by phuc
He had also promised Randy and me that he would bring us some jerky from his dad, who had made it himself from last season's deer. He'd given us some of it before, and it was fine. In fact, last time he'd given us enough to feed an army. Well, mine mostly fed my dad, even if it did give his teeth a workout. He loved the stuff, tried to convince everyone who came by the house they should too. My dad and Bob's dad should have gone into business together. Bob's dad could make it and my dad could hawk it.
I remember passing the kitchen once, and Dad was sitting in there at the table with one of his business partners, and he had pushed a strip of the meat off on him, and I heard the guy say, "I'm not so hot on this stuff, Harold. It's kind of like chewing on a dead woman's tit."
From then on when I ate the stuff, I had to chew it in an absentminded sort of way, not thinking too much about the texture so I could enjoy it.
We took the goodies home, read some Fangoria magazines Randy had brought over, and Bob arrived an hour later than usual for our ventures.
Two things were noticeable right off. One was that the fool was fresh from the shower and hadn't bothered to dry off; his shirt was stuck to his back and the hair that hung out from beneath his hat was wet and shaggy. The second thing was that he had been in a fight; he had a black doughnut around his left eye.
"You know that girlfriend I used to have?" he said.
"Used to have?" Randy asked.
"Yep, used to have. Caught her with Wendle Benbaker."
Wendle was about the size of a small camper trailer. He had played tackle for Mud Creek High until graduation, and his hobby, when he wasn't drinking beer and talking about girls, was talking about girls and drinking beer. He was the only guy I knew who moved his lips over the Playboy foldout as well as the magazine's text. I think it was the staples that confused him.
And to be honest, Bob's girlfriend, Leona of the Big Tits, didn't strike me as any great loss. Her nickname was how she was known by the staunchest anti-male chauvinist, both male and female. She invited being called that, even liked it, thought it was an honor; she wore those monstrous boobs like war medals on a proud general's chest.
"Reckon this discovery," I said, "caused you and Wendle to fight."
Bob rubbed his sore eye. "Good, Sherlock. You're right. Jeke was supposed to meet me out back of the Dairy Queen with the beer, and he did. But after I loaded it up, I saw Leona and Wendle sitting in his car around front. She was sitting so close she might as well have been wearing his pants with him. Burned my ass up. She told me she didn't do nothing on Fridays but watch TV. Told me I could go with the guys, no sweat. Now I know the hell why. She's been letting Wendle check her oil."
"What did you do?" Randy asked.
"Went over there, yanked the door open and called him a sonofabitch, I think. I was a bit under stress right then and don't remember so good."
I nodded at the black eye. "And I take it he wasn't scared none?"
"Not that I could see. And he can move fast for a big guy. Sucker popped out of that Dodge like a ripe zit and hit me in the eye before I could shag it."
"Looks bad," I said.
"You oughta see him."
"You hit him?" Randy said, amazed. "You hit Wendle the tank?"
"No, but I damn sure got some oil stains on his pants. I mean I ruined them little buddies."
Randy and I let that hang, trying to work it into the scheme of things.
"Oil stains?" I finally asked, as if I were delivering the cryptic line "Rosebud" in Citizen Kane.
"When he knocked me down, I crawled under his car and he crawled after me. Some car had been leaking oil there—Wendle's, I hope—and he got his white pants all nastied up.
Covered both knees. Won't wash out Them boogers are ruined."
"That's showing him," I said.
"He was so big I got over beneath the muffler and he couldn't get under there after me . . .
remember that if he starts for you. You get under his car by the muffler and you're safe.
He can't get there."
"Good tip," I said. "Go for the muffler."
"He did kick me, though. He can get his legs under there after you pretty good, so it ain't completely safe. He jammed my little finger some, but he finally gave up, got back in the car and tried to back it over me."
"Looks to me you escaped," I said.
"Rolled out from under there like a dung bug. You remember how fast I could roll in gym when we was doing that tumbling exercise, don't you?"
"You were an ace roller, as I recall," I said.
"Damn right."
"What was Leona doing?" Randy asked.
