Chapter 34
“Can you spare one?”
Connie stood behind Bug’s truck. He’d just lit his cigarette. The lighter still in his hand. Hope bounced towards him when he nodded, motioned.
“I know. Insert standard adult speech. Bad for you. Just a kid. Blah blah blah. Ooh. Marlboros. Nice.”
She got the smoke going and handed the lighter and the pack back and they both churned out blue clouds. Sipe and Bug were still inside The Outpost.
There were smokers down in front of The Up ‘n Up Tavern. Down west, past the park, Auntie’s lit up, but closed. Little Creek quiet, but people were awake. Doors normally left unlocked shut and locked, coffee being sipped, vigils being kept. Down at the intersection, Main and Mountain, brooms and dustpans had swept up and toted away debris, where the SUV smashed the still MIA Honda, but under the moon and stars residual plastic and glass shone, fragments confirming the bigger worlds intrusion into the ideal. The crazy woman unarmed. Fled into the woods alone. Disgraced Olympian dangerous, but not armed. Officials said one thing on one side of the mouth and another on the other, you could be sure they were keeping something quiet. Anyone subscribed to Don Jennings’ Twitter couldn’t help but ponder proferred kernels of possibility, the cops too pussy to intrude into the green, corner and bag one female Rambo. Don heard extra-sensitive chatter. Feds en route. Black helicopters. Little Creek on the tipping point of transformation into a Bilderberg Group wet dream, an internment camp that didn’t recognize the jackboots for jackboots, mistook the cell door clang for protection.
“You were pretty cool in there,” said Hope.
“That was nothing. I do that all the time.”
“Really?”
“No.”
She laughed. It started out as haha before transforming into something a little less derivative. Hope walked over to Clay’s abandoned jeep. Held onto the driver side door and looked inside like opportunities abounded. She spun on her heel. Walked back towards Connie.
“You guys should’ve shot ‘em.”
“Like a movie?”
“It was like a movie. That guy, Sipe? Did you know he was going to do that? To Bonnie, I mean?”
“He’s a quiet guy.”
“That was the shit. I would’ve jammed that thing up between her legs and just held it there.”
“You’re not her biggest fan?”
Hope leaned against the truck tailgate. Considered the truck bed.
“She’s having a Nazi’s baby. Who would be her fan?”
“You’ve got Nazis around here?”
“I don’t know. Probably. We don’t have any fags. If we do, they’re smart enough to shut the fuck up about it. We don’t have any blacks. Jews. No Jews. Well, my mom is like half-Jewish so I’m what? A quarter. Rita will tell you it’s the quieter racism around these parts. I do bad things, enough bad things, people don’t care what my blood is. I’ve eaten pussy. A lot of pussy. But you know, girls. Girls do things with other girls. Guys like it. Do you like it?”
“What?”
“Girls with girls?”
“Whatever makes you happy.”
“I know, but I’m asking you.”
“I’ve…seen things.”
“Jacked off to them?”
“Jesus.”
“Jilling off. Jacking off. Everyone does it, you got to call it something.”
“I’ve seen it. That kind of thing. Girls. But not in person. I guess I’m kind of behind the rest of the crowd,” said Connie. “What do you call it? I’m not very cosmopolitan.”
“Cosmopolitan.” Hope said it a number of times. She liked it. The kind of word she was surprised she hadn’t heard from Tiff. She asked Connie for another smoke. Once she had it going she affected what she thought would be a cosmopolitan accent, kind of British, and said, “Cumming makes me happy. In a cosmopolitan sort of way.”
“That makes most people happy.”
“I know. I’ve seen guys cry after they do. Not guys. Men. One guy - man - had me slap his dick after he came. His dick and his balls. One guy wanted me to crap on him.”
“Jesus.”
“He didn’t have the money for it. Plus, I’m like, ok, do you see anything in this room that you can clean up with? Fuck. It’s always the guys that are dressed really well or that are kind of old that want the weird shit.”
“Or just shit.”
She laughed. Tapped ashes off onto the parking lot.
“Small town life,” said Connie. “At least it’s interesting.”
“Try living here.”
“That’s ok.”
