The Complete Drive-In Read online

  “You promised me, Timmy. You said you’d take me. You know I want to see The Toolbox Murders.”

  I turned and looked at Sue Ellen perched in the middle of the backseat. She was blonde and fair and had moist blue eyes and a freckled pug nose and a red bow mouth. Course, it was dark enough you couldn’t see all this, but you knew it was there, and telling her no was a lot like kicking a puppy for licking your hand.

  “We’ll be miserable,” Timothy said. “Besides, The Toolbox Murders? How’d I let you talk me into that?”

  “You promised, Bubba. And if any of it bothers me, you can explain it to me.”

  “That’s choice. I might need you to explain it to me.”

  “See, I’m old enough.”

  “One word about mosquitoes, one complaint, and we’re out of here.”

  “Deal.”

  Had the weather been hotter, the mosquitoes thicker, or if Sue Ellen had had all the charm of Dr. Frankenstein’s hunchback assistant, we might have cut for home right then. Sue Ellen would have grown up to break hearts, Timothy would have gone on to hit little white balls across great expanses of greenery for unreasonable amounts of money, and I might have ended up with my own karate studio.

  3

  All right, I’m going to stop with Grace’s story now. For all you dipshits in the back row who haven’t been listening—Leroy, quit playing in that pile of shit. Put that stick down. Yeah, well, screw you too, little buddy. I hope your balls get covered in ants.

  Now, all you bozos keep interrupting my relating here and I’m tired of it. You all keep saying, “What about the comet? What about the comet?” Well, I’ve got no new news on the comet, okay? You’ve heard it all before. I’ve told you that story half a dozen times. I started this story with the comet. Remember?

  No, I don’t change it as I go along Leroy. Look, I don’t make you come and listen, do I, huh?

  Why did all this happen?

  We’ve been over this part, Leroy, back when I read you the first half of this story, the one I call THE DRIVE-IN, A B-MOVIE WITH BLOOD AND POPCORN. Yes, the one written on the Big Chief tablets. But to answer your question why ... I don’t know. It’s like why do turds come in different shapes and colors. I can’t answer that. It’s one of life’s big mysteries, and the comet is an even bigger one.

  Here, listen. Do you remember those sayings I taught you? The ones the Christians are fond of. Remember, we talked about Christians. Good? Now those sayings. Let’s use them to get things on the roll and because they’re all purpose. Repeat after me: THERE ARE SOME THINGS MAN WAS NOT MEANT TO KNOW, and I FEEL IT IN MY HEART. Later I’ll teach you about Faith, that way if you don’t know how to explain something, say, you’ve got faith. That covers a lot of bases and cuts down on argument.

  What do you mean that doesn’t work for you? Is this going to be like yesterday’s conversation, Leroy? The one about Why Is There Air and Why Do Boys Have a Pecker and Girls Don’t? Good, because I’m not going to get into that. I’ve got a story written down here and it’s the story I’m going to read. It’s a good story and I’ve recorded it as best I can, and it’s almost the truth. If you want to hear it, fine, if not, I’ll read to myself. I do this for me, not you, so you want to hear the story you got to listen. What, Leroy?

  Uh huh, that’s right. Why don’t you go ahead and find your stick again and stir the shit pile. At least you were quiet. I wish I hadn’t disturbed you.

  Yeah. That’s okay, use your finger. Let me get back to Grace—

  Okay. Maybe I don’t remember what Grace said word for word, but this is pretty close. Trust me.

  Food started running out at the concession, so we used Timothy’s pocket knife to cut strips from the leather seat covers. The leather must have been coated with something (a dirt-resistant spray?), because it made us sick at first, though after a while we got used to it. When we still had Coke from the concession, we’d soak it in that and chew on it, maybe finish off with a few chocolate almonds. But when everything was gone at the concession we had to eat the strips straight out.

