Wormfood (5 page)

Pieces of the corpse were starting to float down the smaller ditch, toward the foothills. “Guess he wants to go home,” Fat Ernst said hoarsely, trying not to laugh. Heck snorted, covering his mouth.

“Did you see what happened?” Misty asked me.

I was suddenly painfully aware of the blood on my forehead, collecting and clotting into a stiff scab in my eyebrow. “I, uh, no … not really.”

Fat Ernst didn’t know what to say either. “Ah … we … uh, were real sorry to hear about the loss of your father.”

Misty gave a quick nod, keeping her eyes on the ditch.

One of the farmers came over, took a look and screwed up his face like he’d just bitten into a rotten lemon. “Dear Lord … You think we should try and maybe … I don’t know, maybe try and
collect
him? For later, I mean … to be buried?”

“Shit, I dunno,” Fat Ernst said. “I’d say just wait. You can get all the parts later on, downstream, if need be.” The man nodded, looking relieved. Suddenly, Fat Ernst noticed me. “What the hell are you doing?”

I looked at my shoes. “Uhh … nothing.”

“Exactly. Get into gear and get to work. You ain’t getting paid to stand around and gawk.”

I nodded and stepped away from the edge of the ditch. It was time to get to work. As I walked across the highway through the gentle rain toward the spinning neon sign, I glanced back and saw Misty watching me. I turned around and kept moving. I heard Fat Ernst tell Heck, “Just can’t get decent help these days.” Then, quieter. “Swear to God, that boy is dumber than a box of dirt.”

Fat Ernst had big plans for his restaurant. He had it built next to where he knew they were putting in the freeway. Actually, he bought up a lot of land where he thought they might build the freeway, just in case. That’s how he owned the land where Grandma and I lived. Paid off one of the county commissioners to make sure they put an off-ramp next to the restaurant, so folks going down the freeway could pull off nice and easy, spend some money, have some food. But before they could get around to planning the on-and off-ramps, the commissioner had a heart attack. The next guy who got put in charge just happened to be part owner in a gas station farther south down the freeway, on Highway 14. So the off-ramp never got put in next to the restaurant. They didn’t even bother to build an overpass, just killed Highway 200 right there.

Well, that pissed Fat Ernst off so much he showed up at the next city council meeting, ranting and shouting about how the council was nothing but a bunch of commie motherfuckers.

The next day, a county health inspector showed up at the restaurant. Closed Fat Ernst down. Fifty-three counts of health violations. Fat Ernst didn’t have much of a choice; he had to comply. Spent even more money, got the restaurant fixed up enough to where he could reopen.

Then somebody else came out a week later, cited him because he didn’t have any designated handicapped parking. And this was back in the days when nobody gave a shit about wheelchair access. They must have really searched the books to find that law. Fat Ernst had to put up a handicapped parking sign, right next to the front stairs. All that did was to make him mad enough that he parked his bone white Cadillac there every day in a sort of protest.

The restaurant was built in the midst of cornfields, on about an acre of land mostly covered in cheap gravel. Fat Ernst wanted plenty of parking space, in anticipation of all the customers he figured would be eating there, but it only made the place seem even more isolated and empty. He never bothered to resurface the lot, and so after a few years passed it looked like some sort of bombed-out no-man’s-land, with giant craters all over the place. When the rains came, the lot was one giant lake of mud.

I trudged across this lake and didn’t even bother to try and keep my feet dry. Mud seeped into my tennis shoes and I could feel the silt and grit working its way between my toes. I glanced back over my shoulder at the intersection.

Everyone was still gathered around the ditch, but nobody seemed to be doing anything except talking and pointing at the water once in a while. I couldn’t see Slim, but he’d gotten the engine of his Cadillac started; it rose higher and higher every few seconds before dropping back into idle.

I shook my head and walked up the five warped wooden steps to the restaurant. The building sat about two feet above the ground, resting on six-by-six wooden stilts that were sunk into concrete blocks. Two large windows flanked the front door. Beneath the left window there was a sign Fat Ernst had hung and never bothered to take down. After about five years, the thing had gotten so tattered and frayed you could hardly read it. It read something like “
Whitewood’s Biggest Party—Every Saturday Night!”
But nobody ever really showed up.

Above the front door was another sign. This one had the words carved into a large, flat chunk of wood. It read “NO WEAPONS ALLOWED” in old-fashioned block letters, as if the place were some sort of saloon in the old West. I kicked open the front door and slammed it behind me.

The restaurant didn’t look much better on the inside. Six tables, covered in peeling Formica, were evenly spaced out in the front half of the building. Dead pheasants and ducks had been awkwardly mounted on the walls between the occasional neon beer sign around the dining room. The dusty eyes of three ragged, moth-eaten buck heads followed me as I wound my way through the tables.

The restrooms were off to my right, on the south side of the building, just past the jukebox. An unbalanced pool table sat near the jukebox, with wood wedges jammed under the legs. Directly in front of me was the bar. It ran nearly the entire length of the building, stretching from the door to the restrooms all the way to the kitchen doors on my left.

I banged through these swinging doors, unzipping my backpack. The kitchen was crammed into a narrow sliver of a room directly behind the bar. Everything was set up in one long row: first the stove, then the silver counter, adjacent to the sink, and finally the wheezing refrigerator.

The kitchen didn’t have any windows. Smudged yellow light came from two bare bulbs that hung from the cobwebbed rafters. I twisted the hot water handle and let the water warm up a little before cupping my hands and splashing it on my face. Soap would have been even better, but there wasn’t any. Finally, I just stuck my head under the faucet and let the warm water run across my forehead for a while.

After wiping myself down and getting most of the blood off with an old dishrag, I pulled the soggy bag out of my backpack and winced at the sight of the crushed vegetables. It looked like someone had taken a short-handled sledgehammer to the tomatoes.

Since the coffee was already sluggishly gurgling to itself, it was time to light the stove. Fat Ernst thought it was a waste of gas to leave the pilot light on all night and would always blow it out. Then he’d reach behind the stove and crank the gnarled handle closed, turning the gas off.

Every morning I worried that maybe he’d forgotten to shut off the gas after blowing out the pilot light, so I’d lean over the stove and sniff cautiously. I never did smell anything; but just to be on the safe side, I’d step back and flick a lit match at the stove. This morning the match landed in the middle of the white film of grease that covered the long black griddle, and the match sizzled quietly a moment before dying.

It didn’t explode, so I squeezed my shoulder between the back of the stove and the grease-spattered wall and twisted the handle back around. Deep inside the stove, I could hear the gas start to hiss. Now it was time to move fast.

I yanked open the oven door with my left hand and at the same time popped a match with the thumb on my right hand. I’d had lots of practice. I reached into the oven with my right hand and pushed the burning match up into the back corner and with a slight
whoosh
, the pilot light burst into life.

I scraped some of the grease off the cast iron griddle and heard the front door squeak open. Fat Ernst’s voice came barreling through the swinging doors and bounced off the walls in the cramped space.

“I don’t know what kinda hog pen you waded through before tracking all this shit across my floor, but I suggest you clean it up right quick. This floor ain’t gonna mop itself.”

I sighed, stretched. It was going to be a long day.

After filling up the bucket in the sink, I grabbed the mop leaning in the corner and went out front. Fat Ernst had left his own muddy tracks right into the bathroom. Another part of the morning ritual. I’m not sure what the hell kind of coffee Fat Ernst drank, but I’d learned to hold my bladder until the afternoon. Nobody used the restroom after Fat Ernst.

Starting in the usual corner, between the jukebox and the front window, I sloshed a little water on the floor, then leaned against the wall, watching the intersection through the window. A few people had managed to get the driver’s door of the hearse open and helped Mr. Hutson climb out. They eased him back to the bank and sat down with him, holding handkerchiefs to his bleeding head.

Most of the cars had left, but now there were a few guys in waders walking around carrying fishnets. They had a large ice chest set near the bank. One of the men, wearing camouflage waders that came up to his chest, wrapped a red bandana around the lower half of his face, so he looked like a bank robber. He carefully clambered down into the ditch, using the mangled back door of the hearse as a support. Somebody handed him a fishnet with a long telescoping handle and a two-foot ring. I guess they were pretty serious about collecting up the rest of Earl.

Heck watched the activity at the ditch bank for a while, then shook his head and walked back to the restaurant. At the top of the steps, he tried to stomp some of the mud off his boots. He didn’t get much off, but I appreciated the effort.

“Mornin’.” He shut the door and joined me at the window, leaning on the tables as he shuffled forward. “Goddamn shame,” he said with a grin, showing perfect white teeth that seemed a little too big for his mouth. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, man.”

As we watched a tow truck pulled up, surveyed the scene, then backed up to the hearse. One of the men suddenly detached from the group and rushed over. It was Slim. He waved his hands around wildly for a moment, then pointed toward the cornfield. I guess he wanted his Cadillac pulled out of the cornfield first.

“What an asshole,” Heck muttered. “Both them brothers were cold-hearted sonsabitches, man. Can’t say I’m sorry one’s gone.” He turned and tottered over to the jukebox. “I’d say this calls for a celebration.” He leaned over it, whistling a tune I couldn’t quite place. “Let’s see here …”

I watched the tow truck pull away from the hearse and drive acrossthe highway to the cornfield. Then I jammed the mop back into my bucket and splashed some more water on the floor.

I don’t know why Fat Ernst was so hell-bent on keeping the floor clean. He didn’t give a damn about the sanitary condition of the kitchen, but he sure wanted a clean floor out front. It wasn’t even in good shape; the varnish had worn off in a vague trail from the front door to the bar and the wood was starting to crack in other places.

“Who the hell are these people?” Heck snarled at the jukebox. His finger slid slowly down the glass, marking each record. “No Johnny Cash. No Flat and Scruggs. No Bill Monroe or Grandpa Jones. Not even any goddamn Hank Williams.”

I just kept mopping, concentrating on all the mud near the door. Heck would spend a few minutes grumbling about the piss-poor selection on the jukebox every morning. He kept hounding Fat Ernst to change the records, but my boss refused to take out anything. He figured he knew what his customers wanted, and that was mostly Southern-fried classic rock. If I had to listen to “Sweet Home Alabama” one more time, just one more time, I was gonna shove my mop through that goddamn jukebox.

Heck kept ranting. “Oh, sure, there’s that no-talent sonofabitch Hank Williams Jr. on here, still living off his daddy’s name, but I’d rather listen to my wife’s cats fucking.” He shook his head in disgust.

I knew Heck well enough to know that when his wife got mentioned, it was time for a drink. “Piss on it,” he said with an air of finality, and pushed away from the jukebox. He swung those bow legs over one of the bar stools and sank onto it like a plant wilting in fast motion in some grade school science film.

He swiveled around, watching me as I sloshed the mop at the mud near the front door, and said, “Why don’t you slow down there for a minute and have mercy on an old man. Get me something to drink. Something. Anything. No, no, wait.” He rubbed a hand over his wrinkled scalp. “That won’t work. Wife hasn’t been cooking muchlately. Been feeding me too damn much cat food these days, and if I have a beer it’s gonna raise holy hell with my insides.” Heck nodded, handing down one of the great truths of the universe. “And I don’t have to tell you that I don’t need to spend all day in the crapper. Hell, no.”

I heard the toilet flush. Once. Twice. I splashed water across the floor in a frenzy of black bubbles, backing closer and closer to the kitchen doors. Fat Ernst filled the doorway, hitching up his jeans and clasping a silver belt buckle the size of a baby’s head. He shot me a quick, sharp look. “Hey, boy. You get that griddle warmed up. Fry Heck an egg and a couple of those sausages.”

“Over easy,” Heck said.

“Then you get your ass in the shitter and clean it up. It ain’t pretty.”

I nodded quickly, gritting my teeth. Only ten more hours. Then the day was done. Only ten more hours.

That night, the rain finally slowed to a foggy drizzle as the dim sun slowly sank behind the mountains to the west. A faint light still reflected off the low clouds, but in time that too was gone, leaving the valley shrouded in misty darkness. Happy hour at Fat Ernst’s came and went with no one except Heck around to enjoy it.

Despite the lack of customers, Fat Ernst kept me plenty busy around the restaurant, scrubbing the toilets, taking out the garbage, and taking stock of the inventory. Mostly that meant recounting the bottles behind the bar, but this time I had to check on the food in the refrigerator as well.