Wormfood (17 page)

It was time for more water. I dumped the bucket in the sink and was about to twist the hot water handle when I heard something outside. A hissed, guttural exclamation, then a hollow thud. I left the bucket in the sink and crept over to the back door. Another exclamation; I could make out the words this time. “Piss brained bag of dogshit.” The last word came out as a forced pop of air, and then another dull thud. I recognized Fat Ernst’s voice.

I slowly twisted the door handle, trying to think of excuses for opening the door. Nothing came to me, but I pulled it slightly open, just a crack, anyway.

Fat Ernst stood in the rain on the loading dock, chest heaving, fists clenched. Heck’s body lay at his feet, just at the edge of the dock. The dock was a square wooden deck, nearly ten feet across, empty except fora stack of rotting pallets next to the door. Beyond the dock was nothing but oceans of cornfields. Fat Ernst kept swearing through clenched teeth. “You sonofabitch. I should’ve…” He trailed off for a second, then came back with a basic “Fuck!” and gave Heck a good solid kick, right in the rib cage. Heck’s body jerked and trembled from the blow, but other than that, he didn’t move. Fat Ernst stomped on Heck’s right hand for good measure. “Cocksucking son of a whore.” Another kick, to Heck’s head this time, shattering Heck’s nose, a dry, snapping sound that reminded me of stepping on a dead, brittle leaf.

Fat Ernst had his back to me, and as he was drawing his leg back for another kick, he suddenly pivoted in place and stared at me. I felt my insides shrinking up and I knew I was going to be the one who got kicked next. But Fat Ernst didn’t move, didn’t say anything. He just stared at me, thick lips pulled back in a snarl, breathing through clenched teeth. I swallowed, fighting the urge to flee. He twisted back around, spat out “FUCKER!” and kicked Heck in the stomach one more time. Blood erupted out of Heck’s mouth in a wet little cloud.

Then Fat Ernst stepped back, still breathing heavily. He stared down at the sprawled corpse and spoke without looking at me. “You get all that shit cleaned up?”

“Yeah, except for the little bit in the kitchen and out here,” I answered.

Fat Ernst looked at the sky. The clouds, black and pregnant with rain, filled the sky from horizon to horizon. “What time is it?” he asked finally.

“Uh, around three or four, I think,” I said.

“Give me a hand here.” Fat Ernst went down to one knee at the edge of the loading dock and flipped open the lid to the Dumpster. It crashed against the metal side with an abrupt, clanging sound that made me wince. Fat Ernst straightened with some effort and took two steps sideways. He bent over and pulled a key ring out of Heck’s front pocket, then rolled him on his side and plucked a wallet out of one of Heck’s back pockets. Fat Ernst slid the wallet into his own pocket like it belonged to him, then sidled down to Heck’s feet. “Grab his arms there, and help me dump him.”

I knew it was wrong. Knew I should have called somebody. Knew I should have left. But it didn’t matter. I grabbed Heck’s bloody arms anyway. I couldn’t look at his ruined face. We both lifted, and Heck simply folded in half. Fat Ernst shuffled sideways to the edge, and dropped Heck’s legs into the empty Dumpster. It was already starting to fill with rainwater. The rest of Heck’s torso slid in, and his arms slipped easily out of my grasp. He hit the bottom of the Dumpster with all the grace of a canvas sack of rotten potatoes falling off a table.

I wasn’t sure if Fat Ernst was going to leave Heck in there until the garbage guys came next Wednesday, or if he was going to haul the body out later that night, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask. Fat Ernst turned his face up to the falling rain for a moment, then wiped his forehead and muttered, “I just can’t understand why it is so goddamn hard for a man to make a decent living on his own these days.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I kept my mouth shut.

After a few seconds, Fat Ernst turned and forced his bulk through the back door. He hollered over his shoulder, “Hurry and finish cleaning up. Then you and me are gonna go for a ride. I’m gonna close up early today. We got a lot of work to do before morning rolls around.”

Fat Ernst had a huge old Cadillac, with fins and everything, a fat white whale wallowing in a sea of mud. The inside was the color of pomegranates that have been left in the sun too long. Everything was this deep dark red, and I mean everything. The carpet, the seats, the dashboard—even the steering wheel. Only the slivery glints of the metal knobs broke the monotony. I sat down on the edge of the impossibly long bench seat, feeling like a frightened toddler placed upon a pew in some musty old church for the first time. And just like I was in church, I prayed. I prayed there wasn’t too much mud on Grandpa’s boots to soil the pomegranate carpet. I prayed Grandma was okay. I prayed we weren’t going back to Slim’s pit.