  All around us people were losing it, going nuts for food, killing one another and eating one another. Sue Ellen wasn’t doing so hot either. She seemed addled most of the time and kept insisting we take her home, that Mommy and Daddy would be worried. She said she didn’t like the movies anymore. She missed her dog. She said lots of things.

  I had to use my martial arts a few times to keep from being hurt by nuts who wanted me for either sex or food. We never got the situation clear; I pounded their heads briskly and they went away. But in time I got too weak for the martial arts, and a lot of the folks around us were too weak to do much of anything either. I guess you could say it was a kind of trade-off. I didn’t feel so good, but the folks that might have done me, Timothy and Sue Ellen harm weren’t exactly up to the Boston marathon either.

  Then along came the Popcorn King.

  Now he was one weird sonofabitch, looking back on it, but I’ll tell you, when those two guys were fused together by the lightning and they had all those powers, tattoos coming to life and running around and the like, I wasn’t even surprised.

  Weird was the status quo, right?

  What did surprise me was when he used those powers of his to supply us with popcorn and Coke, and he started talking that stuff about how he was our savior and that the movies were reality and murder and mayhem were okey-dokey and our salvation, and by the way, got any dead bodies, bring them on over to me and I’ll eat them. You know the rap.

  When he stopped giving out the popcorn and disappeared inside the concession stand for a time, like Jesus gone off into the wilderness, I’ll tell you true, I was some depressed. It was back to eating seat covers.

  When he finally did reappear, he no longer had popcorn to give us. Least not the real stuff. Now it was that substitute crap he was vomiting up. And that had bloodshot eyeballs on it.

  Weirdness suddenly re-identified and redefined itself. I wasn’t going to eat that junk, no way, no how. And neither was Timothy.

  Sue Ellen ate it. There wasn’t any way we could stop her from it. We tried at first, but she got away and got to it anyhow. She said it was sweet as candy and ran around inside your head like a hot lizard; said looking out of her eyes was like looking through a projector, like becoming the light and sound that shot out of the projector and hit the screen; like being everything fast-moving and bright that ever existed. Stuff like that, not twelve-year-old talk. She said when she looked at us she saw little screens on our faces instead of eyes and on the screens she could see little picture shows of our past, and I guess maybe she could, because she told us some things we hadn’t told her about the two of us, like about the time we played doctor.

  Mysterious stuff. Popcorn magic.

  And in time the eyeball corn didn’t seem so odd. So what, big deal, the popcorn had eyeballs and it came from the King who vomited it up? So what?

  The idea of crunching down on those eyeballs wasn’t so weird anymore. I thought maybe in texture it might be like damp Cracker Jack. Was it the vomit that made it sweet? Did lights and shadows and sounds run around in your head like a hot lizard, as Sue Ellen said? Was it really like that? Would I know new and wonderful things?

  I looked around at the others. They were eating the corn, but they didn’t seem to be cruising through life any better than I was. They were weak and sick and malicious, always hungry. They were dying same as me except they were hiding behind the veneer of the King’s chemistry, mixing it with his jive religion, but they were going to die same as me.

  Still, you can only hold out so long. Hunger is the biggest monkey ever made. It can make heroin addiction seem like a Coca-Cola habit.

  Timothy caved in. He got tired of chewing seat covers and listening to his belly rumble. He went the way of Sue Ellen and ate the vomit corn. First time he had it he came back talking about the color of lies. His breath was sewerish and his eyes were dull; I wondered what movies were showing on the backs of t
hem.

  I used my martial arts to keep me away from the corn. I was too weak to practice it, but I did the movements in my head, tried to fill the hungry thoughts with visions of me nude and strong and practicing every technique I knew, fast and slow and medium.

  It worked well, but not well enough. In time my belly started to win over, and I would have gone for the corn had the man not come along.

  This is hard to talk about, but it seems to me, bad as this was, it was better than the corn. The corn would make me sing the King’s song; I wasn’t ready for the color of lies and movies on the backs of my eyes.

  Okay, here goes. Straight plunge.

