Lit Riffs (19 page)

“That’s a whole deer,” he said. “It’s worth more than a bag full of mushrooms.”

I agreed to drive out there with Swampthroat but only if I didn’t have to get out of the car. I told him if Lionel and his crossbow showed up, I would drive away quickly, with or without him.

“That’s fine,” said Swampthroat.

Robin wasn’t happy to see Swampthroat back at our house, but she softened up a little when she saw that we had come to take away the venison.

“That stuff was disgusting,” she said.

“You never even tried it,” said Swampthroat. The meat had been divided into several large parcels, wrapped up in newspaper, and stored in a freezer in our basement. Swampthroat grabbed the last of it and hoisted it over his shoulder. He motioned for me to leave with him.

“Where are you going?” Robin asked me.

“To see a friend,” I said.

“Swampthroat doesn’t have any friends,” said Robin.

“I’m his friend,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” said Robin.

“Let’s go,” said Swampthroat.

We drove out to the State Road and filled up with gas for the trip. The meat was piled in the backseat and I was worried that it would begin to thaw and make things smell. I kept the windows open as we drove along.

A police car pulled up behind us and began flashing its lights. I pulled over. It was dark outside now and those lights made everything inside the car turn red and blue and red and blue. Swampthroat slumped down in his seat.

The cop was a young guy who, I think, had been in Robin’s class in high school. He knew who we both were, especially Swampthroat. Everybody in town knew Swampthroat.

“One of your headlights is out,” the cop said to me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, now you do.” The cop scanned the back of the car, illuminating his view with the beam from a large flashlight. He seemed puzzled by the pile of meat in the backseat.

“What have you got back there?” he asked me.

“It’s deer meat,” I said. “We’re taking it to a friend.”

“Are you a hunter?”

“No.” I said. There was a short pause and I then added, “Swampthroat killed it.”

Swampthroat nodded. “That’s true.”

The cop tucked his flashlight under his arm. “I’m gonna have to take a look at that meat.”

It occurred to me then that the officer might think we were transporting a human body, a person we’d killed and were now trying to dispose of. I said to him, “It’s not a person back there.”

The cop narrowed his eyes. “Can I take a look, please?” he said.

“Sure,” I told him.

I got out and opened the hatchback for him. He examined the newspaper packages and seemed a little surprised to find that there was meat inside them at all. He was not concerned, as I had thought, that they might contain human remains. Swampthroat explained to me that the cop was looking for drugs, which we did not have. The cop finished his search, wrote out a warning for the headlight, and then let us go on our way.

It was harder to see the sign for the Highway to Hell in the dark and I nearly passed right by it. Swampthroat pointed it out and I slowed down with a screech. My single headlight shone meekly down the bumpy road.

“I hope they like deer meat,” I said.

“Everybody likes deer meat,” said Swampthroat.

“Except my mom and sister.”

“They would’ve like it if they’d tried it.”

The old hound began to bark as soon as my headlight hit the shack. There was a dim, flickering light on inside. Swampthroat got out and grabbed two of the larger bundles of meat. Then he ventured toward the front door. I sat low in the car, wary of stray arrows, and kept the engine running.

The door of the shack opened when Swampthroat knocked, and to my surprise, they let him in. I sat in the car for a long time, nearly an hour, listening to the radio and watching the shack for signs of movement. Swampthroat hadn’t returned for the rest of the meat and I wondered if they had him tied up in there. Perhaps Lionel was holding the crossbow to his head. I would have liked to have left at that point. I had taken Swampthroat as far as I said I would and it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to leave. But instead I decided to check on him. I couldn’t leave if Swampthroat was in trouble. If he was, I decided, I would drive back out to the road and find that cop. I wasn’t going to take on Tilly and Lionel by myself.

