CRUDDY (19 page)

HE FATHER said, “It ain’t such a bad place to lay low for a while, Clyde. I can think of worse places. And hell. How many kids you know can say they got their own trailer?” He was laying across the plastic-covered mattress with his arms behind his head. I sat on the bench seat at the miniature kitchen table, smoking. The father said, “Want me to teach you smoke rings?” He demonstrated. Told me to practice. He said the more stunts I could do the better off I would be. He said, “Pammy has a stack of cash up there. And I mean a STACK. In her dresser. Why the hell do women hide everything in their underwear drawer? Any man knows it’s the first place you look once they step into the shower. Big bills, Clyde. And I know she ain’t getting it from running the bar. Hell, I’m getting the feeling nobody comes to the bar. Nobody showed up last night. We were in here shooting the shit and at about dark I say, ‘Who’s running the bar?’ She says, ‘The bar’s running itself.’”

A blue smoke ring drifted upwards and broke apart.

“It sure as shit ain’t cattle. Only man working here is that goddamned Alice the Goon on the meat saw. The stock out there in the feed pen are mostly culls and there’s but a handful of them. Stack of bills six inches high with a rubber band around it and one just like it underneath. Got any ideas, Clyde?”

Later that afternoon I was sitting on the trailer step looking at my finger. It was throbbing and looking very swollen. My fingernail was lifting away at the sides and the cut itself was a wet yellow-green. Fernst stepped out the back door with a candy bar, unwrapped it, and paced while he ate it, making soft
hooo-hooo
noises.

A truck pulled up driven by a man with very bad skin and a very purple nose. Fernst shoved down the end of his candy bar and hopped up the back-door steps. The truck man did some steering wheel maneuvers and backed up almost right against the door. It was a refrigerator truck but old and dented with rust stripes running down the sides. The man got out and opened up the back and set a ramp from the truck bed to the back door. Gagger smells emanated instantly.

He was wearing grime-shiny pants and flies swirled around him. When he stopped moving they crawled on his face and he didn’t brush them away. This was Mom. This was the rendering plant man. He looked over at me. He said, “You Clyde?”

I didn’t move.

He said, “I heard about you, Clyde.”

The open back door blocked my view but there was the sound like a dolly or wheelbarrow rolling. Rolling in and rolling out and rolling back again. Then Mom pulled in the ramp, shut the back door, and Fernst jumped in the cab with him. They drove a short distance to the cull pile and the ramp came back out and they loaded culls. The truck drove away.

The father was right about no one coming to the Knocking Hammer lounge at night. The old men came in the afternoon as usual, but they left before dark. That night the sheriff showed up with dinner, Chinese food from the next town. It was cold by the time he set it on the bar, but I ate it gratefully. Pammy and the father also wolfed. The sheriff said, “Pammy, why do you make Eegore sit on the goddamned floor to eat?”

“Hey,” said the father. “It’s her place.”

Pammy’s fungus smile shot some spores his way.

She’d taken a break from her chomping to pull out a ladder and hang a few more rolls of flypaper. Black dried-out exoskeletons cascaded wherever she bumped, coming off at the legs. A couple bounced off the bar but no one seemed to mind. The father especially. I’ve seen him keep drinking with one swimming in his glass. Once when I said something about it, he said, “Butt out, Clyde. This is between me and the fly.”

The sheriff said, “You know, I have connections with a private institution that takes Ee-gore’s type.”

“The Home,” said Pammy. “Call it The Home. It don’t sound so bad.”

“Vocational training,” said the sheriff. “Fernst is fostered out from there. You never seen anyone better on the meat saw.”

“Fostered?” said the father.

The sheriff explained that it was like taking care of a foster child only it was a foster spooker.

“Don’t call him that,” said Pammy. “Don’t use that word.”

Spooker was another word for mongoloid. As far as the sheriff could tell, I was one. Pammy thought so too. And they were telling the father about the great spooker home just up the way, just outside of the town where the sheriff picked up the Chinese food.

“It’s real nice,” said the sheriff. “Hell, they live better than most of us and they learn a trade at the same time.”

When the father asked what kind of trade, the sheriff said, “By-product processing.”

The father asked, “By-products of what?”

The sheriff mooed.

“I’ll be jingled,” said the father, pouring himself another.

When Pammy said she was ready for bed and the father said good night and followed her up to her chambers, the sheriff said, “Let me walk you to the trailer, son. It’s pretty dark out there.”

UDDENLY I was shivering. “I assure you,” said the Turtle. “I promise you, the sleeping giant will wake.” The whole day had passed. I could see the sky darkening on the other side of the grimy garage window. I felt around for my clothes and started putting them back on.

