by LYNDA BARRY
And we drove down the other side of the mountain and the car filled up with cigarette smoke and Vicky named the things she wanted to eat, Tiger Tails and Chick-o-stix and the list went on. And I freaked her by taking my hands off the steering wheel and lifting my feet from the pedals and saying “Wheee!”
“Fuck, Roberta! You’re sick, Roberta!” said Vicky.
And the rays of morning light fell around us as we rolled out of the dark mountains and into the flat yellow cowboy world. Irrigating jets pulsed over the fields. Migrants in beat-apart hats bent and picked. The Great Wesley and the Turtle were sleeping. Vicky said, “Why the fuck are you crying? We need a gas station. We need a store.”
In the rearview mirror I saw the Stick staring out the window. He looked so pale and worn out but his eyes were alive, taking in the openness, the pale colors, the immensity of the morning sky. He was taking the new world in.
“Fuck, Roberta!” said Vicky. “What are you slowing down for? Drive!”
I stopped alongside a field and called to two migrants. Women who stood up when they heard me ask about the grandma-ma.
One woman said, “¿Que? ¿Que quieras?”
The other, “La abuela. La bruja.”
“¿La bruja? ¿La abuela mysteriosa, sí?”
“The grandma-ma,” I said. “Little. Very old.”
“Sí. Sí. Muerta.”
I said, “What?”
The first woman put her hands together in a praying way and pointed up. Her friend slapped her hand and pointed down.
The smell of the stockyards was too much for Vicky. “Roll up the window!” But the smell was the reason I kept driving slow. The creature smell so powerful and alive and lonely and hopeless.
The Great Wesley sat up. “I was dozing, I’m afraid. What did I miss?”
“The grandma-ma is dead,” said the Stick.
I turned down a road that got smaller and smaller, running along the railroad tracks, running along the canal. I was heading toward the Knocking Hammer, but it was the train I wanted to see. I heard it pounding behind me. I stopped the car and jumped out.
Vicky screamed just a moment before the whistle split the air. I jumped away from the engine onto the gravel between the tracks and the canal, wanting the exhilaration, needing the exhilaration. I kneeled beside the roaring train and I felt nothing.
A hand grabbed my arm and I nearly lost my balance. The Stick had dodged with me. He dodged the train right behind me. I never even saw him. He was shouting something at me but I couldn’t hear him over the train.
“What?”
He cupped his hands. “Do you think we have a chance?”
The train shot away. Going balls-out full speed on such a beautiful stretch of track, such a clean straightaway on such a clear day, the thunder and the roar faded and was gone.
“Do you?” asked the Stick.
I shook my head no.
He put his arm around me. I thought he wanted to comfort me but the Stick was falling over. He was in a lot of pain. Something inside of him had gone very wrong.
The Turtle helped the Great Wesley up the embankment. I was shocked by how the Great Wesley looked in the daylight. How washed-out and frail he was, how gingerly he moved his slippered feet. He looked around him blinking and he made me think of Cookie. The way her intelligent eyes blinked at the surrounding world, her ears up, the interested way she sniffed the air.
“Lovely,” said the Great Wesley. “Perfect. Ideal.”
His bathrobe fell open and in the sunlight his white skin and sudden dinger were exposed, and I saw the huge scar running up the center of his chest. It had been violently stitched. The procedure is called cracking. The procedure is last-ditch emergency and it is called cracking the chest.
“Wesley,” I said.
“FUCK!” said Vicky when she caught up to us. She placed her hands on her own chest and stepped forward and back in horror. “Fuck! Fuck! What happened?”
The Great Wesley said, “My intentions were good but my aim was bad.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“My dear girl,” said the Great Wesley, “I missed.”
And he sat down quite suddenly. And the Stick was down and then the Turtle and then me. The last one standing was Vicky.
She said, “What the fuck are you guys doing? We have to go, man!”
I said, “Where?”
