Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road

by Keene, Brian

  Jackpot. There was little doubt in Arrianne’s mind that this was indeed Lucy Pearson’s diary. The language seemed old—more akin to something from 1830 rather than 1930’s America, but she supposed that was just a stylistic flourish. She skipped ahead to the middle of the book and read an entry dated April 10, 1936.

  Dear Diary,

  I have made a scandal of myself! Even the Marquis de Sade could not imagine worse than the deeds I have done in the darkest slums of this decrepit city. Last night, a strange man saw me wandering around South Street and offered me $100 to urinate on my naked flesh. Imagine such a thing! Luckily, Livingston was nearby to protect me had things gotten out of sorts, because I just had to try this new perversion. I have become a bit of a connoisseur of deviancy, and although I have read of these “golden showers,” I had never before met anyone acquainted with the act. I agreed and Livingston stood guard at the mouth of the alleyway while I disrobed. I gave my guardian the hundred dollars. I am no common lady of the evening. I don’t do this sort of thing for the currency. That all goes to my handsome protector for his services. It is the sheer experience I crave!

  “Uh, you done? Can I have my money now?”

  Arrianne’s face flushed. She looked up from the book and saw Wally staring at her, licking his lips, one hand cupping his testicles through his tight shorts. With the other, he wiped a line of drool from the corner of his mouth after spitting tobacco onto a dandelion that had managed to find one unoccupied spot in which to grow.

  “Sure … uh … sorry.”

  “No problem. Pretty interestin’ stuff ain’t it? No need to be ’barrassed about it. I done spanked it a few times readin’ some of the things in that book. Though some of that stuff would put you off your feed. That woman was plain disgustin’ with some of the mess she was into.”

  Feeling mortified, Arrianne handed Wally the money. He counted it and shook his head as he stuffed the bills in the pocket of his cut-off jeans.

  Arrianne turned to leave, but Wally was intent on continuing the conversation. “I tell you, there’s some sick shit in that book for sure, but if you’re into that sort of thing, I am always willing to oblige a beautiful young lady.”

  Arrianne scowled and recoiled. “No thank you!” She fumbled for the car door handle, opened it, and slipped in behind the wheel, slamming the door and quickly locking it. She heard Wally laughing at her as she started the engine.

  “You must be one sick bitch to want to read that diary! You come back and see ol’ Wally if you start to get the itch!”

  Arrianne whipped a U-turn and gunned the accelerator, racing away from Wally and his nauseating breath.

  She couldn’t wait to get home and read the rest of the diary. She had an irrational fear that something would stop her, though, something that didn’t want her to discover anything about the past. She almost expected to see Wally running after her like the T-1000 in the Terminator sequel, but the rear-view thankfully showed him to be navigating his labyrinth of junk back to the trailer, probably with the intent to play with his own junk once inside.

  “Pig,” she muttered. The nerve of such a degenerate saying she was the sick one.

  Then she thought about the menagerie of perversities from last night—her “dream,” according to Chuck—and how she’d asked him to vomit on her in the shower. Her shoulders slumped. He’d clearly been disgusted, probably a mirror of how she’d looked at Wally just now.

  “It wasn’t me,” she said. It seemed to have more power said aloud. “It was her. Lucy.”

  The puppy yipped in the backseat.

  “Not you.” She reached a hand back and put her fingers through the slots in the crate to let the puppy lick her, rubbing the tiny head and ears.

  On the passenger seat, Dickey leaned his head out into the rushing wind. Drool splattered across the passenger window of the backseat. Arrianne had an instant flashback to the website of the girls lapping up dog drool. She winced, hoping she wouldn’t throw up.

  No, that’s not my style. Apparently I prefer to have people do it on me these days than actually do it myself.

