grUeBERfest 2009 ROUND 1 - Doublewide (MCCALLUM) (86 hits)
Category: Noneno reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (View user info) at 2009-10-09 14:19:57 EDT
Rolston would regret accepting a ride from Keene.
There was that sour smell in Keene's pickup, for instance... Rolston had no problem with the earthy odor of dirt and the pungency of an honest sweat. It was the sweet and sickly reek underneath that made him regret taking the ride. Not long after that, when he went into the kitchen of Keene's doublewide down the street from his own, he realized that the smell was stronger in there.
A year ago Rolston had been riding high, writing ad copy and managing the websites for a chain of Chrysler dealerships. Then the whole chain went bankrupt and he was out of a job. Falling down the stairs of his building in Oakland's Lake Merritt a week later and breaking his hip like an old man was the capper. His right hip had shattered like a china cup thrown at a cinderblock wall, and now it was held together with metal pins, screws, rods and plates. He would walk with a cane for the rest of his life and was warned that he would always feel what vacillated between discomfort and outright throbbing pain.
He had medical insurance at that time but it wasn't enough, and his modest savings had almost been wiped out by his medical bills.
He moved into the East Bay's Oyster Bay mobile home park in the spring, realizing that he could no longer piss away money on a spacious apartment. He bought a forty year old doublewide and moved in beside people he would have done anything to avoid associating with a year ago. White trash idiots, Mexicans scrabbling for work just like he was, shiftless blacks sucking up welfare, drug addicts, and a few senior citizens who drifted through the park like something out of a Romero zombie movie.
He spent his days exercising his still fragile and once shattered hip, and looking for work, being lucky enough to score temp contracts now and then, jobs of a few weeks duration.
He had a car, but he tried to walk as much as possible despite the pain. He wanted to build as much strength as he could so he wouldn't be completely incapacitated by the time he reached his sixties.
Rolston had walked a half mile to the nearest supermarket to buy a few things, watching clouds gather overhead. A short time later he had stepped outside with his cane in his right hand and his plastic bag in his left and the rain had started hammering down.
An older guy with a graying blond beard had pulled up in an old pickup truck and offered him a ride.
"Name's Keene," the man had said, shouting through the open passenger window. "You're that new fellow from down the street. Need a ride back to the park?"
Keene looked to be about sixty-five or so. He had a good thirty years on Rolston, but Rolston's fucked up hip meant he would be moving much slower than the older man. He had vague memories of seeing the Keene come and go.
A sunny day would be nice, a cold day would be bearable, but if he caught a chill in this rain... he'd learned the hard way that something as simple as a sneeze became an adventure in agony when your bones were held together like a reconstructed Greek urn in a museum.
He was trying to call a cab but must have forgotten to charge his cell because the battery was dead.
"Come on," Keene said. "Get you home in a jif."
Rolston knew he was too much of a homebody and had a hard time making new friends, let alone saying the occasion 'hi' or 'how are you doing' to his neighbors. Christ, they couldn't all be bad, he thought. Come on, make a goddamned effort. Be civil.
"I'd appreciate that, neighbor," he said. He opened the door and slowly eased himself into the cab.
Keene was watching him, his wrinkled brow furrowed with concern. "Come a cropper, huh?"
"What's that?"
"Done yourself an injury."
Rolston tried and failed to place Keene's accent.
There was a bit of a southern twang in that gruff voice. He could be a supporting character in an old western. Not a cowboy on a cattle drive, more like the cook. Spittin', cussin', ornery and wiry. He certainly looked the part, with his weathered, tanned hide and whippet-thin frame.
Keene pulled out onto the road as Rolston rolled up his window. "Yeah. It's a bitch. Thanks for the ride."
"No problem."
Rolston expected the man's reply to end with pardner.
It wasn't long before Rolston smelled dirt, and sweat, and that faint, sickening scent underneath. It was sweet and sour at the same time. He had once left some pork from a Chinese take out place in his fridge too long and when the meat had gone off it had that same smell. He regretted rolling up his window against the rain.
