dr1.wps

by phuc

  Sam got up and I let him pass by me and out the door to get Deacon Cecil. When he was gone, Mable shrugged and said, "Well, here we are."

  She told me a story about how she'd won a baking contest in Gladewater, Texas, once, and by then Sam was back.

  "Are things ready?" Mable asked.

  "Ready," he said, and looked at me and smiled.

  I smiled back.

  We went out of the bus, and as we walked, Sam put his arm around my shoulders and told me about the Kingdom of Heaven. None of it was particularly inspiring. The smell from his armpit kept my mind off what he was saying and made me woozy.

  As we neared the selected spot, I could see a number of the Christians strutting rapidly toward it. They really seemed worked up and excited this time, like they'd just arrived at the company picnic.

  On the other hand, I was considerably less than worked up. My entire religious experiment so far had been a vast disappointment. Sort of like when I found out my pet gerbil wouldn't live forever, and later, after I'd cleaned the little turds out of his cage for what seemed like an enormous period of time, thought the little fucker would never die.

  When we were all gathered there, Sam introduced me as a "boy who wants to join God,"

  and the others told me how nice that was, and a girl who might have been pretty, had she not been so thin and her hair so greasy, said, "A fresh one, huh?"

  "You know," Mable said, looking up at the lightning flashing across the blackness, "this reminds me of when we used to camp out, and sometimes it looked like it was going to rain. And we'd build us a big fire anyway, and we'd take some coat hangers and straighten them out and roast wienies over the fire. It was so much fun. We'd just let them cook until they were black, and they tasted so good. That just don't make sense really, 'cause if you burn them at home they aren't any good at all, but out there on an open fire you can cook them black as a nigger, and they're just as fine as they can be."

  "We'll start the services with a little round of prayer," Sam said, "then we'll have communion."

  At mention of the word "communion," a collective sigh went up from the crowd. These were some communion-loving folks. I remembered the sighs from the Popcorn King's followers when they were eating the results of his vomit. There hadn't been a lot of difference in sounds.

  "God," Sam said, "you sure have allowed some odd things here. In fact, I would say you have outdone yourself. But if that's your will, that's it. Still, sure would like to know the why of it ... We also have this young fella amongst us, just baptized and craving the Lord, and we thought we'd bring him to you ... It would certainly be nice if you'd do something to that old Popcorn King, by the way. Like maybe kill him. And it wouldn't hurt my feelings, or the feelings of anyone here, if you'd make this black mess go away and give us back our highway and things. Amen."

  "Amen," said the crowd.

  "Bad as things is," Mable whispered to me, "you got to be thankful. Things will work out, I know they will- I had a cousin, her name was Frances, and she didn't have good thoughts on nothing or nobody, and she got this rash on her foot and it got infected, and she wouldn't do nothing but wear this old sock on it, day in, day out. It just stunk something awful. I'd say to her, 'Frances, you need to go and pour you some chemicals on that thing. It's done gone and got infected.' But you know, she wouldn't listen, and her foot got so infected they had to cut it off. Had a foot one day, next she didn't. Just had this little stub and they got this leather thing they put over it, and she had to put on this artificial foot, and she'd pull a stocking over that and she could slip a shoe on, you know, and it looked almost real. But when she walked, she walked something like this." She showed me how her cousin Frances walked. The congregation and Sam had stopped to look at her, but she didn't seem to notice. She did a sort of stiff step with one foot and dragged the other after it. "That's how she looked. And there's some little ole mean kids that live down the block from her, and they'd get up behind her when she was walking to the store, and they'd all walk like her." She showed me the walk in more exaggerated form. "It was just like a bunch of crippled ducks following their ole crippled mama.

  They'd been my kids I'd have worn their little hind ends out so bad they couldn't have sat down for a week. But the reason she got her foot rotted off like that and got mocked by them children is because she didn't have no faith and doesn't look on the bright side of things. God keeps score on them kind, you can bet he does."

  "Mable," Sam said patiently, "if you're through with the story about your cousin's rotting foot, we'd like to continue."

