THE LITTLE DEVIL’S GOT A GROUCH ON KICKING AND CLAWING and screaming, Feed Me You Sonofabitch. I curl up on the bed lay on my front lay on my back but nothing helps. He keeps raging in the pit of my stomach a fat spiked toad with possum teeth and a snapping snake for a tongue. There’s nothing but black holes where his eyes should be but he can smell blood a mile off. His skin oozes poison that burns worse than fire.
Jesse brings a girl in. She’s got blond hair and skinny legs. She’s got torn blue jeans and a yellow shirt that shows her belly button. Her eyes are blue too but different blue from the jeans. Abby hisses and crawls under the bed. The girl says, Somebody doesn’t like me much. I say, She don’t take to strangers. The girl nods at the TV and says, What’re you watching? A story about a giant tarantula, I say. Truth is I ain’t been paying attention to the show. Been too busy rassling the Little Devil. He comes on fast and he comes on mean gnawing at my bones and itching me deeper than I can scratch.
This is Candy, Jesse says, get up and make your manners. I stand and stick out my hand and say, Pleased to make your acquaintance Miss Candy you sure are pretty. Candy says to Jesse, This is your brother? Looks more like your dad. Our daddy’s dead, I say, our mama too. My mom’s dead too, Candy says. Did you cry when she died? I say, I cried when my mama died. Candy smiles. One of her teeth is broke. Give me twenty more and I’ll take care of him, she says to Jesse.
Want to hear me sing? I say. Candy looks to Jesse. He nods okay. What songs do you know? Candy says. Do you like old ones? I say. Sure, Candy says so I sing Mama’s favorite. I would not die in springtime when all is bright around and fair young flowers are peeping from out the silent ground.
Jesse steps behind Candy with his stiletto. He claps a hand over her mouth yanks her head back and sticks her in the throat. He hits a gusher on his first try. A jet of blood shoots across the room. Candy’s blue eyes get real big. She tries to pull Jesse’s hand off tries to wriggle free but ain’t going nowhere. Another spurt and her legs buckle. Another and her hands flutter and fall.
Jesse sits on the bed with her in his lap. Get over here, he says, don’t let it go to waste. I fasten my lips to the hole in Candy’s throat. Hot blood fills my mouth. I suck and swallow suck and swallow. You got to work fast to drink as much as you can before the heart gives out. Abby feeds too. She comes out from under the bed and licks up the blood on the floor. Candy was a bad girl. Her blood tastes like dirty water. The Little Devil don’t care. He gets his fill and settles and I’m not hungry anymore neither not hurting.
Sometimes Jesse lets me play the radio when we’re driving sometimes he don’t. Tonight he wants quiet. Won’t even let me tap my fingers. There’s no other cars on the road. It’s dark and dark and darker. Nothing to look at but the dotted line. I pretend it’s ears of corn and the Ford’s a hog gobbling them up. I pretend it’s rabbits and the car’s a hound.
How far are we from Hollywood? I ask Jesse so bored I don’t care if he gets mad at me for talking. We ain’t going to Hollywood, he says. I want to see Daniel Boone and Mingo, I say. Daniel Boone died a hundred years ago, Jesse says. That’s an actor on TV pretending to be him. I know that, I say. No you don’t, Jesse says. You think he’s real.
Jesse says there can only be one boss and it’s him. Says he makes the rules and I’m to follow them. Like a dog. If he’s so smart how come he don’t know you can only kick a dog so long before he turns and bites?
We swerve onto a rough dirt road. I hang on so I don’t bang my head. Jesse drives deeper into the dark and pulls over and shuts off the engine. An itty-bitty moon silvers the rocky hills the sand and the trees that look like badmen surrendering. Jesse opens his door and gets out. A coyote yips close by. Abby’s ears is back and her tail’s aswishing. She’d whup a coyote’s ass.
What’re you waiting on? Jesse says. Drag your lazy butt out here.
I’ll do anything to get out of shoveling. I’ve played sick. I’ve lied about a bum leg. It don’t sound like Jesse’s in the mood for foolishness tonight though. I climb out and meet him at the trunk. Miss Candy’s in there with a bedsheet for a shroud. Jesse hands me a shovel.
We walk out a ways and commence to digging. Six foot is Christian but we never go that deep. Ain’t no preacher looking. You got to bury your bodies or burn them. Make them disappear. That’s a rule for all rovers: cover your tracks. Otherwise folks’ll put two and two together and that’d be the death of us all. That’s what happened in Europe in the old days, Jesse told me. Rovers there got sloppy and people caught on and hunted most of them down or run them off. That’s when the first ones come here to the United States of America.
I say I wish we was rich so we could hire a man to dig for us. Jesse says to wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills faster. Or we could turn someone and make him dig, I say. We ain’t turning nobody, Jesse says. There’s too many of us as it is. I ask when he’s gonna take me to Disneyland like he promised. Why? he says. You want to visit Mickey Mouse? You think he’s real too? Mickey Mouse is a cartoon, I say, and a cartoon ain’t real. If you can’t talk and dig at the same time don’t talk, Jesse says.
After we lay Miss Candy to rest I say a prayer over her. Jesse tells me to hurry it up we got to steal a new car before we hit the road. 10-4 good buddy, I say, I’m about to put the hammer down. I know he won’t let me drive tonight so I don’t ask.