Name's Randy and I hit the ground running with the two-volt in my thigh and Grandpappy to my side. I took each and every turn as hard and sharp as the old van would allow it. Nearly flipping the thing up onto two wheels, I just wanted to arrive right on time as we always do and that's why we’re steady employed. We can be counted on, smooth operators and efficient are the two things they tend to call us. And when they call us they always know we’ll be there on time to do what they need with the two-volt in the thigh and Grandpappy eating rye.
Grandpappy set in the passenger seat with the ham sandwich I made for him this morning still taking small nibbles of it, mayonnaise squelching out the back of it on the count of he was squeezing it for the whole car ride. And he took so darn long to eat it that the rye bread I sliced myself and the cheese I sliced off the old block (I never use the pre-sliced ones, mind you) was getting stale by now.
Well ain’t you hungry pappy? Why you being bashful on the sandwhich? Tear into the sucker, what you waiting on? I said or thought, I can’t remember which.
We arrived real soon from then so I took the sandwich out of his hand taking a bite myself before setting it down on the dashboard and lifting him like the wife on the wedding pictures and putting him down in the wheelchair. He lifted his hands, waving them around as if to feel the air itself around him and he knew something was afoot. But then we saw it anyways right there in front of us plain as day. The thing stood seven foot tall or so and ready. So I wheel pappy up close to the demon and he said, this is close enough so I pulled the two-volt from my cargo shorts pocket and Grandpappy drew down with his as well and we jolted him with the sons of guns and he fell just like when I chain-sawed a thick branch off a tree in our backyard, sparks flying and mud splattering.
Alrighty now, woo wee, great job Grandpappy I think I'm getting the gist of it! I, Randy, said to him. I should be able to take over pretty soon. Wouldn’t you say as much?
See pappy been training me for the past six, seven months or so an I was just about ready to take over for myself now I thought, I got my own van and my own two-volt and everything already. I'm rip and raring, just need a bit more practice but I'm getting there. Grandpappy slid the two-volt (his was the original one that he created years back, the first invention known to man that could cap these fellas out of existence, and mine is the new updated model he made for me)into his belt loop. I snatched the tags off the seven footer and looked them over, it said he been looming over this poor fellow for a while. That’s the most confusing part about this job to me, I can’t believe why we don’t get called sooner to intercept these rascals. He been clouding this old boy’s mind for months and months but we got him now and that’s the important part and that's why they called us. Cuz they all know they could count on Grandpappy and Sons Co. to take care of it which we did.
Grandpappy is famous on the count of he once yelled the n-word at a player at the stadium of an NFL football game and got kicked out of the stadium for that and told he could never return. That wasn’t the most famous part about it though. The next part of the story was that being one-eighth Native American himself pappy thought it was kind of ironic because of the teams that were playing on the field that day, one of them was called the Washington Redskins. So he went to the next game in disguise all covered in face paint wearing a large headdress and making play at mimicking war chants altering his voice by moving his hand close and far from his mouth. Nobody thought nothing bad about that and so he started yelling ‘come on you damned blackskin’ to each and every player whenever they made a mistake throughout the game. People got shocked at that and he got escorted out of the stadium again and unmasked and everyone saw it was Grandpappy. Day after that the sports page in the Washington Post had a headline saying Fan Removed from Stadium for Yelling Blackskin at Redksins Game. People on ESPN debated over it. That week the old white owner changed the team name and the new team name was the Washington R-Words. Grandpappy got on Letterman.
So now Grandpappy wears a nice headdress and a R-Words t-shirt for the advertising photo on the side of the work van, he’s got his thumbs up and it’s saying Grandpappy and Sons Co. You Got A Big’n we Gonna Stick’m. Prices May Very Call For Details. And we get lots of e-mails and calls. And people generally recognize us when we go through the Burger Kind drive-thru outside of the town proper whenever we go home for the night. Sometimes we get our charbroiled burgers for free on the count of the recognition and that’s good. They hoop and holler when passing the sacks of burgers out the window.
The old boy who must a called us here today come running out the house. He had some pure contentment in his heart that he ain’t had in a good while, I could recognize as much. I seen the tears in his eyes when he said, wow you guys really took care of it just like that? It’s been months and I’ve been fretting over what to do about it till now, thank you really, thanks a million.
No problem, I told him. That’s what we do Grandpappy and Sons Co. You Got A Big’n we Gonna Stick’m. We’ll send the bill off to your insurance agent and then they will forward it to you and schedule a follow up exam with your mental health physician, thanks for your business call anytime.
