Cruddy - Lynda Barry [32]
He laid down my stamps and pushed my change at me and picked up his wet cig and his fly swatter and started staring out the window again.
I said, “Know that fly you hit before?”
He made a short little noise.
I said, “Well, it got away.”
His sad eyes looked me over.
When the father came back through the glass door our bus was just ready to start boarding. He was walking fast and his hair was wet-combed back and he had his usual tall liquor store sacks and he smelled very strong of cigarettes and perfume and a kind of booze I didn’t know. “C’mon, Clyde.” He got our bags and hurried me along, jerking his head toward the bus door and saying, “Go, Clyde.”
The ticket lady came in a few minutes later. She didn’t look at anyone but the father, who never looked back at her once.
The father hunched and stammered and asked the people in line if it would be all right with everyone if I got on first, being as I was an epileptic.
There was a whoosh of the silver door and the high steps were revealed. It was my first time on a bus and it seemed incredibly royal. I paused at the top of the steps and felt the father’s instant shove. “All the way to the back. Move it. Go.”
He let me have the window seat and he slouched low, hit the recliner button, and shut his eyes. I watched the ticket lady searching the passenger windows as the bus pulled out of the station.
Dentsville. On the front of the bus it said DENTSVILLE.
The father poked his head up when we were out of the bus station. I said, “Are we going to Fort Madley?”
He said, “What the hell’s Fort Madley?”
I took out my stationery box and slipped the ribbon off. Inside was pale blue paper, thin enough to see through. The envelopes had the same airplane on them with the same perfect writing behind it. Airmail.
When the father spoke, I jumped.
He said, “What’s that there?”
“Airmail.”
“Airmail? You spent the money I gave you on that? Damn it, Clyde, who in the hell are you planning on writing? Santa Claus?”
I put it away and waited for him to fall asleep.
It was coming toward evening and we were in the open land again and it was good to see it. The colors had done their last flares and were draining away. I was having a hard time looking out the window because the wires and poles were making me dizzy. The constant up and down. When I tried to ignore them they seemed to get even more obvious. Even when I stared straight ahead they were getting into the corner of my eye.
Who was I planning on writing? Who was I planning on writing? The father’s question was bothering me. I looked over at him. He was snoring so slack-jawed and his breath was squidding out horror fumes in my direction. I saw his Navy bridgework that always gave him trouble. His head was tilted away from me. And I will admit I looked at his neck to find it. The light pulsing of the carotid. The involuntary pulsing. As involuntary as my eyes studying it.
There are two kinds of dying for every single person. There is the moment when your personality dies, when the you of you drains away into the air, and then there is the part where your body dies, organ by organ. And then three days later there are the flies.
Dear Jesus,
Hi, how are you? Please excuse my bumpy handwriting but rightnow I am on a bus.
I kept trying to find a way to turn myself so that I couldn’t see the telephone poles or be in the path of the father’s breath. I was feeling dizzy and then very sick and the father was shouting, “WHAT THE—GO TO THE HEAD, DO IT IN THE HEAD! DON’T PUKE ON ME, CLYDE! CLYDE!”
I never did finish my letter to Jesus. I tried for a while but I couldn’t think of anything else to say besides, Have a Good Summer and Stay Crazy.
Chapter 17
WANDERED AROUND after the streetlights came on, wearing Vicky Talluso’s hat and carrying her purse and sending her ESP vibrations even though I was doubtful either of us had ESP. Vicky said she did, but I think she just needed a girl to bring