CRUDDY

by LYNDA BARRY

  I woke up when the shadow of the sheriff passed over my face. He was reaching down, about to lift me, but I crab-scrambled away. He said, “I’m not going to hurt you, Ee-gore, what in the hell are you doing out here? You didn’t sleep out here, did you? Son? A freight train could come and cut you in two as neat as an ax. Let’s go inside. We’ll let Pammy make us breakfast.”

  The meat saw was going and the flypaper waved a little when the sheriff opened and propped the door. He’d been trying to walk with his arm around me but I pulled away. The father wouldn’t have liked that but the father wasn’t there.

  “PAMMY!” The sheriff stood in the hallway hollering up some stairs. “PAMMY!”

  For breakfast I had the terrible red pop and an ancient bag of Fritos. Pammy wanted me to sit on the floor near the screen door and I did it. The sheriff kept looking at her and wiggling his eyebrows up and down and smiling. She leaned with her back against the bar and one arm crossed over her stomach flaps and the other arm moving up to her face with a cigarette in the fingers. She said, “What?”

  The sheriff said, “You tell me.”

  The father came down the stairs tucking in his shirt. He was barefoot and his hair was sticking up. He nodded to the sheriff. “Morning.”

  The sheriff said, “Pajama party?” He wiggled his eyebrows at Pammy again, and she threw the bar rag at him.

  They made conversation. Pammy twirled a finger in the father’s hair. I saw her clip-on bow hanging off the side of her head. At one point she smiled, looking like a backyard puff-fungus that had blown out all its spores. My life at the Knocking Hammer had begun.

  There was a round of eye-openers. Pammy called the father Mils. The sheriff had introduced him as Milsboro and she thought that was his name. Mils Boro. The sheriff laughed until he got a groin cramp and had to stand up and shake out his leg, but he didn’t correct her.

  I forced down the pop and the Fritos, half gagging.

  The father held up his cigs to me with a question mark on his face. I shook my head. He held up the bottle they were drinking from. He said, “Breakfast snorty?” I shook my head again. He said, “You ain’t going Episcopalian on me are you?”

  A Fanta child burst through the screen door shouting and jumping and pointing toward the canal. There was a commotion of more shouting outside. Pammy said, “Goddamn it.” She shouted, “FERNST! YOU, FERNST! BRING THE POLE HOOK!” The meat saw stopped.

  I looked out the door and saw the grandma-ma running fast with her flip-flops in her hand. Pammy said, “Sit your ass back down. This don’t have anything to do with you.”

  The father said, “You heard her, Clyde.”

  Pammy’s feet came stomp-crunching back across the gravel. She was wet up to her terrible hind end with chunks of mud and unidentifiables clinging to her legs. I heard crying. Wailing.

  She dripped a trail across the wooden floor and sat on the stool beside the father. She lit a cig.

  “And?” said the sheriff.

  She blew a jet of smoke out of the side of her mouth and then turned and gestured to the doorway. “The grandma-ma would like a ride to the orchard. She wants to be the one to notify.”

  “Shit,” said the sheriff.

  A Fanta child had fallen into the canal.

  Chapter 30

  HE FATHER said, “It ain’t such a bad place to lay low for a while, Clyde. I can think of worse places. And hell. How many kids you know can say they got their own trailer?” He was laying across the plastic-covered mattress with his arms behind his head. I sat on the bench seat at the miniature kitchen table, smoking. The father said, “Want me to teach you smoke rings?” He demonstrated. Told me to practice. He said the more stunts I could do the better off I would be. He said, “Pammy has a stack of cash up there. And I mean a STACK. In her dresser. Why the hell do women hide everything in their underwear drawer? Any man knows it’s the first place you look once they step into the shower. Big bills, Clyde. And I know she ain’t getting it from running the bar. Hell, I’m getting the feeling nobody comes to the bar. Nobody showed up last night. We were in here shooting the shit and at about dark I say, ‘Who’s running the bar?’ She says, ‘The bar’s running itself.’”

  A blue smoke ring drifted upwards and broke apart.

