Squirm

by Richard Curtis

  Alma was studying the matchbook. “Quigley’s. Oh wow, have you been there?” Mick grunted a negative. He’d become quite preoccupied with his itch, to the point of rolling up his pants leg to inspect the area, which was an angry red with a number of welts.

  “Quigley’s is a piss,” Alma said, lighting up her joint and taking a deep, sibilant hit on it. “I go there with some of my friends, wrecked out of our gourds,” she continued, holding the smoke in her lungs. “We just order tequila and watch the old farts drink themselves into a stupor.”

  She handed the joint to Mick, who took a hit on it himself, but seemed more preoccupied with his itch than with getting high.

  “How long has that been itching like that?” asked Alma.

  “It just started.” He gestured at the matchbook in Alma’s hands. “What about Beardsly? The antique guy? Does he go to Quigley’s?”

  Alma found this so funny she burst into a fit of smokey coughing. “Go there? He lives there. Aaron Beardsly is a stoned cold alkie.”

  Mick exhaled the smoke, savoring the high quality of the grass. Somehow it surprised him to find grass smoked down here, though why, he wasn’t sure. He shrugged and went back to the trunk, and hauled out a blue shirt that wasn’t too bad. When he looked up, Alma was gazing at his chest with an interest that made him uncomfortable.

  “You must really have a thing for Geri, to come all the way down here from the city,” she observed.

  “I’m trying to cram my whole summer vacation into a few days,” he answered.

  “So I heard.”

  He donned the shirt and shrugged. If it wasn’t that great, it wasn’t that bad either. “It’s sure nice to get away from the city,” he said in a pleasant, conversational tone.

  Alma offered him another toke, but Mick declined. Alma burrowed back into her blouse and came up with another joint, giving it to Mick. “Save it for later,” she said, smiling pixieishly.

  “Why’s that?”

  “That stuff on your leg,” she laughed. “It’s poison ivy.”

  Through the mellow buzz in her head Alma heard a horn honking. That was probably Jeff, Eddie, and Susanne, who’d said they might be going down to Quigley’s to drink and would pick her up if they did. She took the stairs two at a time and peered out the screen door. Yes, there was Jeff at the wheel of his vintage Buick convertible, with long-haired Susanne squeezed between him and Eddie. They greeted their friend, and Eddie climbed into the back seat to sit with Alma.

  The car took off for town, and Alma had no sooner climbed in than she was telling her gang all about her sister’s boyfriend Mick. If Alma loved anything in the world, it was gossip.

  Quigley’s was surprisingly crowded for this time of day. The four teenagers attributed it to the fact that with the town’s electricity down, people wanted to go someplace where there were other people—and cold beer on tap. Still, it was pretty hot in there, and after ordering their drinks they fell into a state of semi-somnolence. Luckily, their friend Amy walked by the window of the bar, carrying her transistor radio. They practically shanghaied her, not so much because they liked her as because she had a radio. The blast of rock music annoyed some of the more sedate patrons, but at least it livened things up in there.

  “I’ll bet there’s gonna be a big rise in population in Fly Creek nine months from now,” Alma shouted, remembering what had happened in New York City nine months after the big blackout back in 1965.

  “Yeah,” said Jeff. “With no electricity tonight there’s gonna be nothing else to do.” He gazed with calflike eyes at Susanne, the meaning of his expression plain to read. Susanne looked at him blankly, pretending not to understand.

  They peered through the grimy window of the bar, seeking grist for their giggly gossipmill, and found a perfect target in Sheriff Reston, who’d just emerged from Town Hall, a tall, dark-haired woman in her late thirties attached to his arm. They couldn’t tell who she was, but who she was not was Reston’s wife, that was for damn sure, and they had a Class-A giggle over that one.

  “Uh-oh,” said Amy, “looks like Big Jim is at it again.”

  “I’ve gotta hand it to that guy,” said Eddie. “He knows how to take advantage of a situation. His wife’s away visiting her mother. Big storm hits, roads are all flooded out, no chance of her popping in on him. No phones . . .” He eyed Sheriff Reston’s “escort” as they crossed the street, apparently heading for Quigley’s. She wore a cool-looking white outfit that could not, it was plain to see, have come from any city closer than Atlanta. She was probably a stranded tourist, which for Sheriff Reston was like a lamb to a hungry wolf.

