The hell…
It was no peach pie that greeted Esau’s gaze when he shoved up Carol’s denim skirt. It was a big dick.
“You gots ta be shittin’ me!” he managed some bewilderment of his own. “A chick with a dick!” Along with Esau’s bewilderment, of course, came more than a smidgen of jealousy, for Carol’s penis was twice the size of his.
“I know what you are!” he wailed. “You’re like them people on Springer! Homo dudes foolin’ with their bodies ta look like bitches so’s they can trick straight guys!”
Esau hoisted his overalls back up, and from a pocket produced a pair of chicken shears. “Yeah, let’s just cut that hog right off. Balls too. Ain’t right fer you ta have a pecker.” He frowned at it once more. “’Specially one that big.”
When Carol saw the shears she belted out a high-pitched and very feminine scream, then fainted dead away.
Hmm, Esau thought. Now that it was time to get down to business, he hesitated. Maybe there was something better to do with it.
“Come ta think of it, honey, maybe we’ll just wait a spell…”
««—»»
“The goddamn hell,” Ashton muttered. He’d stowed the rest of the eel in the rear refrigerator, had another beer, another glass of wine, and another cigar. It was 1 a.m. now, by his Cartier watch. “Where the hell are they?” He peered frowning out the Winnebago’s side window. Across the moonlit lake, he could see Bob’s SeaRay tied up to the pier at the island.
“What in God’s name are they doing over there?”
A sudden rap on the door startled him. If everyone’s over on the island, he deduced, who could that be at the door?
Ashton yanked open the door.
“Hi, Mr. Morrone…”
Ashton peered strangely at the pert, pretty girl in the doorway. A brunette in a white top and neat white shorts. She looked familiar…
“You’re one of the bus-girls at my restaurant, aren’t you?”
“Rochelle,” the girl said.
“What on earth are you doing here?”
“Well, the assistant manager, Mr. Curwen, he lost your cell-phone number so he sent me out. He needs to know which day that wedding party is renting the banquet room. He says you forgot to tell him.”
Ashton’s face creased up in irritation. “Oh, for God’s sake. Come in.” He let her into the lit RV. “It’s Saturday, I told him repeatedly. But I appreciate your trouble, Michelle.”
“Rochelle.”
“Er, yes. I appreciate your coming all this way. That’s a long drive. Would you like something to drink?”
“No, thank you.”
Ashton grabbed himself what was probably his eighteenth beer of the day. But when he turned, he stared at her. Now that she stood in the light, he noticed—
“My God, girl. You nose is as big as an Alaskan strawberry! What happened?”
“Oh, damn!” Rochelle exclaimed, then began sobbing. “I knew it!”
Her being here was odd enough, and her query about the banquet was just as odd. But then, through his dull inebriation, something even odder occurred to Ashton.
I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here…
“Roseanne?”
“It’s Rochelle,” she sobbed, holding her swollen nose.
“Whatever.” Ashton fingered his beard. “How did you know I was coming here? I know I told Curwen that I was going on a fishing trip with my brother. But I never said where.”
Rochelle stopped sobbing, now wearing a look of anxiety. Her hand dropped from her swollen red nose. “I, er, uh…”
“She did it for me, Morrone,” another voice announced.
“You!” Ashton exclaimed.
It was his arch-rival who’d just stepped into the RV:
M. Gerald James.
“My, but don’t we look fat today, hmm, Ashton?”
“What the hell are you doing here, you fussy snoot?” Ashton railed.
James smiled primly. “Topped three-hundred on the scale yet? Must be all those Big Macs, for certainly you don’t eat in that latrine you call a restaurant. I wouldn’t eat in that slop shop…with your mother’s mouth.”
“Those are fighting words, James!” Ashton exploded. His man-tits swung back and forth under his shirt as he lunged forward until—
click!
James produced a small .22 revolver and cocked it.
Ashton’s bravado came to an abrupt halt. “Are you out of your mind! What’s the meaning of this? Why are you here?”
James ran a finger down the line of his thin mustache. “Oh, I was just a bit curious, my fine, corpulent friend. How’s the fishing out here?”
Ashton stood fat and pouting.
“How’s the trout biting, and the walleye? Caught any shad, caught any…Crackjaw eel? Hmm?”
“So that’s what this is all about!” Ashton snapped. “Well, I’m happy to tell you that you’ve wasted your time. There’s no eel in this lake!”
“Oh?” James said. “And those rather large coolers I saw you and your ridiculously obese brother dragging in? I suppose they were full of catfish?” James pulled open the rear refrigerator. He looked in, paused, and then took on an expression as though he’d just found the real Shroud of Turin.
“My God…”
Live eel were squirming in the coolers, hundreds of them.
“Let’s make a deal, James,” Ashton bid. “We’ll split the wealth. We tell no one else about this lake, and split the proceeds fifty-fifty.”
James brow arched. “A generous offer, I must say… All right, you’ve got a deal—” and then James promptly fired three shots right into Ashton’s massive chest. The bullets smacked—PAP! PAP! PAP!—and shoved Ashton to the front of the RV; the vehicle rocked when he landed flat on his back. He flopped like a gaffed salmon, then lay still.
“You killed him!” Rochelle shrieked, holding her bulbous nose.
“Of course I did!” James snapped back. “And he deserved it! He’s a fat vagabond masquerading as a chef. His very existence defames the culinary arts! Well, now I’ve ended that disgraceful existence.” James chuckled down at Ashton’s limp body. “I should get the James Beard Award for this.”
“What are we gonna do!” Rochelle continued shrieking. Her rising blood-pressure only seemed to increase the swelling of her nose.
“We’ll take the eel and return to Seattle,” James answered simply.
“Well then let’s go! Let’s do it now! We have to get out of here!”
“But what’s the hurry, my darling? No one knows we’re here. But keep in mind, there are still a few people who know about this lake and what it contains.” James smiled nefariously. “Ashton’s rotund brother, and the two women. They’re obviously over on the island.” The smile widened. “So we’ll have to take care of them, too.”
— | — | —
Chapter Eleven
Bob had retrieved two flashlights from the SeaRay, and now he and Sheree stalked through the woods, bright beams roving to and fro.
Bob was nearly in tears.
“This is crazy! Where could she be?”
“Don’t worry,” Sheree tried to console. “We’ll find her. We… Well, we were both pretty fucked up.” She declined to tell him about the “Bebo” LSD. “We, uh, drank a lot. She’s probably still buzzed. I’ll bet she just wandered off.”