My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (47 page)

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Authors: KATE BERNHEIMER

BOOK: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
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“A million years? Will you dance with me in a million years?”
“No!” Teague shouted, not caring anymore if he woke his father up. In fact, he wanted his father to come out with a flashlight and a shotgun, and scare the hideous weirdos away. “I said not in a million years. Not even. Aren’t you listening to me?” The whole crowd of them laughed at him then, an odd sort of chuckle that circulated among the ones on the sides and the back and then came to the old man, who chuckled in the ugly lady’s ear, and she uttered a sharp little bark of mirth.
“Not with me? Not with any of us?”
“No!” Teague said, and he reached into his pocket to get his phone. “I’m calling the police now,” he said. “But I’ll dial slowly, so you have time to just go away.”
“Not with my friend?” the lady said, and indicated a large lumpy bundle which, he suddenly noticed, they were passing back and forth among them, each of them, even the small ones, shouldering the burden and passing it on. He thought it was a sack, but he couldn’t tell for sure because the light that fell on them seemed to miss the thing they carried.
“I’m
dialing
,” Teague said. But he was very slow about it, because he wasn’t very good at dialing with one hand, and also because he was getting increasingly nervous and afraid, because they were something else besides just ugly and annoying. There were a lot of them—it seemed like there were more of them every time he looked—and he was starting to appreciate that they might want to do something else besides dance with him.
“For the last time, Teague O’Kane,” the woman said, “won’t you dance with one of us, even out of pity, or fellow-feeling, to share just a little of your undeserved beauty with those who have lost their own?”
“Hello, police?” Teague said into his phone. He had dialed 911, but it wasn’t ringing yet. “I am being attacked by
ugly people
.”
“Attacked?” the woman said. “We only wanted to dance!” But just then the ugly old man picked up an orange and threw it at Teague. It missed, but another, thrown from farther back in the crowd, connected solidly with his head.
“Hey!” he said, and then he was hit again, on the ear he was using for the phone. A lady answered just as the phone flew away. He scrambled after it, stooping to pick it up, but before his fingers could reach it another orange struck and knocked it farther. “Stop that!” he said, and three more oranges came hurtling out of the darkness, two for his face and one for his stomach. Then a whole barrage of them started, and he stood there for a moment, trying to protect his face and his stomach and his groin, but when he covered up one part of himself they only hit him in another. He turned and ran.
He hadn’t gone very far before it occurred to him that he should be trying to run toward home, not away from it, that if he could make it to his front door he could rush through and lock it against them. And he hadn’t gone very much farther than that when they started to appear in front of him in ones and twos, strangely lucent in the darkness under the trees, smiling at him hideously as they lobbed oranges at him. He and his friends had been in the habit lately of driving along Orange Blossom Trail and throwing oranges at the prostitutes, just for the fun of it, and now he found himself regretting that, as fruit after fruit connected with his head. Looking back, he saw that he was being pursued by the wily crowd. They ran close together, one roiling beast, and in their light he could see the sack (it was definitely a sack) balanced on their shoulders, being passed among them as they ran. There was something terrible about their faces, in the glimpse he had of them before he turned his head around again, that was very different from mere ugliness.
He put his arms over his head, peeking out between his elbows to watch his way, and ran as hard as he could, not caring whether he was going toward the house or away from the house, only wanting to get away from them, and very shortly tripped, whether over a root or an outstretched foot, he didn’t know, but he found, as he fell down, that he was somewhat grateful for the trip, and he was less panicked, as he rolled and skidded on the dirt and coarse grass, than he had been as he ran.
Well,
he thought,
I tried to get away, but there are too many of them, and they have too many oranges, and now they are going to get me
. He lay on his back, looking up through the leaves of the orange trees at the dim stars, and they clustered around him.
“Orange you sad you didn’t dance with us now?” said the hag. She leaned over him with the man, and all around them the others were giving him orange-rind smiles, wedges of fruit stuck in their mouths, and juice dripping down their hairy chins.
“Go on and do it,” Teague said. “Rob me. Take my wallet. Take my jeans. They’re not going to fit you, and they won’t look good on anyone you know. But go on. Just get it over with.”
“Rob you?” said the hag.
“We aren’t here to take anything away,” the old troll said.
“We’ve come to give you a gift, Teague O’Kane,” the hag said.“It would have been a merry gift, if you had chosen to dance with us. It would have been a gift of poodle breath and panty lace and eyes bright with joyful tears. But you have spurned those who only meant to bless you, and now you must take another kind of gift from us entirely, and do a deed for us, or else.”
“Or else what?” he asked.
“Or else dark deadliness of poodle!” the old man said. “And suffering sobs!” said the woman. “And an acid bitter sadness in your soul that will last a million years.”
“A million billion!” said the man.
Teague wanted to say that was stupid, that nothing lasted that long, not—he was pretty sure—even the universe itself, but instead he asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Only this,” the woman said. “Take our friend home, and put him to rest.” There was a flurry of activity among the others. Within a few seconds they threw down the bundle in the sack and uncovered it. Teague could tell there was something unpleasant in there by the noise it made when it hit the ground.
It’s full of steak
, he thought, and
Who carries around a big sack of beef in the middle of the night?
It seemed to attract the darkness as it lay on the ground, but when they uncovered it he could plainly tell what it was, and he shuddered because he had never seen a corpse before, nor ever seen a body in such an unnatural posture as it assumed when they rolled it toward him with their feet. It lay with its back to him, one arm stretched out underneath it and another up over its head. Its feet and its chest were bare, and the face was turned away, but he could tell by the breadth of its shoulders and back that it was a man, and he could tell that his jeans were of a very high quality, because he had a special sense for things like that, and could tell a good pair of jeans from across the street, or in the dark, or by the touch of his hand against somebody’s bottom.
