The Devil Delivered and Other Tales Page 30

All this time I was thinking fast, real fast because time was running out for all of us. And I studied Lunker, narrowing my eyes like the cowboys do when there’s Indians about and they suddenly smell smoke coming from Old Lady Helpless’s farm. And of course Old Lady Helpless has a daughter, Young Lady Useless, who faints at the sight of dirty toenails. Yesiree, I kept my eyes narrow and studied her face, those giant eyes all kind and evil at the same time, that giant nose with the big nostril slits, turning this way and that as if she smelled something bad. That flaming hair, so red it’s just not natural. The way her fins gripped the ends of the robe, making sure it flowed just an inch above the dusty floor. The reddish tinge in her teeth from the lipstick. The splotches of rouge on her gills so thick they looked like the melted wax of a thousand crayons, and—wait a minute.

  I had it! It was a gamble, but there was no choice. I had to try. I stared one last time at the biggest thing on Lunker’s face, drew in a deep breath, then pointed down at the hem of her robe and said: “Yuuccchhh!”

  Lunker swung her head to me in a jerk. “Pardon me?”

  “I said: Yuuccchhh!” And I pointed down again.

  “What is it?” Lunker tried to look down, but if you’ve ever seen a pike you’ll know that pike just can’t look down on themselves at all. And so she couldn’t see anything.

  “Can’t you see them?” I exclaimed, a look of horror on my face. One Armed Trapper—I sawneaked out of the corner of my eye—had paused and was squinting like mad at Lunker’s robe. “They’re all over the place!” I wrunkled my nose in disgust, then, looking up at Lunker’s face, I made my whole face scranch up. “And in your hair too! Blagghhh!”

  Lunker fluppered her fins futilely. “What?” she screamed. “Oh, what is it!?”

  “Hairballs! Millions of hairballs! They’re all over you! In your hair! On your robe! Your eyelashes, even!”

  “Aaaaagh!”

  Grandma Matchie and the Major and Bjugstad had been staring at me like I was crazy all this time, but then Grandma Matchie scryed what I was up to and shrieked: “Billions of em!”

  And the Major too: “Yuucchhh!”

  “Aaaaagggghhhhhh!” Lunker flailupped away with her fins and swam in wild circles. “Help me! Oh help me!”

  And that’s when Grandma Matchie roared: “Charge!” And One Armed Trapper’s face showed one brief second of absolute horror before Bjugstad crashed into him, and then his flying body was blasting a hole right through the ceiling and heading for the moon.

  Bjugstad bellowed and danced around. “Revenge! At last!”

  Only it wasn’t over yet, because Lunker had by this time discovered the ruse, and now she glommered down on me and this time I was sure she was going to galobble me up.

  Leaping off Bjugstad, Grandma Matchie stalked up to her. “Game’s over, Lunker!” she snarled. “Now I’m gonna do somethin that I shoulda done two thousand years ago!”

  And Lunker shrank back, whimpering. “No, please! It was all a joke! Honest! Just a joke! Ohh, where’s One Armed Trapper? Where’s Satan Himself? Ohhhh!”

  “He’ll know better than t’show up now!” Grandma Matchie said, though you could tell she was hoping he would, so she could take care of him too. “Come on, Lunker, let me see em!” And she held out her hand.

  Lunker tried to shrink back further but the throne blocked her retreat. Whimpering, she lifted her red wig from the top of her head—and there they were. Her ears!

  And Grandma Matchie grabbed the nearest one and gave it such a twist that Lunker’s yell was heard on Pluto, I bet.

  And that was the end of Lunker and all her schemes.

  Bjugstad was so happy that he carried us all the way home without even a garumble, and so there we stood on the dock, waving him good-bye.

  And Mom had her broom and Dad had his Jacuzzi and a new VCR, and Sis’s hair was pink with blue polka dots, which meant that things were back to normal.

  Later on, me and Grandma Matchie went out to visit the Major on his island, and we sat around the fire roasting peanut butter marshmallows with olives in them, and told our stories just the way they happened. The whole truth, just like I’m telling it here! And then, when the fire was just a pile of coals, and everyone had gone all quiet and funny-looking as they stared at the embers, Grandma Matchie shook her head and said:

  “I’m acursin m’self fer not seein the signs.” She looked up and her face glowed red and it wasn’t just from the fire, either. “There it was, all the signs a er schemin, right afore me! An I didn’t see a thin! E’en when that one story kept showin up everywhere, till I was sick a hearin it! Still … I’m ashamed, jus plumb ashamed.” And she hung her head to prove it.

