by LYNDA BARRY
He reached over the backseat and pulled up one of the three glass jugs he found behind the counter. They were full of a slightly clouded tea-colored liquid. “Hooch,” said the father. “The real deal. Homemade. See what it says here?”
On a crumbling piece of masking tape someone’s shaky handwriting spelled out CORPSE REVIVER.
The father pried off the top and whiffed it. “Hooooo! This shit is a hundred proof. At least. My nose hairs just fell out. Have a snort, Clyde. Come on, son. It’ll give you another eye.”
I sniffed at the jug. The smell didn’t strike me as anything at first and then I saw colored lights behind my eyeballs. I said, “You first.”
“All right. Hell.” He hooked his finger into the glass loop and balanced the jug on the raised crook of his arm. “This here is how we drink out of a jug back home in Milsboro. Bottoms up.” He glugged many glugs and from his eyes rolled burning tears.
He passed it to me and then he started gagging. He started making a wet choking noise and hitting his chest with his fist and then there was an especially creepy sound from the back of his throat. He reached two fingers deep in his mouth and pulled out a rectangular wobbling chunk of fat. He examined it and said, “From that can of beans, I think. Hunk of hog fat they put in the beans.” He flung it out the window and said, “Go on, son. Take a pull. You want to learn how to use a rifle? Could come in handy.”
I took a glug because I wanted a glug. I was liking the glugs more and more. The swirl they gave me, the curlique slide into nothingness.
He showed me the different features of the rifle he used on Marie Cardall. How to break it down. How to put it back together. Gave a long Navy explanation of the relation of firing pin to the bore axis. Showed me how to load it. Showed me how troubled men used it to blow the top of their heads off, putting the barrel in the mouth, taking aim.
He took more glugs and I took some glugs. It was a strange kind of booze, that Corpse Reviver. It didn’t taste bad. It didn’t burn. Not in the first ten seconds. And then it just exploded and made you exhale sentimental ignitable fumes. I got wobbly, very wobbly. He got wobbly. He said we ought to drink one to Uncle Lemuel and to any other son of a bitch stupid enough to get in our way. He asked me was it me that pitched that rock at his head when he was sitting on the toilet. I told him yes it was. He told me it hurt like hell but he was glad I told the truth and if I ever pulled a stunt like that again he would mash me like a fly. And he smiled and I smiled back.
The clouds blew away and the sky above us was clear and inky blue. Very clear with sparking starlight and moonlight falling so strangely. We were sitting outside with the rifle. First he was holding it then I was holding it then he had it again.
“Know what we’re waiting for, Clyde?”
I said, “No.”
He said, “We’re waiting for an explanation.”
I thought it was strange, him saying that and looking up at the moon. And I was thinking of Ardus Cardall coming home after he buried that Leonards boy under two tons of concrete and telling it to Marie, mentioning how he was hoping the whole thing would just somehow blow over. And right then I felt like I understood Ardus Cardall’s logic. Let the past stay in the past. A person makes mistakes. A person has to move on.
After all the things that happened, described and undescribed, if I told you I still loved the father would you understand it? How there was a wire of love running inside of me that I just could not find to pull? It was the side effect of being someone’s child, anyone’s child, whoever God tossed you to.
I was thinking maybe it could work. Maybe we would set up a new life someplace in the yonder and the past would somehow tumble into the hole of forgetfulness. My tingling lips spoke these hopes out loud to the father as the dark conifers rubber-swayed around me. I told him I would never do to him what Marie Cardall did to Ardus. I’d never go to the authorities.
The father laughed a little. He said, “Hell, Clyde, I hate to break it to you, but I’d never give you the chance.”
And there in the forest we sat, him with the rifle, sitting very still, waiting for a certain sound, a certain movement in the brush, an explanation.
Any hunter could tell you there were too many smells coming from our way. The father smelled horrible. I’m sure I did too. The trailer alone could clear the area. It wasn’t a bad thing to take a glug. It could burn. It could blister. But it kept the thoughts apart, it kept the sweet dizzy tunnel rocking. Any hunter could tell you no deer were coming anywhere near us. Unless that hunter was Navy. Unless that hunter was a Navy man from Milsboro.
