Cruddy - Lynda Barry [55]
Chapter 25
E WAS standing at the end of the gravel road between Black Cat Lumber and Bob Smallwood’s U-Rent-It. I saw his silhouette, colorless in the dim light, the red end of a burning cig moved in a way I could not understand at first, it moved horizontally then disappeared then reappeared and moved horizontally again. And then I realized he was turning, spinning slow. And on the other side of Dunbar Avenue the yellow-lit Diggy’s Drive-In sign was also spinning slow. They were spinning together. Diggy the bull standing like a man with a chef’s hat on, offering a hamburger made from his personal meat and the Turtle blowing clouds of the ancient smokeable into the beginnings of the morning sky. I was thinking, Is he waiting forme? A little thrill ran up my spine and sparked in the back of my throat. I lifted my hand. “Turtle. Hey, Turtle.”
A dark car pulled up next to him. The guy driving said, “Turtle. What it is. I’m late, guy. I’m sorry, man.”
The Turtle leaned into the car and said some words. The guy driving said, “Where?”
The Turtle pointed in my direction. The guy said, “Hell yes!” He turned his car into the Diggy’s parking lot and parked beside the Dumpster. Pigeons ran out of many hiding places to meet him. He was tall and thin with a Diggy’s uniform on. Black slacks and a yellow shirt that said, HAVE YOU DUG DIGGY’S?
The Turtle made a come-on motion with his arm before he crossed the street. I felt the miraculousness of us finding each other again drain away. He didn’t seem surprised to see me. I was thinking, is it because he’s a hippie? Is it because no hippie is ever surprised by anything? People show up, people disappear, and people show up again because it is all so cosmic. Maybe the Turtle was just being cosmic. It was possible.
Some of the pigeons split off from the Diggy’s guy and walked over to the Turtle. When I got to the parking lot, I heard him talking to the birds, saying, “What it is, what it is, what it is.” Calling the birds by name. “What it is, Stump Foot, Greasy Wing Dragger, Greasy Wing Dragger Junior.”
The Turtle gestured from the pigeons to me, he said, “Meet your Queen. You will love her. Her motto is, ‘Cold french fries for all.’”
The Diggy’s worker wore a plastic engraved badge that said DANNY, but the Turtle introduced him as the Monkey.
The Monkey said, “This is her? I thought you said she was very horny looking.”
The Turtle said, “That is the Violent One. This is the Hillbilly Woman.”
“Oh.” He lifted a hand and said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” I said.
He looked at the Turtle. “So, is she coming? The violent girl-whatever? She part of this?”
I almost said “Part of what?” But the Turtle put his arm around me and said, “Let’s go inside and roll a fatty.”
The Diggy’s worker said, “Man, there’s no horny-looking violent girl-whatever. It’s just more of your psych-out bullshit, man. She’s just another psych.”
The Turtle said, “The Violent One is not just another psych. She’s the psych. She is watching you this moment in her cyanotic ICU2 TV set. She is leaning forward and hooting her magic horn. We will get the Hillbilly Woman very very high and she will lead us over the smaragdine mountain to a quiet pool where the Violent One awaits you.”
The Monkey said, “It’s just more of your bullshit so forget it, fuck it, it don’t matter.”
I said, “Smaragdine?”
The Turtle said, “From ‘Increase Your Word Power.’ ”
“Vocabulary,” I said.
“Absolutely,” said the Turtle.
“Piss on it,” said the Monkey.
He jingled some keys, unlocked some locks, and we followed him through the side door into a narrow hallway, stepping over brooms and dirty mops and then into a storeroom. I was still waiting for the Turtle to say something about how incredible it was for us to find each other again, and to ask me what happened after he dumped his stash and ran away from the rolling cop, and then to ask me about the fate of his stash, and then to have me blow his mind by reaching