Cutting the Devil’s Throat

THAT’S THE Old Viper in the kitchen dropping a half-eaten pear into the stew. Leftover beer, bloated butts aswill in the bottom. An earthblind spud. A moose haunch, hacked up. A green rabbit’s foot. A handful of washers. Nails. An onion. A grocery receipt: $1.98, $3.29, etc. Thank you. Have a nice day. The Old Viper stirs ’er up, ladles ’er out.

That’s Geordie, the kid with snot-clotted red hair, freckles like flicked mud on his face, coppers in his belly, rocks in his pocket. On his bike, a metallic blue CCM (borrowed), swim suit looped over the handlebars, he races a black car down the hill, exhaust streaming up his nostrils. One thought flaps like a red ribbon in his head, whipsnapping like a lizard’s tongue: Geordie, you gonna win!

Over there now, that’s Pinkie. Got her round peachbottom planted on a meteorite. Only one in town and her butt’s on it. Popped out of the sky one day like a boil. Shouldn’t let her appearance fool you. She may look simple, addled, poached, but Pinkie knows the score. And nowhere does it say Geordie wins.

That black Chev chewing up the road, dust purling out of its back end, dark snail of a man curled around the wheel, that’s bat-eared Baxter Putt. Owns the general store, runs the post office. Nice guy. Friendly. A worrier though. Brow lowering as he listens to that rattly-clunk noise the car makes. He peers into the rear-view mirror and gets a fright. Face in there screwed up tight as a gargoyle, horns and fangs (not really). Bax squinches his eyes, looks again. Ah heck, he says, foot punching the gas, that’s Geordie.

And on the dock, that’s Thunderhead with the rest of the gang – Doggo, Stretch, and the Meatgrinder – pitching stones into the lake. Grimy boy pawfuls of sandstone and shale, crystal-rich hornfels, egg-shaped, polygonal, smooth slim skimmers pocking and stroking and slicing the water. Thunderhead digs into his pocket, past the burr-ball of string, crab-apples, bone dice, before he finds it – the stone. Igneous, fire-forged, wave sucked and shucked, millions of years in the making, it fits into the crook of his finger like an eye in a socket.

Checkers. Tiddly-winks. Geordie never wins. The Old Viper’s an old cheater, an old hornswoggler. She wipes the game board clean with an arm like a loaf, sleeves rolled up to the pits. She tips the table till Geordie’s kings topple slide and roll under the couch. She dumps the contents of the button bowl into the dog’s mouth. Yelp, says Porky. Cards spew out of her hands. Play, she orders, maybe letcha win this time. Geordie stares at the ragged scar line braided like a grin into her neck. Got a head big as a pumpkin, is how she likes to describe herself.

Pinkie bops into Putt’s for candy. Bax is reading the funnies, gravely, the way most folks read the news. He sighs dolefully and plunges a hand into his shirt front pocket where he keeps his supply of thumbnail clippings. Ahem, says Pinkie. Bax looks up. Well now, Miss Pinkie, what can I do fer ya? The usual please, she answers. Bax scoops up a quarter pound of jelly beans, picks out the green and black ones – I just hate those, says Pinkie – and pops them into his mouth. Pours the rest into a little sawtooth-topped brown bag and hands them over. Pinkie slaps fifteen cents on the counter, tails up. Gonna be a contest, she says, down on the dock. Bax, cheeks bulgy as the wind, throws a troubled look through the window that’s intercepted by the two-member Miracle Committee passing by, one of them carrying something white in her arms like a baby.

Geordie jumps. From sugary granite to licorice-swirled migmatite to chocolate-coloured mudstone. He hops on the scree from a rock that’s a box to one that’s a breast to another that’s a broken hump of a back. Elflocks flying, eyes peeled. Might be what he needs is down between the cracks. In the loamy damp, where leeches stretch and curl. Where light falling is terror to the woodlice, to the wolf spiders reeling away like small wild hands. Geordie lifts a slab of fossil-choked limestone and Natrix sipedon, your common watersnake, is wound like a Latin lover beneath. A heavy-bodied, quicktempered fellow, smiling nonetheless.

Owls hooting in the swamp. Mares’ tails twitching in the sky. The Old Viper drags out a dufflebag of silverware. From a tube of toothpaste she squirts out a long blue dangly worm onto the tarnished tines of a fork. Yanks out a shirt that’s stuffed into the maw of a chair, rips off a sleeve. Rubs and rubs. Spit ’n’ polish, that’s the thing. Stuff works wonders. Never mind there’s nuthin to jab. Nuthin to cut, nuthin to spoon up. Does her shopping in the dump (those dire-eyed ravens, scare your pants off), in the all-night open-air back alley. A bone for Porky, a boot for Geordie. And her so starved she’s rooting for something to swallow whole.

Skinned knuckles, nits, and yards of skin about sums up the Meatgrinder. A fat mean kid. Sweaty. Clusters of flies swirl up from his head when he ploughs his fist into things. Opens his mouth for an obscenity to crawl out and there’s a fried bologna sandwich with ketchup, half-chewed, smeared like paste on his tongue. Killed every pet he ever owned. Hard to say what the rest of the gang feels for him. A species of affection, but of a low order. Like a neck feels for a goitre. A gut for a pail of pigs’ feet.

