Grundish & Askew (18 page)

Turleen pulls the Sordes Pilosus from behind her ear and holds it between her fingers. She daydreams about what the fancy cigarette would taste like. Lost in the smoky reverie, Turleen forgets about Grundish’s request.

“Turleen!” snaps Grundish. “Can you do that for me? Can you bring the car into the garage when we’re ready to go?”

“Of course I can, Sonny. Why you getting so snippy?” She tucks the cigarette back behind her ear and starts filling a freezer bag with chopped steak.

“Askew, do you need to do anything before we go?

“I probably oughta go to the little boys’ room,” says Askew, trying to be cute for Dora. He winks at her and she offers a slight smile in return. “And maybe we both should get back into our old clothes.”

“Yeah,” agrees Grundish. “We don’t want to draw too much attention when we’re in the open. But I’ve grown to like these sock garters. And, have you tried on the sandals in Buttwynn’s closet? Incredible. I think I’m taking some garters and sandals with me.”

“Fuckin-A right,” says Askew. “There’s something comforting about wearing both the garters and the sandals, isn’t there?”

“You need anything, darling?” Grundish asks Dora.

“Nah.” She half-grins a snaggle-toothed smile. Her teeth crowd and cross each other, a random jumble of chipped ivory bits that are otherwise well-maintained, not stained. “Just don’t hurt me or nothing.”

“Fair enough. Let’s plan on being out of here within the hour then.” Grundish leaves the room to begin filling a duffle bag with necessities.

And they are on the road again.
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Turleen drives the van with Dora at her side in the passenger seat. The boys stay out of sight on the floor in the back of the vehicle. Turleen hands Dora a cigarette from one of Askew’s half-empty packs. Dora kicks her bare feet up on the dashboard and lights up.

“Did we really have to leave the El Camino?” Askew asks, sticking his whack-a-mole of a head over the back of the middle-row seats in Buttwynn’s Toyota Sienna van. Grundish’s fist is the mallet that pounds the head back down. It pauses, hovering near the top of the seat, waiting for the next pop of the head

“Get your fucking head down,” says Grundish from his crouched position in the middle row of minivan seats. “We need to stay out of sight. Do you wanna get us busted on the way to our safehouse?”

“No, I don’t wanna get us busted,” answers Askew. “I just don’t see why we had to leave my car behind. We could still go back and get it. I fucking love that car.” The El Camino sits abandoned in the Buttwynn garage. Grundish already explained to Askew that the sheriff’s office will have an all-points bulletin for the car, which is registered in Askew’s name and in which an entire trailer park full of witnesses saw them flee. “By the way,” continues Askew, “you’re virtually assuring that they can pin Buttwynn’s death on us by leaving the car there.”

“I already thought about that,” says Grundish. Crouching in the back of the van is awkward for the large man. The frustration born of the discomfort makes him itch with prickly heat. He readjusts his position and straightens his legs. Despite his growing frustration, he speaks to Askew in a calm voice. “Like I told you already, there were things I had to weigh. For example: was it more important for us to clean up the mess at the house or get out of there before somebody else showed up? We can’t take any chances with being caught. Another example: should we kill the kid or leave a witness alive who will undoubtedly be able to identify us? My conscience won that one easily. So, you see, we’re leaving a dead body, our fingerprints and DNA all over the house, and an eyewitness who can identify us, to boot. Oh yeah, and I left a big Turd Burglar calling card in the toilet. We’re already wanted for murder. At this point, it don’t make a bit of difference if we left the El Camino there or not. They’re gonna know it was us in that house. The smart money says take Buttwynn’s car, which, of course, will not be reported stolen until his family returns and sees the mess in their house. So you see, telling me that you have a sentimental attachment to your car is a futile argument.”

“It is not
feudal
. I love that car more than I love most people. If you weren’t such an asshole sometimes, you would realize how important it is to me.” Askew pops his head up over the seat again and casts a demented, popeyed glare at Grundish. The closed-hand mallet whacks the mole back into its hole.