  She had bad luck with the stop lights on her way out of town and kept getting caught by red, so she’d read snippets of the diary as she waited for green. Something from May 1935:

  Dear Diary,

  I’ve all but exhausted my reservoir of the French literature and have taken to rereading it in the absence of anything new to excite me. The nation as a whole must seem utterly mad to everyone else. I fear for any country that attempts to engage them in war! The books describe a world I desire, a world where pleasure is there to be taken and the pathetic teachings of religion are mocked and defied in the pursuit of carnality. My ignorant husband believes his god is hiding under our marital bed, ready to sentence him to hellfire if his seed should ever be ejaculated anywhere outside of my cunt. I humiliated him last night by taking him into my mouth and swallowing his climax. His protests were noticeably weak until after he’d spent himself, and then came the guilt. It would be amusing were it not so contemptible. He’ll probably give half his savings to his church to pay off his sin.

  August 1936:

  Dear Diary,

  Those with the means to live comfortably are likely to turn to pursuits that would horrify the layman, and those who have plummeted to the bottom of social standing will do anything to meet their basic needs. I find this endlessly fascinating and useful when the two converge. The sensation, the experiences in my life are everything. It is a life far beyond the blind servitude of sheep who follow the outdated rules of their book of lies and hope that their wasted existence will be rewarded in the afterlife. What fun it shall be, I’m sure, this eternity, with the whole of judgmental charlatans and hypocrites living in the clouds. How I would love to vomit on the clergymen who call upon my husband and waste many of our evenings at home with their holy madness, as if the hours squandered on Sunday aren’t punishment enough. How it would disgust them all! Perhaps there’s something to be done with this concept of vomit in the slums …

  Again, August 1936:

  Dear Diary,

  I continue to sink lower into the very depths of sexual degradation, but I fear that the heightened pleasures I once enjoyed from my transgressions have begun to recede. What is there after this? I know there must be something.

  The stop lights ran out after that and she pushed the diary into the glove compartment to make sure Dickey didn’t get hold of it while she drove. She’d be home in forty-five minutes. Her excitement to read the rest of Lucy’s diary and hopefully learn more to support her possession premise was balanced by the thought of the inevitable scene with Chuck. She’d already imagined the conversation several different ways during the drive out here, and none of them ended with him buying into her theory for a second. No, he’d say she was insane and needed professional help, threaten to divorce her, or ask why they were wasting time with this dumb fantasy when he could be spreading her ass cheeks and sliding into home base. Probably some combination thereof. She knew how impossible it sounded, but what was the alternative? That she had suddenly taken to blacking out and surfing the Internet for bum porn with an emphasis on puke fetishism? That seemed farther-fetched than possibly being possessed in a house with a colorful history of depravity and violence. Of course no insane person ever truly believes there’s something wrong with her, right?

  I’m not like that. I’m not.

  She felt much more like herself this far from home. The exchange with Wally had been unpleasant, but just to have gotten so many miles away from the house had enormously improved her disposition. But it occurred to her that maybe it was something more.

  Maybe it can’t reach me out here. Maybe whatever it is has no influence this far away from the house.

  She had to go back now though. She’d never convince Chuck they should leave, and if Lucy really was influencing her, would she even still want to leave when she got back? Her biggest problem might be finding someone who wouldn’t bat an
eyelash at the thought of expelling bodily fluids all over her naked body, the more disgusting the better. Even that might not present much of a quandary, she realized.

  I was hoping maybe … I guess … I wanted you to watch me touch myself.

  That pervert at the bar had said that. Had he been embarrassed by the blatant perversity of his own request, or was the awkwardness something else?

  She shook her head. She couldn’t start seeing a conspiracy in everything strange that had happened to her recently, or she’d start obsessing over Freemason rituals and the grassy knoll at Dealey Plaza. So she’d gone to a bar and some creep had offered her $50 to watch him beat off. It probably happened more than she’d ever imagined (and probably for offers of much cheaper compensation).

