CRUDDY (20 page)

T AIN’T nothing, Clyde. Just a little blood poisoning, Clyde. I’ve been through it a hundred and fifty times. You take a shot of Old Skull Popper, you chew three aspirin, and in an hour your troubles will be over.” This is what the father said when he opened the trailer door and set the aspirin and the Old Skull Popper on the tiny kitchen counter. “You lock this door behind me, you don’t let the sheriff in here, Clyde, no matter what he says to you. He can’t get off the subject of you. He wants me to sign you in to that spooker home. Says you look trainable. Trainable, my ass. I’d say he’s tantalized. There’s some weird shit going on around here, Clyde, but it could work out good for us. Hey, what do you think of these slacks? Fit me good, don’t they? They’re Italian.” The father shut the door and left.

I was so sick. I was shaking and sweating on the plastic-covered mattress in the clean, clean murder trailer. I was freezing, then I went burning hot. I felt my insides turn to foam. My finger was killing, killing, killing. It was so swollen you could hardly see the nail. My teeth were vibrating and then my jaws would catch and clench.

I pulled myself up, locked the door, and brought the aspirin and the Old Skull Popper back to bed. Every once in a while a Fanta child’s head would rise and stare into one of the windows, wobbling for a moment and then falling away when the person boosting them lost their hold. One of them was watching when I threw up so hard the aspirins I swallowed tinked out whole onto the floor.

The father said blood poisoning was nothing to worry about until I dried out. If it was tetanus, well, that was another story. Either way, when I couldn’t pee anymore, I was in trouble.

I fell asleep and dreamed about the father in the Dead Swede’s Italian pants. The Dead Swede’s Hush Puppies. The Dead Swede’s delicate blue socks. The Dead Swede’s Arrow shirt and his precious bolo tie. Pure silver. A little dancing man holding a rattle and a weed. And the Dead Swede’s cologne, plentiful imported fumes that singed the inside of my nostrils. I dreamed of the father saying, “You know, I don’t think I ever looked so good. When’s the last time you took a piss? When’s the last time you took a piss? Clyde. Clyde.”

It was all true. The father was wearing the Dead Swede’s clothes and cologne and his bolo. He was drinking in the Dead Swede’s bar and sleeping in the Dead Swede’s bed with the Dead Swede’s widow who was feeling the fantastic love flutterations, who was transforming before everyone’s eyes. No one had seen her smile since the days of the Dead Swede. And she was wearing the tiny high heels again. She hadn’t had those out since the night she did the dance that gave the Dead Swede the cardiac.

There were more details about how Pammy was coming along, and the father laid them on me whenever he stopped by the trailer, but most of them I couldn’t hang on to with my gummy brains. At night certain music blared from the Dead Swede’s hi-fi, melodies came through the trailer walls. “The Three Bells” by The Browns. “Come Softly to Me” by The Fleetwoods. Smooth blended singing with no edges, horrifying in its perfection. I was losing my hair. Chunks of hair fell out onto the plastic mattress every time The Browns or The Fleetwoods sang. The music stuck in my mind. Brain congregations singing little parasitic melodies.

The father came and went making different assessments. “The streaks up your arm, see there? There is no way around it. Goddamn. It’s going to have to come off.”

There are certain dangers in homemade booze, and the second jug of Corpse Reviver must not be forgotten. There can be chemistries like firing pins sending perfectly calibered visions, there is such a thing as the bore axis of the mind. The father felt something funny and wonderful when he drank from the Corpse Reviver. He didn’t want to share it. He kept it in the trailer and took a glug whenever he visited. And then he showed up and took several glugs and I saw he had his knife case out. He had his whetstone out.

Time had fallen apart for me. I lost the order of days and nights and conversations. I know the sun was either coming up or going down because I saw the golden rays falling upon the metal-seamed walls. The father said, “It’s got be done, Clyde. I can’t take you to no hospital. You understand that. At least you know I’m the best possible man for the job. Sit up here, drink, again, and one more.”

His worn whetstone was oiled and he was making the motions. The knife he was honing was her, Little Debbie, he said she had just the right sort of point for small-joint separation. I listened to the soft circular whisper of the sharpening and the familiar promise that I would not feel a thing.

The father was strapping my arm down and tying my wrist tightly and jabbering on, he was laying out his Corpse Reviver–fueled plans about how to make the gold mine that was the Knocking Hammer his. He held the jug up to me. “Take a drink, take another. I’ll tell you what, you feel anything? You can take off one of mine. That’s a promise. The only reason I’m putting this rag in your mouth is for just in case. Now, turn your head, Clyde. Look out the window for the sandman.”