“Take him and bury him inside the Catholic church at Pine Hills, or, if you cannot bury him there, in behind the Salty Pig sausage factory in Windermere if there is no room for him at the church, and if all else fails then take him to the Green Swamp near Orlo Vista and lay him to rest in the bog.”
“Oh, all right,” Teague said, sitting and then standing up slowly. “Is that all you want me to do?”
“Nothing more and nothing less.”
“Okay, then,” Teague said. “But first there’s something you should know.”
“What’s that, Teague O’Kane?” she asked, smiling at him in a very unfriendly way.
“Just . . . this!” Teague said, and cast the orange he had picked up at her face. He didn’t wait to see if it hit her or not, but turned to run again, leaping nimbly over the corpse and sprinting for home. But he hadn’t been running for ten seconds before he was tackled from behind, and all those ugly old people were swarming all over him, their terrible moth-ball breath in his face and their starchy sprayed-up hair brushing his cheek and neck. It felt like they were all sitting on him—for a moment he could hardly breathe—and then the pressure let up, but there was still a great weight on him. They jumped back and away from him.
“There now!” said the woman. “Now you are ready!” Teague lay on his belly, slowly understanding that they had put the corpse on his back, and that the dead man’s arms were crossed over his shoulders.
“What did you do?” he said. “Get it off of me!”
“We certainly won’t,” said the lady. “You alone will do that. Now take him to be buried and be quick about it. If the sun rises on you before it is done, you will regret it!”
“Get it off of me!” Teague said again, and now he was crying, and struggling on the ground, flopping around to throw the thing off, but the dead man held him fast.
“You do it,” said the woman. “And remember what I said to you. Dark tears of the great poodle of sadness! Acid in your heart! Burning forever! Get you gone, Teague O’Kane. You have chosen not to dance with us, and the night is running out!”
“Get it off,” Teague said again, but no one answered. When he looked up they were all gone, and if not for the weight on his back, he would have thought he had imagined them. He got slowly to his knees, and then he stood, the corpse very heavy on his back. When he looked around there was no sign of the crowd of ugly people, but they had left him a message on the ground, words spelled from torn rinds of orange. “We will be watching you,” it said.
“Help!” he shouted. “Help, somebody!” His voice sounded very loud in his ears, but he had the sense that it wasn’t carrying very far, and among the trees he could see none of the lights of his home, and he wasn’t sure which way he should go for help. “And I don’t even know where Orlo Vista
is
,” he said sadly. At that a hand rose up before him pointing, and it took him a moment to realize who it belonged to. With a shout he started to run again, trying to get away from the corpse on his back, but he only fell again, and he lay there weeping again for a moment.
“Crying won’t get me buried,” the corpse said behind him then. “Get up, idiot.”
Teague cried out again, and tried to crawl away, saying, “You can’t talk to me! It’s bad enough as it is but you’re not allowed to
talk
.”
“The dead do as they please,” the thing said, but then it was silent. Teague lay panting with his face in the ground, and then he did get up, and started to walk in the direction that the corpse had pointed. It was very slow going at first. The corpse was heavy, and the night was dark, and he didn’t know where he was, for all that he could not have been very far from his own house. But the trees looked strange, even when he left them behind he walked for what felt like an hour without encountering a highway, only a narrow dirt road that looked more fit for horses than cars, but was easier to walk on than the soft ground. If he had seen a car, he would have flagged it down to ask for help, though he wondered if anyone would have stopped for him, a man with a corpse on his back, no matter how handsome and alluring he might be. It occurred to him, as he trudged slowly down that road, half-fearing that the corpse would speak again, but half-hoping that it would as well, because he was feeling very lonely and afraid, that the night would have been much easier if he had agreed to dance with either the man or the woman, that he must be dreaming, and the changeless quality of the road made it seem this must be so, and he started to feel like he had been going along on it forever. “I’ll just keep walking,” he said, “until I wake up, and if later tonight I see any ugly people on the dance floor, I’ll run away from them right away.” He closed his eyes a moment—the road was so unchanging he suddenly decided there was no need even to watch where he was going. Then he was jolted by a sharp pain—the corpse had reached into his shirt and pinched him on the nipple! “What was that for?” Teague demanded, though of course he knew what it was for. He stopped a moment on the road, feeling very frightened and very awake.
Not long after that he saw the church, sitting all alone at the top of a hill, lit up by a single street lamp. The road led right to the door, and passed through a parking lot that was full of cars. It was hard going up the hill: when he got to the top he just wanted to lie down on the hood of one of the cars and rest for a long time. He went to the door of the church and paused there. “Are you supposed to knock on the door of a church before you go in?” he wondered aloud. He had never been in a church before.
“Not necessary,” said the corpse.
Teague pushed the door open and went inside. The church was lit with candles, and the gentle flickering light made the faces of the many statues seem particularly alert and alive. It wouldn’t have surprised him at all if they all started talking to him, insulting him or asking him the time or scolding him for not dancing with them. But they stayed silent. As he stared at them, though, he thought he recognized the light that had fallen so strangely on all those ugly old people: their faces looked like the statues, as if the light that shone on them came from invisible candles.
“We’re here for a reason,” the corpse said.
“You don’t have to remind me,” Teague said. He started to walk around the church, up and down the aisles, and peeked down the lines of pews, looking for a place to bury someone. People belonged in graveyards; it made no sense at all to him that somebody should be buried inside a church, even one that was carpeted, like this one was, in tacky indoor/outdoor carpeting. That was typical of Florida, he thought, a place where extremes of bad taste flourished.

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