  “What I don’t understand is what those chicks see in him,” said Jeff.

  “I wonder where he’s gonna take her tonight,” Alma mused.

  “You mean take her, or take her?” Jeff guffawed, priding himself in the subtlety of his double entendres.

  “Both,” said Susanne, and they all laughed.

  Sheriff Reston entered the bar with his lady friend and looked over at the five kids, squinting at the glasses on the table to make sure there was nothing more potent in them than Coke. There wasn’t. What was potent was the flask of Wild Turkey secreted in Jeff’s pants pocket.

  Reston sat down at the table nearest the bar and asked for the luncheon menu, and the five kids went back to their people-watching.

  “There’s the dude from New York,” Alma said excitedly. The other four peered intently out of the window to study the pleasant-looking but somewhat scholarly young man strolling through town with Geri. They weren’t sure what they’d expected, but it sure hadn’t been someone who wore glasses.

  As they studied Mick, Roger Grimes entered the tavern and plopped heavily onto a stool. Mr. Quigley, a thin, almost wizened, red-faced man, looked up from the newspaper he’d spread on the bar and asked Roger what he wanted to drink. Roger asked for a double bourbon, neat. Not even a chaser. Quigley looked questioningly at Roger, then did as he’d been told. He’d known Roger since the boy had come of drinking age, and he knew that Willie Grimes’ son hit the booze pretty hard whenever he was upset. He also knew that Roger had a tendency to destroy the bar and anyone who tried to restrain him when he got into these moods.

  He poured one shot of bourbon into a glass, then cut it with another shot of water, hoping Roger wouldn’t see or taste the difference. He’d done this before for Roger or other troublemakers, and though technically, he supposed, he was cheating his customers, Quigley did it for only the very best of motives—to protect his bar, and to protect a man on the rampage from hurting himself.

  At least it was comforting to know Sheriff Reston was here.

  As Roger downed half his drink in one gulp, Geri came into the bar hand-in-hand with a young man that Mr. Quigley did not recognize. At once it became clear to Quigley what the source of Roger’s misery was, for Quigley knew that Roger was sweet on Geri Sanders, and it must be quite a blow to him to see her taking up with this new beau. Quigley had to admit it was a little hard to see what Geri saw in this new young man, who looked like a lawyer on vacation. (Joe Quigley had lived a long time, and there was little about people he didn’t know or couldn’t figure out.) On the other hand, Quigley could also understand why Geri didn’t really cotton that much to Roger, who was, as the local expression had it, just a mite touched.

  One thing you could say about this new young man, though: he wasn’t above coming right up to his rival and saying hello to him. He dropped down onto the stool next to Roger and put his hand on the sulking boy’s shoulder. “Hey, Roger,” he said cheerfully.

  Roger shrugged off the hand like a cow shuddering off a horsefly.

  Mick shrugged and turned to Geri, who’d just slid onto the barstool beside him. “Hi, Mr. Quigley,” she said, ordering a beer.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Mick said to the man behind the bar, “but we’re looking for Aaron Beardsly. Has he been around?”

  “Aaron? No. I ain’t seen Aaron since last night. He left just b
efore it really started coming down.”

  Roger shifted uncomfortably in his seat at the mention of Beardsly’s name, but no one connected this with the puzzling disappearance of the antiques dealer.

  “Geri, everything all right at your place?” Mr. Quigley asked. “Mom okay?”

  “Fine,” said Geri, swallowing some beer and sighing contentedly.

  “Say, that was one heck of a storm, wasn’t it?” the tavern owner said. “I hear the electricity’ll be out till tomorrow morning.” Mick and Geri nodded. For a moment there was an awkward silence as Mr. Quigley stared penetratingly at Mick. Then he leaned closer and said, “You people antique shopping? Well, you look like a nice enough fella. Let me give you a little tip.”

  The old man put his hand on Mick’s shoulder. “Stay away from ol’ Aaron. He’s a little, um, steep. Now, I have a garage filled with the most beautiful stuff you ever saw.”

