The Mortal Nuts (17 page)

Chapter 27

Axel snapped the padlock closed and took one last walk around the outside of the restaurant. Everything seemed to be in order. Most of the concessions on the mall were closed, or closing. Sophie had gone home. Carmen slumped on a bench, smoking a cigarette. Axel wished, as he often did, that he still smoked. The end of the day was a good time for a cigarette. He missed the break, and the morsel of warmth that came with a good cigarette.

Tiny Tot Donuts remained open, feeding the last of the grandstand crowd. Tommy Fabian sat on his stool, looking as though he might fall off at any moment.

It took fifteen minutes for Axel to talk Tommy into closing. By the time the kids had shut down the machines and finished cleaning, it was nearly midnight. Axel helped Tommy lock down the stand.

Carmen had fallen asleep on her bench. Axel gave her a gentle shake.

“Let's hit the road, kiddo.”

They walked to the truck in silence. Both Carmen and Tommy looked like they were going to pass out. Tommy walked with one hand inside his shirt, like his gut hurt.

They were almost to the Winnebago when it occurred to Axel that Tommy might be holding on to something besides himself.

Axel gave Tommy's elbow a nudge. “What you got there, Tom?”

Tommy glared up at him. “I don't want to hear it, Ax.”

“Administration sees you packing a gun again, you could lose your spots.”

“I run into that Bald Monkey again, it'll be worth it.”

In the truck, as they pulled into the motel parking lot, Carmen roused herself to ask, “What's Sophie so hyper about, anyway?”

Axel said, “Sophie? What do you mean, hyper?”

“All day she was all over my case. All of a sudden she's worried about I might put too much meat in somebody's taco. You'd think I was giving away money, the way she's been acting.”

Axel forced his face to assume a serious expression. “Really?”

“Yeah. She's turned into a real bitch all of a sudden. I don't get it.”

Axel could hardly contain himself. This partnership was going to work out great. Grinning, he asked, “So how much meat are we talking about here?”

Carmen opened the passenger door and said, “You're just as weird as she is.”

“Get some sleep,” Axel said. “You'll feel better tomorrow. Try to get in before the lunch rush, okay?”

Carmen closed the truck door and waved him away. Her head hurt. She was tired and she was bored.

She could hear Dean's voice before she opened the door.

He was sitting on the writing table, his booted feet resting on the chair, reading from his poetry book. He looked up briefly as Carmen entered, then continued reading. On the bed directly in front of him sat a young giant with arms the circumference of her waist. He wore an olive-drab tank top, khaki-colored cotton duck pants, and a pair of boots like Dean's, only bigger. His head was shaved, and most of his forehead was covered by a swollen, scabby bruise. He didn't look up at Carmen but kept his eyes fixed on Dean, his arms rigid and flexed, his jaw pulsing every few seconds.

“
No man hath affliction enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction,
” Dean read.

Behind the giant, who took up most of the bed, a boy of perhaps seventeen, also bald, lay gazing up at the ceiling tiles, hands laced behind his head. He wore shredded black denim jeans and a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots held together with silver duct tape. Carmen closed the door and leaned against it.

“How'd you get in?” she asked Dean.

The boy with the cowboy boots toned his head. “Pork just fuckin' picked it,” he said, showing her his collection of mottled gray teeth.

“Pork?”

Dean read, “
This Soule, now free from prison, and passion, hath yet a little indignation.
“

This, Carmen thought, is too weird. She walked quickly between Dean and the giant, heading for the bathroom, hoping to give herself a minute to think. She found another intruder, bent over the back of the toilet tank, using a razor blade to chop chunks of dry white matter into powder.

“What you got there?” Carmen asked, forgetting her confusion. “Coke?”

The man turned his head and leered at her while he continued chopping the lumps into powder with short, rapid strokes. He was the most feral-looking of the group, possibly due to the furry patch that served to connect his eyebrows with his long, meaty nose. Also, he had neglected to shave for some time, and his head and face were covered with short, dense dark hairs.

“We don't do yuppie dope,” he said.

Carmen looked curiously at the lines he was now making on the white porcelain. “What is it?” she asked.

“Crank. You're Carmen, I bet. I'm Pork.”

