by John Everson
“Uhh-uh,” was the extent of our negotiation effects.
Which put me in my current position: Street corner of Eigel and 5th, powdered sugar stains on my gray trousers, a stale reek of sweat and frustration bouncing from me to the Caprice’s upholstery and back again, like some vile game of scented racquetball. I’d been in this car a long time.
Grandma Wanda, however, had been in her house even longer.
I knew she had to come out sooner or later, and I only wished she’d chosen a more interesting neighborhood to set up shop in. At least then I would have had something interesting to look at while I waited for her knob to turn, the car to rev and her 1954 Ford to cough its way onto the street and away from her house. She and the car made a well-matched team: rusted, beat-up, old and indomitable. If she’d driven a tank, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. But the Ford was close enough.
I’d been watching the stationary hunk of road armor since last night, and the arches of my eyelids were threatening to give way. Their architect couldn’t argue very much against the idea. The suburban street stretched ahead of me like a gray ruler: straight and evenly dotted with houses of similar size and shape and color. Geometrically positioned parkway trees and driveways divided the suburban yardstick. I had waited in vain for that tedious sameness to be interrupted by the salacious stride of a young teenage girl, or even by the aged but titillating sunbathing of a not-too-far-to-pot housewife.
But the neighborhood was as sterile as its construction.
When the choking cloud of blue smoke drifted past my lookout post, I almost missed it. But the backfire startled me into spilling coffee on my crotch, and I looked up just in time to see Grandma Wanda’s prune-veined cheeks go chugging past me. Ten seconds later, I was out of the car and heading nonchalantly up her driveway (as nonchalantly as someone can be when wearing a dark stain of coffee and a sticky smear of sugar on one’s crotch).
I ducked past the creaking wooden gate and tiptoed up the rotting deck behind Wanda’s house. At that moment, one of the obstinately invisible sunbathers of the past twenty-four hours decided to step out into the yard next door.
She waved, brown-freckled breasts bouncing like untethered water balloons back and forth. She was maybe forty-five, false blonde, and a dermatologist’s dream: Every inch of her body was tanned a dark leathery brown, and I mean every inch. There were only about three palm’s worth of skin on her that she didn’t have exposed and she was obviously proud of this fact. She jiggled herself from doorstep to fence in seconds.
“Hiya,” she called, resting forearms on the fence and sticking out her derriere so that I couldn’t help but notice her physique. It wasn’t bad, but I’d guess from the amount of dark freckles on her face and chest that skin cancer was a bet no bookie would take odds against. I nodded in her direction and smiled, but she didn’t take the hint.
“You a friend of Wanda’s?” she asked, cocking her head like a bird. Vulture, perhaps.
I nodded.
“Nephew, actually. She told me to stop by and wait for her,” I lied, pulling out my skeleton key and praying the door wouldn’t be stubborn. “I’m picking up some jam,” I added.
She grinned and rubbed her stomach invitingly.
“Mmmm, I do love that Belly Jelly! But ya know, any boy of Wanda’s is welcome to wait at my place,” she offered, slowly pushing browned breasts over the rail of the fence. “I like a little company now and then.”
“Thanks for the offer, ma’am,” I said, wondering if I should try to slip in a quickie next door after I left Wanda’s. “Maybe I’ll stop by later, if it’s okay.”
She frowned, wide lips drooping like a pornographic clown’s.
“Suit yourself,” she said, and slipped the already thin strap of her bikini bottoms into her ass as she walked away from me.
Slowly, for emphasis.
Wow.
I had never believed the tales of bored suburban housewives, but maybe the false symmetry of the streets bred bizarre behavior. Certainly Wanda was no normal granny, from what I’d seen.
My key slid into the lock and sifted through the tumblers with ease. I took a last glance at the bare backside of Wanda’s neighbor, now reclined on a plastic cushion, and stepped inside.
I started in the kitchen.
Where else would you look for a jam recipe?
