Cruddy - Lynda Barry [52]
He said “nort” for north. “We’re from Milsboro, that’s our town. One of the guys on my ship was from Milsboro, North Dakota. North or South, shit, I can’t remember which. Don’t matter. It’s all bum-fuck. So where we from, Clyde?”
I said, “Milsboro.”
He said, “Wrong. You don’t answer questions. You can’t talk. You got faller’s disease. Broke your brain. Never get beyond the mental age of five.” And he spun out the details, some of them quite fancy. How his wife left him without a warning. How all he had left in the world was a mongolian idiot son who he was trying to spread a little joy to. Taking the boy on a hunting trip, teaching the boy how to shoot. Just drinking and shooting rifles in the woods with a retard to help ease the pain.
“You paying attention, Clyde?” I nodded. I wanted to say that if I was never supposed to talk anyway, why did it matter? There were a lot of things I wanted to say to him but my mouth was not so interested in helping me. It was not going to be hard to play my part of the new identity.
The story he was practicing was for the cops. For if we got stopped. He checked his reflection in the rearview mirror to perfect his look of broke-dick sincerity. “Hell yes, I been drinking, Officer. Don’t want to live without her, many a night I come this close, had the rifle barrel in my mouth and my big toe on the trigger. But I got my retard boy to think of, don’t I? I can’t just turn him loose in the world, can I? So shit yes, Officer. If misery’s a crime then lock me up. I don’t hardly give a damn no more. Just be good to my boy.”
The father inhaled off of one of the stale Old Gold cigarettes he took from the store. “Well, what do you think?” He flashed his wet teeth. “Can’t you just see me on The Movie of the Week?”
And then for the first time he mentioned the mess in the trailer. How we had to do something about it and he had a damn good idea. He turned onto another logging road, bumped along the ruts for a while, and then stopped the car. He was twitching the radio dial for a station, found one that played his music and said, “Tell me quick, Clyde. Who’s that singing?”
I thought, Roy Drusky, but my mouth wouldn’t move to say it.
The father said, “Aw come on! You know damn well who that is.” His mouth was full when he said it. He smiled at me big through a wet wad of deviled ham. He was feeling jolly. He was feeling optimistic. And he was acting like he liked me a lot.
He said, “Ain’t you going to eat? At least have one of them candy bars. I got them for you.”
I unwrapped one. The chocolate had gone waxy white. The father took out another ancient Old Gold. He put the lighter to it and said, “Tastes like horse pucky. Want to try?”
I took one. I liked smoking. I was liking it enough to call it love.
He reached over the backseat and pulled up one of the three glass jugs he found behind the counter. They were full of a slightly clouded tea-colored liquid. “Hooch,” said the father. “The real deal. Homemade. See what it says here?”
On a crumbling piece of masking tape someone’s shaky handwriting spelled out CORPSE REVIVER.
The father pried off the top and whiffed it. “Hooooo! This shit is a hundred proof. At least. My nose hairs just fell out. Have a snort, Clyde. Come on, son. It’ll give you another eye.”
I sniffed at the jug. The smell didn’t strike me as anything at first and then I saw colored lights behind my eyeballs. I said, “You first.”
“All right. Hell.” He hooked his finger into the glass loop and balanced the jug on the raised crook of his arm. “This here is how we drink out of a jug back home in Milsboro. Bottoms up.” He glugged many glugs and from his eyes rolled burning tears.
He passed it to me and then he started gagging. He started making a wet choking noise and hitting his chest with his fist and then there was an especially