Cruddy - Lynda Barry [104]
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 convinced 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?”