  "Oh, I am sorry," said Mable. "Don't you pay me no never mind. Ya'll just go right on with your rat killing and I'll hush and listen."

  "That would be nice," Sam said.

  Then came the sermon. It had a lot of storm clouds, sinners, fire and brimstone and the work of the Devil in it. Sam hopped around and waved his arms a lot. But somehow it wasn't very exciting. There were quite a few references to plumbing and painting and a parable about a little girl that got hit by a truck, which I couldn't seem to work into the rest of the sermon or find the point of.

  A man beside me leaned over to another and said, "I'm really sick of this crap."

  "It's a thing to get through," the other man said.

  Finally Sam's sermon sort of petered out, like maybe he couldn't keep it on his mind anymore. He said "amen" and called his flock to him. This was the huddle I'd seen, and Mable put her arm around me and pushed me toward it. In the huddle it was hot and full of sweaty pits, unwashed clothes and bad breath; all this ganged up on me and I felt dizzy and weak, and before I knew it, I was in the center of the huddle and hands were touching me, then suddenly Sam stepped forward and kicked my feet out from under me. I went down hard and hit my head, tried to rise, but Sam shoved me down with his foot, and the next thing I know there's two guys holding my arms, and the girl with the greasy hair has one of my legs and Mable has the other.

  "What in hell are you doing?" I yelled.

  "Communion," Sam said. He took a tin of sardines out of his rumpled coat, and that made me aware suddenly of what was filling that shabby coat of Mable's. More sardine tins.

  "We been sharing these with the congregation," Sam said. "Folks have been real nice about it too, especially since they know I got the bus rigged up with a bomb, and they mess where they ain't supposed to be messin' when we're away from there, and BLAM!"

  "That's got nothing to do with me . . . Tell these people to let me go."

  "It's got everything to do with you. We also drink a little of each other's blood."

  "Like this," Mable said, and she put her knee over my ankle to hold me down and produced a penknife from the pocket of her coat. She opened it smoothly and drew it across her palm. A line of blood appeared there and she held her hand up without looking and a man who was standing above her grabbed it and put his mouth to the wound and sucked. He trembled he was so excited. Mable's tongue worked from one corner of her mouth to the other and her eyes closed.

  A man in the crowd began speaking softly. "Yeah, brother, get it, get it, go, go."

  "Oh yes," Mable said, "Oh yes, yes, yes. Suck, suck, oh God in Heaven, suck, yes, oh yes."

  Then other knives and razors flashed and flesh was opened and mouths were pleased. It sounded like a convention of leeches, or an orgy—or, to be more precise, both.

  Sam squatted down close to my face. There was blood on his lips. "You see," he said, patting my chest. "We made a pact. We wouldn't let nobody else in. We would convert them if they wanted, but they couldn't join us, and we'd eliminate competition. It's a tough thing to do, but the Lord moves in mysterious ways his miracles to perform . . . and food lasts longer this way."

  A man took Mable's place holding my leg and she inched down to me and held the penknife where I could see it. "And we have to take advantage of any food that comes our way," she said. "It would be sinful to waste . . . and we've had our eyes on you and your friend for a while."

  "
We just didn't want to get shot," Sam said. "Your pal never seems to leave his shotgun."

  "But you're Christians," I said.

  "That we are," Sam said, "and that should make you feel proud and special. You'll be with God in Heaven in a short time now. He'll embrace you and—"

  "Then why don't you go join him," I said. "You're holier than me, you should go first."

  Sam smiled. "It isn't my time."

  "It's a little thing," Mable said. "Nothing to it, really. We got to do this thing, and you've got to accept it . . . And this here knife may be small, but it's sharp. It won't hurt much.

  They say the blood goes out of you fast when it's done right, that you just get terrible sleepy, then it's all over. I've cut many a hog's throat in my day, and though couldn't none of them tell me if it was sleepy or not, they seemed to go pretty peaceful, wouldn't you say, Sam?"

  "I would," Sam said.

  "But I'm no hog," I said.

  "Cut the gab," a man said, and he dropped a rusty-looking hubcap beside my head; it clanged, rattled, stopped.

