"And what have you got?" said Carl, giving Todd the slits of his eyes.
"Isn't that what you're taking us to see?" Todd huffed.
"We're going to your house for a little chat and to pick up your brother's car, that's all." Carl shifted his eyes between us, as though suspicious that we might try to switch places on him. "Which one of you was the love child?"
'Love' was a word never used in the Skunk household, which didn't bother me then and doesn't bother me now. In my experience, most anyone who uses the 'L' word is a liar or a salesman. Had Todd's home been gooey with sweet nothings? He seemed like the type whose mother had slathered his face with kisses and her car with bumper stickers: "My son is an honor student at Ludicrous High." Maybe his current wounded self-esteem, as demonstrated by his dour expression, was a sign he was confronting reality. He really didn't have much going for him, for all his mother's boasting.
Okay, I'm reading too much into this. The chump was a stranger to me, after all. Chances were that he was playing the same presupposition games as I was—except he had a head start. He probably considered himself an expert on me. Did he know about me and Kendle? I posted an embarrassed glance towards the driver.
"I think we're both the love child, if we're really monozygotic twins," I observed.
Todd took issue. "It's what happens after you're born that counts."
None of us are compos mentis at the most important event in our life, our conception—even if you make the claim that the cluster of cells that take center stage is a human and not a tadpole. Baby-making is the supreme act of tyranny. We're not consulted, we're not pre-ordained, and in too many cases the result of all that huffing and puffing doesn't satisfy. It didn't matter if we had time-shared the same womb, an accident of history that made us both slightly nauseous. Todd was laying claim to privilege because he had skedaddled to the 'burbs while I languished in White-Trashland.
"I don't see half a cent difference between the two of you," Carl declaimed with all the authority of a junk scientist. "For my money, either one of you would have shafted me. And that's what I'm talking about: my money. One of you has to cough it up--or both of you. Otherwise, I'll have to sic The 'Toon on you."
Joe Dog signaled his disapproval of the moniker with a cartoonish whoop.
"You start behaving like an adult, I'll call you something decent," Carl said without taking his eyes off Todd and me. I didn't think he knew Skunk had called me 'Mute', but I was indirectly wounded by the criticism.
"You're not my brother," Todd said abruptly, turning away.
"Are to."
"Are not."
"You're brothers," Carl snapped at Todd. "It's that, or you've been lying to us. I hate liars, in case you don't know. I can take a lot, but lying..."
"We're home," Joe Dog announced.
I looked out the window and was surprised to find he wasn't joking. The peril of the moment had distracted me. We had crossed the river and passed the University of Richmond without my noticing and we were now in the realm of anonymous fortunes. When we pulled up in front of Todd's house my heart did a downward spiral. On my last visit I had not gotten a good look at the front yard, approaching instead through the alley. The back yard hadn't been up to snuff, but in my experience back yards never are.
Out front, lawn ornaments were flaked and spalled like Pompeian elves frozen in death. Boxwoods flung out untrimmed branches seething with wildlife. The house itself was in need of serious renovation, with paint peeling off the eaves and cracked windows competing for the scrap heap. At the corner of the house stood a rain barrel, which I guessed was empty, seeing as the gutter was broken in a half dozen places and the spout turned cockeyed up at the sky.
And this was only what I saw from the van.
"You can take the boy out of the trash, but you can't the trash out of the—"
"Hey, I get enough shit from the neighbors," Todd cut me short. Getting out of the van, I quickly saw what he meant. All around the yard were notes posted on surveyor sticks. Todd was so lax he hadn't bothered to remove them, leaving a complete history of community protest. The notes started jokingly, like what kids write on dusty cars, as in:
"Please clean me!"
Followed by:
"Please clean me! I'm spawning maggots!"
But after "This is no joke, clean up!" the signs grew smaller, semi-friendly and not-so-friendly handwritten posts shading into the amicability-free printed officialese of "or else". These were notices from the local homeowners' association and civic authorities. I didn't have time to read the smaller print delineating the various codes that were being violated, but the numerous dots between the subsections were ominous enough. Could Todd be hauled off to jail for being a slob? He had not shared my childhood neighborhood, where refuse was a sign of status. He had grown up here, in speckle-free suburbia. And it was beginning to look as if he had learned nothing.