I crept up slowly toward the shack, trying to see what was going on inside. Once I got away from the car, I could hear their voices. I was glad when I heard Swampthroat’s deep grumble. He was still alive. I got up close to the window and peered in. The three of them, Swampthroat, Tilly, and Lionel, were sitting around a table with a kerosene lamp burning between them. They were drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Lionel had a hunting knife and he was sticking the tip of it into the wooden table so that it would stand up straight.

I heard a low growling from below and suddenly the old hound dove out from the house and grabbed hold of my foot with its teeth.

“Hey!” I yelled.

I tried to shake it off, but it growled louder and held tight. Swampthroat and Lionel came out the front door to see what was happening. Lionel yelled, “Drop it, Nancy!” and the hound let go.

I was shaken up, breathing quickly, and Swampthroat laughed at me.

“Come inside,” he said. “Tilly’s making stew.”

I followed them into the shack where Tilly was sitting at the table wearing her camouflage jacket and shuffling a deck of worn-out playing cards. She had seemed older when I saw her before. Up closer, she was kind of pretty. Her hair was a little gray and a smudge of charcoal was across her cheek.

“Have a seat,” she said to me.

The little shack was cluttered with empty cans, cardboard egg crates, and stacks of magazines. There was an old-time record player, the kind where the needle extends into a big horn, sitting on a table in the corner. Tilly’s stew bubbled on top of a wood-burning stove and the whole place smelled like meat and cigarettes. The conflict over the bag of mushrooms had apparently been forgotten. Lionel pulled out a rusted metal fold-up chair and I sat down on that.

Lionel sat on a stool next to me. He seemed too old to be Tilly’s son. He had a big, round face and a stubbly beard. He kept his head down, preferring not to look at me.

Swampthroat opened a can of beer and placed it in front of me. I took a sip and said, “I was wondering what had happened to you.”

“Tilly saw the meat and decided to cook it up,” he said.

A chicken darted out from somewhere and pecked at my foot. Tilly said, “Shoo,” and waved it away. Lionel picked up his knife and began pushing it into the tabletop again. On the walls hung various types of slingshots and his trusty homemade crossbow. Swampthroat seemed at ease here so I tried to relax as well. Tilly got up and stirred the stew. It smelled good.

We played a few hands of that card game crazy eights. I wasn’t very good at it and Tilly laughed at me.

“I think this boy’s retarded,” she said.

From then on she began referring to me as “the retard.” She said it in a somewhat affectionate way, but still I didn’t care for the moniker, especially since it seemed to me that her own son, Lionel, might be touched with a bit of a mental disability himself. He didn’t speak much and he kept getting up to examine his weapons. He’d take a slingshot down from the wall and reset the rubber cord or whittle the handle down with his knife.

“Lionel hunts squirrels with those things,” explained Tilly. “He’s a real accurate shooter.”

I wondered when she said this if she was trying to explain the arrow that had struck my car. Perhaps she was suggesting he’d missed our heads on purpose.

We all drank quite a few beers, and eventually, after some time had passed, Tilly announced the stew was ready.

“It would taste better if I had whole day to let it cook,” she said. “But this will have to do.”

We spooned out the stew into a variety of tin cups and bowls. Lionel wouldn’t eat it until Swampthroat tasted it first. He was worried that it had been poisoned.

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Swampthroat.

“Let the retard eat it first,” said Tilly.

Everyone watched as I put a spoonful in my mouth. It did occur to me that Swampthroat might have poisoned the meat, but it seemed improbable. The stew was delicious, as a matter of fact. It was seasoned just right and the venison had a nice flavor. I’d never had anything like it.

“It tastes good,” I told them.

Tilly said, “Of course it does,” and she began eating it herself. Swampthroat dug in, too, but Lionel waited a while, watching us for signs of distress, before he finally began to eat.

