Vernon God Little (3 page)

I saw a show about adolescents that said role models were the key to development, same as for dogs. You could tell whoever made the show never met Jesus' dad, though. Or mine, for that matter. My dad was better than Mr Navarro, until the end anyway, although I used to get pissed that he wouldn't let me use his rifle, like Mr Navarro let Jesus use his. Now I cuss the day I ever saw my daddy's gun, and I guess Jesus cusses his day too. He needed a different role model, but nobody was there for him. Our teacher Mr Nuckles spent all kinds of time with him after school,
but I ain't sure ole powder-puff Nuckles and his circus of fancy words really count. I mean, the guy's over thirty, and you just know he sits down to piss. He spent all this time with Jesus, up at his place, and riding in his car, talking softly, with his head down, like those caring folk you see on TV. One time I saw them hug, I guess like brothers or something. Don't even go there, really. The point is, in the end, Nuckles recommended a shrink. Jesus got worse after that.

Lothar ‘Lard-ass' Larbey drives by in his ole man's truck, flicking his tongue at my buddy. ‘Wetback fudge-packer!' he yells.

Jesus just drops his head. I sting for him sometimes, with his retreaded, second-hand Jordan New Jacks, and his goddam alternative lifestyle, if that's what you call this new fruity thing. His character used to fit him so clean, like a sports sock, back when we were kings of the universe, when the dirt on a sneaker mattered more than the sneaker itself. We razed the wilds outside town with his dad's gun, terrorized ole beer cans, watermelons, and trash. It's like we were men before we were boys, back before we were whatever the fuck we are now. I feel my lips clamp together with the strangeness of life, and watch my buddy pull alongside me on his bike. His eyes glaze over, like they do since he started seeing that shrink. You can tell he's retreated into one of his philosophical headfucks.

‘Man, remember the Great Thinker we heard about in class last week?' he asks.

‘The one that sounded like “Manual Cunt”?'

‘Yeah, who said nothing really happens unless you see it happen.'

‘All I remember is asking Naylor if he ever heard of a Manual Cunt, and him going, “I only drive automatics.” We dropped the biggest fucken load.'

Jesus clicks his tongue. ‘Shit, Vermin, you always only thinkin bout dropped loads. Just loads, and shit, and girl tangs. This is real, man. Manual Cunt asked the thing about the kitten – the riddle, that if there was a box with a kitten inside, and if the box
also had an open bottle of death-gas or whatever, that the kitten's definitely going to knock over at any moment . . .'

‘Whose kitten is this? I bet they're pissed.'

‘Fuck, Verm, I'm serious. This is a real-time philosophy question. The kitten's in this box, definitely gonna die at some moment, and Manual Cunt asks if it may as well be called dead already, technically, unless somebody's there to see it still alive, to know it exists.'

‘Wouldn't it be easier just to stomp on the fucken kitten?'

‘It's not about wasting the kitten, asshole.' You can tick Jesus off real easy these days. His logic got all serious.

‘What's the fucken point, Jeez?'

He frowns and answers slowly, digging each word out with a shovel. ‘That if things don't happen unless you see them happening – do they still happen if you know they're gonna – but don't tell nobody . . .?'

As the words reach my ears, the mausoleum shapes of Martirio High School slam into view through the trees. A bitty chill like a worm burrows through me.

T
oo fucken late.
When you spot a jackrabbit it automatically spots you back; it's a fact of nature, in case you didn't know. Same goes for Vaine Gurie, who I spy in the road by my house. Storms clouds park over her patrol car.

‘Pam, stop! Leave me right here . . .'

‘Get a grip, we're nearly home.' Pam don't stop easy once she's going.

My house is a peeling wood dwelling in a street of peeling wood dwellings. Before you see it through the willows, you see the oil pumpjack next door. I don't know about your town, but around here we decorate our pumpjacks. Even have competitions for them. Our pumpjack is fixed up like a mantis, with a head and legs stuck on. This giant mantis just pump, pump, pumps away at the dirt next door. The local ladies decorated it. This year's prize went to the Godzilla pumpjack on Calavera Drive, though.

As Pam throttles back the car, I see media reporters up the street, and a stranger lazing next to a van in the shade of the Lechugas' willow. He moves a branch to watch us pass. He smiles, don't ask me why.

‘That man's been there all morning,' says Pam, squinting into the willow.

