CRUDDY (26 page)

HE FATHER actually did have a destination. actually did have a destination. He did have a location objective. It was off the beaten track. It was about fifty miles down a rock-filled road barricaded by a sign that said D
ANGER
! R
OAD
O
UT
! The father drove around it without even touching the brakes.

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 C
LOSED
F
OR
S
EASON.
C
LOSED
F
OR
R
EPAIRS.
E
XCUSE
O
UR
D
UST
W
E
’
RE
R
EMODELING.
G
UARD
D
OG
O
N
D
UTY.
T
HIS
P
ROPERTY
P
ATROLLED
B
Y
R
ADAR.
Y
OU
’
LL
G
ET
M
ORE
T
HAN
A
N
A
SS
C
HEWING
I
F
Y
OU
T
RESPASS
H
ERE.
T
HANK
Y
OU.
D
ORIS
H
ORACE,
O
WNER,
O
PERATOR.

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.”

Auntie Doris said, “
Earlis
?”

“He asked me to marry him.”

“
Earlis
did?”

“Surprise wedding.”

“I’ll say.”

The father came huffing and wheezing back over the rocks. Auntie Doris shouted, “YOU DICKLESS PIECE OF SHIT! SEE WHAT YOU JUST DID TO MY GLOSS ASPHALT?”

The Lucky Chief Motel was long and low with orange doors and cement-block windows. It was built right into the rock face. There was a theory that attaching directly to the rock would keep it cooler in the hot season. Some of the rooms had actual rock walls, and there was an awning over a cave opening that descended to a shallow underground stream. Water for anything but drinking came up from there. Over the cave entrance was quite a fancy sign. It said T
HE
L
AIR
O
F
T
HE
S
EQUINED
G
ENIUS.
As the light faded down to the last shreds I looked for bats to come shooting out, silent and swift. I like bats very much. They are the most incredible creatures. But none were in the Lair of the Sequined Genius.

There wasn’t much else to the Lucky Chief. Some truck-tire planters with zigzag edges and a couple of concrete picnic tables. I figured I’d seen everything there was to see. And then I saw her.

She was sitting on the bench of the picnic table closest to the door marked O
FFICE.
A very intelligent-eyed little dog staring straight at me. Studying me. Scraggly haired and dirty looking. A whitish-grayish dog.

The desert is famous for certain types of hallucinations. Mirages they can be called. Always in the distance, the thing most hoped for appears, like cool, cool water or the ice cream man. The superheated air rises in wiggles and reflects back your last wishes. There are a thousand movies that end with the main character crawling through the desert toward something that does not exist. Often this happens when treasure is involved. When one guy cheats another guy and won’t pay what he owes.

I walked toward the dog.

Auntie Doris said, “Careful. She bites.”

“Haw!” said the father. “Them two could have a contest.”

Pammy said, “Earlis, honey?”

The father said, “What, dolly-baby?”

Auntie Doris said, “
Earlis
? Shit. I need a goddamned highball.”

Darkness in the desert is so quiet. There weren’t any of the usual sounds, there were no train tracks, no sounds of cars, nothing to break the stillness except for a cracking explosion that had everyone but Auntie Doris diving to the ground.

“Testing,” she said. “They’re just testing is all.” She had the yellow bug lights on but I didn’t hear or see any of the usual night insects. I didn’t see any bugs at all except for small gatherings of midnight flies.

Pammy drained her third highball and ran her finger in the dripped condensation. We were sitting at the concrete picnic table. I was holding Cookie, then Peanut, née Snarla. It was Auntie Doris who named her Snarla, the Sequined Genius who named her Peanut, and me who named her Cookie.

I had my nose on the top of her head and I was inhaling her calming fragrance. The fragrance of dogs and the feeling of my face against their fur puts me in such a relaxed mood. A comforted mood. The father and Auntie Doris were glugging and re-glugging and re-hashing old times. On the table was a plastic container full of melting ice and an assortment of bottles and an ashtray that said S
TOLEN
F
ROM
L
OU
’
S
E
FFICIENCY
A
PTS.
S
PARKS,
N
EV.

Auntie Doris said, “Goddamn it, quit shooting your butts all over my asphalt. The ashtray is six inches from your elbow. You say he hung himself?”

