Complete Stories (104 page)

“Help me jam him back in and let’s get out of here,” Jack told Tonel.

“You be touchin’ him,” said Tonel. “Not me.”

Jack hunkered down and took hold of Mr. Cuthbert. The mibracc felt like incompletely cured food, like a half-dried apricot: leathery on the outside, wet and squishy in the middle. He was hissing louder than before. A little more smeel trickled from the bunghole in his belly-button.

Gritting his teeth, Jack re-rolled Mr. Cuthbert and slid him into his golf bag. The skin twitched and splashed. A drop of the bourbon-smeel landed on Jack’s lower lip. Reflexively he licked it off. Error. The room began ever so slowly to spin.

While Jack paused, assessing the damages, crazy Danny reached past him to scoop out one last glassful of the poison bourbon. Mr. Cuthbert’s golf bag rocked and clattered; bubbles rose to the surface. The noises echoed back from the other mibracc. All five lockers were shaking.

“Let’s bounce,” urged Tonel, over by the locker room door. He already had it open, he’d unlocked the dead bolt from the inside. They wouldn’t be able to lock the door behind them.

“There you are, Danny,” came the voice of Les Trucklee as they stepped out onto the floodlit terrace. He was out there checking over the barbeque wagon and smoking a cigarette. “I hope I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing in your hand.”

Jack quickly closed the locker room door behind them. Did it matter that it wasn’t locked anymore? If he asked Les Trucklee to lock it, he’d have to explain how they’d gotten in there. But surely the mibracc couldn’t get out of their lockers unaided.

“You ain’t seein’ squat,” Danny was saying, holding the glass behind his back. “I gotta leave now, Les, I just got a message from my boys here. It’s my mother. She’s real sick.”

“Mother Dank ill again?” said Les in an indulgent, disbelieving tone. “She’s a susceptible old dear, isn’t she? Maybe she should wear more clothes. Are you in any condition to drive, Danny? If you’ll linger a bit, I could give you a lift.”

“No, Les,” said Danny, his voice cold. A long moment passed. Dazzled moths were beating around the lights. Dizzy from his marijuana gum and the drop of mibracc fluid, Jack was seeing glowing trails in the air behind the insects. He thought he could hear hammering sounds from the locker room, but nobody else was noticing.

“All right then,” said Les, stubbing out his butt. “I’m back to serving our patrons. The ladies are on their dessert drinks, flirting with each others’ husbands. They’re excited about the barbeque and golf tournament tomorrow. Don’t forget you’re onstage bright and early, Danny, we’ll want to start up the grill at the crack of dawn. You and your friends stay out of trouble tonight.” Les sighed and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “I wish I was young again. I never had enough fun.”

One of the moths landed on Jack’s hand. The feathery touch grated on his tautened nerves. As he brushed the moth away, he seemed to hear a faint cry, and when he glanced down he saw that the moth had a tiny head resembling that of a round-eyed woman with tangled blond hair. Jack’s stifled exclamation turned Les Trucklee’s attention to him.

“Good luck at college, Jack. If one of you fellows happens to get a wild hair up your ass, stop by around one or two tonight and I’ll give you a free nightcap. Top shelf. Why don’t you sleep on my office couch again tonight, Danny, just to be getting up early. It’ll be even better than last time.”

This was too much for Tonel, who let out a loud guffaw.

And then they were in the parking lot, Danny sitting on his obese black Harley gunning it. His face was dark and angry. Les had gone too far, told too much. Danny roared the motorcycle even harder.

Danny had gotten the hog used from a Killeville insurance salesman who’d bought it as a temporary stopgap against his midlife crisis before moving on to a girlfriend in Virginia Beach. The machine was loaded with puffy middle-aged accessories, including enormous hard-shelled saddlebags. Instead of tearing them off—hell, he’d paid for them, hadn’t he?—Danny had gotten one of his buddies at Rash Decisions Tattoo to paint them with renditions of the Pig Chef—two smirking pigs in aprons and chef’s hats, one holding a meat cleaver and the other waving a long three-tined fork with sharpness-twinkles. The Pig Chef was—if you thought about it—one of the more sinister icons of American roadside art. Danny’s personal totem. What kind of pig is a butcher? What kind of pig cooks barbeque? A traitor pig, a killer pig, a doomed preterite pig destined for eternal damnation. Danny’s Pig Chefs showed the full weight of this knowledge in their mocking eyes and snaggled snouts.