  "Turn him," Sam said.

  The two holding my legs let go, and the men who had my arms flipped me onto my knees, pulled my arms back so hard behind my back my shoulder blades met. They pushed me forward so that my face was over the hubcap.

  "Won't none of you waste," Mable said. "I thought you'd like to know that. We'll take the blood to drink, then we'll have us a little ole cookout with the rest of you."

  "Mable can cook like the dickens; don't matter what it is, she can cook it."

  The greasy-haired girl who had held one of my legs earlier came around and bent down to look me in the face. "I'm gonna love you, sugar. I'm gonna just love you to death. Gonna wrap my lips around you, and chew and chew and chew."

  "Get on with it, for Pete's sake," the man who had dropped the hubcap said.

  Mable grabbed my hair. "Just think about something pleasant, like good ole turnip greens and black-eyed peas. It'll be over quick-like."

  I closed my eyes, but I didn't think of turnip greens and black-eyed peas. I tried to remember how things were before the drive-in, but nothing would come. There was only the dark behind my eyelids, the sound of all those hungry Christians breathing, the smell of their bodies. Mable lifted my head more to expose my neck. I hoped it would be quick and that I would not have to hear my blood draining into the hubcap for very long.

  And just when I expected to feel the blade, there was an explosion, a thud in the hubcap and I was warmly wet from chin to forehead.

  PART THREE

  THE ORBIT MUST DIE

  (Death and Destruction and School Bus-Fu)

  1

  I thought my throat had been cut and the blood from the wound had sprayed my face, and that simultaneously there had been a loud clap of thunder, though it didn't sound right, not even for the artificial thunder of the drive-in.

  Against my will I opened my eyes, saw lying in the hubcab beneath me a hand, and lying next to it in a little pond of blood was the penknife.

  The men had let go of my arms and I was able to rock up on my knees and see Mable.

  She was still on her knees, but now she was holding her arm in front of her, minus her hand, and watching blood leap from the wound like freshly tapped oil.

  Mable looked at me and said, "Oh my."

  A number of the congregation dropped down to try and suck at the stump of her arm, and the girl with the greasy hair began lapping at the blood that had sprayed my face. Her tongue was rough and dry, like a cat's.

  "Who's next?" a voice called, and I turned to see Bob standing there with the shotgun, a wreath of gun-smoke about his head. With his hair and beard grown long, his sweaty hat drooping, he looked like an old-time desperado. At his feet two men lay holding their heads. He had apparently cleared himself a path into the huddle with the stock of his gun.

  "Mess with me," he said, "and I'll shoot you just to check the pump action on this baby."

  Mable said, "Sam, Sam, my hand's done come off . . . Do you think we can get me an artificial one?"

  "They cost too much," Sam said, and Mable fainted forward on her face. The stump-suckers stayed with her, working on her arm, pushing and shoving each other out of the way, tongues darting and colliding as they pursued the taste of the hot blood.

  "Quit that sucking on her," Bob said. "Get away from there." He stepped in and gave one of the lappers a quick kick to the seat of the pants. "Spread the hell out."

  They did.

  "And you," he said, giving the greasy-haired girl a kick in the ribs, "you quit licking his face."

  She scrambled away. I sort of hated that. I was beginning to like her.

  A guy tried to pull a pistol on Bob, and Bob saw him out of the corner of his eye and gave him the stock of the shotgun to eat. The man went down and the gun slid across the asphalt. Bob looked at the greasy-haired girl and said, "Do me a favor, sugar, hand me that gun. Easy-like."

  She gave it to him without protest and he put it in his belt.

  "All right, all other weapons hit the deck," Bob said, "or I'm gonna start opening up heads."

  Another pistol dropped to the ground. Can openers, knives, clubs, coins in socks. A condom full of marbles.

  Bob nodded at the pistol. "I'd like that one too, sugar. Okay?"

  The greasy-haired girl gave it to him. He put it in his belt next to the other one. Now he did look like a desperado.

  The crowd had spread out, and I got up. I felt a little on the limp side.