Wheeling old pappy’s wheelchair back to the van was never the funnest part of the job especially on the days like today when we had gotten a decent smattering of rain the previous night because now his wheels was getting stuck in the mud of the grass pitch we was in the middle of. I pushed and pulled and pushed and pulled. The old boy we just helped was even nice enough to get down behind him and put his shoulder into the pushing while I was trying to do the pulling. Still the thing was just too damned unbudge-ably stuck down in the darn mud.
Well it looks like we got a problem here this time Grandpappy, can’t seem to jar you loose here, I said scratching my ankle with the toe of my boot smearing some mud on my sock. Then I got an idea.
I went and grabbed a rope from the van and tied that sucker around the back of the chair and around pappy as if he was in a hostage situation and hopped back in the van with it tied to the trailer hitch and pushed the pedal down to start moving. Wouldn’t you know he came right out of the mud and out on to the road. I waved to the old boy in the grass and he waved back then I slapped the side of the van. I didn’t feel like putting pappy in the van and getting mud all over so I just towed him back into town, it reminded me of when I’s young and pappy used to get the four-wheeler out when it snowed and pull children to school piled on an old mattress tied to the back of it by ski rope. He seemed to be having a good time. He was a hollering the duration of the way. I didn’t get no weird looks neither till I made my way through the drive through at the Burger Kind, they got a good kick out of it and asked was I crazy and I said no. The boy in the drive-thru window laughed and slapped his thigh, his front teeth had a big gap. I realized I been coming through this very drive-thru my whole life and as long as that boy been there I ain’t never seen him smile.
Later on that day I remember Grandpappy had told me he sensed a six footer lurking near to that boy in the window and I said that made me feel like maybe I wasn’t prepared to take the job over cuz I hadn’t sensed nothing and Grandpappy told me not to worry about it because it comes with time. Plus he said I got to figure that the boy shoulda called us for an appointment anyway, and that’s how I’d know, and that gave me a bit of relief to think about.
Me and pappy sat around the TV sipping from the whiskey bottle, him about two feet from tube, me sitting back on the couch having to stand up and walk back and forth to exchange the bottle. And the good old wife of mine bringing in some stuff she was experimenting in the kitchen, muffins and such. That’s until Pappy creaked his head back over in my direction and hollered out, turn this shit off! And pouted his bottom lip out staring me straight in the eye. I sat there for a couple a moments staring back, looking at the grey stubble on his cheeks and the thin gray hair that sprouted straight up from the crown of his head then I got up and turned that shit off. I threw myself back down on the couch and we sat in silence passing the bottle back and forth till pappy’s head slouched over into sleep. The good old wife was still in the kitchen so I sat the bottle on the table and walked in to hug the old gal. I liked that she was squishy all over but she pushed me away and said now you stop that Randy.
When we woke up the next morning and got some sugary cereals in our bowls and was eating them I took a cup of coffee in to wake up Grandpappy but Grandpappy didn’t wake up and was cold as a ham right out of the fridge so I yelled in to the old gal, Granpappy’s dead, and I picked him up and carried his coldness to the van. When I pulled up into the graveyard and asked the fellow there where the hell my Grandpappy’s lot was because I needed to get to digging he looked real shocked and said that ain’t how you supposed to do it fella, you need to call a hospital or something. So I did that.
The poor old wife was rather sad and I can’t say that I wasn’t either so we hugged and my hands were on those flappy portions of fat under her shoulder blades. I liked Grandpappy he taught me so much, taught me how to work and how to live. I guessed there wasn’t no sense in wondering over whether or not I was suited to begin working on my own without the apprenticeship of Grandpappy now or not. I just had to get to work. It wasn’t no invoices or requests in the work email box when I sat down at the mickytosh to check so I thought about what to do by putting my finger and thumb under my chin and tilting my head. I remembered that boy from the Burger Kind that Grandpappy had said had a six footer lurking near to him. I picked up my two-volt off the coffee table in the front room and dropped it down into my side cargo shorts pocket.
