David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

Vickie shrugs. “I’m fine with that. When?”

“Pretty quick. Figure we’ll live with you guys…till we can scrape up enough dust to put down on a doublewide or something.”

After the ceremony, on the quad, families snap pictures and videotape the graduates. Using a throwaway camera, Vickie snaps pictures of Junior with his arm around Lorna and his hand on her ass.

The Jitney Jungle Supermarket parking lot, 1997. A beat-up ‘78 Chevy Monte Carlo pulls into a spot. The ignition is shut off, but the poorly tuned engine continues to diesel and sputter, causing the car to shake on its bad springs. The dim lights go out. Junior hops from the passenger side, swaggers into the Jitney Jungle.

Inside the Monte, the radio blares Alice Cooper’s “Eighteen.” Lorna opens a box of Sherman cigarettes. Only a yellow one is left. She lights it with a Zippo, smokes, watches Jitney Jungle shoppers come and go. The radio cuts out. She kicks the dash. The radio comes back on, but tuned to an NPR station and a droning, academic voice: “Because Americans come from varied backgrounds, many of them lack full social graces and have remarkably small vocabularies. They often seem rude to foreigners because of their tendency to speak in monosyllables, or answer a question with ‘Okay,’ ‘sure,’ or ‘nope,’ or greet you with ‘hi.’ This brevity is not a personal insult, though to those accustomed to gracious phrases, Americans seem blunt.”

“What’s this shit?” Lorna fiddles with the radio, but it seems stuck on that station.

An eighties Lincoln Town Car pulls into the slot in front of the Monte Carlo, an elderly woman at the wheel. Her enfeebled husband slumps in the passenger seat.

The Town Car bumps the Monte Carlo lightly.

Lorna leans out the window. “If you wanna play bumper cars, there’s a fucking carnival up the road.”

Neither the woman nor the man pay her any attention. The woman hobbles to the passenger side, opens the door, helps the husband out. They walk very slowly toward the Jitney Jungle.

Lorna leans out the window. “You’re too old to be driving. They oughta take your license away.”

The husband lowers his pants and wiggles his bare ass at Lorna. The woman flips her the bird.

Lorna is aghast at the sight.

In the Jitney Jungle checkout line, Junior carries a six pack of Coors Light and a can of Diet Mr. Pibb, but his jacket seems a little bulkier than it did when he went in.

“Find everything you need, sir?”

“Yo.”

“Paper or plastic?”

“Nuthin’.”

“That’ll be eight thirty-three.” The clerk looks at Junior’s jacket a little suspiciously. Junior tosses a ten on the counter. The next customer drops a watermelon on the floor, which bursts into a pulpy mess, distracting the clerk. Junior grabs his change and leaves quickly.

In the Monte Carlo, Lorna, pouting, smokes the yellow Sherman and fiddles with the radio, but it’s stuck on that PBS station: “How much more courteous it would be to use the Japanese phrase ‘Osore irimashita’ — ‘I am overpowered with admiration,’ rather than say ‘Too expensive’ and turn away. Both make it clear that since the price is too high the speaker will not buy, but the Japanese way is undoubtedly more gracious.”

She bangs the dashboard with her shoe.

Junior jumps in.

“Shit, Junior. Why don’t you fix this radio? I hate this car. It’s a fucking junker.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He unzips his jacket, removes shoplifted items: condoms, a razor, a couple of filet mignons, a frozen lobster, Shermans, and tampons. He tosses the tampons over to Lorna. “There you go, babe. Don’t want you bleeding to death.” He passes her a four pack of cream-filled doughnuts. She pops the Mr. Pibb, eats a doughnut.

“See that car, Junior?”

“That Lincoln?”

“Yeah, two old fucks. They pulled in and they hit us.”

“They hit us? Where?”

“Then the old man, he moons me. Then the old bitch, she gives me this.” She flips the bird to illustrate.

“Jeezis.”

“Why don’t they just stay home?”

“I’m with you, babe. Where’s old Hilter when we need him?”

“His name was Hitler, Junior.”

“I thought it was Hilter.”

“Hilter?”

“Yeah.”

Lorna shakes her head in disbelief. “Junior, we need a new raaaaaadio.…” She nods her head toward the Town Car.

“Arright, arright.” Junior reaches under the seat for tools wrapped in a chamois and tied with a leather thong. He selects a screwdriver, a small crowbar and some wire snips.

He smashes the Town Car’s window with the crowbar, opens the door, gets in. With practiced skill, he removes the radio in seconds, then breaks open the glove box and finds a nickel-plated 9mm pistol in a black leather holster.

“Bingo!”

Lorna watches Junior skulk back. He tosses the radio in through the window, then the pistol, before getting into the driver’s seat. “A nickel-plated niner. That’s worth some dust, man.” He starts the engine. It sputters and dies. He starts it again and the engine runs roughly. He jams the accelerator. The car lurches forward, then dies.

The elderly couple make their way to the Town Car. Lorna sounds the alarm out the window: “Shit! They’re coming!”

Junior cranks the Monte’s engine again. It starts roughly, sputters and smokes, but rumbles out of the parking lot. A tail light blinks on and off. A tire is way low.

Months later, Mickey, Vickie, Ray and Wendy emerge from the strip-mall wedding chapel and wait in the parking area. Wendy is now in a wheelchair. Her shoulders sag and her head droops to the side.

Junior and Lorna emerge from the chapel in their black, semi-Gothic jack-booted finery. Mickey tosses a handful of rice in their direction.

Vickie shouts, “Happy honeymoon!”

The unsmiling couple dashes to the Monte Carlo. HOT SPRINGS TONITE is painted across the rear window, cans strung to the rear bumper. The car peels out in a cloud of exhaust and the clatter of dragging cans.

Harley’s Pawn Shop, the same day. The Monte pulls in. Junior enters the shop with something heavy in a plastic grocery bag. Lorna waits in the car, listening to heavy metal on the new radio. She watches Junior negotiate the sale of the 9mm through the shop’s window. He returns to the Monte folding money into his wallet.

Early morning in an abandoned neighborhood. On the horizon, a huge factory blows sulfurous smoke from its stacks. Abandoned houses are boarded up, lawns uncut for years. Some of the houses have burned to the ground. There’s a kid’s abandoned lemonade stand, the pitcher half full of old, algae-covered rainwater.

Mickey’s Animal Control truck winds through the streets. Cages in its bed confine a few cats, a skunk, several puppies.

As Mickey drives slowly through empty, trash strewn streets with names like Happy Landing and Sunflower Court, a stray dog dashes in front of the truck with a KFC box in its mouth. Mickey slams on the brakes, jumps out and follows the animal with a net as it scuttles between two abandoned houses toward an abandoned park.

“Goddamn fleabag. Come on. Come to Daddy.”

The dog disappears into the weedy, abandoned park, Mickey in pursuit. He dodges around or jumps over rusting playground equipment, encounters stinging nettles, old sofas, partially burned mattresses, charred campfire circles, bottles, trash and wads of toilet paper.

He whistles for the dog. “Come on, now. Don’t play hard-to-get, you little bitch.”

He makes his way through a thicket, is stung by a wasp, scratched in the face by a thorny vine, then steps in a pile of dog shit. After cleaning that off with a stick, he ventures further in, until he stumbles into an encampment of homeless men. Two are crouched over a smoldering fire, drinking wine. A third holds back a growling, white German Shepherd at the end of a thin rope leash. Mickey is petrified. The leash breaks and the dog rushes at him.