George insisted they keep the car windows rolled down on their drive back from Shaker’s at Stony Mountain. Let the wind flow through the car, he said, and blow the stink off. This meat the guy had sold them — man! A large slab of something he’d cut down off a hook in his shed after he beat the flies away with a pick handle. An aroma to the stuff that sucked the breath out of your lungs. He’d lopped off a hunk with his chain saw, and now they had it with them, wrapped in newspapers back there in the trunk of Louie’s car.
“You hadda buy the guy out, sixty pounds of the stuff? I mean, you get one lizard, you got to corner the world market on putrescent meat? Louie’ll never get the smell out of this car.”
“He’ll never get it outa his room, neither, so what I think could happen, the guy’ll get used to it,” Zeke said.
“That’s the problem. You think too much.”
“Listen. Thinking’s a sign of intelligence.”
“Not the way you do it.”
The sun was settling low, now only a glowing arc where the prairie met the sky. Ma rode along in stony silence. She hadn’t said a word for half an hour, just watched the city skyline loom up at them out of the dusk. The Perimeter Highway interchange flashed by. Louie said, “Well, Ma, looks like we’re actually going to make it. What a trip, huh? I was starting to wonder. I didn’t want to say anything, worry you, but I’ve been a bit concerned the last few miles. This oil light blinking on and off, red.”
“So?”
“Well. No oil in your engine. It could seize up on you, self-destruct.”
“That’d be God, I guess, huh?”
“Oh, Ma.” She was sinking into one of her moods again. Best to change the subject quick and cheer her up. “I was wondering what the guys are doing right now...”
“Lemme guess,” Ma said. “Let’s see. They’re back-filling the hole where the house used to be, hoping I’ll come home and not notice. It wouldn’t surprise me they’ve sold it for scrap lumber by now, those crooks.”
“Ma, remember what I told you, try and think of them as lambs that’ve strayed. If you’re patient with them, if you’re understanding, they’ll scramble back onto the path. They’re your children, Ma. Your own offspring.” Louie cast about for something from scripture he could say about the weasels. “They’re the fruits of your womb.”
Ma watching him.
“Calling Zeke a fruit?”
Like they couldn’t communicate, no matter what. Louie wished he could have managed to have a few intimate moments with Ma. That had been his plan. There in Fargo, reclining by the pool, Ma asking questions and Louie answering them by referring to scripture. Showing her the power of the Word. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Ma had her own ideas. All she’d wanted was to be driven around to every bottle shop they could find. She never bought anything. Practicing abstinence, she said.
That much at least was a promising sign. Louie was sure one day it would happen, the moment would come, he would get through to Ma. She’d see the light in one blinding flash of realization and undergo a miraculous conversion right there on the spot. He had to admit it was hard to imagine, though. Ma rolling around on the floor having an experience.
The street lights were gleaming now, the last of the sunlight trickling away. In twenty minutes they’d see the dark pitch of rooftops on Ma’s street among the trees.
“Well,” Louie said cheerily, “it was a fun trip, even with all the car trouble, and even though you didn’t find much to bring back with you, huh, Ma?”
“I don’t take nothing unless it’s a bargain.”
“You mean you don’t buy it.”
She looked at him.
At first Dufault thought it was an alligator, but then he thought, no, it can’t be. It didn’t look like one. Not that he’d ever actually seen an alligator, a real live one, but this thing didn’t look right. It didn’t have those bulbous eyes, or those smiling, toothy jaws. This mouth was smaller, more grim and businesslike. The mouth of a snake. One of those big anacondas you saw on TV, could unhinge its jaws and gulp down a sumo wrestler an inch at a time.
The head was slightly turned, one stony eye staring at him. A thin yellow line where the eyelid met that dull, watchful orb.
Dufault’s mouth was dry, his heart was hammering to beat hell, and there was a cold sweat oozing out of him under his shirt. Dufault had a phobia about reptiles, amphibians, whatever the hell this thing was. Alien creatures from science fiction. Animals that crawled out of eggs like maggots.
The way another man might get scared of a spider and stomp it, that’s how Dufault felt about this animal on the bathroom floor in front of him. Only the thing was too damn big. Hell, its tail went out the door into the hall. Try and stomp this monster, you better have a wooden leg handy or you’d be running for your life in one great big circle, your leg chomped off at the knee.
The scaly face two feet away.
And now — Jesus — the tongue sliding out again.
Dufault clapped his hands to try and scare the thing off. It perked up immediately and came at him.
They pulled up in front of Ma’s with the slab of meat back there in the trunk and stopped. It was Zeke who said not to go all the way in under the carport. Zeke who’d spotted the red Ford truck at the end of the street, tucked up tight behind the car ahead of it like its owner had been trying to hide it.
Hide a half-ton truck behind a Chevette. Man.
“As if he thought I wouldn’t spot the dingle-balls,” Zeke said. “Doofy the Newfie. The only guy’s still got dingle-balls on his headliner. I guess the dope’s in there, all right. I wonder if he’s met our houseguest by now?”
George said he didn’t know. Zeke said, Okay, maybe wait a few minutes sitting out here on the steps. Then go in and see for themselves. Why wait? George asked. Zeke said, Why not try a little experiment, see what else old Ed liked to eat?
When the thing made a feint at his leg, Dufault screamed and threw himself backwards. He was a big man, and when his butt slammed into the toilet bowl sideways, the bolts broke clean through the porcelain flange at the base and the fixture tilted over, the tank coming with it, water spraying up the wall. The lid of the tank fell off, and he glimpsed the neck of a gin bottle, booze hidden in there. Dufault backed into the tub dragging the shower curtain down. Cold water spattering his face.
The thing ignored the water. It seemed to have just one thing on its mind — Dufault. It humped forward, jaws gaping as if it were bent on engulfing Dufault’s foot. Dufault back-pedaled, pressing his back against the wall, trying to climb the slippery tile with his heels.
Zeke being ready, they went on into the house, but right away Zeke, walking a little ahead of George, halted so abruptly George almost ran into him.
“Judas in a jumpsuit!”
George looked past him. What he saw was a mess. A shambles. The place had been trashed. Zeke moaned low in his throat, and George knew just what he was thinking: what were they going to tell Ma?
They heard water running. The sound coming from the bathroom, getting louder as they went down the hall, like there was a babbling brook pouring through the house at that spot. They poked their heads in the bathroom door.
The smell was overpowering. Ed, all right.
And also Dufault.
The toilet was knocked over, the tank skewed to one side and ripped away from the wall, a jet of water shooting out the stub of a snapped-off pipe. Dufault was in the tub clutching a near-empty bottle of Beefeater gin, the man soaked to the skin, his red hair plastered to his skull and his eyes staring fixedly at Ed, who lay half in and half out of the tub with his leathery elbows jutting out and his blunt saurian head looking like it was carved out of a wet rock, frozen.