Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed

by Lance Carbuncle

  “It has,” Totem flashes a shit-eating grin at me. “Unadulterated bliss.”

  “It’s just Totem, Mom. Just Totem.”

  “I call him Totem Pole,” she says.

  A queasy feeling grips my stomach as I look at Mom and Totem standing with their arms around each other. My stepfather is half my age. He’ll probably try to tell me what to do around the house. No way I’m calling him Dad. Vague images of them in the bedroom try to creep into my head. Inside I am screaming. In order to avoid vomiting I change the subject and ask about the specifics of Idjit’s demise.

  Mom says that on the same day that I was brought to the hospital, Idjit was taken to a veterinary clinic by a woman who ran over him with her car. Idjit darted into the street right in front of her. Both the left front and rear tires thumped over him. Idjit was taken to the veterinary hospital and tended to. The vet removed Idjit’s collar and called animal control to try to locate his owner. Both Mom and that nice boy, Kevin Emery[35], had checked with animal control on a daily basis so they knew how to get in touch with Mom. Mom told the doctor to do everything he could to save Idjit. And save him he did. Idjit recovered as well as an old dog can from such a thing. Kevin Emery took that dog and drove him all the way down to Mom in Sweetwater. Mom took care of the Galoot for me, trying to keep him hanging around until I came back. She says that every day he seemed to sleep more and move around less. They would have to coax him out of the house with deviled eggs. Mom would dump a beer in his bowl outside just to motivate him to get up and go out. Totem gave Idjit regular belly rubs to stimulate bowel movements. Over the past couple of weeks Idjit has slept almost continually, he has turned his nose up at both food and beer, like he just lost his will to go on. “Baby,” Mom says. “I hate to tell you this, but Idjit Galoot passed away in the middle of the evening just last night. You just missed him. He’s probably curled up at the feet of the Lord right now.”

  “What did you do with him?” I ask.

  “I filled up the bathtub in the hotel room with ice and put him in there,” says Totem. “We were going to put him in a freezer for you until you came back.”

  “But,” says Mom, “now that you’re back, we’ll let you decide what to do with him.”

  “Keep him on ice and bring me his collar.”

  • • •

  Idjit’s collar fits Jack perfectly. He wears it with pride, as if it were a three-karat cubic zirconia necklace with a matching butterfly pendant. Jack has stayed by my side since I came to this hospital, despite Nurse Mildred’s efforts to kick him out of my room. Every day at eleven in the morning he would bark and howl until somebody would turn on The Price is Right. Eventually, they just made sure to turn the TV on each day a little before eleven o’clock. Jack was Chester’s dog. Chester’s father is on the board of directors for the hospital. Chester lives with his parents. Chester’s father was tired of Jack chewing up his newspapers, humping the furniture, and barking in the middle of the night. Chester’s father told Chester to get rid of the dog long ago. Chester’s father was happy to hear that I agreed to take custody of Jack the dog. Chester’s father made it so that Jack could stay in my room. Chester’s father made it so that I could keep Jack, even in a coma. Chester helped to care for Jack during my downtime. Jack stayed in my room, by my side, for three years. Jack is my friend. My hospital room smells like Jack. Jack smells like Idjit. My room smells nice.

  • • •

  The day has been amazing, regaining consciousness and control. I become aware of new things and sensations every moment. I realize that I have an ankle bracelet locked onto my right leg. Mom tells me that I’m on house arrest. “I hired that big-city Tampa attorney you told me about,” she says. “You were right. He is the best around. And a handsome devil to boot. I’ll tell you what. If I weren’t a kept woman . . . ”

  “Mom . . . ” I stop her. “What do you mean I’m on house arrest? I haven’t done anything.”

  “There were so many criminal charges against you.” She shakes her head. “That prosecutor down in Clearwater, he hit you with every charge in the book: federal arson and property damage charges, DUI, aggravated battery, grand theft auto, possession of marijuana, kidnapping, accessory to murder, manslaughter, felony littering, trespassing . . . ”

  “Mom, none of that makes sense. Even if I was guilty of them things, how can they prosecute all of those different offenses, both state and federal, that occurred in different states, in one Florida state court?”

