CRUDDY

by LYNDA BARRY

  The father leaned in and blew on the flame as hard as he could. It went sideways but didn’t lose strength. Then he slung it hard across the room and it hit the wall, fell, and kept on burning.

  “Golly,” said the sheriff. “Ain’t that a thriller.”

  The father said, “Get it for me, Clyde.”

  It was hot to the touch. I flipped the lid open and shut a few times, liking the action. When I handed it back to the father, he lit a cig and passed the lighter to the sheriff. “See what it says on it?”

  The sheriff held it away to get focus. “Let me see. ‘Property. Of. A. Dumb-shit.’”

  The father said, “See that there? PTO. Nineteen Forty-four. Know where I found it? For a nickel I’ll tell you.” The sheriff looked up at him.

  A train roared by and the booze in the bottles trembled.

  The sheriff said, “You going to sign them papers or not? Mom’s got a bed vacant N-O-W and I could take him tonight. Vacancies there don’t last. You drag ass on this and you may not get another chance.”

  Above the bar, hanging from one of the rafter ribs, something was attracting certain night insects, carrion feeders. Something about the size of a head was crawling with shimmer-butt flies in ecstasy. It was all I could do to keep myself from looking up. The waxed paper loops and special trusses were about soaked through.

  Something fell against the father’s neck, caught in the back of his collar. The father hopped off his stool and swatted it out. It bounced on the floor. “What the hell is that?”

  The sheriff leaned down to pick it up and flung it as soon as his hand made contact. “It’s a goddamned EYEBALL!”

  Pammy threw the bar rag over it. She stepped on it.There was a sick wet popping sound. They all stared at the bar rag like it was going to move. The sheriff pig-squinted his eyes at the father. “What kind of trick-shit are you trying to pull?”

  The father said, “Me?”

  Pammy whispered, “It’s the Swede.”

  The sheriff snapped. “Don’t start, Pammy. It ain’t the goddamned Swede.”

  And that is when the rest of the paper loops gave way.

  There were some thin shrieks and violent shouts and a scramble to get to the door and then the three of them were outside half hopping in the gravel.

  “Oh shit,” said Pammy. “Oh goddamn, Arden. I told you we should have—”

  “Shut it, Pammy.” The sheriff had taken some direct hits and was panic-brushing putrid slime chunks and sopping hair wads off of his shirt. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Don’t anybody talk to me for a minute here, I’m next to puking.” And then he roared such a gush that he stumbled backwards.

  The father said, “I need a goddamned drink and we left the goddamned Whitley’s in there, Pammy.”

  Pammy said, “I’m not going in there.”

  The sheriff said, “Shit, I ain’t scared.”

  The father said, “I ain’t scared.”

  Pammy followed them back inside. A dozen eyeballs lay on the floor in assorted positions. The rotting smell was horrendous.

  Pammy whispered the Swede’s name when she saw the carcass on the bar. Out of the gape of its horrible hind end, long pale hair hung dripping with slime.

  “It’s a chicken,” the sheriff said. “Some wise ass is playing tricks.” He was looking at the father.

  Chapter 36

  LYDE,” SAID the father, gesturing out the trailer window. “Some day all of this will be yours.”

  “Clyde,” said the father, “I signed the papers on you.”

  He laid out his plan, drawing pictures with his fingers on the Formica table between us, little strategy maps showing where we were now, where he was going and where I was going and then he drew some lopsided circles about what was going to happen in the future. He said, “You won’t be in there long, when me and Pammy get back from Vegas I’ll come and bust you out, Clyde. Promise.”

  I just stared at him. I’d planned to leave with the migrants to pick apples but they were already gone. The grandma-ma was gone. All that was left in the campground was trash and torn tarps. I didn’t see them go. Nobody did. The father said he and Pammy were packed and ready. He said we would look back on this time someday and laugh. When they wrote the book about how the Rohbeson’s meat empire rose again, it would be the first chapter.

  His brain was corroding. At the time I thought it was the work of the Corpse Reviver. Making his talking and his thinking so confident and insane. But I think his brain would have corroded anyway because he was a naturally corroded person. There are people like this. There are people like the father everywhere. Now you see them, now you don’t.

