Coming and Going (Part 4)

She came easily enough. I told her I thought I saw that girl who was missing. Those eyes looked almost through me, but just in time, I remembered to use the Jedi mind trick, and I stopped them from seeing things they shouldn’t. I knew she was from the dark side by that shrill edge in her voice, even when she was all have a nice day and God bless and all of that phony shit people say but don’t mean.

She looked really scary under those fluorescent lights over the gas pumps, those freaky, knowing eyes glowing right out of her skull. I could feel the place on my bat where it wanted to crack her skull, wanted to open it like a walnut, which would make huge mess, so I had to be extra careful not to let that part of the bat touch her. And you wouldn’t believe how carefully and beautifully I swung that bat, just right, making contact right there where head meets neck at the base of her skull. There was no mess, except that she went down like a ton of bricks and scraped her face up pretty bad on my open car door. She was unconscious, so I don’t think she was crying, but her eyes were watery, and her eye makeup got all swirled into the blood, a line of black here, a swirl of blue there. It was really pretty, those colors swirling together, and I watched for a minute or two before I wrapped her up in the shower curtain that looks like an underwater coral reef with tropical fish on it that looked real and put her in the trunk. It seemed like a good idea to get gas somewhere else, so I left without pumping any gas, even though I pulled right up to the pump.

I went ahead and got gas on my way out to the coast. She must have woken up a little while before we got there. I was watching the road for armadillos when I heard her start beating on the trunk. Since she was already wrapped in the shower curtain, I could just clobber her good when I opened the trunk.

I pulled my Chevy down to where Grandpa used to take me crabbing and realized that I’d forgotten to check the damn tide chart, and I couldn’t tell if it was coming or going. This might complicate things. Hmmm, what would Jesus do? He’d probably save her, drive the demons out of her eyes and into a school of fish or something. I was glad I picked up a six pack at the gas station. Natural Lite. What’s more natural than natural light?

I opened the first one and put Pearl Jam on the stereo and watched the water for a while to see if I could figure out if it was going out or coming in. If it was coming in, I should probably move my car. If it was going out, she might get stuck without being taken out to sea. I wasn’t sure what I should do, so I closed my eyes and recited from the Scottish play, Act Five, scene five:

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

We had to memorize it in high school, and ever since I’ve found that it calms me to recite it. Much better than that stupid tree poem by Joyce Kilmer. I’ve since learned some Elizabethan slang and discovered that Shakespeare was a right funny old bastard. Dirty sense of humor.

Then I started thinking about that Edgar Allan Poe, the one about the old man with the vulture eye. How he cooked him dinner and pretended to love him. That made me think about how my mom pretended to love me, and then the red thing happened, and when it ended, I was back at home, and the tropical reef shower curtain was hanging in the bathroom. I’m not sure what happened.

Then I remembered the gas station lady in the trunk of my car and knew I had to make up some really big sins and go to confession. I started making a list with my very best pencil, the one Lucy dropped by my desk in tenth grade when she was wearing that blue sweater that made my pants feel funny. Holding that pencil made me think about Lucy and that blue sweater. I couldn’t see through it, but it clung to her body in such a way that I could see what she would feel like, and all of the sudden, my willie was sticking up out of my pajama pants, and I had to stop writing and give all of my attention to my willie gazing up at me, begging me to touch him and squeeze him, but not call him George.