  “I told you,” she says, “I hired that Tampa lawyer that you said was so good. And he was. He managed to somehow get all of the charges consolidated. He pleaded you out to all of them and got you house arrest with adjudication withheld. That means you don’t have a record as long as you can stay out of trouble.”

  “But, how could he plead me out when I’m in a coma. Don’t you kind of, like, have to be conscious for something like that to happen. It just doesn’t seem right to me. I’m in a coma, different charges from different states, all dealt with in one court that probably doesn’t even have jurisdiction. Shit, I was never even in Clearwater. What kind of judge is going to allow that to happen?”

  “It’s Pinellas County, Florida,” Mom laughs. “They don’t care about jurisdiction, justice or any of that. Lighten up. You’ve got three years out of your sentence behind you. One year to go and you’re done. Otherwise you could have ended up in the can just like Barney. You want to be in prison, getting traded for a pack of cigarettes? I don’t think so.” She raises one eyebrow at me. “I don’t know how that attorney finagled it, but you got the deal of a lifetime for all of the charges they slapped you with. Now don’t worry about that. You’ve got other things to take care of.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like your son.”

  “My son?”

  “Yeah. The little boy you had with that Ramona girl.”

  “I have a kid?”

  Mom purses her lips, hands on hips, and nods, matter-of-factly.

  “Why can’t his mom take care of him? I can visit him on summer vacations or something.”

  “His momma’s dead. She was hurt pretty bad falling down the stairs at her place. They said she should have made a full recovery, but she didn’t. Just didn’t have it in her to go on. She hung around until she brought the little guy into this world, held him for a couple of minutes, gave him a kiss, and then handed him to a nurse. After it was all over and the baby was taken care of that girl laid back in her bed and bled to death. Nobody even realized there were complications until it was too late. And she didn’t say a word about it.”

  Mom and Totem have been raising the boy. They haven’t given him a name. “That’s your job,” says Mom. She also says that he’s the sweetest little boy that she’s seen since I was his age.

  Through my doorway walks a little redheaded boy, gripping onto Totem’s hand and smiling. His blue eyes beam. He grips a rubber ball in his other hand. A good-looking boy, he looks just like me, minus two hundred pounds and three and a half decades of self-abuse. He radiates love. He is bursting with potential. Just looking at him I can see what a smart kid he is. Oh my God, I think, I am going to fuck that kid up so bad. I can’t even take care of myself, let alone a two-year-old.

  The boy climbs up on a chair next to my bed and locks his big blue eyes with mine. He’s incredible, maybe a little dorky looking in the clothes that Mom dressed him in, but incredible. He holds the ball up to show it to me with a beatific look on his face and says “Ball-doo-Ball,” as if he’s sharing the meaning of life with me.

  “What’s he saying? Is he talking in French?” I ask Mom.

  “He’s showing you his ball. That’s just the way he talks. Mostly it’s about his balls and he says doo a lot. We’re having him tested for that. It’s a little bit weird. But he’s a sweet boy.”

  “He looks like an Angus with that crazy red hair. Put a kilt on him and hand him a battle-axe and he could be an extra from a Braveheart battle scene. He’s d
efinitely an Angus.” Yeah, Angus, just like the hurricane. Plus, Angus Young is the fucking man. Who doesn’t love AC-DC? Whoever doesn’t like AC-DC should be pushed down to the floor and kicked in the jaw with steel-toed boots until their face looks like a bloody bowl of oatmeal. My boy is an Angus. If you don’t like AC-DC, Angus will split your skull with a Scottish Claymore broadsword.

  “Angus it is, then,” agrees Mom.

  • • •

  The days pass quickly now, more so than I would expect in a hospital room. Angus spends most of the time in the room with me now, talking to me about his ball-doo-ball. I am almost never alone. Mom stays with me sometimes. Other times Totem sneaks me some Pabst Blue Ribbons. We hide the dead soldiers in the dresser drawers. One morning Nurse Mildred chastised us when she opened a drawer and found it to be full of empties. Also much to Mildred’s displeasure, Jack stays at the foot of my bed and we watch The Price is Right every day promptly at 11. I am surprised to see that the announcer on the show is not Rod Roddy, but instead some guy named Rich. I learn that Rod Roddy has been dead since 2003, before I went on vacation in vegetable-land. How could I have been hearing him in my coma? I wonder to myself.

