by LYNDA BARRY
Dead Lemuel was already in the shack. The blue blanket came for him first. The father stood over him smoking a cig. He said, “Jesus, Clyde. You bled him out like a hog. I couldn’t have done better.” Dead Lemuel received a few last wet crunching kicks and some advice about lying to someone as superior as the father. Because Lemuel had been lying. The suitcase was inside the shack and so was dead Leonard, who didn’t blow his brains out after all. His throat was cut.
“See what a shit world we live in, Clyde?” The father took a fortifying glug of Whitley’s. “Brother against brother, father against son. Fuck all.”
The father bounced back into the trailer and came out with a gray jug of cookstove kerosene. He said, “Hop in the car, sunshine, we got places to go. This will only take a minute.”
He disappeared inside the shack and there was the splashing and the distinctive smell of kerosene. I waited for the WHOOMP and the WHOOSH, but all I heard was “Burn you son-of-a-bitch. Take. Take. Shit. Come on.” Kerosene can be hard to get going. You’d think you could just throw a match on it and you’d have it made. But it can be a stubborn accelerant. The key is a little Whitley’s. BLAM! The doorway glowed bright and the father came leaping out.
The pink and black car with bite marks in the dash got the same treatment. And I was thinking of the teeth that made them. They looked like the teeth of a child. Someone’s baby teeth marks melting in the flames.
It started to rain.
“This one’s going to blow,” said the father, gunning the engine and we were down the road when it did. I looked over my shoulder and watched the brightness through the wet rear window. It started to pour. It was Sunday morning.
“Goddamn!” said the reeking father. “It couldn’t go more professional than that. Whole damn street will be on fire before someone calls it in. Fire department won’t give a shit. There ain’t nothing to save. They’ll watch it. Keep it from spreading. Eat candy bars and shoot the shit. But no one is going to go sniffing around back there and if they do? Know what they’ll find? A goddamn three-way! Haw! We got us a nice car here, Clyde. The future’s looking bright, Clyde.” And he went on like that, giddy like that, trying to wipe the steam off the windshield with his filthy hands, rolling down his window, letting the creosote smell curl delicate tendrils into the car and that became stronger and then flooded the air, and as the father tried to find the defroster knob the car slid onto the wet boards of the wooden bridge.
“What the—OH SHIT!” The father hit the brakes and the trailer fishtailed and pushed us farther down. When he was able to stop he tried to back up but the planks were slick and the trailer was too heavy. I heard the oncoming roaring, the ting-ting-ting of the approaching bell, not the whistle yet, the whistle would come in a moment, a clear screaming that would shake the world apart.
We were up so high. Up so very high on such a rickety slick bridge. The father’s paralyzed hands were white on the steering wheel. The yellow eye of the train rolled toward us. The bridge was already vibrating. I counted it down. Five, four, three, and when the whistle bellowed the father screamed, and the train pounded and screeched and shook at the legs of the bridge like it was going to pull it down.
There are times when a situation is not funny at all. Times when it would be very rude to laugh, but I could not help it. I didn’t want to be laughing, but my puppet head would not stop. It was the sound of the father’s screaming. Have you ever heard a man scream before? Sounding exactly like a girl?
“You BITCH!” He had me by the head and he was screaming, “YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY? YOU FUCKING STUPID BITCH!” He punched me very hard then and my teeth hit the dash knobs and broke a short upside-down “V” into my front teeth. I tried to get out of the car but he had my arm and he yanktwisted me back. In a very even voice he said, “I’m going to kill you, Clyde.” But when we made it to the bottom of the bridge I was still alive.
Dentsville is a maze, a tangle of curving streets and hills and sudden dead ends. When it’s raining and you are pulling a trailer and you are feeling excitable it is a hard place to get out of. Very hard. The father kept trying to go south but he kept getting turned around. Finally he said, “East, then. East. Fuck it.”