The Burger Kind kinda outside the town proper was full of people. It was lunch time and everyone was filling up on the charbroiled burgers they liked to serve to the good folks. And I had myself two of them things minus lettuce and then I waited in the beautiful restaurant for about a good while longer until the lunch hour was dying out. The boy with the gap tooth was handing the good sandwiches, fries, and drinks out the drive-thru window. I held my hand out in the air in front of me and waved them around slowly as if I was trying to feel the very air in the building just like Grandpappy did it. I closed my eyes then opened them and did it again. The fourth time that I closed my eyes and opened them I imagined the shadowy six footer lurking, hiding behind the deep-fryer with his eyes just a fixated on that gap tooth boy. But I still couldn’t actually see it so I went home.
It was buzzing outside the Burger Kind kinda outside the town proper the very next morning. And would you guess the buzzing was real buzzards out there? People were buzzing with the whispering and talking about gossip and the like but the buzzards were there too. I’m meaning the press with their fedoras and floppy notebooks but also real buzzards with beaks and claws and caws.
That old gap tooth boy’s body been found that morning. Story goes some folks was trying to get their early morning coffees and breakfast burritos with cheese and extra packages of sauce but they could never get their order placed. They was just sitting at the menu board hollering, hey is anyone there. They got real frustrated with their situation on account of their craving for breakfast burritos and this was the only Burger Kind for 30 miles so I could understand. So the fellow goes pounding on the window of the drive-thru thinking most likely some teenagers working was either screwing in the back or just something like sleeping maybe. But the man ended up seeing lots of blood smeared about. Come to find out that old gap tooth boy slit his wrists and had held them over the hot griddle top, cooking his blood so the plumes of smoke puffing out the top of the building from the ventilation system happened to be burnt blood smoke and that’s what got the buzzards circling. The gap tooth boy was slumped down on the bloody and yellow-tiled greasy floor when they broke into the door and found him. He was wearing a paper Burger Kind crown and on it in black marker was written hello can I take your order or can’t I?
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Granpappy was right, that old gap tooth boy must of did have a six footer lurking around him and now I was sad and blaming myself for not being able to see it that day before. If pappy was still alive we could have zapped it right then and there and he’d be smiling with his gap tooth and handing sacks of burgers out the window right now unless it was his day off.
Him and Granpappy’s funerals ended up coinciding on the same day and also in the same place since it’s only one town graveyard. It was a big commotion there were protestors on one side with signs saying things like, Boycott Granpappy and Sons Co Until We Get Our Redskins Back, and protestors on the other side saying things like, If Gap Tooth Boy Got $15 Per Hour Blood Smoke Plumes Wouldn’t Have To Be Puffed. Those were the conservatives and the liberals. And also some Native Americans placing R-Words memorabilia onto pappy’s gravesite and so forth.
After they put him under the ground, the bald pastor who didn’t know he had his fly unzipped read some things from the good book. We invited the people that was there over to our house for some coffee, some fruit punch, some cookies, and some muffins but ‘refreshments’ was what we said. The women all had the same haircut as my wife which was usually straight but today they were all curled to be a bit wavy and you could smell the hairspray. The men had ties that was either hanging halfway down their thighs or they was only hanging halfway down their bellies. The wife had made the cookies and the coffee. The muffins and fruit punch was store bought from the Quick Stop. I told everyone that the coffee was made from Grandpappy’s coffee maker, they said that’s great and the refreshments were delicious. Then they all drove their cars home.
The wife went upstairs to the bedroom and shut the door behind her and didn’t come out again the rest of the day, even when I tried to coax her out with Roseanne reruns. I figured that was a sure sign of depressions and started getting anxious. I was pacing the floors, kitchen to hall to living room and back again. I sat down on the couch and turned on the television set and ended up drifting off for a bit.
When I woke up the room was being filled with the light from an infomercial for a product that promised to remove all cat pee smells from a house within one hour. I went up to bed but the wife was gone, I tried calling her on the cell phone but it started ringing back down in the kitchen she didn’t even take it with her. The wife’s lipstick was sitting with no cap on on the table next to the cell phone. Right then and there I got both worried and scared. I picked up the lipstick and paced around again while thinking. Then I looked in the mirror and swiped one vertical line from my crow’s peak down to the tip of my nose and two diagonal slashes under each eye.
Ever get scared of your own self? I was approaching on that feeling as I sat on down atop the soil still loose and wet piled onto pappy’s grave. Trying to conjure up his energy is what I had went there to do and that seemed spooky to me. I said, well please arise from here Grandpappy because I’m so sorry that I let you down in my first week being the head of the company and I want to do better but I really need some help.