  “Aye, me too,” muttered the Major. “We shoulda both smelled the likes o’ Lunker, hearin’ that same story tole o’er and o’er again, from shinin sea t’shinin sea! Jus like Lunker said!”

  Then Grandma Matchie cocked an eye at me and grinned. “Tyke, canya figure out what story we’re talkin ’bout?”

  “I betcha can’t!” the Major snickered, all superior like. “It’s right in fronta yer eyes, but I betch you can’t!”

  “I bet he can!” Grandma Matchie said. “An I bet One Armed Trapper’s arm on it!”

  “An I bet One Armed Trapper’s real arm!” the Major shouted. “Yours is a fake! An if I win you gotta admit it once an fer all!”

  “You’re on!”

  Then they both turned to me and waited, their eyes glowing brighter than the coals. I gave them a wide-eyed stare. “You mean you’d give up One Armed Trapper’s arm and the whole truth ’bout it? On some dumb bet!?” I jumped to my feet. “Forget it! I want no parta it!” And I stomped off into the darkness.

  After a moment Grandma Matchie’s howl of laughter shook the stars. “Atta boy, Tyke! Atta boy!” she called out behind me.

  When people start betting stories on things, I want no part of it. I don’t want there to be a loser, don’t you see?

  Sure, I knew the answer to that question, but that’s not the point. Because the way I figure it, the next time I want to hear stories from Grandma Matchie and the Major, there’d be one less. And who knows, maybe some day there’d only be one, just like Lunker wanted all along. And it’d have more than one meaning too, if that ever happened.

  Well, the answer’s sitting there right in front of you, just like the Major said. And the next time you’re sitting around a campfire, when someone starts telling you about the one that got away, you’ll know where that story came from, and you’ll be a wise man.

  That was the second week.

  THE DEVIL, WE SAY

  It’s a rule, I bet. And dealing with one just naturally leads to the other, and so on. Forever and ever. That’s why I knew I was in trouble.

  They were calling in one of the big boys, because when some little kid starts talking about Satan Himself then it’s time to get worried. At least that’s what the principal said, and if anyone should know, it’s him. Besides, he had that look of failure about him. You know, the way I look whenever I bring home a report card.

  Even jesters get report cards, and they’re usually bad, so you learn to put on that face of failure so that everyone concerned can make appropriate faces to show how they’re concerned. But people get concerned in different ways, so your face has to be a little bit different for each of them.

  Take Big Nose, for example. She pretends it’s her fault that I get lousy grades. So I make myself like a mirror, and we both look sadly at each other with exactly the same kind of failed poupy expression. “I have tried!” she’d say with a shake of her head, trying to fit some kind of stern look into her failed face, and with a little burning flame of Indignation or something like it there in her eyes when she studies your face and you’re trying hard to show how you’ve failed as much as her. It’s a contest to see who’s failed the most. “What are we going to do with you!” Big Nose’d sigh. Oh ho! thinks I whenever this happens, now it’s we is it?

  That’s Big Nose, but wi
th Mom it’s different. For her, you have to put on a very special kind of expression, because Mom gets all dreamy eyed and before you know it she’s talking about when she was in school. And she’s so understanding and everything that no matter what, my face scrunches up and I start crying. That’s what’s special about this kind of expression—I can’t help it.

  Of course, Dad’s a whole other story, that’s for sure. You see, you have to know Dad. He gets embarrassed by everything everyone else around him does. There’s right ways to do things and then there’s wrong ways to do things. Dad’s way is the right way and everyone else’s way is the wrong way. So the concern goes through two phases. First, Dad gets red in the face, showing me his embarrassment that his son has done it again. But that doesn’t last long, because then he gets mad, and he says: “It’s that damn gothic school system! Now, if I was teachin…”

  The point is, he’s right as far as I’m concerned. Dad’s a great teacher, and he knows the difference between doing things the wrong way and doing things his way. So pretty soon he’s telling me how he’d run the school system, and I get all excited because he’s brilliant when it comes to things like that.

