“We had an accident,” I said.
“An accident,” said the tall gal. Now she was the sweet one. No crappy faces or half-baked pity. She was for real.
“We had a wreck last night.”
“Up on the mountain,” Basil said.
“And then what,” said the stocky one, crossing her arms.
“They went out for some ice,” Avey said, “and got into a wreck. When we woke up this morning he’d… you know.” She started for the door. “You’ll probably want to see for yourselves.”
“You got something to carry him in on?” Basil said.
The stocky woman twirled the tail at her shoulder. “I’m going to pack it over my shoulder,” she said.
“Pardon?” Basil said.
“I’m exceptionally well conditioned,” the woman said.
“Come on, Karen,” said the tall one with a big metal smile. She was a peach, this gal, for real. I guessed she had a houseful of animals, not cats, but dogs. “Eden,” said her tag.
Basil had already made it to the first set of sliding doors. “When you’re finished, maybe you could take care of him, too,” I said. “I know you’re busy and all.”
“What’s your name?”
It occurred to me that in my polka dot shirt and muddy boots I was still dressed like a clown. “He’s in pretty bad shape, you know.”
“Maybe we should have a look at you first,” Eden said.
With her gurney on wheels, Nurse Karen marched out and fell in beside us. Super had enfolded Lucille with an arm to mumble his wisdom as she cried, and she had let him do it. The tailgate was open still, Dinky exposed to all who cared. Once again it began to rain.
“What’re you doing?” Lucille said, her face wide with horror. Nurse Karen had hopped up and crouched near Dinky’s head.
“Now, now,” said the old man.
“Mind if we take it with the blanket?”
“It?” Lucille said.
Super peeled off from Lucille to face Nurse Karen. “You’ll excuse our saying so, misses, but we’ll have to ask you to disembark the wheels till we’ve given the boy his due.”
“Looks like a three-phase operation,” Nurse Karen said to Eden. “Slide it down—”
“Step off the wheels, misses,” Super said, “if you please.”
Nurse Karen’s face hardened. “As you can see, sir, we’re much too busy for formalities. Just take up the feet,” she said to Eden, “and slide it down far enough for us to make the turn.”
“That’s it?” Lucille said. “You’re just going to haul him away?”
“Maybe you could give us a minute?” I said to Eden.
“Karen?” she said.
Nurse Karen bounced from the truck and began to pace.
“It’s raining,” Eden said to me. “So…”
“Thanks,” said Avey.
Super drew off the blanket… Birds were in the trees… I smelled ice cream, I smelled rain… In the distance I heard laughter, but knew it wouldn’t count — no one counts laughter, because laughter disappears… I was just an animal, words on the lake… Then a bird flew, and the rest flew after, and Basil limped up and took Dinky’s feet and pulled his shoulders to the gate, where Super spun him even to it — our old pal Dinky, he was dead.
I hadn’t seen the geeze take his nickels from Dinky’s eyes, but somehow he had, only to lay them down again and step back cap in hand.
“It is clear, friends,” he said, his voice grown solemn, “that before us lies a perturbed spirit without a finger on his lips to smother grief. It’s our job to send him off with nary a whisper at his ears, though he be alone. Blood or no blood, you were his brothers and sisters. And so you loved the boy as we did. You don’t have to croak for us to see how forty thousand brigands couldn’t add to our sum, not with all their stolen love. For ourselves, we’d eat a crocodile if it meant he’d be delivered, ready to bend and give and move through the world with a smile. And we know you’d do it, too. Give this boy his due, friends, then cut the line with hearts full of thanks and cheer.”
Some gawkers had massed about twenty feet off. Lucille was shuddering, she was crying so hard. She took Dinky’s hand and kissed and pressed it to her cheek. Then she lurched into the truck.
“What the fuck’re you staring at?” Basil said to the gawkers. It wasn’t until he’d started toward them that they began to part. A woman walked by, shielding her daughter’s eyes.
“But what is it, Mommy?” the child said.
“That’s right,” Basil said. “Scram!”
“Finished?” said Nurse Karen.
I touched Dinky’s hand. A crust of blood had grown along the top of one of his nails. Avey held me. Her face was swollen.
“Take him,” she said.
“Wait,” Basil said. He brought out a guitar pick — Paul Stanley’s, I knew — and tucked it into Dinky’s shirt. “Rock and roll, buddy,” he said. “We’ll catch you on the rebound.”
And that was it. No police, no questions, no forms. Nurse Karen and Eden just put our pal on the gurney and whisked him through the doors. Poof! He was there, and then he wasn’t. Disgusting. Tremendous. Done.
Super’s dolls covered the bed of his truck, plastic eyes rolling, plastic hair clinging to horrible plastic heads. No sign of sun, no sign of shit but mucho rain and mucho mud. A wind rose up and drove the trees…
Times like this the whole blasted planet creaks on its hinges, waiting for you to give, the way it knows you will, if you’re ordinary… Your life’s just residue. You’re the sloughing-offs of so many sloughing-offs you couldn’t say which was which or what went where and when. You can’t see between the main or remains anymore, the remains or the remainder’s residue. All you know is flux and everflux, the monstrous process — in the big sense, the really big sense — of eating and shitting and eating and shitting and eating… For a single hideous moment, there in the slippery rain, surrounded by the only people I’d ever truly known and who for that reason were strangers, I saw the ruin of distinctions. The weight of Dinky’s absence became the weight of Dinky’s presence. His death had become his life, his laughter my memory of it, my memory the laughing world’s. Beauty and terror, the sacred and the feared — these had lost their color…
“You want me to get in the back a while?” Basil said, his eyes gone crooked the way they did when he grew tired.
“Might as well take care of your feet while we’re here,” I said.
“Yeah,” Avey said. “You wait much longer, and they might have to amputate.”
“Go on, boy,” said the geeze. “That old gal with the tracks in her mouth’ll take good care.”
Basil limped to his girl, who hadn’t seemed so much as to blink. “You okay?” He took her hand, but she didn’t twitch. “I’ll be back in a flash with a Coke on ice,” he said, “just the way you like it.”
IT WASN’T TILL LATER, AS WE LAY IN OUR MOTEL, that Avey said why she told Lucille what she told her while Basil fixed his feet.
“I’m never going to see those people again,” Avey said from her pillow.
“How do you figure?”
“You think this is the first time I’ve hit a snag?”
“How aren’t you going to see them?”
“You won’t either.”
“Avey,” I said. “They’re all I’ve got.”
She ran a finger down my chest. She kissed me there, she kissed my mouth. “Were, baby,” she said, “and had.” I considered the stains on the ceiling, adjusting to her words. “You know it’s over,” she said. “I saw it coming a week after I met you guys, and I’m slow.”
“That still doesn’t say why you had to tell her all that.”