Family Tradition

by Edward Lee

  “Head on back,” Ashton advised.

  “Wait a minute,” Bob reminded. “We still have traps in the water, don’t we?”

  Ashton thought about it. “Yeah, but—shit we haven’t caught anything all day. Fuck the traps. Let’s get back to the girls.”

  Bob sucked on his cottonmouth. He spat, then emptied the bucket of beer bottles over the side. “What’s five minutes? We might as well check the traps.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Ashton snapped on a flashlight, roved its bright beam across the water. They’d used empty gallon milk bottles for buoys, and there one bobbed just over the side of the boat.

  Ashton grabbed it, pulled up the long wet rope. Feels heavy,” he said.

  “Don’t say that!” Bob declared. “It’s bad luck!”

  Ashton hoisted the dripping trap out of the water, slammed it on deck.

  Bob flicked his own flashlight down.

  “Jesus Christ in a whorehouse,” Ashton muttered.

  The boxlike wire trap was full of Crackjaw eel.

  — | — | —

  Chapter Nine

  “Come on,” Carol urged. Once on the island, they ran away from the pier toward the bait shop, two sprites in the night.

  No lights on in the bait shop. Before them the darkness stood, blocked with shapes that were more buildings beyond. The moon continued to hover over them, a limed face.

  “What are we doing?” Sheree inquired.

  “Just snooping around,” Carol replied. “What the fuck?”

  Still high on LSD, Sheree followed. The dark forms around her seemed to percolate, to swell. Anything Carol said back to her seemed to slide out of her mouth like a balloon of faintly glowing oil and wrap around Sheree’s face. Sheree inhaled the liquid words into her nostrils, like gas.

  God, I’m fucked up, Sheree thought, wobbling onward.

  They stepped across dirt and rocks, hiked over driftwood and washed up pilings. Sheree had no idea what the purpose of this excursion was, and didn’t particularly care. Every step she took forward brought a motion of surrealistic trails. Her footfalls ground up and displayed vaguely exploding shapes before her eyes. The sound of her own huffing breath, too, exuded a shape: like sperm in a pool, she thought.

  The darkness was dark light; the moon seemed amplified a hundredfold. As her breasts rode up and down beneath her haltertop, the fabric felt like coarse tongues trying to lick out milk, and the crotch of her shorts was a rough finger.

  “Holy shit,” Carol whispered.

  Next thing Sheree knew, they were at another shack, deeper into the woods behind the bait shop. Carol was gazing into a lit window.

  “He’s…jerking off…with worms.”

  With WHAT? Sheree thought. She stuck her face right up to the shack’s window, and what she saw….

  The redneck from the bait shop—Esau, she thought his name was. He was lyng back on a stained bare mattress. The foot of the bed pointed toward the window, affording Sheree and Carol about as direct a view as one could want—er, that is if one could ever want such a view. GrrrrrrrrOSS! Sheree thought.

  Esau lay naked save for his workboots, his great belly spread like a jumbo white beach ball half deflated. Raisin-sized moles dotted his body along with smudges of dirt, but even grosser and more bizarre was the fact Esau seemed to completely lack body hair. The bottom of his gut rolled down so low that it almost prevented masturbation. Almost. The dirty hairless scrotum bounded below his pumping hand. Not much dick, either, at least by what they could see. But Carol was right about one thing—

  He is! Sheree thought in a perverse shriek. He’s jerking off…with worms!

  Indeed. It was not vaseline or spit in Esau’s palm, it was a fistful of live bloodworms that he squeezed around his cock as his hand shucked manically up and down. At one point, he stopped, lifted off his hand, and as he did so, the mashed worms on his cock fell in a bloody clump between his rotund legs. Esau reached aside to a coffee can on the floor, lifted out a fresh handful, and was back at it.

  Sheree tugged Carol away from the window. “We’re not really seeing this, are we?” she whispered. “It’s the acid, right?”

  “No,” Carol whispered back. “Bebo just makes you see trails and colors. Never any heavy hallucinations.”

  Sheree felt stifled. “But—”

  “Believe it.” Carol giggled. “That fat redneck in there is whacking off with a handful of worms.”

  Sheree thought she’d seen it all.

  Until they went back to the window.

