.

—Heh! I’ve got you figured out, haven’t I, little bird? —he exclaimed, giving her a complicit, cocky wink—. Deep down you like being treated with country vigor and not all that city nonsense.

And he went back to work, faster, rougher, making the table creak as if it were about to split in two. He grabbed her by the hips with his vise-like hands, each thrust a flesh-on-flesh collision that sounded like a slap in the silence. There was no gentleness at all, only the blind push of a man who felt himself master and lord of the situation.

—Raquel! —he roared suddenly—. Get over here, this is ending and I want fireworks! Stand next to her face. Kiss, I want to see some affection while I water you both!

Raquel leaned down and kissed her daughter. It was a salty, desperate kiss. As their tongues touched, they felt Saturnino’s jolts driving up from below, binding the three of them together in a chain of flesh and sweat.

—That’s it, that’s it! —he howled, throwing his head back, showing his bull neck—. I’m coming!

He gave three final thrusts that nearly broke the table, pulled his cock out with an obscene sucking sound and aimed at their joined faces.

—Dessert, ladies!

The jet was, if anything, even more abundant than the first. It landed on their hair, on their pressed cheeks, went into their mouths. He was squeezing his cock with his hand, making sure not a drop was left.

—Field vitamins! —he laughed, panting, spraying them as someone waters a garden.

***

When he finished, he collapsed into the swivel chair, which nearly tipped over. Exhausted, red, happy. He lit another cigarette and watched them through the bluish haze while they clumsily cleaned themselves off.

—You look lovely like that —he said with rustic sincerity—. Like you’ve just been painted. And don’t clean yourselves too much, that’s good for the complexion.

He scratched his belly and let out a satisfied belch.

—Now rest, have a drink… and as soon as I catch my breath we’ll see how good you are at cleaning the garage. And when I say cleaning… —he pointed to his flaccid groin, resting on his hairy thigh like a boiled blood sausage— …I mean polishing the tool. I like mine left shining like a new penny before bed.

He let out a cavernous laugh that echoed through the empty shed. Raquel and Noelia, sitting on the dirty floor beneath a fluorescent light full of dead insects, looked at each other. They were trapped in Saturnino’s kingdom, a place where time stood still and only flesh, grease, and the will of a man who treated them like his favorite livestock existed. And worst of all, Raquel thought while licking a trace of semen from her lip, she was already waiting for that wild bull to catch his breath.