by LYNDA BARRY
Time had fallen apart for me. I lost the order of days and nights and conversations. I know the sun was either coming up or going down because I saw the golden rays falling upon the metal-seamed walls. The father said, “It’s got be done, Clyde. I can’t take you to no hospital. You understand that. At least you know I’m the best possible man for the job. Sit up here, drink, again, and one more.”
His worn whetstone was oiled and he was making the motions. The knife he was honing was her, Little Debbie, he said she had just the right sort of point for small-joint separation. I listened to the soft circular whisper of the sharpening and the familiar promise that I would not feel a thing.
The father was strapping my arm down and tying my wrist tightly and jabbering on, he was laying out his Corpse Reviver–fueled plans about how to make the gold mine that was the Knocking Hammer his. He held the jug up to me. “Take a drink, take another. I’ll tell you what, you feel anything? You can take off one of mine. That’s a promise. The only reason I’m putting this rag in your mouth is for just in case. Now, turn your head, Clyde. Look out the window for the sandman.”
The sandman. The sandman. The sandman.
And then the father owed me a finger but he did not want to pay.
I have read enough of Stedman’s Medical Dictionary and other medical books of information to know that cutting half of my finger off was not what saved me. At that point the poisoning was in all of my bloodways. Even if the father had taken my whole arm off it wouldn’t have mattered.
What saved me was a midnight tap on the trailer door and the grandma-ma’s voice. What saved me was a soup she made from the bones of the murdered deer. That, and a few little other things she ran back to get after she saw my situation. A soothing paste she brought for my finger, that smelled like lemon and mint and Clorox, and her delicate stitches in place of the ones made by the father. She used low-test fishing line, she said she found it in the trailer on the day she cleaned the horribleness away. She said she found other things too.
One of the Fanta children sat on the edge of the bed watching me with quiet eyes and holding a flashlight for her. Another stood guard at the trailer door. Before she left she pointed toward the Knocking Hammer with bared teeth and said, “No good.”
Chapter 33
GOT BETTER. And when I was well enough I went looking for the grandma-ma. I found her near the cull pile squatting by the bodies, doing something with a spoon and what it turned out she was doing was digging out a cow eye. She stood up and tilted her head toward a plastic bucket. She said, “Carry it for me?” It was half full of eyeballs and walking flies.
I followed behind her thinking she was going to the campground area but she turned down a little trail zigzagging through thicker scrub and kept walking. She said, “Everybody’s packing up. Apple season’s early. Beats peaches. I’m leaving out of here too.”
She said, “Your daddy has a flat ass. Flattest ass I’ve seen on a man. I don’t like men with flat asses.”
She said, “Do you know what hoo-doo is?”
We came to a shed. Flies swarmed around a set of yellow buckets arranged in a semicircle. I smelled the dip vat fumes.
She said, “Some people think I’m in with that hoo-doo, they come to me for things. I tell them to their faces, you can give me your money and I’ll make you a Custom Creation, but it doesn’t have any powers beyond what’s in the intended’s mind to begin with. But I can make things that will scare the face off a man. Since I was little I liked to make such things. I was raised by an auntie that used to whip me with an extension cord. It started with her.”
She said, “I’ll make one for you if you like.”
There was a loop of string hanging out of the dip vat liquid. She pulled it and up came a headless chicken carcass, its raw wings raised like a marionette. She said, “It doesn’t look like much, but neither does a hand grenade.”
She said, “A man lost his life in that trailer of yours. I know it for a fact. He left behind what no man leaves behind unless he’s dead. You want to see it? I sun-dried it but it will get its shape back once it soaks awhile.”
She pulled out some waxed paper and in the waxed paper was a dried-up thing looking like a very old hot dog with a helmet on.
She watched me looking at it. She said, “You want to help me scare the living hell out of a couple of people? They’re people you know.”
