Deadside in Bug City Read online

  “Kinda spooky,” said Suzie. “Bell ringing at night, in a deserted church. Like something out of a Stephen King story.”

  “They used to ring church bells when someone died.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe it’s ringing for that dead freak in there.” She jerked a thumb at the Jiffy-Quick.

  “But it was ringing before he died.” Joe tried to smile.

  She shrugged her bare shoulders. Joe caught a glimpse of the swell of her breast where the halter-top gaped open at her armpit. He looked away and made himself think of his wife. Sara would be wondering why it was taking him so long to get a pack of cigarettes. An ex-smoker herself, Sara wanted him to quit too, but she didn’t nag him about it.

  “Gary’s gonna be pissed that I’m not back with his beer,” Suzie said. “And I’m in no mood for his shit tonight.”

  “You said you were going to throw him out anyway, right?”

  She looked down at the sidewalk. “Maybe. I mean, I want to get rid of him, but I don’t know if I can, you know? Gary’s got a bad temper, especially when he’s drinking. And he was about two sheets to the wind when I left to come here.”

  “He doesn’t get violent with you, does he?”

  She looked up at Joe, apparently wondering how much she wanted to tell a stranger about her soured love life. “Ah, he man-handles me sometimes, but he’s never hit me. Not on purpose, anyway.” She looked at his hand. “You married?”

  “Ten years this September.”

  “Wow. That’s a long time.”

  “It could be, if you didn’t love the one you were married to.”

  “And you do?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She looked up the street in the direction of the police station, which was a couple of miles away. “Funny,” she said, “I wouldn’t have figured you for a married man.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  She shrugged again. Again Joe’s eyes involuntarily went to the visible flesh of her breast.

  “I dunno. You just don’t look the part. You look too…I dunno. Shit, I gotta have a cigarette. I got a whole damn carton back at the apartment. You think those cops will let me get a pack if I just leave money on the counter?”

  “Maybe. Let’s give it a shot. I’m going into withdrawal.”

  A siren wailed in the distance.

  The church bell rang on.

  A dome of yellowish murk hung over the night-lit city. Traffic whispered over the streets.

  As they walked toward the door of the convenience store, Suzie said, “Thanks for helping me while ago. Most guys would’ve just been looking out for themselves.”

  “I couldn’t just leave you there to get shot. Or stabbed.”

  She smiled for the first time since he’d been in her company. “You’re a real gentleman.”

  “Aw, shucks,” Joe said, kicking at the sidewalk, surprised that he felt like clowning around after seeing what he’d seen in the store. No doubt about it, he was strongly attracted to Miss Suzie Shrimpton. He had to watch himself with her, or else run the risk of endangering his perfect ten-year record of marital fidelity.

  She slipped her arm under his and hooked his elbow with hers, and they walked arm-in-arm through the door. Like the king and queen of the prom, Joe thought, smiling.

  “Oh, shit,” Suzie half-whispered.

  Joe’s smile fell when he saw the two cops grappling over a broom stuck in the ass of the rodent-faced killer.

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  Dora Pellum picked up the little call bell from her bedside table and shook it as hard as she could. The little clapper sent the jingle-bell call to Dora’s daughter, who was downstairs in the den, probably watching one of those stupid lawyer shows she loved. Cops and lawyers, killers and adulterers were all they showed on TV these days, and Dora Pellum was sick of it. But what she was most sick of right now was that damned church bell across the street booming so loud it rattled her windows in their frames and prevented her from hearing half of what was being said on her History Channel show, a detailed account of Queen Elizabeth’s life before she assumed the throne.

  Dora had to jangle the call bell five whole minutes before Daisy finally darkened her bedroom doorway. “What do you want, Mother?” her daughter asked, not bothering to mask her irritation at having been called away from her own TV viewing.

  Still holding the little bell in her arthritic fingers, Dora said, “I thought you were going to call the police about that damned racket.”

  “Yes, Mother, I did call.”

  “Well, call ’em again. I can’t stand much more of this.”