And I prayed that someday I would forget how Heck’s ruined face looked as he landed in the bottom of the Dumpster.

Fat Ernst dropped into the driver’s seat like a bomb going off in slow motion. Waves of flesh rolled down, then rippled back up his arms and under his shirt. The car’s suspension gave a short shriek of pain, then gave up. Fat Ernst twisted the key and we were off. He didn’t say anything and neither did I.

The Cadillac followed the highway up into the foothills by the lake. I thanked God that we were headed in the opposite direction from Slim’s ranch, but I still got a bad feeling when Fat Ernst stopped the car in front of Heck’s store. A rusted gas pump stood outside the store like a stubborn sentry who refused to leave his post. A wooden sandwich board had been propped up near the door and loudly proclaimed
LIVE BAIT—FRESH WORMS
.

Fat Ernst ignored the “Gone Fishin’, Be Back Later” sign hanging behind the glass front door and opened the door using Heck’s keys. I decided to stay outside, by the gas pump. Heck was dead, and I didn’t need to be inside his store, going through his stuff, looking for God knows what. Behind the store, off to the west, the clouds were churning across the sky, hanging low and fat. It wouldn’t be long before the rain started again, flat-out serious this time.

Fat Ernst reappeared, carrying a chunk of cast iron about the size of a basketball. It was bulbous and heavy, with three stubby legs protruding out of what I thought was the bottom. A thick plastic hose grew out of the top and looped over Fat Ernst’s shoulder. He carried it to the car, breath coming in short, quick bursts.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Sump pump,” Fat Ernst replied, as if that explained everything. He opened the trunk and dropped the thing inside. “See boy, that’s how you make it in this world. You gotta always be thinking ahead.”

I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about but figured it wasn’t the time to ask, because Fat Ernst was settling in behind the wheel. I hopped back into the car and Fat Ernst pulled out in a wide U-turn, heading back down into the valley. Before long, I realized that we were headed down Road E, down the narrow road to the gravel track and out to the Sawyers’ ranch.

The road didn’t improve much in the faint daylight that was still left. It just illuminated the dead trees, broken fences, and scattered litter of tossed beer cans, cigarette packs, fast-food wrappers, and junkthat didn’t have any logical explanation. A La-Z-Boy recliner, lying on its side. A shopping cart. Broken sawhorses. A pile of microwaves. An old dishwasher, still swathed in fiberglass insulation. Much later, I found out all this was actually dumped by people from town who couldn’t be bothered to take their junk to the dump and pay the fee. Instead, they drove out here when they knew the brothers were gone and unloaded their trash.

The Cadillac crested the small hill and rolled down into the hollow filled with deep shadows. As we got closer to the house I could hear the incessant, skin-crawling buzz of the wasps, even through the thick windows. I kept checking and rechecking the passenger window to make sure it was rolled all the way up.

Fat Ernst killed the headlights as he got close to the edge of the house. “Don’t want to spook ’em,” he said. “Heard they started shooting at a UPS truck that got lost once.” After a moment of consideration, he shut the engine off too. We sat quietly in the Cadillac, parked about fifteen yards from the house. Two of the downstairs windows had light spilling out of them onto the tangled grass. But the front door stayed shut. Then Fat Ernst looked over at me. “Why don’t you go say hello.” Then he told me what to say.

I knew it was coming. Knew it was useless to argue. Fat Ernst would probably just break my nose, then make me go up to the house by myself anyway. So I took a quick glance out at the fig trees, now just splintered, twisted silhouettes against a purple sky, and climbed out of the car. I thought about leaving the door open, thinking it would serve Fat Ernst right if I let a swarm of wasps loose inside the car. But I shut the door and started toward the house.

It still reminded me of a spider; a squat, sick arachnid with broken legs, still waiting patiently in its web of fig trees. A thin strip of cracked concrete took me to the front door. I couldn’t feel my legs; they seemed to be moving on their own, and I floated along through the weeds growing in the ragged crevices in the concrete as if I were standing onsome crumbling conveyer belt. I just eased on up to the front door and before I could stop myself, I reached out and pressed the doorbell. Nothing happened.

