by LYNDA BARRY
“You got all the pieces. Now put them together. Didn’t that lady strike you as strange? Ugly as a hog and big as sin? Walking in the middle of the night like that? Standing in the middle of nowhere. Think, Clyde. And tell me, whose fat head put that dent in my hood?”
His eyes found mine in the rearview for just a second before I looked away.
“What if I told you it wasn’t a woman? That help you any? It’s not someone you know to remember, exactly. But you heard about him.”
I closed my eyes and the father swerved the car hard on purpose to wake me. “You’re the only thing keeping us on the road, son. You better not fall asleep or we’ll both be crow meat.”
The first fingers of sunlight fell across the horizon. Colors came back. “You forfeit?” asked the father.
I nodded.
“You remember Doolie Bug?”
I shook my head no.
“One of my cousins used to baby-sit you? That crazy son-of-a-bitch? You know that round scar on the top of your hand? Doolie Bug did that with a Tiparillo. I told your mother, I said, ‘DB’s out of his frigging mind, honey, don’t leave our little baby with him.’ But she’s contrary. If I told her DB was a cannibal from the planet Mars she’d throw a birthday party for him just to piss me off.
“Well.” The father laughed and coughed. “It took a while, but I got him for you, Clyde. Better late than never, they say.”
The scar on the back of my hand is real. It is round and has pale marks radiating from the middle because it had to stretch with my growing. A nickel lays in it perfectly. I have laid a cool nickel upon it many times. It is real, but I was not so sure about the story of the father. I know we hit someone and hit them again and I know we left them laying there but it was the cousin part I wasn’t sure about. He told a lot of dead cousin stories. Cousins who got what they deserved. Stingy ones who fell through the ice going after a dropped penny. Snoopy ones who blew their own heads off with a came-upon gun. Stuck-up ones who died on the toilet. He said that one got written up in the newspaper. Stuck-up Cousin Dies on Toilet. Front page. According to the father who could have been a famous singer. Who could have been a movie star. Who could have bought out Armour and Hormel both on what he would have made if Old Dad hadn’t shafted him.
The father was tired of playing by the rules. The father was calling himself Billy Badass, the outlaw that always got in. And I was his partner, his sidekick, Clyde. The Old Skull Popper was really talking to him and we swerved all over the long empty road.
The scar on my hand is real but the mother always told me it was him, the father himself who gave it to me.
Chapter 10
H ’BERTA, oh little ’Berta,can’t you hear me calling you?” The Turtle was singing and his voice was decent. Sometimes high and sometimes hoarse.
The Turtle said, “Would you ladies like to join me in New Orleans? Would you like to experience the malodor of the sad drunk’s urine in Pirate’s Alley? Would you care to gaze upon the House of the Rising Sun? The Great Wesley and I are planning a trip and you would be most welcome. We have nearly everything we need. We have a car and it is quite a car. But we lack a driver.”
Vicky scratched at her eyebrow. “Who’s the Great Wesley?”
I said, “I can drive.”
“Stick?” asked the Turtle.
“Yes.”
“Yesssssssss,” said Vicky Talluso. “Roberta tells another lie.”
“I’ve been driving since I was eleven,” I said.
“Leprosy of the face comes from lying,” said Vicky. “You get leprosy and then your nose falls off.”
We were on the embankment beside the reservoir, leaning and pushing our faces into a high Cyclone fence with our fingers on the chain link. We were there to watch the high jets of water shoot out of the Jefferson Park Reservoir. Water must be kept in motion or the result is stagnation. For creatures it’s blood that must be kept in motion or there is putrefaction. I mentioned this. Vicky stared at me. The Turtle nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Absolutely. Even in the achievement of ataraxy there must be motion.” Vicky stared at him. She was squinting.
The Turtle said, “Leprosy of the face is totally misunderstood. It is not nearly as bad as people think. Leprosy of the mind, however, is a disaster.”
In the distance I heard the three o’clock bell. School was over. It was time to return to East Crawford. To the mother and my life there. To Julie, the evil half-daughter of the crumbling mummy called Dr. Cush, who made no provision for her when he croaked. Who left her nothing, not a Band-Aid, not even a hair ball.
