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Content now, and buzzing all over in her secret joy, she went back out to the show room, her nipples now fairly
jutting
beneath the Best Buys shirt. Mike was on the phone by the check-out. Archie stood on a ladder in the TV department, hanging Christmas decorations.

Veronica secretly smiled as she eyed Mike’s profile.

My God I love him SO MUCH…

However, at this precise moment, Veronica couldn’t have felt closer to her own spirit nor closer to God. Venal sins, be damned! It was only a matter of time before Mike saw the light of Veronica’s love and they were properly wed in the eyes of the Lord. She even dared to think:
Maybe he’ll propose to me on Christmas!

Veronica would be pleased to know that her minor venal sins of fellatio and vanity would indeed be forgiven. But what she
wouldn’t
be pleased to know was this: she would have to
pay
for those sins first, and she’d be paying for them in a matter of hours.

She’d be paying
big-time.

— | — | —

Chapter 5

(I)

“Maw? Maw? It’s me, Helton…”

Helton sat in the metal chair next to the convalescent bed, looking sorrowfully down at the wizened form of his 80-some-odd-year-old mother, Petunia Tuckton. The stroke last year had landed the noble backwoods matriarch here in the Daisy-Chase Nursing Home, and it was a place Helton could scarcely fathom, part of a system that for some inexplicable reason wouldn’t let dying people die. Upon entrance, he first noticed rows of hoppers heaped high with brown-stained linens. An unnerving silence was periodically broken by inane jabbering, hacking, and lone shrieks. Mostly overweight women who spoke not one word of the English language listlessly pushed medication carts from door to door. Several doors stood upon, revealing shuddering stick-figures beneath sheets, sunken-faced, hollow-eyed: seemingly cadavers that jabbered.
No way to live, no sir,
Helton thought. In one room, he saw the darnedest thing: a fat nurse in pigtails had pulled up the hospital gown of an absolutely ancient man. Bare, paper-white legs stuck out with knees the size of grapefruits.
What kind’a pree-vert show we GOT here?
Helton wondered, because now the nurse had the old man’s withered
dick
between her fingers, and what she did next…

What she did next was she began to insert a long clear plastic tube into the old man’s dickhole!

She pushed the tube down, down, down, and then, when it must’ve been in the poor old fucker two feet…the tube began to fill with piss. Helton’s astonished eyes followed that piss, which ran all the way down the tube and began to empty into a plastic bag…

Good God! They steal folks PEE in this crazy place!

Helton didn’t understand and didn’t want to. His big frame moved on past the nurses station over which hung Christmas decorations. A fella in white clothes sat asleep before a television where a bunch of tall, black fellas in the silliest little shorts and shirts were running back and forth on the wood floor, bouncing a ball. On a cork board, Helton spied an index card that read: HELP WANTED: YOU CAN EARN $10 PER HOUR CUTTING PATIENTS’ TOENAILS! APPLY AT FRONT DESK.

A dense, diarrhea-ish odor followed Helton to his mother’s room.

It pained him to see her like this, and pained him more to notice one of those bags of discolored urine connected to
her
bed as well.
God in Heaven—they’se are even stealin’ my OWN MAW’S pee…
Six-motherfuckin’-thousand-dollars a month is what this creepy, feces-smelling hell-hole cost, but Petunia had wisely never kept her cash in the bank; indeed, she remembered the “Bank Holidays” of the Great Depression and “that connivin’ closet Commer-nist FDR!” Too many good folks had lost everything back then, all because they trusted their government. Petunia knew better, which is why she kept all of her money hidden in a secret place. Fuck the government. This way, Medicaid got stuck with the six-motherfuckin’-thousand-dollar-per-month nursing-home fee, and this was Helton’s good fortune now. He’d never before asked his mother for money—money was something he rarely needed—but he knew she’d understand once he explained the complexion of the matter.

He kept gently nudging her. “Maw?”

The withered face looked like something trying to suck in on itself. Flap-like eyelids fluttered; then a rheumy gaze found Helton’s face.

“Helton, my wonderful son,” the voice creaked like old boat timbers. “It’s heavenly to see ya but—oh, dear, son—ya
know
I asked ya not to visit me. I just cain’t bear fer no one to see me like this…”

Helton squeezed her ancient hand. “I knows, Maw, and I’se terrible sorry fer not abidin’ by your wishes, but see…see… Somethin’ happened…”

Old and dilapidated as the woman was, her senses immediately seized on her son’s words. “Aw, Lord Almighty…is it my great grandson Crory?”

Helton swallowed hard. He could still hear the monstrous sounds from that DVD machine, the sounds the poor tot’s head made whiles goin’ in and out, in and out. “Yeah, Maw,” was the only reply he could muster.

The vigorless woman seemed to age another year just in the next few seconds; wells of tears magnified the cataracts in her eyes. “What yer face is tellin’ me, son, is my wonderful grandson is dead—”

Helton nodded.

“—and it weren’t by accident.”

Helton had to steel himself. “No, it weren’t—it were cold-blooded murder, Maw, of the horriblest kind. S’matter’a fact, what they done to Crory was
so awful,
I couldn’t never tell ya ’bout it, never.”

The old woman’s breath rattled in her sunken chest. She made a despairing nod. “I’se understand, son.”