  Imagine watching old Westerns on a giant screen all morning, then going to restaurants for lunch, then watching more Westerns in the afternoon and other movies like Tarzan and the Naked Lady, or is it Tarzan and the Leopard Lady? Naked Leopard Lady? I can’t remember exactly, but it’s the one where Tarzan fights a guy in a lion suit, and then a stuffed crocodile, and then he gets taken prisoner by Lady Naked Leopard and she ties him to a stake and does terrible things to him until he screams out his Tarzan yell and all the birds in the swamps take to the air again, and this lion runs through the same section of bush over and over again, and all the animals stampede, and before you know it there’s guys disguised as gorillas breaking down the walls and untying Tarzan just in time for him to get all moral about things.

  Now that’s education!

  Showing concern in the right places is important:

  And then there’s the principal, and things start getting a little trickier. You see, his ears get redder and redder, and for him my lousy grades mean the whole world’s coming down all around him. And when you start telling him about Satan Himself he looks like he’s going to unplode.

  And there’s Big Nose crying and Mom and Dad trying to calm her down. So that leaves me one-on-one with the principal, and that’s when I get mad.

  “I don’t look under rocks anymore!” I screamed at him. “Cause I seen Satan Himself! And it’s the truth!”

  “Young man!” The principal surgled up behind his giant desk and put his fists down on it—thumpthump! “Young man! If there’s one thing I won’t tolerate in my office, it’s impertinence! Now, I’ll hear no more of this Devil stuff! Do you hear?”

  Sneaking a look at those big ears, I figured that there’s no way he couldn’t hear! Even if he had cotton in his head! “It’s all true! And if you don’t believe me, you just wait! An I’ll tell you what Satan Himself looks like too! An you can’t stop me!”

  An he couldn’t stop me!

  It was the last week at Rat Portage Lake, and it was awful! Two whole weeks had gone by and I’d hardly done anything yet! And Grandma Matchie was going on and on about how Satan Himself must be just steaming, since we’d foiled his sneaky plans.

  “I can’t figure it, Tyke,” she said. “He’s bin one step ahead a us all along! Puttin Sis and Mom through hell with his turrible schemin. An if there’s one thing Satan Himself is big on it’s revenge! So what’s he up to, that’s what I wanna know!”

  Meanwhile, everyone was getting cranky since vacation was almost over. So I moped around in the cabin, watching all the normal boring things go on all around me.

  “Get outa the way!” Dad roared. “I can’t see a damn thing!”

  Sis ducked, scampered for the kitchen. Her giant ugly feet swept through the tinder pile as she darted past the big black woodstove, scappering scraps of wood in all directions. She yelped, and I laughed.

  “Gothic on a stick, girl!” Dad bellowed, like the whole world was coming down all around him. Twisting his head around, he hunted for Mom. She was sweepening dirt from the cabin doorway, as huge green flies, as big as birds, bazzled in and out through the gaping hole in the screen door. “Ester! Sign up your daughter for ballet classes or somethin! Hell, I’ll do it, come Fall.” Draining his beer, he let the can drop with a plop.

  The Jacuzzi filled the living room. Dad sat in the middle of the fruthering water, which was full of floating beer cans. They bobbled and bumpled against the hairy islands of his knees.

  Come to think of it, Dad was the hairiest man I’d ever seen. Hairier even than Grandma Matchie’s upper lip, only everywhere like that. He had hair covering his legs, from the tops of his wide feet all the way up to his purple and pink striped shorts, and even more under them, I bet. And the hair was black, furry. When she kissed him Good Morning, Mom sometimes said: “Get into that bathroom, Jock, and get that fur off your tongue!” So it was everywhere: hair growing out of his ears, hair growing in his nostrils, and yes, hair even growing in his mouth. His whole head was filled with hair.

  The only place in the cabin big enough for the Jacuzzi was the living room. Water had splashed all the walls, and pooled in the fireplace where bits of tinfoil floated about. Grunting, Dad sat in the tub watching the new video screen and stabbing at the Remote and making the picture go backwards so he could replay his favorite scenes.

  He had a thousand million twenty-nine thousand seventy cassettes, and all of them were Westerns. He’d squint like Clint Eastwood, and grimace like Lee van Cleft, and swell his chest like John Wayne. And the water burbled all around him and sank beer cans and made the hair part on his knees whenever he ducked them down then back up.