  When I spoke, he jumped a little. I think he’d forgotten I still could.

  I said, “Can I have Little Debbie back?”

  He said, “Do you promise to be good?”

  I said, “I promise.”

  I was so thankful to have her back. I laid low in the scrub feeling her edge in the darkness while I listened to Pammy cursing out Fernst. They were half looking for me. The father and the sheriff had hollered my name a couple of times. I thought of the grandma-ma making the sign of the cross over me the last time I saw her, saying, “Not that this is going to help, but what the hell.”

  I could see Pammy upstairs in her chambers, getting ready to fry some potatoes and a couple of hamburgers in her little tiny kitchen. She’d been bragging about cooking all day, she was doing it for the father. She wanted him to know she could.

  The father and the sheriff stood out on the porch. The sheriff said, “Think he ran?”

  The father said, “Not Clyde. It’s not in him.”

  He whooped out my name a couple more times and the sheriff said he was going to check the trailer. It was a moonless night and stars glinted over the Knocking Hammer. I guess it was then when I first noticed I was thinking about killing the father. It’s hard to say when premeditation begins. Laying there in the scrub watching his jug-eared silhouette with Little Debbie in my hand, the idea of killing him seemed very practical. On that night it seemed like a good idea to kill them all. Afterwards I’d take a walk, a stroll in the dark on the railroad tracks with my back to my personal train. I’d take a walk and then explode.

  I am also a corroded person. Extremely corroded. I knew Pammy didn’t have a sense of smell. I heard her talking about it. She told the father she doesn’t miss it because she never had it.

  Who squirted the lighter fluid all over Pammy’s hamburger meat? Who poured out her corn oil and replaced it with kerosene?

  Chapter 37

  DON’T THINK jumping is such a bad way to do it,” said the Stick. “But there are better.” With my feet still on the rooftop ridge, with the night sky above me, I said, “I saw a guy jump once.”

  The Stick said, “Headfirst? If you’re serious you go headfirst. You dive. Hey, there it is, there’s the satellite.”

  At first I couldn’t find it. And then the Stick was behind me, his head bent close to mine but not touching, trying to show me. And then I saw it. It looked like a faint star, but it was moving.

  The Stick, “It’s tumbling. They tumble. Who did you see jump?”

  I pictured Cookie biting the mother as the mother lifted her over the railing of the Aurora Bridge and let go. Let go and walked into a candy store and bought a pound of candy stars.

  I said, “Where’s your mom?”

  He said, “You need to see the attic.”

  I followed him over a narrow shingled ledge that had to be walked sideways before we got to the oval attic window, a window without glass and a cloudy piece of plastic hanging over it from the inside.

  It was easier to do than it looked and I have to say I enjoyed it. The hardest part was going headfirst through the window into the blackness. The Stick lit a match and then he lit a candle and then he set the candle on the floor beside a cracked mirror propped against the slanted roof and the candlelight doubled.

  It was a good smell, the smell of the attic. The smel
l of wood very ancient and unpainted. Pine. The slanted walls had long pine-board cladding. And above the candle in the flicker light I saw a sentence written in pencil, in a child’s handwriting. I hope you die. I hope you rot. I hate you all. 16 September 1919.

  The Stick watched me read it. He said, “She was locked up here because of him.”

  I said, “Who?”

  He said, “Well, he was obviously some asshole.”

  “No. Who is she?”

  He said, “Who are you?”

  We sat by the window. I told him all of my names. Roberta, Clyde, Ee-gore, Mystery Child, Michelle, then Roberta again, and recently Hillbilly Woman. I told him the story of meeting Vicky and the Turtle and dropping Creeper.

  He said, “Creeper?”

  I told him it was in the stash box Vicky went to get. I told him the whole story except for what happened with the Turtle in the garage. Loose Lips Sink Ships and I was wanting to sink ships very badly, but I could not talk about the Turtle’s motions against my bare legs in the garage.

  The Stick said, “What’s it like, Creeper? What’s it feel like? Is Vicky bringing it back here? Is there a lot?”

  I said, “Is that guy downstairs your dad?”

