Cruddy - Lynda Barry [90]
The horse pills were wearing off and Pammy was feeling better. She was leaning up from the backseat and using her lardy fingers to do twirlies in the father’s hair. The father had given her a ring. She said, “Ish betafol.”
It was a man’s ring, fat with a low setting, and the stone in the ring, the jewel, was peculiar. I didn’t know what it was. The color of butterscotch candy and catching the light in a way that was hard not to stare at. Shooting little flitting sparkles around the car when the light caught it right. Where was it from? What was it?
Pammy reached over and tried to do a twirly in my hair. She said, “We’re ganna be a family.”
I jerked, and said, “Quit.”
I got an instant whack on the side of the head from the father, who slammed on the brakes and made me and Pammy change places. “Don’t be rude to her, Clyde. She’s your future mother and she’s still half tanked on muscle relaxers.”
Pammy kept turning around to look at me. Her burned and blistered face was freaking me. Her horrible dead tooth was freaking me. The rolls of fat on her neck were freaking me. She had a fresh change of clothes on, her peed-on Bermudas were on the floor of the backseat. The father was messing with the radio, trying to get a station to come in but all he got was a violently loud hum. He said, “We’re almost there.”
He said, “Clyde, I ever mention Auntie Doris to you?”
I said, “No.”
Smiling, Pammy said, “Ya talk. Why ya sneaky little turd. Say something. Say a little rhymey-something for me.”
I concentrated on the scenery. The radio was off but the hum was still detectable. The sound of power lines. Of hydroelectricity blasting through power lines.
The father said, “I never mentioned your crazy Aunt Doris to you, Clyde? The one with the two green W’s tattooed on her ass? Bends over, spells WOW. Stands on her head, spells MOM. She’s Navy. But Navy don’t begin to describe her.”
The road began to wind upward through rock formations, we headed into the dry jagged hills. The sun was setting and the sky was flaming out colors in that spectacular desert way, combinations that didn’t look actual, didn’t look possible. Gold and violet and blood-red. The father stepped on it a little, fishtailing around the rock-slide bends. Wherever he was going, he wanted to get there before dark. He and Pammy finished off the last drops of Whitley’s and the bottle sailed out the window. The hum was so loud my teeth were affected. They started itching from the inside.
We made a couple more turns and then hit a stretch of black-top, very smooth, it went on for about a quarter mile and then dead-ended in the big black parking lot of the Lucky Chief Motel.
There were many signs nailed onto a wooden post. They said CLOSED FOR SEASON. CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. EXCUSE OUR DUST WE’RE REMODELING. GUARD DOG ON DUTY. THIS PROPERTY PATROLLED BY RADAR. YOU’LL GET MORE THAN AN ASS CHEWING IF YOU TRESPASS HERE. THANK YOU. DORIS HORACE, OWNER, OPERATOR.
Two things happened right away. A stick-skinny woman with a big lower jaw and overcurled hair came running in a flapping flowered housedress screaming, “No! Stop! Goddamn it!” That was Auntie Doris.
Behind her a shadow-shape of a tall man took off running. The father threw the brakes on long enough to jump out and he tore after the shadow-man, both of them vanishing into some rock formations. Caverns and caves. They were all over.
The car kept rolling and Pammy was trying to hit the brake but was having a hard time getting her big leg to cooperate, we plowed along the natural dip in the parking lot with Auntie Doris chasing alongside us, grabbing on to the door handles and trying to drag the car to a stop, and this was my first real view of her, screaming her head off and trying to stop an entire car with her bare hands. The parking lot had just been re-topped that very day. The high bitumen content gave it a glassy surface. We rolled into it, rolled right through it. Came to a sticky stop. Auntie Doris stood at the edge of it with one hand over her mouth.
Pammy got out of the car. She said, “I’m Earlis’s fiancée.