Dead Nolte (15 page)

Nolte marveled at the profound effect his piss wads were
having on his idiot son but was caught off guard by the incendiary nature,
which had developed in his once timid boy.

A small wad of damp diaper stuffing bounced off Ron’s ear,
whether it was the proverbial ‘last straw’, or a perverse reminder of the ‘ear
flicking’, that caused Ron to snap, but the naked dead man was completely
unprepared for the full-on conniption fit which followed.

Ron slammed on the brakes, causing Nolte to fly forward between
the seats, striking his head on the console. “You should have been wearing your
seat belt, motherfucker.” Ron said as he jumped out of the car. No sooner was
he out of the car,
than
he lunged back in for Nolte,
who was busy gathering his marbles. Ron grabbed his arms and jerked him through
the small space between the seat back and the steering wheel.

“Stop, stop, stop!” Nolte screamed, “You’re hurting me!
You’re hurting me!” He cried, pretending to bawl through a fit of laughter. It
was more than the old man could have hoped for.

Ron pulled him out to the center line of the road, dropping
Nolte’s limp arms in his face, roughly. Nolte drew himself into a fetal
position, his head rolled from side to side, in uncontrollable laughter. When he
heard Ron’s footsteps moving off toward the car, Nolte stopped laughing.

“I know what you were doing in Tremé.” The footsteps
stopped. “The cunt had some mojo that kept me from coming in, but I can add two
and two.” The footsteps receded to the car. “I don’t know how the fuck you
found out about it, but you can’t stop it. On the third day, I will be risen!”
The footsteps returned quickly and gave Nolte three hard kicks to the ribs and
one to the side of the old man’s head. A moment later the car door slammed and
Ron speed away. Nolte raised his ringing head and looked at the crotch of his
diaper. He had pissed himself.

Forty-five minutes later, Ron glanced in his rear view to
change lanes and again, Nolte’s stupid face was filling the mirror. This time, he
was wearing the bug-eyed women’s sunglasses and was grinning around an unlit
cigarette. He held his hand up for Ron to see, he was rolling a tuft of diaper
padding between his thumb and index finger. Ron grit his teeth hard, raged and
tried desperately to block the foul asshole from his mind. Nolte burst into
song.

“When I was young, I use’d to wait on massa and hand him de
plate. Pass down de bottle when he git dry and bresh away de bluetail fly. Oh
Jim crack corn and I don’t care, Jim crack corn and I don’t care, Jim crack
corn and I don’t care, Ol’ massa gone away….”

Ron slammed the car door. He could still hear the muffled
strains of The Blue Tail Fly, as he walked away toward the back of Nolte’s
house. He wished there was a way to suck all of the oxygen out of the interior
of his car; he had been fantasizing about ways to kill the dead since Nolte had
started singing.

Assuming the pink Taurus, he had parked behind, belonged to
one of the hillbilly sisters, he inconspicuously dug his key into the paint as
he passed it. The scraping did little to ease the state of anxiety Nolte had
put him in, but it helped.

Ron barged through the unlocked door without knocking,
knowing this would piss off whichever sister was in the house, both were
territorial with anything pertaining to Nolte, and now that the pervert was
dead, he imagined they had piss-marked everything they could squat over and had
claimed full ownership. Fuck ‘em, it wasn’t their house yet, he figured he
belonged here as much as those two inbreds. He knew he was lying to himself, he
had never had Nolte’s dick in his mouth, and deep down he knew the sisters had
‘cocksucking’ rights to all of Nolte’s stuff, they’d earned it.

The worn linoleum floor stuck to his shoes as he made a
bee-line to the alcohol. Nolte’s version of a ‘bar’ was a section of countertop
next to the fridge. Two gallons of tequila, a half-gallon of gin, a fifth of
mescal and a fifth of bourbon were lined up like soldiers for inspection,
labels facing forward, tallest to shortest. The display screamed anal
retentive. The fifth of mescal was missing; the equally distanced bottle effect
was marred by its absence. He chose the bourbon.

“Wow.” He mumbled, shaking his head, the sticker price of
the bottle, “Seven bucks for a fifth, the old fart had spared no expense when
it came to poisoning himself.” Now the fifth of bourbon would be missing, too.
He couldn’t wait for the old man to see the disarray his fueling station had
become.

Not bothering with a glass, he sat down at the table to work
the corn cracking ear-worm out of his head; the songbird in the back seat had
given him a record-breaking headache. Though it felt like it had chemically
scalded the lining in his throat, his empty stomach allowed the brown paint
stripper instant access to his head.

