Grundish & Askew

by Carbuncle, Lance

  “Well, who’s gonna be willing to put us up?”

  “An old flame of mine. He’s crazy about me. The old boy’ll do anything I ask, he will. I mean, talk about being dizzy with a dame.”

  “Well, I don’t see that we’ve got much choice ‘cause I ain’t got no friends other than Askew, and he ain’t got no one but me. But now we’ve got this young lady that we can’t really let go. And we’ve got a kid duct taped to a chair upstairs. The smart thing to do would be to knock the kid off so he can’t identify us.”

  Askew abruptly rotates 180-degrees on his heels and starts out of the room.

  “Askew, get back here.”

  Askew stops and turns. “I’m just going to get me a sodee pop. I wasn’t going to do anything to the kid.” But, just under the tattered flesh of Askew’s face, Grundish recognizes a hint of disappointment.

  “I ain’t got it in me to take that kid’s life. And neither does Askew. So I guess we’re gonna have to leave the kid upstairs, maybe just give him some food and water before we go. Buttwynn’s family will find him and let him loose. And, yeah, he can identify us. But we’ll be long gone by then. And I don’t see no other way around it ‘lessen we want to kill the boy. And we don’t wanna do that. Right, Askew?”

  “Yeah,” grumbles Askew, his tone flat and unenthusiastic.

  Turleen pulls an unlit cigarette from behind her ear and rolls it around in her hand. It’s not a Blue Llama. It’s not a Red Apple. It’s a brand called Sordes Pilosus.[31]Hmmm, Turleen thinks to herself, that doggie gave me some fancy French fags. Next time I see Stubs, I’ll have to do something nice for him, I will. Turleen decides that now when she goes to sleep, she’ll always make sure to keep a baggy of chopped meat with her for her canine dream-friends. The urge to light the cigarette almost overwhelms her, but Turleen maintains control, merely relishing the feel of the Sordes Pilosus between her fingers. She breathes in another whiff of Grundish’s second-hand smoke and secretly wishes to be stricken with a terminal illness so that she can justify taking up smoking again. “Well,” Turleen says, “I’m gonna take this young lady into the kitchen and give her a nice meal, I am. Then I’m gonna freeze all the leftovers for this here dead fellow’s family because they’re probably not going to feel up to cooking when they get home. Now, come on along with me, honey,” she says to Dora.

  Cautiously rising from the chair, Dora stands and allows herself to be led to the kitchen by Turleen. She looks to Grundish to see if he’ll allow her to exit the room. Grundish waves her away with his hand, confident that Turleen will be able to handle the fragile-looking girl if she tries to make a break.

  “You boys do whatever it is that you need to in order to wrap up your business here,” says Turleen. “This young ’un and I’ll be ready to go when you are, we will.”

  • • •

  “There ain’t much use in cleaning this mess up,” says Grundish to Askew. “We ain’t got the time. Why don’t you go take a plate of food to that kid upstairs? Give him some water. Don’t let him up, though. He can shit and piss himself until somebody comes along and releases him. Speaking of which, I gotta go take a dump, myself.”

  • • •

  “God damn! God damn! God damn!” Grundish can’t believe the torpedo in the commode. Turleen has been stuffing him with mounds of meat the past couple of days, so it only makes sense. Grundish still cannot fathom that the monstrosity in the toilet bowl came from his body. The colossal ass-baby spans the widest part of the bowl and dares somebody to try to flush it. Come on, it says. Don’t be a pussy. Go ahead and try to get rid of me. What? Are you afraid of a talking turd? You disgust me. Yeah. How does that make you feel? You make a turd feel queasy.

  “Well,” Grundish says to himself (and the turd), “we’re already wanted for murder, and they’re bound to realize that we were involved here. I’m going away for good if they catch us. Why not leave my mark?” He walks away from the porcelain throne. He walks away from a blue-ribbon, first-prize-winning log of solid waste. The Turd Burglar strikes again.

  • • •

  “Did you feed the boy?”

  “Yep.”

  “Water him?”

  “Yep.”

