by Iceberg Slim
As he reached Pa and stooped to lift him, a muffled blast punched his eardrums. Blood and brain gore splattered him. He winced to see the end of the rifle barrel rammed into Pa’s throat. He dropped to his knees and clasped his shattered dead ringer image close to his chest.
“I don’t hate you no more, Pa,” he sobbed. “I ain’t never thought about leaving you sick. I took care of you, Pa, ’cause Ma loved you. But I ain’t never gonna forgive you, Pa. Not for Ma!” he screamed through bared teeth.
He remembered how, stripped penniless by Pa’s sickness and Binnie’s passion for the ponies and craps, he traded the dilapidated house off to the mortician for Pa’s decent burial. He thought of how he rode the rails, begged, and stole for months until lost and dazed, he circled back through a dozen states to Galveston, Texas.
Now, in his bed, he heard the rustle of taffeta interrupt his bitter reverie. The musk of a dead woman, a murdered woman startled him. He slowly opened his eyes, plastered his hands across his eyes, trembled as he stared through his fingers at the nightmarish apparition smiling wickedly at him from a chair near the door. Grandma Randy! “I must be dreaming!” he exclaimed to himself.
“You’re not dreaming, kiddo,” he heard the obese crone say in her unmistakable whiskey contralto.
He shuddered, knew he was dreaming. He razored red-hot rills across the back of his hand with his fingernails to discover he was awake.
She stroked gem-littered fingers across the bluebonnet blossom pinned in her red hair and primly pulled the hem of blue taffeta down across her lumpy knees as she grinned salaciously.
I’m awake. But she can’t be alive, unmarked over there. She’s dead. I killed her in self-defense, he argued with himself as he stared hypnotized as she took a cigarette from a jeweled case, flicked flame to the cigarette tip, inhaled. He watched her exhale, smelled the poltergeist of smoke as it floated through the air. He popped sweat. The murderess had come back from the grave as she’d warned him.
“Yes, I’m back to punish you, dearie. You fool! I told you you couldn’t kill Satan’s pet. Remember?”
I’ll kill her again, I’ll blow her away, he thought, before she kills me.
She airily waved a pudgy hand. “I’m not going to kill you, kiddo, not personally, that is. My lovelies will for that horrid thing you did to me and them with your baseball bat. Remember? Homer and Abigail are here in this house waiting to chastise you. Happy, happy, kiddo,” she said as she dredged up her bulk from the chair. She threw her head back and laughed.
He darted a glance at the carpet to locate the carbine. He leaned and scooped it up. He swung it toward her to fire. She had vanished. He leapt from the bed, scrambled to fling open the door. Ila faced him. He grabbed her, darted a fearful glance back into the bedroom.
“You see a fatso old broad?” he shouted.
Ila shook her head.
“Well, don’t go in the bedroom! Stay in open spaces until I search the house!” he warned.
“What the hell is happening, Ding-a-ling?” Ila asked as he seized her wrist and pulled her down the hallway to the kitchen.
“Shut up, bitch! We got guests. King cobras!” he screeched.
He snatched a flashlight from the refrigerator top. With carbine in arm, he and Ila searched every shadowed nook and cranny of the house. They went to the basement, stood at the threshold, staring at the piles of junk furniture and odds and ends that the former owner had abandoned.
He shook his head. “It’s too dangerous to search this mess. We’ve got to get out of this house until I think of a way to find and kill those snakes,” he said as he shut the basement door.
He led Ila to the bedroom to stuff his poker winnings into a leather shaving kit. After that, they went to the living room, flopped down on the sofa. His face was tortured as he mopped sweat from his brow with his sleeve.
She studied him, remembered that a boy in the orphanage was frightened by things nobody else ever saw before he was taken away. She chewed her bottom lip as she tried to remember the medical term she’d heard that applied to the derangement.
Ila finger-stroked his temple as she said gently, “I love you, and I’m worried about you, Jay, baby. I just don’t understand how that old woman that you saw could sneak in the house and out, and I never saw her. It’s impossible!”
He cut hostile eyes at her. “She was here!”
“But what if she wasn’t? What if it’s really your . . . uh . . . nerves?” Ila said.
He batted her hand from his temple. “I’m not crazy, girl!” he snorted.