"She got out of the car, started screaming and cussing—which was a thing that hurt me.
She told me a couple of times she was a lady and didn't say them kind of words. Swore she wouldn't say 'shit' if she had a mouthful. But she was out there yelling at Wendle to pull my head off and to kick a turd down my throat.
"When I rolled out from under the car and started running, her and ole Wendle yelling at my back, I knew right then and there that things between us were over."
"Does sound kind of past the patching stage," I said.
"Well ... I ruined that sucker's pants."
We put the goodies in Bob's truck, drove over to Buddy's Fill-up to get gas and some ice for our beer chest.
While we were there, I went to the bathroom to take a leak and Bob joined me at the urinal. The two caballeros.
The place was really nasty, smelled awful. The urinal was stopped up with candy wrappers and some things I didn't want to examine too closely, lest I identify them. Over in one corner was a mashed item I hoped was a Baby Ruth.
Most of the graffiti were illiterate and the artist who had drawn naked women on the walls seemed to lack acquaintance with human anatomy. My dad told me his generation learned a lot about sex from writings and drawings on bathroom walls. I hoped to goodness our generation was getting its information from better sources.
"Nice place, ain't it?" Bob said.
"Maybe we ought to bring us some dates in here."
"We could sit on the commodes and talk."
"Bring in some dip and stuff."
"Have some of them little sausages wrapped in bread with toothpicks through them."
"Serious now," I said. "How are you making it?"
"Good enough. Splashed a little on my boots is all. But I ain't having a good enough time to stick around when I finish. Kind of stinks. How about you? What are your plans?"
"That's funny, Bob."
"Okay, I'm doing fine. She was just some ole gal. You worry about other people too much. Me included."
"Yeah, I'm a regular bleeding heart."
"Well, you are . . . but, yeah, I'm okay. I'm going to miss her some."
"There's nothing to miss, Bob."
"I don't know. Them tits were sure nice and warm."
Randy was leaning on the truck when we came out. "I was about to organize a search party," he said. "Well," Bob said, "we got to talking, you know, and damn if we don't have all kinds of things in common." "Yeah," I said. "You just wouldn't believe."
Randy rolled his eyes. "How about we get in the truck?"
We drove over to Larry's Garage, got there fifteen minutes early, but Willard was out front, smoking a cigarette, the damn thing hanging off his lip like a leech. His long hair was clean and combed back and he wore a black T-shirt with a cigarette pack stuck under one short sleeve. He had a faded blue-jean jacket tossed over one shoulder. He looked like he was waiting for someone to come along so he could mug them.
He strolled over to the truck. "Ready?"
"We're always ready," Bob said.
"You look ready," Willard said. "What happened to your eye?"
"A truck named Wendle Benbaker."
"Get in," I said, "and he'll tell you how he ruined Wendle's pants, and how to hide from him under a muffler."
Randy got out of the truck and made Willard take his place at shotgun.
He went around to ride in the back, carrying a Fangoria with him to read.
"He's a nice little guy," Willard said when he was seated, his arm hanging out the window.
"That's the truth," Bob said, cranked the truck and drove on out of town. As we went, I took the whole place in, noticed for the first time some houses and stores I had looked at before, but hadn't really seen. We drove down the main drag, past the university that I planned to attend, past the big pines that were slowly being thinned by idiots with no concept of city planning but a firm grasp on the concept of greed; drove past the stinking chicken plant and the plywood plant and the aluminum-chair factory, which Willard saluted with an upward push of his middle finger; drove on out of there with me photographing it all in my mind, perhaps sensing somehow it was for the last time.
5
It didn't seem like a night for horrors. Least not the real kind.
It was cool and pleasant. We got there a little later than usual, due to some bad traffic.
Quite a line had formed. You could see The Orbit's Saturn symbol spinning blue and silver against the night.
"I'll be damned," Willard said.
"We'll all be if we don't change our ways," Bob said.
"Wait until you see the inside," I said.