  “It sure as shit ain’t cattle. Only man working here is that goddamned Alice the Goon on the meat saw. The stock out there in the feed pen are mostly culls and there’s but a handful of them. Stack of bills six inches high with a rubber band around it and one just like it underneath. Got any ideas, Clyde?”

  Later that afternoon I was sitting on the trailer step looking at my finger. It was throbbing and looking very swollen. My fingernail was lifting away at the sides and the cut itself was a wet yellow-green. Fernst stepped out the back door with a candy bar, unwrapped it, and paced while he ate it, making soft hooo-hooo noises.

  A truck pulled up driven by a man with very bad skin and a very purple nose. Fernst shoved down the end of his candy bar and hopped up the back-door steps. The truck man did some steering wheel maneuvers and backed up almost right against the door. It was a refrigerator truck but old and dented with rust stripes running down the sides. The man got out and opened up the back and set a ramp from the truck bed to the back door. Gagger smells emanated instantly.

  He was wearing grime-shiny pants and flies swirled around him. When he stopped moving they crawled on his face and he didn’t brush them away. This was Mom. This was the rendering plant man. He looked over at me. He said, “You Clyde?”

  I didn’t move.

  He said, “I heard about you, Clyde.”

  The open back door blocked my view but there was the sound like a dolly or wheelbarrow rolling. Rolling in and rolling out and rolling back again. Then Mom pulled in the ramp, shut the back door, and Fernst jumped in the cab with him. They drove a short distance to the cull pile and the ramp came back out and they loaded culls. The truck drove away.

  The father was right about no one coming to the Knocking Hammer lounge at night. The old men came in the afternoon as usual, but they left before dark. That night the sheriff showed up with dinner, Chinese food from the next town. It was cold by the time he set it on the bar, but I ate it gratefully. Pammy and the father also wolfed. The sheriff said, “Pammy, why do you make Eegore sit on the goddamned floor to eat?”

  “Hey,” said the father. “It’s her place.”

  Pammy’s fungus smile shot some spores his way.

  She’d taken a break from her chomping to pull out a ladder and hang a few more rolls of flypaper. Black dried-out exoskeletons cascaded wherever she bumped, coming off at the legs. A couple bounced off the bar but no one seemed to mind. The father especially. I’ve seen him keep drinking with one swimming in his glass. Once when I said something about it, he said, “Butt out, Clyde. This is between me and the fly.”

  The sheriff said, “You know, I have connections with a private institution that takes Ee-gore’s type.”

  “The Home,” said Pammy. “Call it The Home. It don’t sound so bad.”

  “Vocational training,” said the sheriff. “Fernst is fostered out from there. You never seen anyone better on the meat saw.”

  “Fostered?” said the father.

  The sheriff explained that it was like taking care of a foster child only it was a foster spooker.

  “Don’t call him that,” said Pammy. “Don’t use that word.”

  Spooker was another word for mongoloid. As far as the sheriff could tell, I was one. Pammy thought so too. And they were telling the father about the great spooker home just up the way, just outside of the town where the sheriff picked up the Chinese food.

  “It’s real nice,” said the sheriff. “Hell, they live better than most of us and they learn a trade at the same time.”

  When the father asked what kind of trade, the sheriff said, “By-product processing.”

  The father asked, “By-products of what?”

  The sheriff mooed.

 
; “I’ll be jingled,” said the father, pouring himself another.

  When Pammy said she was ready for bed and the father said good night and followed her up to her chambers, the sheriff said, “Let me walk you to the trailer, son. It’s pretty dark out there.”

  Chapter 31

  UDDENLY I was shivering. “I assure you,” said the Turtle. “I promise you, the sleeping giant will wake.” The whole day had passed. I could see the sky darkening on the other side of the grimy garage window. I felt around for my clothes and started putting them back on.

  The Turtle patted around for his shirt and pulled a paper twist out. “Wait, wait, we’ll have a fatty and I’ll try again. It’s the Windowpane. Shouldn’t have dropped two. Hillbilly Woman, sit back down.”