“Uh huh. It’s cool as long as you don’t actually have to do it.”
“I don’t know. Maybe someday. I wouldn’t want to run into people though. If I was having trouble with them.”
“Like Bonnie? Me and Bonnie?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Her, my mom, ok, both my parents, then Hitler. That’s the top three most evil in all of history. In descending order. Whoa. Wait. No. Four.”
“What kind of math they teach out here?”
She slugged his arm, laughing.
“That’s pretty bad though,” said Connie. “More evil than Hitler.”
The bell jingled. Sipe and Bug walked out of The Outpost.
“Where are you guys from?” Hope asked Connie.
“Seattle. But I’ve been gone. I just got done with school.”
“College?”
“Culinary school.”
“Culinary? Cooking?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
One of the old men coming down the ramp walked at a ponderous gait. Mr. Heavyfoot. Such skinny bastards, the pair of them, Connie wondered which one was guilty. Bug probably. Boots instead of sneakers. They stepped off the ramp, stray gravel clicked and crunched under heel. They came around the driver side of the truck. Neither of them saying a thing.
“So now what?” Hope exhaled. Pushed off the tailgate and crossed her left arm under her breasts, right elbow balanced on top of the left hand, cigarette pinched between fingers on the right hand. Second nature at this point to exhibit the bad girl quality the bad girl knew the saps would pay for.
“We go home,” said Sipe.
Hope snorted. “Meaning what?”
“You call Tiffany?” Bug asked Hope.
“No.”
“You ought to call her.”
“She’ll start crying.”
“She’s probably worried.”
“She’s used to it. It’s her thing. She’s like one of those mom’s, they hurt their kids, make them sick and shit and then go to the doctor. They want the attention.”
“No she isn’t,” said Bug.
Hope shrugged. “Close enough. That’s why she likes Henry so much. Perpetually shit on, she’ll take you under her wing.”
“I got to sleep,” said Sipe. “Just a few hours then we can get out of here.”
Connie nodded.
“You’re welcome back at our place,” said Bug. “Hope’s got my room right now. I’m in the guest room, but we got another room. Enough room for a cot, easy. And the couch is kind of comfy.”
“Waldo,” said Hope.
“Waldo. Right. Mom’s weiner dog might fight you for the couch.”
“It’s fine,” said Sipe. “We can go to the motel.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Sipe, let’s just go with them, ok? I don’t want to check in. I don’t want to, to, to…It’s just a hassle.”
“Yeah. It’ll be nice. Oh,” said Hope. “I can make breakfast!”
“See,” said Connie. “We’ll get a nice breakfast out of it.”
Sipe pondered just what was it with people and this over fondness for breakfast. He ought to call Zeke. Tell him to forget The Outpost, instead head over
to Bug’s tomorrow morning.
Hope still laboring the topic. “Eggs. Bug you have eggs, right? Or pancakes. I’ve made pancakes. If someone helps, I promise I won’t burn them or anything.”
Sipe could just start walking. Pass the tavern up ahead, the post office, Pleshette’s, and he might just keep walking once he came alongside The Sleepy Bear Inn. He was a machine, according to the other guys. Out of the Old Man’s crew, on stakeout, Sipe the one that could stay awake without the support of cigarettes or coffee or pills. Some voice related that if he walked all the long way out to Butcher’s Camp, Faye would welcome him with open arms. His choice of rooms. His choice of ghosts, the namesake, the dead men and their kills alike could come and tell him their tales and Sipe’s resume highlights would materialize, from Bryce Bennett back to the first, a drug addicted former Microsoft bottom feeder that shot some junk heroin into a vein right in front of Sipe, and spasmed and foamed at the mouth, and shit himself, Sipe choking him out to make sure in the moldy, moist basement of a grayed out Wallingford house one day in a long, long ago May, back before Greta was even pregnant and Connie’s birth mother was alive, if conspicuously inattentive to the fruit of her womb.
“Sipe? Hey.” Connie in his face. “You ok?”
“Yeah. Tired.”
“I know. Hey. You heard me, right? I’m going for a walk, all right?”
Hope popped into view around Connie’s left arm.
“Me, too.”
