CRUDDY (22 page)

DON’T THINK jumping is such a bad way to do it,” said the Stick. “But there are better.” With my feet still on the rooftop ridge, with the night sky above me, I said, “I saw a guy jump once.”

The Stick said, “Headfirst? If you’re serious you go headfirst. You dive. Hey, there it is, there’s the satellite.”

At first I couldn’t find it. And then the Stick was behind me, his head bent close to mine but not touching, trying to show me. And then I saw it. It looked like a faint star, but it was moving.

The Stick, “It’s tumbling. They tumble. Who did you see jump?”

I pictured Cookie biting the mother as the mother lifted her over the railing of the Aurora Bridge and let go. Let go and walked into a candy store and bought a pound of candy stars.

I said, “Where’s your mom?”

He said, “You need to see the attic.”

I followed him over a narrow shingled ledge that had to be walked sideways before we got to the oval attic window, a window without glass and a cloudy piece of plastic hanging over it from the inside.

It was easier to do than it looked and I have to say I enjoyed it. The hardest part was going headfirst through the window into the blackness. The Stick lit a match and then he lit a candle and then he set the candle on the floor beside a cracked mirror propped against the slanted roof and the candlelight doubled.

It was a good smell, the smell of the attic. The smell of wood very ancient and unpainted. Pine. The slanted walls had long pine-board cladding. And above the candle in the flicker light I saw a sentence written in pencil, in a child’s handwriting.
I hope you die. I hope you rot. I hate you all. 16 September
1919.

The Stick watched me read it. He said, “She was locked up here because of him.”

I said, “Who?”

He said, “Well, he was obviously some asshole.”

“No. Who is
she
?”

He said, “Who are you?”

We sat by the window. I told him all of my names. Roberta, Clyde, Ee-gore, Mystery Child, Michelle, then Roberta again, and recently Hillbilly Woman. I told him the story of meeting Vicky and the Turtle and dropping Creeper.

He said, “Creeper?”

I told him it was in the stash box Vicky went to get. I told him the whole story except for what happened with the Turtle in the garage. Loose Lips Sink Ships and I was wanting to sink ships very badly, but I could not talk about the Turtle’s motions against my bare legs in the garage.

The Stick said, “What’s it like, Creeper? What’s it feel like? Is Vicky bringing it back here? Is there a lot?”

I said, “Is that guy downstairs your dad?”

He said, “Fuck you, OK? Don’t talk about Susie.”

I was trying to think of a way to explain the feeling of Creeper. I said, “It makes everything significant. Even trash. Even flies.” I told him about the Washeteria, the lady with the shadow of a “W” falling on her face and her freaky beige moles, how when I turned and looked at her I started screaming and could not stop. “That’s Creeper,” I said.

“Would you do it again?”

I said, “Yes.” I told him about the exhilaration. How to me, even horrifying exhilaration is incredible.

He said, “When Vicky comes back will you drop with me?”

I was wondering if he really was a user like Vicky said. I saw him looking over my face. I saw him notice my finger. I saw him staring at the raised letter “y” scarred into my arm, showing just below my sleeve.

The Stick looked at me and the flame from the candle moved in his eyes. Normal pupils. Brown eyes.

I said, “You know that guy I saw jump?”

He said, “Yeah?”

“His name was Fernst.”

ERNST! FERNST! Goddamn it, ERNST!” Pammy was hollering from the kitchen in her chambers. She was calling for ingredients. “Fernst, bring me sliced onions. Fernst, slice me more potatoes. Fernst, I know you stole some pop out of the cooler again this morning how would you like it if I sent you back to Mom? Fernst, the goddamn pilot light is out. Fernst, that flame is too damn high, Fernst, watch that oil. Fernst—”

Bright flash. WHOOOMP! Pammy screaming. Screaming she was on fire.

The sheriff and the father were shouting back and forth and Fernst scrambled out the window with his long arms in flames, fire leaping from his clothes, he was hopping and flapping and then he jumped.

The sheriff and the father got ahold of Pammy and rolled her. They got her to the outside shower and sprayed her down. The father said, “Hell of a grease fire.” And then the sheriff saw the broken Fernst in a heap, twitching, smoldering, and he said, “Oh shit.”

He walked over to look at him. Foaming noises were coming from Fernst’s throat. The sheriff bent down, stuck the gun in Fernst’s mouth and then it was over.

In the bar they were all taking drinks. The sheriff kept his eyes on the father. “I bet you didn’t have a thing to do with that fire.”

The father said, “Damn it, Arden. No.”

Pammy was pig-eyed, pacing the bar and smoking. She said, “It’s the Swede.” Her skin was bright pink under thick layers of melting Vaseline. “The Swede, Arden. He set that fire.”