Stardust under her bed, that’s what Pinkie’s got. No lion under there, no boogeyman. Just silt from the sky. Luminous dander. Streaming bright angel scurf. Lift the pretty white eyelet ruffle, a wide woman’s slip, and have a peek. See. Gold and silver glitter. Sandman stuff, what falls out of Pinkie’s eyes in the morning. Maybe somebody’s great-great-grandma sifted through the screen and come to rest on her floor like silky-soft talcum. Pinkie goes hop hop step hop, chalk dust ghosting her fingers. Unbound bones of sea creatures. Compacted shells and skeletons spelling out of themselves these boxy hopscotch compartments with an arch at the end called HEAVEN into which Pinkie sails.

Cried to beat all hell, says Betty Guitar, plonking her bundle down on the counter. Thunk. Lord yes, chimes in Daisy Kunkle, it did. Whole congregation heard it, says Betty, you should’ve been there, Bax. Now, sign here. She holds up a sheet of paper, a petition with two names on it: Margaret B. Guitar and Daisy Kunkle. One hand wide and loopy, letters like open cages, all sense flown out. The other a minuscule squeezed ant script. Bax gazes, doubtfully (you bet), at the plaster doll-face before him. Red cardinal flower lips, eyes a bird’s-egg blue. People around here got sausage meat for brains, says Betty. Bax sticks out his chin, scratches it. This baby (dumb as stone) cries out. Well, what’s that mean to you, Bax? Bax chews the inside of his cheek. Business, Betty pokes a flinthard finger at him, big business. Charter buses. Souvenirs. You know, it only takes a rumour, Bax, and they’ll be crawling here on their knees.

Who gets called maggot, scabface, pus-sucker, slimebag? Who’s left over, last picked, never picked? Who chucked the rock through the window at school and who got blamed? Who got strapped because he ate the practice cardboard Eucharist? Who kissed the girls and made them spit venom? Who put red dye in the baptismal font? Who’s got a no-see-um daddy? A daddy that rises above the roof, that whines through the cracks. That swarms and stings? That casts himself over you like a black sheet? A dissolving daddy? A decomposing daddy? Who is that? Who is it that’s always sliding down a snake’s tail into trouble?

Thunderhead figures maybe he won’t show. Chickenshit Geordie. Bigmouth. Says he can do it. Yeah, like my dick can yodel. Gonna whip his ass, gonna burn ’im like trash. Thunderhead’s eyes strip the shore, gut the crevices. They probe and slash. Stab into that shack on the hill. (Ugh!) Old hag! What they say about her? (What don’t they say?) She do somebody in? Her old man, was that it? Fixed ’im good, they say, buried ’im in the bush. Dogfights somethin’ wicked. Made that shack hop, you’d think it was alive. Thunderhead closes one eye now like he’s peering through the sight on a rifle. Lines up Bax in the storefront window, scratching his rear end. Focuses on a little screw-faced idiot kid bouncing around, coiled pigtails sproinging. A blue CCM bike (stolen) whirls into view, wheels flicking gravel. Ah! Geordie. Flying down the road to the dock. That rip of a smile appears on Thunderhead’s face as he takes aim.

Table set. Foil pie plates to go with the silver. Toilet-paper serviettes. Two gnawed candles rammed into rotgut bottles. Tin of corn syrup, spittle in the freshly licked rim. Hors-d’oeuvres composting on a heaped platter, claw of something or other sticking out. The Old Viper’s stomach sets up a howl that sends Porky skittering out the back, a turd on legs. She worries the curtain. Waiting. More waiting. The curtain tears off in her hand like a rag and ends up in the pot on the stove. She tamps ’er down with a broken broom handle, drives it into the boiling belching mass. Then what? She hears a faint rap rap rap at the door and moves like a bus to get there. Bowls over a lamp, cord snags around her ankle and she drags it through the room. Two women – one skinny and fidgety, the other fox-faced and shifty. Got the Baby Jesus hooked under one arm like a roast. The Old Viper sizes them up. Well, she says, whatchas waitin’ fer? Get in here, I won’t eatcha.

Bax is remembering that ventriloquy course they had in the church basement couple years ago. Every Tuesday night it was. Wasn’t much in town that couldn’t talk then. Dogs, toads, knotholes, you name it and it’d speak to you. Seemed almost everybody had those quivering stiff lips, casting their voices high in the air (sentences like streamers), making moss whisper, and letters before you opened ’em. Ask a question, think you could get a straight answer? No sir. Spend your whole day yapping with a bag of groceries. So, Bax says to Bull’s Eye St. Jacques, who’s leaning up against the counter, lips locked on a can of root beer, even if it did happen, nobody’s impressed. I mean ya need that at least, eh, fer it to count? Bull’s Eye winks his good eye, being birdshit blind in the other. Miracles? Don’t talk to him about miracles. Listen, he’s cleaning a mess of bass at the fish table this one day. There’s a gull hovering overhead, hovering, squawking like a witch, what’s it do? Gets him smack in the eye with an exploding guano bullet. Acid it was. Knocks his sight out like a light. Hey, Bull’s Eye, you were there, you hear that baby cry? Naw, says Bull’s Eye, slep through the whole damn thing.

