by Ed Wood
Jockey wanted with all his heart to reach out and take this girl over his knees. To pound some sense into her that she needed. “Go on home and sleep it off.”
“I want a cup of coffee.”
“I’m closed.”
“Then open . . . for me.”
“My license says no customers after eleven-thirty. And I like my license. Go on home, Rhoda.”
“Ah, you’ve done it before, for others.”
“Never, Rhoda. Never in my life.”
“Just a cup of coffee. I gotta straighten out before I go home.”
“Other places are open. Their licenses say they can stay open. Mine don’t.”
“Jockey, I don’t like you.”
“And tonight, I like you less. You should have taken a lesson when you saw what your girlfriend Dee looked like when you kids took her off. Someday you’re all going to get into trouble. And if you’re not damned careful, you’ll end up with dope-filled illegitimate babies.”
“What in hell you know about babies? I bet you ain’t even got a pecker left.” She laughed as if she had said the funniest line in all of history. “No pecker at all. Not like the boys I know . . .”
Jockey turned from her and started away, but stopped, as she seemed to be crying. He turned back to her, then walked in close to the broken window on his side. “Now stop the crying and beat it.”
Rhoda reached in coyly to run her hand over his smooth cheek. She was trying her best sex approach. “Come on, Jockey. You know you want to do it with me. You always have. Come on, we can go in the back room. I got a stick left. It’s in my brassiere. We can smoke up and you can get laid, and I can get laid, and we can travel the stars for an hour, and you can get a good lay. Bet you ain’t had a good lay in years . . . come on, Jockey, you must have some whiskey back there. I got a stick. We can shack together. Ain’t that what you want? I see the way you look at all the sweater fronts on the young girls that come here. You got titties on your mind all the time . . . you can get a good feel of mine . . . come on, Jockey . . . I ain’t even got no panties on . . . I lost them someplace . . . at the cabin? I suppose . . . who was at the cabin? I don’t know who was at the cabin . . . somebody was at the cabin . . . I don’t remember . . . Babs did it to me . . . I did it to Babs . . . oh, yeah . . . Lonnie and Rick. That’s who was at the cabin. Fun . . . fun . . . fun . . . oh . . . lay . . . lay . . . lay . . . it’s so good to be young and flying in the pink clouds . . . Jockey, you should fly in the pink clouds,” and her hand brushed his cheek again, but this time Jockey was too disgusted to mind his own anger. He threw her hand aside and it slid across the jagged edge of a broken glass splinter still hanging in the window. The blood spurted from her hand. Momentarily it sobered her from the narcotic heights. She looked at the blood, then turned and ran down the street.
Jockey knew he would worry about that hand all night, but there was nothing he could do. The kid had brought it on herself. There was just nothing he could do.
Chief moved up beside him with several boards, the hammer and nails and an opened bottle of cold beer. “Your beer,” he said.
Jockey took the bottle in his hands. “Thanks, Chief.” He lifted the bottle and took the entire contents without taking the bottle from his lips.
Rhoda had come to a fast walk by the time she reached the block in which her mother’s delicatessen was in. She held her injured hand tightly at the wrist, but it did little to stop the bleeding. It was not a deep cut, but it was long and jagged. Had she been in her right mind, the bleeding could have been stopped almost immediately. But she seemed to take some kind of fanatic enjoyment of watching the blood race down over her fingers and the front of her Levi’s. She held a sort of crazed smile to her features as if she were standing far off and watching this happening to someone else, and she liked to watch it. She liked to watch that someone else being hurt, perhaps bleeding to death.
Reverend Steele stepped out of the delicatessen doorway where his figure had been hidden by the darkness. “Rhoda,” he said.
Rhoda stopped abruptly, frozen in her tracks. She tried to focus her eyes. “Whadd’ya want, preacher?”
Then he noticed her hand. “Your hand is cut.”
“Now ain’t that a revelation.”
The clergyman took a clean handkerchief from his breast pocket and started for her hand. She pulled the hand away, and he became angry. “Give me that hand.” He grabbed it and held it tightly, then with the free hand he wrapped the bandage around the cut. He only let go of her hand when he was forced to in order to tie the knot.
