Cruddy - Lynda Barry [22]
The Turtle listened to my speeding words and then held up a long finger. “Wait. Tell me one thing,” he said. “Are you wanted?”
Chapter 12
HE FATHER never treated me like a kid unless there was someone around. When the father looked at me, I do not know what he saw. Maybe a midget. Maybe an elf. I don’t think it ever entered his mind that I was a kid. He knew it, but he never thought it, and it was what a person thought that mattered. That was the stuff you could twist a dream around.
During our journey he gave me cigarettes, glugs off of Old Skull Popper, bought me coffee and talked to me about the Navy, about things he saw when he was stationed here and there. He mentioned vultures and hornets and some things naked people did under red lightbulbs. He told me he had seen it all and he wasn’t even near forty. “There isn’t a thing left on this earth that can bug my eyes out anymore, and Clyde, for a man my age that’s a tragedy.”
We drove the back roads, sometimes it seemed like we were going in circles, but the father never used a map because the roads he needed to take, the gravel roads shooting pinging rocks and choking dust, were never on them. Where were we going? I wanted to know but I couldn’t ask him. My mouth just wouldn’t move around the words. I was in the front seat again. After the bright daylight came, what happened the night before faded out of me a little. We were miles away from it. I didn’t think about it. Behind us in a cloud of dust a truck was coming fast. The father looked in the rearview mirror and I saw him freak a little. I saw his hands get tight on the steering wheel. The truck swerved around us without slowing down. It pulled a bouncing empty cattle trailer with LITTLE BITTY DREAM written on it in custom letters.
“Shit on that,” said the father, and shoved a cig between his lips.
“You know that Marie Cardall, Clyde? That got her arm shot off by them men?”
I told him I thought it was one man.
“See there? Just like the police. They think the same thing. That that one escapee did it. Just because someone thought they saw him in the vicinity with his Elkwood’s on. Hell, any man can run in a prisoner’s coveralls. That don’t take no talent. That escapee was probably halfway to Texas before anybody touched Marie Cardall’s doorknob. Do you know she still don’t lock her doors? Lock your doors, Clyde. Always lock your doors.”
The dash lighter popped out and he held it tilted while he sucked up some fire onto the end of his cig.
“So you figure out who did it yet? Because you know the parties involved. God, Clyde, I’m about laying it at your feet here.”
“Doolie Bug.”
“Yes, the squashed sack of shit had a role in it, that’s sure. But the second man. You know what the second man is doing right now?”
I shook my head.
“Driving this car.”
I sat very still while he unspooled the story. He wanted to tell it so bad. It was just wriggling inside of him.
“Marie Cardall was just begging for it. First time I talked to her about Old Dad delivering a suitcase to her, she told me she never got any kind of suitcase from anyone. I said, ‘His tally book says you got one.’ But she says no. She never saw or heard of any suitcase from Old Dad. I hate it when people lie to me. Don’t you ever lie to me, Clyde.”
He was pointing a square-topped finger at me. It was missing the tip, from the only slip of the knife in his whole career and it only happened because Mrs. Hannis came asking him to grind up some kidneys