by Lisa Morton
At first I thought he meant Hank…then (stupid me, slow on the uptake as usual) I realized the “trash” was Teddy.
“Hey, Moose, you know what a violent paranoid schizophrenic is?” I asked him.
He stopped and frowned. “No. Sounds like some faggot thing.”
Charming.
“Not exactly. It means we hurt people.”
“Oh yeah?” The big dumbshit just smiled again and took another step forward.
He’d been warned.
I had my hammer in hand, and before Moose could even count to two (about as high as I figured he could go), I jumped towards him and brought that nice steel hammer down right on a size-16 foot.
He screamed like a prepubescent girl and fell back, hopping on one foot, grabbing his injured toes. “Owww…Jesus Christ, she hit me…”
JJ and Denny couldn’t decide whether to defend their friend’s honor or back off, but when I just kind of twirled the hammer a little they stepped away from Moose and looked for something else to do.
I know that after that I could probably have spent the day just sitting on my ass, but I wanted to let them know I also wasn’t afraid of real work, so I hammered in just as many nails as the three of them combined. By the end of the day the framework for the greenhouse was looking pretty good, and those three Neanderthals left me alone.
We quit at dusk, and headed back to the main house.
My reward was to see Teddy.
He didn’t look good—he was haggard from being back on the Prolixin, and from having had to endure watching a cow being slaughtered. After he’d fainted, Mama had reassigned him to general field work, and he’d spent the day learning to handle farm equipment and helping to clear a field.
“Field’s the best place for him,” somebody muttered as Teddy finished his story. I turned to see who it was, but there were a lot of people around.
Nights were when the whole clan cut loose, it seemed. It was still late summer, the evenings were warm, and dinner was a shitkicker hoedown, with big slabs of beef grilling over cut-in-half fifty-five gallon drums that’d been turned into barbecues. There were maybe twenty men and ten women present, including Colby, who gave me a friendly little wave. Jugs of homemade corn mash were passed around, and country music blared from some huge boombox.
I probably don’t have to mention that Teddy was the only non-Caucasian there.
“I can’t take much more of this,” Teddy whispered to me, nervously eyeing the progressively-drunker assholes all around us.
“I know,” I said, nearly shouting to be heard over that terrible music, “I’m working on it.”
I cast a quick glance off to the side, and saw that we were indeed being watched, not by Hank or Johnny or even Moose, but by a bitter-looking, middle-aged woman whose name I didn’t know. She seemed to be stirring some big pot of beans, but I knew her real job was to spy on us and report back to Mama, who I didn’t see anywhere.
“They won’t let us leave, will they?” Teddy asked.
“No. They want us as workers, although they also love to talk about breeding stock.”
Teddy noticeably stiffened. “Oh God. If any of them hurt you…”
I turned my back to our spy, doing whatever I could to make her job harder. “Don’t worry, they’re afraid of me. I think you’ve got the bigger problem. We’ll need a vehicle, some food and water, some Prolixin, and a time when they won’t notice us driving off, because they have guns. I think they must’ve stripped out an armory, because I’m sure these guns are—were—illegal. What do they call them…automatic weapons.”
Teddy nodded, and said, “Back behind the barn they’ve got three trucks and two SUVs. I think our friend Hank is in charge of the keys, though.”
“Great,” I said sarcastically.
Just then the music was turned down a notch, for which I was immeasurably grateful, and Mama made her appearance, waddling out from the house to a chorus.
“’Evening, Mama… Lookin’ fine tonight, Mama…”
She took a seat in a big cushioned redwood deck chair, and was immediately served a big plate of meat. Before she tucked into it, she bent her head and clasped her hands.
“Dear Lord…”
The rest of them echoed, “Dear Lord…”
Dear Lord is right.
I don’t mind telling you that I’m pretty disappointed in God. He’s let us down big, and I’ve got a word or two for Him when we finally meet. These guys think I’ve got a problem with foul language now? Wait until they hear what I’d unleash on the Big Daddy upstairs.
