Cruddy - Lynda Barry [61]
The smell from the feedlot was instant and strong. A nose-twister of super-heated cattle pee and the further nose-twister from the cull pile behind the slaughter shack. More turkey buzzards. The sound of a meat saw buzzing. The familiar flies rising up in greeting. It was a dilapidated operation, small and ratty, but the father’s face lit up when he saw it. He patted the steering wheel and said, “Well, I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch.” He looked over at me but I turned away before our eyes met. He never mentioned what happened at the edge of the canal. For the father it was another world ago. The balance didn’t carry over. He said, “This lady, this Pammy, she likes kids. I want you to honey-up to her, Clyde. And the sheriff too. Come on then.” He got out of the car.
There were some barefoot kids with slept-on hair and dusty legs wearing raggy shorts and tank tops watching us from in front of one of the Knocking Hammer entrances with “Gro STORE” painted above the door. The kids were licking their tongues into the tops of empty Fanta bottles and picking their faces and jumping up onto the sagging porch to try to see into our car. One ran up very close to my window and the sheriff cuffed him. They scattered around the side of the building.
I looked at myself in the wing mirror and saw my eyes looking back through holes in a horrible head, my face was swollen and bruised and there was a pounding pain behind my forehead that was getting louder. The father said, “Quit dragging ass, Clyde.”
There were a couple of cars parked cockeyed out front. The sheriff was late and the regulars who gathered to hear his afternoon wisdom were watching for him. When they heard him haw-hawing so loud outside, they came out of the door marked LOUNGE. They were rubbed-out men. Looking like old hard erasers.
The sheriff was standing at the open trailer door. Around him flocks of new flies were rushing in, attracted by a scent, a new drift of promising molecules. “HAW-HAW!” brayed the sheriff. Then his smile dropped away and he turned to the father, pulled out his gun and said, “You’re under arrest, you bastard.”
The father jerked so slightly, the movement was hardly visible to the human eye. A fly would have noticed it. The compound eye makes even the most minuscule motion seem huge. And I was thinking that maybe the sheriff was part fly because he saw it. He saw it and he kept his hard-faced expression for a few more seconds and then laughed harder. He said to the men, “You see his face! HAW HAW.” He tapped the father with the gun barrel. “Got ya, Milsboro! Haw haw haw!”
The father saw the men with eyes and ears open for a show. It was just a show. The sheriff called them over to have a look inside the trailer. He jerked his thumb at the father. “Do you know this joker tried to sell a county sheriff deer meat off-season?” And I watched the sheriff lie and the father follow.
The sheriff said, “And look at how he fixed it up for me. Don’t it just look mouthwatering?”
More haw-haws. The father played to the sheriff. He said, “Now where’s this Pammy?”
“Ho!” said the sheriff. “You’ll know her when you see her. Somebody call to Fernst. Somebody call Fernst to help with this mess.”
One of the men loped back inside. I heard him holler “Fernst? Fernst?”
A woman’s voice shouted, “What do you want with him? Don’t you go in there. He’s on the job! Goddamn you, get your dried-up ass back on the other side of the bar. Who wants him?”
There was some low-voiced conversation and then the man loped back out and the sound of the meat saw stopped. The sheriff said, “You go on inside, son. You tell Pammy I said for her to give you a red soda pop.”
“Well,” said the father. “He don’t exactly talk.”
The sheriff said, “Oh, shit, that’s right.” He looked at the men and said, “Mongolian idiot. Genuine.”
“Boy’s pretty busted up,” said one.
The sheriff said, “Faller’s disease. Brain troubles. Thrashing spasms.” He talked like he’d known about me for years. “He’ll never get beyond the mental age of five.”
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