Wormfood (28 page)

The pressure around my throat suddenly vanished as Junior released me and grabbed at his own throat. I caught a quick flash of Misty’s face over his right shoulder. Her jaw was set, eyes on fire. She had that leash wrapped around Junior’s neck and was doing her best to choke the life out of him.

Pearl’s cane cracked through the sky into Misty’s skull. Misty dropped to the loading dock, but she didn’t let go of the leash. Junior arched his back, clawing at the leather. Pearl brought her cane down again, viciously striking Misty in the jaw. Misty let go then, rolling into a ball, covering her head with her arms. Pearl whipped the cane over her shoulder, bringing it down in a whistling arc, smacking into Misty’s body. It reminded me of Junior hitting the crowbar in the coffin. She kept hitting Misty, again and again, cracking that cane into Misty’s arms and head and hands.

Before I could react, Junior grabbed a fistful of my hair and twisted, almost rolling me off the plank. He pulled me sideways and shoved my head down toward the black water. Worms rose out of the surface, reaching, straining for my skin as if they were steel shavings drawn to a magnet.

“Don’t kill him yet. We need his blood,” I heard Pearl yell, then saw her lopsided, leering face under Junior’s arm, watching me with her bright right eye. She held the cane in her right hand, buckle in her left. “And his liver.”

Junior rolled me back onto the plank and squeezed my throat again. The gray sky got darker. I heard Junior’s harsh breathing coming down a long, winding tunnel. And then—almost at the other end of the tunnel—I heard Grandma’s voice.

“That’s enough fun for today. You best let go of my grandson.”

Junior jerked his head around. Under his arm, past Pearl’s hunched figure, I saw Grandma’s short, squat frame filling the back doorway of the restaurant. She wore her giant straw hat and Grandpa’s thick neoprene fishing waders up to her ample waist. The .10 gauge rested comfortably on her walker. For a second, I wondered how she’d made it through the worms, but then I realized the waders had protected her.

Junior squinted down at me and didn’t move.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Grandma said, casually bringing up the side-by-side barrels of her shotgun. “I swear to the good Lord, I’m gonna scatter your innards to hell and back.” She paused. “I mean it, son.”

Pearl started to say something, but Grandma wasn’t in the mood and squeezed the trigger. The blast disintegrated the bottom five inches of Pearl’s cane and drove a hole the size of a grapefruit through the loading dock. Grandma rode the recoil, letting the gun rock and buck in her hands, and when the gun smoke cleared, the barrels were aimed at Junior’s head.

Pearl stared down at her feet. “You … you shot me.”

Junior instantly let go of my throat and scooted backward onto the loading dock, asking, “Ma? Ma? You okay, Ma?”

I sucked in a giant breath, coughed like hell, and almost rolled off the plank into the open Dumpster. I remembered that my leg had been dangling in the water and jerked it out with a splash. I couldn’t feel whether any worms were eating into my leg; I couldn’t seem to focus my eyes. Everything had gone numb except the inside of my throat and lungs. Each breath felt like I was swallowing gulps of lava.

“Arch? How you doing?” Grandma asked.

“I’m here,” I said, and my voice sounded hollow and scratchy. “Thanks.”

“What’s all over your face?” Grandma asked me, but kept her eyes and shotgun on Pearl and Junior.

“I dunno,” I said, crawling off the plank. “She marked my face for some kind of something.” I watched Pearl’s expression closely, feeling guilty, like I’d just crossed a line by admitting that Pearl had tried to kill me. “They wanted my blood.”

“You people are goddamn lucky you didn’t hurt my grandson or this girl any worse,” Grandma said, her tone calm and controlled, but a deaf guy could have heard the hatred seeping through the spaces between each word.

Junior ignored her. He kneeled before Pearl, inspecting her feet. “Jesus, Ma,” he nearly sobbed, “You been shot.” Pearl stood still, bracing herself with her good arm on Junior’s head, staring at Grandma. Junior wiped at Pearl’s shoes with trembling fingers. A dozen tiny round bubbles of blood, no bigger than peas, kept rising up at the top of the leather after each sweep of Junior’s hand.

“Don’t you worry about that none,” Pearl said to her son, never taking her eyes off Grandma. “It don’t hurt.”

I knelt over Misty as thunder growled out across the valley. Her left arm rested across her chest and I flinched when I saw her hand. The fingers stuck out in all directions, mangled, as if she’d stuck her hand in a fan belt. Blood ran down her temple. Her bottom lip hadbeen split, and one eye was nearly black, swollen shut. Her other eye was closed. At least her breathing was slow and steady.