After dinner we all sat around with our bellies full and Swampthroat did a few unimpressive card tricks. Lionel got up and put a record on the old phonograph. Instead of cranking it up to make it turn, Lionel had hooked the record player up to a car battery. The record he put on wasn’t an old-time record either, like what you might expect. It was rock ’n’ roll from the 1970s. Blue Oyster Cult, I believe. The music sounded funny coming through that big brass horn, but it was plenty loud.

“Lionel’s pretty clever with machinery,” explained Tilly.

Lionel was feeling a little more social now and he offered to take me outside to shoot his crossbow. I declined, but it would’ve been a good idea to go out there. About an hour later Swampthroat went out to the car to get the rest of the meat and saw that I had left the engine running. Now it was out of gas.

Tilly said the nearest gas station was closed at this time of night. “You’ll have to wait until the morning,” she said. “You two can stay here. That’s okay with me.”

I wasn’t too happy with this prospect, but I was tired, and there seemed to be no choice. Tilly gave me a blanket and I cleared the magazines off the couch and lay down. Lionel and Swampthroat weren’t ready to sleep yet so they went outside to sit and drink. Lionel put on another record for me to go to sleep by. It was that album by AC/DC,
Highway to Hell
.

I woke up early to the sound of Tilly’s roosters crowing away at the first light. Tilly was already awake. She went out and gathered eggs from her rare hens and then she cooked them up for breakfast. They were very tasty. She made me try some more of the stew, too, since it had now had a chance to sit and gather flavor.

“That’s very good stew, Tilly,” I told her.

Swampthroat and Lionel had slept out on the front lawn. Swampthroat had a black eye. Apparently Lionel had hit him for something but they couldn’t remember what and both seemed unconcerned about it now. After breakfast Lionel gave us a ride to the gas station in his run-down truck. I rode in the back with the old hound, Nancy. We filled a can with gas and Lionel bought some more beer. Both he and Swampthroat had some of that for breakfast.

Back at Tilly’s we got my car running and then said goodbye. Tilly said I could come back there anytime. I said that I would, and as we drove away on the bumpy dirt road, I believed Swampthroat and I would return often. I imagined the four of us playing cards and listening to those strange records for many nights to come. But as we hit the State Road and got farther away, I realized this was unlikely. By the time I dropped Swampthroat off at the convenience store in town, I wondered if I would ever see him again. He was smelling bad and was newly drunk at eight thirty in the morning. I watched him lumber away from me, weaving a little, brushing the long hair from his eyes, and I wished I could be like him. I knew that I couldn’t though. For me it would have all just been some kind of act, a dumb charade. That was the last time I saw him.

I got a postcard from Swampthroat several years later. He had hitchhiked to Missouri and become a father. He wasn’t sure where the child was now.

“If you see a kid walking around who looks like me,” he wrote, “please let me know.”

author inspiration

“I’m glad I get to write this explanation because this story wasn’t that easy for me to write. I liked the idea of writing something inspired by a song, but I didn’t want to get all deep and indie rock about it. So long before I wrote the story, I chose this song by one of my all-time favorite bands, the great AC/DC. Then, when the time came to write the story, I realized that my personal experience with the actual Highway to Hell was somewhat limited. I like to party and all that, but I don’t think of myself as the type who will go down in flames. When I tried to write from such a character’s point of view, it came off pretty phony, so then I had to rethink the whole idea. I decided that really, like a lot of us, I’m just sort of facinated with the kinds of people who live their lives knowing they are going down fast. So then I started writing about Swampthroat, which was actually the nickname of one of my childhood friends. He may not have been aware of this nickname, but my friend Roger gave it to him and it fit pretty well. The real Swampthroat is, I’m sure, not going to hell, but what a fine name for someone who is. But now that I think about it, the Swampthroat in this story isn’t such a bad guy either. I think that’s also the point of the song. Even someone like Bon Scott, the late lead singer for AC/DC, who died choking on his own vomit in 1980, was not really a bad person. In fact, he was probably quite good at heart. I’ve heard that about Bon Scott, that he was a very nice guy.