Grundish & Askew (13 page)

Grundish samples the steak and becomes silent again, staring at the muted TV. As he drifts off to sleep, Grundish smiles and thinks to himself,
life ain’t so bad when I got Askew around. No, it really ain’t.

“Wake up! Wake up!” Askew jumps about the room, bouncing off of the furniture and shouting at Grundish. “The goat of day is butting dawn! No ifs or buts! Bang! Come on you girl! Pimp! Punk! Hangman! Run with Me! Let’s run!” Askew, drunk from sitting all night sipping at dark beer with a straw while Grundish slept, dances in front of the television in an outfit from Buttwynn’s closet not unlike the threads sported by Grundish. The red silk robe, too small and tight around Askew’s thick chest is left untied and open, revealing B-cup man-boobs and a hairy, rounded belly. The black dress socks are stretched over the thick calves, the elastic in the cheap socks pulled to the point of breaking, tiny white strands of snapped elastic thread sticks out randomly from the fabric. The socks, irreparably misshapen, only remain held up through the use of a pair of Buttwynn’s sock garters. The garters, a size too small for Askew, press deep on the skin of his leg, just below the knee, leaving a white ring of bloodless flesh just around the edge of the band.

“Wha? What the fuck?” His back, neck and shoulders ache from sleeping in an awkwardly twisted position in the chair all night. The fog of a fresh awakening clouds his thoughts. Grundish rubs his eyes and slaps himself lightly on the cheeks. “What time is it?”

“It’s time to dump your lumpy ass out of bed, Monkey Head!” shouts Askew, still leaping about, a grotesque rotund gnome of a man, scantily clad and jiggling obscenely. His chest heaves out and retracts quickly in a spastic fit of hyperventilation, nostrils opening and closing like gills. He rips and roars and grits his teeth. “It’s morning. It’s light out. It’s time to get up.” Askew grabs a half-full mug of beer with his hand and chugs it.

Grundish eyes Askew suspiciously, watching him set the beer down and use his hands to catapult a Blue Llama up into his mouth. “I thought you were never going to use your hands again.”

“I never said I’d never use them again,” snaps Askew, still breathing heavily. “I said I wouldn’t use them until I mastered the use of my feet. Or something like that anyway. Besides, I took a shit this morning and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to wipe my ass. I tried unrolling toilet paper onto my heel and then squatting down on it and wiggling around but I just made a nasty mess. So, at that point, I decided I had mastered the use of my feet enough to begin using my hands again.”

“Good enough. I hope you washed your feet off.”

“Naah. I didn’t feel like it.
^[25]
I’ll shower tonight.”

Askew draws in a large drag off of his Blue Llama and inhales deeply. He tilts his head back and exhales a thick plume of smoke and laughs. The laugh, that of a madman, continues and mutates into a raspy, jagged, coughing spasm. Askew, his hands clamped over his mouth, hacks and chokes and gags almost to the point of vomiting when he finally settles into deep congested breathing and sits down into his seat to catch his breath. “Damn,” he says, looking down into his hand, “I ain’t never seen one that big.”

“What is it?” Grundish asks, half-afraid to find out.

“Look.” Askew holds out his hand. In his palm is an off-whitish lump, looking like an oversized yogurt-covered raisin drizzled with spittle. “They ain’t even usually half this big. I’m almost tempted to save this one and put it in a jar or something. Maybe call Ripley’s Believe it or Not, I don’t know.”

“I see it, but I still don’t know what it is.”

“It’s a lump of throat cheese
^[26]
, Bro. Ain’t you never coughed one of these up?”

“I ain’t never seen anything like that. It don’t seem right. You really ought to get that checked out. And like I told you before, you need to quit smoking.”

“Nah. Fuck that noise. It’s just throat cheese. I hork ’em up all the time. Ain’t nothing wrong with throat cheese except that if you smash it, it lets off a stench that’ll knock a buzzard off a shit wagon. Here, check it out.” Askew smashes the firm, slick nugget between his thumb and middle finger and waves it in the direction of Grundish.

The smell, like blood, halitosis, and fish, finds its way to Grundish, sticks its stinky finger into his mouth and touches the back of his throat, triggering a forceful gag reflex. “Urrrp!” The acid bile makes it just into the back of his mouth and Grundish manages to swallow it back down. “Get that fucking thing away from me or when I puke, I’ll make sure to do it on you.”

