Cruddy - Lynda Barry [102]
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 ran. 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