  “I’m freezing,” I said. My teeth vibrated against each other. “Let’s go,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We walked down the alley and I felt the confusion of wanting his arm around me and hating his arm around me. His breath had gone back to rasty again. I felt freaked by what we did. As the Windowpane drained away my jaws kept clenching until I could feel my teeth springing. The Turtle passed me Sir Fatty Bone III and I was thankful for it. It slowed down the murdering shocks that were shooting through my mind. The question of did it count. What we did in the garage. Did it count without the word, that word, penetration. Did it count without that? He tried but he couldn’t. He was ready, but the sleeping giant was too wasted.

  He squeezed me. He said, “Hillbilly Woman, I have yet to hear about your finger. Yes. Absolutely. We must do it all again. I must hear the rest of the story. We will find a place and you will keep talking.”

  I said, “What happened to my finger is that it got infected and the father cut it off, OK? The End.”

  He said, “I sense an irritation.” His voice had a hurt tone. “I sense there is a thought which you are having about me.”

  The sky was streaked with the marks of sundown. A jet trail glowed in the ugliest pink. My eyes felt raw. The Windowpane had twisted time so badly. The day had seemed a minute long but in that minute my life uncoiled.

  We were at the end of an alley and I was trying to decide what to do. The Turtle was looking very sad. His eyes looked dark and large with the barest rim of tiger-colored iris. The Turtle said, “I sense you will leave me. I sense our love has died.”

  He sounded so sincerely troubled. I was thinking, what if it is love but I just can’t tell? I never kissed anyone before him. I never anythinged with anyone. It could be love and I could be wrecking my chances. And this made me freak and put my arms around him. He smelled sour. I thought about the power of love and tried to ignore the smell. He kissed me very hard, moving his head in circles and his teeth scraped against mine. It smelled like something was rotting inside of him. I couldn’t help pulling away.

  “Hillbilly Woman, what is it? What has gone wrong between us?”

  “Turtle,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

  He said, “Hillbilly Woman, please lay it on me. Truthfulness at all times. Absolutely.”

  I couldn’t say anything.

  He said, “It’s because I’m Canadian, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Canadian. Yes. I confess it before you.”

  The Monkey at Diggy’s had warned me. He had told me.

  I said, “Do you know Neil Young?”

  “Hillbilly Woman. Absolutely! Would you like to meet him?”

  And that’s when I started the crying.

  And half an hour later I was still crying. I did not know if I would ever stop crying. I was laying in somebody’s front yard and I could not stand up. The Turtle said, “Hillbilly Woman. I did not think you would take it so hard.”

  He said, “Hillbilly Woman, it’s the Windowpane. You are very sensitive to acid.”

  He said, “Hillbilly Woman, please, you are very loud for this time of day in this sort of neighborhood. The lady has just come out onto the porch. The lady has gone back inside and I fear she is phoning the authorities.”

  He said, “Hillbilly Woman, rise. I cannot stay here much longer.”

  He didn’t. By the time the cops arrived he was gone. An officer came out of his car, squatted beside me, asked me was I on drugs. I said my boyfriend just broke up with me. He said I was too young to be taking it so hard and that I would have another boyfriend in the future. The other officer was looking through Vicky’s purse. He opened her wallet. He pulled out her “If Found, Please Return To” card.

  They were both very kind to me. They were very understanding. They said, “Come on, Vicky, we’ll give you a ride home.”

  Vicky Talluso’s porch light was green, and even though her house was in a decent area it was in very skagged-out condition. There were things in the yard. Like chunks of old carpet and some tires and an armchair on its side barfing out its stuffing. I was still crying. I was actually feeling normal but my face kept on crying. The officer stood beside me on the wooden porch. He rang the doorbell and a man’s voice inside said, “Shit and goddamn! It is door!” And then he started his horrible hack-coughing. The door swung open and when Vicky saw me and the cop, her mouth hung open. She was eating a piece of white bread spread with bright mustard. Behind her a television light flickered. She didn’t say anything while the cop explained the situation, beginning with “Your sister” and ending with some encouraging words about my future.

  The door closed behind me and Vicky whispered, “Shit, Roberta!” and then there was the sound of feet pounding down the stairs, a guy who looked about seventeen, very very fine, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Brown hair falling to the back of his neck. He said, “What did the cops want?”

