weary of his freak. “You’d think he’s miserable. But the thing is, he likes it when crap goes sour.”
“Are you actually putting effort into being such a dick?” Hickory said.
“All this attention he gets?” Basil said. “He’s as happy as white on rice.”
The tube meantime had been feeding us steady ruin—houses mired in water and mud; trees on roads; children clutching elders; stern-faced men, spent-faced men, some with slickers, others dusters, hauling sandbags and chattel; stranded vehicles and collapsing bridges; creatures mad with terror…
“AJ, baby,” Basil said. “Bosom buddy. Please. Where the hell’s my truck?”
“There was this rabbit,” I said. “A guy gave us a ride.”
“And who, pray tell, might that be?” Hickory said.
I told them about Super and his monkey. I told them about Fortinbras, and the little red Christ, and the truck of mangled dolls. Dinky stood up and shouted. He said how nervous we’d got when Super claimed to read our thoughts, how the geeze had ranted on about eagles and atomizers, the reversal of poles and the rest. Hickory asked if he was a shrink.
“He gave us drugs,” Dinky said.
That got them frisky, all right.
“I’ll tell you guys what,” Basil said. “Maybe—and I mean just maybe—if you two morons get me really fucking baked, I’ll forget you wrecked my truck.”
I hadn’t thought to query the old man whether he kept a stash for times he ran across dorks in the rain at night. That’s what I said.
“So what was his name, then?” said Lucille.
“This you’re not going to believe.”
“Like I didn’t already stop believing anything you say ten years back.”
“He said it was Stuyvesant Something Something. Yeah. But he told us to call him Super.”
Lucille said, “Next you’ll be telling us he put a gun to your head and banged you in the heiny.”
“Banged them in the ear, more like it,” Basil said. “Knocked what was left of their rocks clean out.”
Hickory said, “But wouldn’t it be a marvel if he and Dinky were blood?”
Basil was pacing. “What are we going to do about my truck?” He poked Dinky’s arm. “Cause in case you guys didn’t know, good old shit for brains here was right for once in his life. The weatherman says it’s going to flood like hell.”
“Limo Wreck” became “The Day I Tried to Live.” We gaped speechless at the phone till Hickory’s sigh confirmed the real.
“We’re stuck,” she said.
Basil took up his knife. For a long time he gave us his back, running a thumb down the blade, but then he spun round and flung the thing at a pile of wood.
“You two morons are so lucky,” he said after his knife had clattered to the floor. “I should skin you both, right here and now.”
“You’re lucky Granddad isn’t here to skin you,” Dinky said. “Granddad wouldn’t like the way you’re treating his place.”
Lucille’s face looked suddenly very stupid, like some girl about to get killed in a flick. “Did you hear that?” she said. No one said a word. “It was a voice,” she said. “Like some horrible singing.”
“You might remember, kids,” Basil said, “there’s something out there called a storm?”
“Sometimes, squeeze,” Lucille said, “I think about what a bummer it is I’m not a man. I’d fuck you so hard you’d never—”
Subtle though it was, the sound repeated, just as Lucille had said, like some horrible singing. She went to the window—followed by me and Hickory and Basil with his hatchet—and moved from it to the next.
“Maybe it was a bear,” she said after we’d covered the place for nothing.
Again Basil turned on her. “That’s about as retarded as when you didn’t know what a belly button is.” This was true. At a lobster joint north of Ensenada, Lucille had downed a pitcher of booze and claimed belly buttons the stuff of shots at birth.
“Bears hibernate, Lucille,” Dinky said.
“Yeah, well,” Lucille said, grimacing at Basil, “at least I don’t have a dick that hooks off thirty degrees right.” She brushed a lock of hair from her face. “Fucking banana dick.”
Now this was something not even I had ever heard. In all the time I’d known Basil, he’d never mentioned a faulty unit. “You’re kidding,” I said.
We all turned to the giant and watched his face screw up. He began to stutter, but that didn’t work either, so he poured himself a drink.
“Anyway,” he said, “there’s nothing out there.”
“There’s nothing out there now,” Hickory said.
“Who’s your closest neighbor?” I said.
“We don’t have neighbors,” Dinky said. “We’ve got fences.”
“Turn out the lights,” I said.
“Fuck you,” Basil said.
“So we can see what’s out there.”
Again we peered out the window, looking for shapes, a car, a ghost, whatever, but found the same old rain and trees in the same old howling night, the same uncanny sense of possibilities imminent.
“The wind can do some batty shit,” Basil said, and raised his glass in a toast. “Here’s to Buddy Time.”
Hickory stood close against me, jungle sweet, the smell of her strong, cucumber and vanilla. Her hand covered mine, she smiled, my hand was in hers, my hand was in her hand. I wanted to eat her teeth, then. I wanted to climb inside her, tired and full, and fall into precious sleep.
“Days like this,” she said, “they say damn the water and burn the wine.”
“Sounds to us,” Dinky said, “a bit like that seize the day crap everyone’s been spouting.”
Lucille picked up Fear and Loathing. “‘We had two bags of grass,’ she said, reading from the cover, ‘seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls.’ Is that cool or what?” she said, and tossed the book down.
“Everyone knows Hunter S is our hero,” Dinky said. “His work with the Hell’s Angels was nothing short of revolutionary.”
“Now
