Cruddy - Lynda Barry [25]
“No,” said Vicky. “Tell the part about the money, Roberta. What about the money?”
The Turtle fished his shoe back on. His toes were also very long, unusually long, you could even say disturbingly. He said, “Fuck ALL people of Indiana!” He said, “Indiana people SUCKS SHIT!”
“I don’t get it,” said Vicky. “What? What’s funny?” Because me and the Turtle were laughing very hard. Were we together? It was possible.
The Poky Dot Lounge was what appeared on the horizon an hour or so after the father hung another cig from his lips and said, “Last one.” He balled the cig pack and flung it out the window. In my side mirror I watched it bounce away behind us. Bounce and roll and vanish. We crossed a wide river and then everything changed. There were no more fields, no houses, no trees, not even telephone poles. Even the colors were gone, all of them except brown and gray and the blue of the late-afternoon sky. The world got emptier and emptier until it looked like a brown ocean of dead velvet, just emptiness covered with short dry grasses and low scrub.
We were on a one-lane road and behind us the stirred-up dust hung in the air. Some creatures bolted in the distance, looking like deer, but not deer. The father said, “Give you fifty bucks if you can tell me what them are.”
My head was hurting and I was hungry. I ate what the father ate. Coffee and cigs and aspirin and Old Skull Popper and an ancient vending machine candy bar and the rancid taste was still in my mouth. I was hungry but I felt like if I ate I would heave instantly. My eyes were burning and I had a sensation in my throat like I’d swallowed gulps of sand.
“Give up?” asked the father. “You owe me fifty bucks. Them are pronghorns. Some people are wild about them, but I never could stand the flavor. You know what they mean by gamey? I’ve dressed a few. They say the sausage ain’t bad. Never tried it.”
We rolled on through the plucked world. He huffed his last cig down to the filter and his lips made a little popping sound when he threw it out the window.
He yawned and then I yawned, and he said, “It’s catching.”
He said, “Talk to me, Clyde, ask me some questions. Ask me anything. I’ll always give you a straight answer.”
I said, “Where are we going?”
He said, “Oh, that’s a surprise.”
He said, “Clyde, we are knife people and have always been knife people and people who use guns are pismires. But I want you to know there is a rifle in the car with us. We’re knife people but there’s always exceptions. There could come a situation where we are glad we have it, understand me?”
I nodded even though I didn’t and he smiled and showed his curved yellow-gray teeth. Did I mention I loved the father? At the beginning of the journey I loved him a lot. They say love for a father is natural and nothing can change it. I don’t know about that.
“Shit,” he said. “Out of gas and out of smokes. Better start saying your prayers, Clyde.”
The time ticktocked undisturbed for a few miles and then across the horizon I saw the silhouette of telephone poles and a square shack up on cinder-block legs. The father said, “We’re saved.”
It was painted a faded-out pink. Shaky circles were drawn on in tan and brown. On the door it said,
POKY DOT LOUNGE
NO MINOR
NO LOITER
NO INDIAN
Someone had added an “A” to the end of INDIAN and then wrote “Fuck ALL people of INDIANA. INDIANA people sucks SHIT!!!”
The Turtle was laughing again. He was curling and uncurling himself like a shrimp and laughing hard.
“That’s IT?” said Vicky. “I’m starting to hate you guys.”
“Tell it again,” said the Turtle.
“No,” said Vicky. “The money. Tell me it’s real.”
“It’s real,” I said. “And I want you all to keep acting very normal. Turtle, you need to pick up your stash because it fell out of your pocket and then we should get up very normally and walk very normally away from here because there is a cop watching us.”
The Turtle took off running.