The sandman. The sandman. The sandman.

And then the father owed me a finger but he did not want to pay.

I have read enough of
Stedman’s Medical Dictionary
and other medical books of information to know that cutting half of my finger off was not what saved me. At that point the poisoning was in all of my bloodways. Even if the father had taken my whole arm off it wouldn’t have mattered.

What saved me was a midnight tap on the trailer door and the grandma-ma’s voice. What saved me was a soup she made from the bones of the murdered deer. That, and a few little other things she ran back to get after she saw my situation. A soothing paste she brought for my finger, that smelled like lemon and mint and Clorox, and her delicate stitches in place of the ones made by the father. She used low-test fishing line, she said she found it in the trailer on the day she cleaned the horribleness away. She said she found other things too.

One of the Fanta children sat on the edge of the bed watching me with quiet eyes and holding a flashlight for her. Another stood guard at the trailer door. Before she left she pointed toward the Knocking Hammer with bared teeth and said, “No good.”

GOT BETTER. And when I was well enough I went looking for the grandma-ma. I found her near the cull pile squatting by the bodies, doing something with a spoon and what it turned out she was doing was digging out a cow eye. She stood up and tilted her head toward a plastic bucket. She said, “Carry it for me?” It was half full of eyeballs and walking flies.

I followed behind her thinking she was going to the campground area but she turned down a little trail zigzagging through thicker scrub and kept walking. She said, “Everybody’s packing up. Apple season’s early. Beats peaches. I’m leaving out of here too.”

She said, “Your daddy has a flat ass. Flattest ass I’ve seen on a man. I don’t like men with flat asses.”

She said, “Do you know what hoo-doo is?”

We came to a shed. Flies swarmed around a set of yellow buckets arranged in a semicircle. I smelled the dip vat fumes.

She said, “Some people think I’m in with that hoo-doo, they come to me for things. I tell them to their faces, you can give me your money and I’ll make you a Custom Creation, but it doesn’t have any powers beyond what’s in the intended’s mind to begin with. But I
can
make things that will scare the face off a man. Since I was little I liked to make such things. I was raised by an auntie that used to whip me with an extension cord. It started with her.”

She said, “I’ll make one for you if you like.”

There was a loop of string hanging out of the dip vat liquid. She pulled it and up came a headless chicken carcass, its raw wings raised like a marionette. She said, “It doesn’t look like much, but neither does a hand grenade.”

She said, “A man lost his life in that trailer of yours. I know it for a fact. He left behind what no man leaves behind unless he’s dead. You want to see it? I sun-dried it but it will get its shape back once it soaks awhile.”

She pulled out some waxed paper and in the waxed paper was a dried-up thing looking like a very old hot dog with a helmet on.

She watched me looking at it. She said, “You want to help me scare the living hell out of a couple of people? They’re people you know.”

E WERE up in Vicky’s room. She had a canopy bed with severe dust-chunks hanging. There were bowls and plates of half-eaten crusted food laying around and the drawers of her dresser were half shut with clothes hanging out. Piles of clothes were everywhere. Some had the price tags still on them but they were balled up anyway. There were pictures taped to the walls of models with insane amounts of eye makeup doing pissed-off poses, and there were models who looked like they were flowing free in fields of tall dandelions, and there was a hot pink chipboard sign that said T
HE
S
WINGING
C
HICKS
A
LL
G
O
J
AY
J
ACOBS
!!! It was a bus sign. Stolen, obviously. So many things about Vicky were stolen. Even the cross that hung from her neck was shoplifted. She said she was very glad to have her purse back because it was her trained purse, the best shoplifting purse ever made. All she had to do was lean against it a certain way and it opened and then when she leaned back it closed. She was going through it, an unlit cig hanging from her mouth.

She said, “Where’s the stash box?”

She said, “Where’s my lighter?”

She said, “What the fuck is the deal with this sock monkey?”

The super-fine guy stood at the doorway staring at me. Her brother. This was the Stick.

She said, “Get OUT of my ROOM!”

He pointed down at his bare feet. They were on the other side of the threshold. “I’m not in your room, am I?” He was eating from a bag of Oven Joy bread. Just mashing pieces of white bread into his mouth. He said, “What’s wrong with her, Vic?”

