Jeff Jacobson - Wormfood

Bert grabbed the plastic bag that contained the rabbit and held it up triumphantly, then plucked a huge knife out of his cowboy boot. It looked like something Rambo would carry. The goddamn blade must have been a foot and a half long. Grinning at me, he jabbed the knife repeatedly into the soft parts of the bag. After carefully wiping the blade clean on his jeans, he slid the knife back into his boot and gave the bag a little shake. It leaked.

Junior hit the horn hard with his fist and “La Cucaracha” suddenly blared out at the world from under the hood. I tried to sink even lower in the seat, holding my right hand up near my face. Junior kept screaming “Cocksuckers!” at the passenger window.

Bert leaned against the wooden slats and began to swing the bag around his head like a lasso, whooping and hollering, “Yeeeeemother-fucking haaaaaaaaaaaaa !” Dark spatters of blood suddenly appeared on car roofs, windshields, hoods. Bert kept swinging the bag, sending fresh drops of blood out into the air in long, streaming arcs.

People in the funeral procession suddenly started to pay attention to the Sawyer brothers.

Junior, who was getting tired of leaning across me to tell folks exactly what he thought of them, their cars, their children, their animals, and their bank accounts, finally just said, “Here. You drive.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know how to drive. Sorry.”

“What are you, fucking retarded? It’s easy. Here.” Junior grabbed the back of my neck and yanked me across his lap while sliding underme at the same time. The truck lurched and stuttered. I heard Bert fall against the cab.

In the passenger mirror, I saw the black plastic bag hit a Cadillac’s hood and slide up the windshield, leaving a wide, clotted smear of blood in its wake. The bag bounced off the roof of the Cadillac and sailed into the air, finally splashing into the irrigation ditch that ran parallel to the highway. The ditch carried water from the reservoir down into the valley. At the moment, it was overflowing with muddy water.

Junior said, “It’s easy. Just steer us in a straight line and keep the speed up. That’s the gas pedal.” He pointed at one of the three pedals on the floor. “There’s the brake in the middle and the clutch on the left. If you gotta shift, just push in the clutch. Easy.”

“But—,” I started to say.

“Just drive, you fucking idiot,” Junior hollered, then twisted his upper torso out the passenger window and laughed like a fucking lunatic at the procession, flinging broken shards of glee that danced out into the rain. “Fuck you … fuck you … and you, too, motherfucker!”

I clutched the steering wheel so tightly it hurt. My right foot found the pedal on the far right, just dumb luck that it happened to be the gas pedal. I kept my left foot hovering in midair above the other two pedals, just in case. I was acutely aware of every little shudder and shake of the truck, every dip and crack in the asphalt, every sway and every bounce. I knew how to drive in theory, having spent most of a semester in a drivers ed class. But the reality of sitting behind the wheel of a one-ton truck, a goddamn stick shift no less, was an altogether different experience.

I flinched as the roof groaned and buckled. Bert was climbing up onto the top of the cab, dragging another bleeding bag behind him. I kept driving, keeping the needle frozen between twenty and twenty-five miles an hour. Actually, this driving thing wasn’t so hard. I eased the steering wheel over to the left and the truck drifted over like a dumb, obedient dog. I casually slid the truck back over to the right. This wasn’t rocket science, I decided. I gently pressed down on the gaspedal and, sure enough, the needle slowly climbed up to thirty miles an hour. We were over halfway down the procession by now.

Fresh drops of blood hit the windshield and mingled with the raindrops as Bert swung the new bag around in wide loops. I found the windshield wipers and cleaned off the glass. Much better. This isn’t so bad , I thought. In fact, it was kind of fun. I pressed harder on the gas. Thirty-five miles an hour.

Junior, protruding halfway out the passenger window and grandly flipping off the funeral procession with both hands, kept yelling, “Suck my fat fucking cock, you fat fucking cunt lickers!”

I kept my eyes on the highway and hit the gas harder. The faster I got away from the funeral procession, the better. The needle, slower now, tenaciously crept toward the very tall, very thin number forty-five. An escalating whine grew from the front of the truck. I found the clutch, and with a little grinding that made my teeth ache, I managed to shift into fourth gear.

Another black plastic bag landed in the back of a brand-new Ford and burst open like a rotten tomato. Bert seemed to be enjoying his new game. Through the rearview mirror, I watched as he enthusiastically jabbed at another bag. Junior chuckled at his brother. “There goes the quota for the week.”

Up ahead, I could see the junction of Highway 200 and Road DD rapidly approaching. Highway 200 dead-ended in a simple barbed wire fence, closing off the solid bank of the freeway, some three hundred yards beyond the junction. Fat Ernst’s Bar and Grill waited just past Road DD, on the east side of the highway, and I decided I’d head for the parking lot to get past the funeral procession as fast as possible. All I had to do was get to the junction first. I figured the hearse would turn right and head west, going up into the foothills to Earl’s house.

Junior flopped back inside, breathing heavily. “These goddamn rich assholes. Think they know everything. Fuckers.” He started to unbuckle his pants.

I tried again. “I don’t know how to drive. Or stop.”

Junior glanced through the windshield, said, “Looks like you’re doin’ a helluva job to me,” kneeled on the seat, facing me, and jerked his pants down. He stuck his ass out the passenger window and screamed in ecstasy, “Lick my ass! Lick it! Lick it!”

I kept increasing the pressure on the gas, and before long the needle hovered around fifty miles an hour. I had this driving thing down cold. Just fifty yards to go.

It never occurred to me that that the hearse might be turning left, heading to the cemetery, down Road DD to the east.

Now, looking back, I can see everything in slow motion: Junior swinging his ass back and forth out the window; Bert launching bag after bag from the back of the truck; and the goddamn hearse turning left, right in front of me. I stomped down on one of the pedals, hoping it was the brake, and jerked the steering wheel to the left.

But it was too late.

I got a brief flash of the back end of the hearse disappearing under the hood, as if the bull skull were attacking the long gray car, trying to eat the smaller vehicle, simply trying to swallow it whole as groaning, gnashing shrieks of metal filled the air. A shadow flashed across the windshield as Bert belly flopped onto the hood, sliding into the skull. I suddenly felt curiously weightless, until the steering wheel reached out and punched me in the chest.

And then everything got dark, numb, and quiet.

CHAPTER 4

Later, Heck told me what had happened. He’d seen the whole thing from the restaurant; he’d been nursing one of his morning Bloody Marys while Fat Ernst sulked behind the bar. Fat Ernst hadn’t been invited to the funeral and was taking the snub personally.

Heck told me, “That Sawyer truck hit the hearse like it was pissed off. The hearse, man, it didn’t have a chance. Went spinning across the highway and pow! It hit the bridge hard, man. Craziest thing I ever saw. “Damn hearse flying, then”—he punched his palm—“right into that bridge. Crunched that back end like steppin’ on a bag of chips. You could just imagine what happened to the coffin inside, man.”