Cruddy - Lynda Barry [93]
The father and Auntie Doris were inside the office settling out some private things. It was Gy-Rah the Sequined Genius who had received the final suitcase. Gy-Rah, half brother of the father, son of Auntie Doris and Old Dad, sired by a slaughterhouse man and not the Sensational Powder Monkey. This was news Gy-Rah could not accept. This was news he refuted through a bull-horn from his hidden location in the rock face above us. He did not want the money, he wanted no part of the pollution, he wanted the defiling elements to leave his surroundings.
“Clydie,” said Pammy. “Why don’t you run go knock on that door and find out what is taking your daddy so long in there.” She lit a Salem from the charity pack Auntie Doris tossed her like an apple to a hog. “Son of a bitching menthol. Can’t taste them.” She was lighting up one after the other, smoking them down, stabbing them out, lighting one up again.
“YOU WILL EVACUATE THE AREA IMMEDIATELY!” said the insulted amplified voice.
“Clydie,” said Pammy. “Could you run up that hill and find that screechy little bastard and tell him his voice is giving me a headache?”
Cookie was asleep on my lap. She was wiggling her feet slightly and making little noises. Dreaming. I didn’t want Pammy to keep talking. I didn’t want to get to know her. I didn’t want to care about what was going to happen to her now that she was in the realm of the father.
“Clydie, can I confess you something? I never been this far before. I mean away-far. And this is far. You better believe it. This is son-of-a-bitching far and it gives me the shivers thinking about it. I want to call Arden and tell him where I’m at but that Doris says there’s no telephone. Now how can you run a motel without a telephone. Arden is not going to take this too good.”
I thought of the sheriff hanging half out of his car, draining himself into the corrugated half pipe. After you are dead you don’t really keep bleeding, there’s nothing to keep your blood moving except for gravity. If you are hanging upside down then gravity is a factor. It’s called bleeding out the carcass.
“Clydie, how is it that your daddy and that Doris are related?”
She studied the ring. The gleaming Eye of the Idol. “She from your daddy’s side of the family?”
I shrugged. She stabbed out another Salem. She gandered at her ring some more, tilting it this way and that way. She said, “You think it makes my finger look fat?” She was rolling, following the glinty glimmer of the Eye of the Idol into the darkness. She was rolling into the blackness after the imaginary man.
She knocked the stone against her dead tooth. Tap-tap-tap. She said, “It’s real. Can tell by the sound.” Tap-tap-tap. “See there? It’s genuine.”
I said, “His name is Raymond. Raymond Rohbeson.”
She said, “Who is? What is?”
I pointed toward the office door. “Raymond Rohbeson.”
She said, “Which?”
I didn’t say anything.
She said, “Your daddy?”
I nodded.
“You say he’s Raymond?”
I nodded.
She lit another smoke. She said, “Raymond Ro-what?”
“Rohbeson. With an ‘h.’ And he’s not really my father.”
“He’s not the what?”
“He told me he wasn’t really my father.”
“Earlis did?”
“No. Not Earlis. Raymond. Earlis is a dead guy.”
Pammy slapped me. She slapped me very hard across the face. When I told the truth about the father this was her reaction.
And after I jumped away and after Cookie lunged at her snarling with fangs exposed and ready to puncture, and after they did puncture and grip through the lard and held on through Pammy’s jumping panicky yanks and after Pammy hollered, “EARLIS, HELP ME! GODDAMN IT HELP ME!” and after Cookie let go and precious blood drops flew and scattered, there came such a flashing light, blue-white and blinding, sending a brief shock of skin-searing heat and a deafening blast, an explosion coming at us in echoing waves and the ground trembled and rocks came loose and there was a sudden flurry of scattering lizards and dusty snakes shooting out of hidden places and Pammy screamed again and Cookie faded fast up into the rock face and I followed her.
Pammy screamed,