Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (8 page)

“Thanks, Doctor Brockett,” Gordon says, remembering his manners. Then he quietly adds: “Goodnight, Dad.” He can tell that his father doesn’t hear him.

“
Toro…
” whispers Mal, grabbing at his crotch.

“
Vaya con Dios…”
Gordon whispers back, in solidarity, as his mother cups her hand at the back of his thoughtful blonde head and leads him away.

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The next morning, Gordon gets up–sleepy-eyed, tousle-haired–and shambles along the hallway toward his morning bowl of Super Sugar Smacks. The dusty sunlight tumbling in through the sliding glass doors ahead of him seems polluted somehow, as if the air it travels through is coated with a thin layer of grease. Then Gordon realizes it’s a
smell
making him think that, the smell of cigarette smoke in stale, sweaty clothes mixed up with old beer and something stronger, maybe rum or gin. He finds Johnny Hoss and Mike Shriver laid out like the dead on the brown Danish Modern couches in the living room. Mike is on his back, snoring, with his mouth hanging open like a lascivious trout. Johnny, on his side, opens his eyes as Gordon tiptoes closer.

“Heya, Gordon.”

“Hi, Johnny,” whispers Gordon, not wanting to wake Mike. “How come you guys are here?”

“Well, it was kind of a wild night. Your daddy was showin’ us a good time.”

“He got bit.”

“I know.”

“You know who did it?”

They both look over at the other couch.

“I think so, too,” whispers Gordon. “But how come?”

“Dunno, really. I was blindfolded. And drunk as a skunk. They was doin’ some sorta initiation rite. Towards the end there, they made us eat somethin’ like a big ol’ wad of snot, only hairy. Damn near made me puke. Things started gettin’ kinda hazy after that.”

“Is that when he got bit?”

“Somewhere in there, yeah. But it was dark. Your Daddy was yellin’ somethin’ fierce, but by the time they got the lights on, there was no tellin’ who done it. But I could make me a good guess.” Johnny nods his head and gives another meaningful glance at the still-snoring Mike Shriver.

“Wouldn’t there be blood on his teeth?” queries Sherlock Gordon, Master of Deduction.

“Not really. He coulda licked hisself clean.”

“Like a cat.”

“Damn straight. You know that sign they use, the black cat with its ass all up in the air? Kinda creepy, innit? There’s some weird shit goin’ on with them Hoo-Hoos. Like, you ever heard of the Snark of the Universe?”

“No. What’s that?”

“I’m not sure, but I met the dude last night. Guess he’s some kinda wizard. He said a whole lotta mumbo-jumbo. Buncha black magic, hoodoo bullshit. At least they didn’t sacrifice no goats, but damn, it was weird. You stay away from them Hoo-Hoos, Gordon. Somethin’ just ain’t right with them sons-a-bitches.”

Gordon’s mother shuffles into the room then, wearing fuzzy pink slippers and a brown polyester fleece robe with white and yellow daisies stitched around the hems. She looks like she just woke up. Her eyes are half-closed and her brow is furrowed against the light coming in through the curtains. Her speech slurs when she says: “Gordon, you’re not bothering Johnny, are you?”

“No ma’am,” says Johnny. “I was already wide-awake.”

“Okay then. Good.” She rubs her temples as if she has a headache. Gordon’s mother suffers from migraines, or so she claims. The medicine closet down the hallway is full of painkillers–Darvon, Percodan, Codeine, Dilaudid–and Gordon can usually tell when she’s taken something, as she has this morning. Lately, it seems she takes at least five or six pills every day.

“Headache, Mrs. Swannson?” Johnny asks like a true gentleman.

“The worst. I took two Demerols, but so far they haven’t even touched it.”

“How’s Mal doin’? The Doc got him shot fulla morphine?”

“I wish. I would’ve asked for a shot, too. But Doctor Brockett said no painkillers because of all the alcohol in his system.” She turns to Gordon. “Shouldn’t you be getting some breakfast, Mister?”

Reluctantly, Gordon trudges off toward the kitchen.

“Bring my cigarettes while you’re at it,” Cynthia growls after him.