  To demonstrate, he reached down and produced a rust-laden brass diver’s helmet, the glass mask scratched, the neck rim dented.

  “Why, in New York, you’d have to pay . . .”

  Geri interrupted him before he could get deeper into his sales pitch. “Uh, Mr. Quigley, we’ll stop in if we have time. If you see Mr. Beardsly . . .”

  The old man didn’t seem to be overly offended by their sales resistance. “Oh, he’ll be here tonight, you can rest assured on that.”

  Mick started to push away from the bar, but Roger looked so morose that in spite of Roger’s rejection of Mick’s first gesture, the young man felt he had to make another effort. “Listen, I’m really sorry about those worms.”

  “Just forget it,” Roger said, not looking up from his drink.

  “We’re going fishing,” Mick said brightly, hoping this would lure the guy out of his mood. “I’d really like you to join us. You must know all the best spots.”

  Roger shook his head again. Then Geri leaned across Mick and touched Roger fondly on the wrist. “Oh, come on, Roger, it’ll be better if you stay away from your father for a little while.”

  The boy’s resistance started to crumble. Smiling weakly at Geri, he said, “When are you going?”

  “Soon as we finish lunch,” Geri beamed. “About an hour.”

  Roger shrugged indifferently, but they could see the temptation was overcoming the lad. “I’ll have to pick up some stuff at the bait shop,” he finally said to their delight. “I’ll meet you down by the boats.”

  “Great!” said Mick. “You can show me how to use the new reel I bought.”

  They climbed down from the stools and were about to walk out when they noticed Alma and her friends seated at the table. They greeted each other. Alma’s friends, after the introductions, studied Mick indifferently.

  “What are you drinkin’?” Eddie asked him.

  “Nothing, thanks. We’re just trying to track down Aaron Beardsly.”

  “Hey, yeah,” Eddie said. “I hear you’re into antiques. I have a dynamite old Nazi bayonet that you might be interested in doing a deal on.”

  “Sounds interesting,” Mick said politely.

  “You can come to my house and take a look at it,” Eddie pressed.

  “Uh, not now. Geri and I are going fishing.”

  “Well then, maybe tonight? We’ll all be here. I’ll bring it with me. The candlelight won’t do it justice, but what can you do?”

  Growing quite uncomfortable, Mick muttered some cordial platitude and made his escape.

  Geri drove him back to her house, where she made tuna sandwiches. She gobbled hers down while Mick applied calamine lotion to his still-itchy leg. “You’ll find that everybody in Fly Creek considers himself an antique dealer,” she said. “Nobody throws anything away. You never know what the tourists want.”

  Mick got up, dried his hands on a piece of paper towel, and stole up behind Geri. Kissing her on the back of the neck, he whispered, “Guess what this tourist wants?”

  Geri giggled, yielded a moment, then ducked away. “Tuna fish will have to do for now.”

  Mick sighed and sat down at the table, tackling his sandwich. It tasted distinctly inferior to Geri’s neck. “That reminds me. Where do I sleep?” he asked.

  “In the extra room.”

  His face sank into his sandwich. Then he brightened again. “Maybe I’ll sneak up to your room.”

  “My mother would have a fit.”

  “She’d never see me. It’ll be dark as hell.” He caressed Geri’s back for emphasis.

  Geri’s breath quickened. “Better if I sneak down. You’d probably bang into something and wake everybody up.”

  Mick smiled and gazed dreamily at his sandwich. “Looks good.”

  It’s hard to say where this smoldering exchange would have led had Mrs. Sanders not come into the kitchen. She began opening cupboards and drawers and setting out pots, pans, and a variety of utensils for what appeared to be a king-sized dinner. At one point she removed an electric knife from an appliance cabinet, then realized it would do her absolutely no good without electricity. She made a face, returned it to the cabinet, and took a conventional carving knife out of a utility drawer and began sharpening it by hand.

  “Don’t fill yourselves up too much. I’m making a big roast tonight. I want you to be hungry by seven o’clock.” She silently thanked her stars that their oven worked on gas instead of electricity. Many a family in Fly Creek would be dining on sandwiches tonight.

  “Don’t bother with a roast, Mrs. Sanders,” Mick said. “We’ll catch enough fish for dinner.”