“Pork? Crank?” Carmen was looking at the lines. “Is it any good?” she asked.

Pork grinned. “Pure crystal meth. You could drive all the way to L.A. on a quarter gram.” He rolled a five-dollar bill into a tube the diameter of a pencil and handed it to her. “Want a little wake-up?”

A few minutes later, Pork followed Carmen out of the bathroom, carrying the top to the toilet tank. Carmen's nose throbbed agonizingly, but it was getting better. She could feel the amphetamine flooding her system.

Dean was explaining something to the kid in the shredded denim, who was now sitting up on the bed, next to the giant. They were both leaning forward intently, listening. The words spilled from Dean's mouth, tumbling over one another. “It's not you, Tigger. That's the whole point. It's everybody. So it's like you are part of the nigger, and part of the yuppie, and part of the whore, and like they are part of you.”

“Bullshit,” said Tigger.

“Look,” said Dean. “What do you do when you got a big zit, big old whitehead, hanging off the end of your nose. You squeeze it off, right? And you got a right and an obligation to do that, right? On account of you don't want people to get sick from looking at you, right? And what do you do when your little sister, who is a part of you—”

“I ain't got a sister.”

“Well, suppose you did, and she's like a part of you, which she would be, and she starts hooking, doing coke and smack, and hanging out with the niggers. What's the righteous thing to do?”

“Me an' Sweety fuckin' kick ass on her and the niggers both.”

“Exactly. What I'm saying is, it's on account of you got to because they are a part of you. Which is what my man Donne is on about. When the fucking bell fucking tolls, you better fucking listen, on account of it means somebody needs to get their fuckin' head kicked.”

The giant, who had been nodding energetically, curled a meaty arm around Tigger's head and started rapping his knuckles against his skull. “Lemme soften his head up. He don't listen.”

Tigger twisted loose. “Fuck you, Sweety.”

“‘Fuck you, Sweety,'” Sweety parroted, pitching his voice as high as he could get it.

“Hey,” said Pork, still holding the ceramic toilet tank top. “I gotta set this down someplace.”

Dean slid off the writing desk. “Right here,” he said. He looked at the lines, six neat parallel slashes of white on white.

“Me and Carmen here, we already got our consciousnesses raised. This is for you guys. You ready for seconds, Deano?”

“You better go first,” Sweety said to Tigger. “Your conscious got more climbing to do.”

Tigger said, “Fuck you,” but he took the rolled-up bill from Pork and did his two lines quickly, one up each nostril, and threw himself back on the bed, holding his hands over his nose.

Pork laughed. “Stings, don't it? That's how you know it's good.”

Pork and Carmen watched Sweety and Dean do their lines, then Carmen opened the cooler and distributed warm canned martinis.

“Awright,” said Sweety. “We gonna have a party.”

“Where'd you guys come from?” Carmen asked.

“Headquarters,” Tigger said.

“Drove over here in Tigger's Caddy,” Dean said. “Man, that is one big ugly car you got there, Tigger.”

Tigger grinned. “The Black Beauty.”

“It's a fuckin' tank.”

“Got a big old five-hundred-cubie V-8.”

“So we drove on over here, sitting around reading John Donne, working on Sweety's head, man. These guys never heard of Donne before. Sitting around waiting all day for the Porker to show—”

“I got hung up,” said Pork.

“It was worth it,” said Dean, pinching his nose. “This is great shit. I want it. I want it all. So anyway, we sit around here waiting, but at least Tigger got done with Sweety's tattoo, man. What do you think?”

Carmen, enjoying the buzz but with no idea what was going on, asked, “Are you guys from Omaha?” She pulled a cigarette out of her pack.

“Gimme one of them,” Sweety said. “Gimme two.” Carmen handed him two cigarettes.

“We're from Frogtown, man,” Tigger said.

“I found 'em,” Dean said.

“Bullshit,” Sweety said. “We found you. You didn't know where the fuck you was.” He had both cigarettes in his mouth. Carmen lit them.

Dean said to Carmen, “Went into this bar, place full of factory creeps, and Tigger comes up.”

“Stepped on my fucking toe,” Tigger said.

“So we start bullshittin'.”