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By around noon, Cynthia is feeling much better. As a matter of fact, she’s high. She calls up Janice Marrsden and they decide to go see a movie together.
The Exorcist
is the one everyone’s talking about. Cynthia has already read the book. She usually sticks to Harlequin Romances–she goes through two or three a week, can’t get enough of them, for some reason. But most of them tell the same story: a young woman falls for a tall, handsome stranger. At some point Cynthia realized that a girl possessed by the devil is pretty much the same thing, only kinkier.

Janice drives over in her blue 1966 Mustang with Jimmy in the backseat. “Stan is off calming down some pissed-off farmer,” Janice announces. “Somebody painted a big sign on his barn that said, ‘
Bong Hits 4 Jesus
.’”

“Never a dull moment when you’re married to the Chief of Police,” says Cynthia, feeling a giddy hilarity fueled by fifteen cigarettes and a second round of Demerol.

“Oh, it gets plenty dull, believe me,” says Janice. “Anyway, I couldn’t find a babysitter, so I thought I’d bring ol’ Jimmy-Toad along with us.
The Swiss Family Robinson
is showing at the same time on another screen. Why don’t you bring Gordon? We’ll make it a double date.”

A deep-lined frown creases Cynthia’s face as she thinks about Gordon tagging along after them. Why can’t she be more like Janice, who takes Jimmy with her everywhere like some dog she adores? But at least Jimmy is borderline normal, as far as little boys go. Gordon is always embarrassing her with his cutesy-pie intellectual observations. He runs around making jokes about Nikola Tesla–or some crusty old monk that no one on God’s green earth has ever heard of–then he expects everyone to laugh. She tells him no one likes a Mister Smarty-Pants. Sometimes she’d like to shoot the lippy little punk. But she knows that would be wrong.

So she goes and gets Gordon. He’s so excited to be seeing a movie that he practically dives into the backseat with Jimmy. With matching glee, Jimmy peels back a Band-Aid on his elbow to show Gordon a scab. It’s a green, gelatinous thing, like amphibian skin. Maybe there’s more to this Jimmy-Toad business than Janice has been letting on.

It’s another scorcher of a day. They drive along Highway 99 to Fresno with the windows rolled down because the Mustang’s air conditioner is broken. Cynthia’s back feels sticky against the black vinyl seat. Janice has a Tupperware jug of iced tea that gets passed around, ice cubes tumbling around inside it like rocks. The boys leave their slobber on the spout, but Cynthia swigs from it again, anyway. The heat makes rude behavior seem natural, almost a celebration of living.

Gordon and Jimmy are sweating like little pigs. They’ve peeled off their T-shirts and have just noticed that they each have a tiny supernumerary nipple just below the regular nipple on their left breast.

“Mom!” Jimmy shouts to be heard above the wind and freeway noise, “me and Gordon both have three tits!”

“I guess you must be twins!” Janice jokes back at them.

The boys seem extremely pleased by this information. They hug each other. “See? I always knew we were brothers,” says Jimmy.

“I wonder who our real mom is–your mom or my mom?” says Gordon. And then quietly, but not so quietly that Cynthia doesn’t hear: “I hope your mom.”

That ungrateful little bastard!

“And what about our dads? Your dad, or my dad?” asks Jimmy.

“My dad. He’s bigger.”

“But my dad could put your dad in jail.”

“For what? Having sex with your mom?”

“That’s enough now, Gordon!” Cynthia glares at him from over the top of the front seat. She wants to reach back there and smack him, but she restrains herself.

Gordon and Jimmy look at each other with big fake grimaces of fear, as if they’re wearing skeleton masks.

“Those third nipples are called Witch’s Teats,” Janice informs them, not noticing the grotesque look of malice on Cynthia’s face. “People used to believe that witches had them so they could to suckle their black cats.”

“So we’re witches?” Jimmy asks, incredulous.

“No, silly. It’s just an old superstition. People get third nipples because it’s a genetic fluke, like blue eyes or crooked fingers. Lots of people have them.”

“So we’re not twins.” Gordon looks disappointed.

“Probably not,” says Janice, as she steers around a Volkswagen bus chugging up a steep overpass, “unless there was some mix-up around the time you were born.”

The boys’ faces brighten. At least there’s still hope.