Chapter 34
E WERE up in Vicky’s room. She had a canopy bed with severe dust-chunks hanging. There were bowls and plates of half-eaten crusted food laying around and the drawers of her dresser were half shut with clothes hanging out. Piles of clothes were everywhere. Some had the price tags still on them but they were balled up anyway. There were pictures taped to the walls of models with insane amounts of eye makeup doing pissed-off poses, and there were models who looked like they were flowing free in fields of tall dandelions, and there was a hot pink chipboard sign that said THE SWINGING CHICKS ALL GO JAY JACOBS!!! It was a bus sign. Stolen, obviously. So many things about Vicky were stolen. Even the cross that hung from her neck was shoplifted. She said she was very glad to have her purse back because it was her trained purse, the best shoplifting purse ever made. All she had to do was lean against it a certain way and it opened and then when she leaned back it closed. She was going through it, an unlit cig hanging from her mouth.
She said, “Where’s the stash box?”
She said, “Where’s my lighter?”
She said, “What the fuck is the deal with this sock monkey?”
The super-fine guy stood at the doorway staring at me. Her brother. This was the Stick.
She said, “Get OUT of my ROOM!”
He pointed down at his bare feet. They were on the other side of the threshold. “I’m not in your room, am I?” He was eating from a bag of Oven Joy bread. Just mashing pieces of white bread into his mouth. He said, “What’s wrong with her, Vic?”
Vicky got up, slammed the door, and hooked the lock. She said, “Where’s the stash?” She dug around her bedroom for another lighter and I told her what went down at the Diggy’s Dumpster.
She said, “Is the stash still in the Dumpster?”
I shrugged. “Probably.”
She said, “Well, we have to go get it.” And then she told me my crying was really getting on her nerves and I needed to stop before she got violent. I wanted to stop. In my mind I had stopped, but my eyes stayed wet, wouldn’t stop spilling over. She never asked me why I was crying and I was thankful because I didn’t know if the answer had words and if it did have words I doubted that she would listen to them.
A ruler poked up into the door crack and knocked the hook out of the latch-eye. In he walked, in he strolled. The Stick. His jeans hung low on his hips and his eyes were brown and his nose was a little bit smashed looking and his mouth was full and all of him looked the way suede feels. He said, “Who are you?”
Vicky said, “GET OUT!”
Downstairs the hack-coughing began. “Vidjki! Shit and goddamn! VIDJKI!”
The Stick said, “Susie’s hungry. It’s your turn.”
Vicky said, “I don’t care if he eats.”
The Stick said, “Yes you do.”
She said, “No I don’t.”
Louder hacking. “VIDJKI! SHIT AND GODDAMN, YOU KNOW!”
The Stick looked at me. “Who are you? Seriously.”
“VIDJKI! SHIT AND GODDAMN I DIE!!”
Vicky said, “Don’t talk to him, Roberta. Don’t say anything to him. And don’t give him anything. I’ll be right back.” Then she told the Stick to fuck himself and walked out the door.
He had a boy-smell coming off of him that made my stomach undulate. It was making me lean toward him and I could not stop it. He said, “Can I talk to you about something? Let’s go out on the roof. You scared of heights at all?” He was staring at my face with the usual curiosity. I turned away. He said, “You ever seen a satellite? You should come out on the roof.”
I f
ollowed him and my eyes spilled harder. Everything was blurred and mixed together. We went into his room. The boy-smell was very strong and it made my legs wobble a little. The walls were bare and painted brown, a chocolate brown, and his mattress was on the floor and the floor was covered with piles of clothes and books and papers and there was a truck-tire inner tube inflated. It had a lamp beside it.
He told me to take off my shoes. That it’s easier to walk on the roof barefoot and he went out the window first, and then turned and waited for me.
The warm composition shingles felt good on my feet. I hadn’t climbed anything in so long. I followed him up around the dormer to the peak of the roof. We sat for a few moments without talking. Vicky’s house was nearly at the top of the hill that was opposite mine. I looked across toward Dunbar and saw the yellow Diggy’s sign lit up and turning. I knew that right across the street was Black Cat Lumber, although I couldn’t see it, and I knew that behind Black Cat Lumber, life was going on in the mud of East Crawford.