Rhoda’s dazed face broke into a gleam. “You were holding my hand . . .”
“Did you want to bleed to death?”
“Me? Bleed to death? Don’t be a punk. I ain’t bleedin’ to nothin’, death or otherwise . . . that’s somebody else. I was standin’ off just watchin’ the bitch bleed to death. But you was holdin’ my hand. Bet you never did nothin’ like that in your church. Holdin’ my hand. An’ I ain’t got my panties on. Rick wanted Bab’s panties. I bet he’s got ’em by this time.”
“Rhoda, have you been drinking?”
“Better’n that . . . much better’n that. An’ I got laid, and I lost my panties . . . and I don’t know how many times . . . and Jockey cut my hand . . . I stuck it on the glass. An’ Jockey wants to make me, too. An’ everybody wants to make me. Maybe we can do it on the pulpit, huh, preacher? Just you an’ me in that big church of yours . . . don’t get on your high horse . . . you like a little, don’t you? Why don’t you get married? You’d have it all the time. Why get married? Get some free. I know where I can get a stick. We could smoke it up. Come on, Preacher . . . just you and me in the pulpit . . . maybe we can do it in a casket. How about that old Long dame’s casket? We could go down to the funeral parlor and knock off a piece in her casket . . . you was at the whorehouses tonight. I saw you. I bet I know what you went there for . . . let’s make out in the casket. Then when you bury her you can always remember you and me done it in the casket . . .”
Reverend Steele hit the girl with the flat of his hand full across the mouth. Her eyes shot upward into her head momentarily, then she spun around and raced through the door and into the delicatesssen.
CHAPTER NINE
Rhoda slept a troubled sleep with drug-induced variations. The creepy crawly things of the graveyard were moving over her body. For a time she was naked and the things bit into her flesh. Then there was the coffin and she was in it. She could hardly recognize the figure as herself. The creature had closed, sunken eyes embedded in leathery skin, the color of green bile puke. The hair was long, like her own, but grey and kinky with age. She wore a long, very full-skirted shroud, as pink as the clouds she suddenly drifted into. She was running but everything seemed in slow motion and the shrunken heads fastened to long feathered poles blinked their eyes at her. Fingers without hands beckoned her. Severed arms and legs, dripping blood, floated aimlessly around her while weird sounds seemed to center directly on her. Then she was running again in the ever-appearing cemetery and there were countless open graves with bodies in various stages of decomposition moaning in a death chorus for her, skeleton hands and talon-like bones grabbed for her. She wanted to scream out but the desert heat that was at her throat, would not permit it, no matter how hard she tried. It was always that way. But an added horror suddenly visited itself upon her. One of the creepy creatures got out of the grave. It was a shapeless thing in a flowing gown, surrounded by dark marijuana smoke. Rhoda knew it was marijuana smoke because she could smell the sickly sweet odor mixed in with a strong smell of sulphur. The thing came slowly toward her. Rhoda tried to back away but she couldn’t move. She looked down and saw her feet had grown ankle-deep into the ground and were cemented there and all the time the creature from the grave came steadily, slowly toward her until it was but inches from her face. The ugly, shapeless mouth opened and whispered her name. The smell of grave mould and of maggots came out of the hideous opening. “Rhoda . . . R
hoda . . . Rhoda . . . Rhoda . . .” Then taloned hands reached out and began to shake her shoulders violently, and all the time whispering her name.
Rhoda snapped up on the bed. She was drenched in sweat. The hand of the cemetery horror had come with her out of the dream. It was held tightly over her mouth letting her frantic screams come out only as muffled gasps. Then the hand slapped her sharply across the face. “Shut up you goddamned little fool!” It was a hard whisper.
The frightened girl snapped back. She recognized the voice but could hardly believe her ears. “Lila?” she whispered as she came slowly back to reality in the dark room.
“Just be quiet!” The whispered voice snapped.
Since Rhoda’s room was in the rear of the building, her window faced out onto an alley which permitted no extra light to enter. But Rhoda’s straining eyes made out a dark shadow as it crossed to the window and pulled down the shade. “Torch up your bed lamp,” demanded the voice. And Rhoda did so immediately.