‘He a stranger, or media?' I ask.

Pam shakes her head, pulling up at my house. ‘He ain't from around here, I know that much. He has a camcorder, though . . .'

Fuck, fuck, fuck goes the mantis, like it does every four seconds of my life. Gas, brake, gas, brake, Pam berths the car like a ferry-boat. Fuck, fuck, gas, brake, I'm snagged in the apparatus of Martirio. Across the street, Mrs Lechuga's drapes are tightly
pulled. At number twenty, ole Mrs Porter stares from behind her screen-door with Kurt, the medium-size black and white dog. Kurt deserves a place in the fucken Barking Hall of Fame, although he ain't made a sound since Tuesday. Weird how dogs know things.

Next thing you know, a shadow falls over the car. It's Vaine Gurie. ‘Who do we have here?' she asks, opening my door. Her voice plays from deep in her throat, like a parrot's. You want to check her mouth for the little boxing-glove kind of tongue.

Mom scurries across our porch with a tray of listless ole joy cakes. She's in Spooked Deer mode. She looked this way the last time I saw my daddy alive, although Spooked Deer can mean anything from her frog oven-mitt being misplaced, to actual Armageddon. But her mitt's right there, under the tray. She heads down the steps past our willow, the one with her wishing bench under it. The wishing bench is quite a new feature around here, but already the damned thing's listing into the dirt. She pays no mind, and flounces up to Pam's car.

‘Howdy pardner,' she says to me, dripping with that cutesyshucksy Chattanooga-buddy-boy shit she started when I first showed evidence of having a dick. Feel the bastard shrivel now. I pull away, in vain because she chases me, covers me with spit and lipstick and fuck knows what else. Placenta, probably. All the while she smiles a smile you know you've seen before, but just can't put your finger on. Clue: the movie where the mother visits this young family, and by the end they have to grapple fucken scissors from her hands.

‘Gh-
rrr
.' Vaine steps between us. ‘I'm afraid your pardner here absconded from our interview.'

‘Well call me Doris, Vaine! I'm almost a Gurie myself, I'm so cozy with LuDell, and Reyna and all.'

‘Is that right. Mrs Little, let me explain where things stand . . .'

‘Well these cakes are just singing out to be tasted – Vaine?'

‘I'm afraid I don't make the laws, ma'am.'

‘At least come up to the house – no point getting hot and ornery, we can straighten things out,' says Mom. I stiffen. You don't want Gurie poking around my room or anything. My fucken closet or anything.

‘I'm afraid Vernon will have to come with me,' says Gurie. ‘Then we need to take a look through his room.'

‘Well, God, Vaine – he hasn't done any wrong, he
always
does like he's told . . .'

‘Is that right. So far he's done nothing but lie, and when I trust him alone he absconds. We still can't account for him at the time of the tragedy.'

‘He wasn't even there!'

‘Not what he told us, he told us he was in math.'

‘It was the time of our math
period
,' I correct. Print me a fucken T-shirt, for chrissakes.

‘Then there's no need to worry,' says Gurie. ‘If you have nothing to hide.'

‘Well but Vaine, the
news
says it's open and shut – everybody knows the cause.'

Gurie's eyelids flutter. ‘Everybody might know the
effect
, Mrs Little. We'll see about the cause.'

‘But the
news
says . . .'

‘The news says a lot of things, ma'am. The fact is we've run this county dry of body-bags, and I, for one, hold the opinion that it'd take more than a single, unaided gunman to do that.'

Mom stumbles to her wishing bench, abandoning her cakes to the side. She overbalances a little as the bench settles unevenly into the dirt. The fucken bench settles a different way every week, like it's indexed to her head or something. ‘Well I don't know why everything has to happen to
me
. We have witnesses, Vaine –
witnesses
!'

Gurie sighs. ‘Ma'am, you know how accessible the so-called witnesses are. Maybe your boy knew. Maybe not. The fact is, he absconded before our interview was over – people with airtight alibis just don't do that.'

This is how long it takes Pam to lever herself out of the Mercury. It grunts with relief as she lets go the frame. Fire ants catapult across the seat.

‘I took him, Vaine. Found him near dead from starvation.'

Gurie folds her arms. ‘He was offered food . . .'