  “And he’s still alive?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t kill him,” Askew takes umbrage at the question. He pulls his robe around his pot belly, barely managing to tie the belt to keep the robe in place. Fumbling with his pack of Blue Llamas, he finally manages to shake one out and light it. “You gotta cut me some slack, Grundish. I already told you that I know I fucked up with some of the shit I done. But you gotta recognize that some of that stuff happened in the mist of some chaotic shit.”

  “Give me that thing,” says Grundish, snagging Askew’s freshly-lit smoke. “You just keep smoking these fucking things in front of me so that I will, too.” He takes a hit off of the cigarette and hands it back to Askew. “I know you’ve been a little confused here. So, I am trying to cut you some slack. Just try...please just try not to kill anybody else.”

  “Hey. I’m not a cold-blooded killer, per se, you know.” He looks to Grundish for confirmation. “Bumpy D, for example. He was literally asking me to kill him for what he did. And Buttwynn. He charged me. What could I do?”

  “What about that kid’s ear?”

  “That was excessive and uncalled for, granite. But I recognize that now, and it won’t happen again. I’m making a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turnabout. Heck, I even apologized to the kid the last time I was up there.”

  Grundish thinks about going to check on the kid and then decides to take his friend’s word for it. Askew seems sincere, and Grundish gives him the benefit of the doubt. “Let’s go check on Turleen and the girl.”

  • • •

  In the kitchen, Turleen sips at an oversized glass of Chianti. She and Dora pick at a plate of fava beans and an unidentifiable cut of meat. Dora sips at her own glass of wine and looks as comfortable as if she were dining with her grandmother.

  “Everything going all right, Turleen?” Grundish asks.

  “It’s hunky dory, it is,” Turleen smiles at the girl. “This young lady here has nowhere to go and no problem with coming along with us. Ain’t that right, Dura?”

  “Yep,” says Dora. She forks several more fava beans into her mouth and nods.

  “Her name’s Dora, Turleen,” corrects Askew. “It ain’t Dura. You’re mispronounciating it. Her name is Dora.”

  “That’s what I said, it is,” answers Turleen. “Dura.”

  “Okay, whatever,” interrupts Grundish. “We can call her Dora, Dura, Darla or Dharma. Shit, you can call me Ray, you can call me Jay. It don’t matter right now. What matters is that we get out of here before Buttwynn’s family shows up. Right?”

  Everybody, including Dora, nods their heads in agreement.

  “All right then. What do you need to do before we go, Turleen?”

  “I just need to bag up and freeze the rest of my food and I’m ready to scram, I am.”

  “Good,” says Grundish. “When we’re all ready to go, I’m gonna have you go out in the driveway and bring Buttwynn’s car into the garage. Can you do that for me, Turleen?”

  Turleen pulls the Sordes Pilosus from behind her ear and holds it between her fingers. She daydreams about what the fancy cigarette would taste like. Lost in the smoky reverie, Turleen forgets about Grundish’s request.

  “Turleen!” snaps Grundish. “Can you do that for me? Can you bring the car into the garage when we’re ready to go?”

  “Of course I can, Sonny. Why you getting so snippy?” She tucks the cigarette back behind her ear and starts filling a freezer bag with chopped steak.

  “Askew, do you need to do anything before we go?

  “I probably oughta go to the little boys’ room,” says Askew, trying to be cute for Dora. He winks at her and she offers a slight smile in return. “And maybe we both should get back into our old clothes.”

  “Yeah,” agrees Grundish.
“We don’t want to draw too much attention when we’re in the open. But I’ve grown to like these sock garters. And, have you tried on the sandals in Buttwynn’s closet? Incredible. I think I’m taking some garters and sandals with me.”

  “Fuckin-A right,” says Askew. “There’s something comforting about wearing both the garters and the sandals, isn’t there?”

  “You need anything, darling?” Grundish asks Dora.

  “Nah.” She half-grins a snaggle-toothed smile. Her teeth crowd and cross each other, a random jumble of chipped ivory bits that are otherwise well-maintained, not stained. “Just don’t hurt me or nothing.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s plan on being out of here within the hour then.” Grundish leaves the room to begin filling a duffle bag with necessities.

  26

  And they are on the road again.[32] Turleen drives the van with Dora at her side in the passenger seat. The boys stay out of sight on the floor in the back of the vehicle. Turleen hands Dora a cigarette from one of Askew’s half-empty packs. Dora kicks her bare feet up on the dashboard and lights up.

