Vernon God Little (16 page)

Nah, my slime's so thick, it ain't worth coming clean at all. Take good note; Fate actually makes it harder to admit slime, the farther in you get. What kind of system is that? If I was president of the Slime Committee, I'd make it easierto come clean about shit. If coming clean is what you're supposed to do, then it should be made more fucken accessible, I say. I guess the shiver that really comes over me is that I just handed everybody the final nail for my cross. All they needed, on top of everything, was a credible lie. You can just see my ole lady on TV when they break the news, don't tell me you can't. 'Well but I even stayed up to pack his sandwiches . . .'

I fumble a lighter from my pocket, and spark up a joint. I ain't going by Goosens's today. Fuck that. My ole lady's safe with Nana. I'm going to find a way out of here.

'Bernie?' It's Ella Bouchard. She stops behind a bush at the edge of my clearing, and moves her lips the opposite way to what I hear in my ears, which is crawfish pie and filet gumbo.

Just let me say, in case you think I'm secretly in love with Ella, that I've known her since I was eight. Every boy in town knew Ella since they were eight, and none of them are secretly in love with her. Her equipment ain't arrived. You guess it maybe ain't coming either, when you look at her. Like her equipment got delivered to Dolly Parton or something. Ella's just skinny, with some freckles, and this big ole head of tangly blond hair that's always blown to hell, like a Barbie doll your dog's been chewing on for a month. Nobody yet figured out how to deal with Ella Bouchard. She lives with her folks, along the road from Keeter's Spares & Repairs. Her folks are like hillbilly types that don't move their arms when they walk, and just stare straight ahead all the time. The kind that repeat everything eighty times when they talk, like, 'That's how it was, yessir, the way it was was just like that, just like that, the way it was.' Probably explains why Ella's kind of weird too. Cause and effect, boy.

'Hi, Bernie.' She enters the clearing slowly, as if I'll run away. 'Whatcha doin?'

'Just hanging out.'

'Whatcha doin really?'

'Just hanging out, I toldja - you shouldn't even be here.'

'You're getting fuckin loaded and fuckin wasted off your ass. Anyway, you fuckin promised.'

Such a foul mouth on a girl probably shocks you. Then you must think: foul-mouthed girl, at Keeter's, alone with Bernie. Okay, yes, a bunch of us boys got our first whiff of nakedness from Ella Bouchard. It cured us of any horniness we might've had; you couldn't name the flavors of ice-cream it looked like she strained through her pants some days. Like, she probably set us back years in our sexual development. She just wanted to cuss, spit, and fart with us, and I guess the only currency she had was her ropey ole body. I know you're not allowed to say it anymore, about certain girls and all, but off the record, Ella was born with it. She'd always be the one doing messy tumbles on the lawn, legs flying open all over the place. Her underwear would always shine your way. When aliens land in town, Ella will be out front with her fucken dress up, I guarantee it.

She takes another step into my space, and looks down at me. 'Fuck, Bernie, you're just like an alcoholic.'

'My name's not Bernie, and I'm not just like an alcoholic.'

'What's your name then? It's something like Bernie, I know that …'

'No, my name's nothing like Bernie, not in the minimum.'

'I'll go ask Tyrie what the name of the guy is who's over here smoking weed and drinking beer.'

She gets that fabulous edge that girls get to their voices, the edge that spells oncoming Tantrum From the Bowels of Hell, that says, 'I'll scratch the heavens down around you and suck the fucken air from your lungs and spit you to fucken hell and you know it.'

'Name's John, okay?'

'No it ain't, not John, it ain't John, it ain't John at all, not John . . .' You can tell right away she spends too much damn time around her folks.

'Ella, I don't want to make a big deal out of anything today, okay? I'm just trying to chill on my own, and just figure some shit out - okay?'

'Not called John you ain't, not with a name like John, uh-uh, you ain't John, no way …'

'Well - whatever, okay?'

'I knew it was Bernie. Can I have a beer?'

'No.'

'How come?'

'Because you're only eight.'

'I ain't too so eight, I'm nearly fuckin fifteen.'

'Still too young to drink alcoholic beverages.'

'Well fuck, you're too fuckin young to drink - and smoke weed, fuck.'

'No I ain't.'

'Yes you are! How old are you?'

'Twenty-two.'

