Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed

by Lance Carbuncle

  Me and Chip step into his car and pull onto land from the front of the ferry. “I don’t wanna talk no stink, but, uhh . . . that was kind of weird, Brah.” Chip shakes his head.

  “What?”

  “You know, that whole think of me when you sacrifice to the gods thing. He was a pretty cool old dude, but, I mean, what the heck was that?”

  “I don’t know. But I kind of liked him.” Parting from Charon, I found myself smiling at his friendliness. He is like Idjit Galoot. Many of these people that I am meeting are like Idjit. All seem to be grateful, although they are the ones who deserve my thanks. All are subservient and wish to be my friends. They are like children who wish to obey and think very little. “I hope that he is right and I do see him again.”

  Chip talks to me the whole time he drives, not even seeming to pay attention to where he’s going. Before I know it, we are almost to Erwin.

  We pull into Erwin and I’m feeling about half past dead. Several vacant black and white police cruisers sit outside of the Egg Hut. I look the other way. The last thing I want at this point is to be made by Major Pickles. Gravel crunches under the tires in the Brahman’s parking lot. The building is still; the neon bull is sleeping. The lights are off. It’s still early afternoon. Ramona hasn’t even opened up for her nightly business yet. I tell Chip that I need to go inside.

  “Looks like a nice place, Brah.” I open the door and step out. Chip doesn’t. “You go ahead. I’ll just wait out here for you. Once you’re done with whatever you have to do, I can still take you to the hospital to get your gut looked at.”

  The front door of the Brahman is locked and no lights are on inside. I cup my hands around my eyes and try to look through the glass. All I can see is heartbreaking darkness and swirling forms in the smudged up glass, forms that look like screaming faces. The faces trapped in the door are not readily apparent. They’re more like the image of Mother Mary that some might see on the windows of an office building or a rust spot that resembles Jesus on the side of a water tower.[30] But those faces are there, clear as day if you’re willing to stare intently and let your eyes go out of focus, kind of like looking at one of those magic eye pictures. Standing slack-jawed in front of the door, I study the images and remember Eshu’s request that I clean the glass. And then I see my own face, reflected back at me as if the door is some sort of fun-house mirror. The distorted reflection is weeping.

  I pull hard on the glass door. It moves a little more, like it wants to open. I pull harder in rhythmic jerks. On the forth or fifth tug the door opens for me. “Ramona?” I call out as I walk into the darkness. No one answers my call. I look out the front door and waive to Chip, asking him to come in. While he gets out of the car and heads toward the building I go behind the bar and pop open a couple of Pabst Blue Ribbons for us.

  “What are you doing, Brah?” asks Chip as he enters the bar.

  “Waiting,” I answer. “I need to speak with the owner of this place. She should be in any time now.”

  “Aren’t we kind of, you know, trespassing here?”

  “She’s a friend, it’s okay.” I hand Chip the bottle of beer I opened for him and he seems more comfortable with hanging out.

  “Go ahead and help yourself to the drinks if you want.” I grab a bar rag and a spray bottle of glass cleaner from under the bar. “I’ve got something I gotta do.” The front door is even dirtier from the inside, smudged with smoke residue and spit and beer, mingled with the body oils from the hands of the patrons and years worth of dust. I spray half of the bottle on the glass, starting at the top of the door. The cleaning solvent drips down the window, cutting clear moist paths in the smudge. I wipe at the window and in no time the rag is a dripping, dirty black swatch of cloth. All I accomplish with the rag is smearing the blackness around on the glass and it looks no better than when I began. I return to the bar and grab a box of clean bar rags and several bottles of cleaning solvent to use on the door. Rag after rag becomes a muddy black mess. I empty bottle after bottle of cleaning fluid. With each rag I begin to see improvement in the window. The pile of rags beside the door bleeds out onto the floor. I clean the door both inside and out. I wipe the last smudges from the glass and stand back to appreciate my efforts. The glass is clear, almost invisible. I look out onto the parking lot and recognize a group of patrons from before when me and Denny were here. I recognize Crash and Peaches in the slow-moving congregation as it approaches.

