Cruddy - Lynda Barry [84]
The day spun overhead and the road went shiny and sent up heat wiggles and Pammy’s head hung out the window all the way to the Nevada border. She got the worst sunburn.
As the light began to fail I watched the father’s cooked-liver eyes in the rearview. He was on Whitley’s and Snore-Not and the Snore-Not made him jumpy and talkative. Made him come out with different provoking sentences. One was, “You know Clyde, I’ve been meaning to tell you, I’m not really your father.”
Chapter 42
OU GAVE HIM DRUGS?!” Vicky was screaming at me. She was screaming about the Stick’s condition and the Stick was telling her to shut up, just shut up.
Susie yelled from downstairs, “I DRINK TO YOU, CAPTAIN! GODDAMN! WHITLEY’S SPEAKS IN A WHISPER. SHIT AND GODDAMN! I WHISPER!” Vicky yelled, “SHUT UP, SUSIE!”
The Stick was getting the rushes and so was I. It was making us freely ask and answer questions. I said, “Why is his name Susie?”
The Stick said he gave himself that name after seeing the E-Z Bake Oven commercial and grooving violently on its song.
I want to say more about the mysterious Susie Homemaker. Horrible fumes came from him. He was a cigar person, a Swisher Sweets person. He was also a don’t-touch-my-rotting-food person, and a pee-in-a-Gallo-wine-jug person with bad aim. He was a twenty-four-hour person in love with his swivel TV. And he wore women’s clothes, and every time I asked either the Stick or Vicky if Susie was their father they told me to go fuck myself.
“THE STICK CAN’T HAVE DRUGS!” screamed Vicky and she moved like she was going to hit me and then she shivered. Her rushes came late. Her rushes came late because she dropped the Creeper with a Diggy’s milk shake. My stomach was empty and so was the Stick’s. We began to raise.
I said, “You want to hear a story?”
Vicky said, “No.”
The Stick said, “Yes.”
I said, “Once upon a time in a deep cave, a dry cave, a certain spectacular cave among the thousands of caves in the area of the Moapa Indian reservation and the Valley of Fire in the state of Nevada, in a location about to be swallowed up by Dreamland, called Dreamland by the military, called Area 51, a secret testing place for spy planes and nuclear bombs, very near the Dam of Damnation, once Boulder, now Hoover, which insults a huge river called the Colorado, in this cave a three-headed dog sits in the blackness upon three Samsonite suitcases and the suitcases are full of money and the dog has six swirling eyes as big as saucers.”
“How much money?” asked Vicky in a very blasted way, her eyes gone black from the dilation.
“Thousands,” I said. “Thousands and thousands. And it’s still there. And anyone who finds it gets to keep it. And I know exactly where it is. And if anyone wants to get rich, all they have to do is ask me to take them there.”
Vicky raised her hand very excitedly. “Me! Me!”
The Stick started laughing.
I said, “But can you face the six dreaded eyes of the three-headed dog? Many have tried and all have failed. The money is covered with blood.”
Vicky said, “Don’t freak me, Roberta, OK? Because I don’t want you to freak me so just don’t, OK?”
“I’m not trying to freak you, Vicky.”
“Then don’t say the dog has six eyes and the money is covered with blood because it wrecks the whole oh oh oh oh oh oh.” The double rushes shook her and her needle stuck on the word “oh.”
I said to the Stick, “What condition? What was Vicky talking about when she said your condition?”
The Stick stood up and stretched. He said, “I’m going to take a walk outside.”
Then Vicky started laughing very hard. She said, “You? YOU?” Because it turned out the Stick never went outside. He hadn’t been outside for several years. And I was thinking this was the condition because I had heard of this condition where a person is not able to go outside without having a massive flip-out.
But the Stick went down the stairs and I followed him and Vicky grabbed her purse and followed me saying, “I have to see this. I have to see this.” And we