by Brian Hodge
“That’s your problem, Jasper,” Bobby said with true sorrow in his voice. “You ain’t got the VISION. That’s why I’m here - why I’m gonna share this good fortune with you. I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do.”
Jasper listened, staring up at the roach, a tickling, creeping sensation transiting his spine as he did. He didn’t like it. The damned wood was slimy to the touch, and no wood that weren’t growing mold should feel that way.
“We’re gonna get that damn shed of yours,” Bobby went on, “and we’re gonna set it up right out yonder.” He pointed to the back of the produce stand. “We’re gonna put ol’ Papa Roach here inside, and then we’re gonna make some signs. All up and down 17 we’ll have advertisements.
Ten miles to the World’s Largest Cockroach.
Don’t MISS THIS - 5 Miles to the Vermin from HELL.
1 Mile to Go - Exit 16A - Produce and souvenirs. You get it?”
Jasper didn’t. He was still staring at the roach.
Bobby leaned in close, whispering conspiratorially in his friend’s ear. “It’s simple, Jasper. We sell tickets. Folks stop to see, buy a ticket, maybe buy some tomatoes and some corn, and they drive on. They won’t be able to help themselves.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding,” Jasper said, turning to meet Bobby’s earnest gaze. “I mean, who would PAY to see … THAT?”
“They won’t see it,” Bobby said. “Not right off. It will be in the shed. That’s the key. And the answer is simple. We make our money,” Bobby looked around, as if there were someone to see him, or to overhear a great secret, “off suckers. Cockroach suckers.”
There were no words for how Jasper felt at that moment, so he turned away, sort of tripped back to his chair, and reached for another beer. “Cockroach suckers,” he muttered. “Jesus fucking Christ on a Popsicle stick.”
Bobby Lee trailed after him, reaching in to get his own beer this time, and Jasper didn’t stop him. There was plenty of beer, and it took too much effort to think and yell at the same time.
“You really believe,” Jasper said at last, “that folks’ll pay good, hard-earned money to see the world’s largest cockroach?”
Bobby Lee’s grin was full wattage again. “I know they will, partner. I know they will. Hell, if I didn’t OWN it, I’d rather see the thing myself than the world’s largest link sausage, and I paid for that.”
“How long you think it’ll take us to get that tin shed up?” Jasper asked.
“Not more’n a day,” Bobby Lee speculated, getting serious. “I helped my Pap put one up in his yard last spring. Not much to it, once you get started.”
Jasper nodded, and the nod worked itself naturally into a slow rock. He stared up at the truck and met the multi-faceted gaze of Martha Stewart’s worst nightmare steadily. He wanted to tell Bobby Lee to take the thing and hit the trail. It was a damn-fool idea. He knew it, and Bobby Lee should know it, but – damned if it didn’t sound as if it might actually work.
“Shit,” Jasper muttered.
Bobby Lee let out a whoop, knowing he’d won.
“You be here first thing in the morning,” Jasper growled. “Be ready to work, no hangover. If we’re a’ goin’ to do this, we’re a’ goin’ to do it quick. I still got fields to plow, and produce to get in. If I let it go, we won’t have a thing to sell except tickets, and I doubt that’s gonna work out too well.”
“I’ll be here,” Bobby Lee promised. Then he turned back to the truck and grabbed the ties on the tarpaulin, pulling them tight and cinching them to the truck bed.
Once the huge bug was covered over, Jasper felt a little better. There was something in the smooth, wooden surface of the things eyes that was unnerving. He knew it was silly, but that didn’t change a thing.
“Damn thing gives me the willies,” he said, reaching for another beer and staring at the blue-draped figure.
“Hope it gives everyone the willies,” Bobby Lee commented. He reached into the cooler and fished out another beer for himself. “I’ll have this one more, then I’m gonna hit the road. Smackdown is on tonight, and directly after that I’ll be gettin’ me some shuteye. I feel destiny callin’.”
“That ain’t destiny,” Jasper chuckled, “it’s indigestion from all them Hally Penyas you ain’t feedin’ to your truck.”
