Cruddy - Lynda Barry [20]
Flies have always been part of my life. In the days of Rohbeson’s Slaughterhouse, flies were everywhere, crawling up the walls like living designs. I used to fall asleep looking at them. Thinking about their world. Their society. Did they have kings? Did they steal from each other? My light fixture was black-full with bodies of them. I used to think they had feelings about certain people. People who noticed them. Certain people. Me.
There was a fly in the car with the father and I. I wasn’t sure if he was a slaughterhouse fly or just a middle-of-nowhere fly. One that got in when no one was noticing. And I wondered what it was going to be like for him when he got out again. What would he think when he flew out of the car and didn’t recognize anything or anybody?
Only in a fairy tale could he ever get home again. In fairy tales it happened all the time. It was possible. I was thinking it was really very possible. And while I was thinking this, the father snatched the fly out of the air and mashed him with a gesture so quick I barely saw it. Meat men can do that. They can snatch flies right out of the air.
The father checked on me in the mirror and asked if I was hungry. He said, “I still owe you that hamburger.”
I started throwing up but nothing came.
“Roberta, Roberta,” said Vicky Talluso. “Are you OK? Is that going to happen to me, Turtle? Because really, I cannot throw up. I mean actually physically I cannot throw up.”
The long fingers of the Turtle touched the back of my neck as he gathered my hair away from my face. “It will pass,” he said.
Vicky said, “What if it doesn’t?”
“I’m OK,” I said. “I’m OK.”
“Lay back.” said the Turtle. “Just be cool and feel the peace and be free and feel the love raining down on you and it will pass.”
Vicky said, “If that Creeper-whatever makes me do that? If I start talking about flies and dry barfing? I’m going to seriously kick your face in, Turtle.”
The Turtle was right. It did pass. Like a snake it slithered away out of me, dividing the grass as it went. My head was on the Turtle’s lap and he was looking down at me through his eerie fringes of white eyelashes. He said, “Hillbilly Woman.”
I said, “Turtle.”
Vicky said, “Unless I get a cigarette, I’m going to claw someone’s face off.”
Vicky wanted to go the Washeteria to get cigs. She said the lady there was a troll with a million warts on her face and incredibly sagged-out boobs and she would not give you change but if you had your own change you could buy cigs from her machine without her caring. Vicky was talking very fast and some of her words were warping but I followed her meaning. I walked next to her and the Turtle walked next to me and I noticed he was shorter than I thought.
I was walking in the wrong direction if I ever thought about going home again. I knew the mother was home and she was waiting. She was waiting right by the door. Her shift was night. She was in her white uniform and stockings and shoes. Her hair was in a French twist. She was smoking. She was muttering. Where in the hell was I?
I have lived a restricted life since the mother saw my picture in the newspaper and met the surrounding reporters and felt the flash of the photographers’ bulbs. Our reunion created quite a stir. The reporters wanted to be there when she came to get me. And they were. And the city of Las Vegas was glad to host us. We were given free rooms at the Golden Nugget and all-you-can-eats everywhere we went. At night from the window the lights glittered and glittered and glittered. Julie watched television and sucked her thumb. I watched out the window. What the mother watched I do not know. She left just as it got dark and didn’t come back until just before morning. We passed a week this way and then it was over.
I never told what happened at the Lucky Chief and she