Whoever was in the house came trotting down the stairs. The
footsteps stopped somewhere toward the front of the house. Slowly, Martha,
assuming the top of her head was invisible, peeked around the edge of the
foyer, up to the bridge of her nose.

“Don’t you knock?” she asked, territorially indignant,
slinking into full view. She held a two-foot version of a Louisville Slugger
tightly in her hand. “You’re lucky you didn’t get it upside the head.”

“You don’t live here, Corn Pone,” Ron replied, refusing to
answer her question. “I hope you wash that thing when you’re finished with it.”
He nodded at the small bat in her hand. “What a girl does with her ‘alone time’
is her business, but God knows how many outbreak monkeys have been up in your
bat polisher.”

“Already starting shit and you haven’t been here five
minutes.” Martha looked past him at the back door, hoping to see no one. She
couldn’t stand Ron, but she actually hated Charlie. It took everything she had
to tolerate them one at a time, together, they were horrible. The things they
said were unbelievably cruel. They seemed to feed off each other when they were
together.

“Want some corn squeezin’s, Daisy Lou?” Her disgusted glance
at the bottle of bourbon wasn’t lost on Ron. One time, when she thought her
shit smelled really rosy, she had engaged him in Biblical debate on the alcohol
content of wine in the Good Book. Her fine congregation at the First Holy
Church of the Blessed Snake Handlers had collectively decided, that alcohol was
a sin, therefore, any nectar of the vine that had crossed the lips of the
Savior, had to be alcohol-free.

Armed with this revelation, they had seen fit to replace the
word ‘wine’ with ‘grape juice’, everywhere it appeared in the New Testament.
The congregation had spent weeks crossing out wines and writing GJ for grape
juice above them. He took another swig from the bottle and smiled. Ron felt the
entire herd was a ‘mark of the beast’ waiting to happen. In fact, he was quite
sure, the visibly righteous were paper tigers and would tuck tail, and bend
knee to whoever held the cheeseburgers during Armageddon.

Martha placed the small baseball bat on the table next to
the bottle of Nolte’s varnish flavored bourbon, causing Ron to recoil in mock
horror. “Careful, Daisy, are you going to make me call in a hazmat team, to bag
that up?” He could feel Martha’s eyes on him, burning in judgment. Fucking
hypocrite, he thought. Both she and her sister. As far as Ron was concerned,
were conniving fun holes, attached to Bugtussle’s runner-ups to the Possum
Queen. The fact that they had ‘found the Lord’, at the exact same time, seemed
orchestrated and phony to him.

Martha pulled the chair in front of her, away from the
table, sliding it further away from Ron, before she sat down. She folded one
hand in the other on the table in front of her and tried her best to appear
genuinely concerned. She was doing okay until her eyes accidentally made
contact with Ron’s and they started to dance around like a red-handed thief’s.
She decided it best to settle her gaze on her hands and ricochet her
communication off her wedding ring.

Almost like she had rehearsed, she began to speak, using the
calming controlled voice, she imagined Oprah Winfrey might use in a situation
such as this. “My stepfather, your father,” she nodded toward Ron, almost as an
afterthought, “has just passed away and circumstances beyond our control, have
forced us together. We need to try and make the best of this time and be as
un-intrusive to each other as we possibly can. I would appreciate it if you
would convey my thoughts and feelings on this matter to your brother when he
arrives.” Forcing a smile, she looked up from her folded hands to Ron’s face,
so that she might measure the impact of her words.

Ron was grinning from ear to ear, looking at her as if she’d
suddenly grown horns. “Did you memorize that all by yourself? Un-intrusive? You
are really pushing that sixth-grade education to the breaking point, Miss
Thang.” Ron couldn’t wait for her to use ‘un-intrusive’ on Charlie. That was
going to be a hoot. “Well, don’t you worry, Daisy Lou,” he slapped his hand
down lightly on the table. “Me and ol’ Charlie plan to intrude on the motel,
and leave you hillbillies to your hillbilly stuff.” He grabbed the bottle of
bourbon colored kerosene and started to stand.

“There isn’t a motel, anymore.” She mimicked his hand
swatting the table. “Thus, the ‘circumstances beyond our control’, Asshole.”
Martha hated cursing, especially when she was the one doing it.

Ron sat down hard. “You have got to be shitting me.” He
sensed the storm clouds gathering. Charlie, as far as Ron knew, had never
lifted a violent hand to a woman, so the hee-haw sisters would be safe, but
keeping him from throwing an ass whippin’ on their husbands was going to be a different
story. Charlie couldn’t stand for stupid; he saw it as a correctable offence
that should be rectified immediately. Stupidity was not to be shared with
others, or put on display. Either fix your stupid or keep your silence. Junior
and RJ had never even tinkered with their stupid. They seemed to be perfectly
content with their ignorance and allowed their mouths to say whatever popped
into their heads, without filter or restraint. They, more than likely, didn’t
even realize they were infected with stupid; Ron had pondered this possibility
on several occasions. Charlie’s drinking would have to be monitored.

