Family Tradition

by Edward Lee

  “What the fuck?” Sheree pondered. “Come across to what?”

  “They mean come across the lake,” Ashton speculated. “To the island.”

  He pointed now, and they could see it: the heavily forested island tiny in the distance, like a fat, green clot floating in the lake. Abruptly, a clearing opened, with water hoses flanked next to electric hook-up. PARK HERE, a sign announced. $5 A DAY FOR ELECTRIC, $5 A DAY FOR WATER. $5 A DAY FOR PARKING. TAKE THE PULL-FERRY ACROSS TO PAY.

  “Those five-dollar charges are racking up,” Carol noticed.

  Ashton grinned over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, hon. Bobby and I got it covered.”

  “I guess that’s the pull-ferry,” Sheree surmised. They parked near a rickety dock and crude gravel boat ramp. A red Ford Explorer sat parked further down. The “pull-ferry” was nothing more than a rowboat connected to a pulley system of thick rope which stretched all the way to the island.

  A wooden sign informed: PULL-FERRY FEE $5.

  Ashton chuckled to his brother. “Think we can afford it, big guy?”

  Bob pulled out a choke-wad of cash. “Aw, gee, I don’t know! I guess we better go back home!”

  Sheree frowned at the laughter which was now obligatory.

  The Winnebago literally rocked when Ashton and Bob got out; Sheree thought of two cows being pushed off a cattle car. Her eyes, however, felt snagged to Carol’s ass as she climbed out. A big perfect swervy ass filling up that tight denim skirt. Sheeze, Sheree though through a prickly flush. Two pinpoints of heat speared her nipples. If I was a man I’d want to fuck her hard in the dirt… She got out behind Carol, cruxed by the sudden kindle of lust. Sure, in the porn business, Sheree had licked more pussies than the average kindergarten kid had licked lollipops, and so much hair pie had sat on her face she thought she was a fucking park bench. But it was all for the show, all for the camera and the billion-dollar-per-year industry of men jerking off in front on their tv sets. Personally, Sheree wasn’t into women (she was into cock). Her mind drifted back to previous Hollywood boyfriends and suddenly her birth canal grew slickened at the constant recollection of touch, handsome men slapping her down and fucking her hard. Chicks didn’t do it for her.

  Her breath felt short when she glanced at Carol again. Suddenly she could think of nothing but eating Carol out and boning her with a 14-inch strap-on. And then receiving the same ministrations. Guess it’s just been too long since I’ve been laid, Sheree deduced. Fuckin’ Ashton, the fat limp-dicked pompous ass. I guess when there’s no Option Number One, Option Number Two doesn’t seem too bad.

  It was just a coincidence, of course, but once Sheree’d gotten out of the Winnebago, her muse of lust lingering on Carol…

  Carol turned around and smiled.

  “Come on, girls!” Bob insisted. “Chop chop.” He irritatingly clapped his hands twice very loudly. “Let’s get across the lake, get our account settled.”

  “Yeah,” Ashton hooked on. He, too, clapped his hands. “Plenty of daylight left.”

  Sheree and Carol straggled after the two rotund twins. When the four of them stepped onto the row boat, Sheree thought it might actually submerge from the excess of weight. As Ashton and Bob turned the crank, the boat began to creep across the lake’s surface, reeling up rope as it went. It wasn’t much for speed, but Sheree had to admit: the scenery was unbelievable. The lake water was clear and shimmering as Waterford Crystal, and the upcoming island seemed to glow in a variety of fresh, fecund greenery. But they had traversed a third of the way across the lake before—

  “Whew!” Bob remarked.

  Ashton drew a fat forearm across his brow. “Damn!”

  Then they both sat down on the boat’s forward seat.

  “Sorry, girls,” Bob explained, huffing and puffing and lighting a cigarette. “We’re tuckered out.”

  “Yeah,” Ashton followed. He lit a La Corona Whiff petite cigar. “We’re old men compared to you two young racehorses. Hope you don’t mind taking a turn on the crank.”

  Oh for God’s sake! Sheree yelled in her mind.

  “No biggie, boys,” Carol said, shooting Sheree a knowing grin. “Sheree and I would love to.”

  “Besides,” Bob added with a chuckle. “You don’t want us wearing ourselves out, do you?”

  “Yeah,” Ashton added. “Then we’d be no good for tonight.”

  You’re no good for anything ANY night! Sheree thought.

