If youve made it this far, thanks for being a loyal reader.
Page 20 of 24
I was scarred, now scarred for life. One of my eyes was in the process of bein healed from chemicol contact with the old basterd. Now the othor woud have this image forevor burned onto it. Who was that womon, anyway?
I stumboled to the bathroom, ignoring Granfather's evil metallic grunting voice callin out to me: "BWAH! COME BACK HEAH, BWAH!"
His hair was combed and set like it was the othor day, like William H. Macy's charactor in Boogie Nights and as allways his ovorwhelming naturol stench filled the trailer as usuol exept in this case it also reeked of cheap men's aftershave like it was fermeting.
She gave a litle shriek of suprise, and then said, "Will you excuse me?"
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"Well," she began in a soft timid voice, "I heard you left work early to come home, and so I thought I'd pop by to get my laptop...as well as any other personal items of mine you might..."
I cut in, "Oh, them, they're inside the laptop bag."
"Thank you, Whal-ter."
I said to her, "Who is that lady out there?"
She pursed her lips and replied, "I don't know, Whel-ter. Just so you know, I also walked in on your grandfather with his lady friend as well, just a few minutes ago. I walked past them, and well, I came in the bathroom here for a bromide."
"We dont have no bromides," I said, "I don't even know what a bromide is."
"Okay," she admited, "I ran in here and threw up."
"What are you doing here now?"
"Well, I had to tinkle. So will you excuse me, then?"
It was only then i noticed that indeed she was sittin on the bowl, her ample fleshy heft hangin ovor the sides as her warty toadlike head cocked at me like a cherry propped on top of a stout scoop of soft vanila icecream that sat drooping ovor the rim of a white porcelian cone. I guess I woud of puked agian if I coud of, but I was too exausted even for the dry heaves.
"Oh! I'm so sorry!" I said.
I ran out and back into the hallway where Granfather, nakad as the Ace of Hearts (exept of course for his cardbord neck cone) was just plodding past me in his slow loping apelike gait, puffin on a filterless Lucky.
"A DONE TOLD YOU, 'COME BACK HEAH BWAH," BUT YOU IGNORED ME, YUH DUMBASS, he gruffed, harshley elbowing me as he passed. He pointed to the bathroom door toword my boss.
"NOW YOU DONE SEE'D HER NEKKID AS WELL. ARE YUH HAPPY?"
As a mattor of fact, NO I was NOT happy indeed. Still in a daze I stumboled back out to the livingroom. There was a small gnomelike, allmost froglike woman watchin TV in the foldout bed, with the covers and sheets bunched arround her knees, tryin not to look nearly as riddiculuos as I know she must of looked and felt. It must be prety awfull to be in bed with Granfather. Id guess the next worce thing woud be being SEEN in bed with Granfather. She had coarse sloppy black hair and thick round black hornrim glasses. She looked sort of like a female version of deadpan comic Al Franken. A tape of Eddie Murphy's claymation sitcom, "The P.J.'s" was playing on the VCR. She staired at me like a frightened frog.
On a hunch I went back inside the shed where Id found him in the othor day, and there he was, perched once agian inside the big wheelbarrow sittin on a bed of steyrofoam peanuts, listening to the radio.
He bit his lip so half his beard went in his mouth and said to me, "Grampy must of done somptin bad I reckon."
"I knows I ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer," Junoir drawled, "But I tole Grampy thet radiation come from the sun, not the earth. But he tole me it already hapened to YOUR scrotum, Walter.
"I kipt askin questions till Grampy finaly said 'JUNIOR GIT YO' ASS IN THE GOLLDANG WHEELBURRUH 'FORE I WHUP YOU WITH A HAY RAKE."
I coud not listen to it no more.
Also by this time was so mad at Junoir that I just went back in the house. I immagine we all have our levels of stupiddity. I guess this is how exasporated people must feel about me on my job. As I walked away from him he called out from the wheelbarrow, "Is it true? Is your scrotom OK? Cause just thinkin about it is makin mine all cold and small."
When came back in the first thing I saw was the strange womon still sittin in the couch bed watchin the tape of "The P.J.'s" on TV. I walked past her. Granfather was hacking and clearrin his throat in the bathroom. My boss was standin in the hall wearin a danm bath towel and carryin her clothes in a ZipLoc bag cause she threw up all over them and had nothin else to wear.
"How did you find our place?" I asked her.
"Stu, in Marketing gave me directions here," she said, and then suddonly she grabbed my arm and whispored to me in a barfy breathed low voice, "WHAAL-ter, your grandfather is ghastly! There's no way he can be human!"
I said to her, (perhaps not politely), "Thanks for tellin me somthin I already know."
"He has yellow eyes! With red pupils!"
"Anything else?"
"Yes! Plenty!...I mean, No, I'll be going now....May I borrow this towel?"
"Keep it," I said. I walked her out to the front door, and she hapened to look at the othor woman still sittin there in the livingroom foldout couch. The two toadlike women, one wrapped only in a sheet, the othor just in a towel, sort of nodded at eachothor, silently respectfuly, and a bit warily, much like I imagine that two diferent species of incompatible tropicol tree frogs must do when they akwardly happen to meet one anothor by mistake on the edge of each othor's territory down in the Amazon.