Vicky got up, slammed the door, and hooked the lock. She said, “Where’s the stash?” She dug around her bedroom for another lighter and I told her what went down at the Diggy’s Dumpster.

She said, “Is the stash still in the Dumpster?”

I shrugged. “Probably.”

She said, “Well, we have to go get it.” And then she told me my crying was really getting on her nerves and I needed to stop before she got violent. I wanted to stop. In my mind I had stopped, but my eyes stayed wet, wouldn’t stop spilling over. She never asked me why I was crying and I was thankful because I didn’t know if the answer had words and if it did have words I doubted that she would listen to them.

A ruler poked up into the door crack and knocked the hook out of the latch-eye. In he walked, in he strolled. The Stick. His jeans hung low on his hips and his eyes were brown and his nose was a little bit smashed looking and his mouth was full and all of him looked the way suede feels. He said, “Who are you?”

Vicky said, “GET OUT!”

Downstairs the hack-coughing began. “Vidjki! Shit and goddamn! VIDJKI!”

The Stick said, “Susie’s hungry. It’s your turn.”

Vicky said, “I don’t care if he eats.”

The Stick said, “Yes you do.”

She said, “No I don’t.”

Louder hacking. “VIDJKI! SHIT AND GODDAMN, YOU KNOW!”

The Stick looked at me. “Who are you? Seriously.”

“VIDJKI! SHIT AND GODDAMN I DIE!!”

Vicky said, “Don’t talk to him, Roberta. Don’t say anything to him. And don’t give him anything. I’ll be right back.” Then she told the Stick to fuck himself and walked out the door.

He had a boy-smell coming off of him that made my stomach undulate. It was making me lean toward him and I could not stop it. He said, “Can I talk to you about something? Let’s go out on the roof. You scared of heights at all?” He was staring at my face with the usual curiosity. I turned away. He said, “You ever seen a satellite? You should come out on the roof.”

I followed him and my eyes spilled harder. Everything was blurred and mixed together. We went into his room. The boy-smell was very strong and it made my legs wobble a little. The walls were bare and painted brown, a chocolate brown, and his mattress was on the floor and the floor was covered with piles of clothes and books and papers and there was a truck-tire inner tube inflated. It had a lamp beside it.

He told me to take off my shoes. That it’s easier to walk on the roof barefoot and he went out the window first, and then turned and waited for me.

The warm composition shingles felt good on my feet. I hadn’t climbed anything in so long. I followed him up around the dormer to the peak of the roof. We sat for a few moments without talking. Vicky’s house was nearly at the top of the hill that was opposite mine. I looked across toward Dunbar and saw the yellow Diggy’s sign lit up and turning. I knew that right across the street was Black Cat Lumber, although I couldn’t see it, and I knew that behind Black Cat Lumber, life was going on in the mud of East Crawford.

The Stick gave me a cigarette. He lit his and then lit mine. He said, “So what’s the deal?”

I shrugged. I was grateful for the cigarette. My eyes spilled harder from the gratitude. I blew a smoke ring and it hung in the still night air. Above us were the random pale stars.

He said, “Seriously.”

I said, “I’m a fucked-up person.”

He said, “I mean with the cops.”

I heard Vicky screaming, “ROBERTA! RO-BER-TA!” The Stick said, “She won’t come out here. She can’t take the roof. If you want to get away from her this is the best place.” I heard her shouting my name from the dormer window. And then in a few moments I saw her backing up in the front yard and spotting me and having an instant fit. The Stick started laughing a little and I started laughing a little too, and I thought about jumping, wondered how bad it would be, and wished there was concrete around the house instead of bushes and grass.

Vicky shouted, “You’re STUPID, Roberta! STUPID! He’s a USER, Roberta! My brother’s a USER!” I couldn’t think of anyone who wasn’t.

A little bit later Vicky left the house with her trained purse hanging from her shoulder. She was dressed up. She had her crinkle-vinyl boots on. She hollered, “I’m going to get it. Because obviously I’m the ONLY ONE WHO CARES! You’re going keep your promise to me, Roberta. When I come back you are going to keep it or I am going to KILL YOU!”

“What promise?” said the Stick. “Where’s she going?”

I said, “How come you’re talking to me?”

He said, “What do you mean?”

I stood up and walked the roof ridge with my arms out until I came to the very edge.

I looked up at the dead pinholes that barely glittered. I said, “You ever think about killing yourself?”

He said, “All the time.”