The two laughed and drank their beer in silence. Both of them kept giving the truck sidelong glances, but neither of them mentioned the thing in the back again. Not much later, Bobby Lee mounted up into the cab of his pickup and, honking like an idiot, backed up in a cloud of dust and trundled his huge cargo off down the dirt road toward the highway. Jasper cleared his produce, locked what he could in his makeshift office and stacked the rest in the back of his truck. He didn’t have far to go. Two back-roads turns and he’d be on his own road, tucked back up in close to the swamp.
Just before he left he hefted his cooler onto the tailgate of the truck and slid it in, closing up behind it. He glanced at the road, thought about it for about ten seconds, then grabbed a last beer “for the road” and hopped in behind the wheel. He wasn’t likely to meet one of North Carolina’s finest between the stand and his home, but by his way of thinking, he was drunk enough already to get the ticket, no reason to deny himself a pleasant drive by leaving all the beer in back.
Shooting a white tail of dust and gravel spitting out behind him, Jasper gunned the truck into the growing twilight.
When Jasper pulled up in front of his stand the next morning, he saw Bobby Lee’s truck already parked over to one side. There was no sign of his buddy, but around back of the shack dust was rising, like there was a herd of something rushing past. Jasper parked, hopped down from his truck, and started around the side of the building to see what was what.
He stopped at the corner and stared. Bobby Lee was going to town on the ground behind the stand with a rake, clearing away brambles and bushes like there was no tomorrow. He’d already cleared a space about twice as big as the metal building in the back of Jasper’s truck would need, and that ground was bare, scraped even and squared off with perfect edges like Jasper had never seen.
“Bobby!” he called out. “Bobby Lee what in HELL are you doin’?”
At first, Bobby didn’t seem to hear him, just kept right on a rakin’ and shuffling around that rectangular patch of cleared ground. Jasper leaned down, picked up a rock and whipped it through the air to collide with the seat of Bobby Lee’s pants. That got his attention.
“Wha...” Bobby Lee whirled, his rake held high in a comical parody of a martial arts stance. Then he saw Jasper.
“I said,” Jasper repeated, “what in HELL are you doin’?”
“Just wanted to get me an early start, that’s all,” Bobby Lee said, grinning sheepishly. “I stayed up kinda late last night. Guess I talked a bit too much about her,” he cocked his head in the direction of the wooden behemoth still tarp-covered in the back of his pickup truck. “Irma got tired of it and chased me out. I slept in the truck until the sun came up, then I came here and got started.”
Jasper blinked, glanced down at the ground, and at the rake in his friend’s hand, then back up to Bobby Lee’s eyes. “Just how much coffee you had, Bobby?” he asked at last. “I ain’t seen that much work out of you in the last year, and you don’t even look like you broke a sweat yet.”
Bobby Lee glanced down at the ground as if noticing the cleared patch for the first time. He leaned on the rake, reached to his back pocket for the bandanna tucked into his hip pocket and brushed it across his face. It was more out of habit than necessity. Jasper could see the man was as cool and fresh as if he’d just gotten up after a long night’s sleep.
“Hell of a job,” Jasper commented. “Gonna make settin’ up a durn site easier.”
Bobby Lee nodded. Now that he’d stopped working and started seeing what he’d been doing, he’d taken on a sort of glazed expression. He heard Jasper fine, but didn’t seem to really be paying any attention to him. He was looking at the earth
he’d cleared, and glancing up now and then at the truck, as if there was something he couldn’t quite make sense of.
“We have to put her here first,” Bobby Lee said at last, tossing his rake aside. “I ain’t seen the door of that shed, but I’m betting it’s not big enough to take her in through. I brought us some pallets I had out back ‘a my place to keep her out of the dirt.”
Jasper blinked. He hadn’t thought about it, but damned if Bobby Lee wasn’t right. They’d have to build the shed around that thing, and even then it was going to come close. The peaked roof of the shed would top out at around eight feet in height, and the roach ran over seven. Jasper shook his head.
“We’re damn fools, is what we are,” he commented, turning away. “Damn fools.”
Bobby Lee didn’t answer. He was already headed toward his truck, the tarp, and the giant wooden body beneath. While Jasper unpacked his own truck, setting up the tomatoes and beans in neat rows on the bench out in front of his stand, Bobby unfurled the tarp, rolled it and tossed it to one side. Then he got in behind the wheel of his truck and very slowly backed it toward the space he’d cleared, being careful not to catch the edge of his tailgate on the corner of the produce stand.