I swore under my breath and raised my fist to knock.

The door opened and Junior grinned out of the shadows at me. “Well, well. If it isn’t the sharpshooter. Hiya, Archie.”

He stood there wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. A chicken drumstick was clamped in one hand. He glanced over my shoulder at Fat Ernst’s Cadillac and took a chomp out of the chicken leg. He pulled his head away, like a dog, and I heard the gristle snap. He said, “Come back for some more shooting practice?”

“Uh, no. Look, I’m sorry about that—I, uh, didn’t mean to do it,” I finished in a small voice. Uncomfortable silence. I had to say something. “Fat Ernst says he’s got another job for you.”

“Is that right.”

A light flickered on somewhere behind him, to the right, illuminating the foyer of the house. A small, antique table stood against the wall behind Junior. A tall mirror hung above the table. It looked old and dark, as if bubbles and smoke had somehow infected the glass, twisting and obscuring the reflection. And I heard the voice, out of the room to the right.
Her
voice. It sounded like rusty iron being slowly pulled apart.

“What’s that pig fucker want?” Dry as death, the words sounded a little slurred and mushy. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about me or Fat Ernst.

Junior called back over his shoulder, “Says he’s got another job for us, Ma.”

In the mirror behind Junior, I caught a glimpse of something pale. The mirror must have been tilted somehow, maybe hung crookedly, because I could see into the room to the right. Maybe it was the living room, I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t until much later that I began to suspect it was hung that way on purpose, so anyone in the living room could see who was at the front door without leaving the room. The pale shapedrifted through the smoky glass like a ghost, but I knew it was her. “What kind of job?”

Junior looked down at me and asked, “What kind of job?” He stuck the now-clean drumstick in his mouth and, in one quick jerk, broke it in half.

“I don’t know.” My voice cracked and trembled. “He didn’t say.”

“Archie don’t know, Ma,” Junior called back over his shoulder, imitating my high, cracking voice. “He didn’t say.”

The pallid figure in the mirror stopped moving. I could definitely tell it had a human shape now, maybe a little thin, with one arm missing or held in real close and tight, but it was a person. It was Pearl. She was watching me through the mirror. For some reason I could see one of her eyes in the reflection, perfectly clear, utterly black and staring. It felt like she was staring right through my head, right down into the nest of squirming fear that was beginning to spill out into the rest of my body. I felt naked. No, more than naked. I felt like I couldn’t hide anything, that all of my secrets were laid bare on a flat rock in the sun and poked at with a stick.

Junior stuck one of the broken ends of the bone in his mouth and started sucking on it, smacking his tongue against the top of his mouth as he sucked out the marrow.

“I know you,” Pearl said. “I know you. Saw you last night.” The reflection tilted its head slightly. “You’re Janine Stanton’s grandson, ain’t you?” It didn’t come out as a question. “Yes, I know you. Knew your grandfather. You look like him. Same scared eyes. I happen to know a few things ‘bout your grandma too.” I wasn’t sure, but it looked like the pale shape in the darkness and smoke of the mirror smiled, a horrible, crooked smile with only one side of her face. “How them boots fit, boy?”

My breath caught and I froze. How did she know about Grandpa’s boots? The figure in the mirror drifted back into the smoky shadows and disappeared. Junior flicked one half of the drumstick into the weeds and said, “What the hell does Fat Ernst want now? Tonight?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” Pause. “He just said to bring your shovels.”

The blast of a car horn shattered the evening stillness and I flinched. Fat Ernst must have been getting impatient. Junior scowled and said, “Ma don’t like a lot of unnecessary noise.”

I didn’t know what to say. I felt like crawling into a hole and hiding there. Fat Ernst hit the horn again.

Junior picked at his teeth with a long fingernail. “Shovels, huh?”

I shrugged again, helpless. “That’s what he said. Said we could all make a lot of money. Just one night’s work.”

“How much money?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to talk to him.” I was trying to get Junior to go out to the car and get me away from the house, but Junior didn’t move. He just leaned against the doorframe.

“Well, then. You tell Fat Ernst not to get his panties in a bunch and to lay off that fucking horn, and we’ll be ready here lickety-split.”

I turned to go, saying, “Okay. I’ll tell him.” Pearl spoke up suddenly, sounding just inches from my ear. “My boys best get their fair share,” she whispered. “Otherwise … there’s a-going to be hell to pay, and I do mean
hell.”