An orange flash. BLAM!!! The father’s body jerked back hard. It’s called recoil. He jumped up and stumbled toward the thrashing with a handful of shells. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! I told God I didn’t care. I didn’t care. I was Navy.
The father shouted, “Flip the lights, Clyde. High beams!”
He dragged the creature into the illuminated spill. Blown apart bad. Shot to near disintegration in some places. Dazzle camouflage.
I am someone who can look at certain things without flinching. Certain dead people. Particular dead people. But I cannot look at the creatures. I have tried and tried. In the days of the slaughterhouse I had so many opportunities. And I was whipped many times for turning them loose. Opening the holding pen gates and whispering “Run, run.” Even though there was nowhere for them to go. No chance in this world. “Run!” I’d whisper to the cattle. Sometimes they would. Mostly they just bunched together, leaning tighter, and stared at me. But I could not stop trying. Locating the father wire was nothing compared to finding the wire of hope for the creatures. And that is a most dangerous wire. It will make you do things. When you run out of glugs, when you run out of Corpse Reviver and Old Skull Popper and especially Whitley’s, that wire is the one that can get somebody killed.
The father had Old Dad’s knife case out. Green velvet inside. A blank space where the boning knife Francine used to lay before the father snapped her like stick. He touched the spot with his finger. “That’s a wound that will never heal, Clyde. Old Dad owes me. He owes me. He can never pay me back for what he’s done.”
Glug glug. “Here, Clyde. Drink to the bastard.”
“And to her,” I said.
“Who?”
I pointed to the steaming creature. “Her.”
The father said, “Shit.”
The knife the father chose was Big Girl. A twelve inch that would not hold an edge for long and had no flexibility, but for the time she was sharp she was loyal, insane, very strong. The father petted her edge with the side of his thumb. Then he ran her so wrong against the whetstone the hair rose on the back of my neck. He was dulling her. Big Girl dull could take a man’s thumb off. Dull knives. All butchers fear them.
The father said, “She’s wrong, but that’s the point.” He started hacking. He made some grunt sounds as he took the creature apart. He said, “Why the hell use a twelve inch for anything I’ll never know. All you need to take anything apart is an eight-inch Forsner with a lot of flex. You have a ten inch and a six inch and you got it made. Old Dad said shit on R. H. Forsner but I’m telling you Clyde, to hell with Old Dad. Forsners are the best knives going. First thing I’m going to do when all this is over? I’m getting me a set of Forsners. Complete. Hell yes, I am.”
And he told me to open the trailer door, and he started handing me warm chunks of the creature. He told me to throw them into the trailer. He said, “Throw, Clyde. Hard. Don’t be a pussy. Fire it.” He wanted a mess. Because that was the explanation.
The father’s voice was so sadly speaking. Sadly explaining it again to the imaginary cop. “Shit yes, Officer. I’ve had a few tonight. I’m not apologizing for it. Shoot me. Shoot my boy. She left us. We don’t got no reason to live anymore. We’d thank you to do it. We got a deer back there and a pile of fish but I don’t know shit about what to do with any of it, don’t know shit about gutting, quartering, dressing. I made a mess of things. I’m flying by the seat of my pants here, sir. J
esus God I loved her. She was apeshit half the time but I didn’t mind. Had a bramble up her ass and threw squirrels at me, but I lived for her. I don’t understand it. I can’t pretend to understand it. I miss her, Officer.”
The father was crying. Actual tears were spilling down his face. His voice was hoarse. And real tears spilled from my eyes too. I couldn’t control it. The sadness of the story. His shaking voice when he told it. The booze. All of it had us both crying over the hacked-apart creature in the middle of the dark woods. Both of us taking more glugs just because.
The father was singing, his voice lifting through the black tangle of trees.
The father wiped his face and smeared blood across his cheek. He said, “What song is that, Clyde? You know it. I know you do.” But I didn’t.
Above us the sky lightened. The world had spun us into a new day. I didn’t look often at the face of the father. But I looked then and saw his wet eyes looking back from beneath sagging folds. And I couldn’t help thinking how his eyes were the exact color of the skim mold that floated in the slaughterhouse ham vat. I told God I didn’t care.