“Skins hang together,” Sweety said, sucking hard on his cigarettes.

“So I asked these guys if they knew where I could get some speed.”

Carmen's head was waggling back and forth as she tried to follow the conversation, retaining almost none of it. Her eyes settled on Sweety's forehead. “What happened to your head?”

Sweety grinned, contorting his brow.

“It's a tattoo,” Dean said.

Carmen looked at it for several seconds before distinguishing the words
FUCK ME.

“Fuck you?”

“You got it, bitch. Fuck me fuck me fuck me.” He stood up and moved toward Carmen, his arms held out before him.

Dean pulled Axel's .45 out of his jacket, pointed it at Sweety, and said, “Bang.”

Sweety clapped his hands over his chest and fell back on the bed. “Arrrgh. You got me. I'm fucking dead.”

Tigger was giggling.

Dean blew imaginary smoke from the muzzle and slid the pistol back into his jacket pocket. “You got to watch these guys every minute,” he said to Carmen. “They're a buncha fuckin' animals.”

An hour or so later, even as he was talking—telling Carmen and the skins about how he'd avenged himself on Tiny Tot, telling them how much cash he'd scored, telling them about how easy it was—a little man behind his left eyeball was telling Dean to shut up, to be discreet, to not trust this bunch with every thought that ran through his head. But that small portion of his consciousness could not withstand the tongue-loosening power of the methedrine. He was gabbing away like a speed freak!

Dean barked out a laugh, interrupting himself.

“What's so funny?” Tigger asked.

“I'm talking like a fucking speed freak!”

That turned out to be the funniest thing anybody'd heard all night. Dean basked in their admiration, feeling his chest expand. He decided to read them some more passages from John Donne, but when Pork saw him reaching for the book, he turned to Carmen.

“I hear the guy you work for is really rich,” he said.

“He keeps his money in coffee cans,” she said.

“Bull
shit!
” Dean said. “We checked his damn coffee cans and didn't find shit.”

“Well, it was there. I saw it. It's not my fault he moved it.”

“Yeah, well, anyways, the donut guy was the one with all the money.”

“He's back at work, you know,” Carmen said.

Dean said, “No shit?” He was surprised. He thought he'd killed him.

“Maybe you ought to score off him again,” Pork suggested.

Dean laughed. “Not a bad idea.”

“I don't know,” Carmen said, getting into the spirit of it. “Him and Axel, they walk back to his place together now.”

“So hit 'em both,” said Pork.

Tigger jumped in. “Fuck, why don't we hit the fuckin' gate? Man, would that be cool, or what? Get, like, a million bucks or something!”

Pork said, “Tigger, I ever tell you what a fucking idiot you are?”

Sweety made a rumbling sound in his chest.

“I ain't talking about you, Sweety,” Pork said. “You're one of the smartest Aryan motherfuckers I know. And big too.” He pulled a folded paper from his pocket. “What do you say we do a little booster?”

Sweety grinned, using his entire face. Dean could hear his scabbed brow crackle.

Sweety's stomach started growling a few minutes into the 6:00
A.M
. edition of
Sesame Street.

“He's hungry,” Tigger explained. “We got to go get something to eat.”

“I'm hungry too,” said Dean. “Hey, Pork You hungry?”

Pork nodded. Dean looked at Carmen, who was curled up on the floor. “You hungry, Carmen?”

Carmen did not answer. Two hours earlier, she had swallowed a few Valiums, and she was now on the floor, wrapped in the bedspread, snoring.

They took Tigger's car to a Perkins. Sweety ordered a breakfast steak and six eggs, scrambled. Tigger explained to the nervous waitress how to prepare them.

“He likes 'em just barely cooked. You go tell them to just stir the eggs up and dump 'em in a pan and then dump 'em right out again on a plate. Hardly cook 'em at all. He likes 'em real soupy like. And get him some extra toast too, so's he can sop it up. Okay?”

The waitress said, “Steak and eggs with a side order of six eggs, scrambled, very loose.”

“Yeah, only you know how loose you think he wants 'em?” The waitress nodded. “He likes 'em even looser than that.” Pork was talking to Dean. “I can get it for you. But not till tonight.” “That's cool.”