Sloughing Off the Rot (10 page)

Crazy Talk shook John awake early in the morning. The sounds of a tussle and muffled grunts and groans came to him. He tried to shake the sleep off and make sense of the noises.

“We have problem,” said Crazy Talk. “Temperature’s dropping at the rotten oasis, stealing kisses from the leprous faces.” He pointed to a spot behind John, from where the groans were coming.

John rose and turned in the direction that Crazy Talk pointed. Outside of the protective circle, where he had fallen asleep, was Two-Dogs-Fucking, stripped of his bath towel and on his hands and knees. A gaggle of frisky lunkheads surrounded him. The lunkies groped and rubbed themselves about his body. One particularly leprous looking lunkie mounted Two-Dogs-Fucking from behind, jackhammer-thrusting his way past hirsute ass cheeks and into the fat Melungeon’s shithole. Another lunkie rounded the front of Two-Dogs-Fucking and penetrated the Melungeon’s mouth with a swollen, chancrous erection, brutally fucking his throat. The other lunkies stood around in a circle, stroking their meat and grabbing at Two-Dogs-Fucking’s dimpled flesh.

Crazy Talk snatched up his bow and a quiver. He took his time aiming an arrow and let it fly. The arrow pierced the back of one of the lunkies and the arrowhead exited the chest, dead center. The lunkie dropped to the ground with his hand still stroking himself. The others continued their bukake session, paying no attention to their colleague spasming in the simultaneous throes of death and orgasm at their feet.

Two-Dogs-Fucking pulled his head back from the lunkie schwanz that was stretching his esophagus. “No,” he screamed, his voice sounding rough and gurgly. “They aren’t going to hurt me if you just let them finish. But if you throw them off, they might tear me to bits. Just let them finish.”

The front-end lunkie stopped Two-Dogs-Fucking from saying anything else by stuffing his bloated nutsack in the fat Melungeon’s mouth. And while Two-Dogs-Fucking tried to explain further, his words squished out around the puffy scrotum as a muffled “mmnmmmpppphhsssss mmmmmmnomnomnomnom manommana.”

An arrow sat tensed on the string of Crazy Talk’s bow. He contemplated the request of Two-Dogs-Fucking. Should he shoot or let the lunkies finish themselves off? Would they just leave after they glazed Two-Dogs-Fucking with their seed? Crazy Talk could not decide how to proceed. He gazed down the shaft of the arrow at another lunkie’s back, drew the arrow tighter, and steadied his aim. But, John grabbed the arrow in his hand and stopped the shot.

And though he did not understand it, John simply knew that he could disperse the lunkheads. He stepped over the piss circle they had sprayed the night before and approached the lunkie orgy. “Be gone,” he said with an air of authority that surprised him. “Be gone and bother us no more.”

The lunkheads at each end of Two-Dogs-Fucking withdrew from the object of their affections and turned toward John. Behind John, Crazy Talk nocked an arrow and trained it on the face-fucker for a kill shot. Despite his dislike for Crazy Talk, Santiago stood right at his side, walking stick in his hands like a club, ready to run in and dispatch the lunkie threat.

And the lunkheads growled at John, but they did not approach him. They stood their ground, hands still unconsciously stroking themselves, and hissed. They hissed out of anger and frustration. They hissed in fear of John.

“Be gone,” he said again and waved his hand in front of the lunkheads, shooing them away like bothersome munkle flies. And he spoke in a manner that felt foreign to him. “Be gone or I will lay you even with the ground. I will grind you to dust. I will drink wine from your skulls and suck the marrow from your bones. Be gone and bother us no more.” As he said so, John knew that they would listen. And the lunkheads backed away from Two-Dogs-Fucking, leaving him facedown in the sand. They backed away from John, hissing and spitting at him like frightened cats. But they did back away. Once at a safe distance from John, they turned and did their best to run. Their flight was more of a low-speed, limping, zigzagging jog. And, while their pace was in no way speedy, it was the fastest John or any of the others had seen lunkheads move.