  “They said they would send a car out,” said Daisy, crossing her arms and cupping her elbows with her hands in a posture Dora read as condescending. “I’m sure they have things more important to do than investigate a bell.”

  “Let me tell you something,” Dora said, her voice rising. “There’s something not right about that bell ringing like that. Can’t you feel it? It’s…”

  “It’s loud. It’s irritating as hell. But what do you expect me to do about it? I already called the police. You want me to go across the street, climb up in the bell tower and stop it myself? Is that what you want, Mother? ’Cause if it is—”

  “Don’t get smart with me.” Dora suddenly felt like throwing her call bell at her daughter. They had been fighting more and more lately, and though Dora blamed herself for being a burden on her only living daughter, she couldn’t help but feel resentment that Daisy resented her. It was a vicious circle she hadn’t been able to break out of, but this was the first time she’d had to check a violent impulse. She set the bell on the table next to the King James Bible, so she wouldn’t be tempted to peg it at Daisy’s chubby face.

  Daisy pointed a finger and said, “There’s your phone. If you want to call the police and complain, go right ahead. You’re not helpless. If you’d get up and walk more around like the doctor said, you’d be a lot better off. And so would I.”

  “You think I like having to depend on you?” Dora snapped. “Maybe someday you’ll be in this position, then you’ll know how it feels to be a burden on your family and have to live with their resentment every goddamn day. I hope you don’t, but that’s the only way you’ll ever understand the pure hell it is for me.”

  Daisy pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “When you’re through feeling sorry for yourself, you can call the cops if you want to. But I’m not gonna stand here and listen to this crap while you’re on your pity pot. I’ve a good mind to take that damn bell away from you.”

  Dora Pellum snatched the bell off the table and threw it on the floor. It bounced on the carpet with a muffled rattle. “Take it then!”

  The church bell’s relentless ringing seemed to be getting louder. It sounded as if it were right outside the window.

  Daisy stared at the little bell. She appeared to be hugging herself tightly as if trying to contain her inner rage.

  Dora, on the other hand, was ready to go for her daughter’s jugular, at least figuratively. She knew where Daisy was most vulnerable, and she went for it. “Where’s that son of yours? Do you even know? He’s probably the one ringing that bell, deliberately trying to drive me crazy, the little heathen.”

  Daisy uncrossed her arms and took a step toward the bed. “Don’t you start on him. James is a good boy. He’s just going through normal adolescent rebellion.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. The boy’s twisted. Haven’t you heard that filth he listens to? I’ve never heard such nastiness in my life. The boy acts like a nigger. And I mean that in the dictionary sense of the word, though I sometimes wonder if he hasn’t got Negro blood in him. Are you sure Ronny Winter was his father, or was there an African in the wood pile?”

  Daisy went at her and slapped her hard across the face. “Don’t you ever say that again, you dirty old bitch!”

  Dora fell back into her pillow, her jaw stinging from the blow, but she was more stunned by the fact that her daughter had
actually struck her than by the blow itself. She stared up into Daisy’s flushed face. Daisy stared back, looking like she might be considering another blow.

  “You…sorry…white…trash…bitch,” Dora said, dragging the words out for dramatic effect.

  Daisy’s open palm shot out and popped Dora’s cheek. Without hesitation, Dora grabbed the glass containing her false teeth, sloshing water onto her lap, and threw it. The glass hit her daughter in the chest, spilling more water, but the upper and lower dentures stayed, rattling, in the glass as it fell to the floor.

  “God damn you,” Daisy said through clenched teeth. She bent down, picked up the glass of teeth and threw it back it her mother, who raised her arms in front of her face just in time to deflect the projectile. The dislodged dentures fell on the pile of extra pillows

  Daisy pounced on the bed and landed with her knees straddling Dora’s thighs. She began to pummel her mother with her fists, landing blows on her upraised arms and on the side of her head. As she flailed with her fists, Daisy emitted a steady cry: “Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…”

  Dora managed to grab the holy book off the nightstand and swung it sidearm. The King James Bible smacked the side of Daisy’s head, knocking her off balance. The old woman lost her grip on the good book and began to claw at her daughter’s face, going for the eyes. She felt the brittle nail of her middle finger sink into the soft, wet orb of Daisy’s left eye.

