by phuc
Someone tried to tell the couple about the comet, the fat folks in the Ford and the brave (or stupid) cowboy who got dissolved, and they just grinned. The guy said, "No way."
"Well," Bob said, waving a hand at the fudge surrounding the drive-in, "I guess we just dreamed all this crap. You think we're giving you a bill of goods, why don't you two just take you a little stroll out in that shit —but don't expect to come back."
The guy looked at the girl; she looked at him; he looked at us and shook his head.
People tried radios, CBs, and some clustered to the concession to make a stab at the phones. But nothing was in order. Just a little static on the radios.
The crowd grew. Must have been over a hundred of us standing around, and more people were coming. They were starting to congregate over in Lot B too, in little spots here and there. Some were driving cars around and around, honking horns, maybe not scared yet, but certainly bewildered. But that didn't go on long. Pretty soon no cars were moving about, just groups of people, talking or looking lost.
A story came to us from Lot B about a motorcycle gang that was over there, about how one of their members panicked and drove his bike off into the stuff, with the same result as our fat man and his calorie-laden family in the Ford station wagon.
The theories started then, those by the loudest and most persistent ones among us being the ones heard. The man with the beer gut wearing a T-shirt a size too small with a mustard blossom on the neck of it, for instance.
"Well, I think it's them men from outer space, whatever color they are. They've done this to us. With us shooting our rockets and stuff up there, they were bound to get sore with us. So they've come down with some of them sophisticated weapons they've got, and they've done this. I don't see how it could be anything else."
"I don't think so," said a guy in a sports coat, his hair neat and stiff as a J.C. Penney model. "I suspect the Communists. They're a lot stronger in this country than most people imagine. And I don't want to open any old wounds here, but maybe McCarthy wasn't as far off as some people thought. These Communists are into everything, and they've said all along that they planned to take us over."
"Why in the hell would they want some Texas drive-in picture show?" Bob said. "They like horror movies, or what? That don't make no damn sense. I like the one about the guys from outer space, whatever color they are, better than that, and that's dumb."
"Hey," said the man with the mustard-colored T-shirt.
"Call 'em like I see 'em," Bob said.
"It's the will of God," said a girl in a long blue cotton dress. "There was so much sinning going on here, God has sent a blight."
The couple who had been practicing the rites of the three-toed salamander in the back of the Buick started shuffling their feet and looking over the heads of the crowd as if they were expecting someone.
"It wasn't God," said somebody at the rear of the crowd, "it was Satan done it. God doesn't punish. Man and Satan punish."
"We're uptight for nothing," said another voice. "Tomorrow the sun will come up and shine through this mess. It's just a freak of nature, that's all."
"No," said a punker girl with orange spiked hair. "It's dimensional invaders."
No one bought that one.
A pretty girl in a pink bathing suit suggested, "Maybe we're all dead, and, like, hanging in limbo or something."
Some consideration on that. A couple of maybes from the crowd; I think it might have edged out the Commie threat a bit in popularity.
"Ain't none of them things," said a fat lady with a nose like a red pickle. She was wearing a pink-and-green housecoat that could have served as a visual emetic and yellow bunny slippers. She had her arm around her skinny husband's waist and two small ankle biters (a girl and a boy) were at her feet. "It's the ghost of Elvis Presley. I read about something like this in The Weekly World News, and Elvis was involved in that. His ghost came down and did some things to some sinners. He said to them that he wasn't happy with the way people were living on Earth."
"Hell," Bob said. "He's got to be a self-righteous sonofabitch now that he's dead. He wasn't nothing but a fat doper."
"He was the King," the woman said, as if she were talking about Jesus.
"King of what?" Bob said. "Constipation? I heard he died on the floor of his toilet with a turd hanging out of his ass. Report said he died 'straining at stool.' He wasn't any more than the rest of us, except he could sing. And even then, he wasn't any Hank Williams."
"Hank Williams!" said the fat lady, taking her arm from around her husband's waist and looking as if she were about to leap. "Now there was a drunk and a doper. And he wasn't near as good-looking as Elvis."
"That may be," Bob said, "but you don't hear of his ghost coming down to bother nobody.
He knew to mind his own business."
This went on for a time, not really solving anything, but it was entertaining. I got to thinking about how much time had elapsed, and looked at my watch. It had stopped.
Bob and the lady with the red pickle nose had finally quit going at it, and a black guy wearing a straw hat and a worn-out gray sweatshirt with "Dallas Cowboys" on it spoke up then. "We could be here a time. What about food? We're gonna need that."
I thought about the cookies and junk back at the truck and wished we'd brought something more substantial, but then maybe that was carrying worry too far, projecting this strange situation too distantly in the future.
The manager of the main concession joined us then. "Look, it isn't going to come to that, worrying about food, I mean. This will pass. Whatever it is, it can't last long. But to ease your minds, let me tell you that if we're here awhile, if food becomes a problem, we've got enough back there in that concession, and over on Lot B, to last a long time."
"How long is a long time?" Willard said.
"A long, long time," the manager said. "But let's don't jump the gun here. This'll pass.