In the meantime, I wasn’t about to bow my head and go along with their little Sunday school meeting. I just hoped they wouldn’t start speaking in tongues and pulling out rattlesnakes to kiss.
Mama led them through their little prayer, and when they finished she called out, “Now let’s eat!” They whooped and hollered again, the music went back on (almost making me sorry they’d stopped the prayer), and food was passed out.
I was about to wander off and see if I could get Teddy and I some bread or whatever, but Mama spotted us and waved us over. I wanted to just flip her the bird, but figured we’d better go.
We walked up, and she indicated a couple of smaller chairs nearby. “Pull up a seat. Didn’t you get yourselves somethin’ to eat?”
“We’re vegetarians,” I told her. I’d decided if it was good enough for Teddy (and pissed off Mama in the process), it was good enough for me.
She laughed so hard her face turned red. “Well, you better change that little habit right now, honey, because beef is mainly what we got here, in case you hadn’t noticed. ’Course for most folks that’s a big incentive to work harder.”
I wanted to say, “I’ll bet it is,” but just smiled instead.
She took a bite of bloody steak, and I nearly hurled as she spoke around the mouthful of flesh. “I hear you did good out on the greenhouse today.”
I shrugged.
“’Course I also hear you damn near broke Moose’s foot.”
“He asked for it,” I said.
“Now, girl,” she said, waggling a chubby finger at me, “he was just playin’, like men do. I can’t have you goin’ ’round beatin’ on all my men. I need ’em to work.”
“Then tell them to leave me alone,” I said, quite reasonably, I thought.
Apparently she didn’t agree. She actually put down her knife and fork and swallowed the meat she’d been chewing, so I knew this was serious. “Ashley, honey, you don’t seem to understand. This is your home now. We’re your kin, your family. You’ll be seeing all of us every day, for an awful lot of days to come. I know we’re not what you’re used to, out there in California. We’re not fancy folk with big degrees and books and funny ideas about God and such. But we’ve got a real shot at a future. We got food, we got oil, we got little ones on the way. We even plan on trying to find something we can make to replace the Prolixin, since we know our supply will run out or expire soon. We’re not stupid. You might even learn to like us—but you gotta give us a chance first. Now what do you say?”
She smiled at me in what she obviously hoped was an encouraging, maternal way, but all I could see was her fat cheeks and a smear of meat juice on part of her chin.
“What about my friend Teddy?” I asked, gesturing at him.
“Well, of course, he’s welcome here, too. We don’t even mind that he’s…you know…” She actually dropped down to this silly whisper, “…black.”
“If you don’t mind, then why bring it up?”
“You didn’t answer my question, Ashley,” she said. “Are you willing to give us a chance?”
“What if we try it and don’t like it?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, her eyes narrowing to little pig-like slits, “I’m sure Johnny would be more than happy to be in charge of tyin’ you up in the barn again.”
Just then I saw Johnny standing ten feet away; one side of his head was still bandaged. When he caught my eye, he winked
at me.
I grabbed my ear and bit some air.
“Now now, young lady, none of that!” Mama called out. “We have other punishments here, too. You’ll learn.”
She waved over a young girl, who bent and listened as she whispered, then ran to the food servers. “For now,” Mama said around another mouthful of beef, “no food for you tonight.”
I had it; she really was starting to sound like my mama. “Y’know what I think you are, Mama? I think you’re just some poor white trash who probably lived in some dinky little two-bedroom shithole before everything fell apart, and secretly you’re probably thanking your God for the dreaming sickness, because now you got this big fine house and a chance to play queen to your hand-picked shitkickers. Well, guess what? Teddy and me don’t want to play.”
I swear I could see the woman physically swell. Her face was red and twitching all over, and it took her a few seconds to put herself back together. Then she just smiled tightly and said, “Are you done now?”