'You are not, you are fuckin not twenty-two.' All this goes to illustrate the First Rule of dealing with edgy people. Don't, under any circumstances, get talking to them.

After a minute of clicking her teeth, and of me ignoring her, Ella starts to mess with the hem of her dress. She makes these noises, like a stroked snake or something, and goes, 'Fuck, it's hot out here.'

Then she raises the hem up her legs, to where they start thickening and softening into thigh. You can tell she swiped this behavior right off some TV-movie. I hope it's not wrong to say it, but it's like watching a Japanese person barn-dancing, the credibility of it, I fucken swear.

'Ella, c'mon will ya?!'

No, here comes the dress on its way up her legs. I just grab my pack and start to stash everything back inside. So she turns to me, real polite. 'I'll go to the shop and scream. I'll tell Tyrie what you did to me, after all that weed and beer, Bernie.'

A learning grows in me like a tumor. It's about the way different needy people find the quickest route to get some attention in their miserable fucken lives. The fucken oozing nakedness, the despair of being such a vulnerable egg-sac of a critter, like, a so-called human being, just sickens me sometimes, especially right now. The Human Condition, Mom calls it. Watch out for that fucker.

I drop my pack and make a deal with Ella. It lasts until the ninth sip of the beer that we share. I know it's the ninth because she counts them. 'Every sip together makes our feelings grow,' she says.

And strangely, for a nano-second before the ninth sip, I do kind of start to begin commencing to like Ella, don't ask me why. I get a few waves about how fucked-up she must be, and how she just wants someone to pay attention to her. I'm loaded, I admit it. But for a flash I even kind of take to her, with her ole straw hair blowing across her face, and the smell of warm bushes around. My hand even brushes against her leg, making silk hairlets stand up. She wriggles until a wedge of underwear shows up on the dirt. But at the same moment the breeze grates this smell off her legs, like salami or something, and I pull right back. I try not to wrinkle my face up, but I guess I kind of do, and she sees it. She tucks herself back into a knot.

'Bernie, how come you don't fool around? You a pillow-biter or what?'

'Hell no. I just think you're too young, that's all.'

'Guys a whole lot older than you want to fool around with me.'

'Yeah, right. Like who?'

'Like Danny Naylor.'

'Yeah, right, I don't fucken think so.'

'Yeah he does, him and a whole shit-loada other guys.'

'C'mon, Ella …'

'Mr Deutschman'd even pay for it, I know that, I know that too well, too damn well.'

'Fuck, Ell, Mr Deutschman's around eight hundred years ole.'

'It don't matter, he's older'n you, and he'd still pay for it.'

'Yeah, right. Anyway, how do you know? You been over there and asked him?'

'I went by there once and he gave me a Coke, and touched me a little, on my ass …'

Don't even think it. A man has his honor, you know.

At the end of the day, I take all the gullies and back roads home, and keep my eyes lively to any roving cops or shrinks. I'm glad Mom's at Nana's - she'll have company, and food in her belly, if only macaroni cheese. I missed my date with Goosens, and have to leave town, see. I just couldn't abandon Mom if she was home sniffling, no way. That's how I'm programmed. By the time I get home, I'm ready to call Nana's and tell Mom the job didn't work out - really come clean, as a final gesture. Then, when I step inside my house, I hear an unmistakable set of squeaks and sighs. The wind falls out of my sails and stays at the door, like your dorky buddy on his first visit to your place. My ole lady's here.

Bawling. I stand quiet, as if she'll ignore me. She doesn't though, and this is where her routine gets quite transparent, actually, because she clears her throat, loudly, then uses that energy to launch into a bigger, better bawl. It breaks my fucken heart. Mostly because she has to resort to these transparent kind of moves to get attention.

'What's up, Ma?'

'Shnff, squss …'

'Ma, what's up?'

She takes hold of my hands, and looks up into my eyes like a calendar kitten after a fucken tractor accident, all crinkly, with spit between her lips. 'Oh, Vernon, baby, oh God . . .'

A familiar drenching feeling comes over me, like when the potential exists for serious tragedy.

One thing I take into account, though, is that my ole lady always wants my blood to run cold; she bawls more convincingly the longer I know her, because my blood-freezing threshold goes up. This far down the road, she even fucken hyperventilates. My blood is icy.

'Oh, Vernon, we're really going to have to pull together now.'