Maybe some sort of industrial accident put this mess around us."
"And the comet?" Randy said.
"I don't know, but I'm sure there's a logical explanation to it all, and I don't see any need to get worked up over starving to death. We haven't been in this mess but a few minutes, and I can tell you now, it won't last."
"God has spoken," Bob said, and the manager glared at him.
"I think we all ought to hold tight," the manager said. "Go on back to your cars, try to forget all this, get your mind on the movies. Pretty soon someone will come to get us out of this. Some kind of accident happened out there, someone knows about it. Hell, they'll have the National Guard in here pretty soon."
"That makes me feel comfy all over," Bob said. "My uncle is in the National Guard and he don't know dick about nothing, has a belly that hangs down to his knees. Great, the National Guard."
"You boys think like you want," the manager said. "Me, I'm going back to the concession, try the phones again, see if they've got to working. Tomorrow we'll all have something to tell our families about."
"Right," Randy said. "A comet smiled at us, put us in Limbo Land, and the edge of Limbo Land ate a station wagon full of fat people and dissolved a cowboy."
The manager tried to smile. "I'm not saying this isn't a dangerous situation, but I am saying we have to make the best of it. Keep our spirits up, stay away from that gas . . .
jell, whatever it is ... and you'll see. We'll be fine. Now I'm going on back to the concession to try the phones."
The manager went away and Randy said, "Yeah, fine."
"He's right, though," a tall guy said. "We can't do much else. We've got to make the best of it ... unless someone here has a great idea."
No one did.
One guy went out to the trunk of his car, came back with an old box and a shovel. He scooped up the cowboy and put him in the box. The mess had lost its acidic quality and was congealing. The box remained intact. He used the point of the shovel to scoop up the clothes and the boots, dropped the hat on top of it all.
&nb
sp; "I'll just . . . keep him in my trunk," he said. "Wife said she didn't mind . . . seems like the decent thing to do. Maybe we can figure out who he is ... get his folks to bury him when we get out . . . Anybody here know him?"
No one said they did.
"Guess he came by himself," the guy said, and carried the shovel and the cowboy in the cardboard box away.
"What a way to end up," Bob said. "In the trunk of a car next to a spare tire."
"In a dirty box, no less," Randy said.
Now to make a long story short, or at least this part of it, this went on, this standing around and talking, this looking at the black mess and waiting for the National Guard, but no one showed up to rescue us.
"We've talked and talked about it," Willard said, "but nothing's gotten any better."
"I'm gonna get me a Baby Ruth," Bob said. "It's good for my skin."
"Not much else to do, is there," I said.
"Let's just do like the manager suggested," said the black guy in the straw hat.
We drifted away from the crowd, and the crowd started to break apart, wandering back to their cars with a stunned look on their faces. The immediate drama was over and nothing had changed. We were still trapped in the drive-in, and the adventure of it was old already.
We all went back to the truck, and I took up my position in the chair and recovered my bag of popcorn. I even found I could get interested in the movies again.
Bob came back with his Baby Ruth and smacked his lips over it enough to make me look through our stuff for some cookies. I had eaten so much I was beginning to feel queasy.
We watched the movies, but after they had run through and started over again, I began to lose interest and really worry. With that many movies shown, and them starting a second run, it ought to be getting toward dawn. There wasn't a ray of sunlight, however. Just the same artificial lights. I was getting sick of movies, the drive-in, even the goofballs who were wandering around in monster suits. I couldn't even feel any warmth for the gals in their bikinis. I felt like a roach in a toilet bowl with someone's hand on the handle, ready to flush. I wanted to go home to my nice warm bed, with Mom and Dad down the hall.
The concession manager we had talked to spoke over the speakers. "The phones still aren't on, folks, and we haven't been able to pick up anything on the radio, but I'm sure the National Guard is on this, and we'll be out of here soon—"
"Guy has a hard-on for the National Guard," Bob said.
"—until then, we're going to keep right on showing the movies, and if there's no help by the time of the third one, we'll be serving breakfast here at the concession—on the house.
No eggs and bacon, I'm afraid. But we've got hot dogs, fresh hot popcorn, plenty of candy and soft drinks, plus some real good orange drink we got in just for tonight."
The manager went off then, and Bob said, "Here we are surrounded by acidic goo, and all this guy can think about is the National Guard, free hot dogs and good orange drink."
"The odd thing to me," Randy said, "is how come the electricity works here in the drive-in, but radios, things that connect us to the outside world, don't? Hell, my watch has even stopped."
"Mine too," I said.
Bob took out his pocket watch. "This one's dead too. First time ever."
"Bet they're all dead," Willard said. It was the first time he had said a word in some time.
He had just been sitting, watching the movies, eating popcorn. "Time is an outside connection too."
"You getting at something, Willard?" I asked.
"Not really. I don't know any better what's going on than anyone else. But this all has a kind of artificial feel to it ... like, hell, I don't know—"
"A B science-fiction movie," Randy said.
"Yeah," Willard said. "I guess so."
"Personally," Bob said, "I think the lady in the blanket and bunnies was right. It's the ghost of Elvis."