  On the day of my discharge, Mom wheels me out of the hospital in a wheelchair. I can walk just fine but it’s hospital policy that I have to be taken out in the chair. The drive to Florida is calm and uneventful. I-75 stretches out before me and my family. The Georgia roadside is cluttered with billboards for Japanese spas where truckers can soak in murky hot tubs and obtain release from slant-eyed women of low moral standards. From the road we can see that one city has a water tower with a round top that is painted like a peach. The crack painted down the front makes it look like a giant ass. Angus laughs at the enormous butt. He is a good kid. We stop to get cheap gas before crossing the state line into Florida.

  In Florida we pass RV’s towing economy cars and pickup trucks with rebel flag bumper stickers. Tourist traps beckon. Every fruit stand off of every exit seems to have the cheapest tickets for the happiest theme parks. I tell Mom that I saw a sign for an Indian restaurant named the Armpit Palace and she tells me that it’s just my mind playing tricks on me, that it’s my pain pills making me loopy, that I’m still recovering. Memories of Fat Elvis and Clubfoot Jasper visit me, as if I was driving up I-75 with them the opposite way just yesterday. It all seems so fresh. We pass through Tampa, through Bradenton, through Sarasota. We stop at an Egg Hut. Me and Angus share a double order of griddle taters and a plateful of scrambled eggs. Mom says that it looks like I’m thinking real hard. She asks me what I’m thinking. I tell her that “I’m thinking I’ll have me another plate of those fried taters, um-hmmm.” Angus laughs. He’s a smart boy. With our bloated grease-soaked bellies full of eggs and griddle taters, we sluggishly head out to the highway.

  And we are on the road again. I give Jack a cardboard container full of carryout scrambled eggs. He eats it all, including the container. For the rest of the trip, Jack burps up sulfur belches. I nod off for a while without dreaming. Near the southern tip of the state Totem suggests that we take Alligator Alley across to the other coast. I tell him to take us across on the Tamiami trail. Angus agrees and tells Totem, “ball-doo-ball.”

  “Ball-doo-ball, it is,” Mom agrees and tells Totem to take us through on the Tamiami trail.

  The area outside of Arnette and Pervis’s compound is still torn up from the hurricane. A mess of palmettos, palm trees and mangroves rises up around the cinder block building like a bird’s nest. Hundreds of broken and faded plastic pink flamingos are tangled in the brush along with traffic cones, newspapers, beer bottles and random auto parts. A narrow path is cut out of the debris all of the way to the building. The fiberglass bun from the Bratmobile sits in front of their house.

  The front door creaks open and out walks Pervis. He invites me in. “Come on in and have a sit down for a while.” I tell him that I can’t. I’m not even supposed to be stopping off anywhere that is not approved by my probation officer. Rest areas, gas stations, and restaurants are approved. Demented redneck backwoods party shacks with tin roofs and rust are not. If I stay too long I may be in violation of my house arrest. Pervis tells me that Buddy has taken to living in the swamps and says he’s real secretive. Every couple of weeks Buddy will stop back in for supplies and “fellowship on the mellowship,” as Pervis puts it. Arnette has been out for the past couple of days hunting the skunk ape. Pervis says that he thinks Arnette is closer than he’s ever been to proving the big monkey’s existence. Pervis shakes my hand and says that he will tell Buddy and Arnette that I’m doing fine. His strong grip makes my hand throb. Pervis helps me carry the heavy camping cooler into his building. I thank my friend for everything and tell him I’ll be in touch soon. And we are on the road again.

