South of the Pumphouse (10 page)

Unfazed, Donny continued, “Oh, that got her hot!

She was drunk as shit. So I pull her into one of them stalls and stick my tongue in her mouth, and I swear I almost barfed! It tasted like she'd been eatin' cat shit or somethin'. I think they was drinkin' them Jägermeisters. That shit fucks up yer breath, I'll tell ya.”

Earl laughed as Ed listened with mild interest.

“So I pull out my peter and push her head on down. She glommed onto that sucker like you wouldn't believe. Like you wouldn't BELIEVE!! I've had some blowjobs in my day, but she was goin' to town.” Donny laughed hysterically. “Anyhow, I couldn't bust a nut. Usually, I nut pretty quick from some good head. But I still had to hella piss, and it was startin' to hurt. She must of slurped for a month, fiddling with my balls and shit. Then she's sucking my balls, and I'm jackin' it like a madman right there in the Rancho shitter. Un-fuckin'-real.”

Earl laughed again. Ed listened with a combination of fascination and disgust.

“Anyhow, I'm still tryin' to blow my load. My arm's getting sore. I'm sweatin'. She's underneath me on the nasty-ass men's room floor sucking on my bag and then—” Donny chuckled to himself as he continued, “I blow this big-ass fart!”

“No!” exclaimed Earl, bursting with laughter. Even Ed grinned at the thought.

“I couldn't help it! I didn't even feel it comin'. And you know what she did? She turns around and sticks her tongue UP MY ASS!!”

“No. No way,” stuttered Earl.

“Up my ASS-HOLE!” Donny repeated with stern emphasis.

“No way. You're full of shit.”

Ed let out a quick, nervous laugh.

“I am not shittin' you!” Donny held up his right hand as if he were being sworn in. “I tell ya, I fuckin' lost it. I shot this huge wad at the wall. Then I pissed all over the place!”

Earl had heard many stories from Donny, and they varied in their degree of depravity, but this one topped them all. “Man!” was the only response he could manage.

“I almost fuckin' passed out! It was like my body just lost control. She's lucky I didn't have to take a shit.”

At this, Ed laughed out loud.

Realizing that he had finally struck a positive note with his friend's critical brother, Donny milked the story for all it was worth. “Oh, it was hella nasty. She's sittin' there lookin' at me, piss all around, jizz drippin' down the wall of the stall. She's smilin' with that cat-shit breath. My fart still stinkin' up the place.” Donny paused for a moment and grinned triumphantly. “It was great! Unbelievably great! Best fuckin' nut I ever had!”

“You fucker,” Earl laughed, shaking his head.

“We had to sneak out of there cuz her pants were all wet. She took me back to her place. We did some fancy fuckin'. We had stopped on the way and got some beers. So we'd fuck a little, drink a little, fuck some more, and drink some more. She'd suck my dick and then have another beer. It was great. After a while, I didn't even notice the cat-shit breath.”

Earl was in stitches.

“Oh, check this out. I'm pounding away at her, doggy style, and that shit was getting all loose and sloppy. So she says she wants me in her ass. So I say, ‘Hey, no problem.'” Donny looked at Ed to make sure he was still getting through. “I was beginning to think I had my dick in a mayonnaise jar. Know what I mean? So I pull out and slide it up to the old bunghole, and it was almost like my peter just fell in. She had the loosest asshole I'd ever seen. No lube, no spit, nothing. Just plomp right in there.”

Ed shook his head incredulously.

“Jesus!” Earl blurted out.

“And she went nuts. You'd think she was on fire or somethin', the way she was screamin' and clawin' and vibratin'. Man, it was fuckin' WILD!” Donny sounded for a moment almost as if he couldn't believe it all himself. “That shit went on all night. Then this mornin', I get up. She's downstairs cookin' me breakfast! So I'm eatin', and her
mom
walks in. I'm shittin' cuz I figure she's heard all the banshee wails from the night before and must think I was brutalizing her daughter or somethin'. But she didn't say shit. Must have been stone deaf or somethin'.”

Donny refreshed himself with a slurp of his beer before continuing. “Anyhow, I says, ‘I'm goin' fishin,' so she packs me a lunch and away I go.”