"I just hope the damn bulbs and such in the projectors don't burn out," Willard said. "Or in the Orbit sign. They do, and it's going to be some kind of dark in here."
Willard got out his cigarettes, passed them around. We all took one, just as if we smoked, and Willard put his lighter to them, and we leaned against the truck and puffed them until we coughed.
"That poor cowboy," Randy said. "It melted him like salt melts a slug. Looked like cheap special effects.
Like in that movie The Hydrogen Man, or maybe The Blob."
"And that fat family and their car," Bob said. "Rendered right down, I figure."
So we smoked our cigarettes and the movies rolled on.
7
After a time, I gave it up and crawled in the back of the truck, found one of the bedrolls we kept back there for camping trips, got in it and fell asleep. Kind of sleep you get from depression and absolute exhaustion.
I dreamed about what Randy had said, about this being like a B science-fiction movie, and the dream was very real. It was like I was tapped into some truth somewhere. There was this B-string god and he was making a movie. He didn't have the power to make the Big Movie, so he just borrowed some people (us) and a setting (the drive-in) and made do with that. Real shoestring stuff. There was a bunch of other creatures with him, maybe they were gods too—hell, maybe none of them were gods—and they were like technicians and the like. They were real ugly hombres. They were speaking in a language I had never heard before, but I could understand it. The main ugly was telling them that it all had to be under budget. If it wasn't, it was all over. He wanted them to do it cheap but be proud. Mostly, he wanted it quick. The technicians were very much in agreement. In fact, they seemed agreeable to most anything the main critter wanted.
It all seemed very real.
Then it was like someone was calling me, my dad yelling at me to come eat breakfast, but the voice didn't sound quite right. It sounded far away, filtered. And when I woke up and ran my hand through my hair I was in the bedroll in the camper, and the voice was coming from the outside, and it was Bob's.
I got out of the bedroll and came out of the back of the camper, still groggy.
"I was about to come in there .and drag your ass out," Bob said. "Breakfast, such as it is, is being served.'
I sat on the tailgate of the truck and looked at a line forming at the concession. People were talking in a friendly, if not happy, way, but you could feel the tension in the air, like some sort of invisible mesh. Seeing all those folks thinking about what the line must be like over at Lot B, I realized that big as The Orbit was, it wasn't that large, and there were a lot of hungry people here, and when it came to living here awhile, it could get pretty crowded. And fast.
But at this point, things were still not bad. This was the time between hot dogs and horrors. When people were still trying to pull together, stiff upper lip, like all those old science-fiction movies where an alien menace makes them cooperate to thwart it, and in the end earth overcomes and learns to live as one, and Moscow opens some McDonald's and Disneyland puts in a branch over there.
We got in a breakfast line and went through. There were three people operating the concession stand, plus the manager. I noticed the girl giving out the candy right off, and in time I would come to think of her as the Candy Girl. She was blond and very pretty.
She had cheekbones so sharp you could have picked your teeth with them. It looked fine on her. If she hadn't been so short she would have looked like a model instead of a doll.
"There's plenty of food here," the manager said loudly, trying to keep everyone's spirits up. "Everything's going to be all right. It might take a little time, but it'll all work out in the wash."
I felt sorry for the manager. He was really trying. But Bob didn't give a damn.
"National Guard show up yet?" Bob asked.
The manager gritted his teeth. "Not yet."
I got my hot dog, drink and candy, and up close the Candy Girl was no disappointment.
The dark brown uniform dress she wore set her skin and hair off nicely. She
had dark brown eyes, pale, clear skin. Her legs looked nice. I wouldn't have minded being strangled between them. She was as delicious as the sweets she was passing out.
I said hi to her and she gave me a quizzical look and said it back.
So our ritual started. We would eat our meals, go back and watch the movies, visit with folks who came by and wanted to talk, mostly speculating on what was happening.
Nobody had an idea any better than Willard's and Randy's about it all being a B movie, and nothing as loony as Elvis Presley's ghost, which made all the other ideas a little less loony in comparison.
One guy from Lot B came by regularly. He was tall and lean and probably thirty. He carried all the information from one lot to the other, sort of a town crier. Because of that, we got so we simply called him Crier, and he liked it and adopted the name.
"I used to drive a beer truck for Budweiser," Crier said. "Only Friday, whenever the hell that was, I got in the samples, if you know what I mean, and turned me a corner a little quick and I didn't have the door closed tight, and I slung Bud all over the highway. Bunch of cars behind me had blowouts on the glass, and some other folks grabbed up the crates that weren't broken before I could get the truck braked and run the hell off with them.
Budweiser frowned on this and canned me. I got good and drunk and come to the drive-in. I wish now I'd stayed home and watched the Friday-night movie on television. It looked like it was gonna be a good one. One of them Godzilla-versus-another-guy-in-a-monster-suit movies. Before my wife left me for a Miller Lite driver, me and her and our dog Boscoe, he's dead now on account of I backed the beer truck over him, used to sit up on the couch and watch them Jap movies every chance we got. There ain't a comedy good as a Jap monster movie."
