Vernon God Little (3 page)

'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.

three

Too 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 ferryboat. 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 cutesy-shucksy 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.'

Curie'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.'

Deputy Curie's lips tighten. She draws a long breath, and frowns at the reporter. 'Firstly, sir, I'm a deputy, and secondly you should consult the media room for updates.'

'Actually, I'm doing a background story,' says Moltenbomb.

Gurie looks him up and down. 'Is that right. And you are …?'

'CNN, ma'am - Eulalio Ledesma, at your service.' Sunlight strikes some gold in his mouth. 'The world awaits,'

Gurie chuckles and shakes her head. 'The world's a long way from Martirio, Mr Ledesma.'

'Today the world is Martirio, ma'am.'

Curie's eyes dart to Pam. Pam's mouth jacks wide open like a kid in a fast-food commercial.

The shape of the word 'TV!' shines out. 'Your Barry'll be so proud!' she says.

Deputy Gurie looks herself over. 'But I can't just go on like this, can I?'

'You're spotless, Vaine - get a grip,' tuts Pam.

'Is that right. Gh. And precisely what am I supposed to say?'

'Relax, I'll lead you right in,' says Mr Ledesma. Before Gurie can object, he sets down his tripod, aims the camera at her, and steps in front. His voice ripens to melted wood. 'Once again we don the cloak of mourning - a cloak worn ragged by the devastating fallout of a world in change. Today, the good citizens of Martirio, Central Texas, join me in asking - how do we heal America?'

'Gh-rr,' Gurie opens her mouth like she has the fucken answer. No, Vaine, duh - he ain't finished.

'We start on the front line, with the people whose role in the aftermath of tragedy is changing; our law-enforcement professionals. Deputy Vaine Gurie - does the community relate differently to you at a time like this?'

'Well, this is our first time,' she says. Like, fucken duh.

'But, are you increasingly called upon to counsel, to lend moral as well as civil support?'

'Stuss-tistically sir, there are more counselors in town than officers of the law. They don't enforce laws, so we don't counsel.'

'The community is meeting the challenge, then - pulling together?'

'We have some manpower over from Luling, and the dogs are here from Smith County, sure. A committee in Houston even sent up some home-made fudge.'

'Obviously freeing valuable time for you to spend with survivors …' Ledesma motions me over.

Gurie falters. 'Sir, the survivors have survived - my job is to find the cause. This town won't rest until the cause of the problem is identified. And corrected.'

'But surely it's open and shut?'

'Nothing happens without an underlying cause, sir.'

'You're saying the community has to search inside itself, maybe face some hard truths about its role in the tragedy?'

'I'm saying we have to find the one who caused it.'

Twinkles stab Ledesma's eyes. He reaches for my shoulder and pulls me into the frame.

'Did this young man cause it?'

Gurie's chins recoil like snails shot with vinegar. 'Gh-rrr - I didn't say that.'

'Then why should the American taxpayer bankroll you to detain him, on the first day of his probable lifelong trauma?'

Other reporters move toward us down the street. Sweat brews on Gurie's face. 'That'll be all for now, Mr Lesama.'

'Deputy, this is the public domain. God Himself can't stop the camera.'

'I'm just afraid I don't make the laws.'

'The child has broken laws?'

'Well, I don't know.'

'You'll detain him just in case?'

'Gh-r.'

The frown on the sheriff's wife is almost down to her tits. Which is way down. Ledesma sizes her up, his tongue lolls restless in his cheek. Gurie tries to shuffle away, but he swings the camera like a gun.

'Perhaps you'll tell us the name of the sheriff who briefed you?'

The way Georgette Porkorney talks you wouldn't think she gave a shit about the ole sheriff. She gives one now, though. Her phone flies out of her bag in a shower of Kleenex.