And soon we were at the edge of the city, rain pouring hard and wipers on high, blood dripping from my nose onto my arms, me not doing anything about it. The road was straight and empty and our tires swished loud, running alongside a junkyard that went on forever behind a fence made of spot-welded tire rims, some of them painted to spell out ANDERSONS ANDERSONS YOU NEED IT WE HAVE IT ANDERSONS ANDERSONS ANDERSONS.
The father twisted the radio dial. The car was a pale green Valiant with black upholstered seats shot through with silver. Bench seats with a divided center so you could lift a lever on your side and lean back to relax if you needed to, if it was possible to relax while the father listed all the thousand reasons why he should kill you and throw you to the crows. You never laugh at a superior officer. Ever. Ever.
We drove out of Dentsville and the world looked empty and green with mountains before us, the road curving gently upwards. Little songs came on the radio the father liked. Sad songs named after towns. Abilene. Detroit City. Saginaw, Michigan. And the father sang.
He could imitate anyone’s voice. His Adam’s apple went up and down the same as the professionals. So many chances in life just passed him by but all of that was over. There was one more suitcase to go and this one he was going to get without a fight. It was actually waiting for him along with a highball and a loving woman who owned her own motel. Spring was just around the corner.
And so we drove up into the misty mountains disappearing into the conifer forests that are always dim and darkly shadowed, even on the brightest of days. The father had his high beams on and he was driving slow. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open. Too much exhilaration will do that to you. Brings on an aftermath of konking out. I felt it too. He drove up a dog-legged logging road into the lasting darkness of the dripping pines and that is where we slept.
Chapter 23
ULIE SAT on the couch looking at me with the flickering light from the television shining on her eyes. It was still night but all the shows were over and on the screen was the hissing no-picture of a billion insane bees. I’d been watching it, staring at it for a while before I realized my awakeness and my situation. I was in the mother’s chair. A blanket from our bed was on me and it was wet with blood and drool. Julie stared at me. “Hey,” I said.
She didn’t answer.
“What’s wrong?” I said. I started to rub my face but the stickiness and crusts stopped me. I kept my eyes off of the TV. There were faces moving in the hissing picture. I’d seen the smile of rotting Earlis there. Of bleeding Lemuel. Of the furious father. The movie called The Life of Clyde was still on but I could not stand to watch it.
“Julie,” I said. “You got cigs anywhere? I need one. You got one?”
She said something I could barely hear, I saw her lips moving. Fuck you, Roberta. I hate you, Roberta. I wish you were dead. She pulled a blanket over herself and curled up with her back to me and went to sleep. I remembered the cigs of Vicky Talluso. I tried to smoke one but it made me sick.
I showered and dressed and stood in front of the bathroom mirror combing out my wet hair. Looking at myself and trying to decide what I was going to do. Have you ever seen the track a snake leaves in the sand? A skittery track? Bones leave tracks like that when they come back crawling, come tap-tap-tapping dead fingers against your skull from the inside. Earlis was tapping. Lemuel was tapping. Leonard and Doolie Bug were tapping too. My nose had stopped bleeding but my eyes were still blown. Beware of Creeper.
Julie was sleeping when I slipped out the door into the darkness. It was about an hour before daylight. I wasn’t sure where I was going. To Vicky Talluso’s house maybe. Or maybe to the Trailways station. I wore Vicky’s hat and carried her purse and along with her things and the stash box of the Turtle there was a very old friend of mine.
The sock monkey named Trina.
I made Trina with the help of the Christian Homes lady who hosed me down in her backyard after the Lucky Chief Motel Massacre. Who wore pink rubber gloves when she threw my bloody clothes straight into the dented metal trash can and who was taking a horrified shower when I fished back into the trash can to retrieve a few things. Little Debbie. A purple cloth Crown Royal bag full of twenties. Trina kept them safe inside of her for five years. It was going to be sad when I tore her head off to get them back out, but Trina knew it was coming.
