Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 (7 page)

Fifty miles east of Green Gulch, Fishhook—as I’d christened him—snored himself awake, staggered up the aisle and plopped down in the passenger seat. I hadn’t really thought about him since we pulled out of that moldy excuse for a campground. As it was, I had the Winnebago sailing down the other side of the pass—careening might be the more accurate verb—so he really was taking his life in his own hands just by moving around—of course, no more so than sharing your veins with a herd of thirsty vampires.

At that thought, I glanced his way, in what I hoped
was an expression of empathy.
³³
He responded by ripping the wettest fart I’d ever heard, a massive gelatinous ass moan, that woke a gag reflex in me that I thought I’d lost with my death. He gave me an exaggerated wink in response. The bastard.

“Jesus Christ! Did you burn a hole through the seat? Open a window! Gawd!”

His laughter was a stutter of grunts, and I soon realized why. With every inch the window cranked down, the air molecules seemed to have bonded with shit. We’d rolled into a cloud of methane gas that could easily power a small island nation. The fucker knew it was coming, too.

His laughter became deep and rolling and I, in turn, began gagging and shouting, “Shut that fucking thing before I puke.”

“I … uh—”

“I … uh nothing, asshole. I know a lame joke when I see one … or smell one.”

The man nodded, grinning wildly and showing off those pearly blacks. The smell dissipated slower than I’d like but anything was an improvement to full exposure.

Crazy ass got back up and shuffled back to the table where I’d first seen him.

What are we going to do with him
?

At the very least, he was going to need as much of a hosing down as this camper, to be at all presentable.

We rolled into a small college town called Ellens-burg, where cows seemed to outnumber the human population by a mile. The stockyards were the first evidence of the place and they stretched from the freeway
to the distant hills, a sea of shit, sectioned off by gridlines of fence post and barbed wire.

The town itself was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, if good old Norm had been caked in shit and three beers shy of a nasty cirrhosis. A mid-sized college kept the population stocked in taverns and cheap restaurants, poverty chipped in on the thrift stores. Lucky for me, visiting parents require moderately habitable hotel rooms or I’d have nowhere to freshen.
³⁴

I pulled into a newish motel called the Round Up—which, if I’m not mistaken is also the name of a weed killer. Wendy parked the Volvo next to the camper and waited for me in front of the office.

“You stay right here. You understand?” I leveled a glare and my index finger at the freak, and then reached down into his fishhooks and thimbles and mussed it up. He gasped and waved his hands over the rolling debris, and then busied himself reassembling his collage of crazy.

“That ought to keep you busy,” I said.

I opened the door and let in a burst of air thick with bovine butt funk. I gave the man one last threatening sneer and slammed it behind me. At the far end of the parking lot, a scruffy-haired youth traded balancing on his skateboard for falling on his ass. The stink didn’t seem to bother him.

“Why, might I ask, would anyone choose to live in this hellhole?”

Wendy shrugged nonchalantly. Too nonchalant for my taste. The day Wendy doesn’t have a snide comment,
is the day she’s hiding something. This, I suspected, was that day. When she finally looked me in the eye, I saw a thin streak of brown below her lip that couldn’t be anything but the gooey, sweet and creamy afterbirth of … wait for it … chocolate.

“Oh, honey,” I said.

“Hmm?” Her brows rose in genuine interest, or so it would seem.

“What’s that on your lower lip? Are you trying out a new liner?” I prodded.

“Huh?” Wendy scraped the chocolate with the point of her nail and examined the roll of brown that clung there. The evidence. “Aw shit. Alright, already. You know it’s chocolate. Of course, it’s chocolate. What else would it be? Why do you have to do that?”

“Do what?” I raised my palms to her, horrified. Had I committed a social faux-pas?
³⁵

“Be so goddamned critical all the time. It’s called an addiction, okay?”

“I … uh …” I didn’t know what to say. One of the few times I’d been at a loss for words. Wendy stomped off down the sidewalk knocking on each of the motel doors along the way. She did so love to disturb the humans. “Sorry!” I called after her.

She raised a fist in the air, then flicked up her middle finger. She knocked on the last two doors and then turned the corner toward the back of the building. As she did, the frazzled guest in the second room down, stuck his head out, a question mark where his face should have been. “What the fuck!” he yelled.