Chapter 25
E WAS standing at the end of the gravel road between Black Cat Lumber and Bob Smallwood’s U-Rent-It. I saw his silhouette, colorless in the dim light, the red end of a burning cig moved in a way I could not understand at first, it moved horizontally then disappeared then reappeared and moved horizontally again. And then I realized he was turning, spinning slow. And on the other side of Dunbar Avenue the yellow-lit Diggy’s Drive-In sign was also spinning slow. They were spinning together. Diggy the bull standing like a man with a chef’s hat on, offering a hamburger made from his personal meat and the Turtle blowing clouds of the ancient smokeable into the beginnings of the morning sky. I was thinking, Is he waiting forme? A little thrill ran up my spine and sparked in the back of my throat. I lifted my hand. “Turtle. Hey, Turtle.”
A dark car pulled up next to him. The guy driving said, “Turtle. What it is. I’m late, guy. I’m sorry, man.”
The Turtle leaned into the car and said some words. The guy driving said, “Where?”
The Turtle pointed in my direction. The guy said, “Hell yes!” He turned his car into the Diggy’s parking lot and parked beside the Dumpster. Pigeons ran out of many hiding places to meet him. He was tall and thin with a Diggy’s uniform on. Black slacks and a yellow shirt that said, HAVE YOU DUG DIGGY’S?
The Turtle made a come-on motion with his arm before he crossed the street. I felt the miraculousness of us finding each other again drain away. He didn’t seem surprised to see me. I was thinking, is it because he’s a hippie? Is it because no hippie is ever surprised by anything? People show up, people disappear, and people show up again because it is all so cosmic. Maybe the Turtle was just being cosmic. It was possible.
Some of the pigeons split off from the Diggy’s guy and walked over to the Turtle. When I got to the parking lot, I heard him talking to the birds, saying, “What it is, what it is, what it is.” Calling the birds by name. “What it is, Stump Foot, Greasy Wing Dragger, Greasy Wing Dragger Junior.”
The Turtle gestured from the pigeons to me, he said, “Meet your Queen. You will love her. Her motto is, ‘Cold french fries for all.’”
The Diggy’s worker wore a plastic engraved badge that said DANNY, but the Turtle introduced him as the Monkey.
The Monkey said, “This is her? I thought you said she was very horny looking.”
The Turtle said, “That is the Violent One. This is the Hillbilly Woman.”
“Oh.” He lifted a hand and said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” I said.
He looked at the Turtle. “So, is she coming? The violent girl-whatever? She part of this?”
I almost said “Part of what?” But the Turtle put his arm around me and said, “Let’s go inside and roll a fatty.”
The Diggy’s worker said, “Man, there’s no horny-looking violent girl-whatever. It’s just more of your psych-out bullshit, man. She’s just another psych.”
The Turtle said, “The Violent One is not just another psych. She’s the psych. She is watching you this moment in her cyanotic ICU2 TV set. She is leaning forward and hooting her magic horn. We will get the Hillbilly Woman very very high and she will lead us over the smaragdine mountain to a quiet pool where the Violent One awaits you.”
The Monkey said, “It’s just more of your bullshit so forget it, fuck it, it don’t matter.”
I said, “Smaragdine?”
The Turtle said, “From ‘Increase Your Word Power.’ ”
“Vocabulary,” I said.
“Absolutely,” said the Turtle.
“Piss on it,” said the Monkey.
He jingled some keys, unlocked some locks, and we followed him through the side door into a narrow hallway, stepping over brooms and dirty mops and then into a storeroom. I was still waiting for the Turtle to say something about how incredible it was for us to find each other again, and to ask me what happened after he dumped his stash and ran away from the rolling cop, and then to ask me about the fate of his stash, and then to have me blow his mind by reaching calmly into Vicky’s purse and handing it to him.
I looked at him expectantly but all he did was nod and gesture to the stocked shelves and say, “Hungry? Can I interest you in anything? Buns? Sweet relish?”