“I’m gonna go catch Stiffie’s act,” said Danny. Stiffie Ryder was his idol, his proof of masculinity, his favorite woman to peep at. Stiffie worked as a stripper at the Banana Split, a bar and grill located on the same stretch of Route 501 as the Casa Linda and Rash Decisions Tattoo, Killeville’s own little Sodom and Gomorrah, just outside the city limits.

“What about those skins in the golf bags?” asked Jack. “What if they try and get out?” The drop he’d licked off his lip was still working on him. One of his legs felt shorter than the other. He put his hand on Tonel’s shoulder for support.

“They can gangbang Les Trucklee,” said Danny. “They can warm him up for me.” He glared at Jack and Tonel, who had no thought of uttering a response. Danny brushed back his lank, greasy hair, drank off the last bit of bourbon-smeel, and tossed his glass to shatter in the parking lot. For the first time Jack noticed that the tips of Danny’s ears were pointed. “I can’t believe Les was talking that way in front of you two,” continued Danny. “Like he’s my sissy. He’s gonna pay the price.” And with that he roared off.

“Danny buggin’ out,” said Tonel. “Trucklee better watch hisself.”

“I don’t know how Danny can drive,” said Jack. “I’m so—” He staggered to one side and puked.

“Weak bitch,” said Tonel, not unkindly.

Jack heaved again, bringing up the day’s four Coca-Colas and the burger and fries he’d had for lunch. Right away he felt better.

The vomit was a little heap at the edge of the asphalt, faintly lit by the terrace lights. Was it hunching itself up like the smeel had done? Beginning ever so slightly to twist into an eddy?

“Come on, dog,” said Tonel. “Let’s creep on home. You can pedal, can’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Jack, looking away from the shifting mound on the pavement. “I’m better now. I got a drop of that crap in my mouth. From the golf bags. I can’t believe how much of it Danny drank. We shouldn’t have let him ride.”

“He’d a pulled his knife if we tried to stop him,” said Tonel.

They walked over to the rack and unchained their bicycles, a couple of beat-up jobs nobody would bother to steal. The night felt thick and velvety, but it wasn’t spinning anymore.

“We ought to talk to Ragland,” said Jack as they pedaled off. “Ask him what’s up.”

“I gotta eat first,” said Tonel. “Dad’s makin’ that burgoo.”

“Can I come to your house too?” said Jack. “I don’t want to go home.” And then he told Tonel the story about this morning.

“That’s some sad stuff,” said Tonel when Jack finished. “Preachers always do like that. But you sayin’ his children had pointed ears?”

“Like Danny’s,” sighed Jack. “Everything’s coming apart, just when it’s finally time for me to get out of here. Back on the terrace I thought one of those moths had a woman’s head. And the mibracc—I can hardly believe we saw that. Maybe we’re just really high.”

“Be some mighty crunk Wheelchair make you see five men turn into somethin’ like chitlins.” They pedaled down Egmont Avenue in silence for a minute, the occasional car rumbling by. Jack didn’t dare try and look at the drivers. Finally Tonel broke the silence. “If you not goin’ by the e-rectory, how we gonna get a ride?” Normally they took Jack’s mother’s car out at night.

“Ask Vincente for his,” said Jack.

Tonel’s father Vincente ran a secondhand appliance store called Vaughan Electronics—it so happened that Tonel’s and Jack’s families shared the same last name, which no doubt had something to do with plantations and slaves. Sometimes Jack would tell people that Tonel was his cousin, which wasn’t entirely implausible, light-skinned as Tonel was. Tonel’s mother Wanda had been mostly white. Even though she’d run off to Florida, Vincente had a picture of Wanda on the kitchen wall in his apartment at the back of the store.

When the boys entered through the alley door, Vincente’s wall of screens was tuned to a porno webcast; he quickly changed it to a boxing match.

“Help yourself to burgoo,” said Vincente, gesturing toward the stove.

“Put the ho’s back on, Daddy,” said Tonel. “We don’t wanna see no thugs.”

“Wouldn’t be fittin’ to expose you,” said the wiry Vincente.

He was lounging in a duct-tape-patched plastic recliner facing twenty-four clunker TVs stacked in a six by four grid. Vincente had installed special controllers so he could switch his digital mosaic between showing a bunch of random channels and showing a single channel with its image jigsawed into pieces. He’d learned electronics in the Navy during the war on Iraq. He began fiddling with his remote, breaking up and reassembling the dataflow, temporarily settling on a Sudanese dagger-fighting flick.

Meanwhile the hearty smell of the rabbit and chicken stew pushed away any lingering queasiness Jack felt. He had the munchies. He and Tonel ate quite a bit of the stew, the thuds and yelps of the movie bouncing along in the background.