'Momma, calm down - is it about the gun?'

Her eyes brighten for a moment. 'Well no, actually they found nine guns on Saturday - Bar-B-Chew Barn disqualified the prize winners for planting guns along the route, there's all kinds of hell to pay in town today.'

'So what's the problem?'

She sets up bawling again. 'I went to cash the investment this morning, and the company was gone.'

'Lally's investment?'

'I've been calling Leona's all day, but he's not there …'

This so-called investment was with one of those companies with names chained together, like

'Rechtum, Gollblatter, Pubiss & Crotsch'. If you want to know who the real psychos are, take any guy who names a business to sound like a lawyer's company, and is still surprised when folk won't turn their back to him.

'Power's being disconnected tomorrow,' says Mom. 'Did you get the advance? I've been counting on your advance, I mean, the power's only fifty-nine dollars for goodness sake, but then when the deputies came …'

'Ma, slow up - deputies came?'

'Uh-huh, around four-thirty. They were okay, I don't think Lally said anything yet.'

'So what'd you tell them?'

'I said you were with Dr Goosens. They said they'd check you at the clinic tomorrow.'

The Lechugas' teddy farm seems ole and squashed when I wake up next morning. Another Tuesday morning, two weeks after That Day. The shade under their willow is empty. Kurt is quiet, Mrs Porter's door is closed. Beulah Drive is clean of strangers for the first time since the tragedy. June is barely underway, but it's as if summer's liquor has evaporated, leaving this dry residue of horror. At ten-thirty the phone rings.

'Vernon, that'll be the power company - when can I tell them you'll have your advance from work?'

'Uh - I don't know.'

'Well, do you want me to call the Lasseens and see what the hold-up is? I thought they promised it to you on your first day …'

'I'll have it tonight, tell them.'

'Are you sure? Don't say it if you're not positive, I can call Tyrie …'

'I'm sure.' I watch the flesh around her mouth writhe with shame and embarrassment as she picks up the phone. My head runs a loop of Ella's words at Keeter's. 'Mr Deutschman'd even pay for it.'

Proof that my mind hooked onto the idea, is that I pretended not to be interested. I just changed the subject. That's how you know the demon seed was planted.

'Well hi Grace,' says Mom. 'He says he'll have it tonight, definitely. No, he's starting late today -

he's studying marketing dynamics for work. Oh fine, just fine - Tyrie's real happy with his progress -

says he might even get promoted! Uh-huh. Uh-huh? No, no, I've spoken to Tyrie personally, and he's definitely getting paid - Hildegard's an old friend, so it's not a challenge. Oh really? I didn't know you knew her. Oh, well - tell her hi.' Mom's eyes sink back into her sockets, she turns dirty red. 'What?

Well if you could just hold them back until after lunch, I'd really appreciate it. The truck left already?

Uh-huh. But if I give them cash when they get here, can't you stop them from …?'

Blood splurches like paste from both ends of my body, caking hard in grotesque spike formations that only happen to liars and murderers, and that my ole lady can see from the phone.

Thoughts dance through my head that shouldn't be there. Simonize the Studebaker, for instance. Mom puts down the phone. Her eyes cut me loose in a raft.

'The disconnection truck already set off for the day,' she says. Razorfish slash the fucken raft.

Mom's eyebrows lean up on one elbow to watch. 'I better call Tyrie.' She fumbles through the phone-table drawer for her address book. I stay on my stomach in front of the TV. Save me falling back down here when I'm fucken dead.

In between snatches of my video research, the news plays on TV. 'Overshadows events in Central Texas,' says a reporter, 'with official sources confirming this morning's tragedy in California as the worst of its kind so far this year. Condolences and aid continue to pour into the devastated community …'

'Vernon, do you have the Spares & Repairs number?'

'Uh - not right here.'

I don't look up. I hear you can get big money selling your kidneys, but my brain's stressed from wondering where to sell them. Maybe the meatworks. Who fucken knows. My only other plan, plan B, is the desperate plan. I browse through my daddy's ole videos for tips. For cream pie, actually, truth be told. Close the Deal is here, one of his favorites. One thing about my dad, he had every kind of plan to get rich.

'Here it is - Hildy Lasseen,' says Mom. She shuffles back to the phone, and picks up the receiver. An important-sounding fanfare accompanies her, as the TV jumps from global to local news.