I was wondering if it was the presence of the Monkey that kept the Turtle from bringing up all the bulging questions. I was watching his eyes but they were giving no clues. The irises were showing and I was surprised by the color. A tiger color, orange-yellow flecked with brown.
“Tray,” said the Monkey. “Tray.”
The Turtle nodded. The Monkey said, “Sec,” and left the room.
“Hillbilly Woman,” said the Turtle.
“Turtle,” said I.
And then he kissed me. Hard. Very hard. Mashing his mouth against mine. When he pulled away I saw his gums were bleeding. The Monkey came back with a smaller version of a lunchroom tray. The Turtle pulled out a bag of the ancient smokeable and dumped it on the tray and proceeded to roll a few fatties.
The Monkey said, “So, Turtle. You got something for me, right?”
“There has been a complication.”
“Fuck.”
“Yes.”
The Turtle pushed a paper twist at the Monkey who stuck it in his mouth and lit a match.
“Fuck,” said the Monkey, and then he took his inhale.
“Indeed,” said the Turtle. We passed several circles of Sir Fatty. I was getting very stoned. I reached into Vicky’s purse and said, “I got a surprise for you, Turtle. Guess what I have of yours?” His tigered eyes flickered the smallest warning flare and I stopped.
The Monkey blew out a cloud and said, “What is it?”
The Turtle’s eyes flickered again and then went out.
I said, “This.” I pulled out Trina.
The Monkey started laughing.
The Turtle reached for her, saying, “Lost, and by the wind grieved, Ghost, come back again.”
After many different subjects were brought up and commented on and dropped, the Monkey said to me, “Were you like, in a car accident?”
I said, “Car accident?”
“Your nose and your teeth. What is the deal? No offense, OK?”
I can be very sensitive about the various smashed aspects of my face but Sir Fatty got me feeling free. My teeth have certain benefits. I can whistle ear-splitters. I can shoot unbelieveably precise jets of water across a room. I shot one out for the Monkey. He seemed like the kind of person who would like it. He fell against the cooler scream-laughing. I had a new friend.
The Turtle said, “And now tell us the story of your finger.”
“Finger?” said the Monkey.
Instinctively I closed my left hand into a fist. When it is in a fist, my finger situation is hard to detect. People almost never notice it unless I want them to. But the Turtle had noticed it.
“Please,” he said.
“Show us.” And I hesitated but the father’s voice did not scream at me for the hesitation. When it came to my finger situation I do not think the father had anything more to say.
The Turtle set Trina on the condiments shelf and took my hand and opened it.
The Monkey said, “Whoa.”
My left index. Called the pointer. I only have half of it. Tough crabbing scars cover the middle joint and creep down the sides, giving it a melted candle look. They’re called keloid formations. Some people are prone to them.
I watched the Monkey slowly hide his hands. I have noticed that people will do this. He said, “Accident?”
I said, “It was removed.”
The Turtle said, “Violently? Purposely?”
“Both.”
The Monkey said, “Wait, man, whoa. Someone like, cut your finger off on purpose? Like, not a doctor? Like, just an average person?”
I started laughing. It was the word “average.”
There was a knock on the side door. A man saying, “Danny? Goddamn it, who you got in there with you?”
The Monkey jumped, freaking. “Fuck! FUCK! Uncle Myronto!” He clawed at the air to try and break up the cosmic clouds.
“He wants my head on a spike,” the Turtle said. “We must depart.”
I grabbed Trina and shoved her in Vicky’s purse.
The Monkey said, “Other door, other door. THAT door! Go! Go!”
We slipped out, keeping close to the cinder-block walls, listening to Uncle Myronto scream at Danny from the other side. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! “Open the door!”
A cop car skidded off Dunbar and into the parking lot.
The Turtle ran, tearing up the street, diving into the first bushes he came to.
The Monkey put his calm paper-hatted head around the side door. “Hey, Uncle Myronto. What’s going down?”
The cop car did a tight turn that brought it my way. I freaked and got the Turtle’s stash out of Vicky’s purse and dropped it into the Dumpster.
The cops hit the siren and the lights, and floored it back onto Dunbar. They were using Diggy’s parking lot as a turn-around.