‘Fiddledy-boo, the Pritikin diet wouldn't even feed the nose on a growing boy.' One sweaty eye snaps to Gurie. ‘How's it going, Vaine – the Pritikin diet?'

‘Oh – fine.
Gh-rr
.'

That's Gurie stuck through like a bug. The crumpled-looking stranger with the camcorder catches my eye from under the Lechugas' willow, then looks at Vaine. He still has a smile without promise, a chalk smile that strikes me edge-ways, don't ask me why. Gurie pays no mind. She just fixes him in the corner of her eye. The guy wears tan overalls with a white dinner jacket, like ole Ricardo Moltenbomb, or whoever Mom's favorite was who had the dwarf on
Fantasy Island
. He eventually penguin-walks over the road, fixing his camcorder onto a tripod. It tells you he's either a tourist, or a reporter. Only way to tell reporters these days is by their names – ever notice how fucken bent your local reporters' names are? Like, Zirkie Hartin, Aldo Manaldo, and shit.

‘So,' says Gurie, ignoring Moltenbomb. ‘Let's get this child into town.' Child my ass.

‘Well wait,' says Mom. ‘There's something you should know – Vernon suffers from a kind of –
condition
.' She rasps it like it's cancer.

‘
Heck
, Momma!'

‘Vernon Gregory, you know you get that
inconvenience
!'

Jesus, fuck. My overbite grows a yard. Moltenbomb chuckles from the roadside.

‘We'll take care of him,' says Gurie, wiping a hand on her leg. She nudges me down the driveway with her body; effective law-enforcement if you have ass-cheeks like fucken demolition balls.

‘But he hasn't done any wrong! He has a
clinical condition
!' Clinical condition my fucken ass.

Just then, Fate plays a card. The hiss of Leona Dunt's Eldorado echoes up the street. The uterus-mobile from hell. It's full of Mom's two other so-called friends, Georgette and Betty. They always just drop by. Until Tuesday, Mrs Lechuga was the leader of this pack; now she's indisposed until further notice.

Leona Dunt only shows up when she has at least two things to brag about, that's how you know your position in life. She needs about five things to go to the Lechugas', so we're junior league. Fetus league, even. Apart from having the thighs and ass of a cow, and minimum tits, Leona's an almost pretty blonde with a honeysuckle voice you know got its polish from rubbing on her last husband's wallet. That's the dead husband, not the first one, that got away. She never talks about the one that got away.

Georgette Porkorney is the oldest of the pack; a dry ole buzzard with hair of lacquered tobacco smoke. We just call her George. Right now she's married to the sheriff, not that you'd want to imagine them doing anything. And get this: just like the rhinos you see in the wild on TV, she has a bird that lives sitting on her back. It's called Betty Pritchard, Mom's other so-called buddy.

Betty just has this mopey face, and tags along saying, ‘I know, I
know
.' Her ten-year-ole is called Brad. Little fucker broke my PlayStation, but he won't admit it. You can't tell him fucken anything; he has an authorized
disorder
that works like a Get Out of Jail Free card. Me, I only have a
condition
.

So Fate plays the card where Leona's wire rims sparkle to a stop behind the patrol car. Ricardo Moltenbomb, the reporter dude, makes a flourish like a bullfighter, then steps aside as an acre of cellulite drains onto the dirt we call our lawn. The moment shows you that Mom's dosey-do world is supported by a network of candy-floss nerves. Now watch them fucken melt.

‘Hi, Vaine!' calls Leona. She leads the way on account of being youngest, which means under forty.

‘What, Vaine?' calls Georgette Porkorney. ‘My ole man grow weary of you at the station?'

Mom takes the catch. ‘Vaine's just doing a routine check, girls – come on up for a soda.'

‘More trouble, Doris?' asks Leona.

‘Well gosh,' says Mom. ‘These cakes are perspiring!' Believe me, there ain't the life in those cakes to perspire.

Vaine Gurie preps her throat to speak, but just then Moltenbomb steps up to her with his camcorder and his alligator smile. ‘A few words for the camera, Captain?'

An audience forms around them, consisting of Pam, Georgette, Leona, and Betty. Georgette's cigarettes appear. She's settling in. Betty's mope turns into a scowl, she steps back. ‘You're not going to smoke on TV, are you – George?'

‘Shhh,' says Georgette. ‘I ain't on TV –
she
is. Don't piss me off, Betty.'