Once the lunkies were clear of the area, John assisted Two-Dogs-Fucking to his feet and handed him his bath towel. “Cover your uncomely parts,” John said. And Two-Dogs-Fucking wrapped himself in the dirty towel. John expected the man to be in shock or angry or humiliated. But Two-Dogs-Fucking just waddled back toward the camp with a smile on his face, as if he had just awakened from a sweet dream.

That morning they dined on bloodwood fruit and grubs. After breakfast, Two-Dogs-Fucking leaned back against a log, thumped his palm on his taut belly, and said, “It’s been a tough day for me already. I don’t have the gumption to start walking just yet. You all go ahead and I’ll catch up with you.”

So they left Two-Dogs-Fucking and Alf the Sacred Burro behind and set out on the road again. The rhythm of his sandals smacking the red bricks drove John forward. And that morning, John felt something stirring in him. Some sort of emotion. He couldn’t identify it, but it simmered in his stomach and radiated warmth all the way up through his chest. John thought it might be happiness but couldn’t be sure. He didn’t feel bad and he knew he felt something. So it was an improvement. He forced himself to try to feel and it seemed to be working. He thought he might feel like laughing but wasn’t sure he was capable. Instead, the slightest hint of a smile formed on John’s lips.

“What’s got you all flighty?” asked Santiago. “You’re looking goofy, almost smiling. It don’t seem right.”

“I don’t know,” said John. “But I think it’s a good thing.” And that’s all he said. John kept walking, slapping his feet on the bricks, and he tried to hold on to the feeling that was growing in him. Santiago walked beside him, thumping his new walking stick on the ground, questioning John with a sideways stare.

Just before they crested a hill and lost visual contact with Two-Dogs-Fucking, John peered back into the distance and saw the rotund form leisurely ambling away from their campsite in the direction that the lunkies had fled. Alf the Sacred Burro stood on shaky old legs and walked away from Two-Dogs-Fucking, following the red brick road and heading in the same direction as John. It was hard to tell, but it looked to John like Alf was shaking his head in disgust.

John allowed himself to be swept along in the current of the clouds above. His path stayed true to the way of El Camino de la Muerte. The others followed, content with being dragged along in John’s wake. Alf the Sacred Burro caught up with them and heeled at John’s side like a well-trained dog. As they walked, the men scratched and picked at the festering munkle fly bites. The picking and scratching only irritated the bulbous boils, popping some of them and inflaming others. The sun pummeled them and boiled the fluid in their blisters. And the men became tired, irritable, and ready to turn on each other by midday.

The red brick road collided into a large mesa that jutted ten cubits off the ground. The edge of the mesa was ringed with grickle grass and derelict school buses sitting end to end like a rust-infected elephant chain. Fabric dyed in bright swirls of many colors hung over the buses’ windows and blocked the view of any outsiders looking in.

“What’s up with the buses?” asked John.

“You’re either on the bus or off?” said Santiago.

“Those not buses,” said Crazy Talk. “Those the warm cozies where the people eat and sleep and keep their meat.”

“Huh?” said John.

“Those are their digs. Dig?” said Santiago. “Those aren’t buses in the sense that their wheels go round and round. There ain’t no wipers on the bus that go swish, swish, swish. Those mufuggers just sit there and give you a place to crash in instead of sleeping on the ground.”

John looked and saw that it was true that none of the buses had tires on them. And they had no wipers to swish. The vehicles sat on stacked-up piles of flat red rocks. Tendrils of smoke crept out of a pipe that stuck out of the roof of one bus. Curtains pulled back in another vehicle and a pair of eyes went blink, blink, blink, scanning the newcomers.

The red brick road rose to the mesa and collided into oaken doors that spanned the distance between the buses on each side. John and the others stood, staring at the doors and pondering what to do. The smell of meat cooking and the sounds of men yelling floated over the buses and dropped like a brick in front of the men.

“Let’s go in,” said Santiago. “It sounds like a party in there.”