  “Holy shit!” Carl whispered. “Look! He’s only got—”

  Oh, GRRRROSS!

  Esau, in his lustful angst, had now brought his knees back to his belly, fat jiggling as his hips fidgeted, his buttocks spread, and it was thanks to this gesture that Sheree and Carol noticed three things. One: Esau clearly was not in the habit of using toilet paper. Two: Only one testicle occupied his scrotum, but it was as large as a kiwi fruit. And Three:

  Sheree almost threw up when her eyes deciphered the rest. Esau held his cock with his right hand, and very dextrously with his left he was feeding a long, single bloodworm into his urethra with what appeared to be a Q-Tip.

  “Oh, man,” Sheree moaned.

  Carol grinned over at her. “Isn’t this the freakiest thing you’ve ever seen?”

  Once the worm had been pushed in completely, Esau pinched off his glans with left thumb and index finger while his right hand continued to mash the worms back and forth over his penis. Now he was really fidgeting, and through the wall, they could hear him heatedly exclaiming: “Ooo-yeah, baby! Sable! Sable! Gorgeous George! Ooo-yeah!”

  A lucky hunch, perhaps, or the LSD had made her precognitive, but as Sheree turned, she caught Carol about to erupt laughter. Only a single chirp escaped, however, before Sheree clamped her hand over her friend’s mouth.

  “Shhhh!” she whispered. “He’ll hear you!”

  They slipped their faces back to the window, and Sheree thought again, Oh, man…

  It was bad enough to see a hairless, mole-spotted 300-pound man masturbate with his knees pulled back and his shit-smeared ass-crack showing. It was bad enough, too, to see his masturbate with worms and worse yet to see him force a worm down his piss-slit.

  But then Esau came.

  Sheree felt like a zombie staring as she watched Esau release the tip of his dick. Several spurts of semen pumped out and landed on his belly. Along with the worm.

  Then Esau plucked up the worm and ate it. Yes sir. He just dropped it into his mouth, chewed, shallowed. Licked his fingers, too.

  Sheree and Carol both blanched. They sat down against the shack under the window. Sheree leaned forward to—

  “Don’t throw up!” Carol ordered in a whisper. “He’ll hear it and come out here!”

  Sheree choked it back, light-headed. The acid only made it worse.

  A door slammed.

  Sheree and Carol sat rigid, hugging each other. What if he had heard them? What would he do?

  Oh, God, oh God—

  The moon shown down like a spotlight. Esau, now re-attired in his overalls, had exited the shack. He stood with his back to them. If he turned…

  “Ooo-eee! What a beautiful night,” Esau said, looking up at the moon. He reached back, dug his fingers deep into the ass of the overalls, scratching. “Guess I better go check on Grandpa Ab’s breakfast.”

  Then he walked away into the woods, whistling.

  Sheree and Carol both let out long breaths. “Christ, I almost pissed myself,” Carol said.

  “I—” Sheree frowned, at once noticing the damp warmth soaking her cutoffs.

  “Come on!” Carol got up, rushed forward.

  “Where are you going?” Sheree followed her around. Carol was going into the shack!

  “Are you nuts?” By the time she caught up, Carol was already inside. As might be expected, the shack stunk. No running water, and the bathroom was simply a seatless chair set over a hole in the floo
r. Sheree glanced inadvertently at the can of worms by the mattress, then felt her stomach convulse. “We can’t come in here! He could come back!”

  “You heard him. He said he was going to see his grandfather or something.”

  That’s right, Sheree remembered. Esau had mentioned a grandfather. Grandpa Ab? “But didn’t he also say something…about breakfast?”

  ««—»»

  “Hey, Skinny?” Esau greeted, holding up an oil lantern. Mavis remained on her hook, in shock. When Esau bit down hard on one of her nearly breastless nipples, she flinched.

  “Good gal. Yer still alive. Cain’t have ya dyin’ just yet.” He patted her stapled vagina. “Gonna let that fish in there cook just right.” Menstrual blood dripped slowly from the gaps in the staples, crusted the pubic hair. “Oh, and thanks fer the cobbler fillin’. Grandpa Ab loved it. He done et six cobblers in one sittin’.”

  Just for the hell of it, then, he bit her again, on the side of the ribs this time. She flinched once more and peeped out a scratch of a scream.