  He said, “Fuck you, OK? Don’t talk about Susie.”

  I was trying to think of a way to explain the feeling of Creeper. I said, “It makes everything significant. Even trash. Even flies.” I told him about the Washeteria, the lady with the shadow of a “W” falling on her face and her freaky beige moles, how when I turned and looked at her I started screaming and could not stop. “That’s Creeper,” I said.

  “Would you do it again?”

  I said, “Yes.” I told him about the exhilaration. How to me, even horrifying exhilaration is incredible.

  He said, “When Vicky comes back will you drop with me?”

  I was wondering if he really was a user like Vicky said. I saw him looking over my face. I saw him notice my finger. I saw him staring at the raised letter “y” scarred into my arm, showing just below my sleeve.

  The Stick looked at me and the flame from the candle moved in his eyes. Normal pupils. Brown eyes.

  I said, “You know that guy I saw jump?”

  He said, “Yeah?”

  “His name was Fernst.”

  Chapter 38

  ERNST! FERNST! Goddamn it, ERNST!” Pammy was hollering from the kitchen in her chambers. She was calling for ingredients. “Fernst, bring me sliced onions. Fernst, slice me more potatoes. Fernst, I know you stole some pop out of the cooler again this morning how would you like it if I sent you back to Mom? Fernst, the goddamn pilot light is out. Fernst, that flame is too damn high, Fernst, watch that oil. Fernst—”

  Bright flash. WHOOOMP! Pammy screaming. Screaming she was on fire.

  The sheriff and the father were shouting back and forth and Fernst scrambled out the window with his long arms in flames, fire leaping from his clothes, he was hopping and flapping and then he jumped.

  The sheriff and the father got ahold of Pammy and rolled her. They got her to the outside shower and sprayed her down. The father said, “Hell of a grease fire.” And then the sheriff saw the broken Fernst in a heap, twitching, smoldering, and he said, “Oh shit.”

  He walked over to look at him. Foaming noises were coming from Fernst’s throat. The sheriff bent down, stuck the gun in Fernst’s mouth and then it was over.

  In the bar they were all taking drinks. The sheriff kept his eyes on the father. “I bet you didn’t have a thing to do with that fire.”

  The father said, “Damn it, Arden. No.”

  Pammy was pig-eyed, pacing the bar and smoking. She said, “It’s the Swede.” Her skin was bright pink under thick layers of melting Vaseline. “The Swede, Arden. He set that fire.”

  “Horse shit,” said the sheriff.

  “It’s the Swede, I’m telling you. He’s goddamn walking.”

  The father stood at the screen door and cupped his hands around his mouth. “CLY-YDE! THIS AIN’T FUNNY NO MORE!”

  The sheriff said, “He ran, Milsboro.”

  The father said, “Not Clyde.”

  The sheriff said, “I’m not the type of man that puts up with shit like this.”

  “He’ll come back,” said the father. “CLY-YDE! CLY-YDE!”

  “Well,” said the sheriff, cracking a new bottle of Whitley’s. “If he don’t come back, we’re going to have to hunt him. Mom don’t wait for no one.”

  Pammy said, “The Swede got him.”

  The sheriff said, “The Swede has better things to do with his time.” He poured a round. They drank.

  The father kept looking toward the screen door. Watching for me. Pammy was digging some pills out of a brown jar and downing them with a half tumbler of Whitley’s. Horse tranquilizers.

  The sheriff said, “Those ain’t for people.”

  She said, “I know it, and I don’t give a goddamn.”

  The father said, “I don’t mean to intrude but what should we do about Fernst out there?”

  The sheriff said, “You read my mind, Milsboro. Got a job offer for you.”

  “Yeah?” said the father.

  “Can you face a meat saw?”

  “Which end?”

  The father stuck a cig in his mouth and pulled out his USN lighter. The sheriff slammed his hand on the bar. “Wise-ass! Always have to be the wise-ass, don’t you, Earlis?”

  “Earlis?” said the father.

  The sheriff said, “That’s your name isn’t it?”

  “Naw, naw, Arden, I ain’t Earl—”

  The sheriff pulled out his gun. “Go ahead and lie to me. I ran your goddamn plates. I know all about you.”