The Stick gave me a cigarette. He lit his and then lit mine. He said, “So what’s the deal?”
I shrugged. I was grateful for the cigarette. My eyes spilled harder from the gratitude. I blew a smoke ring and it hung in the still night air. Above us were the random pale stars.
He said, “Seriously.”
I said, “I’m a fucked-up person.”
He said, “I mean with the cops.”
I heard Vicky screaming, “ROBERTA! RO-BER-TA!” The Stick said, “She won’t come out here. She can’t take the roof. If you want to get away from her this is the best place.” I heard her shouting my name from the dormer window. And then in a few moments I saw her backing up in the front yard and spotting me and having an instant fit. The Stick started laughing a little and I started laughing a little too, and I thought about jumping, wondered how bad it would be, and wished there was concrete around the house instead of bushes and grass.
Vicky shouted, “You’re STUPID, Roberta! STUPID! He’s a USER, Roberta! My brother’s a USER!” I couldn’t think of anyone who wasn’t.
A little bit later Vicky left the house with her trained purse hanging from her shoulder. She was dressed up. She had her crinkle-vinyl boots on. She hollered, “I’m going to get it. Because obviously I’m the ONLY ONE WHO CARES! You’re going keep your promise to me, Roberta. When I come back you are going to keep it or I am going to KILL YOU!”
“What promise?” said the Stick. “Where’s she going?”
I said, “How come you’re talking to me?”
He said, “What do you mean?”
I stood up and walked the roof ridge with my arms out until I came to the very edge.
I looked up at the dead pinholes that barely glittered. I said, “You ever think about killing yourself?”
He said, “All the time.”
Chapter 35
HAT THE hell smells so bad?” said the sheriff. “Pammy farted.”
“The hell I did,” said Pammy. “When I fart, you’ll know it.”
“Sheriff’s been drinking Blatz,” said the father.
“What’s wrong with Blatz?”
It was past midnight, and hot. Outside the night insects clicked and whirred and the ones that were too big to get through the wide-gauge screen on the door to the lounge, bashed their heads against it trying. But there were lots of bugs who fit through fine and Pammy watched with some satisfaction when they found the flypaper. “See there? It isn’t just for flies.”
Every time she looked up, I freaked.
The father said, “Why do you keep that meat saw room locked?”
Pammy and the sheriff hesitated. Pammy said, “Mexicans,” and the sheriff said, “We’ve had trouble.”
The father said, “Well, that sure explains it.”
There was an uneasy silence and then the sheriff started in again on me and the spooker home. He had the sign-over papers on the bar.
I’d seen the shadow car three other times. The shadow men rolling in quiet with no headlights on and unloading rigor mortis cargo. I’d seen the rendering man called Mom come and go.
During one of his extended Corpse Reviver trailer visits, the father reached in his pocket and pulled out a gold pocket watch, with four diamonds marking the quarter hours. He said, “Look at this. She gave it to me this morning. She told me, ‘Don’t let Arden see it.’ I said, ‘Why not?’ When I ask questions, she gets French on me.” And what he meant by getting French was that instead of answering him, Pammy started kissing him violently. “It’s effective,” said the father. “I’m thinking her and Arden are running some sort of fence, but some of the shit I stumble across don’t fit.”
For example, the lighter he was using. He handed it to me. It was the familiar steel rectangle with USN engraved on one side. On the other side, it said, CV HOT PAPAS-PTO-1944-SEMPER FI.
“Marines, Clyde,” said the father. “You know what the Hot Papas are? Goddamn ghosts is what they are. White asbestos suits from top to bottom with just a little peephole for the eyes, them are the ones that run into the wreckage and drag your ass out of the fire. Know where I found this? Laying out front in the dirt. And here, look at this.”
He reached in his shirt pocket and handed me a heavy gold ring studded with diamonds. A man’s ring. He said, “She gave me that too. It’d look about right on a pimp, wouldn’t it? Arden ain’t supposed to see that neither.” He glugged on the last of the mindbending Corpse Reviver. He said, “I could drink a bathtub of this, here. It just gets better.”