“I been waiting a long time now,” Grandma said quietly, watching Pearl carefully. “Kept watching the town, ever since the day you dumped that blood all over the sidewalk in front of the butcher’s. That’s when I knew. Been praying I’d find you like this one day.”

Pearl drew her cracked lips back from her decayed teeth in a defiant, tight smile. “You shoulda prayed that you’d never see me ever again, you shriveled teat. When I get tired of you and your chicken-shit little grandson here, you’re gonna pray for death instead.” Pearl raised the blasted, splintered end of her cane until it pointed at Grandma’s torso, where the waders stopped, just under Grandma’s large breasts.

“Pearl,” Grandma said with a tired smile, “you couldn’t scare a goddamn chipmunk away.”

“You’d be surprised at what I could scare away. Got your grandson shaking in them old boots.” Pearl fingered her cane, stroking it slowly, obscenely. “I can still smell Bill in ’em.”

Grandma exhaled sharply. “I ain’t here to talk about my husband. He’s gone.” She coughed. A tiny trickle of blood ran from her right nostril and collected on her bottom lip.

Pearl’s smile got wider and her eye got brighter. The cane quivered. “In some ways, maybe. Maybe not. Dead? Yeah, he’s dead. Gone?” She shook her head slightly. “Naw. He ain’t gone. Not by a long shot. He still … lingers. Like them boots. He’s still around, you just gotta know how to listen.” Pearl paused a moment, giving all of us a chance to listen as the rain softly hit the surface of the floodwater, the roof, the loading dock. “He talks to
me
now. And sometimes, when the wind is just right, I can still hear his screams. Screaming out there in the dark. Cryin’ for you, for anybody, to come and save him. Course, toward the end, he doesn’t get many words out, as such. Just starts in with them screams. Sounds like a goddamn helpless old woman. It feels … well, it helps me sleep, listening to him out there, out there in that hog pen, just screaming, screaming.”

“Don’t push it,” Grandma said, easing the shotgun up to Pearl’s head. More blood slipped from Grandma’s chin, dripping onto her sundress.

“Go ahead and shoot me then, if you think you can. You don’t have the balls, you worthless old bitch. You should have let him go. He would have been happier with me. And he knows that now. I would have satisfied him, showed him what a real woman could do.”

Grandma smiled thinly and licked her lips. Her tongue smeared the blood, making it look like she’d applied a serious shade of lipstick. She said, “He wanted a real woman; that’s why he chose me. Not some goddamn skinny sideshow freak. He married me, remember?”

“I remember. I don’t forget anything. And you oughta know that.” Pearl let the cane drop for a moment, holding it with her curled left arm, and reached up to the folds of the rags at her throat, pulling out a string of yellow blocks. It was a necklace of some sort, with dozens of irregular, knotted chunks of what looked like wood or bone, all tied together with a piece of twine around Pearl’s scrawny neck.

She grinned. “Forty-four teeth.”

Grandma swallowed and I saw her finger tighten around the shotgun’s trigger.

“And you know where they came from. You know. That big old boar. That one that stared at you the whole goddamn time them county boys pulled all those pieces of Bill out of the mud.”

“I don’t give a damn what you’ve got there. I … I sold those hogs at the auction. All of ‘em. They’re gone.” Grandma clenched her teeth and swallowed, and I feared she was swallowing blood.

Pearl shook the necklace, making the pig teeth dance in a dry, crackling, snapping sound, like a hardwood campfire. “Nothin’s ever gone. Didn’t you pay attention back in high school? Matter never goes away. It just changes. It just gets recycled.” Pearl brought the cane back up. “Who do you think bought them hogs, you stupid bitch? We, me and the boys, we ate every last one of them pigs, everything, righton down to the bone marrow. Sweetest, most goddamn tender meat I ever tasted. Like honey.”

I’d had enough. Hot fury bubbled up and I snapped, “Shut up! Just shut up!” I shook the haze out of my head. “Evil fucking bitch.” I jumped up, away from Misty, and grabbed the shovel. I brought the blade around, feet nearly three feet apart, hips locked, shoulders rolling, arms braced, like I was trying to hit a home run, wanting nothing more than to knock Pearl’s head off, send it skipping out across the floodwater like a flat stone.

Pearl raised her right hand, caught hold of the blade, and stopped it cold. I felt like I’d just tried to chop down a steel beam. The tingling jolt rushed up my arms, vibrating deep in my chest.

Pearl ripped her stare away from Grandma, forced the shovel down, pinned me down like a bug. “You ain’t nothing but a speck on flyshit, little boy.”

