“So how come you’re telling me?”
“I don’t know. Worse you got, worse I felt. Hell, we been partners a long time… Look at you. You look like crap. It was tough to look at.”
“But you managed.”
“For a time. My dad always said when it got right down to it, people weresonofabitches. If it was a difference between honor and no food, he said they’d take the food every time. Looks like he was right about that. We get home, I’ll tell him so.”
“Well, you don’t look so good neither,” I said. “And to hell with your old man.”
“I ain’t feeling up to snuff, Jack, but with this jerky in me I could kind of figure which was my left hand and my right, know my pecker from my leg, know what was going on in here wasn’t just something to look at… Man, this is humanity shredding.”
“Randy’s been a friend a long time,” I said.
“Yeah. I care about him. But you and I been friends a long damn time-since kindergarten. And Randy has gotten real weird, partner. Him and Willard are… well, they didn’t just get that way from lack of groceries. Those two and this drive-in and the things that have happened go together like bourbon and Coke… I think they’re happy with the way things are. Hell, I don’t know, maybe they’re queer and in love and it’s all this making them find it out. And maybe it isn’t that; maybe they’re just super fucked up and this is the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.”
“It still doesn’t strike me as the way you should have handled it,” I said.
“No? Here, take another piece.”
I took it without argument. In fact, I took it a little too fast. I almost ate it with the cellophane on it.
“You’re a nice guy, Jack. Kind of a bleeding heart, but a nice guy. I wanted to tell you about the meat, but I knew you’d tell Randy and Willard. A bite of jerky meat wasn’t gonna help them none, so I couldn’t have that. Finally, though, I figured, hell, I ain’t gonna make this nohow, no matter how much meat I hold back. So, I thought, me and Jack, we’ll split it, last as long as we can. I mean… well, guess I still got some kind of hope in me, just like that manager. Maybe down deep I think the National Guard is going to come through too… You see, I had to choose between Willard and Randy and you. And I took you.”
“Am I supposed to feel flattered?”
“Be nice if you were. You been fucked up so long, you ain’t really got a grip on your thinking. Look out there.”
He slapped his hand against the camper window and I looked. People were fighting. They were on their hands and knees going at it. They sounded like rabid dogs.
“It’s like I was saying, Jack, you’re kind of a bleeding heart. If I’d told you about that jerky a time back, when you were feeling good and full of all that social morality shit, you’d have wanted to share with Randy and Willard… maybe even invite Crier, some of the others over for lunch. Make a picnic out of it. Sing a few songs. We’d have been out of that stuff faster than a whore’s out of pride. And I’ll tell you again: Willard would have killed us.”
“He seemed all right to me.”
“He was. He was good to us because he needed friends. In spite of that toughguy stuff, he was lonely. I’ve thought on this some, had time to. But he’s a survivor, and Randy’s a needer. Them two are together now and they ain’t two people no more, they’re one.”
“So what if I want to share with them now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you shoot me?”
“I might. I could eat you then. That seems to be the trend around here. But I don’t think so. But I might. Just look at it this way, Jack. Randy and Willard are out there-way out there. Twilight Zone theme time. You can forget them two boys unless the manager is right and the National Guard comes in here and rescues us and we all get turkey sandwiches and some rest. Otherwise, you ain’t seen nothing yet. People ain’t nothing but animals, Jack. You and me too. Things get bad enough, like animals, folks are gonna eat what they can, do what they have to.”
I thought about those books I’d garbaged. All of them were junk, but the basic theme to most had been that man was better than the animals, had something inside him that blossomed like a rose and never died, even when the physical body decayed.
I looked out at the fighters in the lot. A guy in a werewolf costume with the mask missing was rolling around on the ground with a fraternity-type guy whose pants had lost their razor crease sometime back.
“And you’re saying we’ll end up like that too?”
“Could. We last as long as we can, though. Build up some hope. Gets too bad… there’s always the shotgun.”
I thought about Dad kidding Mom about the last two bullets back
… when? Christ, who could know? Yesterday? Today? A century ago? What exactly was it he told her…? “When the going gets rough, and it looks like we’re not going to make it, I’ll save the last two bullets for us.”
I looked out the window again. There were people lying on the ground, not moving. A naked man was taking a swift kick in the nuts from a near-naked girl with a punk haircut. There were other people on the ground, on their hands and knees, grabbing for spilled popcorn and candy. One woman was lapping a spilled soft drink like a dog. She had her rear end to me and her dress was hiked up and she didn’t have on any underpants. It was far from sexy. She looked like a desperate, dying animal. I felt sorry for her. For them. For us.
“Maybe you’re thinking about going out there and giving a speech on the unity of mankind?” Bob asked.
“No,” I said. “Guess not.”
“That’s wise. Now take one more piece of meat, chew it slowly, and be a happy animal.”
10
We sat there for a time, not talking. I was thinking, watching the storm out there, and the people. I didn’t want to watch them fight and kill one another, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them. It was sort of like watching the Dallas Cowboys play when they were bad. You hated looking at it, but you had to see it through.
Physically, I felt better. Not ready to do any hurdles or anything, but it seemed my senses had floated to the top once more. A lot of things I’d seen while lost in the ozone clicked together now, and I could see them in a truer light. The little girl with the cape getting kicked to death, for one. Seemed to me I had wanted to kick her too. I could remember thinking that, but for the life of me couldn’t remember why. Had I really watched her father get shotgunned out of the air and thought it funny? And hadn’t there been something about eating a baby? (Raw as opposed to grilled.)
I thought about the jerky I had eaten and remembered what my father’s friend had said about it, how it was like chewing on a dead woman’s tit. The thought of that and what was happening out there, people eating one another now and then, made me feel weak and dizzy.
Maybe Bob was right. Animals. That’s what we were. No different from the animals except for an opposable thumb and a desire to make popcorn and hit each other over the head with rocks, or whatever instrument was available.
Outside, it looked as if things had calmed down. No one was fighting and there were only gawkers. Standing and looking at the bodies on the ground (there were a few of those) and maybe considering them as steaks, but not quite ready to make the move.
But the calm didn’t last long. A guy came walking up, and he had a revolver in his hand, a. 357 Magnum. He had a big, loud voice and he was using it.
“Can’t do this crap to Merve Kinsman. Merve Kinsman don’t take this off anybody. I come here to get my food, real polite like, and I’ll be damned if a punk without any drawers with a nigger on his back is gonna tell me dip. I don’t take that crap, nosireebob. I’ll blow their heads off, is what I’ll do. Knife or no knife. I’ll not have it, I tell you.”