“I can keep going all night, if you like.”
“Oh, you’re wrong. You could keep going all night if I liked, and I don’t.” She waved Johnny over.
“Tie ’em both up.”
At least Johnny didn’t try anything other than tying us up. Well, he did cuff Teddy around a little, but stopped when Teddy made me proud by threatening to bite off his other ear.
Colby came again in the morning to untie us. She brought us each a plate of eggs, milk…and beef. What a surprise.
Fuck it, I thought. We need our strength. I ate my portion of meat and Teddy’s, and gave him all my eggs. He wasn’t nuts about even eating eggs, but he knew he had to.
“I’m supposed to fill you in on some of our rules today,” said Colby.
“You don’t sound too thrilled about it.”
She shrugged. “I don’t exactly have anywhere else to go for better rules.”
“Yeah,” I said to her, “I know, what with that asshole Hank keeping all the car keys and stuff…”
Colby laughed, kind of bitterly. “Oh, that part wouldn’t be a problem—Hank’s my husband.”
Oh, I thought. “Oh,” I said.
“It’s okay. He is an asshole. Or at least he is now. We were having problems even before all this; in fact, I was about to file for divorce. He was a mechanic back in Amarillo, and I was a waitress. We did have a nice little house, but Hank, he…” She trailed off, since she didn’t need to explain any more.
“So how’d you wind up here?” I asked.
“Did Mama mention that her daughter-in-law was a pharmacist who figured out the thing with the Prolixin? That was Judy. She was one of my best friends.”
“‘Was’?”
Colby toed some cowshit in the dirt and nodded. “She was kind of like you—smarter than the rest of ’em around her. It may have been Mama’s idea, but Judy was the one who found this place, got enough of us on the Prolixin to come out here and fix it up. But she and Mama didn’t see eye-to-eye, and they started to fight about a lot of stuff, like who got Prolixin and who didn’t. Finally Judy said she wanted to leave, and Mama said she couldn’t. So one day she got in one of the trucks and tried to take off.”
She exhaled a long, shaky breath, and then added, “Hank shot her.”
Teddy and I exchanged a look. Jesus, how much worse could this get?
“Her husband—Mama’s son—was Johnny.”
It could get that much worse.
So we became part of “the family.” We worked and obeyed the rules just enough to make sure that we got fed and sheltered.
They stuck me in a sort of outbuilding that served as a dorm for the working single women. They had a similar building for the men, but none of the crackers would sleep with Teddy, so he got his own little shed.
There was a lot about what they’d done already and were planning to do that was pretty cool, actually. Mama’d really thought it through, I have to give her credit for that much. They had plenty of meat, but were taking good care of their herds to make sure they lasted; likewise the dairy. They were working on getting farming going, to provide grains and vegetables, and the greenhouse could be used for herbs and things like tomatoes. They had a well, so water was plentiful, and there were half a dozen working oil derricks around, so they had fuel. They had medical supplies and one woman who’d been a registered nurse, who was almost as good as a doctor. They had music and movies, and even a working still.
But they were seriously fucked up. They were fucked up in terms of religion and education and art. There were no books in that entire huge house except Bibles, and Colby once told me that Mama had had all the other books burned after she’d moved in (“said those books had filled people’s heads with bad ideas for too long”).
There was the way they treated Teddy, even while claiming that he was part of “the family” now.
And then there were the women.
I’d provided them with enough Prolixin so that they could’ve woken up all those dreaming women, but the truth is Mama just didn’t want to. She used every excuse from Prolixin effecting the unborn babies to “keeping the menfolk happy,” but I think the truth is she just didn’t want other women around. They were somehow a danger to her.
I was.
Because I’d considered offing her.
This place wouldn’t be so bad with someone else in charge. It didn’t even have to be me—it could be Colby. Someone who’d let the human race come back better than before.
