David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

Myra is not happy to see them. “Why don’t you make them go to work, Mickey?”

“She’s too mean to hold a job. Him, he’d rather go to the gas chamber than look for a nine-to-five.”

Junior and Lorna sit at the table without acknowledging Mickey or Myra in any way. A waitress gives them menus and tops off Myra’s coffee.

Lorna hands back the menu. “Double cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate malt. Hurry it up, okay?”

Junior says, “Same for me.”

Mickey thumps a sugar packet with his finger. “What are you two storm troopers doing today? I know what you’re not doing. You’re not looking for a job, right?”

Lorna snaps, “No, Daddy. I think maybe we’ll go over to that Jewish cemetery, dig up a body or two, and defile them.”

Junior likes the idea. “Yeah! Count me in on that.”

Mickey shakes his head. “Cut the crap. Get a job. Both of you.”

Lorna licks her lips as their food is served. “Jesus, Daddy. All you ever think about is jobs. What we do with our days is none of your nosy-ass business.”

Lorna hungrily downs her food. Myra watches in amazement. “How can you eat like that and still be skinny?” She sticks a finger into her mouth and makes a vomiting gesture. “Is that how you do it?”

“Fuck you, Myra.”

Junior pats his pockets. “Ah, shit, where’s my wallet? Did I leave it home again? Mick, can you take care this check…till tomorrow?”

“Don’t call me Mick. It’s Mickey to you.”

“All right, Mickey, will you take care of this?”

“Yeah, but it’s the last time.”

Lorna sucks the last of her malt through a straw and stands up. “Gotta go to the ladies. Back in a minute.”

In the restroom, Lorna has just finished purging. She flushes, then stands at the mirror rinsing her mouth. She pulls her fanny pack around to the front, takes out lipstick, applies it.

I always liked to eat a lot. I guess I was really a fatso in a hot body. That’s why I hadda get rid of it before I blew up like a blimp. Some people think that’s a mental thing, purging, but I don’t. They also say you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. But I could, in a way. You know what I’m saying? I didn’t worry either ‘cause I made up my mind I was gonna stop purging as soon as Junior got me pregnant. Cold turkey.

A trailer court, afternoon. A light rain falls. Mickey’s ‘78 Ford, blowing smoke, pulls up to a trailer. When he shuts off the noisy engine, the sound of rapid typing can be heard above the rain. He knocks on the door. The typing stops. Myra lets him in.

A short time later, they lie in bed after sex. She smokes a cigarette and drinks peppermint schnapps. He drinks a Mickey’s Big Mouth beer.

“My life stinks, Myra.”

“You’re going to worry yourself into a heart attack.”

“Which wouldn’t be a bad thing. It’s like an elephant steps on your chest. It hurts a little bit, and boom, you’re history.”

“Turn over. I’ll give you a back rub.”

An hour later, as Mickey snores in the bed, Myra types, whispering the words to herself: “He was nearly bankrupt. His brother’s dying wife was costing him an arm and a leg.” She takes a drag on the cigarette, thinks, has a slug of schnapps, continues typing and whispering. “It wasn’t cheap — the breathing machine, the feeding tubes, medicine of all kinds. And he was bearing the financial brunt, with absolutely no help from his family.”

Outside the Zook home, an aging, split-level rancher, probably built in the late fifties. The neighborhood is shabby, the houses in disrepair. Overturned garbage cans are everywhere, trash blows in the street, stray dogs eat garbage. Junior’s Monte is in the driveway. Also in the driveway is a rusted ‘78 Ford Torino with a dragging muffler.

A stray dog turns over a full garbage can. Ray steps from the house with an empty pint of Jack Daniel’s Red in his hand. In Bermuda shorts, knee-high socks and a T-shirt, he is flushed with anger and runs at the dog. “Get outta here!” He hurls the bottle at the departing animal. It misses and shatters against a dead tree. Grousing and cursing under his breath, Ray heads for the garage, stops for a moment, looks up at the window to Wendy’s bedroom and makes the sign of the cross.

In the room, Wendy lies in a vegetative state, breathing by virtue of a ventilator. Someone has rouged her cheeks, mascara’d her lashes, tweezed and penciled her eyebrows and painted her lips a lurid shade of red. A small TV sits on the dresser next to wilted flowers, tuned soundlessly to the Shopping Channel. A fat, black fly crawls on the screen.

Vickie enters and changes the intravenous drip, takes Wendy’s temperature, checks the ventilator.

They made me and Junior take the basement room ‘cause Wendy was in our room. Why didn’t they put her in the basement? She didn’t have a clue where she was…and sure as shit couldn’t care.

The sound of dogs barking in the distance. A large lawn mower engine starts up.

Ray rides out of the garage on a battered old riding mower and onto a lawn that’s much too small to justify the huge machine.

Inside, Junior sits at the dining table with his feet up, smoking a hand-rolled Bugler cigarette and reading the Weekly World News . A fly swatter sits atop additional supermarket tabloids. When the mower revs up outside, he puts in earplugs, returns to reading. The doorbell rings. He removes one earplug, slams the tabloid shut and answers the door.

A florist delivery person hands him a bouquet. “Good morning. Floral Fantasies. Flowers for Wendy Zoo…uh…Zoh….”

“Flowers? Are you fucking kidding me?” He signs for the flowers, slams the door, drops the bouquet into a trash can, settles in with a tabloid again.

Vickie enters in a chenille bathrobe and rubber flip-flops, her hair frowsy from lying in bed. When she opens the refrigerator, a big, sluggish fly nearly smacks her in the face as it escapes.

“What was that, a flying grape?” She chases it with a fly swatter until it lands on Junior’s tabloids, where she swats it.

“Thank you, Mother. That’s nice.”

“Your Aunt Wendy looked terrible today. Pale as a ghost. So I put some makeup on her.…” She pops a Miller Lite, has a slug. “Plucked her eyebrows, too, and did her nails. She’s my sister, Son. We have to take care of one another. We have to love one another.”

“Americans are the weirdest people on Earth.”

“What are you, a Serb?” She spots another fly. “And talk about weird.… We never used to have all these flies around here.”

“They can smell death, like buzzards.”

Vickie swats the fly on a burner of the stove, picks it up with a paper towel, dumps it in the trash and rescues the flowers.

“Why are these flowers in the trash?”

“Why would anybody send a fifty dollar bouquet to a vegetable? How about a check to the family? We’re the ones suffering. Now leave me alone. I’m reading.”

“Mercy, Son, mercy. I know you had a heart when you were born.” She puts the flowers in a vase.

Lorna enters the kitchen from the basement in her panties and bra, yawning, smoking a brown Sherman cigarette. “What did we do last night, Junior? I’m wasted.”

Vickie has a long swallow of her Miller Lite. “Didn’t I ask you not to smoke in here? You know I’m allergic.”

Lorna turns on the tap in the kitchen sink, drowns the butt and drops it into the drain. “What a pest you are, Vickie. How does Daddy put up with it?” She drinks from a carton of milk while chewing up a Pepperidge Farm cookie, then sits down on the sofa to watch Gilligan’s Island .

Vickie examines the interior of the fridge. “How many times have I begged you to put the tops back on things? And look at this — an empty ice tray. What’s the point? And that thing back there.” She takes it out with a pair of tongs, examines it. “It looks like a dead mouse.”