Cruddy - Lynda Barry [79]
The father asked a question but I couldn’t hear what it was. The sheriff said, “That’s THEIR business. I keep out of it. I don’t want to know, you understand?”
There was more conversation but it was getting too mumbly for me to follow it. Voices low, making deals, making plans. The sheriff saying, “So you in or out, Earlis?”
The father saying, “ I’m in.”
I heard their footsteps coming down the hall. The sheriff saying, “You got a strong stomach?” and then the sound of the lock and the sliding bolt.
The sheriff rapped out some knocks. He said, “If you’re by the door, Ee-gore, you better back up.”
In a low voice the sheriff said, “You ready?”
The father said, “I was born ready.”
The sheriff pushed the door open. He said, “Goddamn it, Ee-gore, you switched the light on.”
What I saw before my vision disintegrated was a double sink, very deep, a metal table with a drainage trough around it, heavy hooks for hanging, and a job someone left in the middle of. And the job’s head was severed from its body and the head didn’t have a face or a lower jaw. It had a horseshoe of human teeth, and some of the teeth had gold fillings. And that was what I stared at until something like ash began to fall inside of my eyes, an obscuring gray ash, a blinding that comes. An incineration of vision.
I heard the father and the sheriff. Words, words, words, and someone was walking me outside, fingers pinching tight around my arm, a voice whispering, “Be good, Clyde. We struck gold, Clyde. See you next week, Clyde.”
And then I was in the sheriff’s car, in the grated-off backseat. From the sticky upholstery came an old puke smell very strong. I could smell Old Skull Popper, I could hear the sheriff sucking down long pulls from a bottle. I felt for Little Debbie. She was there.
The sheriff said, “Ee-gore, right now you need a friend in the worst way, don’t you?”
We were on a dirt road, possibly a field road. There was the fragrance of hops. If you know the smell of fields of hops at night. It can be a calming smell. A very kind smell. I heard the hissing of the irrigation devices. The stutter of the water jets. A spray welted hard across the roof and the sheriff rolled up his window. He turned onto a smaller wheel rut path and then he stopped the car.
It was a hot night but he wanted the windows up. Sound travels so easily over flat fields. But even with the windows shut I could still smell the hops, and I fought to hold on to that smell, to concentrate on it. The molecules of it. The sheriff took another pull off the bottle and got out of the car. The back car door opened and he squeezed himself in. He said, “We can make this easy or we can make this hard. If you try to bite me, you won’t have a mouth left. Understood?”
He wanted me to take a drink. He passed me the bottle. I took a glug and passed it back. I wanted him to know I was being cooperative. There was the sound of him unbuckling his belt, and the unzipping and the rearrangement of pants. He put his hand on the back of my neck and pushed my head downward. I didn’t resist. I didn’t hesitate. Never hesitate. Move fast, follow through, let the blade do the work.
My first swipe was a reach-around. Little Debbie was so sharp I didn’t know I truly cut him. I felt something like a knife passing through a hard-boiled egg but that was all.
The sheriff froze in the shock of it, and in that instant I took my second swipe. The neck, always the neck in one motion, get the carotid, the jugular, the windpipe if possible, then GO! GET! Jump away from his grabbing hands, jump out of the car flying because he has a gun, insane pop-pop fire power giving flashes brief and bright, the smell of hops of hops of hops and then the smell of the wet earth itself.
His car engine revved, he was driving wild, I looked up to see his headlights swinging through the blackness, and then a sick crunching and everything stopped. His taillights were high and uneven. He was in the culvert. He had driven into the culvert.
The dome light weakly illuminated his body laying strange, half in the car and