But I realized that even if I could kill Mama and get away with it, the rest of ’em here would never listen to anyone else. After all, they’d had a chance once to listen to somebody else, and they’d shot her instead. They actually liked life under Mama, probably a lot more than they’d liked it before. They’d been poor white trash before; now they were rich. Still white trash, but rich, with all the steaks and Garth Brooks CDs and pink wallpaper they wanted.
Fuck it. If this was the future of humanity, then let it die out.
Teddy, of course, was scared all the time and miserable. He was losing too much weight because he wouldn’t eat meat and was too anxious to eat anything else. Their little cruelties and taunts were becoming more and more open, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d either blow up at one of them or they’d just decide it was time for a little tractor accident. We’d been happy and healthy out on the road, and could be again.
So I thought about escape.
I know you’re probably thinking, Just walk away, just sneak out one night and go! Well, it wasn’t that easy. For one thing, we were in the middle of bugfuck nowhere; walking away was out of the question. That left horse or car, and I didn’t know how to ride a horse. And I wasn’t anxious to learn—truthfully, the big animals scared me silly.
That left car. And keys. And Hank.
Hank kept the car keys in a lockbox attached to a wall in the kitchen. He was the only one who could open that box. Sure, I considered just smashing it, but there was always someone in the kitchen. And Hank never went without a gun.
We couldn’t just go without some supplies. Food we could get, but the Prolixin was kept in Mama’s office, and she locked that door when she wasn’t in there.
And then there was the spy.
The pinch-faced woman who’d watched us the night of that first dinner was still watching us. I’d learned her name was MaryKay, and her gig was to curry favor with Mama by narcing. Seemed she wasn’t very good at any particular work, but she was guaranteed her daily Prolixin by ratting out everybody else.
So, you can see why we needed a plan that involved more than just a long stroll out of there.
First, I figured out the Prolixin:
Mama locked the door to her office, sure…but not the window. I’d noticed it a couple of times, and was pretty sure she never locked it.
I waited one night until it was very late, all the women were in our little dormitory, and I heard nothing but the sounds of peaceful breathing around me; then I got up,
moving very quietly. The door would squeak a little when I opened it, but if anyone bothered to ask I could say I was just going to the outhouse.
Nobody said anything.
I did cross to the outhouse, just in case MaryKay was sneaking a peek at me; I even went in and used it. When I came out, I looked around, then ran over to the main house and found the window for Mama’s office. It was one of those old-fashioned kind of windows that slid up, and so I grabbed the sides and pushed. Sure enough it went up, without a sound. I moved it up so I could even stick my head in the office, and saw moonlight glinting off the bottles of Prolixin.
I didn’t take any then, but I knew I could get to it when we were ready.
I snuck back to the dormitory, opened the door, and tiptoed back to my bunk. I was just feeling pretty triumphant, settling back down under my sheets, when a voice hissed in the darkness:
“Where you been?”
It was that bitch MaryKay.
Fuck, I thought. How long has she been awake? Did she see me?
“To the bathroom. Is that okay with you?”
She grunted, and I heard her roll over. So she hadn’t seen me after all.
I’d dodged another bullet.
Two nights later, a sixteen-year-old kid named Jed was caught jerking off out behind the barn at sunset. Just before dinner, Mama had him brought out in front of everyone, stripped of his pants, and whipped twenty times with a riding crop.
That was bad enough, but the real breaking point for me was when the rest of ’em applauded and started eating.
I found Teddy, who was gripping himself and trembling all over. I whispered three words to him:
“We’re leaving tonight.”
I didn’t care how risky it was, I wasn’t going to stay there any longer. They were bad and getting worse. Being shot would be better than staying there.
I was about to fill Teddy in when he grabbed my arm urgently and looked past my shoulder. I shut up and turned to see that pinch-faced MaryKay sidling up to us.
“Something I can help you with, MaryKay?”
She leered, proving it was possible for her to get even uglier. “I got a message for you from Mama: She says you’re not to talk to that colored man anymore.”