  House arrest is supposed to be brutal. They say that most people end up violating the conditions of their supervision and going to prison. Prosecutors call it the layaway plan because they know that usually their guy will screw up the probation for one reason or another and end up in prison. House arrest is supposed to be brutal. I thought it was awesome. I didn’t have to look for work because my attorney also ended up qualifying me for disability payments due to my condition. The only thing my probation officer required of me was to get more schooling. First it was my GED, which I didn’t even need because I already graduated from high school. And then, what with online college courses and correspondence schools, I’d managed to accumulate an ass-load of degrees. I got an Associates degree in paralegal studies and a Bachelor’s in sociology. My Master’s thesis was on the history of the Mississippi Delta Blues, and in particular, Clubfoot Jasper Moberly and his influence on popular music. I’m a licensed chiropractor and an ordained minister with the Universal Worldwide Spiritual Humanist Order of the Monasterial Brotherhood. Through the Monasterial Brotherhood I have acquired impressive certificates that show that I have official Doctor of Divinity and Doctor of Metaphysics degrees. It took me all of about ten minutes online and Mom’s credit card number to become ordained and receive my certificates. Now I can legally perform weddings, funerals, affirmation of love ceremonies, I can take confession, and I can do something called hand fasting, although I’m unsure exactly what that is. I can even start up my own church if I want to. I am mulling over the possibility of starting up the Ministry of the Monastery of the Flatulent Gastropod. But that seems like a lot of work and a lot of planning. For now I just want to hang with Angus and Jack.

  The house is full. Mostly it’s me, Angus, and Jack hanging around. And we are bums together. Mom cooks for us, lots of eggs, coffee cakes and breakfast foods. She squeezes us fresh orange juice from the wild orange trees in our back yard. It’s so damn sour you can’t drink it without loading it up with sugar. Angus makes his juice a sugary sludge before he’ll take it. Totem hangs out and doesn’t try to be my dad. And it’s a good thing because Daddy has top billing in the house.

  Daddy sits in his favorite chair in front of the TV. He still visits me in my dreams. Last night he told me to whack Totem in the head with a ball peen hammer while he was sleeping. Usually Daddy gives me good advice. I disregarded it last night. I kind of like Totem. I don’t think I’d be as fond of him if he had a gooping head-wound. Right now Daddy is dressed in a Cleveland Browns jersey and souvenir helmet. He’s getting geared up for football season. At his feet sits a perfectly preserved, stuffed Idjit. Pervis fixed him up real nice and lifelike. He even tricked out the Galoot a little bit with sparkling green glass eyes and a rack of antlers, just like on a jackalope. He looks tough, like he would disembowel you if you got too close to his food bowl. I move Idjit around the room just to give him a little variety. He likes it when I set him in front of the window and let him stare out at the egrets feeding in our front yard. Other times he likes to sit on the front porch to greet visitors. Sometimes Jack or Angus cuddles with him on the couch. Usually he’s at Daddy’s feet. They’ve become very close.

  For the most part we watc
h TV. Jack likes deviled eggs and beer. Just like Idjit. Everything he does, every action, every bark, even the smell of his farts, is just like Idjit. It’s eerie and comforting at the same time. Angus loves Jack. The big mutt absorbs the abuse from my boy like he took lessons from Rodney King. Angus loves Jack, and Idjit, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The messy sandwiches with the crusts cut off are almost all he eats. The boy turns his nose up at most kinds of eggs. It concerns me but I tell myself that he’ll learn to love them as he gets older.

  Frank is now driving a tractor-trailer around the country for a living. His trucker name is Pigpen. Frank lives out of his rig and stays with us when he’s not on the road. He hauls all kinds of meat and is always pulling a load of beef, pork or chicken. Sometimes he ends up with something exotic. When he does, he skims a box or two of the good stuff and brings it to us. Last time he stopped in he brought us a freezer full of giant tiger prawn. Each shrimp is over a foot long and weighs more than a pound. We go through gallons of cocktail sauce.

  I try to keep up with the lives of the people I know. Arnette and Pervis visit us on a regular basis. Arnette says that he caught the skunk ape on video but was forced to destroy the tape by government agents in a black car. Arnette has been slowly approaching and befriending a band of the giant monkeys, trying to work his way into their group. Kind of like the Diane Fossey of Skunk Apes. Arnette’s video supposedly caught images of him shaking hands with the troop leader. Even though the tape was confiscated, Arnette says that he still has proof of his encounter. He makes me sniff his hand. It smells like someone ate vomit and then shit it out onto a rotting skunk carcass. “That’s the scent of a silverback male skunk ape,” he beams. “That ain’t never coming off.”