Cruddy - Lynda Barry [101]
“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?