  Daisy screamed.

  Dora didn’t back off. She went for the throat and got her gnarled fingers halfway round Daisy’s flabby neck and squeezed as hard as she could, ignoring the deep pain of her arthritis.

  Daisy likewise clamped her fat hands on her mother’s throat and tried to choke the life out of her.

  While mother and daughter were locked in their brutal embrace, the bell in the abandoned church across the street kept up its relentless ringing.

  * * *

  James “Slim Jim” Winter was haunting Druid Hills Mall while his mother and grandmother were trying to kill each other. Of course, he had no idea that the two women were so violently engaged, nor was he aware of the persistent chiming of the bell in the old church. All he could hear was the music flowing from his old CD Walkman to the streamline headphones clamped over his ears. He was listening to the music of his idol, Eminem. The “Slim Shady” CD.

  James dressed like Eminem, walked like him and even tried to talk like him. Slim Jim Winter was a Slim Shady clone, a hip-hop white dude with a soul-brother’s soul, a gangsta “dog” roaming free. The funny thing was, he hadn’t liked Eminem’s music the first time he heard it. Until his ears and his mind were pried open in his junior year at Druid Hills High, James had been a hardcore metal head who turned up his nose at hip-hop music and ridiculed the whole hip-hop black-rap scene as a last refuge for soul brothers who rapped their lyrics because they couldn’t sing. But one night after cadging a bottle of tequila from his mother’s booze stash and killing half its contents with his best friend Josh, he heard Eminem’s music with new ears, and the whole world seemed to open up for him. From that night forward, he immersed himself in the music of Marshall Mathers, a.k.a., Eminem, and almost literally overnight, James became Slim Jim, the gangsta hip-hop dog of Druid Hills High.

  Now he was a senior and his reputation as a cynical, hip dude had grown, even as his optimist’s outlook and grade-average had tanked. He was a brilliant guy. Everybody said so. His teachers, his mother, his friends, even his enemies—all agreed that he was the smartest kid in school. So why, went the familiar refrain, was he wasting his natural-born smarts on this hip-hop craze and forsaking his studies? Wasn’t he smart enough to see that he needed to further his education in college? His answer to all who posed the question was: “That’s for the sheep, man. I ain’t no sheep, ya know what I’m sayin’?” But of course they didn’t really know what he was saying. Not even Josh, who continued to hang with him just the same. They didn’t understand because he didn’t bother to explain how society was based on the hypocrisy of the Big Lie. Everybody pretended to be civilized and preached the golden rule, but in reality it all came down to the law of the jungle, the survival of the toughest, meanest motherfucker in the valley of the shadow of death. Slim Jim Winter was not about to let himself become a sheep for the hungry wolves that would feast on his bones if given half a chance. No fucking way. He was one of the wolves. A lone wolf not content to run with the pack. He didn’t worry about the future because he was smart enough to know that the future never came. He lived in the Present, in the eternal moment, ever-expanding, canceling the future before it could get to the here-and-now. He lived in a world ruled by laws of quantum physics, laws presupposing parallel universes and infinite possibilities. How could he explain that to the sheep? The mind of a sheep couldn’t wrap itself around that concept, not really. It was all too counterintuitive for their flabby minds.

  It all came down to having confidence in yourself, trusting that you would know what to do when the time came to do it and not worrying about the illusory future. He had done some research on multi-millionaires and concluded that the most successful of them were self-taught and didn’t have college degrees. The real trailblazers of the world didn’t give themselves over to academic brainwashers and cookie cutters, no fucking way. And James was going to be a trailblazer. He knew it. He would forge ahead, make his own way and never run with the sheep. His new motto: Push ahead, never look back, and Devil take the hindmost.

