Creekers (18 page)

“What kind of…bad things?” he asked.

Eagle hogged the next shot at one of his G.I. Joes that had busted ’cos a rubber band broke inside and made his head fall off. “Like really bad things,” he said. His eye opened behind the rock. “Like this lady? After the man squirted a lot of baby-juice in her peehole, he squirted some in her butt, too—”

“He did not!” the little boy exclaimed, appalled.

“Yes he did, ’cos I heard my dad and Uncle Frank talking about it one night they thought I was asleep. They were watching
Naked City
and talking about the lady who got raked. And the rake-ist squirted baby-juice up the lady’s butt, too, and then…”

“What!” the little boy nearly shrieked.

“Then he tied her to a tree and hit her with a monkey wrench, and then he stuck the monkey wrench up her peehole. And after that—” Eagle seemed to pause, like he did when he was making something up— “he hit her in the head with a rake and kilt her.”

“With a
rake?
Why?”

“Why?” Eagle laughed at him again. “Because that’s what rake-ist’s do, stupid. That’s why they call it rake.”

The little boy wondered about this. It didn’t make sense. “But why would a man ever want to do that to a lady?”

“Don’t really know,” Eagle said. “But Uncle Frank said there was lots of folks in the world who were sick in the head, and I guess that’s why. And, anyway, Big Chief Mullins ‘vester-gated the rake, and he told the papers it was a Creeker who done it.”

Creeker,
the little boy thought. He let Eagle hog another shot ’cos he was too busy thinking.
Creeker…

The word slid down his belly hot and ugly and worse than his aunt’s stuffed peppers, and even worse than her corned beef and cabbage with the lumpy tomato sauce that he hated even more. He’d heard a little bit about the Creekers, just little bits. No one talked about ’em much, like they was some bad secret or something, or like the way nobody ever talked much about Mrs. Nixerman, who got sick in the head and would run around buck naked at night with her big fat bubs flapping. She had to go to a special hospital in Crownsville that was only for people who were sick in the head. But even though he’d heard a little bit about Creekers, he asked Eagle anyway, ’cos he figured Eagle might know more. And that’s what fascinated the little boy, like about the rake-ist, and the “things” in the woods, and all that.

He wanted to
know.

“What’s a Creeker?” he asked.

“Aw, you’re stupider than Larry
and
Shemp!” Eagle guffawed. “A Creeker is someone who got born by their father or brother’s baby-juice. And there’s somethin’ about it—I’m not sure what—but if a father like puts his pee-er in his daughter and squirts his baby-juice in her peehole, the baby comes out all wrong. And the same if a mother lets her son squirt his baby-juice in
her.
Uncle Frank said it’s ’cos you’re not supposed to do it, and God gets so mad, he makes the babies come out wrong.”

Wrong,
the little boy thought. It slid down his gut just like the word
Creeker,
and just like his aunt’s corned beef and cabbage and the stuffed peppers. “How you mean…wrong?”

The headless, naked G.I. Joe took Eagle’s rock right in the chest, and pieces of plastic flew everywhere—

WHAP!

“The babies come out like the hippie, peacenik babies Uncle Frank told me about. These hippies take LSD and it messes up a man’s baby-juice, and it makes the babies real ugly and wrong. Same as Creekers. They’se just hillfolk who only squirt their juice into their reller-tives. And their babies get, like, real big heads like a fishbowl and giant red eyes that are crooked, and ten fingers on each hand instead of five. And girl Creekers sometimes had extra bubs and nipples like a hog and stuff. Sometimes they get born without no arms or legs, so the Creeker fathers kill ’em. They
eat ’em
.”

“They do not!” the little boy wailed.

“Shore they do, ’cos Uncle Frank told me. And lots of ’em got teeth like Kevin Furman’s bulldog.”

The little boy shuddered. He wasn’t feeling too good to begin with—on account of his aunt’s stuffed peppers, he was sure—but this made him feel even worse. ’Cos Kevin Furman’s bulldog Pepper had the gnarliest, ugliest yellow teeth, and he couldn’t imagine anything scarier than a person with those same kind of teeth in their mouth…

‘Cos there wasn’t nothing uglier than Kevin Furman’s bulldog.

“And there’s something worse,” Eagle said, lining up the next hogged shot.

“What?”

“I don’t know if I should tell ya, ’cos you’d probably cry like a baby.