“You need to keep the Jethros at home,” Ron suggested
flatly.

“You need to keep a leash on your brother.”

Somewhere upstairs Ron heard Nolte start to sing the
beginning of Jimmy Crack Corn. He knew it was the beginning because he’d heard
the song no less than seven hundred times in the last four hours, though, in
the car, Nolte had always preceded it with ‘One more time!’

He looked carefully at the hillbilly, wondering if she’d
heard it too. Martha had diverted her darting eyes and attention to the kitchen
floor. She bounced one of her knees nervously. It was hard to tell. Maybe she
heard him and she was trying to wish him away. Maybe she was just nervous and
stupid. To Ron, she always appeared to be counting down the last fifteen
minutes on death row.

C
harlie
wove the thumping Harley through the cluster of pickups in Nolte’s drive and up
to the garage. He was astonished to find, none of the vehicles up on blocks and
each one had all four wheels. Someone on the sister side of the family must
have sold a shit load of magazines. Pulling up close to the overhead door, he
let the bike thump for a few seconds before he switched off the ignition. He
felt that a thumping Harley had to be among the most soothing sounds in the
world.

Leaning the weight of the bike onto the kickstand, he
dismounted. Taking turns with his legs, he tried to shake out some of the vibration
that had collected in them. His back clamped, and told him, no, as he reached
down to open the garage door, it had been a long time since he had ridden a
bike. The back road route he had taken to avoid law enforcement, had kept him
riding longer than he had planned, but it beat the bus. Thou shalt not steal,
as a commandment, was a damn good idea in Charlie’s opinion, but he felt little
to no guilt over thieving the motorcycle, had the victim of the theft ever been
forced to ride the bus, there’s a good chance he would have had an
understanding heart and given him the bike out of pity.

Inside the garage, in the opposite bay, was ‘the ‘Vette’,
Nolte’s pride and joy. It was parked with care and covered by a canvas tarp; a
car-sized Chevrolet emblem printed stretched from end to end, announcing to any
and all birds, that they would be shitting on a Chevy.

Charlie had to step over a crate of antique oil jars and
assorted junk to get to the car. (Nolte’s ‘rusty gold’) He grabbed onto the
edge of the tarp with both fists and snatched it off in a cloud of dust. He
took a moment to watch the dust settle into the pristine interior. What a joke.
The old man had really thought he had something here. Nolte had talked about
the car as if it were a million dollar Bugatti, instead of a caught in the
middle Corvette, too new to be worth any money and too old to be fast. Nolte’s
pussy magnet was merely a hag attracter.

Nolte would hang at watering holes and drinking ditches;
until he could spot a barfly with a look of desperation. If he could sway her
interest from video poker to his raggedy ass, she became Nolte’s new
girlfriend, at least for as long as he could keep her drunk. Once he had her
well lubricated, he’d ask her to go for a spin in his rag top.
 

This was his standard M.O. As soon as he set his sights on a
victim, he was throwing as many margaritas and beers down them as they could
keep from puking up, hoping to get them drunk enough to go ‘top down’.

After the old man had poured his date into the passenger
seat and buckled her in, probably more to prevent her escape, than for her
safety, he would then lean over the console and whisper, “Top up or top down?”
he’d then flash them a mouthful of yellow teeth and shoot them the catch, “I’m
talkin’ about your shirt, darlin’.”

Surprisingly, the shithead got his way most of the time.
Nolte would sport around town, both tops down, comb-over, stacked-up hair, and
saggy tits, all blowing in the wind.

Nolte was an old fashioned date rapist, he used alcohol. He
was of the opinion, that only criminals used Rohypnol. Charlie shook the memory
of wine bottle shaped titties out of his head. Nolte wouldn’t know class if it
danced up and bit his fucking dick off.

Dragging the tarp behind him, he knocked over the crate of
antique oil bottles, scattering them across the floor of the garage. Charlie
walked back to the bike and whipped the tarp up and over the motorcycle. “Now
you see it, now you don’t.” He said to himself. He thought it best if prying
eyes (law enforcement) didn’t get too familiar with his newly acquired mode of
transportation, just yet.

Someone sucked snot up their nose behind him. “I felt up a
stripper one time.”