The Great Wesley pulled out the very last of the ancient substance and a slender bone pipe with elaborately carved vines winding around it. He said, “I should like a good smoke with all of you, as all of you are dear, dear friends of mine, and I should like to hear the conclusion of the tale of the Hillbilly Woman, which I assume was a very happy one.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Not really.”
“Of course it was,” said Wesley. “You are here with us, aren’t you?”
“Fuck this,” said Vicky. “I vote no. I’m not staying here. Where is this? This isn’t even anywhere!” But in the end she sat with us. In the end she stayed.
Chapter 54
OOKIE. WHERE was she? Had he killed her? He was that kind of person. The father was very much that kind of person. But he was also the kind of person who would not kill her if she was still useful.
I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I did not expect the crashing to come so hard. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again the morning had come.
My heart was pounding hard. I prayed she was still alive. I prayed I wasn’t too late. When I got to the parking lot, Gy-Rah’s truck was gone. The broadcasting equipment the father had hurled out the night before lay in glinting pieces and trailing wires. I scanned for the father. Was he waiting for me? Was he hiding behind a rock and taking aim?
Pammy was at the concrete picnic table with her head down on her arms. Around her were many empty booze bottles. Poor Pammy. Her head was so scalded. The shriveled fuzz of hair was so pathetic. There were broken bottles around her feet. I remembered her miserable wobbling the night before. I was feeling sadness for her, which made me wish some happiness for her. And then I saw the flies.
A great black cloud of flies buzzing and ringing her neck and turning the ground beneath her into a living carpet. They were on her legs and they covered the sheeting blood on her chest. Her throat had been cut.
The office door was open. I whispered, “Cookie? Cookie?” There was a blood trail through the door to the couch. A blood-soaked towel and scissors and part of a ripped sheet and full ashtrays and highball glasses laying on a sick green carpet. The walls and low ceiling were spackle-shot, very bumpy with little glitters glinting. The curtains were shut. I whispered, “Cookie? Auntie Doris?”
In the bedroom. In the bedroom. The blood on the ceiling and the blood on the walls, back-splatter, back-splatter in welts, smeared hand marks streaking downward. The lamp knocked over, the bed rolled cock-eyed. On the rug I saw Sheila. Sister to Little Debbie. I saw Sheila and beside her I saw a thumb.
And then I saw the hand it came from. Auntie Doris was on the other side of the bed. Her blank eyes were open and she was curled up like a child.
From the parking lot came the sound of the bad muffler, the engine rattle, and the speaker sound. The father’s voice amplified, “Clyde, Clyde. You miss me, son? I sure miss you.”
I froze. The gun was in the car. I picked up Sheila. The father said, “Where are you, son?” Cookie yelped. “I have your little doggie here.” The engine stopped. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” There was a scuffle and the father said, “You stupid bitch. Hold still.” He was talking to Gy-Rah.
I stepped out of the office to see the father standing behind him with a knife pressed to his throat. Gy-Rah’s eyes were rolling like a cow’s.
The father said, “Clyde. Clyde. Look at him. Old Dad sneaks off to Nevada, dinks Doris three times and this is what she poops out. Old Dad leaves me with nothing, and sends a third of his fortune to this. There’s no god, Clyde. Remember that.”
Cookie r
an. Cookie disappeared into one of a thousand hidey-holes and I was glad for her. I was hoping that she would not come out again until the father was gone. Truly gone for all time.
“You Navy, Clyde? Are you?”
I held Sheila behind me. I nodded.
“Say it, goddamn you.”
“I’m Navy.”
“You’re Navy what?”
“I’m Navy, sir.”
“Then we don’t need this pussy anymore.”
Gy-Rah was able to walk quite a distance with his throat cut. The father had time to tap out a cig and light it before Gy-Rah went down like a dropped marionette.
The father gestured all around. His eyes were red-rimmed and dull. He gestured to Pammy and the office and to Gy-Rah’s last writhings. He gestured to his split pant leg with white rag bandages wrapped beneath it. He said, “Can you believe this world of shit?”