We moved up in line, finally drove by the outdoor marquee. It listed / Dismember Mama, The Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead, The Toolbox Murders and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Inside, the big party had already started. There were lawn chairs planted in the backs of pickups, and folks planted in the chairs. There were people on the hoods and tops of their cars. Punkers. Aging hippies. Conservative types. Fraternity and sorority kids. Families.
Cowboys and cowgirls with beer cans growing out of their fists. Barbecue grills sputtered away, lifting sweet smoke into the fine Texas sky. Tape decks whined in conflict of one another. A few lovers on blankets were so hot at it, Willard suggested that they should charge admission. Cars rocked in spastic rhythm to the sexual gyrations of unbridled youth. Someone somewhere called someone a sonofabitch.
Other people yelled things we couldn't understand. Bikini-clad women walked by. People in monster suits walked by. Sometimes young men in monster suits chased the bikini-clad women by. Dogs, let out of their owners' cars to do their business, pissed on tires or left deposits of another nature in the vicinity.
And, most important, of course, there was the screen.
One of six, it stood stark-white against a jet-black sky, a six-story portal into another dimension.
We tried to get as close as we could, but most of the front rows were taken. We ended up in the middle of a rear row.
We got the lawn chairs out, the goodies. Bob and I went to the concession stand and bought some bloody corn for all of us, and by the time we got back with it, the sleaze classic I Dismember Mama had started.
We rolled through that one, drinking, eating, laughing, shouting at the gory spots, and finally The Toolbox Murders came on, and it was halfway through that one that it happened.
I don't remember any great change in the atmosphere, anything like that. Everything was normal—for The Orbit. Sights, sounds and smells as they ought to be. The bloody corn was gone, so were several Cokes, and Bob and Willard had made good work of the beers.
We were about a third of the way through a bag of chocolate cookies. Cameron Mitchell had just opened his ominous box of tools to take out an industrial nailer, as he had designs to use the wicked instrument on a young lady he'd been spying on in the shower, and we were ready, hoping as much for blatant nudity as celluloid gore, when—
— there was light.
It was a light so bright and crimson, the images on the screen paled, then faded.
We looked up.
The source of the light was a monstrous red comet, or meteor, hurtling directly toward us.
The night sky and stars around it were consumed by its light, and the thing filled our vision. The rays from the object felt soft and liquid, like being bathed in warm milk and honey.
Collision with the drive-in seemed imminent. My life didn't pass before my eyes, but I thought suddenly of things I hadn't done, thought of Mom.and Dad, then, abruptly, the comet smiled.
Split down the middle to show us a mouthful of jagged saw-blade teeth. Instead of going out of life with a bang, it appeared we were going out with a crunch.
The mouth opened wider, and I was turning my head away from the inevitable, thinking in a fleeting second that I would be swallowed by it, like Pinocchio by the whale, when—
—it whipped up and away, dragging its fiery tail behind it, leaving us awash in flickering red sparks and an even more intense feeling of being engulfed in warm liquid.
When the red pupil paint peeled away from my eyes and I could see again, the sky had gone from blood-red to pink, and now that was slowly fading. The comet was racing faster and faster, ever upward, seemingly dragging the moon and stars after it, like glitter swirling down a sewerish drain. Finally the comet was nothing more than a hot-pink pinprick surrounded by black turbulence that sparked with blue twists of lightning; then the dark sky went still, the lightning died out, and the comet was memory.
At first, it looked as if nothing had changed, except for a loss of the moon and the stars.
But the exterior of the drive-in was different. Beyond that seven-foot, moon-shimmering tin fence that surrounded it was . . . nothing. Well, to be more exact, blackness. Complete blackness, the ultimate fudge pudding. A moment before the tops of the houses, trees and buildings had been visible beyond the drive-in, but now they were not. There was not even a dot of light.
The only illumination came from the drive-in itself: from open car doors, the concession-stand lights, the red neon tubes that said ENTRANCE (ECNARTNE from our angle) and EXIT, the projector beams, and, most brilliantly, the marquee and the tall Orbit symbol, the last two sources being oddly located on a spur of concrete jutting into the blackness like a pier over night ocean. I found myself drawn to that great symbol, its blue and white lights alternating like overhead fan slats across the concession, making the Halloweenish decorations against the window glass seem oddly alive and far too appropriate.
