by Kirk Alex
The chanting was not letting up in spite of Brenda’s concerted effort to put an end to it, and it was starting to get to him in a bad way. He could tell the pepper bellies in the sorry bucket were snickering. Fuckers. All fuckers. The way it always was for him: the world on his ass. Society causing him grief. People.
Just as he contemplated, toyed with the idea merely, of drawing his .357 and taking care of business, commotion of some kind coming from the backyard, the left side of his Garage, to be more precise, by the hedges, pulled him away from the badgering teens, drew his attention, and he walked back there.
CHAPTER 30
Just as he had suspected upon first spotting the trapped rabbit behind his window mesh, Lloyd’s other grandkid, Brenda’s older half-brother “Twelve-Fingers” Flinger, was tussling with Marvin against the side of his garage.
Bent teeth and the “Mohawk” that was a foot high and went straight up and kept this way with lots of gel, extra-strength. Kid wore leather wrist bands with inch-long chrome spikes. Had a mama who was an aging rock-n-roll groupie and was doing time, or had done time for hanging paper and soliciting a vice cop in a Beverly Hills hotel.
Marvin had the teen on the ground and he was pummeling him with both fists. By the time Cecil got there, Flinger had begun to hyperventilate. His eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness. Biggs shoved Marvin off of him. Knelt beside Finger Lickin’. Turned him on his side and slid the US Mail satchel, that he was rarely without, under his head.
“Ain’t done shit to the young punk, me. Punk be actin’.”
“He’s epileptic.”
Biggs dug around inside Flinger’s satchel. Found a bottle of phenobarbital, a thermos. Shoved an anticonvulsant in his mouth. Uncapped the thermos, and poured soda in him to chase it.
“Couldn’t you tell he was having a seizure? Hell’s the matter with you?”
“Didn’t know, me. Don’t nobody say shit about it.”
“You didn’t know he was epileptic? You must be the only one, then.”
“Fuck him. Young dude ain’t got no invite to trespass.”
“People are known to die from asphyxiation after a grand mal seizure like this.”
“Dude was snoopin’. Yo.”
Flinger was regaining consciousness. He was coming back to. Stabilizing. Biggs helped him up.
“What was that?”
“You heard: caught him peepin’ in the garage window.”
“That right?” Biggs was looking at the teen now. “What did you expect to see in there?”
Wilburn Flinger remained on the woozy side and it took him a moment to respond.
“How could I see anything? Windows are dirty, and you got them boarded up; just like everything is boarded up around here.”
“What was it you expected to see?”
“Beeves.”
“Beeves? You’re crazy. This is a church, not a slaughter house.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“Who sent you?”
“Who sent me? Nobody sent me. It’s my sister Brenda’s rabbit: Bentley. Got caught in your basement window. I come over to free him. That’s when I got the idea to find a stick or something to poke at it, make him come out the other side of the mesh.”
“I’ll ask you again: Who sent you?”
“I told you: Nobody did.”
“How did your rabbit get caught in my window?”
“He ain’t mine. Bentley belongs to my half-sis.”
“How’d he manage to get stuck—on my property, of all places?”
“Petunia Roscoe’s dogs went after him. He run inside the mesh to keep from getting mauled to death.”
Marvin picked up a pair of binoculars off the ground. “He was carrying these.”
“Belong to my grandpa. Lets me use them.”
Binoculars had night vision capability. Biggs was familiar with the type. He looked at him without saying anything for a while.
Although the kid was eighteen, at a mere five foot two he was practically a dwarf, a wide one. Had a unibrow and a large head, with all that dark hair formed in a ridiculous do. An earring in the shape of a swastika hung from the left earlobe. There was a stud in one of the nostrils, a safety pin above his right eye. Black leather jacket had zippers along both sleeves, and other places; lots of zippers. Black cut-off jeans went down to below his knees, although up at the waist were way too low, lower than the elastic underwear band. Wore knee-length argyle socks. Boots were shit-kickers: black and scuffed, with five-inch heels, to compensate for lack of stature.