It was different for me. The father left me a fortune. Getting to it was my problem. I knew the way, but I needed transportation. I was tired of the current version of my life. The mother and I, we had serious mental problems with each other but it was her who had the knives. Who screamed that she could cut my throat and Julie’s throat and her own throat and who could stop her from doing it? Who? Who in this world?
I do believe that if she got in the right mood she could slit my throat with no problem. And I think she could do Julie. But I’m pretty sure that when it came to doing herself she’d run out of gas. I mentioned all of this to Vicky and the Turtle and Vicky’s eyes went round.
“A fortune?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Yessssss,” she said. “What kind of fortune? Are you lying? Because if you are lying I am going to get very violent. I get extremely violent when people lie to me. Is it money?”
“Cash money,” I said. “Three suitcases full.”
Vicky snorted but kept her eyes on me. The Turtle didn’t say anything. His thick white eyelashes didn’t even flutter.
I watched the motion of the shooting water, shooting high and white, then gone, then rising again. It’s called pulsing. It happens because of the differences in pressure. Blood shoots for the same reason. You would be surprised by how it can spray. Blood can hit the ceiling and drip back down on you. But usually blood on the ceiling and the walls is secondary. It is from the knife or the ax in fast repeated motion. Back-splattering. Meat people know how to keep it to a minimum but it is still an unavoidable part of the job. I mentioned this too. Vicky said, “You’re sick, Roberta. Is the money real?”
The fountain jets shot up and behind them in the blue sky the clouds were moving fast. The visual combination made me dizzy, and I saw the little bright spots come swimming from the sides of my eyes.
I said, “I need to sit down.”
The Turtle sat down next to me. “Tell me about the dangerous adventures of Little Debbie.”
Vicky said, “You two are perfect for each other. I can’t wait for both of you to get really high and have a conversation because I want to be really high and listen to it because I can’t tell what the fuck either one of you is talking about.”
She had one cigarette left. She lit it with the USN lighter. The flame blew sideways in the wind and I smelled the fluid and my fingers itched to take it apart. Slip it out of its metal case and take a dime to the screw at the bottom and open it. I wanted to tilt up the flicker wheel and pull out the red flint. I said, “Can I see your lighter, Vicky?”
She said, “People who lie can’t touch anything of mine.”
The Turtle suggested we move down to a little hollow beside the fence where we would be completely hidden. Vicky got mad. “Once I light a cig I hate to move, OK? I’ll do it this time but next time you’ll know so there will not be an excuse.”
We followed the Turtle a few yards to a hollow in the embankment. Someone had dug a hole under the fence.
“That’s where he went in,” said the Turtle.
“Who?” I said.
“The fellow. The dead fellow.”
Vicky was blowing smoke out of her nostrils and staring up at the tilted razor-wire top that was added to the Cyclone fence after the day the dead man was found in reservoir waters. A man who had been floating in the water supply for some time.
The Turtle said, “I kn
ew him.”
Vicky said, “No one knew him.”
“I did,” said the Turtle. “The Great Wesley did.”
The Turtle said, “The fellow was a homo and this was difficult. His parents were never in the mood for this information. They sent him to the Barbara V. Hermann Home for Adolescent Rest. The Great Wesley and I were so fond of him. We were saddened by the news of his self-inflicted homicide.”
“Suicide,” said Vicky.
“Not at all,” said the Turtle. “It was murder.”
Vicky snorted. “You can’t murder yourself.”
The Turtle shook his head. “If only he had known.”
Vicky said, “I’m not feeling anything. If this Creeper is a burn, Turtle, I’m serious. You do not want to know what I do to people who burn me.”
I leaned my head forward because I felt like I was going to throw up.
Vicky said, “You feeling it, Roberta? You getting the rushes? Look at me. Let me check your eyes.”
But my eyes were normal. Chills came clawing up my back. Was it the rushes? Something was happening. My jaws felt tight. I said, “I heard he was in there for at least five days before they found him. You guys ever wonder how much of the dead guy’s water you drank?”