Carl betrayed his bourgeois roots when he made a face at the weedy grass. Was he making an association between this and his own depilated pole dancers? Body hair was death to a career in the nude. His girls were properly maintained, like good lawns.
"Cool, man," said Joe Dog, getting out and stretching his polyester legs. "This is supermurgitroid. Could've used this on the set of Abner. Only thing missing are the dead soldiers."
"You can practice your slang on the unemployment line," Carl said.
"I can dig it," Joe Dog answered.
"I cleaned up the beer bottles," Todd said boastfully, as though he had done Mankind a favor out of all proportion to what it deserved.
"Where's the sidewalk?" Carl fussed. "I hate chiggers and snakes."
I had been about to strike out across the lawn, but decided against it. I had been dealing with too many snakes lately.
Todd guided us to the in-name-only sidewalk and we gingerly made our way to the front door.
"You got something against lawnmowers?" Carl asked, gingerly dodging a cross between a grasshopper and Mothra.
When we entered I noted the smell was no worse than my humble dump on Oregon Hill, but when Carl and Joe Dog winced I realized Airwick was sorely lacking.
"You got something against vacuum cleaners?" said Carl. Then he brightened. "Hey, I can offer you a French maid. Actually, they come in pairs."
"Au pair girls?" Todd said, cocking an eyebrow in my direction, as if I would instinctively understand the joke—because we were twins, after all, and were supposed to be able to read each others' minds. In the best Skunk tradition, I was already concocting a nickname for him. Think of an eight-letter word that begins with an F and ends with a D.
On the other hand, I had to admit Todd was making me feel right at home. The wood and plaster weren't saturated by age, a hundred years-worth of animal corpses weren't hidden in the crawlspace and the walls didn't shudder with noise from neighboring houses. But the junk was there, lumps immaculate under a thick layer of dust that was like filtered oxygen to me, but sent the other visitors into violent coughing fits.
"OK," said Carl, "but this doesn't prove anything. You wouldn't be the first pig with money.
"You want some coffee?" Todd offered. Manners come more naturally when you have gun to your head, especially when the metaphor threatened to become a reality.
"I'll pass," said Carl.
"How about a beer?"
"What kind?"
"Milwaukee's Best."
Carl was taken aback. "You are broke..."
"How about you?" Todd asked Joe Dog, who was scrutinizing a newspaper spread out on the musty carpet. He seemed ready to squat and unload.
"Cowabunga!"
"That a 'yes' or a 'no'?" asked Todd.
He didn't ask me if I wanted anything, which I found pretty rude but not unexpected. The only weapon I had was a partial truth, which didn't go far towards encouraging hospitality. He began searching out possible seating arrangements and was beginning to toss a broken lamp off a settee when Carl raised a hand to stop him.
&nbs
p; "Why not sit out back? It's kind of stuffy in here."
"Did Mom...did your mother..." I stuttered.
"Mom wasn't a neat freak," Todd shrugged. There was no point in denying his swinish inheritance. The evidence was overwhelming. Unless he admitted that Skunk was his father, he had no birthright to fall back on as an excuse. I doubted he brought many women to this guano pit. There was no sign of a feminine hand attempting to put things right. It was a sobering thought. The two of us living alone in our separate houses, moving sluggishly through our dung heaps, unattached, unlovable, alone in the universe. The big difference was that, whereas I looked sorrowfully on my mess like a rat on a promontory, Todd took no heed of neglected accountability. He possessed more of the Oregon Hill spirit than I did. You could say there was more birth than nurture in his makeup, but the same went for me. In all of Skunk's troupe, I was the one who didn't belong—because I had a trace of guilt. I didn't earn it. I was just guilty, because of who I was, by virtue of my parentage.