  “Did we really have to leave the El Camino?” Askew asks, sticking his whack-a-mole of a head over the back of the middle-row seats in Buttwynn’s Toyota Sienna van. Grundish’s fist is the mallet that pounds the head back down. It pauses, hovering near the top of the seat, waiting for the next pop of the head

  “Get your fucking head down,” says Grundish from his crouched position in the middle row of minivan seats. “We need to stay out of sight. Do you wanna get us busted on the way to our safehouse?”

  “No, I don’t wanna get us busted,” answers Askew. “I just don’t see why we had to leave my car behind. We could still go back and get it. I fucking love that car.” The El Camino sits abandoned in the Buttwynn garage. Grundish already explained to Askew that the sheriff’s office will have an all-points bulletin for the car, which is registered in Askew’s name and in which an entire trailer park full of witnesses saw them flee. “By the way,” continues Askew, “you’re virtually assuring that they can pin Buttwynn’s death on us by leaving the car there.”

  “I already thought about that,” says Grundish. Crouching in the back of the van is awkward for the large man. The frustration born of the discomfort makes him itch with prickly heat. He readjusts his position and straightens his legs. Despite his growing frustration, he speaks to Askew in a calm voice. “Like I told you already, there were things I had to weigh. For example: was it more important for us to clean up the mess at the house or get out of there before somebody else showed up? We can’t take any chances with being caught. Another example: should we kill the kid or leave a witness alive who will undoubtedly be able to identify us? My conscience won that one easily. So, you see, we’re leaving a dead body, our fingerprints and DNA all over the house, and an eyewitness who can identify us, to boot. Oh yeah, and I left a big Turd Burglar calling card in the toilet. We’re already wanted for murder. At this point, it don’t make a bit of difference if we left the El Camino there or not. They’re gonna know it was us in that house. The smart money says take Buttwynn’s car, which, of course, will not be reported stolen until his family returns and sees the mess in their house. So you see, telling me that you have a sentimental attachment to your car is a futile argument.”

  “It is not feudal. I love that car more than I love most people. If you weren’t such an asshole sometimes, you would realize how important it is to me.” Askew pops his head up over the seat again and casts a demented, popeyed glare at Grundish. The closed-hand mallet whacks the mole back into its hole.

  “The question is this: is your car worth us all getting arrested?” Grundish readjusts his position again, trying to discover a more comfortable manner in which to twist himself. He presses his mouth against the tiny gap between the middle and the passenger side seat and speaks into the crack. “Because if we were to go driving around in that car, we’d be busted before the second track of your Gimme Back My Bullets eight-track tape is over. They’d take your car. They’d take your Skynyrd tape. And they’d take you, me, and probably even Turleen to jail. Is that what you want? ‘Cause if it is, then let’s have Turleen turn around, and we’ll just go back to the house. Is that what we should do? God damn, Askew! I’m always having to watch out for you and clean up your messes. And now you’re wanting to go back and get us all caught. You are always trying to fuck up my shit. Man, it would be so much easier if I didn’t have to deal with all this nonsense sometimes. Do you want us all to go back so you can have your car, even if it means getting everybody thrown in prison?”

  “No,” Askew’s voice trembles. “It ain’t what we should do. I’m just saying that you ain’t being sensitive to my feelings about that car. I love that fucking car. And I just wish you wouldn’t blow me so much shit about it. You want I should go away and just leave you alone?”

  “Where in the fuck would you go, anyway?”

  “Well, I could find my way south and live in the swamps. Build myself a little chickee hut or something.”

  “Yeah, and how’d you eat? You ain’t got sense enough to find anything to feed yourself.”

  “I’d find things,” says Askew, his voice hitching. “I’d hunt. I don’t need no nice food with ketchup. Nobody’d bother me. And if I wanted to keep a car, nobody would try to take it away from me.”

  Grundish hesitates, breathes deep. “Fuck,” he sighs. “I been mean, haven’t I? Hey, I’m sorry we have to leave it there.” His tone softens into vocal putty. “It’s just that it’s the only choice we really had, ya know. I know it was a sacrifice[33] on your part. And I appreciate it, Bro.”