  And then, without saying a word to each other, the motley looking group stops. They look at each other. Crash slaps himself in the head, turns and walks away, shadowed by Peaches. The rest of the crowd breaks apart and walks away from the bar. I am reminded of thoughtless lumbering zombies from the movies.[31] When they get further from the bar I see them begin to appear human again in their movements and actions. The happy hour crowd makes a group decision to forego the Brahman for the evening. I go to sit at the bar with Chip. We open two more beers and just sit. No talking. No laughing. Nothing. Chip picks little bits of dead skin from around his remaining fingers and piles it up in a little mound on the bar. I decide to look for Ramona upstairs in her apartment. Chip decides to stay at the bar.

  Around the side of the building and up the stairs to Ramona’s apartment. Hand knocking on door. The sharp raps ring out unanswered: lonely, pregnant question marks dangling impotently from Ramona’s doorknob. Uncooperative doorknob, refusing to turn. Where is she?

  “I don’t usually do this,” I hear Ramona’s voice, “but you seem so nice.” She rounds the corner of the building with her hands looped around the elbow of a young man. The man holds a full paper bag that says Egg Hut on the front. They stop at the bottom of the stairs. “My God!” says Ramona when she sees me leaning against her door. “I knew you were going to be in bad shape but I didn’t expect this.” She takes the bag of food and sends the young man away.

  Ramona opens the door to her place and a whoosh of warm smoke and cat urine air washes over me. I follow Ramona into her place. She sets the bag of food on her table and begins pulling out Styrofoam containers of Egg Hut grub. Somewhere a bell rings and I salivate as the smell of the greasy food hits me.

  “We have a bucket of griddle taters that have been smashed, squashed, splattered, chewed, chunked and spewed,” Ramona says as she sets a steaming paper bucket onto the table. The grease from the food has already begun to soak through the bucket. I pick up the container, leaving an oily stain on the table. Inside is the tastiest, greasiest looking glop of potato mess I have ever seen—a glistening oily clusterfuck of hash browns, ham, cheese, onions, peppers, some sort of brown stuff and little bits of crispy fried gristle. “I also have a mess of scrambled eggs. I know you like eggs,” she says. “I hope you like them swimming in butter. They use two sticks of butter to cook up each order. Guaranteed to clog up the arteries.” She licks her lips and smiles at me.

  I load up griddle taters and buttery eggs onto my plate. I tell Ramona about a man in a yellow hat and an abandoned basset hound and my dead Daddy relaxing in a chair. I tell her about category five hurricanes and exploding Mexican headwear. I speak of injuries and visions and epiphanies. I tell of adventure and loss. Ramona sits and listens as I tell her, through a mouthful of masticated breakfast food, about turkey vultures and skunk apes and giant RV’s shaped like wieners. And, I tell her that I need to cancel our contract.

  “Well, I don’t usually void my transactions,” she says, “but, I’ll make an exception in your case.” She looks me straight in the eyes and says: “I can’t have the daddy of my baby being a soulless monster, now, can I?”

  “Phhst-t-t-pyow!” I almost choke on my eggs and then manage to spit-spray them out onto my plate. “Baby?” The one word is all I can manage. “Baby?”

  Ramona comes up behind me and rubs my shoulders. “Calm down, you big wuss. There ain’t no need to bust a grape over this. I don’t expect nothin’ from you. God knows we don’t need to get married. I don’t want child support or anything like that. I
just want to make sure you’re around for this little man.”

  “How do you know it’s a boy? How do you even know you’re pregnant? It’s only been a few days, a week, I don’t know. It’s too short of a time to even know. How do you know it’s mine? Can you prove it? What do you want from me? How can I be responsible for this? What? Do you want me to take it home and take care of it? Oh yeah! Mom’s just gonna love that. Is it healthy? What do we name it? How’s Idjit gonna feel about this?” I am unable to stop the frothy diarrhea of questions bubbling from my mouth.