  Timothy and Sue Ellen were just back from the concession, sitting in the car, eyes closed, seeing whatever it was the corn made them see, and I was sitting there thinking of stripping off another piece of seat cover to chew on. There wasn’t much left and it made me ill to think about chewing on that nasty stuff, but what else was there to do? So I’m thinking about this, trying to get the will to do it, when this man staggered by on my side, put his hand against the door frame, said, “Shit, this ain’t heartburn,” and fell over.

  I got out of the car and looked at him. He was about thirty with long, stringy, grayish hair and he was lying on his stomach with his head turned to one side, his eyes open. But he wasn’t seeing much. He had been correct. It wasn’t heartburn. He was as dead as a dodo’s agenda.

  Sue Ellen and Timothy got out of the car and came around and looked at him, then looked at each other, and finally me.

  We didn’t say a word. We got hold of him and put him in the backseat and Sue Ellen got back there with him, and Timothy and I got in the front.

  Of course, I knew what we were doing. We were saving him for food. I hadn’t been willing to eat popcorn with eyeballs on it, but somehow this was different. It would have been a shame to let him go to waste when we were starving. And if we didn’t eat him, someone else was going to come along and drag him off for just that purpose.

  Hell, it wasn’t like we’d killed him.

  I remember sitting there thinking about this, turning from time to time to look at the body on the backseat, and finding that each time I looked, Sue Ellen had removed yet another article of his clothing. When he was completely stripped, she called for Timothy’s knife, and he gave it to her.

  My next memory is of holding the corpse’s still-warm liver in my hands and rubbing it into my face, then eating it. Strength flowed back into me immediately, and for some reason my legs began to jerk spasmodically and my knees hit the bottom of the dash and caused the glove box to knock open.

  Timothy kept a little mirror in there, and it was at an angle, and by the light of the pulsating Orbit symbol, I could see myself. My face was stained a rust color from forehead to chin, and my eyes were little pits.

  I looked at Timothy and Sue Ellen.

  Timothy was chewing on a bone with a few chunks of meat on it. He had his eyes closed, and when he chewed he made little orgasmic noises deep in his throat.

  Sue Ellen was on her hands and knees straddling the body, and she had half her head buried in an opening she had cut in the man’s stomach. She was rooting around in there like a pig.

  I opened the door and fell on the ground and threw up.

  I don’t think Timothy or Sue Ellen noticed. They were too busy with lunch.

  I crawled under the Galaxy and tried to wipe the blood off my face with my forearms, then lay on my side with my knees pulled into my chest, and shook.

  A young man so thin his pants flapped around his legs like flags on poles, came by, dropped to the ground, and made a meal of what I’d thrown up. His face was turned toward me as he lapped. When he saw me, he lapped faster. Maybe he thought I wanted it.

  He finally staggered off. Where my vomit had been was a damp spot.

  I rolled on my back and looked at the underside of the car and tried to think about nothing, but all I could see was that man gutted from throat to crotch and Sue Ellen with her head dipped into him. And lastly, my own face in that mirror, smeared with blood from hair to chin.

  Bones were dropped out of the Galaxy’s windows on the left side, and I turned my head and looked at them and tried to determine if they were rib, forearm, or leg bones. I couldn’t make a decision.

  As I watched, people came along and snatched up the bones and ran off with them.

  I lay there for the longest time, feeling very sick to my stomach and my soul.

  When I heard Timothy and Sue Ellen getting out of the Galaxy, I refused to watch their legs go by. I knew they were going to the concession to get their vomit corn from the King. I had decided I would starve to death before I did that.

  I don’t know how long this went on, my lying under the car hoping to starve. It could have been thirty minutes or it could have been days. But Timothy and Sue Ellen came and went several times and I always felt dizzy, as if I were in the middle of some huge platter that was being spun.

  But my starvation plans weren’t working out. The hunger had a mind of its own, and finally I crawled out from under the car and tried to stand up. But couldn’t. I was too weak. I got hold of a door handle and pulled myself up and looked in the window at the body on the backseat.