  Askew, sensing an advantage, tells Grundish, “Well if you don’t want me, you just have to say so. I’ll go off into the swamps right now. I’ll go live down there all by myself. And I won’t get no more cars taken away from me.”

  “I said I was sorry,” says Grundish, and meaning it. “Jesus Christ, Askew. Out in the swamps, you’d starve. You’d get eaten by gators. Somebody’d shoot you. Nope. You stay with me.”

  “Well, you could be more considerate of my feelings. Why couldn’t you just explain it to me in the first place why we had to leave my car, instead of just dragging me off and not telling me your reasons. I mean, I get it now. But, yeah, you was just being mean there for a while.”

  “Well,” Grundish’s tone hardens again. “I done said I was sorry. Are you gonna keep grumbling about it, or, are you gonna let it go?”

  “I told you, I’m letting it go.”

  “Good. ’Cause you’re the only friend I got.” Grundish cocks his hip up and jams his hand under his waistband to peel his sweat-moistened nutsack from his thigh and readjust the equipment. “Now shut your pie-hole, and let me take a nap. And stay out of sight until we get to wherever it is that Turleen is taking us.” Grundish closes his eyes and lays his face on the floor. His cheek rests on a cool strip of metal track for one of the seats. He pretends it is the tile floor that provided him with so much relief earlier. With nothing better to do, Grundish effortlessly transitions into napping mode.

  Askew lies on his side in the row behind Grundish, glaring at the back of the seats in front of him. The ebb and flow of his emotions drag him from warm appreciation for having a friend like Grundish to childish resentment about leaving the El Camino behind. The tender feeling for his best friend overpowers the resentment, smothers it. Askew, too, closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep, smiling and thinking to himself, Grundish always watches out for me. I ain’t never had a brother, but I bet that this is what they’s like with each other. Pissing each other off sometimes but mostly feeling good about each other.

  27

  In the far southeast corner of the United States is Florida, a peninsula dangling limply from the rest of the country. Florida is sometimes referred to as the nation’s genitals. In the center of the nation’s dong is a largish, ruptured varicose vein known as Polk County. Sitting right smack in the middle of the burst vein is an infec
ted carbuncle, a little pus-filled town by the name of Bartow. State Route 60 funnels drivers out of Bartow and sends them on their way to the east coast of Florida. Just east of Bartow, on a small side road running off of Route 60 is Jerry Mathers’ Foreign Car Parts and Service. It is really more of a junkyard than an auto garage or service station. Just beside the front gate is a rusted metal sign that says “Jerry Mathers’ Foreign Car Parts and Service.” On the left side of the sign is a buck-toothed beaver with two of his paws giving the thumbs up[34]. Two dilapidated Corvairs sitting on concrete blocks flank the front gate. An eight-foot tall cement wall encloses the yard, all five acres of it. The wall is covered with moss and kudzu vines and has holes chipped into it in places. Small trees grow from some of the holes. But the wall stands sturdy against the elements and intruders. Densely packed about the property are countless sickly Volkswagen vans in various states of decrepitude and a motley collection of other broken down vehicles.

  Inside the junkyard’s concrete walls, Randy Buttwynn’s van sits next to a large metal building. Randy Buttwynn has nothing to do with the van anymore. Buttwynn is a bloody mass of putrescible flesh patiently waiting for the rest of the Buttwynn clan to return home and discover his cadaverous condition. The de facto owners of the van, Grundish and Askew, are, in their own way, dead to the world, sleeping the coma-like, dreamless sleep that sets upon those who reach a point of complete exhaustion.

  A sore-covered donkey uses his mouth to pull weeds from the ground around Buttwynn’s van. His few remaining teeth mash the vegetation into a pulpy meal. He tries to swallow it. Instead, he suffers a bout of retro-peristalsis and regurgitates a compact, shit-brown lump of waste product from his stomach. The ground around his feet is littered with the brownish lumps. The donkey wheezes. His breathing is labored and his sides suck in, looking like they are trying to meet at the beast’s core and touch each other. His brown hide stretches tight across the harshly-defined ribs. He has lived for a long time and his years are kicking the hell out of him. The name of the donkey: Alf the Sacred Burro.