It wasn’t until the teen wiped grass and general crud from his chin and mouth that Biggs was reminded that he had an extra pinkie on each hand. Flinger had a total of twelve fingers. Where the average Joe and Josephine had ten, flop-eared Flinger had a dozen. Possibly explained why he was so quick to flip people off at the slightest provocation: secretly hoped that the extra finger on each hand might one day be severed by an unhappy recipient, then he’d be down to ten—like everyone else.
“Yo. Ain’t you gonna aks him what he be doin’ way back here, when the bunny be over there?”
Flinger took the opportunity to give Marvin Muck the bird. Marvin was about to step in and knock him down again.
Biggs put a stop to it.
“Peeps want to know what’s causing the smell. Thought I’d investeegate while I was back here looking around for a twig, something to poke at the rabbit with.”
“But nobody sent you?”
“They didn’t send me. Nobody sent me. Lloyd, my grandpa, keeps talking about the smell; he’s bothered by it. But he didn’t send me. Nobody sent me.”
“Rutherford, my German shepherd. Got run over. Keeping him in the garage for the time being. Went out and bought formaldehyde and trying to learn taxidermy in order to preserve him. It’s not easy to let go when a pet dies. It’s like losing a member of your family. He was family. That’s that. And you’re trespassing.”
“I know.”
“You planted that rabbit in my window deliberately in order to have an excuse to snoop.”
“Like hell that’s what I done. Rabbit don’t even belong to me.” He pointed to his thirteen-year-old half-sister Brenda standing on the other side of the street, currently wiping her eyes with a tissue, or doing something like it; looking nervous and concerned.
“Believe me now? Bentley belongs to her. He don’t belong to me, like I said. If he was mine I’d just throw him against the wall, head first. Rabbits are like cats: smell like a sewage plant. Something like the stench coming from your garage.”
“We went over that.”
“Keep telling Brenda if she don’t keep that rabbit in his cage, he’s gonna get run over one day.”
“Exactly. That’s what happened to Rutherford. Hit-and-run.”
“Nobody run over Rutherford,” said Marvin.
“The driver who ran him over,” Biggs continued unfazed, “didn’t even have the decency to stop and offer condolences.”
“Maybe he got nervous,” said Wilburn.
“Or just didn’t give a damn,” said Biggs.
Wilburn lifted the lid on his Tupperware container that he kept in his US Mail satchel to see if any of the eggs in there had survived the tumble. Three of the four raw eggs were cracked, and he turned the container upside down and let the yolk pour out and down his throat.
He swallowed the lot, shell and all, although some of the yolk and egg white missed his mouth and dripped onto his hands. Finger Lickin’ dealt with it by licking his fingers and sucking his thumbs.
He retrieved the final, untouched egg, poked a hole in the shell with the fingernail on one of his two extra pinkies, and sucked the yolk out. Marvin Muck made a face like maybe he was about to get sick.
“You right, Cecil. Yo. Mothafuckah be crazy.”
When Wilburn was done with that, he dug around inside the plastic container and produced a purple Popsicle, mostly covered in raw egg. He licked the egg off, and stuck the Popsicle in hi
s mouth.
It was disgusting the way he went about it.
“Like a crack ho suckin’ weenie head.”
“Nothing like dessert. After you had a fine meal like that.”
“Dessert? You call that dessert? You call suckin’ raw egg’ a meal? Even jambalaya be better than that.”
Wilburn sucked his Popsicle.
Biggs handed him the binoculars. “You’ll need these, the better to peek under the girls’ dresses with.”
Wilburn accepted the binoculars with a repeat of the earlier claim, as he walked along the Roscoe side of the church grounds to where the window was. Biggs and Marvin followed.
“They ain’t exactly mine. Field glasses belong to Lloyd.”
“So you come from a long line of Peeping Toms, that it?”
“There.” Wilburn Flinger pointed at the frightened, trapped rabbit, caught between the wire meshed wrought iron bars and the planks over the pane itself. There was a gap; better yet, what looked like a man-made opening, that the animal had been able to crawl into, and was presently unable to budge.