"These weather forecasters can't seem to get their act together," Rolston said.
Keene nodded. "They don't know shit about fuck."
They pulled into the park, made a few turns through the tight maze of streets, and Keene stopped the truck by Rolston's home.
"Nice trailer," Keene said.
Rolston nodded thanks, preferring to think of it as a mobile home. He was about to climb out of the truck as carefully as a man carry a few sweating sticks of dynamite when he noticed his windows were dark in the gloom outside.
"Aw shit, I left a few lights on. Looks like my power is out."
Keene pointed ahead, and then hooked a thumb over one shoulder. "This whole side of the street is dark. Looks like my end is OK. You got to call that good for shit manager and get him to check the breakers."
Rolston's cell was dead, and he didn't have a land line. "Listen, I hate to impose, but can I use your cell phone?"
Keene shook his head. "You could if I had one, but I don't have a hankering to get a brain tumor or cancerous gonads."
"Shit," Rolston said.
Keene put both hands on the wheel as if giving a great deal of thought to a weighty subject. After a moment he said, "You can use my phone in the house. No point driving over to the manager's office. That skunk is probably off somewhere smoking weed."
"Well I appreciate that," Rolston said. Look at that, he thought. I made a friend.
Keene drove to the far end of the road and parked beside his own doublewide. Rain pattered on the rusted aluminum roof of the carport. As Rolston got out of the truck and carefully shifted his weight to his cane he tried not to let his distaste show on his face. The mobile home had not been painted in decades, and what paint remained was dark with years of accumulated grime. The L-shaped yard was almost completely taken up by two old metal sheds with padlocked doors. The doors on one shed were bent from years of hard knocks and through the gap Rolston could see the long handles of shovels, picks or some other kind of tool, the wood smooth from years of use. Air conditioners mounted to the front and side windows were giving off a muted clatter even though it was an unseasonably cool day.
Keene unlocked the door. There were four locks. On the door was a weather-faded sign that read BEWARE OF DOG.
Jesus, Rolston thought, leaning on his cane at the bottom of a short flight of stairs.
Keene stepped inside his kitchen. "Just a sec," he said. A moment later Keene was holding out an olive-colored phone that was probably new in 1978. He offered just the handset, on the end of a very long cord. The plastic buttons in the handset were yellow with age. "Here you go."
Rolston winced. "I appreciate it, but do you mind if I sit for a moment?"
Keene looked at him, leaned back inside and gave his kitchen a once-over, and then said, "Sure thing."
By the time Rolston got up the stairs and through the door Keene had pulled on a sweater and slid a chair up against the kitchen counter.
"Whew," Rolston said. "You like it cool, huh?"
Keene seemed unsure for a moment and then he gave a surprised laugh. "Oh. Yep. One of these days a heat wave is gonna be the death of me."
Rolston eased himself into the chair, seeing that Keen's place had the same layout as his, gas stove, cooktop, cupboards and cabinets all in the same place. He pulled a small card out of his wallet, thank Christ he had it since his phone was dead and the information inaccessible, and called the park manager's office.
"Voicemail," he whispered to Keene, and then a wave of that sickly-sweet rotten smell engulfed him and he nearly threw up.
"Ain't that always the way," Keene replied.
Rolston left a quick message, his words clipped as his stomach heaved. He gave the phone to Keene and got up.
"You okay? You look kind of washed up?"
"Fine," Rolston said. He pointed to a covered plastic garbage bin. "No offense, but just between us neighbors, I think you've got something rotten in there that needs to be bagged and tossed."
Keene sniffed at the air and said, "Huh. How about that."
Then he went to the kitchen door, took a key from his pocket, and locked it from the inside.
Rolston forced out a hollow laugh. "What are you doing?"
Keene ignored him. "I been living with that smell so many years now, I guess I got used to it. What with all the lime I used in the cellar and burning the leftovers I thought the smell was under control." He shook his head and smiled. "Fuck me for being neighborly." He opened a cabinet by the door and took out what looked like a small skinny baseball bat.