  Pammy said, “Ear-less? Who?”

  The sheriff picked the father’s lighter up off the bar, lit a cig, and hurled the lighter against the far wall of the barroom. “I do it right? Huh, Earlis? Navy my ass.”

  The father and Pammy were looking at each other. The sheriff said, “Our meat saw man gave out on us and we got a job waiting.”

  He downed his glass and poured again but the Whitley’s was pouring funny, and then it wasn’t pouring at all. And the sheriff saw something like a ragged hot dog was hanging out of it. “What the shitting hell? A FINGER!” He glared at the father. “You stupid-son-of-a-bitch. You think you can scare me? You think I’m afraid of a GODDAMN FINGER?”

  The sheriff yanked the fleshy end and held it up in a one-second display of courage before he got a good look at it and sent it flying. “It’s a COCK!”

  The father said, “Now that is goddamn eerie. What the hell is going on? Why don’t you just tell me?”

  Pammy’s hands shook as she fished two more horse calmers out of the bottle. “He’s coming back in pieces, Arden. The Swede wants his revenge.”

  The sheriff leveled his gun at the father. “You put that cock in there.”

  “That bottle was sealed,” said the father. “It was you that cracked it.”

  The sheriff eyes narrowed. “And then you slipped it in.”

  The father said, “Arden, where the hell would I get a man’s cock? Why the hell would I ruin a full bottle of Whitley’s? Put your gun down, Arden, you’re making me feel bad.”

  The sheriff aimed at the father’s forehead. “Let’s go outside, Earlis.”

  Pammy said, “Arden, IT’S THE SWEDE MAKING YOU DO THIS! He’s turning us against each other. Shit, Arden. Goddamn it, Arden, DON’T YOU SHOOT HIM, ARDEN!”

  The sheriff walked the father out to where Fernst lay. There were deep shadows all around. It would have been nothing for me to get the sheriff. Little Debbie was wanting to. Little Debbie was straining in my hand like a dog seeing a rabbit. It would have been nothing to do a fast slice that would cause the sheriff a surprising intestine cascade.

  But I wasn’t in the mood to do the father any favors. I was enjoying the terrified look on his face, I have to admit I was enjoying it very much.

  If Pammy hadn’t spotted me, who know
s how wonderful that night could have turned out to be?

  Chapter 39

  HERE ARE certain creatures in the ocean called sessile creatures, creatures permanently attached to one place, like the barnacle and the anemone and the feather-duster worm. And there are also drifter creatures, attached to nothing, carried places by the current, and at night some of them will glow when disturbed. At night they can leave a phosphorescent trail five miles long behind a ship, a trail clearly visible from the air. That could be hell on a Navy man. Dazzle camouflage is useless in the dark.

  I was shut into the blackness of the meat saw room. Shut in there by the sheriff. He shoved me in, said, “Don’t turn on the light unless you want a surprise,” and bolted the door.

  It was a cold room but there was a smell of spoilage. The refrigeration unit gave off the smell of a washcloth gone sour. There was the smell of disinfectant and fresh sawdust. And twisting around all of it was the high scent of blood, bitter and metallic. And a much heavier odor I recognized. The complicated smell of a sliced creature. Complicated because sliced hide smells different from sliced fat, and sliced fat smells different from sawn bone, and internal organs each have a particular smell, and then there is the raw odor of the divided meat itself. All of these smells were fresh.

  My hand found the light switch. Did I want a surprise?

  “YOU DO NOT KNOW WHO YOU ARE DEALING WITH, YOU STUPID SHIT!” That was the sheriff shouting at the father. I could hear his words but not the father’s or Pammy’s. The sheriff was shouting that he was big, very big. He had big connections in Chicago, with the BIG boys in Chicago. Did the father understand the legal implications of habeas corpus? No body equals no murder equals peace in the valley for all concerned. Was the father starting to get the picture? It was the sheriff who oversaw the final steps required to turn an important somebody into a scattered nobody of bone, blood meal, and cat food.

  The father asked a question but I couldn’t hear what it was. The sheriff said, “That’s THEIR business. I keep out of it. I don’t want to know, you understand?”