He was stiff-leg walking to the car. He got in on the passenger side. “Here it is.” He lifted the gun. “Here’s what that son-of-a-bitching sniper used on me, Clyde, ain’t it? Run up to the table and get a bottle of Whitley’s. This morning has been a bitch and I could sure use a drink. Fish around in that pile of shit I yanked out of the truck, see if you can’t find a couple of cables and harnesses. Do you know that little bastard had the goddamn gall to offer me a blow job? And do you know I had the goddamn gall to take him up on it? Speed it up, Clyde. It’s getting hot and we got a long day ahead of us.” He flipped down the visor and looked at himself in the mirror. “Got a goddamn pimple. Hurts like shit, too.”
He gave the directions and I drove. Little Debbie and Sheila were snuggled together beneath my shirt. The father was humming and drinking and smoking and yawning. He said, “Stop the car, son.” He held the gun against the side of my face. He said, “Give me your knife, son.”
I reached for Little Debbie and he said, “Don’t try it, son. Just hand her over.” He took her from me and kissed the blade. “She’s such a pretty little girl.”
The road got steeper. The father kept the gun on me. “GodDAMN I am tired.” He kept yawning and popping his eyes. “When all this is over, I’m going to take a nice nap. That little faggot surprised me. Do you know he told me he had six peckers?” The father held up a splayed hand and the thumb on his gun hand. “Six! Told me he was some kind of wonder of nature. I said, ‘Well let me have a look.’ Only two of them were worth anything. Turn here. Turn here. Yes, I see the sign, if I don’t give a shit about it, you don’t either. You Navy, Clyde? Because right now I need a goddamned commando.”
The road we followed was so rocky that I had to drive very slow. It wound up and up and up. The father made some melting-brain comments about keeping the car in motion, keeping the momentum going on the impossible road winding so steeply between boulders.
He drained the Whitley’s fast. “Stop,” he said. “Stop here. Here.”
He asked me again if we were partners and I said we were. He told me to get the cables and he kept the gun on me. When I turned my back, BLAM! He shot the gun off very close to my head. I smelled the burning. “Goddamn snipers are everywhere, aren’t they, Clyde?”
We climbed the rest of the way, going slow because of the father’s bad leg. He was sweating hard in the face. We were up very high and it was getting to him. He sat down. “This is as far as I go, son.” Beside him was a rusted iron U-bolt embedded into the rock. The father pinged the gun barrel against it. “History, Clyde. This here? The boys who built the great dam put these in. The Powder Monkey himself did this one. They didn’t have no banks nearby during the construction, a lot of shifty little shits were crawling all over and waiting to rob you. Haywire blasted his safe-hole on the other side of this rock. Hung over the edge and made himself a Wells Fargo. Gy-Rah got me this far but the shit didn’t bring no cables. You follow me, Clyde? These rings are going to hold your cable. Gy-Rah said the suitcase was there, just a twenty yards down from the edge. Wish I had a drink to offer you before you go.”
He told me to thread the cable through the parallel U-bolts. Told me he’d anchor them good for me, that no one could beat a Navy man when it came to knots. All I had to do was fasten the harness around me and work the drop-pulley to lower myself down.
He said, “Go on now, son. That’s right. You see Hoover Dam yet? She’s supposed to be goddamn spectacular.”
My legs were shaking. The cables were stiff and there were complications of leather straps looking ancient and crumbled. I will admit I was freaking badly, I will admit I looked back to see the tipping glint of the waving of the gun. The father looked bad. Greenish and thin and his hair stood up. He was laying on his stomach. The height had gotten to him.
I crawled to the top edge and looked over. I was surprised to see that the U-bolts continued over a descending platform. It was still a long way to the real edge. I dropped the cables over.
In the distance I saw the dam, her high white wall holding back the unnatural lake, unnaturally blue water glinting in such a dead world.
The father shouted, “Clyde? How’s it going?” He pulled the cable and felt the resistance.
“Clyde? You got it? Tug if you got it.”
Nothing happened. He yanked on the cable but it wouldn’t budge. There was an echo that faded fast every time he shouted my name. I wondered how long it would be before he decided to climb up to the edge. I’d have one chance. There could be no hesitation. Sheila was ready. Sheila had no problem with the idea of turning against him.