  Sis hid in the kitchen. Her hair was orange and yellow now, and she cried all the time and it made me sick. And those bumps on her chest were getting bigger and bigger and I had nightmares about them filling up the whole cabin.

  “Shoo! Shoo!” A broom whirvled in front of my face. I jumped back. “Shoo flies! Shoo!” I dodged another swing of the broom.

  “Mom!”

  “Jock Junior, you let all these flies in?” Like a big straw-haired head, the broom wanagged at me.

  I shook my own head after it. “Uh uh!”

  “Don’t you let any flies in, you hear!”

  “I won’t, Mom.”

  “Jock Senior!” Holding her broom as if to swat a fly, Mom stormed up to the Jacuzzi. “When are you going to get out of that damn thing? You’ve been in there since you built it!”

  “Shut up! I’m not going anywhere! Now get outa the way so I can watch the picture!” He opened another beer can.

  Ever since me and Grandma Matchie came back from Westhawk Lake, Dad’s been in there, watching movies and eating bananas. He won’t come out, and it’s been three whole days. There must be a thousand million eighty-two beer cans floating around in there. And Mom’s been on another sweepening craze since she got her broom back, sweepening everything: floors, walls, the ceiling, and the path out to the outhouse. Even the dock.

  The whole world was getting desperate.

  I stared at the giant screen that now hid the big window overlooking the lake. A man in a black suit sat in front of a saloon, ruckling in a chair while this dumb lady tried talking to him. But he just ruckled, pushing with his legs against a post, one leg, then the other, and the dumb lady didn’t know what to do, and Dad drank his beer and grinned.

  “Jock Junior!”

  I looked at Mom.

  “Go out and play, will you? Go find Grandma Matchie and make sure she’s not getting into trouble. But don’t you watch if she’s wrassling a bear or something, you hear?”

  As I passed by she swung the broom at me, but I jumped forwards and she missed. Only I forgot about the screen, and went through it again. I tore it even worse this time, and fell down on the porch.

  “D
amn you, Junior!” Dad’s bellow made me jump up, and I leapt off the porch and fell again.

  “Ballet lessons for alla em!”

  Boy did I run.

  I found Grandma Matchie down by the boathouse. She was dripping wet, which meant that she’d been down in her lodge, and she wore a long blue dress with white dots that went down to her flapping hiking boots. She winked at me when she saw me coming up the path. In her hands was an ax, and the door to the boathouse was all chopped up.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked.

  Making a funny face she lifted the ax over her head. “Can’t find the key. Been so bloody long since I needed t’get in ’ere.” She swung the ax and the whole double door shook. “Stand back, Tyke, or I’ll be brainin ya.”

  It took five minutes of chopping before that door fell open, and even then it fell open from the other side, where the hinges had rotted away. After pausing for a breather, Grandma Matchie heavered the ax out into the lake.

  I watched it arc up and out, then make a big suplash about ten feet from the end of the dock. “What’d you do that for?”

  “Don’t need it anymore. An what ya don’t need y’throw away.” And with that she grasped my hand and led me into the darkness of the boathouse. “Fifty years since I last come in ’ere,” she growled. “Back then I wuz runnin yer cabin as a fishin lodge, an we had all them backhouses set up fur sleepin in, an we had millionaires comin up from New York New York bringin whole Jazz bands with em—boys who could play yer skids off. Yesiree, Tyke, those were the days!”

  “How come you closed down the lodge?”

  “Well, Tyke, there wuz a turrible acc’dent one day. We had one a them bands playin out back an the biggest blue heron you ever seen came right down an et them all up.”

  “That musta bin some bird!” I shook my head.

  “Not big ’nough, Tyke,” Grandma Matchie replied. “Cause right then an e’en bigger eagle come down an snatch that heron right up, an they fought fur hours right up above the lodge. And then th’eagle gets his tal’ns roun the heron’s neck and started squeezin. An the heron’s beak opened wide an that eagle foun imself lookin right down its throat, an he saw that band, playin their brains out, an the eagle was so scairt by what he saw that right then and there he dropped the heron. Only the heron ne’er really did recover from that, and neither did the eagle, and that’s why all the heron’s roun ere are blue, an that’s why all the eagles got white hair on their heads.”