Cruddy - Lynda Barry [100]
“And I need the suitcase.”
“The—”
“The blue suitcase full of money.”
“Yes.”
“I need it.”
“My itching! I implore you.”
“The suitcase.”
“There is a complication.”
I shot the gun again. I was really enjoying shooting off the gun. There was a ricochet sound. Some chunks fell off the cavern walls.
“I’ll take you to it,” said Gy-Rah. He put his hands up and waddled his behind as he walked ahead of me. This is how he came out of the cavern. The way I’d seen prisoners do it a milllion times.
The father popped up from behind the car and smiled very hugely at me. With his glowing cig clamped between his teeth he was clapping his hands. Clap, clap, clap, for a job well done. “Shit, Clyde! Damn, Clyde! Goddamn great, Clyde! Balls-out son of a bitching Navy all the way, Clyde!”
And then I shot him.
Gy-Rah ran. The father rolled on the asphalt clutching his leg. “Shit, sniper! Clyde! I been shot!”
He was twisting his head like an upside-down rooster to see where the shot had come from even though he was looking straight at me when I fired at him. His eyes saw me but his mind refused the knowledge.
I ran to him and said, “Car keys! Car keys!” He heard the urgency in my voice and tossed them to me without hesitation. Maybe he thought I was going to roll the car between him and his assassin. Maybe he thought I was wanting to shield him from harm. What I did was start the car and back over his foot.
Gy-Rah pounded on the office door. It flew open, he was yanked in, and Pammy was shoved out. The door slammed and locked.
Pammy looked sick. She wobble-walked toward the father. Her hair was deteriorated to the very scalp, looking like a couple of wispy feathers on a just-hatched bird. She closed one eye to get focus and her legs gave out.
I drove fast and talked loudly to Cookie, saying I would pull over in a minute, I’d pull over and get her out. I jumped out of the car, popped open the trunk, and of course it was empty.
For a while I lay on the hood of the car, staring up into the darkness. Staring up at the stars. The thousands and thousands and thousands of stars. Some fall and leave trails. Some go out without anyone even noticing.
Chapter 53
STOPPED THE car and Vicky woke up. She said, “Where the fuck are we? I’m fucking starving.”
“The Top o’ the Pass,” said the Great Wesley. “It is real.”
I stepped out into the cool night air. Vicky said, “There a bathroom?”
“Around back,” I said. “That way.”
All of the windows were broken out and the door hung half torn from its hinges, but the carefully placed stones in the wall were still there. And I walked to them and put my hands upon them and they were cold and they refreshed me. It was just an hour or two before sunrise. Vicky came back. “I can’t pee back there. Too weird.” She tramped into the bushes.
The Turtle got out and the Stick got out but the Great Wesley said he did not feel capable. The Turtle leaned into the car and gently urged him and the Great Wesley gently refused and I felt a sad tightness in my throat from their tenderness toward each other. Their soft voices twining.
The Stick walked over to me and put his hands near mine on the wall. He said, “This has been the weirdest night.”
Vicky came back. “I’m so fucking hungry!” She poked her head inside the doorway of the dead gas station store. “Smells pukey. Let’s go.”
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