20
Joe McEejit lived with his mother, Merideth (pronounced, Joe stressed, Merry Death) in a trailer way in the back of the Stately Swamp Mobile Home Commons just off the Tamiami Trail. The trailer park reeked of meth-making, and various colored clouds of smoke puffed from every other trailer. Rupert rode shotgun in Joe’s 1992 Jimmy Yukon down a cracked paved road that wound through the park. They passed a man covered in what looked like tar being handcuffed over the hood of a tan, rusted-out 80s Chevy Cavalier. As they passed, Rupert heard him yell, “If I had some crack, I wouldn’t be out here stealing . . . ” Joe didn’t notice. But Rupert’s attention shifted the instant they drove around a double-decker trailer creation on a turn. Not a trailer designed to be a two-story habitat, but two single-wide trailers stacked and welded together, with a chain ladder going from the bottom to the top. But that wasn’t what impressed Rupert. As they rounded the curve, he could see the back of the makeshift structure, over which was painted as a massive faded rebel flag with the words “The South Will Rise Agian.” The a was a tiny, less-faded later edit a fat Sherpie marker between the i and n.
About thirty seconds later, they pulled up next to what Rupert presumed to be the McEejit household. A broken fiberglass birdbath stood in what passed as a front yard and a red Hodaka Combat Wombat motocross dirt bike leaned up against the side of the trailer. It looked youth-sized and old.
As Rupert followed Joe through the door, he was overcome, not by meth cooking, for once, but the smell of baking cookies. An old woman with auburn-faded-to-rust-colored hair came out from behind the connected counter island that separated the kitchen from the dinning/living room area.
“Who the fuck is this asshole? Is that a purse?”
Joe handed her two Golden Tickets to Crack Planet and Rupert and his man purse were forgotten. She squealed like a non-crack-smoking old woman who’d won a trip to Vegas with an unlimited supply of nickels to play the slots, except she likely smoked crack and the slots in this scenario shilled out free crack.
“Crack Planet, here we come!” Then she stopped. “How’d you get two tickets, Joe? What did you do . . . ?” She looked about to come at him, but Joe threw his hands up and pointed at Rupert, who braced himself for a light pummeling. But she stopped and looked up at him.
“Who the fuck are you? You’re fucking huge.”
Rupert opened his mouth, but Joe spoke.
“Mom, this is Rupert.” He explained the deal they’d made and she contemplated it for a moment.
“I hear Crack Planet’s pretty amazing,” Rupert said, voice low and polite.
Merideth shot him a look, and then Joe, who was occupied with his phone.
“Goddamn it, Joe, put that fucking thing away. We have a guest.”
Joe slid his phone into his back pocket. Merideth said nothing else, but only returned to the kitchen and opened the oven. The fresh cookie smell wafted stronger, warmer. Rupert passed Joe a dubious look, but Merideth returned with a tray stacked with still-steaming cookies and set it on the table. Her shirt neckline was a little low—not embarrassing-cleavage low, but low enough to reveal a tattoo high on her chest that said “Don’t Fuck with Gramma,” embellished with a rose and a leaping manatee, which Rupert doubted they did. It looked old and faded, as if she’d gotten it long before she’d reached the conventional age for grandmotherhood. That was a little unsettling, though not unexpected.
Rupert thought of Bucket jumping onto—into—the deceased, definitely-not-leaping manatee, but was snapped back to the present when Merideth said: “Well, let’s get cookin’ then. But first, have some cookies.”
Rupert picked up a cookie, still warm between his fingers, and looked at it. Chocolate peanut butter, he thought, though he was a little leery. They stood in a meth lab trailer with an old woman who cooked meth and with whom Rupert did not want to fuck. He considered declining like he’d declined Bucket’s offer of post-cook coffee.
Joe grabbed one and took a bite. He had his phone out again and thumbed through something or other, then looked over at Rupert. “Oh, they’re clean. Mom would never put that shit into her cookies, right mom?”
“You’re goddamn right.”