“Horse shit,” said the sheriff.

“It’s the Swede, I’m telling you. He’s goddamn walking.”

The father stood at the screen door and cupped his hands around his mouth. “CLY-YDE! THIS AIN’T FUNNY NO MORE!”

The sheriff said, “He ran, Milsboro.”

The father said, “Not Clyde.”

The sheriff said, “I’m not the type of man that puts up with shit like this.”

“He’ll come back,” said the father. “CLY-YDE! CLY-YDE!”

“Well,” said the sheriff, cracking a new bottle of Whitley’s. “If he don’t come back, we’re going to have to hunt him. Mom don’t wait for no one.”

Pammy said, “The Swede got him.”

The sheriff said, “The Swede has better things to do with his time.” He poured a round. They drank.

The father kept looking toward the screen door. Watching for me. Pammy was digging some pills out of a brown jar and downing them with a half tumbler of Whitley’s. Horse tranquilizers.

The sheriff said, “Those ain’t for people.”

She said, “I know it, and I don’t give a goddamn.”

The father said, “I don’t mean to intrude but what should we do about Fernst out there?”

The sheriff said, “You read my mind, Milsboro. Got a job offer for you.”

“Yeah?” said the father.

“Can you face a meat saw?”

“Which end?”

The father stuck a cig in his mouth and pulled out his USN lighter. The sheriff slammed his hand on the bar. “Wise-ass! Always have to be the wise-ass, don’t you, Earlis?”

“
Earlis
?” said the father.

The sheriff said, “That’s your name isn’t it?”

“Naw, naw, Arden, I ain’t Earl—”

The sheriff pulled out his gun. “Go ahead and lie to me. I ran your goddamn plates. I know all about you.”

Pammy said, “Ear-less? Who?”

The sheriff picked the father’s lighter up off the bar, lit a cig, and hurled the lighter against the far wall of the barroom. “I do it right? Huh, Earlis? Navy my ass.”

The father and Pammy were looking at each other. The sheriff said, “Our meat saw man gave out on us and we got a job waiting.”

He downed his glass and poured again but the Whitley’s was pouring funny, and then it wasn’t pouring at all. And the sheriff saw something like a ragged hot dog was hanging out of it. “What the shitting hell? A FINGER!” He glared at the father. “You stupid-son-of-a-bitch. You think you can scare me? You think I’m afraid of a GODDAMN FINGER?”

The sheriff yanked the fleshy end and held it up in a one-second display of courage before he got a good look at it and sent it flying. “It’s a COCK!”

The father said, “Now
that
is goddamn eerie. What the hell is going on? Why don’t you just tell me?”

Pammy’s hands shook as she fished two more horse calmers out of the bottle. “He’s coming back in pieces, Arden. The Swede wants his revenge.”

The sheriff leveled his gun at the father. “You put that cock in there.”

“That bottle was sealed,” said the father. “It was you that cracked it.”

The sheriff eyes narrowed. “And then you slipped it in.”

The father said, “Arden, where the hell would I get a man’s cock? Why the hell would I ruin a full bottle of Whitley’s? Put your gun down, Arden, you’re making me feel bad.”

The sheriff aimed at the father’s forehead. “Let’s go outside, Earlis.”

Pammy said, “Arden, IT’S THE SWEDE MAKING YOU DO THIS! He’s turning us against each other. Shit, Arden. Goddamn it, Arden, DON’T YOU SHOOT HIM, ARDEN!”

The sheriff walked the father out to where Fernst lay. There were deep shadows all around. It would have been nothing for me to get the sheriff. Little Debbie was wanting to. Little Debbie was straining in my hand like a dog seeing a rabbit. It would have been nothing to do a fast slice that would cause the sheriff a surprising intestine cascade.

But I wasn’t in the mood to do the father any favors. I was enjoying the terrified look on his face, I have to admit I was enjoying it very much.

If Pammy hadn’t spotted me, who knows how wonderful that night could have turned out to be?

HERE ARE certain creatures in the ocean called sessile creatures, creatures permanently attached to one place, like the barnacle and the anemone and the feather-duster worm. And there are also drifter creatures, attached to nothing, carried places by the current, and at night some of them will glow when disturbed. At night they can leave a phosphorescent trail five miles long behind a ship, a trail clearly visible from the air. That could be hell on a Navy man. Dazzle camouflage is useless in the dark.

I was shut into the blackness of the meat saw room. Shut in there by the sheriff. He shoved me in, said, “Don’t turn on the light unless you want a surprise,” and bolted the door.