Lila walked to a large, flowered cloth-covered easy chair and sank into it. “I’m tired and hungry. I’ve come a long way.”
Full realization climbed into Rhoda’s clearing mind. The effects of her narcotic adventure had nearly worn off. Her mind was clear and her eyes focused once again. “Lila, it is you,” she gulped.
“Talk low or the old bat will hear you.”
“She turned your old room into a store room. There’s two store rooms between us and her.”
“That helps.”
“How . . . how . . . how did you get out?”
“Let’s just say I sneaked out the FRONT door when nobody was looking,” she said, then quickly added, “and believe it or not it was a FRONT door.”
“Leave it to you Lila,” Rhoda grinned. “You always were the smart one.”
“You can damned well bet your ass I am. Look kid. Beat it downstairs and get me some cigarettes before I have a nicotine fit.”
“Sure, Lila!” Rhoda started off.
“You got any liquor in the place?”
“Ma don’t allow it, you know that!”
Lila’s tone became tense. “I didn’t ask what Ma allows. Don’t try to hold out on me, kid. Now dig it up!”
“Honest, Lila. I ain’t got none here. An’ it’s too late to get to a bottle store. There’s lots of wine in the deli though.”
“That’ll have to do I suppose. Get a coupla’ bottles and make it quick. Don’t forget the cigarettes.”
“I won’t.” Rhoda took the door knob in her hand but the door held fast.
“You didn’t think I’d leave it unlocked, did you?”
Rhoda looked to the key in the lock and turned it, then went out quickly. She was gone only a few minutes and when she returned she had bologna, cheese, bread, two bottles of wine, cigarettes and matches which she put on the bed. Lila grabbed up the cigarettes and hastily tore open the pack. Rhoda already had a match lit.
“Ahhh, that’s better,” replied the older girl when the butt was going. She looked to the bed then picked up the slices of bologna which were wrapped in plastic. “Boloney! Just like up at the joint.” She turned to Rhoda. “Take the cork outta’ one of them wine bottles.” Then she built a tall bologna and cheese sandwich and went back to sink again into the easy chair. “I killed a broad last night,” she said simply. “A nurse at the prison hospital. I thought I only put her to sleep the hard way. Some reports on the radio said I cooled the bitch.”
Rhoda didn’t answer. At the moment she couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Then I cracked a guy’s skull open with his own whiskey bottle and stole his car. Who knows? Maybe he’s croaked too.”
The younger girl shuddered at the coldness of her sister’s reference to her act.
“Maybe you could claim it was an accident!”
“Don’t be a creep. There are no accidents in a prison break.”
“I’m afraid for you, Lila.”
“Good Christ why? I can only get life again, and I’ve already been sentenced to that once. What else can they do? Cops and their stupid laws. Reformers and their ‘Be kind to our poor demented’. I kill and all the state can do is put me under a roof and feed me for the rest of my life. I tell you, kid, the laws are all on my side when it comes right down to it.” She laughed. “I have actually got away with murder. No matter how many times—I can only get life. And I only got one life to live.” Her laugh was a bit too loud for Rhoda’s comfort.
“We’d better keep our voices down or Ma will wake up and hear us.” Rhoda was nervous.
“Damned old bat. Turn me in to the cops. She’s got something comin’ for that little bit of business.” Lila ate angrily.
“Ma felt she was doin’ right.”
Lila’s voice came out a controlled whisper, but in it was all her anger and venom which had been building inside her guts for the past many months. “Right? What’s right about turning your own daughter over to the cops so they can put her behind bars and throw away the key? She never was in such a place. How could she know what’s right and what ain’t right about it?”
Rhoda moved to her sister and put a comforting arm about her shoulders. “You’re home now. That’s all that matters. Forget it.”
Lila brushed the girl’s arm away. “Forget it! Sure, I’ll forget it. Just as soon as I even up the score.” She snapped to her feet and moved to the bed where she made another bologna and cheese sandwich. “Who’s been runnin’ you chicks since I left?”
“Dee took over!”