Jasper paid him no mind. He knew there’d be a short rush on the vegetables just before noon, and he needed to get them out and in place to be inspected, detected and selected, as his ol’ Pap had used to say. No time for cockroach nonsense, nor for Bobby Lee himself, if it came to it. That boy needed any help, he’d have to holler for it.
That call never came. Jasper plunked down into his old rocker, kicked up his boots like he’d done a thousand times before, and started rocking. Mrs. Tefft dropped by on her way back from dropping her kids at school and picked up two pounds of fresh tomatoes. Edna Johnson came by for her regular order of green beans and potatoes, and Sheriff Ben Grouse pulled up in his cruiser to grab a small basket of strawberries for his Missus. Jasper never charged the Sheriff for small things like the strawberries, and in return Jasper never got charged with anything himself. Like drunk driving, or illegal parking. Or running a produce stand without a business license. Things in the country had a way of working themselves out.
All that while, Bobby Lee was out of site back behind the stand. None of Jasper’s customers commented on it, though Sheriff Grouse eyed Bobby’s old pickup suspiciously while he perused the strawberries.
A couple of times Bobby Lee walked past to Jasper’s truck, grabbed parts of the shed out of its long, corrugated box, and headed back out of site, but he didn’t say a word. He was moving fast and he kept his head down, mumbling to himself all the time. Jasper figured it for cursing, but the one time Bobby Lee came close enough for his friend to hear, all that came across was some sort of rhythmic mumbo jumbo.
“What you doin’, Bobby Lee?” Jasper called after him. “Takin’ up that rap music?”
Bobby Lee didn’t answer, and Jasper wasn’t inclined to raise himself out of his seat and follow after to insist on it. Truth be told, he didn’t rightly care what Bobby Lee was sayin’ as long as he didn’t say “Come on back and help me, Jasper.”
The noon rush passed, and Jasper was popping the top on his second beer of the afternoon when he finally started to feel guilty. Bobby Lee had been working quietly all morning long, since before Jasper himself had even arrived, and not a finger had been raised to help him. It was true that Jasper had provided the land, the shed, and all the moral support a fella could want, but it was also true that he’d agreed to be part of this cockamamie project. The least he could do was make a solid effort to pitch in and do his part.
Besides, the pile of shed parts still left in the truck was getting pretty small, and Jasper was beginning to wonder just what the hell Bobby Lee was doing back there. They’d agreed to move the cockroach into the cleared spot first, and then build the shed, but it seemed like Bobby Lee had changed his mind somewhere along the way and just started building. Hell, from the banging and clanking Jasper had heard, the damn thing must be just about finished, and that was a job. Jasper had built one just like it out back of his house for storing lawn tools and making home brew.
Shifting his weight forward, he sat up, drained his beer, reached with practiced ease into the cooler and brought out two more. Then, with a long, drawn out burp, he stood and headed around back of the stand.
For the second time that day, Jasper Winslow stopped dead in his tracks. He felt the bottle in his left hand slipping free and gripped it very suddenly, stumbling back. Bobby Lee’s truck stood off to the side again, but it was empty. The damned roach was nowhere to be seen, and standing smack-dab in the center of that cleared plot of land, the shed had taken shape. More than that, it was perfect. Jasper had had two cousins and his old lady helping, and he had not managed to get his shed up in near the time or manner that Bobby Lee had done this one by himself.
Bobby Lee was nowhere to be seen, and Jasper, taking a deep breath for courage, stepped forward to the door, slid it aside, and stepped inside. The building’s interior was shadowed. There were no windows, and even the sunlight that slipped in behind him through the door could do little. Jasper stepped forward, blinking, and ran smack into something hard after the second step. Something jabbed his cheek hard, something smooth and cool. Something sharp.
“Damn!” he grunted, stepping back. “Bobby? You in here? What in hell did you DO?”
There was no reply, but Jasper heard the murmur of voices near the rear of the shed. He reached out with one hand, letting the beer bottle crack gently into the side wall of the shed, and followed the left wall around, being careful not to move too fast, in case any more of the damned cockroach’s double-D goddamned appendages felt inclined to give him a whack.