“The question is this: is your car worth us all getting arrested?” Grundish readjusts his position again, trying to discover a more comfortable manner in which to twist himself. He presses his mouth against the tiny gap between the middle and the passenger side seat and speaks into the crack. “Because if we were to go driving around in that car, we’d be busted before the second track of your
Gimme Back My Bullets
eight-track tape is over. They’d take your car. They’d take your Skynyrd tape. And they’d take you, me, and probably even Turleen to jail. Is that what you want? ‘Cause if it is, then let’s have Turleen turn around, and we’ll just go back to the house. Is that what we should do? God damn, Askew! I’m always having to watch out for you and clean up your messes. And now you’re wanting to go back and get us all caught. You are always trying to fuck up my shit. Man, it would be so much easier if I didn’t have to deal with all this nonsense sometimes. Do you want us all to go back so you can have your car, even if it means getting everybody thrown in prison?”

“No,” Askew’s voice trembles. “It ain’t what we should do. I’m just saying that you ain’t being sensitive to my feelings about that car. I love that fucking car. And I just wish you wouldn’t blow me so much shit about it. You want I should go away and just leave you alone?”

“Where in the fuck would you go, anyway?”

“Well, I could find my way south and live in the swamps. Build myself a little chickee hut or something.”

“Yeah, and how’d you eat? You ain’t got sense enough to find anything to feed yourself.”

“I’d find things,” says Askew, his voice hitching. “I’d hunt. I don’t need no nice food with ketchup. Nobody’d bother me. And if I wanted to keep a car, nobody would try to take it away from me.”

Grundish hesitates, breathes deep. “Fuck,” he sighs. “I been mean, haven’t I? Hey, I’m sorry we have to leave it there.” His tone softens into vocal putty. “It’s just that it’s the only choice we really had, ya know. I know it was a sacrifice
^[33]
on your part. And I appreciate it, Bro.”

Askew, sensing an advantage, tells Grundish, “Well if you don’t want me, you just have to say so. I’ll go off into the swamps right now. I’ll go live down there all by myself. And I won’t get no more cars taken away from me.”

“I said I was sorry,” says Grundish, and meaning it. “Jesus Christ, Askew. Out in the swamps, you’d starve. You’d get eaten by gators. Somebody’d shoot you. Nope. You stay with me.”

“Well, you could be more considerate of my feelings. Why couldn’t you just explain it to me in the first place why we had to leave my car, instead of just dragging me off and not telling me your reasons. I mean, I get it now. But, yeah, you was just being mean there for a while.”

“Well,” Grundish’s tone hardens again. “I done said I was sorry. Are you gonna keep grumbling about it, or, are you gonna let it go?”

“I told you, I’m letting it go.”

“Good. ’Cause you’re the only friend I got.” Grundish cocks his hip up and jams his hand under his waistband to peel his sweat-moistened nutsack from his thigh and readjust the equipment. “Now shut your pie-hole, and let me take a nap. And stay out of sight until we get to wherever it is that Turleen is taking us.” Grundish closes his eyes and lays his face on the floor. His cheek rests on a cool strip of metal track for one of the seats. He pretends it is the tile floor that provided him with so much relief earlier. With nothing better to do, Grundish effortlessly transitions into napping mode.

Askew lies on his side in the row behind Grundish, glaring at the back of the seats in front of him. The ebb and flow of his emotions drag him from warm appreciation for having a friend like Grundish to childish resentment about leaving the El Camino behind. The tender feeling for his best friend overpowers the resentment, smothers it. Askew, too, closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep, smiling and thinking to himself,
Grundish always watches out for me. I ain’t never had a brother, but I bet that this is what they’s like with each other. Pissing each other off sometimes but mostly feeling good about each other.

In the far southeast corner of the United States is Florida, a peninsula dangling limply from the rest of the country. Florida is sometimes referred to as the nation’s genitals. In the center of the nation’s dong is a largish, ruptured varicose vein known as Polk County. Sitting right smack in the middle of the burst vein is an infected carbuncle, a little pus-filled town by the name of Bartow. State Route 60 funnels drivers out of Bartow and sends them on their way to the east coast of Florida. Just east of Bartow, on a small side road running off of Route 60 is Jerry Mathers’ Foreign Car Parts and Service. It is really more of a junkyard than an auto garage or service station. Just beside the front gate is a rusted metal sign that says “Jerry Mathers’ Foreign Car Parts and Service.” On the left side of the sign is a buck-toothed beaver with two of his paws giving the thumbs up
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. Two dilapidated Corvairs sitting on concrete blocks flank the front gate. An eight-foot tall cement wall encloses the yard, all five acres of it. The wall is covered with moss and kudzu vines and has holes chipped into it in places. Small trees grow from some of the holes. But the wall stands sturdy against the elements and intruders. Densely packed about the property are countless sickly Volkswagen vans in various states of decrepitude and a motley collection of other broken down vehicles.