Rolston was wondering why Keene mentioned a basement when all the homes in Oyster Bay were set on cement pads. He didn't realize he was looking at a very old nightstick until Keene turned and swung the scarred length of wood at his hip. There was an explosion of pain that lit up the room like a flashbulb had gone off and Rolston fell on his back, setting off another burst of pain.
Keene grabbed the shoulders of Rolston's jacket and began dragging him in jerks and starts down the hall to the bedroom at the rear of the house. Rolston was incapable of fighting back. The pain in his hip flared anew every time his weight shifted.
Keene dropped Rolston flat on his back beside the bed. The smell was so bad back here it almost seemed to blacken the air. Keene had air purifiers in each corner of the room and the air conditioner was running at the highest setting. Despite his fear and confusion Rolston momentarily wondered what Keene's utility bills were like as the chill in the air cooled his skin.
Keene pushed his bed to one side. It was on old-fashioned casters. He tore away a section of carpet held down with Velcro and then lifted a wooden trap door as wide as the storm doors to a cellar. He climbed down a few feet and then bent at the waist, disappearing for just a moment. Rolston heard another door creaking open. When Keene stood again he sniffed the air.
"Hell, I still don't smell it," he said.
A draught in the house brought the smell from whatever was down there to Rolston. He turned his head and vomited.
"Now jee-zuss, boy, you think I want to be mopping that up?" Keene stepped back up into the bedroom, dragged Rolston to that wide door in the floor, and rolled him in and down.
Rolston caught a glimpse of a wooden sleeve lined with insulation and another narrower door set in the concrete pad under the house before he tumbled down head first, the fingers of his left hand striking the solid rungs of a long wooden ladder and snapping like dry twigs as he fell. He tried to twist his body so he wouldn't break his neck and landed on packed earth, his left shoulder and hip becoming nuclear explosions of agony. He slumped on one side. He looked up and saw Keene coming down the ladder. The trap door in the concrete pad had to be twelve feet above him, maybe more. He raised his head and stared. Keene must have been working on this place for decades.
Fluorescent lights stuttered on over his head. The space was fifty feet long and thirty wide, extending away from the road and under other lots. A few feet from Rolston the dirt floor became smooth poured concrete. In digging out this space Keene had avoided damaging any gas or water pipes, and they passed down the length of the room and crossed it almost at random. At the far end of the space was some sort of clear plastic tent. Rolston had seen enough cheap horror flicks to realize what he was seeing. Inside the plastic tent that was a makeshift clean room was an operating table on a spotless tile floor. It was an operating theater.
In that clean room were powerful lights, trays of surgical instruments, narrow storage lockers, medicine cabinets and to either side of the operating table, two long work surfaces bearing gleaming chrome and steel instruments and machines. The only things Rolston recognized were a compact microwave and some kind of fancy microscope.
Keene reached the bottom of the ladder and hauled Rolston to his feet.
As he ducked his head to avoid hitting a pipe, Rolston realized Keene was terribly strong as the man began carrying him through the maze of pipes to the clean room.
"Those damned things," Keene said, nodding at the pipes. "I've been repairing the sons of bitches myself for years. Just wouldn't do for a public works crew to come and start digging in search of a leaking pipe. They'd find this place and stop my work, and I am so close to completion."
This far from the ladder the walls were painted drywall. They passed by two short and wide wooden doors on either side of the long space and Rolston thought, sweet Jesus, there's more to this place? The doors were bolted shut.
Keene pushed through the flaps of clear plastic and eased Rolston down on the table.
"That big sewage pipe back there burst two years ago. What a cunt of a thing that was to fix. Now you just relax—"
Keene paused and looked over his shoulder as both of them heard a muffled wailing.
That sounds like an animal, Rolston thought. Or a... a kid.
"Time to feed the babies," Keene said. He grinned and eased Rolston back on the table. He studied Rolston's ashen, sweating face for a moment as if assessing him, and then stepped away.