While Pearl’s gaze was fixed on me, Grandma shot forward, bringing the double barrels of her .10 gauge down in a short, vicious arc, cracking it into Pearl’s skull. Grandma grunted, spat, and hit Pearl again.

Pearl dropped to her knees, wincing in pain, grinning the whole time.

Something tickled the back of my mind, something important.

Next to me, I heard Misty whisper, “Kill her … just kill her …” Her eyes were nothing but slits, but she was conscious. She pushed herself up into a sitting position. “… Kill her …”

Pearl lifted her right hand to her head and touched the raw spot where the barrel had connected. “You hit like a girl,” she said to Grandma.

I jabbed the shovel at Pearl again, just to keep her off balance, on her toes, so to speak. Boiling fury still popped inside of me and I said, “Gimme that fucking buckle. It ain’t yours, it belongs to her.” I jerked my head at Misty.

Pearl looked at me and the left side of her face folded into a smile. “You think you’re man enough, you come and get it.” She held up the buckle for a moment, clenching it in her fist while she slid her kneesapart on the dock, then lifted her dress and shoved the buckle up between her legs. She spread her arms wide in an invitation. Judging from the look on her face, I’d say she liked hanging onto the buckle.

I didn’t know what to do. I sure as hell wasn’t going to go after it.

“I’ve listened to enough of your evil garbage,” Grandma said, biting off each word as if it tasted bad. Blood still dripped off her chin. “I may be a tired old woman, but I will kill you and your whole family if you so much as sneeze.”

I’d never been prouder of my grandmother.

Pearl hissed, “You just wait, you sad, leaking sack of meat. My boys? They’re gonna catch up to you. Someday, somehow, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

I finally figured out Junior was gone.

One minute, all five of us had been grouped into a rough circle on the loading dock, and I could remember Junior at his mother’s side up until she pulled out the tooth necklace. But when I had lost it, trying to hit Pearl in the head, I realized that Junior hadn’t been there. He had vanished like smoke.

I brought the shovel back up, saying, “Grandma, he’s—”

Junior screamed, “Eat this!” from inside the kitchen. Thunder cracked across the loading dock, and blood exploded from Grandma’s chest and back. She was lifted off her feet and flung forward, shoulders rigid, knocking the walker into Pearl. I jerked my head around just in time to see a short bark of flame leap out of the darkness of the kitchen. That was it; that was what I had forgotten.

Ray’s Super Redhawk, lying on the dining room floor.

A wall of fire unfurled out at me. Searing heat washed over the loading dock, and the concussion followed an instant later, slamming into my chest, my head, snapping my bones. It felt like I’d been hit by a burning truck.

It was the gas.

When Junior had shoved me against the stove, the burst of airknocked out of my lungs had blown out the pilot. So the whole time we were out on the loading dock, the colorless natural gas had been silently filling the kitchen, the dining room, until Junior pulled the trigger on Ray’s revolver.

The initial wall of flame had blown itself out, and through the haze I caught a quick glimpse of Junior. He was on fire, stumbling toward the front door; the grease in his pompadour seemed to be especially flammable. I hoped it hurt bad enough he wished he was dead. I hoped he thought he had just been flung into hell. He threw himself at the front door, burst through it, and hurled himself into the water in a cloud of smoke and steam.

Grandma fell facedown on the dock, flattened by the impact of the gunshot and the wall of heat. Her right palm slapped the wood, then crumpled under her body as she slid forward. The .10 gauge slipped out of her grip, bounced once, and slid across the wet wood into Pearl’s hand.

Pearl landed hard on her bony hip at the edge of the Dumpster. The shotgun slid past my head, right into her good arm. She swung the heavy barrels around toward Grandma. “Shoot me?” she rasped. “I’ll eat your heart, you bitch, just chew it up and shit it out.”

I rolled onto my side, twisted, and kicked Pearl in the face with my right foot. It wasn’t much of a kick, but the impact snapped Pearl’s head back and the shotgun went off; her pointed chin popped up as the buckshot exploded into the flames in the kitchen. The force of my kick, combined with the heavy recoil from the .10 gauge, knocked Pearl’s upper torso back, and ever so slowly Pearl toppled and fell into the Dumpster headfirst. She held on to the shotgun all the way, refusing to let go even as the Dumpster water swallowed her head, shoulders, hips. Her sticklike legs followed, kicked once, then slid off the loading dock and disappeared into the thick, dark water. A few bubbles popped on the surface. The shotgun was gone.