  He leaned against the railing of the mall’s upper level and looked down at the shoppers who were here to buy their little parcels of happiness (always saving their receipts). Eminem was rapping in his ears about two-faced parents who fucked up their kids with their own sick trips and about kids who wrecked their brains with drugs and stupid shit. James grinned, digging the truth of Slim Shady’s rap. James was dressed in his Slim Shady duds, the go-to-hell bag-rags, the bassackwards cap, the Slim Shady T-shirt, the flashy sport shoes. It wasn’t that he was trying to be Eminem; he was paying tribute to his idol, showing the world that he was not going to be pushed around or hammered into a square hole. He was way too hip for that shit.

  Josh tugged on his shirttail.

  James pulled off his headphones. “What?”

  “Check those dudes in front of Starbuck’s,” said Josh. “I think they’re about to get into it.” James looked and saw a middle-aged guy with a pot-belly poking his finger into a younger man’s chest. The younger man, wearing khaki shorts and a knit pullover, tossed the contents of his Starbuck’s cup into the other man’s face.

  “Hot damn!” said Josh. “There they go.”

  James and Josh leaned over the railing and watched the two adults scuffle in front of the coffee shop. “Kick his ass!” Josh yelled at both men.

  Passersby gave the men wide berth as they took turns shoving each other.

  “Shit,” said James. “That all they got?”

  “Give ’em time,” urged Josh. “This is gonna be good.”

  Muzak played from hidden speakers, cutting the balls off an old Rolling Stones tune and making it sound like a harmless children’s ditty.

  James wanted Josh to be wrong. He didn’t want the shoving match to turn into a knock-down-drag-out. For all his gangsta posturing and his professed belief in the superiority of the meanest motherfucker in the valley, James didn’t like violence. In fact, it scared him. He’d seen too many nasty rows between his mom and dad before the old man ran off with a topless dancer when James was ten. He had too many vivid memories of marital violence, like the Valentine’s Day brawl when his old man came home drunk and broke his mother’s nose and his mom fought back with a bottle of wine, cracking it over old Dad’s head. There had been blood all over the kitchen that night, and James had hidden under his bed till morning.

  “Fuck those assholes,” he said. “Let’s cruise out to the Crab Shack and look for snatch.”

  “Aw man, those chicks are skanky. I wouldn’t touch them with your dick.”

  “Hey.
”

  “Come on, Slim. We can’t leave now. This is just getting good.” Josh sucked icy lemonade through his straw and watched the hostilities escalate between the antagonists in front of the coffee shop. The older man drew back his fist and drove it into his opponent’s jaw. “Woo-hoo!” hooted Josh.

  With a sick feeling in his belly, James pushed off the railing and started walking away. “I’m going,” he told his friend.

  “Yeow, he nailed him good,” chortled Josh. “Hey, where the fuck ya going? You can’t leave me.”

  “Then get your ass in gear,” James called over his shoulder.

  “Shit, man. I can’t believe you.”

  Josh caught up with him at the north entrance to the mall and followed him outside to the parking lot. “Next time we’re taking my ride, man. I don’t get how the hell you can just walk away from—”

  “Ssshh,” James shushed him and suddenly froze in his tracks. “Listen.”

  Josh halted beside him. “What?”

  “Hear that?”

  An old ’67 Mustang rumbled by in front of them. If it had a muffler, it was completely gutted.

  “What? That?” Josh pointed at the passing antique Ford.

  “No, you idiot. The bell.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Sounds like it’s coming from Holy Cross Hill.”

  “But—”

  “Why the fuck is it ringing?”

  “Must be coming from some other church.”

  “There’s no other church in that direction. Just that one up the street from my house.”

  “So? What’s the big deal? A church bell’s ringing.”

  “But who’s ringing it? And why? Nobody’s used that place for over a year. Hell, it’s condemned. They’re supposed to tear it down soon.”

  “Maybe it’s your old lady,” Josh joked. “Had one too many and decided to play Quasimodo. You know, like in The Hunchback of—”

  “Of course I know. I wrote that book report for you, jughead.”

  “Oh yeah. Huh.”

  “And my mother quit drinking.”