About halfway back, Jasper stopped. The shed had gone deathly cold. And quiet. The shadows, which shouldn’t have been very deep in a building with open eaves and the front door slid wide, clung to him, blocking his vision. The mumble of voices had shifted to more of a drone, like a bunch of midge flies hovering over the swamp. The tone rose and fell in a steady, hypnotic pattern, but there was no sign of Bobby.
Jasper turned and edged his way back toward the front. He had a big Halogen search light in the back of his truck he used for deer spotting. That would light this place up and show him what was what.
Thing was, the further he slid along the wall toward where he knew that door had to be, the further it seemed he still had to go. He saw the cleared dirt outside, plain as day, but his breath was coming in short bursts, and he knew, without seeing it, that it was shooting out of his mouth like fog. It was cold enough Jasper felt the frost that suddenly coated the beers he held, and the burn of the cold glass against his skin. His toes were numb, and each step he took toward the door, and the light, was an effort he wasn’t sure he felt like making.
Then the sound stopped. A hand fell heavily on Jasper’s shoulder and he screamed, jumping back against the pressed metal wall so hard it dented. He gripped the beers so tightly he wondered if they might shatter.
The shed had grown lighter. Bobby Lee stood in front of him, grinning like an idiot, and holding out a hand for one of the beers.
Jasper teetered. He leaned heavily on the wall, despite knowing full well it had been erected by the grinning idiot standing before him in about half the time the job should have taken. It held.
“Hell, Jasper, what’s wrong with you?” Bobby Lee asked, as though nothing was the matter. “You look like you seen a ghost. Or maybe,” Bobby grinned, turning and raising a hand to the wooden monstrosity behind him, “a giant cock-a-roach?”
Jasper heaved off the wall, lurched to the door, and stumbled out into the late afternoon light. He took in several deep breaths, and then turned back. All he saw was Bobby, sipping on his beer and staring back at him. The shed behind Bobby’s back had no special characteristics, beyond being extremely well-constructed. There was no way to penetrate the shadowed interior from where Jasper stood, but he heard no soft voices and
he saw no deeper-than-normal shadows. The air was warm, moist, and filled with mosquitoes.
Jasper shook his head. He glanced down and noticed he was still holding his unopened beer. With a quick twist, he decapitated it and tossed down half the bottle.
“Maybe you’ve been sittin’ out in the sun too long, Jasper,” Bobby Lee commented. “You don’t look so good.”
“You didn’t see, or hear, or feel anything wrong in there?” Jasper asked, eyeing his friend suspiciously.
“Like what?” Bobby Lee scratched his head and took a draw from his beer. “I was in the back, tyin’ down the straps to hold that big old money-makin’ baby in place. I didn’t see or hear a thing.”
“I don’t reckon you want to tell me how you got that thing out of your truck, neither,” Jasper observed, his eyes narrowing.
Bobby Lee never blinked. “I backed her up and used the winch. How in hell did you think I got her in the truck, Jasper? I ain’t no Superman.”
Jasper blinked. He hadn’t expected such a simple answer, and if he could’ve gotten his body to contort to the right shape, he’d have kicked himself in the ass for not thinking of it.
“Is there somethin’ wrong, Jasper?” Bobby Lee asked.
Jasper turned away and lurched back toward his seat, and his beer. He didn’t say a thing until he was seated once more in his old rocker, staring out at the dying sun and route 17 passing in the distance. He reached for another beer, tossed another one to Bobby, and closed his eyes, leaning back.
“So,” he said at last. “Just when did you expect we would start drawing in these ‘Cockroach Suckers,’” he asked.
Bobby was grinning when he opened his eyes, and the two talked well into the evening, watching the sun dip deep orange behind the line of trees that bordered the swamp. Finally, when the last of the beers had been emptied, Jasper rose shakily and headed for his truck. He left the produce baskets as they stood and grimaced at the expected tirade when he reached home without them, drunk. Didn’t matter. For once, Jasper was convinced that Bobby Lee might border on human intelligence, and might actually, God forbid, be right about something. They were going to make them a pile of money, and it was going to start the very next day.