Petrogypsies (27 page)

I nodded.

“That’s me. ‘The Red Herring of Romance’. He noticed I never, ever had a girlfriend. No dates, no parties, no nothing. I’m so ugly and useless, no woman wants to come close to me.”

“Awww …”

“I have been laid exactly twice in my life, and they were both pity-fucks. I used to take lessons all the time. Thought I could, you know, learn how to be attractive somehow. Dancing lessons, etiquette lessons. Body-building lessons.” He laughed. “Hell, I even took boxing lessons for a while. You know, the manly sport for manly men. Figured that might get me a girl or two. All I got was a broken nose. Still gives me trouble in bad weather.”

He shook his head and staggered back to the cage. “To hell with it. I’m used to it all by now. I quit trying years ago.”

“That why you’re so depressed tonight?”

“Nope. Not exactly. I’m getting terminally drunk tonight because this afternoon the Magnolia figured out how to cut her losses with the dactyls.” He opened the cage door and clucked at Maureen and Sonny until they waddled out to him.

He hooked an arm around Maureen’s neck and hugged her. “See, they’re a lot like me in one important way. They’re failures, too. They’re grown-up birds, look healthy, everything. Just like me. But they don’t reproduce. Don’t even try, as far as we can tell. They’re a genetic dead end. Just like me. Ain’t worth a fuck.” He started to laugh again.

“Aw, Stevie,” I said.

He got himself under control. “The Stone Magnolia’s got me by the
huevos
, Henry Lee. We spent all sorts of money producing these dead ends. Gene-grafting and cloning and all the stuff that goes with it is so horribly expensive you wouldn’t believe it. She wants to see some results. Heck, I can understand that. I want to see some results, too.”

He took another slug from the bottle. “She told me this afternoon she wants to autopsy the birds to find out why they aren’t reproducing. Then we can give the results to the rest of the other schools.”

“Okay, so humor her,” I said. I knew that an autopsy had been performed on Pegleg, but nobody had explained the exact procedure to me, and I hadn’t really thought about it that much. If anything, I thought it was merely a thorough examination, like the one I’d gotten at the clinic. And I sure didn’t know it was only called an autopsy if the victim of it was already dead. I was being a dumb old country boy again. He looked shocked. “What’s the matter? This, uh, autopsy deal gonna hurt ’em?”

He started to laugh, collapsing against the cage. “Hurt them?” he choked out. “
Hurt
them?” Then he started to cry at the same time. Tears streaming into his scraggly beard, he turned and grabbed each bird by the neck. They could have torn him to bloody ribbons with their beaks and claws, but they only screeched and flapped uselessly while he dragged them to the edge of the roof.

I struggled to my feet, and lurched after him. Before I could get to him he’d pulled them to the very edge. He had to let go of Maureen while he shoved Sonny over the edge. She stood there and flapped in confusion until he grabbed her and sent her tumbling after Sonny. Stevie stood wavering and looking down over the edge. I was afraid he’d go over, too, so I grabbed for him, but he slipped out of my hold and ran along the edge.

The dactyls both swooped in a sharp curve back to our level.

They looped and began to come in for a landing on the roof. Stevie picked up a double handful of gravel and threw it as hard as he could at them.

“Go away! Go away! Get out of here, dammit!” They banked away in alarm, then came back for another try.

I got a dozen yards from Stevie before he turned and threw a handful of gravel at me, too. A couple of fairsized pieces hit me in the face. I flinched back and fell down in the process.

The dactyls had circled around and were trying to come in for a landing again. Stevie scooped up more gravel and flung it at them. “Get away!” he screamed. “Don’t come back here! I don’t want you any more!”

I got behind him while he was distracted and wrapped my arms around him. He struggled and twisted, knocking us both to the ground. He sobbed and hit at me while we rolled around on the roof.

“Goddammit, Stevie, just a minute, here!” I cocked a fist back. He was out of control. Didn’t look like he was going to stop until I made him stop.

“Henry Lee, what they’ll do in an autopsy—they’ll kill the birds first. Then they’ll cut them into little pieces and look at the pieces. Sonny and Maureen’ll be dead, and I’ll be alone again.”