At that instant she recalled the mental derangement term. Paranoid schizophrenia! Fear narrowed her eyes as she moved away a bit.
She said, “So we’ve got a problem, snakes in the basement. Do we sit here and wait for them to die of old age?”
He shaped a cunning smile of triumph. “We’ll check into a hotel until I can get the exterminators to put a tent over the house and gas it Monday. What kills roaches and rats will sure as hell snuff cobras,” he said as he picked up the phone to call a cab.
They sat in silence waiting for the cab.
Finally she said, “The old lady? Where did you know her?”
He jerked his head to stare at her. “In Galveston. Now, Ila, dummy up about her.”
They heard the honk of the cab. They left the house and went down the walk to get in.
“She won’t be able to sneak into the house after I steel bar all the windows and doors,” he whispered into Ila’s ear as he patted her thigh.
“Jay, the old broad you thi—you saw. Who is she?” Ila pressed.
He glared at her. “Forget her! I mean it!” he said sternly.
His mind whirled madly as the cab pulled away into the peaceful and salubrious Houston twilight. At midnight, in a downtown hotel bed, wide awake, Jay clutched sleeping Ila in his arms. He remembered how the seedlings of his madness had been planted a decade before in Grandma Randy’s mansion of horrors.
II
Jay saw himself at seventeen. He vividly recalled how he had palpitated in Grandma’s horror mansion at his teenage sweetie’s coded knocking on his bedroom ceiling from the attic above. He rapped a softball bat against his ceiling in reply. Then he went to a furnace vent in the wall, listened for movement in Grandma’s first-floor bedroom below.
“Hi, Ice Cream Cone, it’s clear!” he stage-whispered into the vent. Then he made a kissy sound of cunnilingus.
“Ooeee!” a honeyed voice squealed through the attic vent.
Joyfully he flung himself back into his bed. Thumbtacked shots of rodeo superstars riding and roping studded the walls. He gazed at them, certain he’d join their ranks one day.
Shortly, Fay, a dazzling platinum-haired girl, eased into his room and flung herself onto the bed into his arms. The teenage waifs caressed and kissed ravenously, clung together in the county-accredited foster home for the first time since their arrest ten days before. His house-pet cowboy suit, pearl grey and crisp, sprawled on a chair aglow like a decapitated ghost in a laser of Texas dawn.
He tongue-flogged her navel, her inner thighs. She pulled and mauled his ears. He moaned ecstatically. They flinched, jerked apart at the flash of dormitory lights on the windowpane, followed by the clang of a wake-up bell.
He ground his face against her vulva. “Oh, no!” he groaned.
She said, “Dammit! I woke up late and blew the sugar. But first chance, Candy Dong, I’ll be back to do the do.”
She kissed his navel and burrowed her face and head into his crotch. Reluctantly, she stood and her bantam curves outrageously bulged her coarse cotton nightgown. Her fawn face was ethereal in the murk as she gazed at him.
She whispered, “I love you, Jay. You want me, too?”
He said, “Me you too, Fay. Who you want wasted to prove it?”
They laughed.
She bit her lip. “I’ve got the creepies. Can’t we please put this place down soon? Like tonight?”
His handsome face twis
ted for an instant in irritation. “Baby, c’mon now, no bread is what got us here. But you gotta admit, it’s got the Galveston juvenile slammer skunked all to hell. I hoboed to Texas,” he said as he moved to sit on the side of the bed. His arms embraced her waist. “But, we’re gonna ride the cushions soon as I can . . . ah . . . borrow a hunk of bread from Grandma Dracula’s purse or maybe she’s got a money box.”
Fay said, “She tried to pump me last night, late. I don’t think she bought that you’re my half brother. I’m scared of her, Jay!”
He frowned, “Don’t be scared, baby; be cool and smart. Soon that kitchen and this place ain’t gonna be nothing but a memory. You remember to tell her what I told you?” he asked with a serious face.
She said, “No, I’m an idiot. So, I told her the truth, that I’m the runaway stepdaughter of one of the wealthiest assholes in Milwaukee, crazy enough to hook up with an Arkie from the coal pits and get busted for stealing five bucks worth of tamales.”
They laughed.
She sighed, “My stepfather would pop off if I crawl back.”