Vicky made a little heaving sound. She shivered. Was because of the Creeper? I looked over at the Turtle. His face was very calm. His eyes were on the pulsing jets. Who was he? What was his deal?
“I’m having a nic fit,” said Vicky. Her hands were shaking bad.
The Turtle pulled out his Copenhagen and told her how to do it, how to pinch up the tobacco and how wedge it inside her lip. Vicky tried it. Her eyes watered and she started spitting violently. Little black flecks were in all the crevices of her teeth. She was clenching and unclenching her fingers. “I think I’m feeling it. You guys have to guard me, OK? Because I can get insane when I drop. Very insane.”
“Will you come to New Orleans?” said the Turtle. “We have an appointment at Dorothy’s Medallion that the Great Wesley really would like to keep. Have you heard of the place called Dorothy’s Medallion where large women wear small golden bathing suits and squat for the audience? Can either of you dance?”
Chapter 11
LIES ARE messengers. One was on a blade of dead grass right below where I was trying to barf. It was scrutinizing me and I did not like it. I said, “Sometimes I am in the mood for fly scrutinization and sometimes I am not.”
“So be it,” said the Turtle. “Absolutely.”
“New Orleans,” said Vicky Talluso. “Is that serious? Because seriously I could go. Because my philosophy is just, like, screw it, I’m going. Now I don’t feel it. Roberta. You feel it? Were you lying about the cash money?”
I shook my head no.
“No, which?” she said. “No you don’t feel it? No you’re not lying? Which?”
“Both,” I said. My stomach was in ripples and I could smell tripe, fresh and unrinsed and very strong. Memory smells are a problem for me. Actual smells can be difficult, sometimes almost impossible for me to stand. But actual smells are things a person can get away from. The memory smells are impossible to fight. The tripe smells steamed. I started heaving. The fly continued to scrutinize.
Flies have always been part of my life. In the days of Rohbeson’s Slaughterhouse, flies were everywhere, crawling up the walls like living designs. I used to fall asleep looking at them. Thinking about their world. Their society. Did they have kings? Did they steal from each other? My light fixture was black-full with bodies of them. I used to think they had feelings about certain people. People who noticed them. Certain people. Me.
There was a fly in the car with the father and I. I wasn’t sure if he was a slaughterhouse fly or just a middle-of-nowhere fly. One that got in when no one was noticing. And I wondered what it was going to be like for him when he got out again. What would he think when he flew out of the car and didn’t recognize anything or anybody?
Only in a fairy tale could he ever get home again. In fairy tales it happened all the time. It was possible. I was thinking it was really very possible. And while I was thinking this, the father snatched the fly out of the air and mashed him with a gesture so quick I barely saw it. Meat men can do that. They can snatch flies right out of the air.
The father checked on me in the mirror and asked if I was hungry. He said, “I still owe you that hamburger.”
I started throwing up but nothing came.
“Roberta, Roberta,” said Vicky Talluso. “Are you OK? Is that going to happen to me, Turtle? Because really, I cannot throw up. I mean actually physically I cannot throw up.”
The long fingers of the Turtle touched the back of my neck as he gathered my hair away from my face. “It will pass,” he said.
Vicky said, “What if it doesn’t?”
“I’m OK,” I said. “I’m OK.”
“Lay back.” said the Turtle. “Just be cool and feel the peace and be free and feel the love raining down on you and it will pass.”
Vicky said, “If that Creeper-whatever makes me do that? If I start talking about flies and dry barfing? I’m going to seriously kick your face in, Turtle.”
The Turtle was right. It did pass. Like a snake it slithered away out of me, dividing the grass as it went. My head was on the Turtle’s lap and he was looking down at me through his eerie fringes of white eyelashes. He said, “Hillbilly Woman.”
I said, “Turtle.”
Vicky said, “Unless I get a cigarette, I’m going to claw someone’s face off.”
Vicky wanted to go the Washeteria to get cigs. She said the lady there was a troll with a million warts on her face and incredibly sagged-out boobs and she would not give you change but if you had your own change you could buy cigs from her machine without her caring. Vicky was talking very fast and some of her words were warping but I followed her meaning. I walked next to her and the Turtle walked next to me and I noticed he was shorter than I thought.
