CRUDDY

by LYNDA BARRY

  Pammy said, “Hepme, hepme, I canna mo mah les.” She was wiggling in the alkali.

  I heard a slight vibration in the air. Like the sound of wind whipping over something hollow. I said, “They’re coming back.”

  “Shit on it,” said the father. “It’s just the Air Force.”

  Pammy said, “Tha lilbassart tahks! Ah jassherd hi! Tha lilshid tahks!” The father propped her up. He said, “You’re dreaming, fat-ass.”

  The planes came at us.

  The father yelled, “INCOMING! INCOMING!” We were all flat on the ground. The stillness returned. We loaded Pammy into the backseat and the father took the wheel. He drove randomly. He laid on the horn, saying, “Somebody is bound to hear us.”

  Pammy said, “Imma keel yuh yuh bassart!”

  The father said, “I guess that means the wedding’s off.”

  “Wha??” Pammy said. “Wewwing?”

  “Take a look, baby-doll! We’re in Las Vegas!”

  Pammy made many rubberized movements before she was able to lift herself up enough. What she saw made her lay back down and say, “Imma keel you dahd.”

  In the distance a white cloud was rolling toward us. In the middle of the cloud was a Jeep. In the Jeep were two soldiers with helmets and two rifles.

  The father glugged deep from the last bottle of Whitley’s. He said, “Shit on the Air Force.” He quick lit a cigarette. “I can handle the goddamned Air Force.”

  The Jeep stopped some yards away. One of the soldiers stood up and said through a bullhorn, “THIS IS A RESTRICTED AREA. YOU ARE IN A RESTRICTED AREA.”

  The father cupped his hands and shouted, “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. WHICH WAY’S VEGAS?”

  The two soldiers jumped out of the Jeep with their rifles. They trotted toward us in high black boots laced tight at the ankles.

  The father said, “Which one of you clowns is going to point me to Vegas?”

  “You need to leave the area immediately, sir.”

  “My wife is drunk out of her mind and my kid has diarrhea.”

  “Sir?”

  The father tapped me on the shoulder. “See there, son? That’s an Air Force man right there.” He pulled a long drag on his cig. “My boy is crazy over the Air Force. You wouldn’t consider giving him a little ride in your piece-of-shit Jeep would you? Turn a couple brodies in the sand? It would mean a hell of a lot to him. He don’t got long to live.”

  “Sir, you need to leave the area immediately.”

  “Can my boy have a ride?”

  “I can’t do that, sir.”

  “Aw shit, why not?”

  Pammy said, “Hep me.”

  “Shut up, honey. I’m talking.” The father made a drinking motion with his hand. “She’s topped out.”

  “We’ll escort you, sir.”

  “Just tell me who in the hell is going to give a shit if you give my boy a ride in your vehicle there?”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Well, you tell me, what am I busting my nuts to pay taxes for then? I paid for that Jeep.”

  The two soldiers exchanged looks.

  The father rubbed his face. “Shit, boys. I’m sorry. Guess I’m wound a little tight. I got the piles so bad I’m about to have a nervous breakdown.”

  “Vegas is that way,” said the bullhorn soldier.

  They led us to a dirt road that turned into an old severely cracked paved road and the father waved. He said, “Goddamn it was hard not to kick their asses, Clyde. Goddamn I hate the goddamn Air Force.”

  Along the road there were some old signs advertising attractions in Las Vegas. Some had a few silver sequins still wiggling on the nails. The expansion of Dreamland had killed the road we were on. It wasn’t used anymore.

  If you look at a map of Nevada you’ll see a place called Nellis Air Force Range just east of the Funeral mountains and Devil’s Hole. Dreamland won’t be marked. But it is there, underground, at the center of a world of tunnels as wide as highways. Tunnels and certain cave passages.

  We came to a crossroads. The father said, “I know right where I am.”

  In front of us was a hand-painted billboard. It said, SEE THE LAST LIVING POWDER MONKEY! HE IS FANTASTIC! SEE THE MAN WHO BUILT THE DAMN! HE DEFIES GRAVITY! HE DEFIES DEATH!! HE IS FEARLESS!! THE POWDER MONKEY INVITES ONE AND ALL TO ENTER HIS SPARKLING CIRCLE! THREE SHOWS DAILY!! THE POWDER MONKEY WILL THRILL YOU AS NEVER BEFORE!! UNFORGETTABLE!!