“Breakfast and a packed lunch. Man oh man, sounds like a heck of a gal,” Earl chuckled.

“Eh, I'm still looking for the bitch with the flat head so I can have a place to set my beer while she's slurpin' my peter,” roared Donny.

Ed continued to shake his head, not really knowing how much of what he heard was truth or even if he had heard it correctly. “Wow, I really admire your great respect for women, Don.”

“Well, we can't all be as sensitive as you, Pee Wee.”

“Yeah, well at least you could try and be a little more original with your dipshit commentary. That flathead beer joke went around when I was in the fifth grade.”

“You don't mess with the classics, Ed,” rebounded Donny with a smirk.

“You're gettin' a bite, Don!” snapped Earl, slapping Donny's chest.

“Shee-it!” Donny yanked back on his pole, looking up at the tip. “Missed that fucker!”

Don reeled in, his cigarette dangling out of his mouth. He stopped mid-reel, took a big drag from his cigarette, then flicked the butt into the water.

Chapter 21

C
RABMAN AND
S
TING

T
he sun peered randomly through the marine layer. Fair weather was all well and good, but Earl was irritated by the lack of action. He was a patient man, however, sitting stoically, arms crossed, staring outward, as he watched the pole tips for any signs of life.

Ed sat reclined as far back as his seat would allow and propped his feet up on the top of the transom. He scanned the horizon, marveling at the lack of definition between the sky and water. It looked like a huge, seamless piece of shimmering fabric, the colors shifting from warm tints of orange to silver to cool baby-blue. The surface of the water pulsated as huge, bulbous globules rose from the liquid like salmon-colored spheres of gelatin drifting up into the haze of scattered clouds. Some of the shapes were more irregular than others, resembling, though they were much bigger, the bright fish-row sacks that his father would cure for use on the rivers for steelhead fishing. As he watched the magnificent random vessels drift away, Ed grinned. He had reached a familiar place, the heart of a psychedelic mushroom trip. He felt content as the winter sun caressed his face. He had always enjoyed being out in nature when he took hallucinogens, and he was happy that he was tripping now.

Looking to his right hand, Ed stared at the large can of beer that he'd been nursing. He had been holding it so long that the tin no longer felt cool. He admired the graphic design on the blue, gold, and white can.
How clever,
he thought, being an artist himself, and he liked how simply yet effectively the text
FOSTERS
was splayed out across the face of the can. As he gazed, he noticed that his hand was taking on an orange hue, similar to the morning sky, only blotchy and less consistent. It reminded him of the faux sponge-painted walls that had recently become trendy in the cafés and restaurants around Berkeley. The shape of his hand was altered as well. It had swelled to magnificent proportions, and his four fingers had morphed into a single jagged appendage opposed by one similar replacing his thumb. His hand now resembled a large crab claw.
A Dungeness crab
, he thought, remembering the ones he had seen while tending traps with his father in the old days. He waved it back and forth in front of his face, watching the color trails it left before his eyes.

Donny cocked his head back and watched Ed, who at this point had decided to test the strength of his crustaceous limb by crushing the Fosters can, spewing its remaining contents over himself and his brother.

Lurching back, Earl blurted out, “Damn, Ed. What the hell ya doin'?”

“Sorry.”

Ed returned to observing his claw in silence. Donny chuckled at the curiousness of it all. Earl, relatively undaunted, crossed his arms and returned to mindfully watching the poles. Donny gulped down the rest of his beer and threw the bottle into the five-gallon bucket that held the other empties. He let loose a loud, exaggerated belch that caused Ed's brow to furrow.

“So what was with all that Pee Wee Herman shit anyway?” asked Donny, reaching for the cooler.

Ed noticed that his hand had suddenly returned back to its natural state. He stared at it disappointedly. Perhaps it was Donny's god-awful guttural belch that knocked him back to reality. Perhaps it was just the recognition of the voice that had, in his youth, represented adolescent torment and oppression. Whatever the reason, Ed heard the question and realized that Donny was going to try to wind him up.

“It wasn't Pee Wee Herman,” Ed answered flatly.

“You used to dress like Pee Wee Herman and ride all around on that scooter of yours. Don't fuckin' deny it.”

“I was a mod.”

“Mod?”

