Mission
A
homeless guy panhandling downstairs had told me this was where the
old lady lived. The one eating all the livestock. The one who might
be my missing grandmother. If this was her, and I thought it was,
she needed help. I knocked again. Sometimes old people took a long
time to get to the door. I was just finally turning away when the
cover slid away from the peephole.
“Yeah?!”
A voice roughened by hard use.
I
had not decided what to say. "Um." My mind was empty.
“Three
seconds.”
“Ms.
Johnson,” I said desperately, “I think I'm your grandson.”
Silence.
Then the door swung open. There she stood, Granny from the Beverly
Hillbillies. Instead of a corn cob pipe she had a can of Bud.
“No,”
she said and moved to slam the door.
“I'm
pretty sure. My mother was...”
“I
believe you; don't want to talk.” She bounced the door off the hand
I put out to stop it.
“And
I heard about the cow. I'm curious. How...”
She
rolled her eyes and took a swig, stepping aside to give me room. As
soon as I was in she slammed the door hard enough to shake dust off
the knickknacks on the shelves, if there had been any. There weren't.
A battered wooden table with a couple of chairs was all the furniture
in the front room. The only thing on the table was a 4-inch ceramic
horse, which was, frankly, hideous. She set the beer can down beside
it.
I
cleared my throat.
“I
don't know how to say this, Grandma. I hear you've been eating
animals. Raw, whole, live. Is this true?”
For
a moment she just stared. My eyes flicked to the doorway as I
measured my chances of escape. Then she laughed, a true belly laugh,
improbably loud coming from her. It went on and on. Gradually she
subsided. She wiped her eyes.
“Raw,
sure. Whole? No. Live? No. I did eat a dead fly. The spider might
have been in a coma. The rest of them were ceramic, and good riddance
to the lot. The cat was pink, nuff said. The dog had
Heartfelt-Moments eyes. The cow was an abomination. People make the
most disgusting crap imaginable. I dispose of it.” She pointed at
the center of the table.
“And
tomorrow? Tomorrow I'm going to take care of that obnoxious horse.
You watch me.”
Publ. Daily Cabal
No comments:
Post a Comment