Wormfood

DEDICATION

For Deb

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A lot of fine folks helped out and showed me such unbelievable kindness that a mere thanks doesn’t seem to be enough. But this is the least I can do. Your willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty for this goofy writer is appreciated more than you will ever know. So many, many thanks to:

My family—Saw and Mad, Mom and Dad and Clay.

The wonderful writers and teachers and mentors and students and friends in the Columbia College Chicago Fiction Department—including my teachers Don De Grazia, Anne Hemenway, Gary Johnson, Eric May, Devon Polderman, and especially John Schultz, who gave invaluable advice and encouragement.

The fantastic team at Medallion Press, especially Adam Mock, Paul Ohlson, Lorie Popp, Helen Rosburg, Emily Steele, and Jim Tampa.

Some of the people I’m honored to call my friends—Gus and Jen Alagna, Christian Behr, Jay Bonansinga, Mort Castle, David Chirchirillo, Craig Christie, Jen and House Domonkos, Tom Egizio—Webmaster extraordinaire, Mark Ferguson of Hard Boiled Records, Trent Haaga, Heather Jack, Dave Janczak, Brian Kustek, Gregory Lam-berson, Jack Mazzenga, and Lou and Sandy Phillips, and so many others.

The musicians who helped fuel the writing of this novel—AC/DC, Johnny Cash, The Cramps, Deadbolt, Motorhead, Murder by Death, The Ramones, the Reverend Horton Heat, Southern Culture on the Skids, and The Ventures.

And finally, my wife, Deb, who gave me unwavering support and patience. I love you, little one.

Grandma woke me up with her .10 gauge, shooting at the ground squirrels again. I think that was the morning it all started, when the worms got loose and the Sawyer brothers stole the dead steer and Fat Ernst had us break into Earl’s coffin and I tasted Misty Johnson’s sweat and that witch crawled out of the darkness under her lawn mower and a whole hell of a lot of blood got spilled.

Yeah. It started with Grandma and her Browning.

Those squirrels pissed her off like you wouldn’t believe, burrowing into the rich black soil and eating her vegetables. She grew nearly everything we ate in her garden out there behind the trailer, from tomatoes that swelled up like water balloons about to burst to red onions the size of softballs to ears of corn so sweet they tasted like they were half sugar cane.

So when the squirrels snuck in and tried to eat the results of her hard work, Grandma went to war. And she didn’t take prisoners.

The shotgun blast faded into the soft whispering of rain striking the roof. I rolled over in bed and checked the alarm clock. It was dead, dark, and silent on the floor next to my narrow mattress. At first I thought one of the storms had knocked out the power again, then realized that Grandma had unplugged the clock. I guessed our talk last night about me working for Fat Ernst hadn’t gone over as well as I had hoped.

My watch read 7:32.

The Sawyer brothers would be showing up any minute now.

Grandma hated them even worse than the ground squirrels.

The shotgun ripped another hole in the morning air. Grandma didn’t believe in traps or poisons; they took all the satisfaction, all the
fun
out of the job. Instead, she loaded her own shells, using number 9 steel shot, so we didn’t have to worry about lead poisoning. She didn’t even have to get rid of the little corpses. The Browning .10 gauge blasted them into instant fertilizer.

I stumbled into the bathroom, pulling on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt as I went. No time for a shower. I stuck my toothbrush in my mouth, took a deep breath and flexed my chest and both arms in a classic bodybuilder pose. In the mirror, nothing much happened. A scrawny sixteen-year-old with a bad haircut grimaced back at me. It looked like I’d been in an accident and couldn’t move very well.

My name is Arch Stanton. Me and Grandma lived in a single-width trailer dumped at the end of a long dirt driveway out in the hills. Grandpa died nearly five years ago, heart attack. Mom and Dad had been dead for over twelve years. They were coming back from a weekend in Reno when Dad apparently took one of the mountain turns a little wide and hit a minivan filled with a family of six. Head-on collision; killed everybody but the family’s youngest child. When they performed the autopsy, they found that Dad’s blood had an alcohol level of .09 percent. Just enough to be legally drunk in California. All of the insurance money, everything, went to the child who survived.

