Cruddy - Lynda Barry [73]
“What promise?” said the Stick. “Where’s she going?”
I said, “How come you’re talking to me?”
He said, “What do you mean?”
I stood up and walked the roof ridge with my arms out until I came to the very edge.
I looked up at the dead pinholes that barely glittered. I said, “You ever think about killing yourself?”
He said, “All the time.”
Chapter 35
HAT THE hell smells so bad?” said the sheriff. “Pammy farted.”
“The hell I did,” said Pammy. “When I fart, you’ll know it.”
“Sheriff’s been drinking Blatz,” said the father.
“What’s wrong with Blatz?”
It was past midnight, and hot. Outside the night insects clicked and whirred and the ones that were too big to get through the wide-gauge screen on the door to the lounge, bashed their heads against it trying. But there were lots of bugs who fit through fine and Pammy watched with some satisfaction when they found the flypaper. “See there? It isn’t just for flies.”
Every time she looked up, I freaked.
The father said, “Why do you keep that meat saw room locked?”
Pammy and the sheriff hesitated. Pammy said, “Mexicans,” and the sheriff said, “We’ve had trouble.”
The father said, “Well, that sure explains it.”
There was an uneasy silence and then the sheriff started in again on me and the spooker home. He had the sign-over papers on the bar.
I’d seen the shadow car three other times. The shadow men rolling in quiet with no headlights on and unloading rigor mortis cargo. I’d seen the rendering man called Mom come and go.
During one of his extended Corpse Reviver trailer visits, the father reached in his pocket and pulled out a gold pocket watch, with four diamonds marking the quarter hours. He said, “Look at this. She gave it to me this morning. She told me, ‘Don’t let Arden see it.’ I said, ‘Why not?’ When I ask questions, she gets French on me.” And what he meant by getting French was that instead of answering him, Pammy started kissing him violently. “It’s effective,” said the father. “I’m thinking her and Arden are running some sort of fence, but some of the shit I stumble across don’t fit.”
For example, the lighter he was using. He handed it to me. It was the familiar steel rectangle with USN engraved on one side. On the other side, it said, CV HOT PAPAS-PTO-1944-SEMPER FI.
“Marines, Clyde,” said the father. “You know what the Hot Papas are? Goddamn ghosts is what they are. White asbestos suits from top to bottom with just a little peephole for the eyes, them are the ones that run into the wreckage and drag your ass out of the fire. Know where I found this? Laying out front in the dirt. And here, look at this.”
He reached in his shirt pocket and handed me a heavy gold ring studded with diamonds. A man’s ring. He said, “She gave me that too. It’d look about right on a pimp, wouldn’t it? Arden ain’t supposed to see that neither.” He glugged on the last of the mindbending Corpse Reviver. He said, “I could drink a bathtub of this, here. It just gets better.”
I turned the ring over in my hands.
“You know why she gave me that, Clyde?”
I shook my head.
“She wants me to marry her.” Glug, glug. Glug, glug. “And I’m thinking of doing it.” And the Corpse Reviver spun his mind into an excited and vicious trance, pinwheels of possibility whirled. He said, “Vegas. That’s the place to do it. It’s so goddamn perfect. I can go by Doris’s motel and get Old Dad’s last suitcase, me and Pammy can get married. This place is in her name, the Dead Swede signed everything over.” His face was dripping sweat and he was turning very red and his lips pulled away from his teeth in an uncontrollable smile that was not a smile, more like something you see on a dead person’s face. Rictus. It’s called rictus.
He was getting emotional, he was talking about Old Dad. He was pointing at the light fixture and saying Old Dad was trying to make him understand. Old Dad guided him to the Knocking Hammer to carry on the tradition that began before man could hardly stand straight and still had ten pounds of hair