I pointed out the skateboarder, watched him launch off toward the poor kid in his loose-fitting boxers
and bare feet, and ducked into the manager’s office, just as the man unleashed a torrent of expletives on the unsuspecting youth.
³⁶

With Wendy off sulking somewhere, I had no choice but to rouse Gil from his eternal slumber. I banged on the door to the dirty camper john, and yelled, “Gil! Wake up! I need to talk!”

“Wha-wha?” His voice slurred like a dementia patient’s.

“Wendy and I had a fight.”

“So?”

“So? Help me get over it?” I leaned against the door and kicked the bottom with the toe of my shoe.

“Stop that racket. You know I’ve got to sleep.”

“C’mon. What should I do?”

“Jesus. Apologize?”

“Why do you assume it’s my fault?”

Silence.

“Well?” I asked.

“Isn’t it?” he sighed.

“Shut up and go back to sleep already.” I turned and examined Fishhook.

With the vagrant and nothing but four “budget beige” walls to occupy my mind, I was left with no other choice than to give him a makeover. I stood in the camper doorway eyeing the biohazard. His hair was shoulder length and ratty, starting on the top and working its way around his mouth like a dirty mohair scarf. What skin left exposed was ruddy and dry to the point of flaking. And the clothes—Christ—too tattered to salvage.
Thank God for American Express Black; re-imagining Fishhook’s persona was going to cost a fortune.

“I … uh …” he whispered. Because that’s all he ever seemed to say, except for those comments.

They’re comin’, girl.

My first thought rushed to the vampires, those gluttons that fed from the poor guy so liberally. But it was daylight, and there was no way they were following, right now. Then I wondered if he could be referring to Markham and his werewolves. But how could he possibly know about that? We didn’t even know that, for sure. I suspected Markham was on our trail, but I hadn’t seen any proof. Madame Gloria hadn’t mentioned it, and, honestly, wouldn’t she have? I thought back to the moment she spoke to Wendy privately and a strange theory batted its way into my brain.

Maybe she was in on it. But, she’d led us to a safe place for Gil. Didn’t make sense.

I was getting completely fucking paranoid.

I shook off the fog of thoughts and eyed my quarry. This time he was responding to my visual assessment and seemed to know he was looking down the throat of a bored zombie with a keen fashion sense. For a crazy guy, he seemed to put together the puzzle pretty well. He reached up and brushed his beard into a point, loosing food debris and at least one cockroach that dropped to the table and scuttled through the grid of doll heads and buttons, taking refuge in a toppled thimble.

“Oh yeah.” I nodded. “It’s project time.”

Fishhook flinched.

He was surprisingly easy to herd into the motel room; a rolled-up newspaper prod didn’t work but flashing a tit got the hobo shuffling right along. His eyes crinkled as he stepped into the sun.

Getting him into the tub was another story.

Bubbles exploded from the rush of steaming bathwater. I’d swiped six miniature shampoo bottles and a can of Ajax off the maid’s cart just to be sure we’d have enough cleansers for his soaking.

The first step was my obstacle, not his. You see I wasn’t really prepared to see the guy naked. Not after seeing all the dimpled scar tissue circling his neck. I’d seen a show on scarification as the next big body art movement. Looking at Fishhook, I wasn’t buying it. Not for a second.

The scars tracked down his arms, chest and stomach, a trail of pain marking every bit of flesh loose enough to get a mouth around. Some were fresh specked with the yellowed ooze of infection. Fishhook needed antibiotics and a good plastic surgeon. What he had was me. He watched with those sad eyes, assessing me this time. I imagined him wondering if I was disgusted.

I was. Probably wasn’t hiding it well, either.

He undid his belt and dropped his pants, catching me off guard, ruffling me—and not just because he wasn’t wearing underwear. The scars continued down past his waist, a mass of swollen indents blossomed across his buttocks, traveled the length of both thighs and calves, set off against a canvas of mottled bruised flesh. There were even a few bites on the sides of his feet.

Savages.

Fishhook did have one thing going for him. He was hung like someone had left the sausage machine unsu-pervised. I found myself staring, mouth unhinged. The sight was moderately frightening, I must say, like someone had traded a normal dick for a fresh kielbasa. I’m not even going to talk about the foreskin.