Inside the junkyard’s concrete walls, Randy Buttwynn’s van sits next to a large metal building. Randy Buttwynn has nothing to do with the van anymore. Buttwynn is a bloody mass of putrescible flesh patiently waiting for the rest of the Buttwynn clan to return home and discover his cadaverous condition. The
de facto
owners of the van, Grundish and Askew, are, in their own way, dead to the world, sleeping the coma-like, dreamless sleep that sets upon those who reach a point of complete exhaustion.

A sore-covered donkey uses his mouth to pull weeds from the ground around Buttwynn’s van. His few remaining teeth mash the vegetation into a pulpy meal. He tries to swallow it. Instead, he suffers a bout of retro-peristalsis and regurgitates a compact, shit-brown lump of waste product from his stomach. The ground around his feet is littered with the brownish lumps. The donkey wheezes. His breathing is labored and his sides suck in, looking like they are trying to meet at the beast’s core and touch each other. His brown hide stretches tight across the harshly-defined ribs. He has lived for a long time and his years are kicking the hell out of him. The name of the donkey: Alf the Sacred Burro.

Alf the Sacred Burro was tethered to the large metal building in the center of the junkyard complex. He had been tethered there for years. Providing shade and a constant source of food for Alf is a Dwarf Fuji Red Apple tree. While sitting under the apple tree and contemplating the flies buzzing about and landing on his snout, an idea struck Alf. He usually doesn’t like ideas. Ideas mean thinking, and sometimes physical effort. And it was always easier for Alf to just hang out under the apple tree and eat the fruit that fell to the ground. But this day he said to himself,
maybe I should go check out the rest of this place. All I ever see is this little patch of land that I am tied to.
With his remaining teeth, Alf gnawed through the rope that restricted his freedom and he set out to learn more about the property around him. And then he regurgitated some of the hemp rope that he swallowed. Alf left the safety and comfort of his designated area and explored the property. Staying close to the side of the building, Alf ventured around the corner, settling on the spot just outside of Buttwynn’s van as the place most interesting to a sick donkey. The remainder of his tether dangles from the metal building, its end frayed and moist with stinking donkey slobber.

Inside the metal building, Turleen is giving Jerry Mathers a firm hug and breathing her hot breath into his ear. Jerry has to stoop his emaciated body to accept the embrace. Tall, lanky, and skeletal are all words that apply to his appearance but still fail to adequately describe the man. The skin on his face is stretched taut like a thin protective barrier over the bone. Buck-teeth jut out from the skull, just barely anchored in bloody gums. Sunken eyes smolder in the sockets; the eyes are given the appearance of even greater depth by the purplish-black bags beneath them. The hunched over wisp of a man is hideous in his appearance. But his face radiates a peace and happiness in reaction to Turleen’s presence. The unadulterated joy he experiences transforms his appearance from concentration camp survivor to that of a child waking up on Christmas morning. Jerry wears a knit Peruvian beanie cap with tassels dangling from the side. He pulls the hat off and shivers even though it is 95-degrees outside.

“Look at you,” he says, stepping back to give Turleen the up and down, “always forever young. Always a beauty.” He pulls back and straightens up to his full height of six feet and seven inches. The sweater he wears dangles from his shoulders in the same manner it would from a wire hanger. “Well, how does it feel?” he asks. “How does it feel to see ole’ Jerry Mathers after all these years?”

“It feels real nice, it does, Jer Bear.” Turleen’s cheeks flush, and sweat forms on the back of her neck. She touches her hair and smiles at Jerry. Instead of talking, they gaze into each other’s eyes.

Jerry tears himself from the gaze and looks toward Dora. “And what’s your name, young lady?”

“Her name’s Dora, it is,” Turleen answers for Dora. Dora nods at Jerry and winks. “She don’t talk much, but she’s sweet. Poor thing got messed up in my boys’ problems, she did, and got dragged right along with us.”