“Ok. We’re going for a walk.”
“I want to surprise Tiff,” said Hope.
“Fine.”
“And then we’ll come out to Bug’s,” said Connie.
“Make Tiff poop her pants, then come home,” said Hope.
“Ok.”
Connie and Hope walked towards Woodruff Road.
“Wait,” said Sipe. “You’re going to walk out there?”
“No. Fly, stupid,” said Hope. She put her arms out in front, the Superman thing, and making a fart in the bathwater noise, ran up the side street, out of sight. Connie shrugged, walked in her wake. She called after him like he was a party pooper. Sipe could hear her running, it sounded like in figure eights, looping from one lane into the other.
Rolling through the Auntie’s intersection, Bug looked left, south, down Old Woods Road, and thought he spotted some sort of mass way down the length of road, but no lights. Maybe, the cops low key, going infrared, waiting for Millicent Timbers to poke on out of the woods innocent like a deer or a bear or a coyote sniffing on the rim of man.
The Forest Service parking lot glowed amber, courtesy lampposts and the footlights rimming beauty bark.
Lights on inside the last house in town. Tiffany and her uncle, the boy and the tall woman, Gwen. Bug wondered how long Hope would fuck around town before dropping by, letting her friend know she was ok.
“I think you scared the shit out of Lowry,” said Bug.
“Probably.”
“How much of that did you mean? Literally?”
“Just enough to get my point across,” said Sipe.
“Where does that come from? Telling people stuff like that?”
“I don’t know. The job. My sister.”
“Let me guess,” said Bug, “Older sis? She picked on you.”
Sipe didn’t answer. They were fast coming up on the intersection, the Zippy Mart.
Bug relieved to see they’d be the single vehicle forcing a Deputy out from his unit at the checkpoint. Lucky as shit the woman had dropped Lueck’s piece, only broken his nose. The law enforcement presence would be a touch too much otherwise. Now, once he’d miraculously slung all his slug-weight out the unit, Deputy Gunderson would ask where the Logan girl went, Bug would say she was watching movies with a friend, then tell Gundy to expect him to come back through in a bit, pick her up, potentially some guy, too, some wunderluck struck castaway until his car got fixed. Yep. Bug and his ma practically running a motel anymore.
Beneath the cloudless sky every particle of the world brushed blue. Up high on the wind towers signal lights blinkered to ward off collision with the potential low flying night flier. The wind tower blades still. Come morning, the breeze rode sidesaddle with sunrise, straining its fingers through brush, hay, and elderberry bushes, and those giant blades would rotate, plug juice into the grid.
Given Deputy Gunderson’s blessing, Bug plugged on through and passed the Zippy Mart lot, slowed, and signaled and turned onto his property. He parked beside the beat up Honda and turned off the engine. The porch light left on. Inside, Waldo’s ears would be perked up. No barking. Waldo wouldn’t want to wake his sick mistress. Bug punched his seat belt loose. The seat creaked as he reached for the door handle.
“We ought to move the car,” said Sipe.
“What car?”
“It’s at the gas station. Have to wait. Connie’s got the keys.”
“All right.”
Bug could sense that Sipe had something more to say. It was like high school. Killing a six pack out at the railcars, Ty Ruchert doing impressions, of TV people, teachers, his siblings, then getting down to it, the nitty gritty, about his future, blowing Little Creek for good, how he felt for Tanya, his future wife. Ty the king of pauses.
“Thing of it is,” said Sipe, “when I talk to people like I talked to Lowry, like you heard me talking, I don’t know if I’m talking to her.”
“The sister?”
Sipe nodded.
“Like I see her instead of the person right there. Or if I think I am her and I’m talking to me, the little kid version. Trying to piss him off, or rile him up enough he finally really lets her have it. I don’t know.”
Bug nodded.
“She still alive?” he asked.
Sipe didn’t answer. Bug thought the other man hadn’t even heard the question, too involved in sorting the evidence that would reveal who he was when he acted like the devil’s spokesman.
Eventually, Sipe said, “I think so,” and Bug wondered how many horror slides Sipe had shuffled through before he could fly the determination one way or the other.
The Lipless Gods Page 36