And who might they be? My parents, I mean. As we passed to the back of the house I scanned the clutter for framed portraits or any other memorabilia that might identify Todd's adoptive family. The only sign of literacy was a cheap plaque hanging by a frayed string on the wall. It read: EROSION BEGINS HERE. Finally, I asked.
"You have any pictures around here?"
"Of Mom and Dad?" Todd looked troubled, as if I had asked him for a loaded gun. Was he afraid I would discover no resemblance between him and his parents? Or worse, that he was his father's spitting image? I favored neither Skunk nor my mother, so it seemed quite possible that I might look at one of Todd's family portraits and see...myself. If not literally myself, with a pacifier jammed in my mouth, then at least the originals from which Todd and I had been duplicated.
It didn't look like an answer was forthcoming. When we walked out onto the back deck, Joe Dog whooped and mounted a mop-topped hobby horse, his legs cracking up to his chin as he rocked violently.
"Nature boy," Carl sighed. He turned to Todd. "You have kids?"
"Hell no." He nodded at the hobby horse a little shame-facedly, as though caught mistreating an animal. "That was mine."
"And that swing over there?"
"Mine. I wouldn't try it, though. My insurance...I don't have much in the way of liability."
Meaning Todd didn't have any insurance at all, seeing as liability is nine-tenths of the law. The rusting A-frame hulk of the swing set was more dangerous to Todd than to his guests, since a lawsuit resulting from an injury would bring down the house. In its current state, it might not be worth much, but this half-acre was a gold mine. Joe Dog, tempted by Todd's inferred dare, looked longingly at the swing. The Dogpatch character would have leapt at the opportunity to daredevil among the rusty seats and chains, but Schmuckalooza was more refined.
"Why haven't you junked it all?" I asked.
Todd shrugged. He had simply not gotten around to it. For twenty years neither he nor his folks had not gotten around to it. Todd defined a neat freak as someone who rinsed out his coffee cup more than twice a year. A dark signal coursed through my innermind. Anything that comes naturally must be inherited. Neatness was the furthest thing from my mind because it just wasn't in me. Slobility, too, could be an inherited trait. This mess was of long standing. If Todd's mother was gone, when did she go? The grass and weeds might be relatively recent, but unless she had been gone for decades, she should have had plenty of time to remove the aging swing set and basketball hoop and trampoline, not to mention the Tonka toys littering the deck.
What was Elizabeth Neerson's background? Where had she come from? Did she say 'tomato' or 'tomaato'? I began to get a queasy feeling. I mean, in addition to the queasiness attributable to being kidnapped for the second time by frontrank goofballs.
Carl took a deep breath, then coughed. He had been overly optimistic on the benefits of fresh air, neglecting to take into account the toxic cloud of ragweed pollen.
"Listen—" Todd began, stopping when Carl held up his hand.
"You're broke, I can see that. But you must have some source of income. I figure you eat like the rest of us. How do you afford it? Is there a trust?"
Todd turned beet red, exactly the same way I did whenever confronted by an embarrassing question.
"Just a little bit," he said. "But it's only enough to keep me going."
"I wouldn't want to steal the food out of your mouth," said the mealy-mouthed club-owner. Then he nodded at Joe Dog. "But you know, I have to feed my employees, and they aren't so particular. Hell, dogs eat their own vomit."
Filing an employee complaint against a slanderous boss was the furthest thing from Joe Dog's mind. He had decided a trampoline was just the ticket for the aspiring beatnik. Jumping off the hobby horse, he raced through the tall grass and launched himself into the air. The rotten canvas broke and he tottered onto the grass.
"Those things aren't safe," Carl belatedly cautioned, and turned back to Todd. "You see what I mean? No sense. Doesn't even know how to feed himself."
I smiled in disbelief, but Todd saw danger in the joke. Carl required no excuse to rob him, but if pressed he would supply one with as much merit as a razor blade in an apple.
"You don't need me for this," I said, backing towards the house.
"Don't make Dog chase you," said Carl. "He gets riled whenever he's forced to break a sweat."
I'd seen some evidence that this was true and stopped in my tracks. "You're after Todd, not me," I protested.