  There was hardly anything left of the man. Even his eyes and genitals had been eaten. Only his pelvis, ankles and feet had flesh on them, and it was turning black.

  I felt hungry enough to bite the toes off his feet, one at a time, and would have tried, but about the time I started to go after him, the concession stand blew up.

  4

  That was us that did it, of course, and no use going into that again. Anyway, we smashed the concession, killed the King, and for our fine work, the crowd got hold of us and crucified us. But I told you all about that too.

  Summing up this part of Grace’s story, she didn’t see what happened to the concession, but when she turned around it was in shambles and on fire. Of course the movies from the concession were snuffed too, though the projector over in B section of the lot was still pumping. But the thing is, we killed the King.

  Grace’s dizziness subsided and she managed to walk toward the flames. She saw what was happening to us, but later when she met us, she didn’t remember our faces. The crowd was about to put fires under the crosses and cook us, and the comet came back. The black goo went away, and the drive-in folks were out of there.

  Grace wanted to help get us down. Her dizziness had passed, and she tried to talk Timothy and Sue Ellen into helping, but they had come back to the car and they were ready to leave.

  Anyway, Grace said—

  I got the keys from Timothy and pulled the body out of the backseat. Doing that made me dizzy again, but I put a hand on the side of the car and stood that way until it passed.

  I went around back to the trunk and opened it. I wanted to find something I could use as a tool to get those people down off those crosses, but there wasn’t much there. A tire tool, a spare, and a bag full of golf clubs. I leaned down deeper, seeing if maybe there was something way in the back, and when I did, my head felt as if it were flying apart.

  And as they say in the old detective movies, I fell into a deep, dark pit and it closed around me.

  “I didn’t mean to hit you that hard,” Timothy said.

  “Someone meant to,” I said. “What did you use?”

  “A golf club.”

  It was bright daylight and I was stretched out on the ground beside the Galaxy, which was parked on the grass next to the highway. I felt a little too warm.

  Timothy helped me to a sitting position and gave me a piece of fruit. After what we’d been eating, it tasted like heaven. I began feeling better immediately. Which is not to say the golf-ball-size lump (which was appropriate) had gone away.

  “I panicked,” Timothy said. “I was afraid it would go back to how it was. I’m thinking better now that I’ve had some food.”

  I looked for Sue Ellen and spotted her sitting in the shade of a big tr
ee, eating fruit. She was rocking a little and humming to herself.

  “She’s not doing so good,” Timothy said.

  He got an arm under me and helped me to my feet. I looked down the highway and saw nothing but more highway bordered by jungle and topped by blue sky.

  “I’ve got to go back to the Orbit,” I said.

  “I can’t do that,” Timothy said. “Neither can Sue Ellen.”

  “Just take me back. You don’t have to go in.”

  “We’ve come a long ways since I hit you.”

  “You owe me, Timothy.”

  He drove me back and waited while I went inside the drive-in. I thought maybe I could find something in a car there to use as a tool to get those fel las down, if they were still alive. But when I got inside, the crosses were down and they were gone.

  I didn’t stick around to look at the empty cars or the bones. I went outside to where the Galaxy was waiting, and we started on down the highway.

  Okay, gang, I’ll interrupt here to say that we stopped Grace’s story and told her that Bob and me were two of the folks on the cross, and Crier was the one that got us down. And when we finished that, she picked up with her adventures.

  But before we get to those, why don’t we take a brief intermission. My tongue is getting tired.

  THIRD REEL

  Grace Tells of Tremendous Gas Mileage,

  Shit Town, and Popalong Cassidy

  1

  So we went on down the highway, traveling only a few miles a day, stopping to look around, relieve ourselves and search for fruit and berries.

  I was amazed at the way the gas held out. It was like when we were in the drive-in and the electricity worked for no logical reason, and now here was the gas gauge showing us to be getting incredible mileage. It was going down all right, but slowly compared to the miles we were racking up.