Charlie turned to see the result of some drunken backseat
moment of passion between siblings. The blank opened mouthed stare, said it
all, Charlie had seen this same look of confusion before. This thing standing
before him was the reason Junior and Alice had to ‘git married up.’ The kid
looked to be around fifteen, but the vibe Charlie was getting, told him the
carnal mistake was probably still struggling with tying shoe laces, “all by
himself."

“She let me squeeze her titties.” The kid sucked snot again.

“Was it your mom?” The kid turned his blank open-mouthed
stare inquisitive, with an attempt to sweep the snot off his upper lip with his
tongue. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Junior-Junior.” The kid answered, bringing a grubby hand to
his crotch, to pluck at himself.

“Imagine that.” It was obvious to Charlie, from the kid’s
pixelated stare, that mommy let this one go right from the milkers to the video
games. “Should you be out here by yourself, without a helmet?” Charlie asked as
he brushed past him and up the steps to the back door.

 
“Are you Charlie?”
the kid asked, sucking snot again. “My mom doesn’t like you.”

Charlie paused with his hand on the doorknob, “That’s okay
kid; she told me she doesn’t like you either.”

He walked into the house without knocking; no one noticed.
Either the overlapping chatter masked his arrival, or nobody could see him
around Junior-Senior’s portly frame. It wasn’t long before the smell of cut
onions and stale sweat, wafting off Junior, was encroaching on the same
air-space that Charlie’s nose was trying to use.

“Cute kid out there, is he yours, Jethro?” Junior startled
forward. “He’s a chip off the ol’ block, isn’t he?” Charlie peeked past the
curtains on the door to see the kid blowing his nose on the front of his shirt.
“Yep, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree with that one, did it, Junior?”

Junior stepped further into the room trying to put some
distance between him and Charlie, his size thirteens kicked the chair, Alice
sat in.

Whatever she had been smiling at was quickly forgotten, her
facial expression changed fast enough to cause injury to her cheeks. She shared
her immediate scowl between Junior and Charlie; Junior for not warning her of
Charlie’s presence and Charlie for existing.

Charlie looked around the room, from face to face. Everyone
in the kitchen looked back at him with the look one might have after discovering
half a cockroach in the peanut butter, all but Ron, who was grinning from ear
to ear.

“How was your bus ride?” Alice sneered, bum-rushing the
high-ground with an air of superiority. I hope it wasn’t too bothersome.”

“Too bothersome?” Charlie repeated, chuckling. “Look at you,
gittin’ yer hill talk all fancied up.” He purposely bumped the back of her
chair reaching for the bottle of beer Ron held out to him. “I was presented
with the opportunity of a more desirable mode of transportation.” Charlie guzzled
the beer, washing some of the road out of his throat. “So this is what a
hillbilly wake looks like? Y’all got a Sin-Eater a’comin’ to wash Nolte’s soul
clean and shiny with Twinkies and Doritos?” Charlie glanced over at Junior and
RJ, who were now side by side, Junior was attempting to form a solidarity with
the larger male. “I ‘spect the onliest thing that’s missing from this here
wake, is lap dances from yer sisters, Fellas, when do they start?”

RJ’s face reddened and Junior looked even more confused than
usual. Charlie looked at the bottom of his beer bottle to check the status of
its contents and brushed past the two idiots, making himself at home in Nolte’s
refrigerator. Taking a fresh one from the ‘beer shelf’, he handed his empty to
Junior.

Junior’s everyday expression of confusion deepened, as he
juggled with the complications the empty bottle had presented him. Should he
set it down? Should he throw it away? His mind had not yet resolved the lap
dance insult and now he had this damn bottle to contend with. He knew this was
not a time for him to appear indecisive. Alice had warned him about looking
stupid in front of the brothers. Junior tried to hand the bottle to RJ, who
waved it off. Junior was stuck with it. His mind raced.

Junior seemed to have cataloged three facial expressions
during the span of his life. Confusion, Nervous Confusion and the one that he
used when confronted with multiple options, Deep Confusion. The latter, the one
someone might expect to see on the face of Einstein, as he worked out the
details of the atomic weight of space, was used by Junior when choosing socks
or verbs. His mental limitations were a constant source of irritation to Alice.
Charlie figured the poor son of a bitch was one life insurance policy away,
from a nap in the freezer.

“Why is everyone hanging out in the kitchen?” Charlie asked.
He scanned the faces in the room again for an answer, skipping over Junior
whose attention was still lost on the empty beer bottle. The rest looked as if
they were still wondering where the other half of the cockroach was. “It’s a
bit crowded in here, don’t you think?”