  “Spunky little dickens! I like that in a gal! Hail, if’n it weren’t fer yer pussy bein’ stapled shut, I’se might give ya the high, hard one!”

  He turned around, then leaned over the giant metal drum sitting over the fire pit. The coals glowed bright-orange, tinting Esau’s grinning face. He sniffed at the trace steam leaking from the drum’s rim. “Ummmm-MM that smells good! We’ll let Fattie cook in their till tomorrah, let all that blubber melt down into a nice rich stock. Then the meat just falls off the bone!”

  Next, Esau walked over to the canoe, and touched the head sticking out of it. The head just lolled there. “Dang, ya finally died, fella. Looks like it’s pate on toast fer Grandpa’s breakfast. Cain’t wait ta see that liver on ya, bet it’s huge.”

  Esau set the oil lamp on a table, then grabbed a hammer and with its claw began to pull out the roofing nails which he’d used to tack the tin sheets over the canoe. “Dang!” he remarked when he’d pried off all the tin. The canoe was full up with corn-flecked diarrhea. The stench rose like the miasma over an open sewer but this did not afflict Esau in the least; to him, the stench was just another culinary aroma. The body simply lay there, submerged in shit save for the oval of its face. Esau used his knife to cut the nylon twine lashing the boy’s wrists to the front seat prop. Then he pulled the boy out on to the ground.

  “Hot damn!” Esau excitedly exclaimed. The boy’s belly looked pregnant. This internal protuberance would be the liver, swollen to four or five times its normal size from weeks of force-feeding. A delicacy. Most would be used for pate, while the ends he would grill over soaked cherrywood. The trimmings would make a delectable wurst.

  The boy’s body dripped liquefied shit as Esau hoisted him up and placed him on the cutting table; Esau’s arms came away slick brown. He next cut the ankle lashes. All manner of bugs and worms churned over the boy’s excrement-shellacked skin, but that was no matter. The skin would all be trimmed off. The thighs, of course, would serve as roasts; the belly, bacon; the rest rough-chopped for bouillabaisse. But first…

  “Let’s get that big, sweet liver out’cha,” Esau said to himself. He went to the counter, for a paring knife. Cutting out the liver required some finesse. “Grandpa Ab’s gonna shit!”

  But when Esau turned back toward the table, the boy was sitting upright.

  “Well don’t that beat all? The dead kid ain’t dead!”

  The boy’s wild face looked at Esau and said: “Nab-bluh-glab-noob-plap!”

  Esau burst laughter.

  “Flup-loopsie-groo-moobuh-lops!”

  “I hear ya, buddy,” Esau guffawed at the boy’s insane babble. “Life’s a bitch, huh? Well, take my word fer it, it’s ’bout ta git worse.” After four weeks in the canoe, certainly the boy would not be a threat. Weak, insane. Esau would simply cut his throat and bleed him out, then get to work but before he could—

  In a feeble gesture, the boy swung his arm as if to strike a blow. “Floop!” he shrieked. Esau honked laughter but only for a moment. Even though the blow had missed, the motion sent a splat of ammonia-rich diarrhea sailing through the air, and this splat landed directly across Esau’s eyes.

  “Aw, good GAWD!” At once, Esau dropped the knife, fell to his knees. His eyes burned like tear gas. He tried rubbing them, tried blinking the shit out of them, but that just made it worse. He was helpless, blind.

  Meanwhile, Darren—the nineteen-year-old boy who’d been sitting in his own shit for the last month—continued to babble insanely and got up from the table. His skinny legs wobbled but he was still able to walk. He began to walk toward the door.

  “Help me PLEASE!” a shriek ripped through the shack. It was Mavis, surfaced from her shock and flopping intently on the hook. “Help me please I’m BEGGING you!”

  Darren looked at her. “Gar-hoob-lee?”

  “Please don’t leave me here!”

  Darren, even in his quite understandable clinical psychosis, must have summoned tiny remaining speck of coherence. His shit-covered feet carried him over to the stall, and then he wrapped his arms around the girl’s hips and with considerable difficulty was able to raise her up the necessary several inches for her to lift the lash between her wrists off the hook.

  “Bloom-oop-duh-lie!” Darren celebrated.