The father said, “You know he hung himself, Doris.”

“Well. You scared the living crap out of Gy-rah.”

“I just wanted to give him a little half-brotherly kiss is all.”

“He don’t want to know you. He said you’re a pollution.”

“Pollution?”

“Don’t ask me. He’s the genius.”

“What do you think about it?”

“Me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I could give a French shit.”

“Well, that’s good.”

Pammy was staring at her engagement ring. I was starting to feel sad for her. I knew all about trying to hang on to certain words said by the father. She wanted the words to be true. And I could tell she loved him. And although she was an evil fungus growing on 200 pounds of irritated lard, her feelings were real. It wasn’t her fault that the father wandered into her life. Chance blew the father in a lot of directions. He rolled around this way and he rolled around that way, deforming everything he brushed up against.

“Earlis, what kind of stone is this?” Pammy held her hand up and touched the ring. “Daddy-baby, what’s this type of jewel called?”

The father lit another cig and threw the match onto the asphalt.

Auntie Doris said, “God
damn
you.”

The father said, “Dolly-baby, that right there is the genuine Eye of the Idol. Worth a pile.”

Auntie Doris snorted the word “
Earlis
” into her highball glass.

Pammy hung on.

ICKY CAME up the stairs dripping wet and her mascara had run black streaks down her face and her missing eyebrow area was looking very waxy and prominent. “Roberta. Come here! Come here!” Her whisper was urgent.

She pulled me over to her and put her face against my ear. Some of her dripping soaked into me. She whispered, “We did it. We did
it.
Oh god. I am SO in love.”

The Turtle and the Great Wesley stared at her.

Vicky said, “What?! Mind your own! Fuck.”

No one knew what to say.

Vicky pinched her eyes down into suspicious lines. “How come everybody stopped talking? What’s going on? You guys were talking about me, weren’t you?”

The Turtle said, “My dear Wesley. Let us return to the piano. You will play a dirge. I shall sing.”

And so the Great Wesley played and the Turtle sang, “
Daaane...is such...a fuh...ker...He...is...such...a fuh...ker...
”

Vicky’s smile shined when she saw Dane come up the stairs with his wet hair combed back. I saw him avoiding her eyes.

“Alas,” said the Turtle. “Alas and oh fuck. The Sultan of Ass-heads lives.”

“Fuck you, fuckhead. I need to get high, man.” He picked up the carved apple. “What a wicked fucking pipe, man. Matches. Matches.” Vicky scrambled to get him some. He took them without looking at her. He was acting like she was not in the room. Every time she sat closer, he moved away.

The Turtle said, “Observe. The Sultan knew her and now he knows her not. The Violent One has become a banished and broken filament in the world’s saddest lightbulb. Play, Wesley. Play the mournful tune.”

The Turtle sang to Vicky and threads of drool hung from his lips. He was looking very pale, and even when he sank to his knees he kept singing and in between vomits of watery pinkness into the shag carpet he kept singing and crawling toward her and she scrambled backwards, shouting, “Fuck! Fuck! Get away!”

The Sultan thought it was hilarious. He coughed out his apple cloud and said, “You two are fucking
perfect
for each other!” Vicky slapped the apple pipe out of his hands. The Sultan flipped her the finger.

The Great Wesley closed the piano cover, stood up and readjusted his bathrobe and said, “Brother, it is time I inform you that I am leaving and I will be taking the car.”

“The FUCK you ARE!”

The Turtle crawled to the apple pipe and was trying to get a hit off of it when the Sultan kicked. The apple pipe flew and hit the wall and the Turtle rolled onto the floor holding his jaw and the Sultan was about to kick him again but was stopped by a sudden cut on his arm, a slice, very clean and very deep and instantly gushing. Little Debbie gleamed in my hand.

“FUCK!” shouted the Sultan. “What the fuck ARE you people? I’m FUCKING calling the COPS!” And he ran to the telephone and we ran for the garage. All of us piled into a very sleek car and after a few false starts and some violent jerks we were rolling, rolling though the deep shadows of the dark boulevard, listening to Vicky crying and saying, “He used me. He used me. He used me.”