CRUDDY (29 page)

AVERNS ARE wonderful things. Sometimes the walls are made of alabaster and sometimes gypsum. Sometimes other things. The cavern that was Gy-Rah’s lair was enormous. The Powder Monkey’s work had made it an easy stroll down stepped walkways to a mysterious world that had once been an underground river. There were domed places, oval indentations where loose stones swirled in the ancient eddies, cutting the stone above and below in the most elegant way, shapes very Roman. Shapes you see on
Gladiator The
ater,
Channel 11, Saturdays at two.

While the father explained my job to me, handed me the gun called the Luger, told me how to hold it and fire it, my mind was drifting to the movie called
The Time Machine
where monsters with glowing red eyes and bloody teeth freaked around in worlds underground. The main girl in the movie was named Weena and she didn’t know the god she worshipped was created by the monsters. A god that opened its loving mouth and then sucked you into the meat-saw room. There were very obvious clues that made you shout at the TV, saying “No, Weena! No!” and as I half listened to the father explain the Navy way of flushing an enemy out of hiding, I wondered if someone somewhere was yelling warnings at me. Someone watching the movie of my life and shouting, “No! No! Turn back before they eat your legs!”

“What you have to do, Clyde, is simple. You got to go in there and flush him out. I don’t care how you do it, but don’t goddamn kill him. You can wing him but do not kill him, all right? Flush him into the clear and I’ll take it from there. Go. No. Do it. Here.” And so I had the gun. A loaded gun handed to me with trust and confidence.

But I didn’t turn back. I entered the Lair of the Sequined Genius with a gun in my hand. Weak lights flickered in the descending blackness. I was surprised by the coolness of the air, surprised by the little sounds of dripping. A bit of water still passed through parts of the cave. Condensation made the pipe handrail slick to the touch.

As I walked, I wondered if I really could shoot the man in the short-shorts. There were so many other people I’d rather shoot at. And I was distracted by this thought when the lights went off.

Blackness.

“Psssst!”

An amplified whisper bounced and echoed around me.

“Pssst! You. Troglodyte. Abomination. I see you.”

The sound came from everywhere at once. Whispers though a microphone can be so horrifying. Little whispered words and little evil insults.

“Pollution. Poison. Carrion.”

A flame flickered behind a hoard of stalagmites.

The hissing voice of Gy-Rah said, “I see the gun. I see the gun clearly. Were you really planning on shooting me, you revolting pygmy?” The fire flicker went out. Gy-Rah laughed. From the blackness he whispered, “Take aim now.”

It was quite a lucky shot. I didn’t hit him but the blast made him holler, “Ooh, my balls! Ooh, my balls!” The lights came on and I saw him clutching his sequined privates. He’d clipped himself on a stalagmite.

“My ointment! You have activated my dark itching! I must have my ointment!” In the pale light I saw he was badly afflicted with a weepy scaly rash that thickened his eyelids and circled his elbows and from the way he was wriggling I could tell there were some other bothersome areas as well.

“You must run at once to Mother and get my ointment or I will go mad. The luminous green balls of genius which roll in my brain inform me I must surrender. Oh this itches! Tell me what you want! Speak!”

“The dog,” I said.

“Dog?”

“The white dog.”

“Peanut?”

“Give her to me.”

“She is yours! My ointment! Go!”

“And I need the suitcase.”

“The—”

“The blue suitcase full of money.”

“Yes.”

“I need it.”

“My itching! I implore you.”

“The suitcase.”

“There is a complication.”

I shot the gun again. I was really enjoying shooting off the gun. There was a ricochet sound. Some chunks fell off the cavern walls.

“I’ll take you to it,” said Gy-Rah. He put his hands up and waddled his behind as he walked ahead of me. This is how he came out of the cavern. The way I’d seen prisoners do it a milllion times.

The father popped up from behind the car and smiled very hugely at me. With his glowing cig clamped between his teeth he was clapping his hands. Clap, clap, clap, for a job well done. “Shit, Clyde! Damn, Clyde! Goddamn great, Clyde! Balls-out son of a bitching Navy all the way, Clyde!”

And then I shot him.

Gy-Rah ran. The father rolled on the asphalt clutching his leg. “Shit, sniper! Clyde! I been shot!”

He was twisting his head like an upside-down rooster to see where the shot had come from even though he was looking straight at me when I fired at him. His eyes saw me but his mind refused the knowledge.

I ran to him and said, “Car keys! Car keys!” He heard the urgency in my voice and tossed them to me without hesitation. Maybe he thought I was going to roll the car between him and his assassin. Maybe he thought I was wanting to shield him from harm. What I did was start the car and back over his foot.

Gy-Rah pounded on the office door. It flew open, he was yanked in, and Pammy was shoved out. The door slammed and locked.

Pammy looked sick. She wobble-walked toward the father. Her hair was deteriorated to the very scalp, looking like a couple of wispy feathers on a just-hatched bird. She closed one eye to get focus and her legs gave out.

I drove fast and talked loudly to Cookie, saying I would pull over in a minute, I’d pull over and get her out. I jumped out of the car, popped open the trunk, and of course it was empty.

For a while I lay on the hood of the car, staring up into the darkness. Staring up at the stars. The thousands and thousands and thousands of stars. Some fall and leave trails. Some go out without anyone even noticing.

STOPPED THE car and Vicky woke up. She said, “Where the fuck are we? I’m fucking starving.”

