Cruddy - Lynda Barry [48]
There is a saying about Jesus. That he will forgive anyone for anything. Anything at all.
Do you know the song by Brenda Lee?
“I’m sor-ry...so sor-ry...please ac-cept...my a-pol-o-gy.”
The father was singing it in a jigging cadence as he dragged the blue blanket containing the rotted Earlis out of the trailer and into the shack of Lemuel, singing it jaunty, and leaving a trail of horrible liquid behind him. He had a handkerchief doused in Aqua Velva tied over his nose. His singing was muffled, but it was on key. I think the maddest people in this world are the ones who could have been stars, could have serenaded all people so famously with voices lifting up from spinning gold records. There were so many good things that should have happened to the father. He wasn’t your average man. He wasn’t meant to live in an average world.
Dead Lemuel was already in the shack. The blue blanket came for him first. The father stood over him smoking a cig. He said, “Jesus, Clyde. You bled him out like a hog. I couldn’t have done better.” Dead Lemuel received a few last wet crunching kicks and some advice about lying to someone as superior as the father. Because Lemuel had been lying. The suitcase was inside the shack and so was dead Leonard, who didn’t blow his brains out after all. His throat was cut.
“See what a shit world we live in, Clyde?” The father took a fortifying glug of Whitley’s. “Brother against brother, father against son. Fuck all.”
The father bounced back into the trailer and came out with a gray jug of cookstove kerosene. He said, “Hop in the car, sunshine, we got places to go. This will only take a minute.”
He disappeared inside the shack and there was the splashing and the distinctive smell of kerosene. I waited for the WHOOMP and the WHOOSH, but all I heard was “Burn you son-of-a-bitch. Take. Take. Shit. Come on.” Kerosene can be hard to get going. You’d think you could just throw a match on it and you’d have it made. But it can be a stubborn accelerant. The key is a little Whitley’s. BLAM! The doorway glowed bright and the father came leaping out.
The pink and black car with bite marks in the dash got the same treatment. And I was thinking of the teeth that made them. They looked like the teeth of a child. Someone’s baby teeth marks melting in the flames.
It started to rain.
“This one’s going to blow,” said the father, gunning the engine and we were down the road when it did. I looked over my shoulder and watched the brightness through the wet rear window. It started to pour. It was Sunday morning.
“Goddamn!” said the reeking father. “It couldn’t go more professional than that. Whole damn street will be on fire before someone calls it in. Fire department won’t give a shit. There ain’t nothing to save. They’ll watch it. Keep it from spreading. Eat candy bars and shoot the shit. But no one is going to go sniffing around back there and if they do? Know what they’ll find? A goddamn three-way! Haw! We got us a nice car here, Clyde. The future’s looking bright, Clyde.” And he went on like that, giddy like that, trying to wipe the steam off the windshield with his filthy hands, rolling down his window, letting the creosote smell curl delicate tendrils into the car and that became stronger and then flooded the air, and as the father tried to find the defroster knob the car slid onto the wet boards of the wooden bridge.
“What the—OH SHIT!” The father hit the brakes and the trailer fishtailed and pushed us farther down. When he was able to stop he tried to back up but the planks were slick and the trailer was too heavy. I heard the oncoming roaring, the ting-ting-ting of the approaching bell, not the whistle yet, the whistle would come in a moment, a clear screaming that would shake the world apart.
We were up so high. Up so very high on such a rickety slick bridge. The father’s paralyzed hands were white on the steering wheel.