I turned the ring over in my hands.
“You know why she gave me that, Clyde?”
I shook my head.
“She wants me to marry her.” Glug, glug. Glug, glug. “And I’m thinking of doing it.” And the Corpse Reviver spun his mind into an excited and vicious trance, pinwheels of possibility whirled. He said, “Vegas. That’s the place to do it. It’s so goddamn perfect. I can go by Doris’s motel and get Old Dad’s last suitcase, me and Pammy can get married. This place is in her name, the Dead Swede signed everything over.” His face was dripping sweat and he was turning very red and his lips pulled away from his teeth in an uncontrollable smile that was not a smile, more like something you see on a dead person’s face. Rictus. It’s called rictus.
He was getting emotional, he was talking about Old Dad. He was pointing at the light fixture and saying Old Dad was trying to make him understand. Old Dad guided him to the Knocking Hammer to carry on the tradition that began before man could hardly stand straight and still had ten pounds of hair on his ass. “You know what I could do with a place like this? I could kick the shit out of Chicago. The name Rohbeson would be right up there with Swift, Armour, and Hormel.”
A salty tear rambled down his craggy face. “Old Dad didn’t turn on me, Clyde. A father’s love is eternal. And when I think of how I stood up at his funeral and called him a lying sack of shit—”
I looked up at the light fixture and watched a trapped fly jerk around in the last stages of buzzing itself to death. “Old Dad,” he said. “Please forgive me.” Glug glug. “Old Dad, I swear to you—” Glug glug. More salty tears. Some shaking sobs. And then his arms reaching out for a certain kind of comfort. “Clyde. Clyde. I need you.”
The sheriff had tried to get some comfort from me too. The night the father and Pammy left me to him. The night the sheriff said, “Let me walk you to the trailer, son. It’s pretty dark out there.” He tried to get some comfort and ended up shouting, “OW, OW, YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!” and the father leaned his head out of Pammy’s bedroom window, calling, “He bite you? I warned you.”
And the sheriff had been trying to get me into his car with offers like, “I’ll let you blow the siren, Ee-gore, I got twenty-six candy bars, Ee-gore, I’ll let you shoot my goddamned gun, Ee-gore.”
The father wanted me to keep playing him, but I didn’t know how much longer I could play him without help. I needed Little Debbie but the father’s knife case was locked in the trunk with the s
uitcases.
“Pammy farted,” said the sheriff.
Pammy said, “Goddamn you, Arden, I did not.”
“There’s no shame in it,” said the father. “I farted once myself, in Korea.”
I was sitting on the floor of the bar playing with a tiddlywinks game the sheriff bought me. Pammy kept telling me to get to bed but I was not about to leave. The grandma-ma had done her part and I had to do mine.
I shot the tiddlywinks, trying to see how many times I could hit Pammy on the back of her legs before she freaked on me. I wanted to distract her from her natural inclination to check the flypaper.
The father and the sheriff were plastered. Pammy was too. She turned and hissed, “You hit me again and I’m going to pull those Dumbo ears right off your head.”
“Oh, now,” the sheriff said. “He’s just playing. Don’t you think he looks cute sitting there?”
“If I thought,” said Pammy, “I’d blow the perverted brains out of your head.”
The sheriff started talking up the spooker home again, telling the father how good it would be for me, the father could visit me anytime, and when I learned my vocation, Mom had agreed to let the father be first in line to foster me back.
The father said, “Hey, Arden. You want to see something I learned in the Navy?”
The sheriff said, “Not especially.”
The father set the lighter on the bar, and concentrated on it. He did something quick and one-handed, the lighter flipped into the air and bloomed into flame before he caught it. He said, “How’d I do that, Arden? Want to see it again?” He flipped the lighter so he caught it close to the sheriff’s face and there was a flinch. The reflected flame moved weirdly in the sheriff’s pale eyes.
The father said, “Try and blow it out.”
The sheriff said, “How about if you just shave my ass instead?”