  The two women stood up, got on either side of the handles. They began to crank. But Carol’s frequent grins proved she was going along with the joke. The grin seemed to say This is the price we pay for living with a pair of fat stooges.

  Now that Sheree and Carol were on the crank, the boat began to make some headway, in spite of her conclusion that this “pull-ferry” was about six hundred pounds heavier than it should be. Every time Carol rowed down to display her immaculate cleavage, Sheree squeezed her lip between her teeth. Christ, I’m soaking…

  The brothers smoked and swapped more bad jokes as Sheree and Carol cranked for all they were worth. The smoke from Ashton’s cigar kept sweeping Sheree’s face, such that she could see herself slapping it right out of her loving boyfriend’s fat mug. She was glazed in sweat by the time they’d cranked to little boat to the ramp on the other side.

  “Good job, girls,” Bob complimented, flicking his cigarette butt over the side.

  “Yeah,” Ashton said. “You both get an A…for Attractive!”

  And you get an F, Sheree thought. For FAT.

  The boat raised a good six inches when Bob and Ashton stepped off. Carol stepped off next, and grabbed Sheree’s arm to help her off.

  “Oh, gross,” Sheree remarked instantly. “Sorry I’m so sweaty.”

  “I am too, so don’t worry about it,” Carol assured. Then she leaned to Sheree’s ear and whispered, “Besides, I’d love to lick it all off.”

  — | — | —

  Chapter Four

  “’Fraid you’re right, Esau. This one ain’t worth a ’skeeter off a dead skunk’s ass.” Enoch cast an eye at the skinned girl. She looked like bone scraps, little more.

  “Bet she don’t weigh more’n wad of my hock.”

  “Bet she don’t.”

  Of the two huge men, Enoch was more huge, three inches taller than Esau’s six-foot four, and twenty more pounds than his three hundred. Both had beards they hadn’t trimmed in years, long bushy hair, overalls and workboots. Tried and true rednecks, Northwest style. Esau had dragged the girl’s skinless corpse here to what he and his older brother simply referred to as the “tarp.” It was actually an odd, large gully that existed toward the center of the island, about twenty feet wide, fifty long, and God knew how deep. An ideal place in which to discard scraps like this fairly useless thing from the girlie prison. Several days of hard work had been required to effectively cover the gully; Enoch and Esau had felled a dozen trees over it, providing a sufficient framework over which they had unrolled great sheets of olive-drab tarp. Over that, they’d piled enough branches and leaves that the gully was perfectly camouflaged. It was a minor concern but a concern nonetheless. Not too many folks ventured out to Hartsene Island but on the rare occasions when they did, Enoch didn’t need them to be finding out what they’d been doing out here all these years. Their needs had turned the gully into a giant belly full of bones and human gruel; no doubt hundreds of bodies had been dumped beneath the tarp.

  Esau threw back the end piece of tarp—the corpse-pit’s door. “’Bout the only good thing was her skin.” He grabbed the corpse’s stiff feet, dragged it over to the dump-hole. “A skinny gal’s skin is tighter, fries up better, ya know?”

  “If you say so,” Enoch replied. “You do the cookin’, I’ll do the procurin’.”

  After claiming the girl’s skin for a delectable pile of roe-filed crispy spring rolls, Esau had also trimmed all of the flesh from her face (for headcheese), which left a curious sight: drab lanky mouse-brown hair framing a raw skull traced with
tendons. “In ya go, Skinny,” Esau said, and kicked the twiglike body into the hole. He could hear it tumble down to the bottom.

  “D’ja fuck her?” Enoch asked.

  “Yeah, but it weren’t a good nut,” Esau recalled in disappointment. “Big pussy on her fer such a little thing. I’d rather jerk off with the worms any day.”

  “I done told ya ’bout that,” Enoch said in a warning voice. “You leave them worms alone—we need ’em for bait to sell.”

  “Aw, Enoch,” ain’t but a half-dozen fishermen came out here last summer. We ain’t gonna make no money.”

  “Shut yer booger-hole, boy. They’ll be comin’, just you watch. Bet we make a hunnert dollars at least this season. And that’s a hunnert less that I gotta pinch. Most’a these whores’n hitchhikers I pick up, they ain’t got dick in their wallets. Gettin’ viddles ain’t the problem—it’s gettin’ cash. We got expenses here, like yer blammed satellite dish and yer fancy cookin’ gear’n shit and the danged lecktrick bill. Plus I needs ta put gas in the damn trucks. I cain’t very well pay fer gas with a pot’a yer damn fish stew.”