Keene squatted, opened a small refrigerator under the table and took out four frozen burritos. He tore open the ends of the wrappers and put two of the burritos in the microwave. Then he took another look at Rolston before stepping out of the clear plastic tent.
Rolston tried to move and realized he couldn't do much without becoming nearly incapacitated with pain. He watched Keene open one of the bolted doors and step into a softer light. He could hear Keene muttering softly, almost crooning.
Keens' voice was muffled as he said, "That's a good girl!"
Rolston knew that if he didn't do something, anything, he would die here. How could he not know? This kind of thing played out on our TV screens and in our newspapers all the time, and always after horrific deeds were done. A week or a year from now Keene would fuck up or drop dead and then this mobile home would be on the local news, Rolston's remains nothing but a shape in a body bag.
Despite this knowledge he was strangely calm. He'd been fighting back pain for so long that holding his panic at bay was almost too easy.
He searched his right pocket, his eyes watering from the stench down here, looking for metal. His left pocket held his keys and some coins, but he could hardly move his left arm. His hand clutched something slender. It was a pack of gum. Juicy Fruit. He'd quit smoking three years ago and still craved nicotine every time he saw someone light up. Juicy Fruit helped.
He leaned onto his right side. When his legs shifted he felt as if someone was using a hammer to pound shards of broken glass into his shattered hip. He could almost see the glass, sleek, thick blades with the slightest green tint; pieces of an old fashioned Coke bottle.
He was just able to reach the long work surface. Glancing down saw thick nylon straps that Keene could have used to restrain him.
Biting back the pain he stretched as far as he could and stuffed the half empty pack of Juicy Fruit into the open end of one burrito wrapper.
Keene was backing out of the room. Rolston eased back onto the operating table, sweat standing out on his face. His pain spiked as he lay back and he clenched his teeth, feeling hot urine spray out if him and soak into his underwear.
The microwave beeped. Keene closed the door in the wall. He cane back into the clean room and studied Rolston for a moment, then took the hot burritos from the microwave and put them on a plate. He got a plastic bottle of Sunny D from the refrigerator and went back to the first door. He went inside, crooning. He stepped out a moment later, hands empty, leaving the door open.
"Food time!" He crossed to the second door and opened it. "Together time! Happy time!"
Keene came back into the clean room and put the other burritos in the machine and pushed a button.
Odd guttural noises were coming from the second door Keene had opened.
Keene stepped out of the clean room again and said, "Patience, patience," in a merry voice. "Your food is coming, young man!"
The metal foil on the gum wrappers in the microwave began to flash and snapping sounds were coming from inside the machine.
Keene came into the clean room and dropped a fist like a lead weight into Rolston's diaphragm. As Rolston gasped for breath like a landed fish Keene opened the microwave door and cursed. The burrito and the wrapper were on fire.
Coming from the second door Keene had opened was the almost musical sound of a heavy chain rattling and jingling.
As Keene carefully dragged the burning burritos onto the counter, Rolston rolled onto his broken hip, finally sucking in air as he reached for something he had seen on the opposite table, a large plastic bottle of alcohol that Keene probably used as a disinfectant. He grabbed the bottle and yanked the cap off with his teeth, and then swung it and squeezed it with a scream of pain just as Keene turned around.
The alcohol splashed across Keene's shirt and the burning burrito. There was a flare of flame and Keene's sleeve was on fire. Rolston dropped the bottle, and as the contents gurgled onto the floor a burning ember from Keene's sleeve ignited the spreading pool.
Keene's cry was like thunder. "DAMN YOU!"
"Daddy?"
Rolston looked toward the flaps in the plastic tent and saw a little girl standing outside the clean room. Rolston couldn't see her clearly through the plastic; it was like looking through a lens smeared with a thin layer of grease.
The girl was naked. She was holding a burrito in one hand and her Sunny D in the other. Her dark brown hair was tied back in a ponytail. Rolston thought she was wearing a thin necklace, some kind of chain around her neck. Then he looked at her arms. And her legs. And her flat, pale chest. She was a mass of surgical scars puckered with the indentations of old stitches.