“I knowed ya would, Maw. Ain’t no recourse but ta git our proper revenge, and with God’s help, I think I can.” He looked deeply at her. “See, Maw, what was done ta Crory was so devilsh, there ain’t but one way ta deal with it…”

Petunia Tuckton brought a crabbed hand to her bosom and moaned. “Aw, son, I know! I know what yer talkin’ ’bout! Thought them days was done, but I guess that were just wishful thinkin’. The world don’t get better, it just gets
eviller.
And I trust in yer judgment so’s…you do what’cha must.”

“I gots the truck, and Dumar’n Micky-Mack’re with me to help. But, see, we’se gonna have to be on the road, maybe fer a spell. We’se gonna have to go out inta the
world,
Maw.”

The woman nodded knowingly. “So’s you’ll need money ta do that, I know.” With great effort, then, Petunia leaned up, grabbed Helton’s collar, and pulled him close to whisper, “Ya gots my permission ta take as much as ya need.”

Helton knew he’d have to keep his voice down. If the folks here found out his mother had a stockpile of cash, then that
six-motherfuckin’-thousand-dollar-per-month
nursing-home bill would surely be levied against the Tuckton family.

Fuck that.

“Thanks, Maw. I’ll leave ya now, so’s we can go’n fight fer the family’s dig-ner-tee. When it’s all done…I’ll come back’n tell ya…”

“My wonderful, wonderful son,” the old woman wheezed. “It ain’t natural fer no one ta be livin’ in the wretched state I am—ain’t what God intended, these nursin’ homes. And I know my time’s near.” The claw-like hand grabbed Helton’s. “Ain’t nothin’ more important than
family,
son, so you do what’cha need to so’s ta restore the family name. God be with ya, and if’n I move on to the Firmament’a Heaven a’fore your tasks are done…just know I’ll be smilin’ down on ya the whole time…”

Choking up, Helton kissed his mother on the cheek and left.

The truck waited outside in the parking lot: a 20-year-old behemoth of a step van nearly twenty feet long. Helton and Dumar’s know-how of engines and such kept the corroded rattle-trap in fine working order, though they rarely used it for anything more than transporting firewood. The door on either side slid open, quite like that of a UPS truck.

“How’s Grandma?” Dumar asked behind the wheel.

Micky-Mack looked up from the back, hope in his eyes.

“Best we not speak of it, fellas.”

A short drive past Crick City took them to Petunia’s fine, old log cabin, and it only expended minutes for Helton to retrieve $50,000 in banded $100 bills.
Best to have more’n we need than not enough,
he reasoned. But now further provisions would be required…

“Where to now, Paw?”

“Boys. I’ll ‘splain more as we go,” Helton said, fairly dreading what came next. “Life has it’s
travails,
as my Daddy used to say. We ain’t city folks but I’se afraid we’se gonna have to go to the city now. The
big
city…”

Dumar and Mick-Macky cast Helton beseeching looks.

“Pulaski,” Helton finished.

In their youth, Dumar and Micky-Mack were excited by the prospect; it was very rare that any of them left their backwoods domain. Helton could see the evil of the city, could see how cities
changed
folks in their hearts. Traffic lights, shopping malls, cars and trucks going this way and that, folks honkin’ their horns’n givin’ each other the finger… Surely, city life stifled the natural good will of humankind. Helton had seen too many fine men fall prey to the lie. But it didn’t take long to arrive in Pulaski where the first thing they saw were streets lined with
buildings—
all crammed together—and bigger buildings in the background,
apartment
buildings, no doubt, where folks lived all hemmed in like chickens in a coop stacked on top of one another. “Watch these blasted traffic lights, son. If’n ya drive through one that’s red, a
poe-leece
man’ll make ya pay
money.
”

“Dang! Just fer drivin’ on the street?”

Helton nodded, already disheartened. “This is the world
outside
’a where true folks like us don’t live.”

“Ain’t been here in so long,” Dumar muttered. “Looks even
bigger
now.”

“It’s what they call
progress…
”

“Unc Helton! Cousin Dumar!” Micky-Mack blurted in excitement. He pointed in awe. “Lookit that! A real, live
subway station!
”

All of them peered at the squat, yellow-roofed building with the SUBWAY sign. “I heard’a subways,” Dumar said.

Helton frowned. “Just more’a the outside world gettin’ inta folks like chiggers.”

Micky-Mack was beside himself. “I heard a subway’s like, a
train,
but one that runs
underground!
”

“That it is,” Helton said disapprovingly. “Ain’t nothin’ natural ’bout underground trains.”

But Dumar was squinting at the queer building. “So the trains…are underground?”

“Yeah, they is, son. That’s why we cain’t
see
’em.”

“But, shit, Paw. Don’t look to me like they’se selling train tickets in there. Looks like all’s they’re selling are sandwiches,” Dumar said of customers exiting the building as they munched on big long sandwiches.

“Guess they’se fixin’ ta eat them sandwiches while they’se ridin’ the underground train,” Micky-Mack speculated.

Helton nodded. It had been quite a while since he’d been here, but his memory remained keen. He directed Dumar around several more turns. “Nice Christmas decorations,” the younger man observed of the blinking wreaths atop the street lights. “But, ya know, it just don’t…,” and his words trailed off.

How’se can we enjoy the spirit’a Christmas time,
Helton realized,
after seein’ what happened to poor li’l Crory…