Me and Grandma needed money. We needed money bad. I had tried to tell her the night before, over dinner, tried to tell her that something had to be done. “I know you don’t want me working for … him, but jeez, Grandma, we’re two months behind with our rent. You can’t just ignore that,” I had said slowly, quietly. Fat Ernst owned the trailer and the land, and the only reason he hadn’t kicked us out yet was because I worked like a dog in his restaurant.

Grandma just looked at me, her crinkled face curiously flat.

I looked at my plate. “I know you don’t like it. I don’t like it. But we don’t have a choice.” I sighed, figuring it wouldn’t be a good idea to mention that, along with my regular job at the restaurant, Fat Ernst had me helping the Sawyer brothers tear down an old barn. They needed me for my weight, a whopping one hundred and seven pounds, perfect for climbing up into the rotting rafters and knocking sheets of corrugated metal off the roof.

Grandma crunched her lettuce. “We get along just fine.”

“No, we don’t. We—” I broke off and flung my arm at our reflection in the sliding glass doors, gesturing at the dark, invisible field beyond. “We don’t own anything.”

“We’ll manage.”

I attacked my chicken breast, sawing it into ragged chunks. “How? How? Where are we gonna go? You refuse to go on welfare, so—”

“Nobody, nowhere, is ever gonna have to give us money or food. You should know that, Arch. We raised you to be strong. I’ll never, ever accept charity from anybody.”

“Grandma, this welfare, it isn’t charity. We pay taxes, so we deserve it.”

Grandma gripped her fork tight. “Deservin’ it’s got nothing to do with it. I never accepted no charity, and I’m sure as hell not about to start now. Me and your grandfather survived the Great Depression just fine. You and me’ll survive this just fine.”

I shook my head. I had already tried explaining that the world was a different place now than in the 1930s, but Grandma told me I’d understand when I got older. Well, I understood just fine.

That’s why, after our talk, I had crept through her dark garden, plucking a few tomatoes, a couple onions, and some ears of corn I didn’tthink she’d notice. Fat Ernst gave me five bucks for every bag of produce from Grandma’s garden. Believe me, I wasn’t proud. I hid the bag of vegetables in the closet by the front door, nestled between Grandpa’s Springfield 30.06 and his stack of Encyclopedia Britannicas—the only thing Grandpa ever read besides Louis L’Amour novels. I figured that was a safe place since Grandma didn’t like to see Grandpa’s stuff. Hurt too much, I guess.

It was 7:40. Now I was officially late. I retrieved the bag from the closet and carefully placed it in the bottom of my backpack. I grabbed an apple out of the fruit bowl, something that Grandma kept full no matter how little money lay in the dark blue jar on top of the fridge. The apple was getting a little brown, but I wasn’t going to complain. I bit a healthy chunk out of it and glanced out the window over the sink.

The trailer faced north, providing a wide, unobstructed view of a large, flat field that lay between two low foothills. A twisted, very dead oak tree waited patiently to collapse out in the middle of the field, surrounded by petrified cow patties and thick weeds. Beyond the foothills, the desolate, high country wildness rose into a low sky full of dark clouds.

Ten yards from the northwest corner of the trailer, Grandma stood at the edge of her garden, as still and patient as Death himself. She wore Grandpa’s old rubber boots and his faded overalls. A gigantic straw hat covered her head and the shotgun rested easily across the handles of her mud-spattered walker.

I swallowed another piece of the apple and was about to take another bite and find my shoes, but then I froze. The sweet taste of the apple soured as I realized I was looking at a small black hole, set about a quarter inch from the brown skin. A nice, neat wormhole.

Then I heard the low rumbling of the Sawyers’ truck.

The truck, a pitch-black 1960 one-ton Dodge, riding awkwardly on four giant tires, lurched impatiently up the long muddy driveway like a hungry beetle. It rumbled up to the trailer, followed by rolling clouds of blue exhaust. A grinning bull skull, its splintered white hornscurling out to a wingspan of over four feet, proudly rode above the curving, decidedly aggressively aerodynamic lines of the truck at the front of the hood. A heavy steel bumper protected the grille. Yellow and orange flames flickered over the front tires. The words “ SAWYER FAMILY HIDE AND TALLOW SERVICE ” had been spray-painted on the doors in jagged, dripping letters.