Pappy spiraled out from the headstone, ghastly, foggy, and yellowish and he was kind of standing up with no wheelchair. I say ‘kind of’ standing up because his knees was bent in the wrong direction making him into a square shape with the top of his head setting on the toe of his rat-nosed leather shoes. First thing he told me was to wipe that paint of my face on the count of I was only 1/32nd Native American so it could be considered racist for me to wear it and I replied that it wasn’t paint it was lipstick but that alright I would. I picked up an R-Words blanket that had been displayed near pappy’s gravestone and tried wiping it off but it mainly smeared into a bloody looking mess.
Grandpappy why are you bent like that and where’s the ol’ wheelchair, I asked him and he replied to me, what, you think wheelchair’s have souls or something? I should be riding in a ghost chair? I scratched my scalp and replied that well yeah I guess that’s true but then does that mean leather shoes have souls and he said he reckoned it must be so, and, now why’d you conjure me boy what’s the deal here?
Well because of that old gap tooth boy at the drive-thru window, I said. You remember him? He went off and killed hisself and it’s my fault pappy. I couldn’t see that six footer lurking anywhere near him. You told me you seen it but when I tried without you, I couldn’t. I need some tips, or hints, or advice, or something and I need them bad because now the old lady she went and caught the depression it seems on the count of your passing.
Close your eyes, Randy. Just close your eyes and smell death in the wind, that’s how.
Ok but how pappy? What does it smell like, I asked.
It’s bound to be different for you than it was for me. You have to witness death, you have to be in and around it. Remember the last time you witnessed death or were near it, what did it smell like? That is what you will need to follow.
I thought about standing out there in that BK parking lot with the buzzards circling with their gross raw looking necks and faces. I closed my eyes to feel what I felt, see what I seen, and smell what I smelt. The slashing breeze on my face. My hands touching the pilling pockets inside of my shorts. The whispering and murmuring fedora’d journalists. And that smoke, of course that burnt bloody smoke. It singed the hairs right out of the inside of my nostrils, that couldn’t be nothing but death plus there was a little bit of a french fry smell mixed in there too.
A large gust of wind came and sent Grandpappy tumbleweeding head over heels across the cemetery, down the hill, and off into the distance. I should have tried to go and catch him but I thought that I was in too urgent of a situation.
A sort of peculiar familiar darkness was humming through the house when I opened the front door and I caught a whiff of some french fries too. But I can’t say that I much liked the smell the way I usually would because when I stopped and closed my eyes the fries had a bit of a smokey blood tinge to them. A took my time creeping up the steps, I didn’t want to make no noise. The bedroom door was sitting slightly ajar so I crept over to where I could peek in.
The wife was laying on the bed with her eyes open staring straight at the ceiling and a big foggy shadow creature in the shape of a rectangle stood hunched over her. I mean it’s hard to explain the way it looked but basically looked like a six foot tall black book made out of shadow with cat ear triangles on top that I guessed was ears and cat ear triangles on bottom that I guessed was feet. Then there was two holes near the center inside of which was no fog, it was completely see-through like somebody took a large drill bit to dry-wall. But within those hollowed out spaces was yellowish-orange fireballs that bounced around slowly similar to the screensaver on the mickytosh. I reckoned these was eyes or sensory organs of some sort cuz they start bouncing around like crazy when I bumped the door slightly and it creaked open.
I pulled the two-volt from my cargo shorts pocket and gave him a nice jolt. Those fireballs turnt from yellowish-orange to greenish-blue and lightning strikes circuited through the fog of him. It collapsed back into the wall knocking down a framed picture of the wife and I dressed as a cowboy and a hooker inside of a old-timey saloon. She sat up with a not-so-sad look on her face and I asked her if she knew that leather shoes have souls and she said well sure I think that all shoes have souls. Or at least that’s what I decided that she had said and I liked it so I didn’t ask her to clarify. Then I told her about how Grandpappy might be gone but he’s still around in spirit and asked would she join me in trying to go catch him.
Of course she agreed to that and said that she wasn’t quite sure on what I was meaning but that she had trust in me enough to do whatever I thought was best. So she put her shoes on and some clothes then zipped a big old jacket over it all and we headed out the front door.
While we was driving towards the cemetery in the work van and I recounted the tale of how I conjured pappy and she said she was proud of me for being able to do that and thanks for coming to save me but well Randy how could you let your Grandpappy just blow away with the breeze like that and not consider his feelings. I said that well he was already dead and you wasn’t, so didn’t she agree that she was the priority if we’re thinking rationally. She said no absolutely not Randy cuz you’re not able to do this job without him and I looked over at her and her eyes were blank and glossed over so I knew exactly what she meant and I was startled and felt a shiver.
