Jeff Jacobson - Wormfood

“I remember. I don’t forget anything. And you oughta know that.” Pearl let the cane drop for a moment, holding it with her curled left arm, and reached up to the folds of the rags at her throat, pulling out a string of yellow blocks. It was a necklace of some sort, with dozens of irregular, knotted chunks of what looked like wood or bone, all tied together with a piece of twine around Pearl’s scrawny neck.

She grinned. “Forty-four teeth.”

Grandma swallowed and I saw her finger tighten around the shotgun’s trigger.

“And you know where they came from. You know. That big old boar. That one that stared at you the whole goddamn time them county boys pulled all those pieces of Bill out of the mud.”

“I don’t give a damn what you’ve got there. I … I sold those hogs at the auction. All of ‘em. They’re gone.” Grandma clenched her teeth and swallowed, and I feared she was swallowing blood.

Pearl shook the necklace, making the pig teeth dance in a dry, crackling, snapping sound, like a hardwood campfire. “Nothin’s ever gone. Didn’t you pay attention back in high school? Matter never goes away. It just changes. It just gets recycled.” Pearl brought the cane back up. “Who do you think bought them hogs, you stupid bitch? We, me and the boys, we ate every last one of them pigs, everything, righton down to the bone marrow. Sweetest, most goddamn tender meat I ever tasted. Like honey.”

I’d had enough. Hot fury bubbled up and I snapped, “Shut up! Just shut up!” I shook the haze out of my head. “Evil fucking bitch.” I jumped up, away from Misty, and grabbed the shovel. I brought the blade around, feet nearly three feet apart, hips locked, shoulders rolling, arms braced, like I was trying to hit a home run, wanting nothing more than to knock Pearl’s head off, send it skipping out across the floodwater like a flat stone.

Pearl raised her right hand, caught hold of the blade, and stopped it cold. I felt like I’d just tried to chop down a steel beam. The tingling jolt rushed up my arms, vibrating deep in my chest.

Pearl ripped her stare away from Grandma, forced the shovel down, pinned me down like a bug. “You ain’t nothing but a speck on flyshit, little boy.”

While Pearl’s gaze was fixed on me, Grandma shot forward, bringing the double barrels of her .10 gauge down in a short, vicious arc, cracking it into Pearl’s skull. Grandma grunted, spat, and hit Pearl again.

Pearl dropped to her knees, wincing in pain, grinning the whole time.

Something tickled the back of my mind, something important.

Next to me, I heard Misty whisper, “Kill her … just kill her …” Her eyes were nothing but slits, but she was conscious. She pushed herself up into a sitting position. “… Kill her …”

Pearl lifted her right hand to her head and touched the raw spot where the barrel had connected. “You hit like a girl,” she said to Grandma.

I jabbed the shovel at Pearl again, just to keep her off balance, on her toes, so to speak. Boiling fury still popped inside of me and I said, “Gimme that fucking buckle. It ain’t yours, it belongs to her.” I jerked my head at Misty.

Pearl looked at me and the left side of her face folded into a smile. “You think you’re man enough, you come and get it.” She held up the buckle for a moment, clenching it in her fist while she slid her kneesapart on the dock, then lifted her dress and shoved the buckle up between her legs. She spread her arms wide in an invitation. Judging from the look on her face, I’d say she liked hanging onto the buckle.

I didn’t know what to do. I sure as hell wasn’t going to go after it.

“I’ve listened to enough of your evil garbage,” Grandma said, biting off each word as if it tasted bad. Blood still dripped off her chin. “I may be a tired old woman, but I will kill you and your whole family if you so much as sneeze.”

I’d never been prouder of my grandmother.

Pearl hissed, “You just wait, you sad, leaking sack of meat. My boys? They’re gonna catch up to you. Someday, somehow, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

I finally figured out Junior was gone.

One minute, all five of us had been grouped into a rough circle on the loading dock, and I could remember Junior at his mother’s side up until she pulled out the tooth necklace. But when I had lost it, trying to hit Pearl in the head, I realized that Junior hadn’t been there. He had vanished like smoke.

I brought the shovel back up, saying, “Grandma, he’s—”

Junior screamed, “Eat this!” from inside the kitchen. Thunder cracked across the loading dock, and blood exploded from Grandma’s chest and back. She was lifted off her feet and flung forward, shoulders rigid, knocking the walker into Pearl. I jerked my head around just in time to see a short bark of flame leap out of the darkness of the kitchen. That was it; that was what I had forgotten.

Ray’s Super Redhawk, lying on the dining room floor.

A wall of fire unfurled out at me. Searing heat washed over the loading dock, and the concussion followed an instant later, slamming into my chest, my head, snapping my bones. It felt like I’d been hit by a burning truck.

It was the gas.

When Junior had shoved me against the stove, the burst of airknocked out of my lungs had blown out the pilot. So the whole time we were out on the loading dock, the colorless natural gas had been silently filling the kitchen, the dining room, until Junior pulled the trigger on Ray’s revolver.

The initial wall of flame had blown itself out, and through the haze I caught a quick glimpse of Junior. He was on fire, stumbling toward the front door; the grease in his pompadour seemed to be especially flammable. I hoped it hurt bad enough he wished he was dead. I hoped he thought he had just been flung into hell. He threw himself at the front door, burst through it, and hurled himself into the water in a cloud of smoke and steam.

Grandma fell facedown on the dock, flattened by the impact of the gunshot and the wall of heat. Her right palm slapped the wood, then crumpled under her body as she slid forward. The .10 gauge slipped out of her grip, bounced once, and slid across the wet wood into Pearl’s hand.

Pearl landed hard on her bony hip at the edge of the Dumpster. The shotgun slid past my head, right into her good arm. She swung the heavy barrels around toward Grandma. “Shoot me?” she rasped. “I’ll eat your heart, you bitch, just chew it up and shit it out.”

I rolled onto my side, twisted, and kicked Pearl in the face with my right foot. It wasn’t much of a kick, but the impact snapped Pearl’s head back and the shotgun went off; her pointed chin popped up as the buckshot exploded into the flames in the kitchen. The force of my kick, combined with the heavy recoil from the .10 gauge, knocked Pearl’s upper torso back, and ever so slowly Pearl toppled and fell into the Dumpster headfirst. She held on to the shotgun all the way, refusing to let go even as the Dumpster water swallowed her head, shoulders, hips. Her sticklike legs followed, kicked once, then slid off the loading dock and disappeared into the thick, dark water. A few bubbles popped on the surface. The shotgun was gone.

“Please don’t be dead,” I whispered, scrambling to Grandma. She was lying on her stomach. A red cloud grew violently on her back, right between the shoulder blades.

“Oh no,” I whimpered and gently rolled Grandma over on her back. It was worse than I had feared. The bullet had left a crater the size of a coaster in her chest. I could see three, four inches down, into her chest, into her heart. Both of her eyes were closed. “Grandma,” I whispered into her rain-streaked face. “Grandma?”

She opened her eyes.

“Hang on, just hang on, okay?”