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Three hours later, Cynthia and Janice emerge dazed and blinking from the Fig Garden Cinema Complex. They don their sunglasses and fire up menthol cigarettes as soon as they see the sun. “
Oh… my… god…
” says Janice, bearing down on her first inhalation.

“Kind of makes you think it might be time to start going to church again, hmm?” says Cynthia, already gargling smoke.

“Either that, or start dating a priest.” Janice turns to look at Jimmy and Gordon standing behind her in the doorway with the theater’s powerful air conditioning blowing against their thin T-shirts. They’re both shivering. She asks, “So how’d you like your movie, Jimmy-Toad?”

Jimmy appears too stunned to even answer. He moves his mouth like a goldfish, but no sound comes out.

The boys, of course, had gotten bored with
The Swiss Family Robinson
and decided to sneak in to see
The Exorcist
for themselves. They found seats in the back row of the theater just as the creepy girl was peeing on the carpet in front of an astronaut, so they naturally assumed the movie was a comedy–even though no one in the audience was laughing. But by the time the girl’s face turned ugly and she started stabbing herself between the legs with a crucifix and throwing up green gunk in people’s faces, they thought otherwise. Gordon and Jimmy were scared right out of their minds.

“That, uh…
tree house
was pretty good,” Gordon volunteers, trying to cover for his buddy.

“Yeah, real neato…” Jimmy manages to squeak out.

They shudder like ducks shaking water from their backs, then run out into the sunlight baking the cars in the parking lot. Cynthia knows something is up, but Janice is oblivious. Jumping up and down by the side of the Mustang, Jimmy asks his mother if they can go to Farrell’s for ice cream. It’s just on the other side of the mall. Janice takes a drag off her cigarette and looks to Cynthia for guidance. Cynthia shrugs. “Okay, we’ll meet you brats over there,” Janice shouts, blowing smoke.

“You’ll have to eat some dinner first!” Cynthia yells, just to show them who’s boss. But they’re already running.

Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor is not Cynthia’s idea of fine dining, but the boys love it. The wait staff wears straw boaters, striped vests, and starched white shirts with garters on the sleeves. The whole place looks like a turn-of-the-century whorehouse with fake Tiffany lamps hanging above every table and red brocade wallpaper on the walls. An old upright player piano kicks out manic Dixieland jazz for a quarter. Demented bells and sirens go off and crazy lights flash whenever someone has a birthday or orders a special ice cream sundae called The Pig Trough. It’s enough to give old men heart attacks and make parents wish their children had never been born.

If it were up to Gordon and Jimmy, they’d eat there every night. Farrell’s is especially on their minds around birthday time. If you sign up on the Farrell’s Fabulous Birthday Party List, on the designated day you get free ice cream sundaes. All you can eat. Farrell’s will later sell that list of names and birthday dates (some 167,000 names in all) to an envoy of the U.S. government, which will result in Gordon and Jimmy finding themselves in possession of darkly worded letters from the Selective Service when they turn eighteen, reminding them to register for the draft:

That bit of unpleasantness is far in the future, however. For the moment, all Gordon and Jimmy have to worry about is what to order for dinner. Gordon suggests something light, so they’ll have room for ice cream later. To Cynthia and Janice’s unspoken horror, the boys order split pea soup. Cynthia thinks to herself,
My god, those little shitweasels must’ve snuck in to
The Exorcist
and seen Linda Blair puking on the priest….
That suspicion is confirmed when the soup arrives. Neither Gordon nor Jimmy can find the will to eat it.

“Jimmy, you ordered that soup, now eat it, damnit,” says Janice. She opens up a new pack of cigarettes, tearing at the cellophane with talon-like Lee Press-On nails.

“You heard her, Gordon,” says Cynthia. “Eat it or wear it.

Jimmy shovels a few spoonfuls of soup into his mouth, grimacing. With bored nonchalance, Gordon picks up his soup bowl and balances it between his fingertips above his head. Sirens go off and the lights start flashing. A ragtime tune erupts from the player piano. Some imbecile has ordered another Pig Trough.

“I guess I’ll…
wear it,”
says Gordon as he upends the soup bowl over his head, to great green effect.