Wormfood (4 page)

Straight up the highway was Junior. He swayed unsteadily up the yellow line, carrying the bull skull in his left hand. One of the horns was gone, broken off. Smoke rolled across the highway behind him.

For a moment, nothing moved but the smoke. Then all hell broke loose.

I heard car doors opening, slamming shut. Shocked, angry voices. Men with permanently sunburned faces in dark, Western-cut suits boiled out of their cars and pickups, stomping toward the intersection. Stocky women in dark blue and green dresses that hugged their ample hips and hung to midcalf followed their husbands out of the cars, some wearing the soggy remains of their potluck contributions.

The first Cadillac in the funeral procession, the one that had been following the hearse, sat quietly in the middle of the intersection. Finally, the driver’s door swung open and Slim Johnson, Earl’s younger brother, jumped out. A thin trickle of blood ran from his thinning hair down his white forehead, across the hat line, and continued down his red face. He looked naked without his John Deere hat.

“Sonofabitch!” he screamed, literally shaking with rage. His scarred, leathery hands clenched and unclenched into bony fists. It looked like Slim’s wife and the rest of Earl’s family were in the car. They didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to climb out. I wondered if Misty was in there. Many of the men from the funeral procession had reached the second car in line, but hung back, waiting to follow Slim’s lead.

It didn’t take long. Slim stalked forward, down the center of the highway, shaking a finger at Junior. “Sonofabitch!” he screamed again, apparently the only word he was capable of choking out. A vein throbbed alarmingly in his temple. He stomped down the highway in his ostrich skin boots, his finger vibrating spastically like a dousing rod that had just found the ocean. “Sonofabitch! You hear me, you little sonofabitch?”

Junior ignored Slim and tucked the bull skull under one arm. “Bert! Let’s go!”

In the weeds next to the hearse, Bert called out weakly, “Junior?”

Off to my right, across the muddy lake that Fat Ernst liked to call a parking lot, the screen door slammed shut. Fat Ernst and Heck workedtheir way down the steps and started across the acre of mud. At first glance, Fat Ernst looked like somebody had haphazardly shaved one of those bears that were trained to ride a unicycle around a circus ring. When he got closer, you could see this guy was maybe a little uglier than a shaved bear. He had named his restaurant to try and convince people that this big, waddling German had a sense of humor. But all it did was give everybody permission to call him “fat” to his face.

The smaller man was Heck. He sported a potbelly so perfectly defined it looked like he was trying to hide a bowling ball under his shirt as he hopped through the mud with his ambling gate. Heck, short for Hector, ran a bait shop up near the Split Rock reservoir. He never had a whole lot of business since not many people bothered fishing up there; carp were about the only fish that could live in the brackish water.

Bert called, “Hey, Junior? Junior?”

Meanwhile, Slim had caught up with Junior in the middle of the highway. “You listen to me when I’m talking to you, you little—” Slim started to yank Junior around, but Junior twisted out of the rancher’s grasp and shoved the bull skull into Slim’s chest.

“Fuck off!” Junior shouted up into Slim’s face. “Look what you fucking did to my truck!” Dark spittle flew out of Junior’s mouth and landed on Slim’s cheek. Slim did an admirable job of ignoring it, even as it slid down his cheek and collected at the corner of his lips.

Slim’s voice dropped dangerously low. “Now, now you listen to me—”

Junior jerked the skull up in a quick, savage motion, cracking the heavy bone into Slim’s chin. Slim’s head popped back as if he’d suddenly found something amazing in the clouds above him; then he took two stuttering steps sideways.

He turned, and I thought he was going to say something to the group of ranchers behind him, but he toppled face-first onto the hood of his Cadillac instead. He slid down and his chin bounced off the front bumper, snapping his teeth shut with a solid crack that made me wince. It knocked him straight out; his eyes rolled back and he dropped to the asphalt, landing on one knee and his left ear.

None of the men from the procession moved. Somebody brave shouted, “Hey, that ain’t right,” but that was all.

The passenger door of Slim’s Cadillac opened and the one and only Misty Johnson stepped out. Everything stopped for a second. Even the rain. She slammed the door and said, “Junior, didn’t your mother ever teach you any manners, you goddamn dumb redneck prick?”