“You cut that opening in my mesh?”
“No way.” Wilburn picked up a twig off the ground. “I didn’t want to cause more damage to it than was already there.”
“What do you plan on doing with that?”
“Poke at it. Until it comes out the other side.”
“Can’t you see it’s stuck? Animal is not going anywhere; it isn’t able to.”
“I can’t think of nothing else.” A flustered Wilburn Flinger turned his head, and could see his sister standing back there across the street, on the verge of tears. “Brenda’s about to start crying again—and I just can’t stand to see her cry. I ain’t a rabbit lover; I don’t get rabbits. Just as soon throw it at a moving truck and watch it go splat. Like I said: it’s Brenda’s. I have to do something. Maybe one of her girlfriend’s will blow me if I can show them what a good guy I am.”
Cecil selected a key on one of the many key rings on his carabiner. Inserted it into the lock in the wrought iron frame. Turned the key. He opened the frame and let the teen scoop the bunny up. Flinger seemed to lack the sense to say thank you, and walked off toward the chain-link part of the fence that fronted Biggs church and property.
Cecil swung the wrought iron bars in place and locked the frame. Saw that Flinger was about to try scaling his gate and couldn’t believe it. If the kid broke a leg he’d have another lawsuit on his hands. He walked down to put a stop to it.
“You’re not climbing over with Bentley in tow?”
“Got a better idea?”
Biggs unlocked the gate. Gestured he try walking instead. Flinger took him up on it. Brenda rushed in to take her pet in her arms. Kid had tears streaming down. She was the one who thanked Biggs for the effort.
“Don’t mention it.” If he were not genuinely touched by the girl’s show of gratitude and emotion, he came close. It was rare for him. “Had a couple of pets myself as a youngster. They were killed and eaten by my own family. Something like that you never forget. Glad I could help.”
CHAPTER 31
Biggs checked his mailbox. Found the usual junk mail, advertisements, and porn solicitations. Someone had evidently put his name on a few smut lists. It didn’t figure: he was the bishop of a church. Why send him gay porn and outcall service offers and hot oil rubdown enticements at discounted rates from that massage parlor but a few doors down from Slim Jessup’s diner? Jessup owned the place, too, or at the least was one of the co-owners. That was the rumor. And the gay porn? It wasn’t all gay porn, but a lot of it was. Who would do that to him? You get one guess: Petunia and Marty Roscoe. Unless it was Roscoe on his own. Just to fuck with him.
When he looked up he noticed that Brenda had walked back to her side of the street to join up with her friends and was reprimanding them for the chanting and jeering. They did stop upon her insistence. She realized what her brother was up to just then and shook her head in disgust. Called her grandfather Lloyd’s name. Wilburn didn’t seem fazed in the least. He was lying on his belly in the middle of the driveway and he had the binoculars glued to his eyes, which in itself would have been perfectly harmless, except that he had them aimed at the girls’ behinds as they jumped rope.
Old man dicker soon enough limped up from his backyard with the aid of that metal cane. Paused at Wilburn’s feet and swung that cane like it was a golf club, whacking him across the soles of his boots.
Biggs stood where he was, pretending to be immersed in his mail, while straining to hear what was taking place on the other side of the street between grandfather and grandson. Enough of it was discernible.
“What did you find out? I sent you over there to see what’s causing the smell. Find out anything?”
“Yeah, I did. Dude’s got bad breath like you, Gramps.”
“Keep pushing, Wilburn, and you’ll push yourself right out of the garage and onto a bus bench. I’m charging you rent from now on—”
“Rent?”
“And utilities. If you can send money to Manson and them other serial killer vermin, what you don’t spend on drugs and hookers, you can damned well pay rent. Me and Fontana are damned tired of carrying your ass. About time your mother quit running around with that rock-n-roll trash out there in London and started taking care of her own kids.”
“Fuck Bernice. She ain’t shit.”