Eagle missed the next target, a big dead toad they’d found by the creek. But one time Dave Houseman told them his friend Mike Cutt would take
live
toads and shoot ’em with the slingshot, and he’d even play baseball with live toads. He’d swing the bat, and the toad’s guts would spray way out. And the little boy couldn’t think of anything grosser. And then Eagle continued, “the Creekers, you know, they got their own whorehouse out here somewhere.”

“What’s—” the little boy gulped. “—what’s a…whorehouse?”

Eagle rolled his eyes. His next shot, too, missed the big, dead toad. “It’s a place where men pay money to squirt their juice into ladies, ya moe-ron. Don’t ya know nuthin’? And sometimes the whores put a man’s pee-er in their mouths and let ’em squirt their baby-juice there—”

“In their
mouths?”
the
little boy shrieked.

“That’s right, in their mouths too, not just their peeholes. But anyway, I heard Uncle Frank and my dad talkin’ ’bout it one night, and the Creekers have a
special
whorehouse, where men can pay to squirt their juice into
Creeker
ladies, like the kind I was tellin’ you about who are all messed up and wrong and gross-looking and have big heads and ten fingers on each hand…”

And teeth like Kevin Furman’s dog,
the little boy remembered.

SPLAT!

The little boy looked up. Eagle had finally hit the big dead toad with the slingshot.

The toad’s insides splattered everywhere, in a wormy red mist.

««—»»

That day Eagle had gone on to say that this Creeker whorehouse was supposed to be a secret. Nobody talked much about it just like they didn’t talk much about Mrs. Nixerman. Not just any man could go there—’cos it was special—but only men who were friends with the Creekers. This all fascinated the little boy. That ladies—they were called whores—would let a man do these things to ’em for money, and ‘specially
Creeker
ladies…

But now the curiosity itched, much much worse than the way his skin itched under Doc Smith’s plaster cast.

The next day Eagle got grounded by his dad, for beating up his brothers Ricky and Billy ’cos Ricky and Billy had called him “bald eagle,” and only Eagle’s friends were allowed to call him that.

But the little boy still itched with curiosity, with the innocent quest for knowledge. He wanted to see…the “things” Uncle Frank had talked about.

So for the whole time Eagle was grounded the little boy wandered around the woods anyway. Right after school. Sometimes he’d stop by the police station and say hi to Big Chief Mullins, who chewed gross-out tobacco but seemed like a very nice man, and sometimes he’d give him licorice sticks; he even offered him a “chaw” once but the little boy didn’t want to put
that
stuff in his mouth.

««—»»

Summers made the town—his entire world, in fact—a wonderful, lazy dreamland. School was out; he did his paper route in the mornings, mowed lawns in the afternoon, and sometimes Big Chief Mullins would pay him a few dollars to wash the police cars or clean up the station. Most of his money he gave to his aunt, to help out with the bills, but in the summer he always had some left for Cokes and models. And when his work was done, he’d wander.

In the woods.

Maybe Eagle’s Uncle Frank was just kidding them. So far he hadn’t even come close to finding the “things.”
There probably aren’t any,
he thought one day, trudging through the wooded hills up behind the creek.
Probably just said it to scare us…

But why would Uncle Frank do that?

It was mid-August, and the hottest day of the year. His belly didn’t feel right that day. “Too much of that ice cream,” his aunt told him that morning when he got back from his route, but he knew better. It was those stuffed peppers she’d served again last night. But like most ten-year-olds, he wasn’t about to let a bellyache keep him cooped up at home. He felt even worse mowing that day’s lawns; a couple times he thought he might upchuck.
Mrs. Young would fire me for sure,
he thought,
puking stuffed peppers on her lawn!
He should’ve stayed home when he was done, but he couldn’t help it. Bad as his belly felt, after he’d cleaned up the mower and put it back in the shed, he headed for the woods.

He crossed the rushing creek, carefully stepping on the stones he and Eagle had thrown in last year. Some green slimy stuff had grown on some of them—he had to be careful. Clumps of frog eggs clung to sticks in the water, and on the bank he almost stepped on a big brown snapping turtle he thought was a pile of mud. Uncle Frank said they’d bite your fingers off if you got too close. On the bank, he kicked over a log. Two fat shiny salamanders sat there, and they had yellow spots, which was neat. But his heart jumped when he kicked over another log: a nest of baby snakes slithered in the damp spot, six of them, but to him it looked like a hundred. And they were brown with tiny diamond heads. Harmless in reality—they were just hognose snakes—but to a ten-year-old boy,
any
brown snake was surely a copperhead.