Rupert took a bite and the chocolate-peanut-buttery goodness slid down his gullet.
It was the single best cookie he’d ever eaten in his life.
“Oh my God,” he said through another bite.
Merideth grinned, the gums of her dentures the same color as her hair. And then they all stood there for a moment—Joe eating cookies and thumbing his phone, Rupert eating cookies, his mind blank, and Merideth standing there, enjoying the fruits of her labor. But the quiet filled only with cookie-chewing was too much for Rupert’s still-delicate social composure, and he said: “So, you have grandchildren?”
“Fuck no,” she said, as if she really meant it.
Silence but for the cookie chewing. Then:
“Did you hear about that fella, tried to shoot Trump at a rally in Vegas?” Merideth made small talk.
Rupert eyes lit up. “Did he?”
“No, thank God.”
“Oh.” Rupert wondered what ridiculous, hypothetical garbage the country could have been spared, should the worst happen in November. Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, perhaps. Maybe ending ANWR drilling restrictions or rolling back environmental regulations. Suppose he would increase the likelihood of using nuclear weapons again for the first time since 1945. Or, Rupert thought, possibly he’d oversee the longest government shutdown during a psychotic temper tantrum in order to get billions of dollars for this completely unnecessary wall he’d keep talking about between the United States and Mexico that no one but a handful of heartland bigots would actually want or think we need. Maybe he’d legitimize white supremacy, or use mass shooting victims as photo ops. Perhaps he’d politicize or monetize a deadly global pandemic. All predicated on the inexorable deterioration of the man’s brain, as he’s clearly in the early stages of dementia, in addition to being illiterate and clinically narcissistic.
Rupert snickered to himself—he had a pretty wild imagination sometimes, even in this godforsaken upside-down state.
Merideth waddled down the hall and behind a curtain on the other end of the trailer. Rupert and Joe both grabbed another cookie each and followed her.
There, Rupert was confronted with a massive, immaculate, complex system of tubes and stands and glass beakers. It was awe-inspiring.
“Wow, Meri . . . Merry-Death, you did all this?”
She stood with her fists on her hips, nodding and admiring her own creation. Then:
“Joe’s lucky I let him near it.”
Joe nodded, dispassionately resigned to his complete incompetency.
“But, I like bakin’ better than cookin’, so fuckknuckle there’s gotta do it. He does okay. He only fucks it up now and then.”
A faint ringing issued from Joe’s back pocket, and then a voice: “Holly’s Hush Hush Lingerie, how may I help you?” Joe nonchalantly slipped his hand into his back pocket and hung up the call without removing the phone.
Merideth smacked Joe upside the head. Joe hardly seemed to notice.
Rupert chewed the remainder of his final cookie.
“Well,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Let’s get started.”
Rupert took notes as they worked, and during a quiet moment when Merideth wasn’t instructing, Joe asked Rupert:
“Hey, Rupe, have you heard of this government-funded meth work program?”
Rupert froze.
“No.” He returned to mixing the pseudoephedrine with the red phosphorus and hydriodic acid. He realized he had begun to believe the D.E.A.T.H. program didn’t exist.
“I guess it’s some kind of thing that puts Methheads to work as a form of rehabilitation. Their pay is accumulated and once they get clean, they get a lump sum to go start new lives.”
“With some kind of supervision, of course,” Merideth added.
“Hmm,” Rupert said. “Sounds interesting. Are you thinking about checking it out?”
“Well, Mom wants me to,” Joe said, and Merideth nodded.
“Get clean, get the cash, and then he can have it back.”
“Have it back . . . ” Rupert said.
“His habit.”
“Of course,” Rupert replied. For the first time, this whole scene struck him as a little depressing. Joe seemed like an okay guy.
“Supposed to be a lot of cash,” Joe said. Rupert looked at him—he was thumbing through his phone again.
“I’m going to maybe check it out tomorrow. Wanna come?”
“Sure.” Rupert said impassively, and he prepared to filter out the red phosphorus.
Sock it to me...