It was a cold room but there was a smell of spoilage. The refrigeration unit gave off the smell of a washcloth gone sour. There was the smell of disinfectant and fresh sawdust. And twisting around all of it was the high scent of blood, bitter and metallic. And a much heavier odor I recognized. The complicated smell of a sliced creature. Complicated because sliced hide smells different from sliced fat, and sliced fat smells different from sawn bone, and internal organs each have a particular smell, and then there is the raw odor of the divided meat itself. All of these smells were fresh.

My hand found the light switch. Did I want a surprise?

“YOU DO NOT KNOW WHO YOU ARE DEALING WITH, YOU STUPID SHIT!” That was the sheriff shouting at the father. I could hear his words but not the father’s or Pammy’s. The sheriff was shouting that he was big, very big. He had big connections in Chicago, with the BIG boys in Chicago. Did the father understand the legal implications of habeas corpus? No body equals no murder equals peace in the valley for all concerned. Was the father starting to get the picture? It was the sheriff who oversaw the final steps required to turn an important somebody into a scattered nobody of bone, blood meal, and cat food.

The father asked a question but I couldn’t hear what it was. The sheriff said, “That’s THEIR business. I keep out of it. I don’t want to know, you understand?”

There was more conversation but it was getting too mumbly for me to follow it. Voices low, making deals, making plans. The sheriff saying, “So you in or out, Earlis?”

The father saying, “ I’m in.”

I heard their footsteps coming down the hall. The sheriff saying, “You got a strong stomach?” and then the sound of the lock and the sliding bolt.

The sheriff rapped out some knocks. He said, “If you’re by the door, Ee-gore, you better back up.”

In a low voice the sheriff said, “You ready?”

The father said, “I was born ready.”

The sheriff pushed the door open. He said, “Goddamn it, Ee-gore, you switched the light on.”

What I saw before my vision disintegrated was a double sink, very deep, a metal table with a drainage trough around it, heavy hooks for hanging, and a job someone left in the middle of. And the job’s head was severed from its body and the head didn’t have a face or a lower jaw. It had a horseshoe of human teeth, and some of the teeth had gold fillings. And that was what I stared at until something like ash began to fall inside of my eyes, an obscuring gray ash, a blinding that comes. An incineration of vision.

I heard the father and the sheriff. Words, words, words, and someone was walking me outside, fingers pinching tight around my arm, a voice whispering, “Be good, Clyde. We struck gold, Clyde. See you next week, Clyde.”

And then I was in the sheriff’s car, in the grated-off backseat. From the sticky upholstery came an old puke smell very strong. I could smell Old Skull Popper, I could hear the sheriff sucking down long pulls from a bottle. I felt for Little Debbie. She was there.

The sheriff said, “Ee-gore, right now you need a friend in the worst way, don’t you?”

We were on a dirt road, possibly a field road. There was the fragrance of hops. If you know the smell of fields of hops at night. It can be a calming smell. A very kind smell. I heard the hissing of the irrigation devices. The stutter of the water jets. A spray welted hard across the roof and the sheriff rolled up his window. He turned onto a smaller wheel rut path and then he stopped the car.

It was a hot night but he wanted the windows up. Sound travels so easily over flat fields. But even with the windows shut I could still smell the hops, and I fought to hold on to that smell, to concentrate on it. The molecules of it. The sheriff took another pull off the bottle and got out of the car. The back car door opened and he squeezed himself in. He said, “We can make this easy or we can make this hard. If you try to bite me, you won’t have a mouth left. Understood?”

He wanted me to take a drink. He passed me the bottle. I took a glug and passed it back. I wanted him to know I was being cooperative. There was the sound of him unbuckling his belt, and the unzipping and the rearrangement of pants. He put his hand on the back of my neck and pushed my head downward. I didn’t resist. I didn’t hesitate. Never hesitate. Move fast, follow through, let the blade do the work.

My first swipe was a reach-around. Little Debbie was so sharp I didn’t know I truly cut him. I felt something like a knife passing through a hard-boiled egg but that was all.

The sheriff froze in the shock of it, and in that instant I took my second swipe. The neck, always the neck in one motion, get the carotid, the jugular, the windpipe if possible, then GO! GET! Jump away from his grabbing hands, jump out of the car flying because he has a gun, insane pop-pop fire power giving flashes brief and bright, the smell of hops of hops of hops and then the smell of the wet earth itself.

His car engine revved, he was driving wild, I looked up to see his headlights swinging through the blackness, and then a sick crunching and everything stopped. His taillights were high and uneven. He was in the culvert. He had driven into the culvert.

The dome light weakly illuminated his body laying strange, half in the car and half out, his face down, the red draining slow into the corrugated half pipe.

I followed the culvert back to the main canal, stopping once to wash his blood off my face. I was looking for the train tracks. I was praying for the train tracks. And I cannot describe the relief I felt when I heard the distant roaring and saw the beam from the twisting yellow eye of the night train.