During my time in the Las Vegas Christian Homes when I was the mystery child who suffered from shock and amnesia, I had a decent life. I had the name of Michelle, the Christians called me Michelle and I enjoyed life as Michelle. I enjoyed making sock monkeys for the Christian Missionaries International Sock Monkey Drive, sock monkeys for disadvantaged children around the world. I enjoyed the Jesus they prayed to, a very different-looking Jesus from the one I was used to. His eyes weren’t shocked-rolled high and his mouth didn’t hang open in agony and no blood was dripping down his face, or from his slash wound or from his various nailed locations. The Christian Homes Jesus was a very comfortable-looking Jesus. A strolling Jesus, in very clean clothes. A clean Jesus for clean, strolling people.
I was happy to make sock monkeys in his honor. I was happy to add my sock monkeys to the pile and watch Lawrence Welk’s floating TV world and eat green beans and scalloped potatoes and ham made in an electric skillet and drink big glasses of milk and snarf down tapioca pudding and hear the reverend list me in the names of people to pray for. It wasn’t the world’s most exciting life but I was admiring of the calm that comes with boringness and plenty. Things were going pretty good until the mother showed up and blabbed out my true identity.
I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and thought of the comfortable Jesus and the scalloped potatoes. I wondered if any of the international disadvantaged children had discovered the hidden prize I sewed into the head of every sock monkey. Twenty dollars of the father’s money and a little square of paper written with the nine best words of his advice.
Expect the Unexpected.
And whenever possible,
BE the Unexpected.
You could call it a kind of memorial to the man. If I had an extra knife to sew into each one I would have done that too. Disadvantaged children sometimes need them. They sometimes need them very badly. Inside of Trina, wrapped in layers of twenty-dollar bills and raw cotton, Little Debbie waited.
When I left East Crawford in the dark final hour of that night, I didn’t exactly know where I was going. The only thing I knew for certain was that I was never coming back.
I was wrong about that. But as the father would have said, I was still right.
Chapter 24
HE FATHER woke me up while it was still dark. He was yawning and said, “Clyde, damn it, I need some help.” And what he needed help with was backing the trailer down the dog-leg. Dog-leg is what you call a road that turns like the logging road did, an angle unexpected. I had the flashlight and I did my best even though in the sharp air of the mountains my mind clearly was telling me again to run. Drop the flashlight and run. I looked up through the branches trying to find the sky. I didn’t see anything. Not even a star. The back-up lights threw their red glow and the father’s face was greenish in the side mirror. I was thinking of what would happen if I did try to run, but I knew it was too late for that. He would never let me go now. And I wondered how bad it would be, really, to die in the forest. To spill out and soak into the fallen pine needles and have it over with.
I ran my tongue along the new gap in my front teeth and remembered the father ramming my face into the dashboard. An inverted “V,” rough and sharp and giving a stabbing pain when cold air hit it. It would hurt to die. It would hurt terribly. I’d seen the father with the animals in the slaughterhouse. I’d seen their heads take the face of the Jesus in agony. I will admit I was terrified.
I got back into the car. The father said, “I am tired as shit. Feel like I didn’t even close my eyes.”
There was a low fog dragging itself through the trees. Fog in motion drifting across the road in the headlights. The father kept yawning and popping his eyes wide and talking about coffee. After a few miles of uphill driving we came to a closed-down gas station and grocery store called Top o’ the Pass. The headlights slid over damp old-fashioned walls made of stacked-together stones covered in green-black moss. There was one gas pump and the hose was ripped off and laying in a lazy curve below it. In the window a handwritten sign said HUNTING LICENSES HERE. A larger one said CLOSED FOR SEASON.
The father said, “Shangri-la.”
He took the final glugs from last bottle of Old Skull Popper. He said, “Gotta find the crapper,” and stumbled around the side of the building. A few seconds later he was back, straddling the trailer hitch and popping open the trunk. He said, “Crapper’s locked.” He found the crowbar and went back around. I heard the wood splintering.
I rolled down the window and the fog dragged itself in and left a chill inside of me that would not depart. The father was gone a very long time.