"In order to add two plus two, I need two," said Carl
While I struggled to winkle the logic out of this, Todd chimed in:
"And in order to have an ass, you need two half—"
"Be nice," Carl waggled. "Your life is in my hands."
Ouch.
"Let me remind you of a few things," Carl continued, "and maybe fill in the gaps for Mutt here."
"Mute," I said, wondering if it was Jeremy who had given him my nickname, and at what point it had been mangled.
"When Jeremy came to you for his share of the Brinks money—"
"There's nothing Brinks about this place," Todd interrupted with some accuracy. "I told you, my father made a ton with asbestos abatement. He had a contract with the state to strip out the old buildings downtown."
"Mmm-hmm," Carl smiled.
"This Brinks business, Skunk, everything—it all came out of the blue," said Todd. "I'd never heard of any of it." He shot me a jaundiced look. "I never knew anything about him until I met Barbara and she told me."
"Mutual," I said, my disgust basting to a golden wrath.
"Forget you," Todd shot back. "I don't think Jeremy is my brother, either. I don't have any brothers or sisters."
I held my peace on that one.
"Then why did you come to us for assistance?" Carl smiled like a seasoned businessman who took to paid assassination as a holiday lark.
"You can't have forgotten already," Todd said. "It was only half a year ago."
"Really, it was that simple?"
Carl's tone was playful, as though he remembered very well their first meeting. Why he should bother stretching out the conversation with feigned ignorance eluded me. Maybe he was having second thoughts about the free beer, no matter how cheap.
It was fascinating to see Todd skate across a range of expressions, because I was seeing (much to my self-dissatisfaction) my own reaction to unpalatable subjects. Neither one of us had a poker face, it seemed, and the topic at hand roused him to ratlike fury. Did I really look like that whenever I was (pardon the expression) beside myself? Did my face narrow, my chin shrink and my eyes wobble in idiotic dementia? I resolved to spend some practice time in front of the mirror. I needed to hone my cool.
Todd was going to tell a story on himself, because if he didn't Carl would. Either way, it didn't promise to be flattering.
"I was at the PFZ January..." he began.
"Taking in the sights," Carl elaborated.
"It was a
hot day," Todd continued.
"Half a year ago lands you in the dead of winter."
"What matters the weather! I happened to be downtown on business."
"Business?" Carl inquired. His tone inferred Todd knew as much about business as a seal knew about the Mojave Desert.
"It's not pertinent to the story," Todd frowned. "Remember way back when you still had a liquor license? When a dude could still drop in the PFZ and not end up with lemonade?"
Carl didn't answer, which I found more worrying than anything he might have said outside of 'I'm going to plug the both of you, here and now.' And maybe that was precisely what he was saying-not-saying. His liquor license had been a badge of honor, or it could have been dishonor, but either way it made him a viable business entity. His girls were goddesses in my uncultured eyes, yet they were probably not top of the line. Tungsten-halogen lighting, starvation diets, giraffe costumes and pasties could only perform limited miracles. Carl had counted on the chemistry of spirits to convince his customers they were witnessing a parade of bona fide centerfolds. To some folks, hambones without beer are just hambones.
"I must have had a few drinks too many that evening," Todd continued, fending off Carl's wrathful expression by looking into space. "Usually, I'm cooth enough to act my age, but I went a little overboard and started coming on to one of the pole girls."
"'Performance artists'," Carl corrected, massaging his ego with the cachet. "And if you think playing goochy-goo with a cooch in public is a sign of refinement, you must take your dumps in the front yard. But you missed the best part. You want me to continue for you?"
Seeing he was not going to get a break, Todd went on:
"I may have been a little too forward."
He waited for Carl's laughter to subside.
"The girl began yelling—really out of all proportion to what I'd done. Which wasn't much. Or it could've have been. Anyway, I don't remember. So this girl starts acting crazy, like I was a real pervert instead of a guy looking for a good time. Then this other girl comes up and begins hammering me. Man, she hit hard."
Skunk Hunt Page 32