* * *

We threw rocks for half an hour, until the birds banked into the darkness and disappeared, screeching mournfully. We waited another half hour to make sure they didn’t try to return.

By then, the bottles were both empty. Stevie said he had another one in the lab, so we fell down the stairs toward it. It was only one floor away, but it seemed like about ten. Neither one of us was navigating real well by that time.

After about five tries, he got his key into the door lock, and we stumbled into the lab. He flicked on a light switch, and started rummaging through his desk drawers. I sat down in the doorway and leaned against the doorframe to rest and get my strength back.

As he triumphantly pulled a fifth out of the lower left-hand drawer, I heard the elevator door opening at the end of the hall.

I leaned out of the doorway to check it out and slipped and hit my chin on the floor. Set the stars to whirling around.

A few seconds later, strong hands pulled me back up to a sitting position.

“Thank you very much,” I said. “Very, very, very, very—”

“Poor fella. Looks likes he’s really messed up.”

“Yeah. Too drunk to even sit. Sad. Very sad.”

I tried to focus on the speakers and finally succeeded.

It was Billy Bob and two other guys, each of them almost too big to fit through the doorway. All of them were in Kaydet uniforms, crew-cutted and ugly enough to make their mothers ashamed.

One of them marched over and picked up Stevie under one arm, neatly grabbing the bottle out of the air when Stevie lost his grip on it.

“Looks like the Herring is kinda out of control, too,” Ugly Number One said.

Billy Bob bent over, put the heel of his hand on Stevie’s forehead and pushed up until they were eyeball to eyeball.

“Hello. Anyone home?” Billy Bob asked pleasantly. He rapped on the side of Stevie’s head.

“What you want?” Stevie returned.

“That C you gave me last semester looked bad. I want an A in your stupid course, little fart.”

“Nope. Not ‘less you earn it.”

Billy Bob bounced Stevie’s head up and down a couple of times. “I wasn’t asking, little fart. I was telling. You give me an A, or you’ll wish you were never born.”

Stevie chuckled weakly. “Too late. I
already
wish I was never born.” He kept chuckling until Billy Bob started bouncing him some more.

I tried to stand up and Ugly Number Two absent-mindedly put a foot in my chest and shoved me onto my back. I grabbed the foot and tried to bite his ankle, but I didn’t have the strength or coordination to pull it up to my mouth. He ignored me.

“I’m serious,” Billy Bob was saying. “This is your extremely last chance to save your ass, Herring.”

“Bite it, Billy Bob,” Stevie said.

Billy Bob lifted Stevie’s head once more and slapped his face, hard enough to send his glasses flying into the corner. Stevie yelped. His expression looked like he had been shocked sober instantly.

“I’m getting tired of asking you nice,” Billy Bob said. He slapped Stevie on the other side of his face, snapping his head practically into his shoulder. I yelled and tried to sit up again, but Ugly Number Two shoved me back. “I can hit you all night,” Billy Bob went on. “That what you want, Herring?”

Stevie’s face crumpled, and he wiggled frantically when Billy Bob raised his open hand again. Billy Bob watched while Stevie kept trying to squirm out of Ugly Number One’s grip. Then he grabbed Stevie by the beard and brought his face close.

“You like this? You want me to keep it up? Or will you give me an A?”

Fresh tears dripped onto Billy Bob’s hand. He raised his other hand.

“Don’t,” Stevie whispered. “Don’t any more. I’ll do it.”

“You’ll give me an A?”

“Yes.”

“You know what happens if you change your mind or say anything about our fun tonight, don’t you?” He slapped Stevie again, harder than the first two times. “That’s what happens. Don’t fuck me up, Herring.”

Stevie upchucked on himself and Ugly Number One. Billy Bob back-pedalled barely in time to keep from getting spewed on.

Cursing, Ugly Number One dropped Stevie on the floor.

Billy Bob’s handsome face went ugly for the first time.