A hurt look washes over Askew’s mug. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Bro. I just got kind of wound up.” He flicks his hand toward the wall opposite him. The mucilaginous tonsillolith splats on the Buttwynn family portrait, a direct hit on Mr. Buttwynn’s face, and leisurely makes its way down the portrait, finding a comfortable final resting place at the point where the non-glare glass cover meets the frame. “Seriously, I don’t know what came over me. I guess I’m kind of delirious from the dark beer and lack of sleep.”

“It’s all right, Bro. Just keep your fucking throat cheese to yourself from now on.”

“You got it, Pal.” Askew smiles a moronic gap-toothed grin, relieved to be forgiven so quickly. “I’ve got something I gotta show you. It’s bad ass. Wait right here. All right? Don’t go anywhere.”

Askew leaves the room. Askew returns. Grundish is bent over with his legs straight and his hands flat on the floor. He returns to an upright stance, grabs his chin and the back of his head and twists it to crack the neck, making a sound like somebody stepping on bubble wrap.

“Check this baby out.” In Askew’s hands is a two-foot long flintlock rifle. The gun’s stock is cut off just inches below the trigger, leaving just enough reddish wood for Askew to wrap his hand around it. A thick barrel, flared at the end, is held to the ornately-carved wood stock and points in the general direction of Grundish. “It’s called a blunderbuss.”

“Where’d you get that fucked up gun? How do you know what it’s called? And stop pointing the fucking thing at me.” Grundish steps to the side of the gun.

“I found it in Buttwynn’s den. It was mounted above the fireplace. And chill out. It can’t be loaded if it was mounted on the wall, right?”

“I don’t know,” says Grundish. “Probably not. Just don’t point it at me though. Or I’ll take it away and beat you with it.”

Askew laughs and points the gun away from Grundish. “This here blunderbuss is bad ass. It had a little plaque beneath it on the wall that told all about it. This one was used by sailors and pirates. It was
exspecially
supposed to be used to clear the deck when the pirates would board another ship. They’d load it with rocks and broken glass and nails. The blunderbuss’ll fuck you up,
Bee-yatch
.”

“Put that thing down, Askew. You ain’t never held a gun in your life, and now you’re holding a fucking sawed-off shotgun on steroids. Give me that thing.”

“I do, too, know how to handle this bad-boy. You just pull the cocking thing back.” He half-cocks the flintlock mechanism, points it at the wall, and shouts “
Blam! Blam! Blam!
” He pulls the trigger, releasing the half-cocked hammer. The hammer gently clicks against the flash pan lid and does nothing more. “See, I told you it ain’t loaded.”

“You don’t know shit. Acting like you fired it three times in a row. It ain’t no fucking semi-automatic handgun. It’s like a muzzle loader. You have to reload it after each shot. Give me that thing. You freak me out with it.”

“Here you go, ya’ party pooper.” Askew lobs the blunderbuss at Grundish, who catches it in front of himself with both hands. “Come on, I got more to show you before I crash.” Grundish notices that Askew’s words are becoming more and more slurred.

In the front of the Buttwynn residence is a formal sitting room with an oversized picture window facing the street. Askew pulls back the curtains. Grundish looks out and growls softly.

“Does that look familiar to you?” Askew asks, a cloud of his beer and cigarette breath enveloping him. A devilish grin forms on his face.

Out the picture window, Grundish feasts his eyes on a yellow minivan. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers vanity license plate reads
2GUD4U
. “That’s the van,” Grundish mutters. He growls low, like an animal. “That’s the fucking van. The one with the kids who throw shit at me.” His teeth grind, making a sickening scraping sound. His hands clench and unclench, fingernails leaving pale crescent imprints in the palms of his hands. “That’s the fucking van.”

From the front door of the house across the street exits a teenage boy. He shouts back over his shoulder into the house: “I know, Mom. Do you think I’m a flippin’ retard?...I know!...Jeez, don’t you trust me?...Don’t be stupid, Mom!” He slams the door and walks to the minivan. Inside the house, the mother counts the days until her son reaches the age of majority. She secretly hopes that her son ends up learning a little lesson about disrespecting people. She doesn’t want him to get hurt, but maybe just scared by somebody that isn’t going to put up with his shit.

Grundish stares out the window, staying mostly behind a curtain, and watches as the yellow van pulls out of the driveway and then squeals its tires in front of the Buttwynn’s house. The van is gone but Grundish glares at the space that it occupied, his hands still clenching and releasing, his teeth grinding off enamel. Minutes pass and he silently simmers.

