Cruddy - Lynda Barry [87]
We were on an unpaved road marked PRIVATE, then we passed through a barbed-wire archway marked NO TRESPASSING, and then we went past signs with red skulls on them saying DANGER RESTRICTED AREA and that is where he gave me my driving lesson. On the shockingly white desert flats between ranges of dried mountains and sudden rock formations so peculiar.
“Straight,” said the father. “Go that way, south, south, until I tell you to turn.” And then he stretched out in the backseat, closed his eyes, and he tumbled into snoring.
I liked driving. I liked it very much. And I liked the weird landscape. It seemed like I had been there before and that was a mysterious feeling.
Pammy stirred. In her oblivion she mumbled some words I couldn’t make out. I tried to keep us going straight on the forbidden road, which was getting fainter in the blowing dust. The place was looking so familiar to me it made some chills run up my back. Pammy mumbled again and I looked over and saw she had wet her pants. Her face was looking quite boiled. Her dried-out lips were moving.
The white flats before me had a shimmer rising. Looking like water up ahead. Looking cool in the wiggling heat. I was feeling so thirsty.
The blowing dust was alkali, called alkali, a mineral in the dirt that the wind kicked up and made you taste it. It was bitter and metallic. But the whiteness it gave to things was beautiful and I will admit I became enchanted and I found out I could feel even more enchanted if I smoked a cigarette and did some graceful curves with the steering wheel and then I had to try a circle and then I had to try a spiral and then I went back to peaceful serpentines. I had some quenching little sips of Whitley’s and then my mind jolted. There was a reason I knew this place.
The Horror of the Blood Monsters. It Came From Outer Space.Them! The Blob. The Mummy. The Amazing Colossal Man. I was in the valley of the monsters. I was in the middle of the location where so many of the world’s greatest movies were filmed. I was right where the plane did a sudden nosedive and crashed and blew up on fire and an innocent man ran to help, he jumped into the flaming wreckage to pull the pilot to safety, but BLAMBLAM! There was plutonium on the plane and the radioactivity burns him crunch black. He ends up very bald but he lives. The radiation has caused a change. He starts growing. His body becomes huge and he can’t stop wanting to destroy everything, he hurls a bus full of people over his head. They all die. The furious emotions of the Amazing Colossal Man are real.
I kept thinking, “I am driving right where he was formed. I am driving right where he walked.”
I took another little sip of Whitley’s. I thought about how there actually were moments when life was good and decent. I kept driving and sipping. I can’t tell you exactly when I lost the road. At some point I just noticed there were no tire tracks to follow anymore and then a jet came flying so low and silent followed by an explosion so loud that my mind just went white. Then came another and another and another. “Fucking hell!” shouted the father.
Pammy was roused. She unlatched her door, fell out and rolled. I opened my door, walked around the car and leaned on the back bumper. Radiation transformation. I puked silver heaves.
Chapter 44
HE AIR above the white desert flats was so still after the jets passed over. I heard the tobacco on the father’s cigarette burning on every inhale. He was leaning on the hood of the car, surveying the four directions. “We are lost as shit.”
Pammy said, “Hepme, hepme, I canna mo mah les.” She was wiggling in the alkali.
I heard a slight vibration in the air. Like the sound of wind whipping over something hollow. I said, “They’re coming back.”
“Shit on it,” said the father. “It’s just the Air Force.”
Pammy said, “Tha lilbassart tahks! Ah jassherd hi! Tha lilshid tahks!” The father propped her up. He said, “You’re dreaming, fat-ass.”