Misty had hair the color of blond sin, curling slightly around her bare shoulders. A black dress clung to a body with curves like those on old cars from the late forties, early fifties: curves that hinted, suggested, promised the exquisite soft heat underneath. Man, oh man, those curves. There was something about the precise mathematical nature of those smooth angles that triggered something in my brain like goddamn voodoo; overloaded, overheated the circuits, sent the synapses barking at each other in different languages, fogged up the connections in a monsoon of lust. Maybe it was wrong to feel that way about somebody who had just lost her father, and at the man’s funeral no less, but I didn’t care.

Junior pointed the bull skull at her. “You better watch your mouth, talking about Ma.” He turned back and ambled down the highway toward his truck, still looking for the broken horn. “Bert! Let’s go. Get the lead out!” Then he saw me and stopped. His heavy-lidded stare froze my blood.

“I … I told you I didn’t know how to drive,” I stammered.

Junior just shook his head ever so slowly. He never took his eyes off of me. “See this?” He shook the skull at me. “You’re gonna pay for this.”

“Hey, Junior? Junior?” Bert crawled out of the weeds next to the hearse. Although his right arm hung at his side at an unnatural angle, I could see that the broken horn was clutched in his fist. He lurched toward the truck, holding his right wrist close to his waist, and met Junior at the double yellow lines in the center of the road.

Junior looked Bert up and down for a minute. They exchanged a few quiet words.

Misty leaned forward, crossing her arms and resting them on the top of the door frame. She watched silently, her perfect chest framed in the car’s window frame, and looked at me.

Junior helped Bert toward the truck.

I blinked and watched as a couple of the men skittishly came forward and helped Slim to his feet. Fresh blood oozed from Slim’s mouth. He jerked his arms free, glaring at the world, and shook one callused finger at Junior and Bert. “You … you little sonofabitch.”

His fragile composure was beginning to crack again. I couldn’t wait for it to shatter; then he’d go after Junior like some wild dog. Hell, this was something I’d pay to see. Slim swallowed and his top lip kept twitching as if he’d had a stroke. “I’m talking to you, boy, so you’d best—”

Junior turned back to the procession one more time, speaking slowly and loudly so everyone could hear him clearly. “Why don’t you take that bony little dick of yours, stick it right up your tight ass, and start farting, motherfucker.” He shoved Bert into the passenger seat. Bert’s right arm hit the dashboard and he screamed. I tried not to grin.

Fat Ernst and Heck finally reached the back of the truck. My boss was wheezing terribly, something exercise always did to him. Even though his lungs were shot, having to haul all that bulk around meant he still had muscles like boulders, buried underneath deceptive layers of fat. Once, when a trucker was mouthing off, I saw Fat Ernst casually reach over the bar and pop the guy in the jaw. It wasn’t a big, swinging roundhouse punch, either. No, it was just a little jab, but I heard the trucker ended up enjoying his meals through a straw for the better part of a year.

Slim ignored Fat Ernst and Heck and kicked the truck’s back tire with one of his ostrich skin boots. I don’t think it hurt the tire much.

“Howdy, Slim,” Fat Ernst breathed.

Slim kicked the back bumper.

Junior tossed the bull skull and the horn on the floor of the cab next to Bert’s boots and turned to Slim, smoothing out his pompadour with both hands. “Do it again. C’mon. Do it again! I got witnesses. When I drag your ass to court, I’m gonna tell everybody how you assaulted our truck.”

“You little … little … sonofabitch,” Slim said in one long, hissed exhale. I don’t think anything scared Slim more than lawyers. He yelled, “Where is that useless goddamn deputy?” and looked down the highway, as if the police car might just happen to be driving along. He whirled and pointed at Fat Ernst. “Call Ray! Get him out here right now!”

Fat Ernst finally caught his breath enough to string more than three words together. “Well now, Slim, I don’t know exactly what happened here, but—”

“Get on the goddamn phone! I want Ray out here now! Right now!” Slim started to say something else, but Junior jumped into the truck and started it with a roar, drowning out the rest of Slim’s words.

I stepped smartly out of the way as the hide and tallow truck backed away from the smoking hearse. It swung around in reverse toward the restaurant. The gears ground together like a mouthful of steel shavings as Junior forced the gearshift into first. He beeped the horn twice and waved, then flew back down the highway the way we had come, passing the funeral procession once again.