  Underneath the sign was another sign. In faded-out cursive words it said, The powder monkey is dead.

  Chapter 45

  FEAR THE Sultan of all Ass-heads has already betrayed us.” said the Turtle. “I fear the arrival of the authorities. He frolics with the Violent One. We cannot save her from his power. We must depart at once. Yes. Absolutely. North to Canada. North to the sweet homeland.”

  “My dear, dear Turtle,” said the Great Wesley. “I am in the mood for fruit. Will you join me in the kitchen?”

  In the kitchen was a huge bouquet of rotted flowers tied with a black bow. Wesley said, “My father and mother. How sad for me.”

  I said, “What happened?”

  “They have gone the way of all parents, I’m afraid.”

  “Dead?”

  “Switzerland. I counted on them remaining in Lausanne for at least a month. Unfortunately the news of my escape and unexpected homecoming has somehow reached them. They are due back tomorrow.”

  “DEATH TO THE SULTAN OF THE ASS-HEADS!” said the Turtle. “They won’t take us back alive, my dear Wesley. This I swear.”

  In the kitchen a plastic bag of apples lay on the counter with a stretched hole ripped into the side. The Great Wesley took one apple and began opening the drawers. “I am in need of a small cleaving instrument.”

  “A knife?” I asked.

  “Exactly.”

  I produced Little Debbie. The Great Wesley admired her. “It has been a long time since I have seen anything so sharp. At the home we were not permitted such things. And yet we managed, did we not my dear, dear Turtle? Barbara V. Hermann could not dampen our love for adventure.”

  “Down with Barbara!” said the Turtle.

  I said, “The home?”

  Wesley carved a careful hollow into the apple. “The Barbara V. Hermann Home for Adolescent Rest. Yes. This is a fine knife. Quite a fine knife.”

  With some careful cutting and boring and a bit of foil and a few pinpricks the Great Wesley transformed the apple into quite a pipe.

  “Oh my dear Wesley. How I long for sensational smoky-smoky.”

  “To hear is to obey, my dear Turtle.” Wesley drew a metal canister from his robe pocket.

  “My dear Wesley! You old fox!”

  We smoked.

  I said, “Tell me about the home.”

  The Great Wesley exhaled a great apple-scented cloud. “The Barbara V. Hermann Home for Adolescent Rest is quite exclusive and the membership requirements are stringent. For suicidal and psychotic youth from distinguished families, it is top tier. International. Discreet beyond words. Nestled in an obscured location adjacent to the Lolo National Forest. Triple-fenced and gated. But still the Turtle and I managed to escape with quite a valuable bundle of medications. Great quantities stolen from the Barbara V. Hermann drug treasury. We left in search of sensational smoky-smoky. Most of us preferred the combination of smoky-smoky and ample television to the antipsychotic pharmaceuticals we were given. A majority of the residents at the home were in agreement on this and we petitioned Barbara V. Hermann to include smoky-smoky on her vast roster of drugs but she refused. It was a simple concept,” said the Great Wesley. “But you know Barbara.”

  “Death to Barbara,” said the Turtle.

  “Yes,” said the Great Wesley. “Perhaps I overreacted when I killed her.” He inhaled another cloud.

  “My dear, dear Wesley,” said the Turtle. “It was I who killed Barbara. Let the truth be known.”

  Wesley said, “My dear, dear Turtle. There is no need to confess to a crime you did not co
mmit. It was I who strangled her.”

  “My dear, dear, Wesley. You are kind in your wish to protect me, but I alone am guilty of this crime. As proof I offer you her last words. She said, ‘Turtle, no.’ I said, ‘Barbara, yes.’ She said, ‘Turtle, you strange psychotic fucker.’ ”

  The Great Wesley shook his head. “My dear Turtle! But those were not her last words at all!”

  “My dear Wesley, but they were.”

  “No, as I choked the life out of her body her last words were, ‘Make my skin into drumheads for the Bohemian cause.’ ”

  They gently argued for a while and then the Great Wesley turned to me. “Hillbilly princess, it is rumored you can drive. Is this so?”