“Yeah. Didn't you ever see
Quadrophenia
?”

“Quatro what?” drawled Donny.

QUAD-RO-PHENIA
,” repeated Ed, enunciating as “if he were speaking to a five-year-old. “You know, The Who?”

Donny pondered a moment, then responded, “I don't remember The Who being dressed like Pee Wee Herman.”

“It was a movie. With music by The Who,” Ed explained. “Sting was in it.”

“Oh, well, Sting. That guy's
gotta
be queer,” observed

Donny, settling back in his seat.

“Why's Sting got to be queer?”

“Ah man, he did that song back when we were in high school.” Donny sang mockingly, “
Do-Do-Do, Da-Da-Da
. Fuckin' stupid as hell.”

“Just because you're not into something doesn't make it queer,” Ed answered, chuckling at the absurdity of the conversation.

“Hey, Skynyrd would never do a song like that,” Donny stated defiantly. Earl couldn't help but laugh.

“Whatever, dude.” Ed shook his head and snickered.

Donny cracked his new beer, took a deep swig, and continued mockingly, “Yep, whatever,
dude
.” He flipped his bottle cap into the water, where it floated on the surface for a moment before sinking into the murk.

The water was not very deep and the visibility was about twelve inches at best. As the cap fluttered down toward the bottom, it grazed the back of a huge and magnificent sturgeon. The fish gave one pump of its massive tail and gracefully moved forward.

Chapter 22

P
HILOSOPHY

F
ew things in life were more frustrating to Earl than coming back from a trip without any fish. He had been speaking in dead earnest when he complained to Red about the
skunk
on his boat. Denise had experienced his annoyance firsthand on many occasions. If he returned from a fishing trip with an upbeat stride, she knew that the action had been good on the water that day and there would be fresh fish for dinner. If, however, Earl entered the house muttering to himself, she knew that there had been no fish that day and that the evening could potentially be unpleasant. More than just the wasted expense of a fishless trip, it was a matter of pride with Earl. As did most anglers, he considered the measure of a good fisherman to be gauged not so much by the size but the consistency of the angler's catch. Earl had long proven himself to be a skillful fisherman, but in his own eyes his luck had turned of late, and he was starting to feel a bit desperate. Donny's taunting didn't help matters. More than anything, Earl wanted to see his younger brother, once again after these many years away, battle a mighty sturgeon, and this only added to his desperation. Earl tended the poles with great focus, watching the tips, keeping the bait fresh, and reminding his cohorts to do the same. But with Donny's slapdash approach and Ed's apparent mystification with his surroundings, he found himself doing most of the work.

Earl cast out a freshly baited pole. Ed was lying back in his chair, spacing out, while Donny rooted through his pockets.

“Pee boy, looks like you could use a little pick-me-up,” Donny observed, digging out a key-load of white powder from a small plastic zip bag. He put the key to his nose—
SNORT!
—then gestured the key toward Ed.

“No thanks.”

“Earl?”

“Ah, don't mind if I do.” Earl took a blast from a full key up his nose. He turned to Ed, “Special occasion, bro. Special occasion.”

“Is that coke or crank?”

“Who the hell's got money for coke?” barked Donny. “Pure meth, boy. It lasts longer. I got a buddy that cooks it up right in his garage.”

“Man, I don't see how you guys can snort that shit. I don't see how
anyone
could want to snort that shit.”

“Sheee-it. Snort, hell. Everybody's smokin' it these days,” laughed Donny.

“You're kidding me,” responded Ed. “Fuck that.”

“Hell yeah, right off the foil.” Donny winked at Earl.

“Man, that's sooo bad for you. You may as well be smoking a plastic bag.”

“Well, you gotta die of somethin'.”

“Aw, man. No thanks.”

“I can see you now, Pee boy,” laughed Donny, “bored, lonely old fucker cuz you out-lived all your friends. You'll be in the old folks home eatin' your bean sprouts and tofu shit. Me, I'll be long gone. If my heart explodes while I'm pumpin' away at some fat-assed El Sob girly, that'd be okay by me. I'd go out a-grinnin' like a bastard.” He laughed, along with Earl.

“I'm sure that's an honorable event most women could do without,” Ed said snidely.