Cruddy - Lynda Barry [76]
I could see Pammy upstairs in her chambers, getting ready to fry some potatoes and a couple of hamburgers in her little tiny kitchen. She’d been bragging about cooking all day, she was doing it for the father. She wanted him to know she could.
The father and the sheriff stood out on the porch. The sheriff said, “Think he ran?”
The father said, “Not Clyde. It’s not in him.”
He whooped out my name a couple more times and the sheriff said he was going to check the trailer. It was a moonless night and stars glinted over the Knocking Hammer. I guess it was then when I first noticed I was thinking about killing the father. It’s hard to say when premeditation begins. Laying there in the scrub watching his jug-eared silhouette with Little Debbie in my hand, the idea of killing him seemed very practical. On that night it seemed like a good idea to kill them all. Afterwards I’d take a walk, a stroll in the dark on the railroad tracks with my back to my personal train. I’d take a walk and then explode.
I am also a corroded person. Extremely corroded. I knew Pammy didn’t have a sense of smell. I heard her talking about it. She told the father she doesn’t miss it because she never had it.
Who squirted the lighter fluid all over Pammy’s hamburger meat? Who poured out her corn oil and replaced it with kerosene?
Chapter 37
DON’T THINK jumping is such a bad way to do it,” said the Stick. “But there are better.” With my feet still on the rooftop ridge, with the night sky above me, I said, “I saw a guy jump once.”
The Stick said, “Headfirst? If you’re serious you go headfirst. You dive. Hey, there it is, there’s the satellite.”
At first I couldn’t find it. And then the Stick was behind me, his head bent close to mine but not touching, trying to show me. And then I saw it. It looked like a faint star, but it was moving.
The Stick, “It’s tumbling. They tumble. Who did you see jump?”
I pictured Cookie biting the mother as the mother lifted her over the railing of the Aurora Bridge and let go. Let go and walked into a candy store and bought a pound of candy stars.
I said, “Where’s your mom?”
He said, “You need to see the attic.”
I followed him over a narrow shingled ledge that had to be walked sideways before we got to the oval attic window, a window without glass and a cloudy piece of plastic hanging over it from the inside.
It was easier to do than it looked and I have to say I enjoyed it. The hardest part was going headfirst through the window into the blackness. The Stick lit a match and then he lit a candle and then he set the candle on the floor beside a cracked mirror propped against the slanted roof and the candlelight doubled.
It was a good smell, the smell of the attic. The smell of wood very ancient and unpainted. Pine. The slanted walls had long pine-board cladding. And above the candle in the flicker light I saw a sentence written in pencil, in a child’s handwriting. I hope you die. I hope you rot. I hate you all. 16 September 1919.
The Stick watched me read it. He said, “She was locked up here because of him.”
I said, “Who?”
He said, “Well, he was obviously some asshole.”
“No. Who is she?”
He said, “Who are you?”
We sat by the window. I told him all of my names. Roberta, Clyde, Ee-gore, Mystery Child, Michelle, then Roberta again, and recently Hillbilly Woman. I told him the story of meeting Vicky and the Turtle and dropping Creeper.
He said, “Creeper?”
I told him it was in the stash box Vicky went to get. I told him the whole story except for what happened with the Turtle in the garage. Loose Lips Sink Ships and I was wanting to sink ships very badly, but I could not talk about the Turtle’s motions against my bare legs in the garage.
The Stick said, “What’s it like, Creeper? What’s it feel like? Is Vicky bringing it back here? Is there a lot?”
I said, “Is that guy downstairs your dad?”
He said, “Fuck you, OK? Don’t talk about Susie.”
I was trying to think of a way to explain