It was a kitchen like any other grandma’s: Its white Formica countertops were lined with spices, potholders and jars of flour, sugar and who knew what else. A warm yeasty odor, like fresh-baked bread hung in the air. But there were no dishes in the sink, and no recipe books lying about. The fridge was dotted with those ridiculous magnets shaped like ears of corn and pieces of fruit. I’d never understood why people paid money for a kitschy kitchen. Then again, I’d always had an urge to open fire with a shotgun on those yard ornaments spotlighting people’s bent-over backsides.
I didn’t spend too long in the kitchen before marking it off as dry. Wanda had to have a larger place for canning her jam anyway, and I’d always sort of figured she used a basement. I know my grandma used to keep preserves in the cool damp confines below her kitchen. Maybe Wanda cooked and canned there.
The stairs weren’t too hard to find. A door opened right off the kitchen onto a narrow descent of dark wooden steps. I felt around for a light and found a string, loosely tied to a hook in the wall. I pulled it, softly at first, and then with a harder tug. A bare bulb screwed into a rough-wood ceiling flickered on at the bottom of the steps.
My first step creaked so loud my heart turned over like a rusted-out ’68 Chevy. I looked behind me and listened hard, paranoid now that as soon as I made it to the basement, the ol’ bat would walk in the door behind me.
“You get caught, and we don’t know ya’,” my boss had told me right out. Just the sort of corporate loyalty I expected. And yet I was here anyway. If I didn’t get caught, there was a huge bonus waiting for me in an unmarked envelope in the safe behind the CEO’s red leather recliner. I had counted the zeros myself. This was a trip worth the risk. And hell, what could an old lady do against me anyway, aside from calling the police and reporting my license number, if she’d noticed the car? I almost whistled as I descended the rest of the stairs.
Wanda’s basement reminded me of a cave I’d once gone through on a tour. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I shivered with the clammy cold that seeped immediately through my still-damp pants and shirt. I guessed it was good for the jelly to stay in a natural refrigerator, but I couldn’t imagine that the old lady spent much time down here. I know I wouldn’t. Not by choice, anyway.
The floor of the basement seemed to be natural rock. Lord knows, digging a deep enough hole to put in a basement was difficult around here, with bedrock being about one foot down. But usually when they did dredge one out, they concreted it too. The floor sloped off to the right from the end of the stairs, and I decided that right couldn’t be wrong. With a quick look back up the stairs to the cheery light above, I ambled deeper into the darkness. I quickly realized that the other strange thing about this basement was that there were no windows. It was as if the house had been built atop a cave. And as I looked up at the ceiling, I wondered if that was really so far-fetched. The ceiling was not planed out as the floor had been, and instead, outcroppings of smoothed red and tan stone crept along in tides of tension.
So I was in a cave. What would the boys say to this one? Not only does the Granny refuse a cool million for her stupid jelly, but she hides in a dank cave with the recipe. Probably even stirs up the mix in a big black kettle.
I was startled out of my internal amusement by a noise upstairs. A door slamming.
SHIT.
“Hellooooo?”
I dove back for the stairs, crawling up them on all fours to try to spread out my weight and minimize their creaking.
“Wanda’s nephew? Are you still here, hon?”
/> It was the damned nosy neighbor! I considered just hiding down in the basement and hoping she’d go away on her own…but if she came down the stairs, I’d be cornered.
No, I had to get rid of her quickly, and on the ground floor.
Quietly I rose to my feet and slipped through the door back into the kitchen.
“Helloooo?”
She’d moved to the stairs that I assumed led to bedrooms on the second level. I pushed the door slowly shut and stepped into the dining room behind her.
“Looking for me, ma’am?”
“Oh!” She jumped around, hands on her chest, still only marginally covered with a pink-and-yellow day-glo bikini. “You gave me a start. I had just about given up on ya.”