He swore. He spat. He kept yanking on the cable. The sun burned down on him. He hollered and hollered. Finally he began his upward crawl, clinging to the cable that would not budge because I tangled them bad through the U-bolts. Jamming every hook and pulley and strap in an impossible snarl.
Fear is cumulative. It rises to a breaking point and then a person freezes. “Clyde! Goddamn it!”
I crouched just under the ledge with my back flattened against the rock wall. A few pebbles came tumbling over when he got to the edge. And then I saw his jug-eared shadow. By the time he realized what happened it was all over. He tried to say some gurgley last words but I couldn’t really make them out. It’s hard to enunciate with a slashed windpipe.
Chapter 55
ES,” SAID the Great Wesley. “The son shall bathe his hands in parent’s blood, and in one act be both unjust and good.” He nodded. “Burma Shave.”
“Yes,” said the Turtle.
“The money,” said Vicky. “What about the money?”
“It’s still there,” I said. “Where?”
The Stick rolled up onto his side and lay back down. He said, “Cop. Cop. There’s a cop.”
The white car was pulled over and I saw the yellow county star on the side. A big-bellied man was walking around the Jaguar. Vicky was backing away into the scrub. With a bored and irritated expression the man in tan and brown signaled for us to come down the embankment. He called us hippies. I started laughing.
I had so many thoughts right then. Ideas on what to do scattered in a thousand directions, what could I do to keep it rolling, keep the motion going. I thought of the Stick’s question. “Do you think we have a chance?” And suddenly I thought, Yes! Yes! But the sound of the splash behind me changed everything. Wesley went over the canal edge, hit the rushing water, and was carried away so fast. I jumped up running alongside the canal and it seemed like he was waving to me, shouting some encouraging words to me but I couldn’t hear what they were because the Turtle was screaming, “Wait for me! My dear, dear Wesley! Wait! Wait!” and he ran so fast, chasing after the shape of the disappearing Wesley, but he was not fast enough. I saw him slip out of his shoes and jump in.
The cop hopped back in his car and took off. I was sure he was going for help but no one ever came. In a certain way it didn’t surprise me. I know things about cops. About fathers. About the world.
I ran to get the Turtle’s shoes. It seems strange to me now when I think of how convinced I was that he would need them. How convinc
ed I was that I would see them both again. But they were never found. Not by us. Not by anybody. There is a part of me hoping that maybe they made it. Made it to wherever people like us finally go.
We were at the Yakima bus station, Vicky was slurping down a strawberry milk shake that she would later be very sorry she ordered. I bought the tickets back to Cruddy City with my sock monkey money. We left the sleek car on a side street with an empty gas tank and the keys in the ignition. I was thinking about how close we were to the Knocking Hammer. How it would have been nothing to drive on a mile farther and lay my eyes on it again, something I had been wanting to do and planning to do for so long. Take the whole journey again, re-trace the trail of the father to the very cliff edge. But the urge had drained away.
The Stick was ill. He was having trouble moving, but he told me there was nothing wrong with him. And I believed him. I believed him completely. The father spoke the truth when he said that people lie and lie and lie. Even the best people do, sometimes.
I said, “You want me to get you some aspirin?”
Vicky said, “He can’t have aspirin.”
I said, “Why not?”
The Stick said, “Shut up, Vicky.”
She shrugged. “Fine with me.”
The Stick said, “So you cut his throat?”
I nodded.
“And you know for sure he’s dead?”
“He’s dead.”
“Didn’t you stay to make sure?”
“I got bored.”
“Bullshit,” said Vicky. “None of it ever happened. It’s all bullshit. Nobody would leave that much money behind. How much did you say it was?”
“Thousands. Thousands and thousands.”
“Such bullshit.”
Our bus boarded. The doors whooshed open and we climbed on. I carried the shoes of the Turtle and the robe of the Great Wesley. “To the back,” I said. “All the way back.”