Understand this: I don’t do cheese tray.
³⁷

I must have sneered. Fishhook cleared his throat and formed a coherent sentence.

“You may not like it, but I’ll bet that friend of yours enjoys a little hood.”

“Oh … I see. You’re talkative,
now
.”

“Everyone knows Gummi bears taste like dick cheese.” He rocked his hips, spanking his thighs with the monstrosity.

“Gross. Just get in the tub, you perv.” I reached to snatch his putrid clothing off the floor but he beat me to it, rummaging through linty pockets, until he retrieved a small green Tupperware container. He gave it a shake, rustling up a muted scraping sound and then hugged it between his palms. He slid into the tub, eyes never leaving the container.

I sat on the toilet. “Do you remember what you said to me back in the camper?”

He shrugged.

“You said, ‘They’re coming.’ Who’d you mean?”

He closed a fist around the lidded cup. “I didn’t say nothin’ to you.” His words clipped off at the ends like a bad haircut, choppy; defensive or embarrassed, but hard to say as he didn’t have any other social skills that could be construed as normal.

“Yes you did,” I chided.

“No I didn’t.”

“Did, too.”

“Uh unh.”

“What’s in the box?”

“None of your business.”

I crammed his rags into the trashcan, through with
his bullshit. “I’m going to get you some new clothes, but since you can’t be trusted to clean your own dick, I’m certainly not leaving these filthy rags for you to pull back on after you’ve bathed.” He snickered and I backed out of the room, slamming the door behind me. A moment later, I heard sloshing. “And shave off that goddamn beard. It looks like a badger’s taking a shit on your face. I think there’s a razor on the counter. I’ll be back in a bit and take you to get some coffee and food.”

“I … uh. I … uh—”

“Great.” I stepped out of the motel room, nearly falling over a clearly eavesdropping and knee-level Wendy. She dropped over on her side.

“Dammit!” she squealed.

“Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry.”

She snatched her purse from the cement and brushed at her already-ruined sack dress. “I’m fine.”

“No. No. Not about running into you, about before.”

She brightened. “You were right. I’m a freak.”

“Still. I shouldn’t have.” I lifted my hands in surrender.

Wendy clutched her hips with mock indignance, and pouted. “You’re supposed to tell me it’s perfectly normal to have cravings for human food. That’s a friend’s job.”

“Hello? There’s nothing
normal
about us. I’m just worried that you feel like you have to hide it.” I pulled out my best psychotherapy voice for the next bit, a manner I had a great deal of experience with, being a habitually inappropriate patient. “Secrets erode families.”

“Can we just talk about something else?” She looked at the wastebasket in my hands. “Like what’s in there?”

“Oh, just Fishhook’s clothes. I need to toss them in the dumpster. I’ve got him bathing right now and there’s
a topic that’ll trump a pesky eating disorder. The guy’s wiener is scary big.”

“What?”

“Oh yeah. He needs a chamois for that hose.”

“You’re kidding. I thought you said he was gross.”

“Oh, he is. Totally covered with scars from his neck down, the poor guy.”

“Then what were you doing checking out his dick?”

“Um … hello? I’m a perv. Now, let’s go shopping.”

The rest of the afternoon was spent searching for suitable travel attire in the Town That Fashion Forgot. The population must have had to drive elsewhere for their clothing needs—or, God forbid, duct tape some burlap together and call it a dress (like this one bitch I saw
³⁸
)—all we could find were a thrift store and a western wear shop, both of which caused me to itch like crazy just looking at the signs. Despite my own personal anti-cowpoke sentiment, Wendy dragged me into Mandy Jo’s Tack and Tatters; she didn’t seem to have a problem wrangling into low fashion.

I did.

Mandy Jo, as I insisted on calling the shop girl, wore a flared skirt and boots with a leather vest festooned— and there’s no other way to put this—with spare change, a centerfold from
Penthouse
’s “Girls of Panhandling” issue, or at the very least a runner-up.

“Hey, ladies. Can I help find you some cute western wear outfits?” Mandy Jo snapped her gum with a jaw cracking like a TMJ poster child. She rested her hands on her hips.

“Ew.” I shook my head as I looked her up and down.
If I’d thought about eating this one, it was only for a second, chewing through that outfit would surely cause a rash in even the most hardy of skin types.