“That hop head shitbird couldn’t lead anybody out of a one-way hole. Bet you ain’t got a buck in your pocket?” Rhoda lowered her head dejectedly and sat on the edge of the bed. She didn’t have to answer the question. “Just like I figured.” Lila moved back to the easy chair. “How do you get enough cash to keep up your supply of weed?”
Rhoda looked up sharply.
“Don’t look so innocent. Nobody knows the smell of POT better’n me. And sister, when I come in here, you was stinkin’ from weed.”
Rhoda lowered her head again. She spoke slowly. “Dee got all smacked up on H in town so we drove her out to the desert cabin . . . you know the place.”
“We?”
“Lonnie, Rick and Babs.”
“Babs Halpin?”
“Yeah!”
“Old Queer Babs!” Lila laughed, then became serious again. “Look, kid. She may do exciting things to you in bed, but be careful. She’s a real nut. Sure! I’ve killed! But I was forced into it by circumstances. Babs will kill just because she enjoys it, and it won’t matter who it is that’s gettin’ killed—friend or enemy. She likes blood and the pain of somebody else. That’s the way she pops her jollies best.”
“I know,” Rhoda said softly, her eyes blinking horror as she remembered that night three nights before. “The gang killed Miss Long coupla’ nights ago.”
“That figures! What in hell’d they kill the teacher for?”
“She’d been giving some of the gang a bad time, them that still goes to school, so everybody figured she oughta be taught a lesson. All the kids wore masks so she couldn’t prove nothin’. But all the time everybody was usin’ pot or shootin’ up on H, and pretty soon one thing led to another. Lonnie was flyin’ on H. I don’t know if he meant to do it or not. You know him and that knife. It’s like a razor. Everybody was jazzin’ like crazy, and Babs with the blood bit. Everybody was laughin’ and yellin’ and jazzin’. A real orgy. An’ all the time the teacher was screamin’. I guess by the time the boys threw her on the hospital lawn she’d lost too much blood. Anyway, she died the next mornin’. Probably a good thing she did. She heard about a shipment of stuff comin’ in from Mexico. You know Dee when she flies on H. She says anything that comes to her head.”
“She have time to spill anything to the cops?”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to find out. Anyway, all she could tell was that some was comin’ in. Nobody knew until tonight who was bringin’ it in.”
“Dee spilled it again, up at the cabin. We take it off his boat Friday night.”
Lila’s eyes lit up. “You mean Lark? Lark’s boat? Is he back?”
“That’s right.”
“Now you’re talkin’ big time.” She walked to the second bottle of wine and uncorked it. She took a long pull at the wine then spoke softly. “Does he ever mention me? Lark?”
“Until last night I haven’t seen him in over a month. But he used to talk about you all the time. He used to say you were the best doll in the bunch—when you were leadin’ the Chicks.”
“Lark!” She rolled the name over on her tongue as if she were tasting something very pleasant. “Now there’s a man. If the OLD gang were still together, and knowing what I know now . . . nobody could ever bust us again.” Then her voice became a demon. “First thing tomorrow find him for me. I want to see him as soon as possible.”
“Dee won’t like that!”
Lila’s face turned red with anger. “What in hell’s Dee got to do with what I want?”
“She does all the talkin’ to Lark that’s to be done. She don’t let nobody else get near him when it comes to business.”
“I’ll change that. You just do like I tell you.”
“Sure, Lila. You know I will.”
Lila threw a remaining crust of bread into a bucket beside the bed, then she indicated the remnants of food on the bed. “Get rid of that stuff. It’s been a long day and I’m tired.”
Rhoda tossed the foodstuffs into the bucket then looked to the clock on her night stand. The hands stood at four a.m. “It’s late. Ma will be getting up in an hour or so. She always does.”
Lila turned to indicate the door. “Lock the door and get me a nightie. We only had potato sacks up there. It’ll feel good getting into something soft for a change.”
“You always did like nice clothes,” said Rhoda as she crossed to the door and locked it. “I got a nice one for Christmas.” When she turned back to face Lila, her features were troubled again. “Lila? What happens if the cops come lookin’ around here for you? They will, you know.”