  Arrianne disappeared into her thoughts, driving on autopilot for the next thirty minutes. She wasn’t aware of the changes in her mind the closer she got to home, as slight and gradual as the movement of the minute hand on a clock. Like a clear stretch of road where tendrils of fog unfolded until they became a mobile smokescreen, she couldn’t think about anything miles down the road, only the few visible yards ahead of her. Chuck, the house, the diary mattered to her about as much as some play she’d read back in high school.

  What did matter, however, was the hitchhiker who stood at the interstate exit.

  Ordinarily she would never have even given him a second glance. She’d heard too many horror news stories and friend-of-a-friend cautionary tales that all seemed to feature “raped repeatedly” and ended with “never found her head” to ever entertain the idea of giving a ride to a stranger. Such vagabonds were everywhere back in the city; in fact, they seemed to make up the majority of the population. It became an art form not to see them even if you were feeling gracious enough to toss them a few coins, as though to acknowledge them would guarantee you a spot in a cardboard box one day through some kind of economical contagion. You were safe if you simply didn’t look.

  So why was she not only looking but pulling on to the shoulder to come to a complete stop?

  He cocked an eyebrow, as though he couldn’t believe she was doing it either. His eyes were bloodshot and a little too wide open, affecting a sort of calm madness that wouldn’t have been out of place on a man leading a doomsday cult to mass suicide. His beard looked like some kind of living creature on his face, tufts of it sticking out every which way. Any movement of his head seemed like the creature was shifting position, about to chew his face off. She bet it would feel like a Brillo pad. The hair on his scalp looked equally unruly, dried out and surely uncombed since Lost was still on the air. He wore a battered fatigue jacket with bold letters on the breast pocket that had become an unreadable smear. His blue jeans could have fetched a ridiculous price at a vintage store with the appearance of being several years old, including the built-in wear and tear, except his would undoubtedly be the real deal. The knee on one side was held together by fading strands, the knee of the other covered in an honest-to-God patch. She hadn’t seen one of those since she didn’t know how long. Beside his battered boots sat a duffel bag the color of his jacket, weather-beaten but intact and probably the newest thing he had, something that might have been fairly young when there was still an East and West Germany.

  That’s probably where he keeps the heads.

  Lastly, he cradled a pathetic cardboard sign, the flap torn unevenly from a box. PLEZE HELP. She imagined he didn’t have many takers with such a vague request. Not WILL WORK FOR FOOD, not even WILL PUKE ON CAMERA FOR SICK THRILLZ, just PLEZE HELP. She found that sad.

  Dickey pulled back from the window and looked at her inquisitively, whining. We’re not really giving this psycho a ride, are we?

  “Afraid so,” she said, scratching behind his ears. She patted the backseat beside Lucy’s crate and gave him a little push, and Dickey reluctantly limped back to it between the passenger and driver seats. She then pushed open the passenger door toward the hitchhiker—

  He’s not a hitchhiker, he’s a bum, a hobo, a vagrant.

  —to let him in.

  He hoisted his duffel bag onto the floorboards and climbed into the car. Something bounced off his fatigue jacket when he did. Dog tags. She examined all the gray in his hair and his beard and pegged him in his mid- to late-sixties. If he hadn’t combed his hair since Lost was on the air, he probably hadn’t taken a true shower since the characters got into the hatch. Her eyes watered and she had to swallow down bile as his unwashed odor filtered through the vehicle like a poisonous gas leak.

  She smiled at him like she didn’t notice. It was easy enough. She liked it. The heat that had been simmering between her thighs even as she’d pulled to the side now threatened to boil over at his proximity and its mephitic bouquet. Her wetness had saturated the crotch of her panties.

  He’d probably eat them whether or not they were edible panties.

  She opened her mouth to say something, and until she actually heard the words, she wasn’t completely sure she wasn’t about to offer him fifty bucks to watch her bring herself to a climax right where they sat.

  “Where are you going to?”

  He hunched in the seat like a prison inmate over a tray, hoping to not be noticed and stabbed in the lung with a shank. He twisted his head to look at her, his eyes watery. “To hell, probably,” he said simply. He stared back into his lap. A hand floated up to clench around his dog tags.