She covered the distance between us before I could think of a response. And then she put her hands boldly on my crotch. My eyes must’ve bugged.
“Listen, I noticed outside that you’d spilled something on your pants here.” She rubbed the appropriate (or inappropriate) spot. “I thought I could just take these and clean ’em up for you while you’re waiting for Wanda. I think she headed into town for some sugar.”
With that she began unbuttoning my pants with one hand, while massaging my coffee stain with the other. I couldn’t help but respond, which brought a grin from her.
“I might be able to help you with something else, as well,” she said. Her voice had grown huskier, and rising interest aside, I had to help this sex-starved sweetheart to the door.
“I’d like it if you would, ma’am, but not just now.”
I removed her hands from the waistband of my underwear, which she had dropped to her knees to pull down. She leaned in to breathe heavily on my Jockeys, looking up at me with a mouth ready to swallow Olympus. And I don’t mean the camera.
I shook my head once more and readjusted my pants. She pouted and rubbed her chest provocatively as I rebuttoned myself, stubborn tent notwithstanding.
“I’ve got some business I need to take care of before Grandma Wanda gets home,” I said. It was a lame excuse, but I kept picturing the zeros on the end of that bonus check. Transposed with the second hand of a clock, it made for an inspirational mental lever. Button it up and push her out, my greedy side intoned. I won’t repeat what my other side said, but it had to do with finding out natural hair color and connecting light to dark freckles. The zeros won.
“I need to get some phone work done,” I told her, leaning forward to cup her chin. God she had big lips! “But maybe tonight?”
She shook her head. “My husband will be home in a couple hours.”
“How ’bout tomorrow. Lunchtime?”
She brightened somewhat. Shook her head halfheartedly.
“If I’m home, maybe.”
“Good. Let me help you up.”
I took her arm and pulled her to her feet. She made sure to push her chest against me, and I ran a hand appreciatively down her backside. But kept steering her towards the door.
As I opened it for her, I bent to kiss her on the cheek.
“Tomorrow then?”
She turned her cheek away and sucked my lips inside her own. It was a hard, wet kiss. It left me breathless, and wondering if I really needed zeros for anything.
“Sure?” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
The cellar felt even colder this time down, and it didn’t help that I had images of Wanda’s neighbor spread-eagled underneath me interrupting my concentration. I headed right once more and found that the stairs had apparently ended in a corridor, not a downstairs room. It narrowed as I walked, until it seemed that the ceiling and walls were but inches away from by head and shoulders. The bulb that hung at the bottom of the stairs barely illuminated this area, but I could see that there was a door just ahead. I reached out to open it, and the knob stopped dead.
Locked.
Damnit.
This was taking far more time than I’d planned. How long had the bimbo upstairs kept me? Ten minutes? And I’d been in the house five to ten minutes before that. If Wanda was just picking up sugar, she could be to the store and back in twenty-to-thirty minutes. I didn’t have much time.
I pulled out my skeleton key and tinkered with the lock. This one wasn’t budging as easily as the outside door. I could almost hear my “mission clock” counting down in my head.
And then the tumblers tumbled, and the door eased open.
I felt around on the wall inside, and found a light switch.
Clicked it.
And swore out loud.
Granny didn’t work in a dainty little old-fashioned kitchen.
No sir.
The light switch activated a long fluorescent light fixture that hung over an island workstation in the center of the room. I know a thing or two about browning a good piece of beef, and I have to say, that long wooden counter, with its rack of expensive-looking carving knives off to one side got my hands itching to slice and dice something. A half empty box of mason jars sat on the floor nearby, and a gleaming stainless steel sink divided a huge countertop against the back wall. There was a row of dark wooden cabinets lining the wall above the sink. I stepped over and yanked a couple open to confirm by guess.
Yep.
The old bat’s toothy face looked back at me from dozens of home-canned jars of Grandma Wanda’s Belly Jelly.