The Turtle patted around for his shirt and pulled a paper twist out. “Wait, wait, we’ll have a fatty and I’ll try again. It’s the Windowpane. Shouldn’t have dropped two. Hillbilly Woman, sit back down.”

“I’m freezing,” I said. My teeth vibrated against each other. “Let’s go,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

We walked down the alley and I felt the confusion of wanting his arm around me and hating his arm around me. His breath had gone back to rasty again. I felt freaked by what we did. As the Windowpane drained away my jaws kept clenching until I could feel my teeth springing. The Turtle passed me Sir Fatty Bone III and I was thankful for it. It slowed down the murdering shocks that were shooting through my mind. The question of did it count. What we did in the garage. Did it count without the word, that word,
penetration.
Did it count without that? He tried but he couldn’t. He was ready, but the sleeping giant was too wasted.

He squeezed me. He said, “Hillbilly Woman, I have yet to hear about your finger. Yes. Absolutely. We must do it all again. I must hear the rest of the story. We will find a place and you will keep talking.”

I said, “What happened to my finger is that it got infected and the father cut it off, OK? The End.”

He said, “I sense an irritation.” His voice had a hurt tone. “I sense there is a thought which you are having about me.”

The sky was streaked with the marks of sundown. A jet trail glowed in the ugliest pink. My eyes felt raw. The Windowpane had twisted time so badly. The day had seemed a minute long but in that minute my life uncoiled.

We were at the end of an alley and I was trying to decide what to do. The Turtle was looking very sad. His eyes looked dark and large with the barest rim of tiger-colored iris. The Turtle said, “I sense you will leave me. I sense our love has died.”

He sounded so sincerely troubled. I was thinking, what if it is love but I just can’t tell? I never kissed anyone before him. I never anythinged with anyone. It could be love and I could be wrecking my chances. And this made me freak and put my arms around him. He smelled sour. I thought about the power of love and tried to ignore the smell. He kissed me very hard, moving his head in circles and his teeth scraped against mine. It smelled like something was rotting inside of him. I couldn’t help pulling away.

“Hillbilly Woman, what is it? What has gone wrong between us?”

“Turtle,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

He said, “Hillbilly Woman, please lay it on me. Truthfulness at all times. Absolutely.”

I couldn’t say anything.

He said, “It’s because I’m Canadian, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Canadian. Yes. I confess it before you.”

The Monkey at Diggy’s had warned me. He had told me.

I said, “Do you know Neil Young?”

“Hillbilly Woman. Absolutely! Would you like to meet him?”

And that’s when I started the crying.

And half an hour later I was still crying. I did not know if I would ever stop crying. I was laying in somebody’s front yard and I could not stand up. The Turtle said, “Hillbilly Woman. I did not think you would take it so hard.”

He said, “Hillbilly Woman, it’s the Windowpane. You are very sensitive to acid.”

He said, “Hillbilly Woman, please, you are very loud for this time of day in this sort of neighborhood. The lady has just come out onto the porch. The lady has gone back inside and I fear she is phoning the authorities.”

He said, “Hillbilly Woman, rise. I cannot stay here much longer.”

He didn’t. By the time the cops arrived he was gone. An officer came out of his car, squatted beside me, asked me was I on drugs. I said my boyfriend just broke up with me. He said I was too young to be taking it so hard and that I would have another boyfriend in the future. The other officer was looking through Vicky’s purse. He opened her wallet. He pulled out her “If Found, Please Return To” card.

They were both very kind to me. They were very understanding. They said, “Come on, Vicky, we’ll give you a ride home.”

Vicky Talluso’s porch light was green, and even though her house was in a decent area it was in very skagged-out condition. There were things in the yard. Like chunks of old carpet and some tires and an armchair on its side barfing out its stuffing. I was still crying. I was actually feeling normal but my face kept on crying. The officer stood beside me on the wooden porch. He rang the doorbell and a man’s voice inside said, “Shit and goddamn! It is door!” And then he started his horrible hack-coughing. The door swung open and when Vicky saw me and the cop, her mouth hung open. She was eating a piece of white bread spread with bright mustard. Behind her a television light flickered. She didn’t say anything while the cop explained the situation, beginning with “Your sister” and ending with some encouraging words about my future.

The door closed behind me and Vicky whispered, “Shit, Roberta!” and then there was the sound of feet pounding down the stairs, a guy who looked about seventeen, very very fine, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Brown hair falling to the back of his neck. He said, “What did the cops want?”

Vicky said, “It’s not really your business is it?”

“Shut up and tell me.”

The hacking man said, “Shit and goddamn, I welcome to you this house!” He was old and laying on a plaid recliner and he was wearing a woman’s pink chenille robe. That was Susy Homemaker.

Vicky yanked me away by the arm. She said, “Don’t look. Don’t talk to him.”