I was walking in the wrong direction if I ever thought about going home again. I knew the mother was home and she was waiting. She was waiting right by the door. Her shift was night. She was in her white uniform and stockings and shoes. Her hair was in a French twist. She was smoking. She was muttering. Where in the hell was I?
I have lived a restricted life since the mother saw my picture in the newspaper and met the surrounding reporters and felt the flash of the photographers’ bulbs. Our reunion created quite a stir. The reporters wanted to be there when she came to get me. And they were. And the city of Las Vegas was glad to host us. We were given free rooms at the Golden Nugget and all-you-can-eats everywhere we went. At night from the window the lights glittered and glittered and glittered. Julie watched television and sucked her thumb. I watched out the window. What the mother watched I do not know. She left just as it got dark and didn’t come back until just before morning. We passed a week this way and then it was over.
I never told what happened at the Lucky Chief and she never once asked me about it. She told her made-up story on how the father kidnapped me, how he snatched me away from her. And how she was frightened he may return. He was the main suspect in the murders. When she was asked if he seemed capable of such a horrible crime, little glittering tears dropped from her big eyes and she nodded. “Yes. Oh yes. He’s capable. I am so afraid.”
But in the newspaper pictures she doesn’t look afraid at all. She looks happy. And beautiful. Did I mention the mother is beautiful? She is what they call a knockout. A stunner. Drop-dead beautiful.
The pictures are on the wall in the living room area. Just her. No caption. No story. Just her very beautiful face smiling on famously. She was so happy when her picture was in the paper. But now no one was calling, and the mother was squinting at me.
I’m what a person might call a dog. Very much a dog. Guys have actually barked at me and offered me Milk-Bones. My face cells divided into the shape of the father, who even for a man was on the homely side. Jug ears and no chin and a wi
de nose and hooded eyes. Bad skin. Thin hair. All of it revisited in me by means of somatic mitosis, Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, page 954.
I have looked like a boy since the beginning of forever, a pug-ugly one was how the father said it. Unusually ugly. A face strangely shaped. It hit him early in our journey together that I could pass for a mongolian idiot with no problem. That was his name for it. Mongolian Idiot. Also in Stedman’s, page 957. The name of the mental condition suggested by my face is real. It’s my epicanthic folds. I have what some people call slant-eye.
He told me how to do it. Be this type of idiot. And he was proud when I first pulled it off. In Moorehead, North Dakota, he took me into a Salvation Army. The clothes the mother threw into the car for me were mostly dresses and he didn’t want me in dresses. The lady at the counter felt so sorry for us she didn’t even charge us.
“Clyde,” said the father as we rolled out of that town, “You are a treasure.”
This story was tumbling out of my mouth as we walked to the Washeteria. It tumbled out in broken chunks and pieces. The Turtle was listening. Vicky wasn’t. She was talking at the same time and her words sounded like scribbles.
I said, “Turtle, I want to go to New Orleans. I can’t go home, I am too late. The mother is waiting and she will kill me, I mean actually kill, and she will blame it on aimless men, she will tell the newspapers it was the aimless men.”
“The aimless men?” said the Turtle. Vicky was buzzing loud in my other ear. Her words were repeating but I could not make the meaning of them come together until she was shouting and what she was shouting was, “DO YOU HAVE A NICKEL? I NEED ONE MORE NICKEL. DO YOU HAVE A NICKEL? HEY, ROBERTA, HEY.”
My saliva was squirting down the insides of my mouth and tasting sweet. The Turtle gave Vicky a nickel and said, “The aimless men?”
And I explained the aimless men, how they are always hiding and waiting for the girl who moves with no purpose. Killer men who would drag me deep into the woods and stab me forty-nine times and cut off my hands and cut off my head and throw my hands into the bushes at Golden Gardens and throw my head off Pier 99 and they would roll the rest of my body down any sewer hole. The mother knows about these men, these killer men because she gets the details from sinister magazines, all of them with TRUE! in the title.