  Arrianne waited for more, but he didn’t offer it. “Can I … drop you anywhere on the way?”

  Somewhere deep within her was a voice sounding an alarm at this predicament she had willingly placed herself, but it was so faint as to be merely an enhancement to the excitement. It might have been a lot louder even a few miles ago, though probably unnecessary altogether since she would have reacted with disbelief to be told she would pick up a (bum, hobo, vagrant) hitchhiker. Not now, though. Now that voice was like the whisper of a ghost on a tape recording.

  “Wherever,” he said. He looked back at Dickey, who panted a bit more animatedly. “I ate a dog in Vietnam,” he announced. “This one knows it.”

  Arrianne checked the rear-view. If that was Dickey’s “you ate one of my kind” look, then apparently the trees in the woods and the weatherman on TV had also eaten dog.

  “There’s things coming for me,” he continued. “Awful creatures. You can barely see their eyes. Always watching.” He held a hand out in front of him and made a beckoning gesture with his fingers. “Come home.”

  Arrianne didn’t have the faintest idea how to respond to anything he’d said so far. She put the car in drive and eased back onto the ramp. “Some weather we’re having, isn’t it?” she said. “I’m—” Who was she, indeed? She wasn’t about to give him her real name. “Lucy.” Her smile never faltered.

  “Brad,” he grunted. “Brad Zeller.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Brad. You been waiting out here long?”

  He shrugged. “Couldn’t really say. I’ve seen the skin rot off a head before. It was like time-lapse photography. Could have been minutes or hours. Could have been days. I never moved. It was like being in a snow globe, but no snow. Just a head. Rotting on a spike.”

  “Well, that’s certainly … exciting. Was this in Vietnam?”

  He flinched slightly and cupped a hand to his mouth. She heard a wet jostling sound as he put his fingers through his lips to straighten something out. Once he seemed assured that everything was settled, he answered her. “That wasn’t nothing compared to what I saw out in Vietnam. That’s why I’m going to hell, you understand.” He pronounced Vietnam so that it rhymed with “dam.”

  “Like what?” she asked. The panicked whisper begged her not to provoke him, but the need to provoke herself was far greater, rapturous. “What was it like, all that death and despair?”

  “Like …” He choked for a moment and hawked up something that he proceeded to gulp back down with an effort. “Like breathing. You go insane at first. You’re seeing bodies when you close your eyes. Th
en it’s kind of cool. You realize you can do any fucking thing you want to. You’re like Double-Oh Seven, but you don’t got an exploding pen or a trick car or nothing. What you got is some Claymores and an M-16, and you’re going around cutting off ears for a necklace. It’s power.” He smiled faintly and then grimaced. “But then one day it’s like breathing. You do it every day without even thinking about it.”

  Breathing. She was doing that faster now herself, exhaling through her mouth. She squirmed in her seat where things felt gloriously wet, hotter with his casual disregard for both killing and bathing alike. She kept one hand on the wheel, but the other crept over to her left breast, cupped and pinched the nipple through her bra. She hadn’t considered not wearing one without knowing who’d be selling her the diary. It had definitely felt like the right move at the time, but now she wished she hadn’t bothered. She wanted to see her erect nipples poking through her shirt, obvious and unashamed in the least. She squeezed herself roughly, inviting pain and relishing it in a way she never had before she and Chuck moved into that house.

  Brad just stared at his folded hands in his lap like a man praying at church, oblivious to her movements.

  “Tell me about something you saw over there,” she invited. “Something awful.”

  He didn’t respond, muttering to himself.

  Arrianne’s brow furrowed. “Don’t hold out on me now, Ben.”

  “Brad,” he corrected.

  “I couldn’t give a fuck less what it is. Sing for your supper, Ben, or I’ll stop the car and let those freaks catch up to you.”