Kersplash! That’s the Meatgrinder’s turn. A smacker that lands like a cannon ball. He curses and horks into the lake, narrows his eyes looking for something defenceless to kick – Pinkie, say, who’s skipping around snickering into her tiny hand. Oh, that was good, she says, real good (hee hee), who’s next? Doggo. A furry-headed fungal hound of a boy. Reminds Pinkie of the muskrat Pop brought home that she kept in a shoebox until it died and the creepy things came out of the shadows and took it away. Doggo ambles over to take his place at the edge of the dock. Readies himself – no fancy handwork – just hurls his stone straight up. Seems to hang in the air for a splinter of a second before sliding straight down, silent and slick as a raindrop. But it kisses the lake too hard. Hey, tough luck, somebody grunts, as ripples tattle circular across the surface.

Shoot the lump. Squeezers. Skat and hearts. Bax’s Mama liked all those games. Rounders. Tipcat. Oh, she was a salty one, quick. Out the door, catch me, she’d say, find me. Never mind the work. Got beat if she didn’t do it, and she wouldn’t. Garden choked, cows moaning to be milked. Pat and William and Albert, all those damn babies up to their ears in shit. Food dangling off the wall, and consider yourself fortunate if you could get a plate pried loose off the table. Why, honey, you look like a regular little undertaker, she’d say to Bax, don’t you know how to cut loose, son? And here she’d tickle him, and there she’d be making demon faces, and find me she’d say, ducking out of sight. And the babies wailing, and him too. Bawling his eyes out. Imploring her. Running terrified into the yard. Papa coming in from the field, scythe in hand like death itself. And when Bax did find her she was in the well. Face down so he couldn’t see if she was laughing at him or not.

Stretch, four feet of swaggering skin and bone, steps forward with a scab-thin shard. Poises himself perfectly. Concentration an electric wire connecting his cat-keen brain to his small deft hand. About to fire, the wad of Double Bubble in his mouth lurches into his throat and gets stuck. His arm goes eely, the shot wild. Grows wings, it looks to Pinkie. Zigzags. Ricochets off the boathouse, grazes the water once, twice – a chorus counts – three times then sinks. No cigar.

Daisy Kunkle lies under the table, a milk-white moustache encrusting her upper lip. Mixed drinks never did agree, and it’s no wonder, this one something the Old Viper called a Nurse’s Boot (rubbing alcohol and It shoe polish). Betty Guitar’s got umbles like iron, though it might’ve loosened her tongue some. She can’t stop rhyming off names: Mal Roberts, Ownie and Warnie McClay, Fran “Belly” Garret, Bud Priddle, even Baxter Putt. Really now, climbing the hill, she hadn’t expected this. A fry pan in the face maybe. If lucky, a hen scratch. A dumb violent signature stabbed onto the petition. But not this chameleon hand forging witnesses, drawing them out of thin air. Ink on paper calling up a whole assembly of believers, making them appear like some kind of black magic.

Victory near enough to poke, Thunderhead approaches the dock’s edge. In slow motion, to generate awe. This has to be fully appreciated, remembered. Stalled time turns the air hypnotic, thick as honey. He surges into place. Clothing rippling, muscles, hair stroked by an invisible hand, cruel features gentled into a nobler expression. The stone, black and round as a hole, rides between forefinger and thumb. Arrested on the verge of throwing it, Thunderhead is involved in his own drama like prayer. Then finally, he releases it, and the stone ascends, translated into a weightless unchained piece of the earth. Everyone’s gaze trails it, fans it, keeps it up there in the blue sky, keeps it aloft. Until in unison they bring it down, careering into speed, faster, plummeting faster. Gone. It melts into the lake, swallowed without a seam or a scar. But no. You blew it! says Geordie. True. True enough. Look again – a lip of water where the stone was taken curls itself into a slight sneer.

What made Daisy Kunkle smile in her sleep, what made the rooster crow and the baby cry, what made Baxter Putt hang his mournful face like a moon in the window, what made Porky whimper, what made Thunderhead and the rest of the gang yowl, what made Betty Guitar and the Old Viper raise seething smoking jam jars of homebrew in celebration, what made the sun falter, what caused those blood-dark clouds to blossom below the surface of the lake, was Geordie. Geordie reaching down his mud-gloved hand and picking up Pinkie’s hopscotch marker – an arrowsharp quartzite flake – and tossing it. Carelessly, without even looking. Knowing what? Knowing this time he’d win. Knowing exactly how it would fall. A glinting blade of light – glorious! Impossible, yet slicing the water without a shimmer. Geordie. Lowdown, spat-upon, despised boy, what cut the devil’s throat.