Cemetery Strike Read online

  As I stood, the Woods Edge golf cart bisected the path far in front of me. I didn’t believe it, but then I saw the penis tie dragging all the way behind it like a dead kite, twisting and turning in the dirt, never lifting off the ground to gain flight.

  Mr. Slippery Dick had the cart, my fucking cart, the one I’d wanted to drive from the very beginning. Something huge stuck out of the back compartment. Someone whispered to me, “It’s a child-sized body bag. He found the kid. He had the keys to the trailer.”

  So it made sense, even though the voice that spoke had dirt in its throat. It made even more sense, being that I had just finished giving the kid everything I had.

  I ran.

  The cart had gone in the direction of the oldest section of the cemetery, the place where Sonny wanted to bury his wife. The place where Mr. Slippery Dick had been asking strange questions. So I ran, even after smashing into headstones like a hurdler that couldn’t jump.

  When I got to the opening, Mr. Slippery Dick was there, standing with a shovel in hand, on the far side of the grave that me and Sonny had started. He had his suit jacket off, and the sleeves to his white dress shirt were rolled up. Yeah. The union president, getting his hands dirty doing blue collar work. Burying the kid. My kid.

  I called out, “Mr. Dick?”

  He turned the way vampires turn––deliberate, strong, sure of himself in his evilness. He said, “What’d you call me?”

  “Mr. Dick,” I said.

  Those demon voices whispered something from behind. I couldn’t pay attention to them. I had to stay focused. I had to get the kid back, unzip the body bag, put more blood into him.

  “Stop,” I said. It seemed like all I did was tell people to stop doing all the things that I had started.

  Mr. Slippery Dick just snarled at me, hating me for finding him. Then he said, “You think you’re hot shit because the president almost said your name once. But in fact, you’re still a nobody. Get the hell out of here. You’re trespassing.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do. Get the hell out of here. I put it here, and I’m trying to get it out.” The voices around me roared like I said the right thing. “And it looks like you have my kid. I want him back.”

  “Your kid?” he said, incredulous. “This kid’s worth more than a thousand of your kids.”

  “John.”

  “What!”

  Mr. Slippery Dick gaped at me. “Obviously, you huffed a few too many bodies. So I’ll say this slowly. You have no business here. Leave, before I make you leave.”

  I felt drained to the point that only the dead grassroots held me from sinking into one of the graves. I kept hearing those voices, making more and more sense all the time. I listened closely for what to do. They were coming from underneath now. From the graves, though I heard them in my ears.

  Mr. Dick went back to digging, like I was no threat at all. I stepped closer to him. He might’ve been telling the truth about the kid. That the one in the bag wasn’t mine. The body bag was a different color from all the other body bags in Woods Edge.

  “John.”

  Mr. Slippery stopped, looked over his shoulder to see if I was still in his ear. He said, “What? You want more money?”

  “Money’s not worth anything.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  I stared at the body bag. Life. Blood. Food. An appetite. Clean lungs. A place to live. Other people. Meaning. Safety for someone else. A better world for someone else. A better world for someone else that I loved.

  What did I want? What I always wanted, only different. Only the same. I said, “I want what everyone wants. More. But at least this time it’s more of something else.”

  Mr. Slippery Dick’s whole face crinkled. He said, “Well what is it, smart guy?”

  As I ran at him he lifted his shovel and swung it into my outstretched fist, sending me swinging. After steadying myself, after finding where he stood, I ran again, jumping on top of him, throwing both of us to the ground. That’s where I yanked on his cloth penis, wrapping it around his neck, once, twice, three times. I just kept twisting it around, and then I pulled tight on the little bit left, all while a crowd of demons cheered my name.

  “John, John, John.”

  I held the tie until the snarl stayed frozen on his face. Then, with Mr. Slippery Dick dead, I went over to the body bag to look inside. It was so big. It wasn’t the floral bed sheet. It wasn’t even the tarp that the kid was lying on. I opened it. The kid inside had been dead for months, his skin thinned out to leather. It was a kid, but it wasn’t Crystal’s. Mine. Him. This kid had been double the age, adorned in fancy jewelry and a thousand dollar suit. He had also been all mangled up, like road kill.

  From underground I could hear bones drumming roots, vibrating my ears, telling me to huff Mr. Slippery Dick, to breathe him in. I went to the golf cart, found a tire iron, picked it up.

  Mr. Slippery Dick’s chest rose and fell. He wasn’t dead after all. As he groaned, I heard the ballerina pushing from inside his chest, wanting to be let out. She tapped her toes, and Mr. Slippery Dick’s foot twitched.

  “Huff. Huff. Huff. Huff.” The demons from under the earth chanted, wanting to let their mother out.

  I jammed the cross between Mr. Slippery Dick’s ribs. He gave an agonizing scream, and then spit blood.

  Dead huffers yelled at me, “Huff, huff, huff.”

  “Hush!” I said back. “Hush.” Everyone got quiet. I twisted the cross into Peters’s lungs and pulled it out. Then I twisted the cross in again, pulled it out. That’s when the ballerina rose like a genie, floating into blue space, throwing up stars as she flailed her arms, not even waving goodbye as she fled.

  I stumbled to the cart. Looking around the seats for keys, all I saw were candy bars and cookies and juice and sugar packets. It was all I needed. I’d done it. I’d gone out to get food for the kid, and I’d found some. Now all I had to do was drive the cart back to the trailer. I kept looking for the keys. Of course, they were in the ignition the whole time. Actually, the thing was still running.

  I put my foot on the pedal and the cart zoomed forward, racing toward life. I crashed the cart right into the steps of the trailer. I put the food in my pocket, ran up to the steps to the door.

  The table was empty. Just a dirty, blue tarp covered it.

  The kid was gone.

  “Kid?” I yelled like a fucker. And I kept yelling. “Kid!”

  My eyes felt movement by the sink. I steadied myself. The kid stood there, tears in his eyes, a cup of water half filled in his hands.

  The kid said, “You were gone so long. I had to get up. I needed water. You should close the door.”

  I slammed the door shut, locked it. I put my hands into my pockets and emptied them onto the table. We sat down, eating and drinking until we had enough energy to think like humans. After that, while it was still light out, we took the cart out of Woods Edge Cemetery and drove it across the uptown bridge, leaving the city far behind.

  I’d done the right thing. I’d done it. True, I started a worldwide drug apocalypse, but I also kept the most important person alive, and that person wasn’t me.

  Think about what’s happened. Yeah, you gotta spend all your time indoors, hunkered down with your loved ones, not focusing on anything but survival. But at least now when you do die, if a huffer gets to you, depending on whether or not your lungs work, everyone will know what type of person you really were.

  And, it could all be put to rest right now. If everyone could be a better person, if everyone could put someone else’s needs in front of their own, if they could just make more of the right things, huffing wouldn’t even work. The killing would stop. The world would even be better off than when I first got here.

 

 

 
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