  “Thank you thank you!” Mavis shrieked once her feet touched the ground. She ran out the door.

  Darren shrugged. “Zoo-lee-doop,” he said and then staggered out himself.

  ««—»»

  “Look at all this stuff,” Carol remarked in amazement. Sheree stood nervously behind her in Esau’s filthy shack while her friend rummaged through an old termite-ridden dresser.

  Carol held up a fat titleless book; it cover seemed to be some kind of lizard skin.

  “Big deal,” Sheree said. “An old book.”

  “Yeah? It’s written in Arabic. Why would that redneck moron have a book that’s written in Arabic?”

  Sheree moaned wearily. “I don’t know—”

  Carol clunked the book down, then picked up some other things from the drawer. “Look at this. It’s money but—”

  Sheree’s eyes flicked to the drawer, which was lined with old coins and some bills.

  “This money’s, like, real old.” Carol held up a worn silver dollar with the face of William Jennings Byran. The date read 1873. Several two-dollar notes displayed Jefferson’s face but had dates from the 1840's. Several dull gold coins in ten- and twenty-dollar denominations lay in the drawer.

  “Big deal,” Sheree insisted. “So he’s a coin collector—”

  “That hayseed? You got to be kidding.”

  “Then maybe it’s his grandfather’s.”

  “Sheree, some of these coins are much older than his grandfather can possibly be. This stuff must’ve been passed down from his family for generations.”

  “Fine. Now let’s get out of here. He could be back any minute. And didn’t he say he had a brother?”

  Carol gave it a sudden thought. “You’re right. Go wait by the door and keep an ear out. If you hear anything, whistle.”

  “Carol!”

  “Just go. I’ll only be another minute.”

  Shaking her head, Sheree went out, stood at the front door. The acid was still streaming in her head, disorienting her. She felt as though she were standing on a trampoline as she tried to maintain her attention. She couldn’t imagine why Carol insisted on searching the shack; perhaps the LSD had brought out a kleptomaniacal impulse. Or maybe she was just a snoop. It was in a woman’s nature to snoop, she supposed…even if the woman had a penis.

  Before she could further speculate, she thought she heard something. The faintest sound? Or just some aural glitch from the LSD?

  Rapid tiny crunches…

  Then Sheree froze, her eyes blooming. Carol had told her to whistle if she heard anything, but there was no time. That’s how fast it happened.

  That’s how fast the figure appeared.
>
  Sheree remained planted in shock as what she first thought must be a wraith emerged from the woods. A ghost, yes, like a death-camp ghost—that’s what it looked like: a tall, skeletally thin girl with short brown hair. Completely naked. Her wrists were tied together, her hands covering her pubis. The insides of her skinny white legs were smeared with blood, and her eyes, though wide, looked dead.

  The figure, fast as a sprite, ran wildly past Sheree, muttering, “Fox! Fox! They put a fish in my vagina!”

  And then she was gone.

  Was…that…REAL? Sheree wondered. She blinked hard, sucked in deep, deep breaths. It seemed real. But—

  At the same moment, slightly louder yet slower noises drifted toward her. It was now perplexion that paralyzed more than fear.

  Another shape drifted from the darkness.

  A shining brown man, with a belly sticking out like a soccer ball. He walked as if palsied, skinny legs struggling to support the disproportionate weight of the abdomen, and he, too, was naked. And—

  WHEW! Sheree thought.

  If this was a hallucination, it was a damn stinky one. This brown man smelled worse than a sewer. Oddly, only his face was white—blanched white—like the skin of the girl who’d just jogged by. The rest of his body seemed smeared with…

  Is it…shit? Sheree wondered.

  It was a shit-covered man!

  He stopped in his tracks at Sheree’s presence. He looked right at her.

  “Brab-nab-lee-gab,” he said.

  Then he hobbled away.

  Sheree silently stared after him.

  When Carol grabbed her arm, Sheree almost screamed out loud. “Did I just hear a voice out here?” Carol asked.

  “Uh…”

  “Sheree? What’s wrong? You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  Sheree slowly shook her head. “You don’t want to know what I just saw.”

  “Not the redneck’s brother!” came Carol’s fierce whisper.

  “No. No, I don’t think so.”