“Let’s dip our heads in hot wax and glarble praises to the blue fadoodle,” said Crazy Talk.

Alf the Sacred Burro whinnied and backed away from the door. He opined that they should circumnavigate the village and keep on keeping on. Alf’s nerves caused him to heave and seize up until he regurgitated a mess of vegetable fibers and hair all wound into a hard, blackish lump. Crazy Talk pounced on the bezoar with the quickness of a mountain lion, seizing the donkey-ball and securing it for himself before Santiago could lay claim to it.

“Gawdamn albina Injun,” Santiago said to Crazy Talk. “Gawdamn.”

John scratched at the itch of his thickening beard and pondered the doors before him. He wondered what was inside. The mesa blocked the path, so they had to pass through. But they had avoided the other towns and villages that they saw off of the trail. And they seemed to be better for it. John did not want to be detained or delayed. And he knew not what awaited them inside the gates. But the words of the burning bush rang in his head:
He who follows the trail is at one with the trail. He who is virtuous experiences virtue. He who loses the way, is lost. When you are at one with the trail, the trail welcomes you. Follow the trail
.

“We don’t have a choice,” said John. “This is where the trail takes us and we have to follow. We have to be at one with the trail. And this village or fort or whatever it is sits on the way. We have to go through.” John grabbed the wrought iron ring of the lion-head knocker and banged it against the door three times.

The three sharp claps on the door rang out. The sounds of feet stumbling and somebody mumbling came through the door in muffled tones.

Someone on the other side of the door moved the cover on the Judas hole and placed his eye to it, glaring out at John and the men. The eye scanned back and forth evaluating them. An oafish voice attached to the eye said, “Go away and be gone. You’ve no business here.” The words, gloppy and gooey, poured from the doorman’s mouth like thickened honey.

“We’re travelers and mean no harm,” said John. “Please let us pass through and we won’t bother anybody.”

“We’re not buying what you’re selling, good sir,” said the low voice behind the door.

“Please just allow us to pass through,” asked John again.

“Move it along, sir. There’s nothing to see here.”

Crazy Talk put his hand on John’s shoulder and eased him backwards. He gave John a knowing nod and approached the door. And though John had no clue as to what Crazy Talk was doing, it seemed right. So John stood back and let Crazy Talk take over.

Crazy Talk said, “Baby talk, baby talk, it’s a wonder you can walk. Thatwise, little pig, little pig, let us in.”

“Who is that?” asked the man behind the door. “What are you saying?”

“I rubber man bouncing down the mushroom gravy highway. In the time of chimpanzees I was monkey. Thatwise, I now slap the dolphin forcefully in your direction.” Crazy Talk gripped the skin on his face between his thumb and forefinger and quickly moved his cheek back and forth, slapping the insides of his cheek against his teeth and making a squishy, mock-masturbation sound.

“Come again, sir,” said the man behind the door. “Who be you?”

“Thatwise, I dirty brown, flopping around. Puffed up and bloated when the sun goes down,” said Crazy Talk, following it up again with the squishy-cheeked sounds of masturbation.

The doorman said, “Wait there. I’ll be back shortly.”

Crazy Talk stood still in front of the door, waiting. All stood with him, though they had no idea why they stayed. And the sounds of movement on the other side of the portal returned. First, the sound of something hard scraping on the wood. Then, the Judas hole opened and a milky eye, afflicted with severe cataracts, squinted out at them.

“Who be you lewdies?” breathed a shaky, faint voice. “And why be you here? What be this chepooka?”

“Listen, ded. I viddy your glazzies and hear your burbling slovos,” said Crazy Talk. “You need not even be a malenky bit poogly. We the sadness and madness and hope for the land. We the yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye. We be the newborn dead and the wet sloppy souls. I am a clown and I bring you Crawling King Snake. Thatwise, we inquire that you allow us to pass fluids in your presence.” Crazy Talk jumped back, placed his hand under his armpit and quickly brought his other arm down, making moist fart noises.