Jack’s cell phone rang. He peeked at the screen, fearing it would be Mom, but, no, it was Gretchen, looking tense.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m still at the tabernacle. It’s getting way too trippy. You think you could come and get me now?”

“Um, I guess so,” said Jack. “I’m at Tonel’s. We have to see about getting a car.”

“Axe her can she hook me up a honey,” put in Tonel. “I’m driving. Right, Daddy? I can have the van?”

“If you can start it,” said Vincente, twitching his remote to break the image into twenty-four new channels. “Sneak the battery outten Ragland’s truck. I seen him come back a half hour ago. You know he ain’t goin’ out again.”

“How do you mean trippy?” Jack asked Gretchen meanwhile.

“It’s that Armageddon thing,” said Gretchen. There was a trumpeting noise in the background. “Albert Chesney is getting really weird about it. He wants me to spend the night with him at Casa Linda to help him ‘gird his loins’ for the last battle. None of the Day Sixers wants to help him. Albert says that six pure hearts can turn the tide, so he needs five people to help him. Dad wants me to be with Albert even though he himself plans to stay home. Come get me, Jack. Right now they’re watching a video, but when it’s done, Dad’s driving Albert and me to the Casa Linda.”

“Is this another of your put-ons?”

“Save me, Jack. I mean it. And, you know, I really am pregnant.” Gretchen never let up. Jack liked that about her.

“Hook me a honey,” repeated Tonel.

“We’re coming,” said Jack. “And Tonel wants to know if you can find a date for him?”

“Pinka Wright is into him. I might call her.” The trumpets rose to an off-key crescendo. “Hurry.” Gretchen hung up.

The tooting noise didn’t stop when Jack turned his phone off. After a moment’s disorientation, he realized that Vincente had tuned his screens to some random webcast of—what was it? Three glowing donuts moving across the wall of TVs, silver, gold, and copper. Behind them was a background of unfamiliar stars. A cracked brass fanfare played. Before Jack could ask about the picture, Vincente punched his controller again, splitting the image into twenty-four new channels.

“What she say?” demanded Tonel.

“Her father wants her to spend the night with Albert Chesney,” said Jack.

“She jivin’ you again,” said Tonel. “What she say about my date?”

“Pinka Wright.”

“Ooo! Let’s bounce it, dog.”

“Don’t let Ragland hear you,” warned Vincente. “He’s got that shotgun.”

First of all they had to check the tires of Vincente’s ancient van, and of course one of them was flat—Vincente’s driving license was suspended and he didn’t keep insurance up on the van, which meant that he hardly ever drove it. Tonel found an electric pump in the bowels of Vaughan Electronics and they dragged out an extension cord and filled the tire. The tire seemed to hold its size, so that problem was solved.

Next came the issue of gas. A quick check of the van’s gauge showed it to be stone cold dry. Tonel produced a can and a squeeze-bulb siphon from the back of the van. The plan was to get gas from Ragland’s truck as well as borrowing his battery.

Quietly they walked down the alley to Ragland’s truck. Tonel popped the hood and set to work extracting the battery while Jack began pumping gas from Ragland’s tank. It felt stupid to be making such a complicated thing out of getting a car. Gretchen needed his help. Shouldn’t he just walk around the corner and take his Mom’s car?

Right about then Ragland appeared, gliding out of his backyard like a ghost, the barrel of his shotgun glinting in the streetlight. He was holding it level at his waist, pointing right at Jack’s stomach.

“You hookworm,” said Ragland. “I oughtta blow a hole in you.”

Tonel jumped backward, letting the hood slam shut. “We just tryin’ to use Daddy’s van,” he said. “We figured we could borrow your—”

“I’m gonna call the po-lice,” said Ragland. “A night in jail be good for you two whelps.”

“Oh yeah?” said Tonel. “How ‘bout if I tell them what you do to them old men in the locker room? We saw you rollin’ em up. Cops might even call it murder.”

“You was in the lockers?” said Ragland, letting his gun droop.

“We came in through the grate in the ceiling,” said Jack. “And then we let ourselves out.”

“You left the door unlocked?” said Ragland after a pause. “Oh Lord. You gotta help me now. Jump in my truck.”

“How long have the mibracc been like that?” Jack asked Ragland as he drove them towards the club.

“Goin’ on two weeks,” said Ragland. “Right when they got them big glass jars. Was Mr. Gupta showed me about the stomach plugs. He got it from somethin’ he seen on TV. The men like me to do ‘em that way. I drain ‘em every night, and plump ‘em up in the mawnin’. We use the steam room. They been payin’ me extra and, yeah Tonel, they even doin’ some yard work for me.”