“The Top o’ the Pass,” said the Great Wesley. “It is real.”

I stepped out into the cool night air. Vicky said, “There a bathroom?”

“Around back,” I said. “That way.”

All of the windows were broken out and the door hung half torn from its hinges, but the carefully placed stones in the wall were still there. And I walked to them and put my hands upon them and they were cold and they refreshed me. It was just an hour or two before sunrise. Vicky came back. “I can’t pee back there. Too weird.” She tramped into the bushes.

The Turtle got out and the Stick got out but the Great Wesley said he did not feel capable. The Turtle leaned into the car and gently urged him and the Great Wesley gently refused and I felt a sad tightness in my throat from their tenderness toward each other. Their soft voices twining.

The Stick walked over to me and put his hands near mine on the wall. He said, “This has been the weirdest night.”

Vicky came back. “I’m so fucking hungry!” She poked her head inside the doorway of the dead gas station store. “Smells pukey. Let’s go.”

And we drove down the other side of the mountain and the car filled up with cigarette smoke and Vicky named the things she wanted to eat, Tiger Tails and Chick-o-stix and the list went on. And I freaked her by taking my hands off the steering wheel and lifting my feet from the pedals and saying “Wheee!”

“Fuck, Roberta! You’re sick, Roberta!” said Vicky.

And the rays of morning light fell around us as we rolled out of the dark mountains and into the flat yellow cowboy world. Irrigating jets pulsed over the fields. Migrants in beat-apart hats bent and picked. The Great Wesley and the Turtle were sleeping. Vicky said, “Why the fuck are you crying? We need a gas station. We need a store.”

In the rearview mirror I saw the Stick staring out the window. He looked so pale and worn out but his eyes were alive, taking in the openness, the pale colors, the immensity of the morning sky. He was taking the new world in.

“Fuck, Roberta!” said Vicky. “What are you slowing down for? Drive!”

I stopped alongside a field and called to two migrants. Women who stood up when they heard me ask about the grandma-ma.

One woman said, “¿
Que
? ¿
Que quieras
?”

The other, “
La abuela. La bruja.
”

“¿
La bruja
? ¿
La abuela mysteriosa, sí
?”

“The grandma-ma,” I said. “Little. Very old.”

“
Sí. Sí. Muerta.
”

I said, “What?”

The first woman put her hands together in a praying way and pointed up. Her friend slapped her hand and pointed down.

The smell of the stockyards was too much for Vicky. “Roll up the window!” But the smell was the reason I kept driving slow. The creature smell so powerful and alive and lonely and hopeless.

The Great Wesley sat up. “I was dozing, I’m afraid. What did I miss?”

“The grandma-ma is dead,” said the Stick.

I turned down a road that got smaller and smaller, running along the railroad tracks, running along the canal. I was heading toward the Knocking Hammer, but it was the train I wanted to see. I heard it pounding behind me. I stopped the car and jumped out.

Vicky screamed just a moment before the whistle split the air. I jumped away from the engine onto the gravel between the tracks and the canal, wanting the exhilaration, needing the exhilaration. I kneeled beside the roaring train and I felt nothing.

A hand grabbed my arm and I nearly lost my balance. The Stick had dodged with me. He dodged the train right behind me. I never even saw him. He was shouting something at me but I couldn’t hear him over the train.

“What?”

He cupped his hands. “Do you think we have a chance?”

The train shot away. Going balls-out full speed on such a beautiful stretch of track, such a clean straightaway on such a clear day, the thunder and the roar faded and was gone.

“Do you?” asked the Stick.

I shook my head no.

He put his arm around me. I thought he wanted to comfort me but the Stick was falling over. He was in a lot of pain. Something inside of him had gone very wrong.

The Turtle helped the Great Wesley up the embankment. I was shocked by how the Great Wesley looked in the daylight. How washed-out and frail he was, how gingerly he moved his slippered feet. He looked around him blinking and he made me think of Cookie. The way her intelligent eyes blinked at the surrounding world, her ears up, the interested way she sniffed the air.

“Lovely,” said the Great Wesley. “Perfect. Ideal.”

His bathrobe fell open and in the sunlight his white skin and sudden dinger were exposed, and I saw the huge scar running up the center of his chest. It had been violently stitched. The procedure is called cracking. The procedure is last-ditch emergency and it is called cracking the chest.

“Wesley,” I said.

“FUCK!” said Vicky when she caught up to us. She placed her hands on her own chest and stepped forward and back in horror. “Fuck! Fuck! What happened?”

The Great Wesley said, “My intentions were good but my aim was bad.”

“What the fuck does
that
mean?”

“My dear girl,” said the Great Wesley, “I missed.”

And he sat down quite suddenly. And the Stick was down and then the Turtle and then me. The last one standing was Vicky.

She said, “What the fuck are you guys
doing
? We have to go, man!”

I said, “Where?”

The Great Wesley pulled out the very last of the ancient substance and a slender bone pipe with elaborately carved vines winding around it. He said, “I should like a good smoke with all of you, as all of you are dear, dear friends of mine, and I should like to hear the conclusion of the tale of the Hillbilly Woman, which I assume was a very happy one.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Not really.”

“Of course it was,” said Wesley. “You are here with us, aren’t you?”

“Fuck this,” said Vicky. “I vote no. I’m not staying here. Where
is
this? This isn’t even anywhere!” But in the end she sat with us. In the end she stayed.