Candles had long since been snuffed out, the gang gone except for its newest member. Weed was sitting in his own vomit on a mattress, hands and ankles bound with belts. He was shaking and whimpering.
'Shut up,' Smoke said, shining the light in Weed's terrorized face.
'I didn't do nothing,' Weed muttered repeatedly.
Smoke quickly undid the belts, keeping his distance and not breathing.
'Maybe I ought to dump your ass,' he said in disgust. 'You're nothing but a puny little pussy. Throwing up all over the place and crying like a queer. Well, I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Picasso. You're cleaning up this place before you go anywhere.'
West was running around her house, picking up, straightening up, throwing out pizza and fried chicken boxes, stuffing dishes into the dishwasher while Niles stuck with her feet like a soccer ball.
'Get out of my way,' West told Niles. 'Where's your mouse? Go get your mouse.'
Niles wouldn't. West trotted into the bedroom. She sat on the left side, where she didn't sleep, and bounced up and down. She punched the pillow and rumpled the spread. She ran back into the kitchen and got two wineglasses out of a cupboard. She dusted them, swirled a small amount of Mountain Dew in each, raced back to the bedroom and placed them on the bedside tables. She dropped a pair of athletic socks that could have passed for a man's.
She was out of breath when she hurried inside her office and began digging in drawers for a greeting card, maybe a letter that looked suspiciously personal from someone besides Brazil, who had written her often back in days that meant nothing to her anymore. She came across a florist's card still in its envelope, her name typed on it. She walked quickly into the foyer and dropped the card on a table, in plain view of anyone who came through the front door.
Bubba was late, the night without a moon or stars or possibility of redemption. He had no choice but to exceed the speed limit on Commerce Road. He had no time to indulge in nostalgia as he sped by the Spaghetti Warehouse, where he had taken Honey last Mother's Day, despite their not having children. Bubba did not want them, because Bubba believed the Plucks, especially those named Butner, were overbred and had reached the end of the line.
Bubba smoked and rode hard past Sieberts Towing, and Fire Station #13, Cardinal Rubber amp; Seal, Estes Express, Crenshaw Truck Equipment Specialists, Gene's Supermarket, John's Seafood amp; Chicken, and all the other businesses paralleling 1-95. It had begun to rain, limber drops diving through the crack in the Jeep's roof and kicking below the rearview mirror and over polyurethane before touching the dashboard in record time. The Lucky Strike water tower and tip of the Marlboro sign loomed on the horizon no matter which way Bubba turned, reminding him that cigarette making, like life, went on.
Bubba felt hateful toward Muskrat because he had refused to do anything further to Bubba's leaky Jeep. Bubba was angry with Honey, who had not lived up to her name when he had finally gotten home. She had not apologized for gummy Kraft macaroni and cheese and charred Tombstone pizza, both dashed with too much Farm Plus! Seasonal Blend. Honey cared not that Bubba's ritual glass of Capri Sun was tepid, the Jell-O cheesecake warm, or that the Maxwell House left over from breakfast could have blacktopped the driveway.
Honey had gone from ridiculing the Cheez Whiz and Miracle Whip that Philip Morris had spread over the earth, to launching into a weepy litany that Bubba could not escape because she had hidden his car keys. He did not know what had gotten into her. Before this night, she had never caused him to be late for work, even though she had no way of knowing that he wasn't really late because he was going in early to cover the second half of Tiller's shift.
Philip Morris sparkled like a jewel and was as perfectly pitched as a tuning fork amid the depressing tarnish and unbearable discord of the awful traffic and endless road repairs of 1-95. The grounds of the 1.6-square-mile administrative offices and manufacturing plant were immaculate, the expansive green often used as a helipad by those of a higher order that Bubba revered and rarely saw. Shrubs were perfectly sculpted. Japanese maple, crabapple, Bradford pear and oak trees were lush and precisely placed.
Over the years, Bubba had become increasingly convinced that Philip Morris had been sent to earth on a mission that, like God's will, wasn't entirely revealed but merely hinted at, even to its well-paid chosen employees. Bubba had never been inside a building with so much varnished parquet and sparkling glass surrounded by gardens so splendid they had been dedicated by Lady Bird Johnson.
Big video screens communicated to workers from all corners, the industry's technology so secret that not even Bubba understood half of what he did every day. Bubba knew it was all too enlightened to be of this world. He had come up with a theory that he discussed only with those who had, over time, been drawn into the secret society of Alien Ship Helpers, or ASH.
ASHlings believed the fourteen thousand cigarettes produced per minute, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, were really fuel rods needed by the massive throbbing engine room that propelled the spacecraft through dimensions one could accept only on faith. These fuel rods were inert unless burned, and this required millions of humans to help out by lighting up and causing the collective combustion needed to keep the spacecraft moving at warp speed through its secret dimension.
It made perfect sense to Bubba that the good and loving Consciousness had figured out long ago the planet wasn't going to make it unless IT intervened. It followed logically, according to Newton's Third Law, that if all actions cause an equal and opposite reaction, there would have to be an Evil Force who liked things exactly the way they were and wanted them to get worse.
Thus it was, as more combustible fuel rods were produced and ignited around the planet, the Evil Force got increasingly desperate and irritable. It studied history to figure out what had worked in the past. It came up with a destructive and divisive campaign of nonsmokers' rights that instantly resulted in discrimination, hate groups, censorship and fame for the surgeon general. Sweeping anti-smoking campaigns, lawsuits, horrendous taxes and bloody skirmishes on the Senate floor unfurled like the Southern Cross and sent litigious and greedy troops into a senseless war that could be watched by all on CSPAN and CNN.
The ASHlings alone knew that if the campaign of evil aggression caused people to quit lighting up, soon there would be no more combustion, except by cars, which didn't count. The production of fuel rods would cease. The engine room would be silenced. The alien spacecraft would have no choice but to change course lest it be powerless and adrift.
Bubba was thinking about all this and was in quite a state by the time he stopped at the guard booth and Fred, the guard, opened his window.
'How ya doing, Bubba?' Fred asked.
'I'm late,' Bubba said.
'Seems to me you're early. You don't look like you're in a good mood.'
'I didn't read the paper today, Fred. Didn't have time. How're we doing?'
Fred's face darkened. He was a closet ASHling and often conspired with Bubba when Bubba rolled up in his piece-of-shit Jeep and displayed his parking permit.
'You saw the video board downtown, that Dow Jones display in front of Scott and Stringfellow?'
'Didn't get there.'
'Bubba, it's getting worse,' Fred told the truth in a hushed voice. 'It's up to eleven ninety-three a pack. Help us, Lord.'