  And when I told him it was, he stood and carefully straightened his bathrobe around himself. From his pocket he produced two keys on a golden ring.

  Chapter 46

  HE FATHER actually did have a destination. actually did have a destination. He did have a location objective. It was off the beaten track. It was about fifty miles down a rock-filled road barricaded by a sign that said DANGER! ROAD OUT! The father drove around it without even touching the brakes.

  The horse pills were wearing off and Pammy was feeling better. She was leaning up from the backseat and using her lardy fingers to do twirlies in the father’s hair. The father had given her a ring. She said, “Ish betafol.”

  It was a man’s ring, fat with a low setting, and the stone in the ring, the jewel, was peculiar. I didn’t know what it was. The color of butterscotch candy and catching the light in a way that was hard not to stare at. Shooting little flitting sparkles around the car when the light caught it right. Where was it from? What was it?

  Pammy reached over and tried to do a twirly in my hair. She said, “We’re ganna be a family.”

  I jerked, and said, “Quit.”

  I got an instant whack on the side of the head from the father, who slammed on the brakes and made me and Pammy change places. “Don’t be rude to her, Clyde. She’s your future mother and she’s still half tanked on muscle relaxers.”

  Pammy kept turning around to look at me. Her burned and blistered face was freaking me. Her horrible dead tooth was freaking me. The rolls of fat on her neck were freaking me. She had a fresh change of clothes on, her peed-on Bermudas were on the floor of the backseat. The father was messing with the radio, trying to get a station to come in but all he got was a violently loud hum. He said, “We’re almost there.”

  He said, “Clyde, I ever mention Auntie Doris to you?”

  I said, “No.”

  Smiling, Pammy said, “Ya talk. Why ya sneaky little turd. Say something. Say a little rhymey-something for me.”

  I concentrated on the scenery. The radio was off but the hum was still detectable. The sound of power lines. Of hydroelectricity blasting through power lines.

  The father said, “I never mentioned your crazy Aunt Doris to you, Clyde? The one with the two green W’s tattooed on her ass? Bends over, spells WOW. Stands on her head, spells MOM. She’s Navy. But Navy don’t begin to describe her.”

  The road began to wind upward through rock formations, we headed into the dry jagged hills. The sun was setting and the sky was flaming out colors in that spectacular desert way, combinations that didn’t look actual, didn’t look possible. Gold and violet and blood-red. The father stepped on it a little, fishtailing around the rock-slide bends. Wherever he was going, he wanted to get there before dark. He and Pammy finished off the last drops of Whitley’s and the bottle sailed out the window. The hum was so loud my teeth were affected. They started itching from the inside.

  We made a couple more turns and then hit a stretch of black-top, very smooth, it went on for about a quarter mile and then dead-ended in the big black parking lot of the Lucky Chief Motel.

  There were many signs nailed onto a wooden post. They said CLOSED FOR SEASON. CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. EXCUSE OUR DUST WE’RE REMODELING. GUARD DOG ON DUTY. THIS PROPERTY PATROLLED BY RADAR. YOU’LL GET MORE THAN AN ASS CHEWING IF YOU TRESPASS HERE. THANK YOU. DORIS HORACE, OWNER, OPERATOR.

  Two things happened right away. A stick-skinny woman with a big lower jaw and overcurled hair came running in a flapping flowered housedress screaming, “No! Stop! Goddamn it!” That was Auntie Doris.

  Behind her a shadow-shape of a tall man took off running. The father threw the brakes on long enough to jump out and he tore after the shadow-man, both of them vanishing into some rock formations. Caverns and caves. They were all over.

  The car kept rolling and Pammy was trying to hit the brake but was having a hard time getting her big leg to cooperate, we plowed along the natural dip in the parking lot with Auntie Doris chasing alongside us, grabbing on to the door handles and trying to drag the car to a stop, and this was my first real view of her, screaming her head off and trying to stop an entire car with her bare hands. The parking lot had just been re-topped that very day. The high bitumen content gave it a glassy surface. We rolled into it, rolled right through it. Came to a sticky stop. Auntie Doris stood at the edge of it with one hand over her mouth.

  Pammy got out of the car. She said, “I’m Earlis’s fiancée.”

  Auntie Doris said, “Earlis?”