“Fay, I guarantee your horny pa ain’t gonna get another shot at your poonie. And there ain’t never gonna be no more coal pits for me, no more sweat for us, and no more missed meal cramps for us. We’re gonna live cushy and hang tough and pretty in the tall sweet clover,” he said with a grim face. “I’ll figure a way, out there. Trust me!”
“I trust you, Jay, in clover or in poison ivy. I’ll always be your girl and love you,” she whispered as she sucked his bottom lip.
She turned and went to the door. Then she paused, blew a kiss, stepped into the hall, and shut the door.
He heard Big Ralph, the outside dorm keeper, bellowing profanely. He heard the raillery and shouts of the dozen-odd juvenile delinquents as they washed up for breakfast. He shuddered to remember himself out there with them about to start a long day in the fields beneath a blowtorch July sun. Worse than the coal pits, he told himself. Moments later, he heard the six kitchen and laundry girls in the attic dorm above preparing to start their day and the acid tongue of Phoebe, the old dorm mother.
A half hour later, Jay tensed, felt his heart jump cycle to hear the weird old foster mother stir and the usual strange sounds from her room on the first floor below his. He got out of bed and put his ear to the vent. Her demonic gabbling shivered his spine as always. Beneath it, he heard the dulcet warble of canaries. Then he retched from a horrible meld of piercing, hissing sounds and the terrified shrieks of canaries. “Cobra!” he said aloud.
“Homer! You share with Abigail, you heah?” he heard her say sharply. Then after several moments of silence, he heard her order, “Back to your straw now, gluttons!” Then she cooed, “That’s my lovelies.”
He heard the door shut, so he went to put an ear against his door to hear Grandma on the stairs. He got into bed. He shuttered his enormous blue eyes, limped his nude steel wire frame in fake sleep. Impregnated coal dust mascara rimming his eye sockets gave his gold-mopped face a debauched cast.
Moments later, he trembled uncontrollably at the sound of his room’s doorknob twisting stealthily. Through blinds of silky lashes he saw the door open. Her jowly, corrupt face was thickly rouged and lipsticked. Her massive flab was silhouetted through a red silk wrapper as she stood in the doorway. Her widow’s peak and frame of the robe reflected her ruined, long-nosed visage, which gave her a chilling satanic presence. Her wrists and arms were scarred by fang punctures.
She held a glass of orange juice in her hand. She concealed the whip, looped on her wrapper belt, at her back. Smoothly, she shut the door with a bump of her epic rump and padded toward the bed.
Jay heard Fay and the other girls chattering in the hallway on their way to the kitchen downstairs. He shut his eyes tightly, and his hands knotted fists beneath the sheet. He heard the torrid rasp of the old voluptuary’s breathing as she moved through the gloom to the side of the bed to his back and placed the glass on the nightstand, the whip on the carpet beside the bed.
The bed springs jounced as she slid her musky heat against him. A bluebonnet blossom rhinestone pinned into the dyed flame of her mane tickled excruciatingly as she nuzzled his spine and buttocks.
He willed himself numb. He’d pleaded a bellyache two nights ago to send her away frustrated and evil, muttering threats to return him to the fields or to juvenile authorities if he couldn’t be sweet to her after all she had done for him. Now, she was back to grope him again, he thought. He’d never be able to get the money for his escape with Fay out with the field slaves in the dorm. Or worse, in jail.
Oh shit! I wish this horny creep would gimme a break. Drop dead or something, he thought. He ground his knuckles into his eye sockets as he flipped and yawned spuriously.
“Good morning, gorgeous,” she crooned in whiskey contralto. “Look at me.”
He stared at the ceiling, terrified of her green hypnotic orbs. “Morning, Grandma,” he mumbled. He started to reach across her for his cigarettes on a nightstand. Her gem-spangled hand pressed him back.
As she tapped a cigarette from the pack to light, she pouted her lupine lips. “Please, babykins, call me Brandy,” she entreated as she flicked flame to the cigarette and laid it between his lips.
She took a jeweled hash pipe from her wrapped pocket, lit it, and pulled on it with slumberous eyes for a long moment. The smoke rode the air pungently as she exhaled. “Oh, Gawd, it’s wonderful!” she exclaimed.