  “Calm down.” Ramona rubs my head like she’s petting a dog. My foot thumps on the floor. “I just know. But let’s worry about all of this later. We have more pressing business right now.” She comes around to my side and sits down and mutters to herself while digging through a handbag the size of a small suitcase. “Now where did I put that?” She makes a mountain on the table out of the contents of her purse. The pile in the middle of the table grows as she adds on half-full cigarette packs, containers of breath mints, a tube of something called Gyno-Vagiclean, a Kiss Alive 8-track tape, a pair of swimming goggles. Ramona continues to dig through the purse and extracts crumpled receipts and battery powered whatzits and pandoodles. She stacks up popguns, pamponas, pantookas and drums, checkerboards, bizzledinks, popcorn and plums. With the purse near empty and a precarious pile of teetering handbag debris on the table, she looks up and says, “Ah, here it is,” and hands me a wadded up piece of napkin. I try to uncrumple the tissue and part of the napkin sticks together.

  “Ugghhh. Did you blow your nose on my soul?”

  “I blew my nose on the contract,” she says. “I sneezed and had stuff dribbling down my lip. I needed to wipe it off with something. But it ain’t like I wiped a booger on your soul. Just on the stupid contract. And I’m giving it back to you now so don’t bitch about it.” She empties an ashtray and hands me an antique brass cigarette lighter. “Go ahead, burn that thing up, before I change my mind.”

  The napkin sits on the table in front of me. I peel the boogered-up portions of the napkin apart. She blew her nose right on my name. The ink is smeared beyond readability. I study the napkin that caused me so much trouble. Something scratches at the door and Ramona opens it up, letting in a mangy old German Shepherd. The dog approaches me and curls up at my feet.

  “What’s up with the fleabag?” I ask and instinctively reach down to scratch his head.

  “Oh, that’s Crazy Chester’s dog, Jack. He fixed a little boat I have. I like to get out on the lake once in a while. It was strange, he didn’t ask me to pay him for the repair work. He just asked that in return I take old Jack.” Ramona grins as she looks down at the dog. “He’s sweet but he’s a lot of work to take care of and he stinks like a grease trap. If you’re gonna renege on that contract we had, well, I also want you to take the load off of me and take that old dog when you go.”

  Jack whines a little bit and stares me down with bloodshot eyes. He’s no Idjit Galoot, but he seems like a good dog. What the hell, he can be my travel buddy for the rest of my journey. And if Idjit approves, maybe Jack will come down to Florida with us. “Alright,” I agree, “I’ll take Jack your dog.”

  “Well, then, quit yanking your crank and let’s get on with it,” says Ramona. “Let’s torch that stupid napkin.”

  I turn the wheel on the antique lighter. The flint throws a spray of sparks and fires up the wick. I hold the napkin over the blue tip of the flame and it goes up in a poof like a big sheet of flash paper, larger than you would expect from a small bar napkin. Without thinking I yank my hand back and throw the flaming paper across the room. The fiery ball lands on the cat. Earnest takes the flame on like an oily rag and runs about the room, setting fire to furniture, dirty clothes, curtains and paneled walls. Ramona screams. Jack howls. Earnest shrieks in a way that is almost human until his still flaming body drops on its side and sets fire to the carpeting.

  “Get out of here!” I shout at Ramona. We run for the door and Jack follows us. At the top of the stairs Jack gets caught up under my feet and I fall forward onto Ramona. We roll down the stairs, a mass of flailing limbs and dog parts, each of us hitting something hard on each step on the way down. At the bottom of the stairs I pull myself out of the heap and wipe blood from my eyes. I look up to see black smoke pouring from the door of Ramona’s apartment. Jack pulls himself away from the building with his front legs, the back legs dragging uselessly behind him. Ramona is unconscious, her arms and legs bent at painful angles away from her torso. I try to stand so that I can pull us away from the burning building. My left leg buckles under me and shoots a flow of burning pain all of the way up to the back of my head. A hand grasps the back of my shirt and pulls. Me and Ramona are being dragged backwards away from the bar. Chip has one hand on my shirt and is gripping Ramona’s hair in the other hand. He drags us all of the way back to his car and then carries Jack over to us. I hold Ramona by the head and talk to her. She doesn’t answer. My mind goes fuzzy. I hear footsteps and sirens above me just before I pass out.

