Cruddy - Lynda Barry [44]
“You seen ’em,” said the father. “You seen Leonard.”
“Seen a shadow of him,” said Lemuel. “Showed up here in the middle of the night, crying like a baby, wouldn’t come in, didn’t want me to come out. Told me the whole story through that blanket. Said he couldn’t stand for me to see his face. Said he had a gun and he was going to blow his own head off if I tried anything.”
“Uh-huh,” said the father, sounding bored.
“You want to hear this or not?”
Leonard said they drove to the next county, bought a car and trailer right off the barely used lot with cash and a trade-in, and then they really did go fishing. Lake Marie. Earlis really did have some new bait he wanted to try out. Red salmon eggs, coffee grounds, and mini-marshmallows cooked together in a frying pan. He invented it, and it worked so good the fish were practically begging to be hooked. And then they celebrated with plenty of hugging and a big bottle of Whitley’s and Leonard was thinking it was love. Some would call it perverted, he knew that, but for him it was true love at last.
“Cornholer,” said the father.
“Goddamn it, man!” said Lemuel. “What do you got for a heart, a cat turd?”
Leonard and Earlis were together all that night and the next. Earlis told Leonard he was wild in love with him, that Leonard meant more than anything in the world to him, but the time had come to move on.
And Leonard said, what the hell did he mean by move on? And Earlis said he was taking Leonard back to the A&W. And Leonard said, “Then what?”
Earlis said, “I’m leaving town.”
Leonard said, “Just like that?”
Earlis said, “I shall never forget you.”
And that’s when Leonard grabbed the gutting knife off the counter and ripped Earlis open clean.
“Gutting knife,” said the father. He blew out a jet of cig smoke and nodded his approval.
Lemuel said, “Leonard didn’t plan to kill him. He ain’t like that. Now, I’m like that, and you’re like that, but Leonard ain’t like that.”
And Leonard was sorry right afterwards. And Leonard had a nervous breakdown right there and Leonard drove a thousand miles with dead Earlis bouncing around the hot trailer with the piles of muskie until he pulled up to Lemuel’s place in the middle of the night and confessed out the whole story through the blue blanket. Leonard said he was killing himself, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. He made Lemuel promise to make sure the car and the trailer went to the rightful man. That was Leonard’s final wish.
“You,” said Lemuel, wiping his eyes. “He wanted you to have it.”
“And?” said the father.
“And what?”
“Well don’t keep me in suspense here, Lemuel,” said the father. “Did that little cornholer blow his brains out or not?”
Chapter 21
O-BER-TA! RO-BERTA!” Julie’s voice was calling me from downstairs. “It’s on! You’re missing it!” The word is maintain. That is what you are supposed to do when you are high and you don’t want anyone to know it. Maintain, maintain, maintain.
“Ro-BERTA! The crawling hand just killed a cow and now all the other cows are freaking out!”
“Cattle,” I said, as I came down the stairs. “Not cows. Cattle.”
“How are you supposed to know, you’re not even watching it.” Julie turned to look at me. “Your nose is still bleeding.”
I said, “So?”
I got Vicky’s purse and pulled out her wallet. If found, please return to Vicky Tallusoj. I was looking at the “j” on the end of her name. Thinking it was silent. And then I thought about different silent letters I knew about and if it was possible to put them all together and spell a silent word. A drop of my blood splashed onto the ID card. It was so red.
“Roberta!” Julie’s head popped up over the back of the couch. She dangled her hand at me and did crawling motions with her fingers and then pointed at the TV. A lady was standing in front of the dead cattle and screaming. She could not stop screaming. I dialed Vicky’s number.
“Who you calling?”
“Nobody.”
“You can’t use the phone in case Mom is trying to call here.”
I said, “She’s not trying to call.”
“You got blood all over your shirt.”
“So?