  Vicky said, “It’s not really your business is it?”

  “Shut up and tell me.”

  The hacking man said, “Shit and goddamn, I welcome to you this house!” He was old and laying on a plaid recliner and he was wearing a woman’s pink chenille robe. That was Susy Homemaker.

  Vicky yanked me away by the arm. She said, “Don’t look. Don’t talk to him.”

  Chapter 32

  T AIN’T nothing, Clyde. Just a little blood poisoning, Clyde. I’ve been through it a hundred and fifty times. You take a shot of Old Skull Popper, you chew three aspirin, and in an hour your troubles will be over.” This is what the father said when he opened the trailer door and set the aspirin and the Old Skull Popper on the tiny kitchen counter. “You lock this door behind me, you don’t let the sheriff in here, Clyde, no matter what he says to you. He can’t get off the subject of you. He wants me to sign you in to that spooker home. Says you look trainable. Trainable, my ass. I’d say he’s tantalized. There’s some weird shit going on around here, Clyde, but it could work out good for us. Hey, what do you think of these slacks? Fit me good, don’t they? They’re Italian.” The father shut the door and left.

  I was so sick. I was shaking and sweating on the plastic-covered mattress in the clean, clean murder trailer. I was freezing, then I went burning hot. I felt my insides turn to foam. My finger was killing, killing, killing. It was so swollen you could hardly see the nail. My teeth were vibrating and then my jaws would catch and clench.

  I pulled myself up, locked the door, and brought the aspirin and the Old Skull Popper back to bed. Every once in a while a Fanta child’s head would rise and stare into one of the windows, wobbling for a moment and then falling away when the person boosting them lost their hold. One of them was watching when I threw up so hard the aspirins I swallowed tinked out whole onto the floor.

  The father said blood poisoning was nothing to worry about until I dried out. If it was tetanus, well, that was another story. Either way, when I couldn’t pee anymore, I was in trouble.

  I fell asleep and dreamed about the father in the Dead Swede’s Italian pants. The Dead Swede’s Hush Puppies. The Dead Swede’s delicate blue socks. The Dead Swede’s Arrow shirt and his precious bolo tie. Pure silver. A little dancing man holding a rattle and a weed. And the Dead Swede
’s cologne, plentiful imported fumes that singed the inside of my nostrils. I dreamed of the father saying, “You know, I don’t think I ever looked so good. When’s the last time you took a piss? When’s the last time you took a piss? Clyde. Clyde.”

  It was all true. The father was wearing the Dead Swede’s clothes and cologne and his bolo. He was drinking in the Dead Swede’s bar and sleeping in the Dead Swede’s bed with the Dead Swede’s widow who was feeling the fantastic love flutterations, who was transforming before everyone’s eyes. No one had seen her smile since the days of the Dead Swede. And she was wearing the tiny high heels again. She hadn’t had those out since the night she did the dance that gave the Dead Swede the cardiac.

  There were more details about how Pammy was coming along, and the father laid them on me whenever he stopped by the trailer, but most of them I couldn’t hang on to with my gummy brains. At night certain music blared from the Dead Swede’s hi-fi, melodies came through the trailer walls. “The Three Bells” by The Browns. “Come Softly to Me” by The Fleetwoods. Smooth blended singing with no edges, horrifying in its perfection. I was losing my hair. Chunks of hair fell out onto the plastic mattress every time The Browns or The Fleetwoods sang. The music stuck in my mind. Brain congregations singing little parasitic melodies.

  The father came and went making different assessments. “The streaks up your arm, see there? There is no way around it. Goddamn. It’s going to have to come off.”

  There are certain dangers in homemade booze, and the second jug of Corpse Reviver must not be forgotten. There can be chemistries like firing pins sending perfectly calibered visions, there is such a thing as the bore axis of the mind. The father felt something funny and wonderful when he drank from the Corpse Reviver. He didn’t want to share it. He kept it in the trailer and took a glug whenever he visited. And then he showed up and took several glugs and I saw he had his knife case out. He had his whetstone out.