“Don’t talk about your mother that way.” The old man more than understood the kid’s bitterness. Had every right. Sure did. Took notice of his grandson’s face for the first time.
“They do that to you? What happened over there?”
“Got the living crap beat out of me, is what happened. Thanks to you.”
“Was it Biggs?” Lloyd was about to turn on his heels to go inside and get on the phone. “Calling Valley PD about this right now.”
“Wouldn’t do no good.”
“Why wouldn’t it? It’s their job to protect the citizenry.”
“I was trespassing, you old fool. Besides, it wasn’t him. He helped me. Was having a seizure, too. It wasn’t Cecil; it was the other one: the nigger.”
“You need to stop using that word.”
“What word?”
“Nigger. That’s what word.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the ugliest word there is. That’s why.”
“No, it ain’t. There’s one other that’s worse.”
“Name it, you little jerk. What is it?”
“Rent. And utilities.”
“You’re asking for it, ain’t you, boy?”
“You sent me over there to get my ass kicked, and all you want to do is squeeze me for every dollar I got. Ain’t got that much to begin with. Get nearly put in the hospital and all you want to do is stick me in some crappy shed and take my money.”
“You ain’t got any to speak of, as of yet—so hush up about it.”
“You brung it up, Gramps.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Man, I’m sick of old people always giving me a hard time.”
“What’s behind the odor?”
“Rutherford. His dead dog. Got him hanging in the garage. Biggs is trying to learn taxidermy. So he can keep him around.”
“Not likely. That dog of his hit the road, just like Tillie; like his wife. Had to get away from him. Can’t say as I blame either one. Took his abuse long enough. His kind is always like that: abuse their women, beat on the dog—and wonder why they moved on.”
“Yeah? You’ll be asking yourself the same thing when I’m gone if you don’t get off my back.”
“The day you move out will be the happiest day of my life.”
“You say that now, only you’ll be crying your eyes out, you and Grandma both, when I pack up and hit the bricks. Tired of this shit.”
“Go in the house. Let Mother take care of you, clean your face. You look a mess.”
“Leave me alone.”
Lloyd held his ha
nd out. Asked for the binoculars. Looked like Wilburn was refusing to turn them over. “I didn’t let you borrow them so you can sneak peeks under young girls’ dresses. Hand them over.”
“When I’m good and ready.”
Old man Dicker raised his cane. Was about to smite the teen with it. Held it there. Poised.
“I will. I’ll strike you down, Wilburn. Exactly why that nigger over there give you a beating. Got no respect.”
Didn’t seem like Wilburn was willing to go that far. The old man looked like he meant business. Flinger rose to his feet, lifted the leather strap over his head and relinquished the binoculars.
Biggs thought he heard him say that he was sorry. Yes. Apologized to his grandfather, and asked if he really meant what he said about charging him rent. Lloyd Dicker limped back down his driveway to his backyard without responding. Wilburn spit on the ground. Kicked his skateboard over, hopped on it, and skated out toward the sidewalk.
Ace and his buddy Felix Monk could be heard chuckling out loud in their beater; they were sucking on beers in those paper sacks and chuckling. One of them even made cat sounds, implying that Wilburn was nothing but a “pussy.”
Wilburn “Finger Lickin’” Flinger did not waste any time, didn’t think twice about it. Flipped them the bird. Skated up to the car on the sidewalk side, held that middle bone where it could be seen. Taking great pleasure in it.
Before he knew what was happening and could duck in time, beer was thrown in his face, then the beer cans. First the one, then the other, practically knocking him off his skateboard. Ace and Felix laughed out loud this time, then drove off in their multi-shaded bucket.
CHAPTER 32
Biggs turned to walk back. Noticed his sign. Stood there shaking his head. As if he didn’t have enough to deal with.
To the right of the stoop, roughly in front of the basement window, the height of an average human, the message the thirty-six-by-thirty-six-inch cathedral sign proclaimed was not the one he had instructed Marvin to put on there. Instead of posting a simple enough adage like LIFE IS SHORT, PRAY HARD, Marvin had made it: