Part 8 (1/2)
A wh.o.r.e, Phil thought as he walked out of the station.
I dumped her, and she turned into a strip-joint wh.o.r.e...
Eight.
It was a fascinating sound, a slick wet clicking, like duct tape being pulled off something tacky.
The world seemed to hum in his head: glories, wonders.
Mishmash words ricocheted in his brain. My poor brethren, he thought. I bless thee in thy error. I love thee...
Ah-no-prey-bee!
Skeet-inner!
Ah-no, slave-luss!
He watched, in reverence, in faith. What an honor to behold sights such as this... He felt heady and warm. He felt exuberant. The flesh of the world... My G.o.d, we are blessed...
That slick, wet sound resumed. Colors glittered, contrast flashed. It was just so beautiful! Red running over white.
His eyes turned to the window, to the sky.
And the wet sounds continued.
Soon, the Reverend thought. His heart burned like an ember, an ember of love, a hot, glowing ingot of molten truth.
Yes. Soon it will be time again...
He was a little boy. Bugs buzzed at his face, some of them sinking stingers. Dead branches and leaves crunched beneath his blacktop Keds as the sun blistered through the trees.
He didn't feel good. At school, Miss Cunningham mentioned that a real bad flu from China was going around. I won't get it, he remembered thinking. I'm not Chinese.
But his skin felt cold in spite of the drenching heat. His stomach felt dry-he'd thrown up earlier, hadn't he?-and he knew it must be the stuffed peppers his aunt served for dinner last night. He hated stuffed peppers. Why couldn't they eat Pop Tarts every night instead? The cinnamon kind were great, and the strawberry kind with the white icing...
He didn't want to go home. He didn't want to believe he was sick. I'm not sick, he convinced himself. I don't have any Chinese flu! So on he marched, wandering as children do in a pent-up glee, in a curiosity that was as honest as it was without direction of any kind. This gully here, he'd played in with his G.I. Joes. And over here by the stump that looked wide as a manhole cover, he and Dave ”Cave” Houseman had shot at Nehi bottles with the BB gun that Cave had borrowed from Eagle. And they'd hit plenty of the bottles.
His Keds crunched on. He didn't know where he was going, and he didn't care. One night he'd stayed over at Eagle's house, to watch the Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k show, and a lady on TV had killed someone with a frozen leg of lamb. And Eagle's Uncle Frank had come in-he built houses-and said to never go in the woods because there were ”things” in the woods that ten-year-olds shouldn't see. So naturally the next day he and Eagle Peters had gone into the woods, which they did almost every day from then on. One time they'd found a warm can of Miller beer, and they even drank it once they found what Uncle Frank called the churchkey. Another time they found a dead cat behind Buckingham Elementary, and the cat's belly was moving from a bunch of worms that got in it. And then there was another time they found a big dark-green plastic bag full of moldy magazines, only these magazines had lots of pictures of naked ladies in them, and they laughed because it reminded them of a show called Naked City. One of the ladies was pouring honey between another lady's legs, then she was licking it off! In another magazine a lady was sticking a gun in another lady's hole. And after that she was sticking cuc.u.mbers and bananas and things in her. And in one other magazine there was a caption that said ”WENDY LIKES TO SUCK,” and that reminded them of the song they heard all the time, called ”Wendy,” or was it ”Windy”? The lady had a black man's thing in her mouth!
He and Eagle roamed the woods whenever they could, but they never found the ”things” that Uncle Frank said ten-year-olds shouldn't see.
”Uncle Frank said a girl got raked out here once,” Eagle told him one day when they were shooting slingshots at bottles by the creek. ”He said it said so in the paper.”
”A girl got raked? What's that?”
Eagle seemed to know everything, and, as he lined up his next shot-at a Briardale Cola bottle-he spoke like it was nothing.
”It's when a man puts his pee-er in a lady, and she doesn't want to.”
This confused him. ”Why would a man want to do that?
”'Cos it feels good, stupid. Don't you know anything? He squirts baby-juice in her, and it feels good.”
”Oh... What's baby-juice?”
Eagle laughed. ”You're stupider than Larry on the Three Stooges! Baby-juice is the stuff that comes out a man's pee-er when he puts it in a lady. It makes 'em have babies. But when rake-ists do it, they do other things too.” Eagle pulled the slingshot back. ”Bad things.”
This made him wonder. When Eagle hit the Briardale Cola bottle, it exploded. ”What bad things?” he asked Eagle.
They called him Eagle because he had blond hair, but his father always made him get a crewcut, so he looked like a bald eagle. And Eagle said, ”Well, they beat the ladies up too, and sometimes they kill 'em.”
Something bloomed in the little boy's head, a curiosity like the time he broke his arm, and it itched under the plaster so bad he stuck one of his aunt's knitting needles up there to scratch it. When Doc Smith took the cast off, he cried 'cos the doctor did it with a little saw that sounded worse than Doc Verib's dentist drill. And when the cast fell away, his arm was covered with white flakes, and all the hairs on his arm had turned blacker than Lisa Cottergim's eyebrows. She was an Oriental girl who got 'dopted by her parents, and her pretty eyebrows were blacker than a crow's feathers. Maybe she was Chinese, and that's why they had this Chinese flu going around that his teacher had told him about. But, anyway, Doc Smith told him his hairs turned black only 'cos the plaster had covered the hairs from the sun for six weeks. And anyway something itched in his head just like the way his skin itched under the cast.
”What kind of...bad things?” he asked.
Eagle hogged the next shot at one of his G.I. Joes that had busted 'cos a rubber band broke inside and made his head fall off. ”Like really bad things,” he said. His eye opened behind the rock. ”Like this lady? After the man squirted a lot of baby-juice in her peehole, he squirted some in her b.u.t.t, too-”
”He did not!” the little boy exclaimed, appalled.
”Yes he did, 'cos I heard my dad and Uncle Frank talking about it one night they thought I was asleep. They were watching Naked City and talking about the lady who got raked. And the rake-ist squirted baby-juice up the lady's b.u.t.t, too, and then...”
”What!” the little boy nearly shrieked.
”Then he tied her to a tree and hit her with a monkey wrench, and then he stuck the monkey wrench up her peehole. And after that-” Eagle seemed to pause, like he did when he was making something up- ”he hit her in the head with a rake and kilt her.”
”With a rake? Why?”
”Why?” Eagle laughed at him again. ”Because that's what rake-ist's do, stupid. That's why they call it rake.”
The little boy wondered about this. It didn't make sense. ”But why would a man ever want to do that to a lady?”
”Don't really know,” Eagle said. ”But Uncle Frank said there was lots of folks in the world who were sick in the head, and I guess that's why. And, anyway, Big Chief Mullins 'vester-gated the rake, and he told the papers it was a Creeker who done it.”
Creeker, the little boy thought. He let Eagle hog another shot 'cos he was too busy thinking. Creeker...
The word slid down his belly hot and ugly and worse than his aunt's stuffed peppers, and even worse than her corned beef and cabbage with the lumpy tomato sauce that he hated even more. He'd heard a little bit about the Creekers, just little bits. No one talked about 'em much, like they was some bad secret or something, or like the way n.o.body ever talked much about Mrs. Nixerman, who got sick in the head and would run around buck naked at night with her big fat bubs flapping. She had to go to a special hospital in Crownsville that was only for people who were sick in the head. But even though he'd heard a little bit about Creekers, he asked Eagle anyway, 'cos he figured Eagle might know more. And that's what fascinated the little boy, like about the rake-ist, and the ”things” in the woods, and all that.
He wanted to know.
”What's a Creeker?” he asked.
”Aw, you're stupider than Larry and Shemp!” Eagle guffawed. ”A Creeker is someone who got born by their father or brother's baby-juice. And there's somethin' about it-I'm not sure what-but if a father like puts his pee-er in his daughter and squirts his baby-juice in her peehole, the baby comes out all wrong. And the same if a mother lets her son squirt his baby-juice in her. Uncle Frank said it's 'cos you're not supposed to do it, and G.o.d gets so mad, he makes the babies come out wrong.”
Wrong, the little boy thought. It slid down his gut just like the word Creeker, and just like his aunt's corned beef and cabbage and the stuffed peppers. ”How you mean...wrong?”