by LYNDA BARRY
Vicky wanted to hold the Turtle’s shoes and I was very surprised when she cried a little over them. I couldn’t cry. The Stick got the window seat. He leaned back and said, “And then what?”
The flat landscape moved behind him, looking oddly fake. “And then what happened?” He closed his eyes.
And then what happened was I made my way back to the car and I started shaking very violently and it was a long time before I could drive and it was very hard to drive once I could and I made it back to the Lucky Chief and I threw up and hollered for Cookie and I kept hollering for Cookie and I popped the trunk and took a handful of money out of one of the suitcases and then I dragged both of the Samsonites into the cavern, deep, deep, deep into the cavern and I hollered and hollered for Cookie and I heard her barking and she came running and she was wagging her tail very hard and I picked her up and kissed her and we walked into the sunlight. The End.
“The END?” said Vicky.
“The End,” I said.
“What a fucked-up bullshit waste-of-time story! God, Roberta! I could slap you right now.”
“You could,” I said. “But it would be a terrible idea.”
She was picking at the Turtle’s shoes. At the silver foil around the insole. She pulled it away and found a rectangle of origami paper. Inside were two perforated sheets. A miniature deck of cards printed on each. “It’s blotter,” she said. “It’s actual blotter.” There were two more sheets in the other shoe. There were 127 hits of blotter in all.
And after a moment there were only 121. She took three hits and gave me three hits. I snuck one to the Stick.
The bus bounced, Vicky got carsick, the strawberry milk shake found its way to the floor. She took three more hits. When we got to Cruddy City we were so blasted we could hardly maintain enough to get the 7 Dunbar bus home. The Stick said he was feeling better, that in fact he was feeling perfect. Vicky wanted to go home. None of us could think of a better idea. She walked very fast and we fell behind and the Stick put his arm around me. He said, “I’m a bleeder. Did Vicky tell you? I’m a bleeder.” But I didn’t know it was a situation. A condition. I just thought it was a thing you say when you are very high, like I’m an eater or I’m a breather. And we were so very high. All the streetlights shot rays at us and the cars left trails for us. All the ugly things around us looked beautiful. I missed the Turtle and the Great Wesley very much right then.
The Stick said, “My real name isn’t the Stick. My real name is—” He said something unpronounceable. Something that sounded slightly like “the Stick,” but had more letters in silent combinations. I tried to repeat it and he laughed.
He said, “I have a crush on you, Roberta.”
I told him my name was no longer Roberta. I told him my name was Junior Bizarre and Vicky heard this and she fell on the grass laughing and having contortions and it took us a very long time to make our way to the hedges that surrounded the Tallusoj house.
He stopped at the broken front gate. I could tell that even in his blasted condition that he was thinking about Susie. He hadn’t told Vicky. He said, “Vicky, Vicky. Um—um, Susie—”
Vicky said, “Fuck Susie. I’m sick of Susie.”
She bounced up the porch ahead of us. The TV light was jumping in the window. The green porch light was on. He looked at me. Did we leave the TV on? Did we? I thought we turned it off.
Vicky shoved open the door.
“SHIT AND GODDAMN! THE INTERRUPTION! MY PROGRAM!”
The resurrected Susie lay back in his flowered bathrobe with his vulnerables spreading. He had a plastic tumbler of Whitley’s in one hand and a Swisher Sweet in the other.
“Fuck off, Susie,” said Vicky. “Cover yourself up.”
“SHIT AND GODDAMN! I HAVE TO GET ORGANIZED!”
Later, in the attic, in the candlelight, the Stick and I lay together having some revelations.
He said, “I do still piss the bed.”
I said, “I killed a lot of people.”
He ran his finger over the inside of my arm and said the words spelled in scars.
I’m sorry.
He said, “Can I see your knife? Can I see Little Debbie? Is that what you used to do this?”
I handed her over.
He said, “What happened to Sheila?”
“She’s with the father. If he fell, she is at the bottom. If he dried out like beef jerky, she is still his companion. Before I left I shoved her in pretty hard.”
He ran his fingers over the raised letters again.
“You did this.”
I nodded.
“Are you sorry?”
“No.”
And we were quiet. And I crawled to the oval window. I was looking into the sky, I was wanting to find a satellite for him. I was thinking there had to be one tumbling somewhere above us. I didn’t see him do it. Make the deep silent slices upwards from his wrists. “I’m a bleeder,” he said, “I’m a bleeder, I’m a bleeder.” But I didn’t know what he meant until it was too late.
And I know I was screaming and I know I was scrambling after him out of the window and along the dormer ledge but I cannot say if he jumped or he fell. It seemed like he did neither. To me it seemed as if he took a calm step into thin air.
And so the ambulance came and so the cops came and I was very hysterical and Vicky was very hysterical and so we were all taken to Emergency and so the mother was contacted and came in screaming with her neck cords sticking out shouting she would kill me she would kill me she was absolutely going to kill me and so I shouted back that she should do it, I didn’t care and so she was restrained and so I was restrained and so the cops asked me questions and so Vicky yelled from the next cubicle Don’t Narc Me Out, Roberta! Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!
And so we were kept overnight for observation and so the surgery man came in to say, “I’m afraid we struck out, I’m afraid he did not make it. He did not make it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” And so the Stick was gone.
And so Susie was taken away and so Vicky was taken to a foster home, which she busted out of immediately. And so she called me said would I meet her, would I go with her because it turns out Neil Young is playing at the Hec Edmondson pavilion and it’s festival seating and if we get there before the sun comes up we will be the first in line and then we will be in the front row when he sings “Cinnamon Girl.”
And so that is what I am about to do right now. Sneak out and meet Vicky by the Diggy’s Dumpster. And then tomorrow night, after the concert she promised she will come with me to the train tracks. And she promised she will give me the little push I need unless something happens and she gets together with Neil Young.
And so if you are reading this, if you are holding this book in your hands right now it means my plan worked completely, I am gone. I am gone. I got my happy ending.
And so whoever you are, if you want the money, you can have it. My description of the location is decent and followable. But watch out for Dreamland. Beware of the Air Force. Stay Navy all the way.
That is all.
This is the End.
I dedicate this book to my sister, Julie.
ABOUT THE TYPE
Cruddy is set in Monotype Fournier—discovered in the 1930 edition of Moby Dick designed and illustrated by Rockwell Kent. The typeface itself was recut for Monotype in 1924 under the direction of Stanley Morison. The original was created by Pierre Simon Fournier around 1742 and called “St. Augustin Ordinaire” in his Manuel Typographique. The earliest of the “transitional” typefaces, Fournier was a bridge to the more severe “modern” style made popular by Bodoni later in the century.
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