  The ambulance smells like dog. I come to and my vision clears. I look to my left and see Jack the dog in a gurney beside me. The EMT’s are working feverishly on him while I lay in my own gurney, neglected and in pain. “Good God!” I say. “Are you transporting a dog in your ambulance.”

  One of the paramedics gasps at the sound of my voice and turns in my direction. “Oh! Oh! Max! He’s alive!” the man says to his coworker, and they both turn to look at me.

  “Of course I’m alive. Why wouldn’t I be? I feel pain in places I didn’t even know I had. I’m oozing fluids out of every pore in my body and for some reason, my asshole hurts. But I’m alive.”

  The other emergency medical worker, Max, stares at me. “You were dead. You had no heartbeat, no breathing, nothing. This is a miracle.” Max rubs the back of his left hand against the hair on his head and makes a confused circle with his mouth.

  “You guys were working on that dog instead of me, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah, he was my dog and I gave him to your friend, Annie. We figured that since you were a goner, we would work on saving Jack,” says the man. I realize that he is Crazy Chester. “But none of that matters. You were dead and now you’re alive again. You’re in bad shape and you need to not get worked up.” Chester turns to look at Jack once more then turns back at me with watery eyes. “Listen buddy, I think you broke your back when you tumbled down those stairs. I’m going to see to it that you recover. I’ll make sure they fix your back, if you’ll take Jack my dog. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” It seems like the right thing to do, taking the dog. “But I’m in a shitload of pain right now. Can you do something for me?”

  “We’re way ahead of you.” Max tries to hand Chester a syringe, fumbles it, and drops it on the ground. “Uh-oh, I dropped it,” says Max as retrieves the syringe and hands it to Chester. Max steps away and rubs the back of his hand on his hair again.

  “What’s in that?” I ask.

  “Morphine,” answers Chester as he jabs the needle into my arm and pushes the plunger. “That should take care of the pain.” Warmth spreads throughout my body. The pain recedes and I begin to sweat. The urge to vomit builds. Everything looks as if I am viewing it under water. I mutter something about Idjit Galoot. A muted clicking sound ticks off, di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di, as Chester and Max do a slow-motion turn away from me and go back to work on the dog. I sink into opiate soaked delirium.

  • • •

  In a dimly lit room, sitting cross-legged on a tattered Turkish rug is Idjit. He holds the bowl of a long bamboo pipe over the flame of a small lamp and takes a pull. Idjit exhales slowly, the white smoke envelopes his head. He passes me the pipe, saying nothing. All around on the floor are men sucking on long pipes like the one Idjit hands to me. Some are sleeping. Some stare off into the darkness. One hums softly to a sparse arrangement of bass and saxophone playing somewhere above us. I hit on the pipe and choke a little on the fruit-like
, not unpleasant, smoky taste.

  “Sit back,” says Idjit. He hands me a long tubular pillow. “We can talk while you enjoy the pipe. As Albert Einstein said, ‘I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.’”

  I hold the pipe over the flame of the lamp and take a long pull until the glowing glob in the bowl goes black and turns to ash. Smoke sluggishly exits from my mouth and nostrils, as if it has no better place to go, leaving in its place a vagueness of mind. “Yeah,” I laugh, “these guys in here look as if they have a calm and objective judgment in their affairs.”

  The men lounge about on the floor, staring at the ceiling, humming to the infectious mellow soundtrack of bass and saxophone. One digs in his bellybutton and then holds an index finger under his nose, sniffing it as if it were a flower.[32]

  “These men are seeking answers, as you should too,” says Idjit. “There are opium dens where one can buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins can be destroyed by the madness of sins that are new. This is not such a place. That is not opium you smoke. That is life. That is my body. That is my blood. That is my essence.” Idjit rolls a tarry black ball between his paws and places the goo in the bowl of his pipe. He holds the bowl over the lamp to warm the contents and then hands the pipe to me. “Take a long pull and hold it. Hold on to me as long as you can.”

  Holding the bowl over the flame of the lamp, I inhale as deeply as possible and hold the vapors. Idjit smiles and tells me “it’s real good that you done that, getting the contract back from Ramona. Now just keep holding your breath.” I hold the smoke in with all of my will until everything goes black and I deflate. Waves of tranquility wash over me.