  “He asked me to marry him.”

  “Earlis did?”

  “Surprise wedding.”

  “I’ll say.”

  The father came huffing and wheezing back over the rocks. Auntie Doris shouted, “YOU DICKLESS PIECE OF SHIT! SEE WHAT YOU JUST DID TO MY GLOSS ASPHALT?”

  The Lucky Chief Motel was long and low with orange doors and cement-block windows. It was built right into the rock face. There was a theory that attaching directly to the rock would keep it cooler in the hot season. Some of the rooms had actual rock walls, and there was an awning over a cave opening that descended to a shallow underground stream. Water for anything but drinking came up from there. Over the cave entrance was quite a fancy sign. It said THE LAIR OF THE SEQUINED GENIUS. As the light faded down to the last shreds I looked for bats to come shooting out, silent and swift. I like bats very much. They are the most incredible creatures. But none were in the Lair of the Sequined Genius.

  There wasn’t much else to the Lucky Chief. Some truck-tire planters with zigzag edges and a couple of concrete picnic tables. I figured I’d seen everything there was to see. And then I saw her.

  She was sitting on the bench of the picnic table closest to the door marked OFFICE. A very intelligent-eyed little dog staring straight at me. Studying me. Scraggly haired and dirty looking. A whitish-grayish dog.

  The desert is famous for certain types of hallucinations. Mirages they can be called. Always in the distance, the thing most hoped for appears, like cool, cool water or the ice cream man. The superheated air rises in wiggles and reflects back your last wishes. There are a thousand movies that end with the main character crawling through the desert toward something that does not exist. Often this happens when treasure is involved. When one guy cheats another guy and won’t pay what he owes.

  I walked toward the dog.

  Auntie Doris said, “Careful. She bites.”

  “Haw!” said the father. “Them two could have a contest.”

  Pammy said, “Earlis, honey?”

  The father said, “What, dolly-baby?”

  Auntie Doris said, “Earlis? Shit. I need a goddamned highball.”

  Darkness in the desert is so quiet. There weren’t any of the usual sounds, there were no train tracks, no sounds of cars, nothing to break the stillness except for a cracking explosion that had everyone but Auntie Doris diving to the ground.

  “Testing,” she said. “They’re just testing is all.” She had the yellow bug lights on but I didn’t hear or see any of the usual night insects. I didn’t see any bugs at all except for small gatherings of midnight flies.

  Pammy drained her third highball and ran her finger in the dripped condensation. We were sitting at the concrete picnic table. I was holding Cookie, then Peanut, née Snarla. It was Auntie
Doris who named her Snarla, the Sequined Genius who named her Peanut, and me who named her Cookie.

  I had my nose on the top of her head and I was inhaling her calming fragrance. The fragrance of dogs and the feeling of my face against their fur puts me in such a relaxed mood. A comforted mood. The father and Auntie Doris were glugging and re-glugging and re-hashing old times. On the table was a plastic container full of melting ice and an assortment of bottles and an ashtray that said STOLEN FROM LOU’S EFFICIENCY APTS. SPARKS, NEV.

  Auntie Doris said, “Goddamn it, quit shooting your butts all over my asphalt. The ashtray is six inches from your elbow. You say he hung himself?”

  The father said, “You know he hung himself, Doris.”

  “Well. You scared the living crap out of Gy-rah.”

  “I just wanted to give him a little half-brotherly kiss is all.”

  “He don’t want to know you. He said you’re a pollution.”

  “Pollution?”

  “Don’t ask me. He’s the genius.”

  “What do you think about it?”

  “Me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I could give a French shit.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  Pammy was staring at her engagement ring. I was starting to feel sad for her. I knew all about trying to hang on to certain words said by the father. She wanted the words to be true. And I could tell she loved him. And although she was an evil fungus growing on 200 pounds of irritated lard, her feelings were real. It wasn’t her fault that the father wandered into her life. Chance blew the father in a lot of directions. He rolled around this way and he rolled around that way, deforming everything he brushed up against.

  “Earlis, what kind of stone is this?” Pammy held her hand up and touched the ring. “Daddy-baby, what’s this type of jewel called?”

  The father lit another cig and threw the match onto the asphalt.

  Auntie Doris said, “Goddamn you.”