Cruddy - Lynda Barry [75]
Above the bar, hanging from one of the rafter ribs, something was attracting certain night insects, carrion feeders. Something about the size of a head was crawling with shimmer-butt flies in ecstasy. It was all I could do to keep myself from looking up. The waxed paper loops and special trusses were about soaked through.
Something fell against the father’s neck, caught in the back of his collar. The father hopped off his stool and swatted it out. It bounced on the floor. “What the hell is that?”
The sheriff leaned down to pick it up and flung it as soon as his hand made contact. “It’s a goddamned EYEBALL!”
Pammy threw the bar rag over it. She stepped on it.There was a sick wet popping sound. They all stared at the bar rag like it was going to move. The sheriff pig-squinted his eyes at the father. “What kind of trick-shit are you trying to pull?”
The father said, “Me?”
Pammy whispered, “It’s the Swede.”
The sheriff snapped. “Don’t start, Pammy. It ain’t the goddamned Swede.”
And that is when the rest of the paper loops gave way.
There were some thin shrieks and violent shouts and a scramble to get to the door and then the three of them were outside half hopping in the gravel.
“Oh shit,” said Pammy. “Oh goddamn, Arden. I told you we should have—”
“Shut it, Pammy.” The sheriff had taken some direct hits and was panic-brushing putrid slime chunks and sopping hair wads off of his shirt. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Don’t anybody talk to me for a minute here, I’m next to puking.” And then he roared such a gush that he stumbled backwards.
The father said, “I need a goddamned drink and we left the goddamned Whitley’s in there, Pammy.”
Pammy said, “I’m not going in there.”
The sheriff said, “Shit, I ain’t scared.”
The father said, “I ain’t scared.”
Pammy followed them back inside. A dozen eyeballs lay on the floor in assorted positions. The rotting smell was horrendous.
Pammy whispered the Swede’s name when she saw the carcass on the bar. Out of the gape of its horrible hind end, long pale hair hung dripping with slime.
“It’s a chicken,” the sheriff said. “Some wise ass is playing tricks.” He was looking at the father.
Chapter 36
LYDE,” SAID the father, gesturing out the trailer window. “Some day all of this will be yours.”
“Clyde,” said the father, “I signed the papers on you.”
He laid out his plan, drawing pictures with his fingers on the Formica table between us, little strategy maps showing where we were now, where he was going and where I was going and then he drew some lopsided circles about what was going to happen in the future. He said, “You won’t be in there long, when me and Pammy get back from Vegas I’ll come and bust you out, Clyde. Promise.”
I just stared at him. I’d planned to leave with the migrants to pick apples but they were already gone. The grandma-ma was gone. All that was left in the campground was trash and torn tarps. I didn’t see them go. Nobody did. The father said he and Pammy were packed and ready. He said we would look back on this time someday and laugh. When they wrote the book about how the Rohbeson’s meat empire rose again, it would be the first chapter.
His brain was corroding. At the time I thought it was the work of the Corpse Reviver. Making his talking and his thinking so confident and insane. But I think his brain would have corroded anyway because he was a naturally corroded person. There are people like this. There are people like the father everywhere. Now you see them, now you don’t.
When I spoke, he jumped a little. I think he’d forgotten I still could.
I said, “Can I have Little Debbie back?”
He said, “Do you promise to be good?”
I said, “I promise.”
I was so thankful to have her back. I laid low in the scrub feeling her edge in the darkness while I listened to Pammy cursing out Fernst. They were half looking for me. The father and the sheriff had hollered my name a couple of times. I thought of the grandma-ma making