She took his cigarette, tapped ash off it into an ashtray, then pressed the pipe stem between his lips. He hesitated.
She crooned, “Hit it a drag, Angel Face. It will give you wings.”
He drew deeply, coughed.
She said, “Draw easy, deep, babykins.”
He closed his eyes and sucked on the pipe. She swooped and licked his washboard belly and jogged her tongue in his nipple. Then she lay gazing spellbound at his movie star profile as he sucked on the pipe and stared at the cigarette smoke rings she blew toward the ceiling.
His awesome comeliness sparkled her ancient crotch. This cute enticer is prettier than Billy Dove, the cruel bastard that I turned my first trick for, she thought. I’ve got to sculpt his head in plaster for a bronze! She pulled the wrapper off her head. Her scarlet fingernails knifed his pubic thicket. She noticed his organ activate a bit.
He passed the pipe. The hash swirled him into a downer. He remembered the pigsty jail and his yearlong week with the others in the field.
She licked his mouth. He was rigid as he struggled not to recoil. She turned away for an instant to put the pipe on the nightstand. Quickly, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He remembered that the field slaves called her “Grandma Randy the Witch” behind her back.
He darted a glance at her mountainous lobster pink ruin, tree trunk legs scabrous with varicose veins. A combination of pity and revulsion panged him as he thought of the slew of nearly nude G-stringed images in her bedroom, on the walls, tables, and dresser depicting her reign, forty years before, as Bluebonnet Brandy Hoffstader, the sleek honky-tonk queen of Galveston stripper-prostitutes.
He giggled as he told himself a rhyme: “Grandma Brandy now ain’t dandy. Just fat and randy.”
She said, “Li’l darlin’, it’s like music to hear you laugh.”
He panned her bulk with mocking eyes. He snickered, then he laughed uncontrollably. She stared at him malevolently, bit him hard on a nipple. He gasped, reflexively back-handed her face. Through the hash swoon, the face of his cruelly lustful grandmother, Binnie, flashed in his head like neon.
He trembled, with mouth agape, as he stared at her. “Bin . . . uh . . . Grandma, please! Don’t! Please! I mean it!”
But she noticed an odd telltale passion in his eyes. She grinned like a shark as she rubbed her jaw and observed his organ quiver to half erection for an instant. Her eyes were radiant with excitement. She turned and palmed a diamond wristwatch with a gem-cut band of gold squares from her wrapper pocket on the carpet. With
a smile, she turned toward him. With plump fingertips, she dangled and swept it before his eyes. The bauble shot like golden stars. His blue eyes followed the path of the glittery pendulum hypnotically.
She whispered, “It’s yours, li’l darlin’.”
He mumbled, “Mine, Gran . . . uh . . . Brandy?”
She sucked the end of his tip-tilted nose as she slipped it on his wrist.
“It’s yours because you’re so beautiful and I flat-out adore you,” she whispered hoarsely.
He twisted his wrist, gazed entranced at the shimmering treasure. “This cost five hundred at least,” he murmured.
She smiled. “A thousand, my pet, plus tax.”
He pecked her forehead and exclaimed, “Thanks! It’s the most beautiful watch there ever was!”
She sweetly whispered, “It’s nothing! My mother left me tons of money. When we’re regular sweeties, you’ll be spiffy in nothing less than suits, everything tops! Kiddo, I mean rocks on your fingers big as your heartbreaking eyes, your pockets stuffed with ‘C’ notes, a white Caddie convertible, with all the extras.”
She heaved a sigh, “I can’t wait to see you with it all. Honey, dearie, everything is up to you.” She threw an elephantine thigh across his belly.
“What I got to do?” he whispered.
She patted his cheek. “Be my sweetie true and make me feel good.”
He said, “Feel good? Like how?”
She said, “In a moment, dearie, I’ll tell you like how.”
She took the glass of orange juice, heavily laced with a powerful hypnotic drug, off the nightstand. She smiled. “Drink your breakfast juice to the most beautiful watch there ever was,” she said as she extended the glass.
The hash and the excitement of the watch had parched him. He took the glass, sipped, then drained it thirstily. She smiled and relit the hash pipe and passed it to him. The watch continued to magnetize his eyes as he leeched on the pipe. He fell back relaxed and dreamy eyed.