  Mrs. Sanders never missed an opportunity, even when her daughter’s chosen boyfriend was sitting a few feet away. “Geri, why don’t you ask Roger over for dinner tonight? He worked so hard cleaning up those branches.”

  Geri thought it over and said, “Sure, Mom.” Anything she could do to ingratiate Roger again after the disaster of the missing worms would be a plus. Besides, after Mick returned to New York City, she’d need Roger to take her to dances and picnics.

  Geri and Mick ate their sandwiches in silence, mooning at each other while Mrs. Sanders puttered in the kitchen. Then Geri raised a question she’d been meaning to ask Mick. “Do you suppose something happened to Mr. Beardsly?”

  “Probably not. I’ll bet we see him tonight boozing it up in a dark corner at Quigley’s.”

  “Do you really plan on going there?”

  “Sure. I can’t disappoint the guy with the bayonet,” he laughed. Bayonets were not really Mick’s idea of antiques, but he didn’t see much he could do to get out of his promise to Alma’s friend without offending him. Offend him and he’d offend Alma, and Mick didn’t want to alienate anyone in Geri’s family.

  Geri opened the refrigerator and took out some milk. Despite the block of ice—or perhaps because of it, since it had diminished to the size of a fist and didn’t look effective enough to cool a glass of water—the milk container was not very cold. She poured out two glasses and handed one to Mick.

  Mick raised the glass to his lips, then remembered something and lowered it, looking a little sallow.

  “There was a worm in my egg cream,” he announced flatly.

  “What?”

  “When I went into that luncheonette,” Mick explained to Geri, whose eyes bugged with horror, “I ordered an egg cream and I found a worm in it.”

  Mick stared into the glass of milk, wondering not just about this one but about all the milk he would ever drink, or never drink, again.

  “What’s an egg cream?” Geri asked, apparently as much put off by the obnoxious-sounding name of the drink as by the fact that there had been a worm in it.

  “It’s like a chocolate . . .” Mick wandered off into some private reflection. “I wonder if it was my fault after all. Maybe it had something to do with the truckload.”

  Geri seemed utterly bewildered, but not so bewildered that she was able to finish her milk. She got up, looking faintly nauseated, and left the house with Mick. Mrs. Sanders was appalled that the two young people h
ad left full glasses of milk, and carefully poured them back into the container.

  Looking cautiously around the Grimes property, Mick and Geri ventured toward the truck whose cargo (or lack of it) had been the cause of so much unhappiness.

  “Is Roger around?” Mick said, feeling a little anxious about this snooping. Mick was well-built and athletic, if a bit slight, but there was no doubt who’d be the loser in a test of belligerence with Roger, who’d done nothing but manual labor all his life.

  “He’s probably at the dock getting the boat ready,” Geri whispered. She wasn’t concerned with Roger so much as with Roger’s father. Neighbors or not, he wouldn’t hesitate to thrash Geri if he found her trespassing and tampering with the truck.

  Mick turned the handle on the back doors of the truck and pulled them open. A vile gust of urea and putrifaction overwhelmed him momentarily, and again he shook his head and asked himself what kind of people farm worms.

  He peered into the darkness and made out very little except for a few shovels and mud rakes. But there wasn’t a worm to be seen. Not so much as a single one. Or even half of one, which to Mick’s way of thinking was twice as disgusting as a whole one.

  There was one thing that interested him, though: a rolled up tarpaulin sack resting on a shelf on the side of the truck. It was too far away for him to reach from the ground, so he shinnied himself up and ventured into the foul black interior, whose floor was slimy beneath his shoes.

  He tugged lightly at the tarpaulin, and when it released its contents it was all Mick could do to keep from passing out. It was the skeleton. It slid out of the tarpaulin and landed with a clattering of bones at Mick’s feet.

  “The skeleton!” Geri gasped. “How’d it get there?”

  “Yeah,” said Mick, “if it’s the same one. They all look alike to me.”

  Suddenly, remembering something he’d read in a detective novel once, he took the skull in his hands and tried to twist it off the vertebrae that attached it to the skeleton’s spine. But a thick layer of gristly cartilage held it firmer than he’d expected.