Cruddy - Lynda Barry [5]
After the authorities found us, found me and Cookie wandering, and after they spread newspapers out on the backseat of the patrol car and told us to get in, our picture was in the next morning’s Las Vegas newspaper. Me and Cookie’s picture was. We looked bad and crusty. The caption called me the Mystery Child and the story underneath told of my shocking condition and amnesia and asked did anyone recognize me, anyone in this world? The picture was of the very olden me, my hair very very short, shaved like a boy’s and my arms and legs so skinny and my expression very paralyzed, me holding Cookie in my breadstick arms. And even though most of the blood was washed off of us we were still very convincing because the newspaper photographer told the Christian Homes lady to please leave some of the blood, he did not want all of the blood showing, but please leave a little because blood was the drama and the interest but too much of it was an appetite wrecker and it was a morning paper.
So the Christian Homes lady took me and Cookie into her cement backyard, all cement but painted green, and she made nauseated faces at our condition and also at the swirling fly families that had become our devoted followers and she unrolled the garden hose and said, “Stand right there,” and then, “Take off your clothes and put them there,” and when the reality of the nude version of me was revealed, she freaked totally. Because up until then, everybody thought I was a boy. When it turned out I was a girl, that was a surprise no one was expecting.
The father taught me. Against the odds, he taught me his wisdom: No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible BE the unexpected.
Chapter 4
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I met her at school on the day of my fifth-year anniversary of the Lucky Chief Motel Massacre. Public interest had finally laid down with its arms crossed like a vampire in a coffin. No one cared anymore who did it. No one cared if I ever told the story or not. It was what I had been waiting for, but when it finally came it was slightly a disappointment. On every other anniversary someone had always called us, someone from the Las Vegas paper, some reporter asking the mother, “Has she remembered yet? Has she talked yet?” And the mother got her chance at publicity, which is something she dearly loves. But this year the phone did not ring and the mother started looking at me with a little more squint to her eyes, like she was deciding something.
I was expecting to feel relieved when the story died. I was expecting to feel proud. The father always talked about the value of being able to really keep your mouth shut when it mattered. I kept mine shut for five years. It took five years for the parade of interest to finally pass. I thought I was going to feel happy when it did. I didn’t expect the empty street it left behind. I didn’t expect the old faded trash swirling in devil-cones around me.
They didn’t find him. They didn’t find his body, but I was thinking it was still there. I was thinking that if I really wanted to, I could take the money I have hidden and I could buy myself a Trailways ticket and I could go check on him. See if he is petrified like the shiny beef jerky man called Sylvester at Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe who is on display beside actual shrunken heads with sewn-up eyes and lips. Or maybe he is all skeleton now, picked clean and bleached out like the displayed bone with WHALE PENIS written underneath it. Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe is a good place to go when you are left wondering what finally became of the