“All right, Buddy,” says Askew, putting his hands on Grundish’s tensed shoulders. “It’s time to move it along. Nothing to see here anymore. Let’s go in and eat some of the breakfast that Old Turleen’s been cooking.”

Slowly, with the guidance of Askew, Grundish moves from the picture window and allows himself to be guided into the kitchen. In the kitchen, a feast of breakfast foods covers the counter. Turleen limps around the kitchen in her red dress, stirring pots on the oven, sprinkling spices on the various dishes and sampling the food here and there. “Well, good morning,” she says to Grundish. “I wondered if you were ever gonna wake up, I did.”

For Grundish the morning is spent eating the smorgasbord cooked by Turleen. She had been mixing and stirring and blanching and grilling and parboiling and chopping and mincing, frying and cooking, stuffing, stewing and searing, infusing and basting and fricasseeing in the kitchen almost the entire time at the house, only taking a brief period of time to doll herself up in Mrs. Buttwynn’s clothes and stopping now and again for a catnap or a glass of wine. On the counter, beside a mostly-empty wine glass, a lit Romeo y Julieta cigar is spiked on a meat thermometer. A trail of smoke wafts from the stogie and mingles with the scents from the foods, giving the room a comforting aroma.

“Turleen,” says Grundish, “not that I don’t appreciate it, but, why are you making all of this food? It’s not like we’re gonna be staying here for more than a day or so.” He cuts a thick chunk of country ham away from the round ring of bone and crams the salty meat into his mouth.

“I’ll tell you something, I will,” says Turleen, pointing a wooden spoon dripping with batter at Grundish. A trail of smoke blows Turleen’s way and stings her eyes. She rubs the incipient tears with her forearm and inhales deeply through her nose. “I ain’t had the opportunity to cook up a decent meal for a hungry man since Uncle Hank was kicked in the head by a pony and his brain swelled up too big for his skull.”

“He was kicked in the head by a pony?” Confused ridges of skin ripple above Grundish’s eyebrows.

“And how. A right short little feller, he was,” says Turleen, alternating between stirring the batter and shaking the spoon in Grundish’s direction for emphasis. “He was short. But, he was a big man, Uncle Hank was. Big on the inside. And big in the pants. And he could eat like a man three times his size. Mostly he just liked Sloppy Joes, he did. But he’d let me cook him anything I wanted to. He couldn’t really taste what I made for him anyway since he bit off his tongue when he was a young ‘un. He just had a little nub of a tongue that couldn’t taste most flavors. But for some reason he could really taste those Sloppy Joes, he could. Here, have some pancakes.” She limps over to the table and sets a plate of flapjacks buried in snozzberries in front of Grundish. “Where’d Leroy go?”

“Leroy?” Grundish laughs. In the entire time he had known Askew, he almost never heard anybody refer to him by his first name. He had always been Askew to Grundish, to friends, to teachers and even to other Askews. Sometimes Grundish called him Douche-nozzle, Fucknuts, or just plain old Scrotum, but never Leroy. Only Turleen ever called him Leroy, and it never failed to make Grundish chuckle. “Oh, yeah.
Askew
. I don’t know, I guess he finally went to sleep.”

“Well, it’s about time. That boy’s been up all night going through these people’s stuff, messing around on their computer and ranting and raving about them. Something about a quarter, or no quarter, or something, it is, that he was raving about. I’m kind of getting worried about that boy, I am. He don’t seem quite right, you know? Kinda tetched, and I haven’t seen him like this before.”

“Well, maybe he just needs some sleep,” says Grundish through a mouthful of some of the best pancakes he ever tasted. “What happened with him when got his face so messed up anyway?”

“Well, I been thinking about that, I have,” says Turleen. She grabs her wine glass to take a sip and realizes it’s nearly empty. She turns it up anyway and drains the few remaining drops into her mouth. “At first I thought those boys was looking me up and down with the bedroom eyes, I did. Like they were ready to start pitching woo with me. But the more I think about it, I think Leroy just kinda went loopy. I think I was trying to excuse that boy’s actions, I do. He just jumped outta the car and started hurting people real bad, calling ’em Fuckers and kicking at ’em. Just kicking ’em real hard and not stopping. Maybe I kinda made it up in my head a little bit that he was protecting me, I did. Maybe. Because when I think about it, I don’t know how they could have even seen me very well, me being in the car and it being dark out and all.”