He kicked over the nearest table, sending glassware and other lab equipment crashing to the floor. Ugly Number One tossed Stevie on top of me, where he continued to heave spastically. The smell and the sounds of him made me feel awful nauseated, so I spent the next few minutes concentrating on not puking, myself. I hardly noticed the destruction that was going on around us.

Finally, Stevie and me both got ourselves back under control. We managed to stand up, supporting each other as we inched higher off the floor. God, he smelled awful.

Billy Bob had found a crowbar and was prying off the lock on the door of the refrigerator beside Stevie’s desk.

“No! Don’t do that!” Stevie shouted. Billy Bob looked at him and grinned. The lock popped loose and Billy Bob yanked the refrigerator open.

“Your big-time government research, Herring.”

Stevie started to heave again and fell down.

“I got an idea, Herring,” Billy Bob said. “You aren’t sure I really
deserve
an A, are you? Well, hell, fella, I can mix up formulas with the best of ’em when I set my mind to it. Watch!”

Billy Bob grabbed a half-gallon jug off the top of the refrigerator, one of the few pieces of glass still unbroken in the lab, and set it down on the desk. He started grabbing test tubes out of the refrigerator and emptying them into the bottle.

“Aha! Aha! Ze fiendish mad doctor in his lab, going beyond ze boundaries of science!” he cackled. “Ve vill create ze ultimate chemical and rule ze vorld! Ha, ha, ha, ha!” His retardo buddies laughed along with him.

He threw away about every fourth or fifth test tube unopened, shattering it against the wall.

Stevie retched and moaned beside me.

When he had emptied the refrigerator of test tubes, Billy Bob stoppered the jug and shook it vigorously.

He marched over and squatted beside Stevie. He emptied the sludge in the bottle on top of him. “Here you go, ol’buddy. Did I mix it up right?”

He straightened up. “I get an A in your course, or we’ll do this again, you understand?” He grabbed Stevie by the hair and nodded his head up and down for him. “Ah, you understand. Good. Sorry about the mess. Shouldn’t take you too long to clean up.”

Ugly Number One kicked me in the belly before he stepped over me on the way out.

Stevie didn’t start to weep until we heard the elevator doors close.

I didn’t pay too much attention, because I’d finally lost my personal fight to keep my stomach full, when I got kicked.

We were still lying there all miserable when the campus cops arrived and arrested the hell out of us.

* * *

Doc bailed us out the next morning.

“Looks like you boys have about completely fucked up your lives,” he told us on the front steps of the police station.

Bent over and feeble, we squinted up at him in the unbelievably bright morning light.

“Drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace, creating a public nuisance, destruction of University property, assaulting a couple of police officers—”

“We didn’t assault no police officers,” I said softly, since I didn’t yet seem able to speak louder than a whisper. “They assaulted us. ‘Bout a half a dozen of ’em.”

“Who’s the judge gonna believe? The cops or a couple of drunk assholes? They threw the whole library at you two clowns.”

“You mad at me or somethin’, just say so, Doc.”

He sighed. “Aw, crap. I was young and stupid once upon a time, too. C’mon, let’s go have us a nice big breakfast. Some eggs and hash browns and pancakes, and maybe a juicy ol’ steak.”

He laughed when we both turned pale, stuck our hands over our mouths and started hiccupping.

“Well, maybe only some black coffee for you two big-time criminals.” He took a couple of brand-new pairs of sunglasses out of a shirt-pocket. “Here, I figured you’d need these. A good hangover’ll make you blind as a hoot-owl. Soon as you recuperate, we’ll try to figure how we’re gonna deal with this little setback.”

* * *

It was after normal breakfast hours, so Doc volunteered to treat us our meals at the House of Pancakes near the campus.

What had happened, Doc said while we were walking, was that a couple of campus policemen had been making their rounds when they saw three Kaydets crossing the campus. One of them had vomit smeared all over his blouse, so they pulled over and asked a few questions. The Kaydets said that one of them had gone with his buddies to talk to his professor about a term paper he was thinking of getting an early start on, and they’d found the prof and a friend of his drunk and destroying the professor’s laboratory. They tried to talk them into stopping, but the two drunks attacked them. The professor got sick on one of them, so they left.