“Nolte went tits up in the other room,” Ron offered with a
smile, “The hill folk have been rootin’ around in every room of this house,
lookin’ fer goodies, but won’t spend more than a few seconds at a time in
there.” He said tossing a nod toward the living room and a wink at Charlie. “I
think they’re scared of ghosties.”

“Nah, there’s no such thing.” Charlie paused to guzzle his
beer again. “Is there Alice?” he asked, handing his empty bottle to RJ, who in
turn, handed it to Junior. Junior’s face had a strained look of confusion.
Charlie wondered if Junior might have developed a fourth expression, the ‘Why
won’t my ejection seat work?’ look of confusion.

“I’m hungry.” Alice stated flatly, “Would you get the grill
going, Junior?” She turned to Junior, dropping her gaze down onto the two beer
bottles in his hands. She shook her head and frowned. Junior looked around
nervously for a place to put them, knowing any place he chose would turn out to
be the wrong place. Alice knew she had to get Junior out of the line of fire;
he was a slow moving target. Stupidity had a way of snowballing with him. “Get
Junior-Junior to help you.”

Ron choked on his bourbon, or whatever Nolte’s version of
bourbon was. “Are you shitting me, you named your kid, Junior-Junior?” He
looked at Charlie across the room.
 
Charlie had turned his head, hoping to stave off laughter. “Did y’all
run plum outta baby names, up yonder on Walton’s Mountain?”

Alice flashed Ron and evil glare, “It’s a nickname,
Dipshit.” She stood, looking as if she would like to tear Ron a new asshole,
before turning her anger loose on poor, full handed Junior. “Can you put your
beer down long enough to burn a few hotdogs for your son?” She snapped before
planting a Scottish archer in his ribs.

Junior thought about handing her his empty bottles but
quickly reconsidered, since she only had one free hand. He had a bad feeling he
was going to be the dipshit now. She would be in need of a punching bag later
and his ass was wearing Everlast underwear. Grilling hotdogs was a good idea.
It would get him out of her sight, and allow him an opportunity to sort through
the empty beer bottle thing. Junior removed himself from the others, tail
between his legs. He felt he could have handled the situation much better if
he’d had time to think. Sometimes things just happened too fast for him.

Charlie stared at RJ with a crooked smile, “Hey Ron, you
want to see my new scoot?” he said, not breaking his stare with the big
hillbilly. “Your wife looks like she could use a drink, Jethro.” He smiled,
uninviting RJ.

RJ had heard the ‘Charlie Stories’, but they didn’t scare
him. One of these days, he would grab that sonofabitch in a bear hug and
squeeze him out, and then he would laugh at Chucky for pissing his pants. He
remembered getting choked out in gym class, in high school and he’d pissed his
pants.

Junior and Junior-Junior had gathered around the grill they
had set up in the driveway. The slope of the drive caused one end of the grill
to be two inches higher than the other. Junior, who had been blessed all the
way to the plum full mark with hillbilly ingenuity, had a spatula stuck between
the grill wires, keeping the hotdogs from rolling off and onto the ground. The
franks had gathered against the spatula dam, but Junior-Junior was standing by
at the ready on the low side, just in case the old man lost control and the
spatula dam burst. Both appeared to be in a state of deep concentration, with a
matching set of deep confusion expressions.

Charlie and Ron had paused to watch the operation. “Why
don’t they just turn the grill?” Ron asked.

Ron scratched his head in wonderment as Charlie elbowed
past. “Twenty bucks, says one of them gets burned.” Charlie wagered. Ron could
watch stupid people; do stupid shit, far longer than he could. To Ron it was
entertainment. To Charlie, it was fucking tragic, stupid fucks pissed him off.
A whistle caught Ron’s attention; Charlie was taking the tarp of the bike.

“What’s up with the cover, you’re afraid a bird’s gonna shit
on it?”

“Nah.” Charlie chuckled. “Proof of ownership problems.” He
winked at Ron and changed the subject. “What did the old lady in Louisiana have
to say, do we still have a deal?”

“We have today and tomorrow to get it to her.” Ron rubbed
his forehead; he was still having a hard time getting his mind around voodoo,
magic and ghosts. “Right now, Nolte can’t touch the thing. I have no idea why.
Who fucking knew voodoo was so regulated.” Ron gave Charlie a grave look. “If
he gets his paws on this fucking thing before we do, not only are we out the
cash, but we are stuck with his crazy ass until the day we die, not only us but
our children and our children’s children and so on and so forth. I’d rather
castrate myself with a spork than allow him to play Grandpa Touchy with my
offspring.”

“How in the hell are we going to find something that small
in that cluttered shithole? Charlie asked. We’re running out of time.”