The contents of these cabinets would bring me thousands on the open market. But they wouldn’t tell me how to make more. I shut the doors and peered deeper into the room. The light yellowed and dimmed before reaching the far wall, but I could see there were racks of something over there in the shadows.
An old white refrigerator hummed against one rocky wall, the kind that you actually had to pull a handle down to release the door. Probably had been here since the house was built. Another door was tucked into an alcove in the wall near it, but that wasn’t what held my attention. Instead, I noticed the strange array of thin clear plastic tubes running along the floor towards the shadowed rack. I followed them across the room and up a metal shelving unit. Each tube ended in what looked like a glistening, bloated sack. They smelled rank and heavily sweet at the same time.
I reached out to touch one with a fingertip and recoiled instantly. It was cool and slick with a slimy ooze of what I’d guess was decay. And it seemed to quiver when I touched it.
A lightbulb burst in the back of my head and I connected the name of Grandma’s jelly with these lumps of bloated flesh on stainless steel bar racks.
Bellies.
She actually was fermenting the jelly in stomachs!
My own middle began to churn dangerously as the sour part of the smell hit home. I stepped back a pace.
What the hell was she mixing in there? I followed the tubing past the fridge and under the lip of the closed door. This one wasn’t locked.
I wish it had been.
When I opened it, my nose was immediately assailed by an earthier, fetid odor. The stench of decay. Of death.
And laid out on a half dozen cots in the center of the room were the reasons.
Six men.
With their abdomens sliced open. Autopsies in progress, only the procedure seemed to have been put on hold for a bit too long. The flesh hanging from the open bellies to drip brown stains on the floors near each bed had long ago ceased to weep. But the chilly temperatures and lack of flies had worked together to keep the flesh of these men bearable. Barely.
The man nearest me was grossly overweight, and one blackened arm hung to the floor, its hand smeared in his own dried guts. His eyes were open, and though they’d filmed over a yellowish white, I still thought I could see the terror crying in them.
She had stolen their bellies to make jelly!
This was bad.
This was not a recipe the home office could adapt.
But who was going to believe me
when I described this scene? Disemboweled men rotting on cots like discarded carcasses in a meat locker. Their bellies hosting some weird jelly concoction and connected to, what I now saw in the far corner of the room, was a hospital drip bag hanging from a hook embedded in the blue-gray rock walls?
“Care for some jelly, mister?”
I almost jumped onto the cot with the fat man.
Almost.
Grandma Wanda stood in the doorway. And unlike the toothy likeness on her jelly jar labels, this Wanda was not smiling.
“Maybe another time,” I answered, edging farther back into the room.
“Well if you didn’t come for my jelly, my guess is, you came to learn how to make it, eh?”
I didn’t answer. But her voice was not in a tone that demanded, or even sought, reply.
“My guess is, you’ve realized by now why I really couldn’t sell this little grocery list for mass production.”
She laughed then, a not-particularly pleasant cousin of a cackle.
I continued to step backwards, a few inches at a time. I was near the third cot, and the air was growing thicker by the moment. I stifled the urge to gag, and Grandma Wanda finally stepped fully into the room. I intended to barrel past her just as soon as she moved a couple steps from the door. She was only about four foot eleven. How hard would it be to knock her out and clear the stairs. Even if she had a knife or a gun, which I couldn’t see handy at the moment.
And then I noticed the face of the man in the third cot. Long nose, thick mustache, mouse-brown hair. I knew that man. As only a rival salesman can know another man.
I hated him.
And in a way, I loved him. We’d warred for years through jelly market penetration, favored distribution contracts, clever television slogans. Ted Mernier. From Fucker’s. Apparently I wasn’t the only jelly gigolo to come creeping around Granny’s basement on the sly. Or maybe she’d lured him here with the promise of a deal.
No matter what the circumstances, Ted wasn’t going to be sharing any panels with me this year in Cleveland at the Bread Spread Convention. His stomach just wouldn’t be in it.