I fell asleep and woke up and he still wasn’t back. Finally I went looking for him. I found a door that was three-quarters open. I saw the shadow of him on the toilet, leaning against the wall with his head bent in a very weird position. He was snoring.
I considered ways to wake him and in the end I threw a rock. It could have been a smaller rock and I didn’t need to throw it so hard and with such good aim but I was feeling moody.
“Ow! Ow!” I heard him holler but he didn’t see me. I was back in the car looking asleep before he even got his pants up. He came around the side of the building saying, “It’s going to be light soon. We have to haul ass.” He stretched his arms out and yawned. “I’m feeling pretty damn good, considering.” Then he broke the glass on the grocery store door and called me to help him carry out a couple of armloads of provisions.
There wasn’t much to choose from. My flashlight beam moved on piles of mouse evidence. Cobwebs hung from one thing to the next. I opened one of the coolers and a barf-stench clawed out at me, so I shut it. In the end I carried what the father pointed to. All of it seemed dried out and dead. Bulge-top cans here and there.
It started raining again. The road continued downward in gentle looping twists, but even so, the trailer skidded and fishtailed behind us and the father was cursing it between the words of the story he was wanting me to memorize. The story of our new identities. He said, “Jimmy one of them cans for me, Clyde. All of a sudden I’m feeling hungry. Take the lid all the hell off.” I handed him an ancient can of pork and beans and he drank from it, shaking it so chunks fell into his mouth. He said, “Clyde, you know what you and me are? We’re just a couple of dumb-asses from North Dakota.”
He said “nort” for north. “We’re from Milsboro, that’s our town. One of the guys on my ship was from Milsboro, North Dakota. North or South, shit, I can’t remember which. Don’t matter. It’s all bum-fuck. So where we from, Clyde?”
I said, “Milsboro.”
He said, “Wrong. You don’t answer questions. You can’t talk. You got faller’s disease. Broke your brain. Never get beyond the mental age of five.” And he spun out the details, some of them quite fancy. How his wife left him without a warning. How all he had left in the world was a mongolian idiot son who he was trying to spread a little joy to. Taking the boy on a hunting trip, teaching the boy how to shoot. Just drinking and shooting rifles in the woods with a retard to help ease the pain.
“You paying attention, Clyde?” I nodded. I wanted to say that if I was never supposed to talk anyway, why did it matter? There were a lot of things I wanted to say to him but my mouth was not so interested in helping me. It was not going to be hard to play my part of the new identity.
The story he was practicing was for the cops. For if we got stopped. He checked his reflection in the rearview mirror to perfect his loo
k of broke-dick sincerity. “Hell yes, I been drinking, Officer. Don’t want to live without her, many a night I come this close, had the rifle barrel in my mouth and my big toe on the trigger. But I got my retard boy to think of, don’t I? I can’t just turn him loose in the world, can I? So shit yes, Officer. If misery’s a crime then lock me up. I don’t hardly give a damn no more. Just be good to my boy.”
The father inhaled off of one of the stale Old Gold cigarettes he took from the store. “Well, what do you think?” He flashed his wet teeth. “Can’t you just see me on The Movie of the Week?”
And then for the first time he mentioned the mess in the trailer. How we had to do something about it and he had a damn good idea. He turned onto another logging road, bumped along the ruts for a while, and then stopped the car. He was twitching the radio dial for a station, found one that played his music and said, “Tell me quick, Clyde. Who’s that singing?”
I thought, Roy Drusky, but my mouth wouldn’t move to say it.
The father said, “Aw come on! You know damn well who that is.” His mouth was full when he said it. He smiled at me big through a wet wad of deviled ham. He was feeling jolly. He was feeling optimistic. And he was acting like he liked me a lot.
He said, “Ain’t you going to eat? At least have one of them candy bars. I got them for you.”
I unwrapped one. The chocolate had gone waxy white. The father took out another ancient Old Gold. He put the lighter to it and said, “Tastes like horse pucky. Want to try?”
I took one. I liked smoking. I was liking it enough to call it love.
