Cruddy - Lynda Barry [40]
If it was me doing the display I would have had him laying down. I would have had sand in the case. I would have made it look as realistic as possible and most of all, I would not have covered his vulnerables. I would have wanted everything displayed. In the interest of science. To show what happens to a dead man’s pecker in the sun. I thought it even before what happened, happened. But I wouldn’t count that as ESP.
At five o’clock I stood in front of the bus station waiting for the father. I watched the black-glass door of the Golden Egg for half an hour and then another half an hour. People wobbled in and people wobbled out but none of them were the father. Finally I crossed the street running and went inside.
It was a very dark place and the air was thick with exhale. A long bar barely lit up, and haggish heads leaning over it, drinking the fantastic booze, sucking it down and tapping empty glasses for more. I examined the faces but none of them belonged to the father. The bartender yelled for me to get out.
A few minutes later a junker car, pink and black and bashed in places with one of the back doors roped shut pulls up next to me and the father leans across the front seat and shouts, “I been circling the damn block. Where the hell were you?” He leaves me in the front seat with the engine running and gets our bags. When he comes back he is happy to report the suitcase still has the tape he put along the edges to make sure, just to make sure no hands have opened it.
The car smelled like old milk and cat pee. The dashboard was cracked open and powdery sponge showed through. Also there were bite marks on it. Teeth marks. Human ones.
We drove up hills that increased in steepness until we were on a hill I could not believe. The street had deep zigzagged gouges for traction. I felt like I was on the first part of a roller-coaster ride, my full weight pressed into the seat back. The father was cussing the transmission. “Shift! Shift! You worthless piece of shit!” The car barely crawled.
All of Dentsville seemed to be nothing but hills, steeper and steeper. When we got to the top of one, there was another, until finally it was time to start down. The father pumped the brakes and got pale. He hated heights. He gripped the steering wheel and said, “This ain’t going to—oh shit—oh SHIT!” And we wound around Dentsville like that. Crawling up and skidding down with the emergency brake pressed as far as it would go. And then we came to the neighborhood the father was looking for.
I couldn’t believe a place could be so grim. So full of sad yards and boarded-up houses. I didn’t see anyone, not a soul except the scrounger trucks driving by with junk piled high and tilty. The father said, “You know what you’re looking at here, Clyde?”
I shook my head.
“This is progress.”
He rolled the car to a stop and took out a cigarette and handed me one. He pulled out the Old Skull Popper and took a glug and passed the bottle to me. I wasn’t really in the mood, but I took a glug because I could tell he was about to lay something on me, a plan was about to be explained, and I learned that in such circumstances a glug of fantastic booze is not a bad idea.
“Clyde. Clyde. Listen to me good.” The father was reaching into a paper sack with CRISS CROSS DRUGSTORE printed on it. He pulled out a beige-colored roll of fabric, an extra-wide Ace bandage. He said, “Take off your shirt.”
I hesitated, and he cuffed me. “I don’t got no time for your shit right now. We partners? Are we?”
I took off my shirt and he wrapped the bandage around my middle. “Don’t want it too tight. Want it comfortable. Is it? You can breathe?” He fastened it with three silver-toothed clips.
He reached over the backseat and pulled his knife