I moved my eyes back to the road and my instincts caused me to avoid a dead possum laying there, would have been fine just to run the sucker over but my instinct had me swerve and I nearly lost control of the van veering off to the shoulder of the rode and overcorrecting sending us barreling way back into the left lane zipping just between a pizza delivery car and a cross country semi-truck carrying a load of Hostess snack confections, one of the two vehicles had angrily honked. I regained control of the van and pulled off onto the shoulder to catch my breath and assess the wife’s mental state.
I stepped outside the van and that shadowy figure was clinged on top of the automobile with his entire mass hanging over the edges looking like we had just bought a triple king size mattress from the Costco wholesalers outlet. So I hopped back in, strapped my seatbelt on and punched the gas pedal. I rolled down my window and poked my head out to check did I shake him, which I didn’t. He was still there grasping on with all the leverage it could muster. Then I had an idea that I wasn’t quite sure why I didn’t just think of in the first place so I pulled the van off to the shoulder of the road again. I got out and zapped him with the two-volt turning those fireballs from the orange-ish color back to the blue-ish again and hopped into the van punching the gas down to the floor. I looked in the rearview mirror and seen him come sliding off. I glanced towards the wife and noticed the glaze was gone from her eyes and she looked again to be the lady I was familiar with but I figured it was only temporary. But still I was relieved to get him off for now and to have some time to find pappy and we was nearing to the cemetery at this point.
That’s when I seen a ghastly foggy blur spinning and whirling down the shoulder of the highway like Sonic the Hedgehog back in the day on the Sega pappy bought for me from that big garage sale that they held annually in the church parking lot, except for this spinning blur was foggy and yellow and pappy instead of blue and a hedgehog.
I rolled the passenger window down because that’s the side of the rode the blur was on and tried to keep pace with it. I hollered out, pappy is that you? He said yeah and that he figured out how to steer himself but since the wind caught hold of him there was no way to stop his momentum and he just been rolling along for some time now. He told me to go ahead and jolt him with the two-volt and that was likely to stop the momentum or at least change it or something.
I aimed at him out the window and my aim is pretty good so I got him with the first zap. There wasn’t a gradual slow down to his momentum it was just instantaneous. He went from rolling head over heels at 70mph to a spark and blast that sent him launching up into the air and landing as a smoking ball of charged energy about 50 meters off the side of the rode. The blast that rocketed pappy out into the corn fields rippled outward as well and killed the battery in the van causing the headlights to give out leaving us in pitch black doing 70 on the highway. The moonlight being just barely enough to illuminate the reflective strips on the side of the road making it a guessing game of connect the dots to not go barreling off the road. There were headlights not too far back in my rearview mirror and I knew the brake lights were out making it tough and dangerous for me to stop real quickly. I lightly put the brakes on and slowly veered over till I knew I was on the gravel shoulder then came to a quick and dusty halt.
Cars was zooming by my door so I was checking in the side mirror for a good time to open it up. I saw my chance so I looked over into the glossy eyed blank face beside me and told her wait right here for just a few minutes while I go and fetch pappy and I’ll be right back. It smelled like popcorn when I opened the door and got out.
When I was halfway to the burnt corn where pappy had landed I heard the hinges of the van door swing open. I looked back and seen the creature had caught up to us and the wife slowly make her way around the front of the van towards the street. I turned myself right back around and started sprinting towards her yelling about get back in the van and what are you doing? But she didn’t stop and slowly drug the feet underneath her out into the highways oncoming traffic.
I laid down that night in hopes that I’d never wake up. That could solve all my issues. There would be no thoughts of the past, no regrets or wishes, no life flashing before the eyes or none of that. Just cease to exist, that’s how mopey I was. But it didn’t happen because I never even fell asleep, and when the sun rose up there was a seven foot rectangle shadow cast over me. I walked down stairs and it followed me down. I turned on the TV and sat myself on the couch and figured I wasn’t fixing to move from there until somebody came and forced me to.
Less than a week later I realized that I had a house to myself, a TV, and a few bottles of whiskey and I was just stunned and thinking, what was I ever considering moping around about anyway? Sure I figured I was real sad but sad can be not so bad and someday I’m gonna become a yellow foggy figure too and until that time comes this is a pretty nice set up.