  Esau winced. It’s not fish stew, it’s called booly-base! Damn it!”

  “What the fuck ever, boy.”

  All Esau did was cook; it was Enoch who served as the supplier. This required frequent drives out to Route 101, to pick up whores at night, and hitchhikers, and bring ’em back ta meet Esau. Whenever he needed a new vehicle, he simply car-jacked one, then painted it a different color, and brought the previous owner or owners back to the island. In fact, about the only real pleasure in Enoch’s life—save for humpin’ what he brought back—was picking out new vehicles whenever he fancied. Right now he had the Nissan Pathfinder island-side and the brand-new Ford Explorer on the other side of the lake. A man had to have somethin’, didn’t he? Esau had his cookin’, Enoch had his trucks. Enoch always made sure to pluck a nice shiny new one with a nice cassette stereo, so’s he could listen to nice music on the long drives back and forth, music like Handsome Dick Manitoba and the Dictators, the Freddie Blassie’s “Pencil-Necked Geek” album, and WCW’s Greatest Hits.

  “Pull that there tarp back over the hole, boy. We best be on our way.”

  Esau obeyed, unflinching at the waft of corpse-gas when he replaced the flap. He scratched his crotch with one hand, his ass-crack with the other, then loped after Enoch to the Nissan. They drove deeper into the island, toward still more things they had to hide. Just as the gully was camouflaged, so were the sheds, each of which existed for different reasons. The smoke-house, the curing house, the place where they did their marinates. “We still got them two curin’,” Enoch reminded. “Figger we better check on ’em.” What he referred to was the pair of young men he’d picked up on 101, hitching to the point where they said they had relatives. Spunky fellas, they was. Matt’n Mike they said their names was. They fought like reg-ler buggers when Enoch took ’em down with his slapjack. One fella was shaved-headed, with tattoos, and a devil-looking goattee, the other looked like a college boy in a Yankees hat. Enoch had cracked both their noggins with the jack, then cut off their peckers and chewed ’em as jerky on the ride back.

  Fresh-cut dick was always a good chew.

  Now them two boys was split’n hangin’ in the curin’ house. Esau was cold-smokin’ ’em, he was; the house was filled with fragrant leaves and herbs as they rotted. It was necessary to come out here twice a day ta drain ’em which was fairly simple. Just run a sharp knife down their legs’n let ’em drip.

  “How they look?” Enoch asked when Esau come out.

  “They’se gettin’ there. Few more days, I’d say.”

  All the “houses,” by the way, were as effectively covered with branches’n leaves as the tarp-hole. Damn near impossible to see unless you was lookin’ for ’em. Two of ’em had chimneys: the smoke house’n the hot house. They hung ribs and sausage in the smoke house, and cooked the drums in the hot house. All the pine’n ash out here in the woods made fer great cookin’ fuel. The chimneys puffed away their soot-black smoke into the high trees. Good viddles in there, fer sure!

  The fourth shack was were Esau did his marinatin’. One fella Enoch had picked up near Dungeness ’bout three weeks back, he was still alive on account of how regularly Esau fed’n watered him. Several times a year, Esau liked ta corn-feed one, so what they did was they tied a guy up tight in strapping twine, put him in an old canoe, then nail sheets of roofing tin over the canoe. The fella’s head would stick out through a hole at the top, which allowed Esau to pump corn mash down his throat with a bellows. It made the liver real big’n sweet, whiles the rest of him would marinate in his own corny shit’n piss.

  The lone head sticking out from the canoe pleaded, “Please! Let me go! Why are you doing this?”

  “Quit’cher yammerin’,” Esau said. “It’s feedin’ time.” He filled the bellows from the big can of corn mash, then stuck the nozzle down the kid’s throat and squeezed. The bellows promptly displaced its contents into the kid’s gut. “That should hold ya fer a while, huh?”

  When Esau pulled out the bellows, the kid coughed, his eyes bloodshot and nose runny, like he had a cold.

  “Damn! Ain’t that some luck!”

  “What’s that?” Enoch asked.

  Another cough ruffed up.

  “He’s done caught hisself a cold!” Esau celebrated. From a big pocket in his overalls, he withdrew a small Tupperware container. “My spinach salad! Grandpa Ab loves it!”