Then I glanced at the screen. The Toolbox Murders was visible again, but there was no fun in it. It seemed horribly silly and out of place, like someone dancing at a funeral.
Voices began to rumble across the lot, voices touched with surprise and confusion. I saw a rubber-suited monster take the head off his suit and tuck it under his arm and look around, hoping he hadn't seen what he thought he saw, and that it would be some kind of trick due to bad lighting through the eyes of his mask. A bikini-clad girl let her stomach sag, having lost the ambition to suck it in.
I realized suddenly I was walking toward the exit, and that the gang was with me, and Bob was chattering like an idiot, not making any sense. The din of voices across the lot had grown, and people were out of their cars, walking in the same direction we were, like lemmings being willed to the sea.
One man fired up his car. It was a new Ford station wagon and it was full of fat. Fat driver in a Hawaiian shirt with a fat wife beside him, two fat kids in the back. He jerked the car around a speaker post with surprising deftness, pulled on the lights and raced for the exit.
People scattered before the wagon, and I got a glimpse of the driver's face as he raced past. It looked like a mask made of paste with painted golf balls for eyes.
The headlights hit the darkness, but didn't penetrate. The car pushed down the tire-buster spears with a clack and was swallowed foot by foot by the pudding. It was as if there had never been a car. There was not even the sound of the motor retreating into .the distance.
A tall cowboy in a Stetson full of toothpicks and feathers sauntered over to the opening, flexed his shoulders and said, "Let's find out what the hell gives here."
He put a boot on the tire-buster spears to hold them down, stuck his arm into the fudge, up to the elbow.
&n
bsp; And the cowboy screamed. Never in my personal history of real life or movie experiences have I heard such a sound. It was like a depth charge to the soul, and its impact blew up my spine and rocked my skull.
The cowboy staggered back, flopped to the ground and turned himself around and around like a dog with its guts dragging. His arm was gone from hand to elbow.
We ran over to help him, but before we could lay a hand on him, he yelled, "Back, goddammit. Don't touch me! It runs."
He started screaming again, but it sounded as if his vocal cords were filling with mud.
And I saw then what he meant by "It runs." Slowly his arm was dissolving, the sleeve going limp at the shoulder, then the shoulder folded and he tried to scream again. But whatever was eating him from the outside seemed to be working inside him even faster.
His forehead wobbled forward as bone and tissue went to Jell-O, caved in on the rest of his collapsing face. His cowboy hat came to settle on top of the mess, floated in it. His entire body went liquid, ran out of his clothes in nauseating streams. The stink was awful.
Carefully, holding my breath, I reached out and took hold of one of his boots and upended it. A loathsome goop, like vomit, poured out of it and splattered to the ground.
Beside me, Bob let out with a curse, and Willard said something I didn't understand. I dropped the boot and looked at the darkness beyond the tin fence and the strange truth of it struck me.
We were trapped in the drive-in.
6
That we were trapped in the drive-in was realized immediately by most, but accepted slowly by all of us. And there were some who didn't know right off, like the couple in the Buick parked near where a bunch of us had gathered, looking at the hat, boots and empty clothes of the dissolved cowboy. Neither comet nor screams had reached them. They were too wrapped up in their lovemaking. They were in the back seat of the Buick, and the girl had one ankle draped across the seat and the other on the package shelf. We were all watching the car rock, watching it threaten the shock absorbers and test the strength of four-ply tires. And as the car was at a slant, dipping its rear end toward us, we could see a pale butt rising to view, vanishing, rising, vanishing, all with a regular rhythm, like an invisible man dribbling a basketball. It was something we kept our eyes on, something that tied us to our old reality, and I really hated for it to end and for the girl's ankles to come down, and a little later for them to come out of the car with their clothes rumpled, looking mad at first, then confused. It was our faces that did that to them, the way we were bunched up, the rumble of our voices, the fact that more people were walking our way, and, of course, there was the absolute blackness all around.