  "Take off your belt, Jack," Bob said, "and give it to that preacher fella to put on the woman. He doesn't make her a tourniquet pretty quick, she's gonna die."

  "She's gonna die anyway," a man in the crowd said. "Why don't you just let us go on and eat her, and you two can join in. Hell, you can go first."

  "That's a good idea," the greasy-haired girl said.

  "No thanks," Bob said.

  I took off my belt and gave it to Sam. He got down on his hands and knees and applied it to Mable's arm, about six inches above the wound. It cut off most of the bleeding.

  "I think you're supposed to let that off now and then," Bob said. "You don't, she'll lose her whole arm ... if it don't kill her."

  "I got some idea how to do it," Sam said. When he leaned over to make an extra adjustment on the belt, a can of sardines tipped out of his pocket. All eyes went to that can.

  "They've got a lot of those," I said to Bob. "That's how they've been holding things together. And nobody's tried to take it away from them because they've got the bus rigged with a bomb."

  "You don't say?" Bob said. "And here I was thinking this was all just the power of the Lord, and it's cans of sardines."

  "You mess with that bus," Sam said, "it'll blow you out of this drive-in."

  "That's an idea," Bob said. "Okay, Mr. Preacher, get your wife there. Jack, give him a hand. Ya'll come with me. Rest of you Christians just sort of lick up here while we're gone."

  Sam and I got our arms around Mable and got her up. She came to briefly, but she couldn't walk. We dragged her away, the toes of her house shoes scraping the asphalt. I looked back over my shoulder as we went away from there, and the greasy-haired girl grabbed the sardines and tried to make a run for it. She was swarmed. At the bottom of the mound of thrashing arms and legs you could hear her yelling, "Mine, mine."

  The guy who had dropped the hubcab snatched Mable's hand from it, sprinted off tearing at it with his teeth. He rounded an elderly Chevy, practically leaped from one row to the other, weaved into some other cars and disappeared into shadows, perhaps to lie under some automobile and chew on his prize like a contented terrier.

  A middle-aged woman in jean shorts and a red blouse dove down on the hubcab and began to lap at the blood there. A man dropped to his knees to join her. They growled at each other like Dobermans.

  "Praise the Lord," Bob said.

  "Oh, shut up," I said.

  When we came to the bus, Bob made Sam put Mable down and
give him the key. Sam said he would give him the key if he was going to be so foolish, but he would rather be shot point-blank with the shotgun before he would open it himself. The results would be too terrible, and the death of all of us would be on his hands.

  Bob put the key in the lock and opened the back door.

  He looked at us and smiled. "Boom," he said.

  "Well," Sam said, "it worked up until now."

  Bob climbed inside and we went after. The bus had shelves and the shelves had wire over them, and behind the wire were oodles of canned goods, mostly sardines and Vienna sausages. Two of my all-time nonfavorites under normal conditions. Right now they looked rather attractive. My stomach growled like an attack dog.

  "Comfy in here," Bob said.

  Sam and I helped Mable over to a bed that folded away from the bus wall, and Sam got a bucket and put that by the bed and took the pressure off the tourniquet. Blood shot out of the wound and into the bucket. "We were afeared of a nigger takeover," Sam explained as he tightened the tourniquet again. "Figured it came down to us or the niggers, we'd have this food put back, and that would hold us for a time."

  I looked around more now that my eyes were adjusted. There was all manner of stuff in there. Plumbing tools, carpentry tools, painting equipment, even a welding torch and the tanks to go with it arranged on a dolly.

  "Guns?" Bob asked.

  "We hadn't gotten around to that," Sam said. "That was next."

  "Wouldn't lie to me, would you?"

  "I'm telling the truth . . . Damn you, why'd you have to shoot Mable's hand off?"

  "Seemed sort of necessary," Bob said. "She was about to cut my buddy's throat. Though I figure the dumb sucker deserved it. Christians, my ass."

  "Watch your language," Sam said. "If it had been her foot, that wouldn't have been so bad. But her hand. She likes to cook and give me back rubs, and she needs two good hands to do them things right."