  Esau looked at the head sticking out of the hole. He grabbed its throat. “Blow yer nose. Ya hear me?” he ordered. “If ya don’t, I’ll shove yer head down into that boat so’s you’ll drown in your own shit. Ya hear me?”

  Desperately, the head nodded. Esau clamped his mouth over the boy’s nose; the boy began blowing.

  The boy blew his nose heartily into Esau’s mouth. Long and hard and noisily. At the task’s end, Esau pulled his mouth off the victim’s nose, cheeks stuffed. He spat the lumpy snot into the Tupperware container and sealed it shut.

  Esau smacked his lips, pointed to the boy’s wet nose. “You want a hit off this? It’s damn good, fer sure. Nice’n meaty.”

  “What’cha gonna do with that bowl’a snot?” Enoch asked.

  “I done told ya. My spinach salad. We ain’t got no Feta cheese—snot’s better, anyway.”

  “Oh…yeah.”

  “Go on. Take a hit.”

  Enoch leaned over, covered the boy’s nose with his mouth, into which more bronchital mucus was expelled.

  Enoch sucked and swallowed, nodding. “You’re right. That was damn tasty.”

  “Told ya,” Esau said with a wink.

  ««—»»

  WELCOME TO HARSTENE ISLAND AND THE BEAUTIFUL TOWN OF HOTH’S LANDING! a wooden sign announced.

  “Here we are,” Ashton stated the obvious.

  Sheree had never heard of Hartsene Island or Hoth’s Landing. A mud trail led up from the boat ramp to a series of buildings—shacks, really—whose wood-slat walls had long turned gray when the paint had bubbled off.

  Higher in the trees, another wooden sign read:

  HOTH’S LANDING

  POPULATION: 2

  “Two?” Carol cited. “There’s only two people on this island?”

  “Seems so,” Bob answered, and patted her ass. “What do we care? The fewer people, the better.”

  “Yeah,” Ashton agreed. Streaks of sweat trailed down his beige silk shirt from the underarms. “This is perfect. No one else out here fishing? We’re probably the first people here this season. More Crackjaw eel for us.”

  You and your fucking Crackjaw eel, Sheree thought in loath. She looked in utter distaste as Ashton’s love-handles rode up and down under the sides of his expensive shirt. The back of his black Armani slacks were riding up his giant ass-crack.

  Why don’t you do me a big favor? Have a heart attack.

  Yet another wooden sign, over the first dilapidated shack, read BAIT SHOP. COME ON IN!
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br />   “Look, there’s another truck,” Carol observed. Parked next to the bait shop was a red Nissan four-by-four, the same odd red as the Ford truck they’d seen on the other side of the lake. Carol peered, as if trying to read small letters. “Isn’t there something…weird about the paint on that truck?”

  Bob pinched her ass. “Forget about the truck, sweetcakes. We’re here to—”

  “PAAAAAR-TEE!” Ashton shouted. “We’re gonna drink our asses off, get in ON, and catch all KINDS of Crackjaw eel! Anyone care to second the motion?”

  “PAAAAAR-TEE!” Bob yelled.

  Sheree and Carol traded wearied looks.

  Several other buildings—similar shacks—descended into the woods behind the bait shop. Sheree briefly spied a television satellite dish on the back incline of the roof, and a rutted trail leading into the forest. Movement flicked high in the trees; Sheree was almost startled.

  A Spotted Owl peered down at her with liquid-crystal eyes.

  As the group approached the shop, Bob took note of a red Nissan blazer parked before a well-pump. “What’s this…”

  “Huh?” Ashton said.

  Bob was peering at the vehicle’s hood. “That’s weird.”

  “Huh?” Ashton repeated.

  Bob scratched his bearded chin. “This is a brand-new Pathfinder. I bought one a few months ago. But…look at the paint.”

  Ashton gave the vehicle a glance. Wide brush-strokes could clearly be detected in the pale-red paint. “Pretty lousy paint job for a brand-new truck.”

  “It looks like housepaint,” Bob accentuated.

  “Uh-oh!” Ashton exclaimed. “Better get Mako!” He patted his brother on the back. “You’re right, Bobby, the paint on the Nissan’s fucked up. But you know what? Who CARES? It’s time for us to—”

  “PAAAR-TEE!” Bob rejoined, raising a fist into the air. Then they both brayed laughter.

  “Can you believe this pair of dolts?” Carol whispered to Sheree.