“Sonofabitch!” Slim screamed.

“Now, just take it easy, calm down and …”

But Slim wasn’t listening. He stormed back to his Cadillac, ripped open the driver’s door, and got in. The back doors popped open and family members hastily crawled out as Slim gunned the engine.

Misty stepped away and shut her door. Slim’s and Earl’s wives, I didn’t know which was which, clung together, watching Slim with wide, horrified eyes. Even Fat Ernst managed to get out of the way.

Slim stomped on the gas but nothing happened. The Cadillac didn’t move. The back bumper was caught underneath the bumper of the burnt-orange Cadillac behind it.

Slim tried again, and the front tires started spinning on the wet asphalt. The bumpers gave a protesting, grinding sound, but held. The front of Slim’s car drifted back and forth across the intersection. He screamed something and punched at the steering wheel. Then he jerked the short gearshift into reverse and stood on the gas again. The Cadillac rocked backward, and both bumpers curled down to the asphalt. Then it was back into drive and the car surged forward, lifting the bumpers up once again.

The metal held for a brief moment, long enough to get the front tires spinning and the car floating back and forth across the road. Then the bumper of the burnt-orange Cadillac gave way with a high, twanging sound and a couple of sparks.

Slim’s Cadillac shot forward as if fired from a slow-burning cannon. I could see Slim wrench the wheel to the left, saw the front tires turn as well, but they couldn’t find purchase on the rain-slick asphalt at that speed and the Cadillac shot through the muddy parking lot and plunged into the cornfield, where the engine promptly died.

Nobody said anything for a minute.

Then, from the cornfield, I heard a faint “Sonofabitch!”

And just when Fat Ernst opened his mouth, one of the wives started to scream. But she wasn’t looking across the highway at the cornfield. She was staring down into the ditch. Several of the men and their wives rushed forward to see what was wrong. I walked across the bridge and stood a ways behind Fat Ernst.

Right on the other side of the intersection, by the short bridge where Road DD crossed over the irrigation ditch, the ditch split intwo. One branch, the main one, kept going straight, due south toward the freeway. The other branch forked off to the left, following the road to Slim’s and Earl’s ranches in the northeastern end of the valley. A large wooden gate used to regulate the flow of water was sunk into the concrete where the two ditches met. Normally, the gate would have been down, cutting off water to the smaller ditch, but today it was open, and the dark water rolled and boiled at the junction where the smashed hearse lay.

It looked like parts of Earl were swirling around in the water.

Somebody led the wives away from the edge of the bridge as more parts of Earl’s corpse slowly emerged. I caught sight of the toe of a black cowboy boot, an empty arm of a blue suit with a clenched, swollen fist sticking out of one end, and some just plain unidentifiable meat. “Jesus Christ,” I whispered and swallowed. Stray strands of white hair floated up, and I quickly looked away before the rest of the head followed.

“Damn. That ain’t gonna be easy, finding all of him to put back in a box,” I heard Fat Ernst murmur to Heck. Fat Ernst froze suddenly, eyes wide. “Jesus, you don’t think … They weren’t gonna bury him with his belt buckle, were they?”

I’d heard about Earl’s belt buckle a few times in the bar. I guess he’d won CAA Cowboy of the Year a few years ago, and as a prize they’d given him a giant silver and gold belt buckle. The gold had been sculpted into a relief showing a cowboy and his horse crossing a mountain meadow at night. Dozens of small diamonds had been set into the silver sky, representing stars. Way I heard it, the buckle wasn’t cheap, not by a long shot.

Heck nodded. “That’s what they said, man.”

“Jesus,” Fat Ernst repeated. Both men touched their own large belt buckles, but I didn’t know if it was just to reassure themselves that their own buckles were still there, or if it was out of sympathy, like Catholics making the sign of the cross. Fat Ernst grunted. “I’ll bet Slim ain’t too happy about not getting his hands on that buckle.”

“What the hell is that?” Heck asked.

I saw something roll over in the water. It looked kind of long, cylindrical, and gray, like a small hose or something. But the water kept surging around, and it was gone before I got a good look at it.

“I reckon part of the lower intestine,” Fat Ernst said knowingly. “I heard he’d been down on the bottom for something like two weeks. So Hutson couldn’t embalm Earl. Read that they can’t do it to bodies that have been in salt water too long.”