As he patted out the flames on his sleeve Keene saw Rolston watching the girl. He backhanded Rolston.
Rolston felt his nose break and tasted blood flowing over his lips.
The maddening jingling and clanking of chains grew louder.
"This is supposed to be happy time," Keene hissed at Rolston. "Together time! Peaceful time! We don't want stress and agitation!"
The burrito wrapper had stopped burning. Keene stomped out the fire on the floor with his feet. Then he went to the little girl. He opened the plastic flap of the tent and caressed the girl's cheek. "There-there, sweetie."
Despite his pain and terror, Rolston felt like crying. "Christ," he said. "She's stitched together like... like Frankenstein's monster."
"She is no monster," Keene said, picking the girl up and gently rocking her. She looked over his shoulder at Rolston and took a bite out of her burrito. "She is perfect. Perfect. Do you have any idea how many years it took me to learn this art, this science? There were so many failures, so much burning to do, so many little ones turned to ashes. That's where you'll earn your keep, by the way. It's always advantageous to try out new techniques on living flesh."
He carried the girl back to her room and shut the door half way. Then he turned to Rolston and snorted a laugh. "My neighbors thought I liked to barbecue a lot, the ignorant pissants. But the risk was worth every minute. These little ones are imperfect and out of proportion. So many flaws. And so quarrelsome. It took someone like me to make the perfect child," and here his voice became tender, "So sweet in every aspect."
There was a metallic twang from the opposite door, still open. Keene looked that way and then stepped forward to close the door. He said, "Easy now, easy, everything is fine, we're all safe down here." Something swiped at his legs and then his jeans were sliced open in three places and blood was spilling from deep cuts. Keene staggered backward.
Rolston got off of the operating table. He reached out and steadied himself on a rolling IV stand. He lurched out of the clean room and saw Keene coming for him on unsteady legs. Rolston balanced on his good leg and swung the IV stand, striking an old gas line. He hit it a second time and a pipe broke free on en elbow joint.
The odor of gas immediately began overpowering the rotten meat smell in the air.
For the first time Keene had a look of fear on his face. The unseen chains rattled fiercely again and Keene shuffled to the open door, swinging it shut. Something on the other side began pushing the door open.
Rolston eased by Keene as fast as he could, using the now bent IV stand as a crutch. He reached the ladder and began to pull himself up the rungs. This was going to take time.
Keene continued to struggle with the door and was finally shoved backward as the door was pushed wide. He fell on his back and something lashed out, opening his throat.
"Happy time," he gurgled, through welling blood.
Rolston's head was almost at ground level. He could see Keene, but not what had attacked the man.
The little girl's door creaked open and then she was kneeling beside Keene. She screamed, her voice high and piping. "Stop hurting daddy!"
The gas in the air was thick and it was making Rolston a bit dizzy. He pulled himself up one more rung, catching a breath of fresher air as he reached the insulated wooden sleeve between the ground and the mobile home. Rolston could see Keene's bedroom not far above. He was almost there when something grabbed his left leg and pulled hard.
He hooked his right arm through a ladder rung and looked down. There was a second child on the ladder, naked except for an oversized, filthy hoodie. The too-long sleeves feel back as the child, a boy, pulled on Rolston's leg.
Rolston wasn't looking at hands. He was looking at the thick-clawed paws of a large dog. Short lengths of broken chains dangled from manacles on each foreleg.
"No," he said, remembering the sign on Keene's door.
The boy looked up and the hood slipped off of his head. His nose and jaws had been surgically removed. Stitched onto his face with crude sutures that were oozing pus was the long muzzle of a dog.
The last calm part of Rolston's overloaded mind thought, no, that's impossible. It's absurd!
The boy opened his jaws and long canines sank into the man's calf.
Rolston let out a final shriek as he was pulled down the ladder.
It wasn't long before gas from the broken main filled Keene's basement. It drifted up to the bedroom and moved down the hall to the kitchen, to the old stove and cook top, and the pilot lights.
The fearsome explosion left behind a debris-strewn crater of considerable depth.
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