Charlie’s Pub was thick with stale cigarette smoke and slow-moving drunks. I was half-lit on cheap beer and worn thin as a rake from hearing Pee Wee gripe about the current state of things, so I passed my time by watching the trucker and the dancing dead guy.
The trucker was a big and beefy guy that looked as if he’d made a lifetime habit of shaving with a chainsaw. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the dead guy since his steaming bowl of chili had been set before him. Sitting in a corner booth, this trucker, he hovered over his meal like he’d done a stretch in the pen somewhere down the line.
As for the dancing dead guy, well, he was a different matter entirely. With his eyes closed and his head tipped back, that cat danced to absolutely no music at all. Not to mention that being dead for too long had left him worse for wear. Every so often, he’d come real close to the trucker’s table.
Pee Wee must’ve noticed me eyeing the situation. “Richy,” he said, “what the hell is wrong with the world?”
“How should I know?” I said. “The doctors and scientists can’t even figure it out.”
Pee Wee hopped down from his bar stool and waddled off toward the john. I emptied the rest of my beer, lit a smoke, and rapped my bottle three times on the bar top, letting Fred the bartender know I was due for another.
I looked over at the trucker. He was still sporting that evil eye, still coddling his chili. The dead guy danced on, oblivious to the chili ogre.
My thoughts drifted for a spell, and I thought about Pee Wee and his situation. I thought about how he always says that it’s hard enough being a dwarf in a giant’s world, let alone a dead dwarf in a world peopled by living monsters.
Pee scaled back up into his bar stool.
“That was quick.”
“False alarm,” he said, as if it was none of my business.
“Excuse me for being alive.”
If looks could kill, as they say, I would’ve been one less among the living.
“Ha-freaking-Ha!” Pee squeaked. “Get some new material, Richy. I just spit four more teeth out in the restroom, you jolly white dickhead. Do you have any idea what it’s like being a dead dwarf in a world peopled by--”
“Can it, Pee,” I said. “I think the big guy’s out to make his move.”
Pee hopped back down from the stool and toddled off toward the john again. I felt bad for the little guy. Once upon a time, he had a wife and three kids and a good thing going for him. Before he died and stayed alive.
Fred popped a cap and slid a cold one down the bar. I grabbed it and motioned for him to come over and have a word.
“How’s it hangin’, Richy?” Fred asked.
“Long, strong, and always keeping the right knee warm, Fred.”
We shared a weak laugh.
“Who’s the ugly chili-ape over in the corner?” I said.
“Jimmy Dean. Why?”
“You mean, like the sausage Jimmy Dean?”
“Yeah, sure. But he ain’t got nothin’ to do with makin’ no sausages. Drives a truck. Stops in time to time. Why ya askin’?” Fred’s brow furrow as he wiped his hands on a towel reeking of stale beer.
I looked at Fred, then over my shoulder to the chili fiasco in the making, and on back at Fred again. “Think you’re going to have a mess on your hands. That guy who’s dancing there, he’s coming mighty close to Jimmy Dean’s chili. . . . Hey, any sausage in that chili?”
Fred ignored me and peered back at the situation. He said, “That dead fella--Craig, I think he calls himself--he comes in here frilly groovin’ like that almost every damn night. He’s gettin’ to be awfully ripe, too. Reckon I should go over there’n say somethin’?”
“Don’t think you need to,” I said.
That was when Craig--while executing what I took to be some Madonna move or another--bumped hard into Jimmy Dean’s table.
“Hey-o, rotten top, what’s the big idea over here?” Jimmy said in a husky voice that matched his look.
Craig stopped dancing and said, “Oh, that’s rich. Rotten top. Do you write your own stuff, hillbilly bob, or do you and your gay bashing; dead hating cronies have meetings about this type of stuff? I’m also Jewish, by the way.”
Fred moved down the bar and said, “If you two are gonna start some static, take it on out front, already.”
The two paid him no notice.
Jimmy Dean stood up and moved his half-eaten helping of chili off to a side and said, “I could give two squirts what you do in your off-time, sissy pants, but what I do give a good for is that you assholes don’t know how to lay down and stay dead.”
“Take a number, big boy,” Craig said. “I’m used to being counted in the minority.”
“Minority.” Jimmy grunted. “You know how many of you are out there?” He stabbed a finger toward the front door. “You know how many decent, livin’ folk are in the street because you sons-a-bitches are takin’ up all the jobs and willin’ to work for next to nothin’?”
“Get off your soapbox, sweets. I didn’t come here to be preached to about current affairs. Especially by some grease-monkey, hilljack.”
“No, you’re here to stink up the joint and get rotten droppin’s in my chili.”
Pee Wee moved back up into his stool. “I knew those two would have it out,” he said.
He sounded funny, like he was talking through a mouthful of wet cloth. I looked over at him.
“Give me a toothy smile,” I said.
“Sit and spin, Richy. I just left all but one tooth in that restroom.”
“Surgeon general says that death is the leading cause of all gingivitis.”
He flipped me the bird with a stubby, bloated middle digit, climbed back down from the stool, and headed off toward the john again.
I hollered, “For the love of life, Pee, don’t masturbate while you’re in there. You might go and jerk off more than you bargained for.”
He played deaf.
I looked back to find Jimmy and Craig staring in my direction. Craig was practically leering at me. I turned forward and rapped my empty bottle three times on the bar top.
“I got nothing in your bowl of tomatoes and cow meat!” Craig picked up with, obviously not wanting an end to the exchange.
Jimmy chuckled and rested his bulky frame back down in the chair. He gave one look at his chili, belched, and said,
“Let me tell you a piece about where I come from.”
Craig tossed his hands in the air. “What makes you think I want to stand here and listen to your hillbilly drivel?”
Jimmy put his booted feet up on the table and leaned his chair back on two legs like a man who has a story to tell and all the time in the world to do it in.
“D.T.N.B.” And that was all Jimmy needed to say.
The few people left in the pub went silent; all attention was given to the ugly chili ogre in the corner. Craig was no exception to this rule. Why? Because D.T.N.B. was the big rumor-whore dry humping the nation.
“That’s about what I reckoned,” Jimmy said. “Now, you ready to hear me out?”
Craig didn’t reply.
“Good. You see, comes right down to it, suppose I oughta be thankin’ your kind. Why, if it wasn’t for you all I’d still be sittin’ down there in Brogan Field Penitentiary. Still beatin’ the manly faggots off with nothin’ save my fists and a wooden shank.” He flashed a yellow smile at Craig and tapped his finger on a decal sewn onto his tee shirt. “You still got brains enough to read? If not, it reads: D.T.N.B.”
“That’s an ugly ass rumor,” Craig put in. “Like you."
“You sure told me.” Jimmy said. He put a match to a cigar, puffed hard a few times, and then exhaled thick, bluish smoke into Craig’s face. He said, “Rumor? Just like God’s a rumor, right? Everybody with a book read education thought you dead heads gettin’ up after you’d just flat lined was some kinda miracle, didn’t they? Right off the bat they sure did. Thought you’s some almighty gift from God. All the way up till you freaks started stinkin’ up the place.”
Craig pulled up a chair.
“Keep your distance,” Jimmy said. “I still got chili needs finishin’.”
“So what would you do, mister perfected asshole, if your insides stopped moving but you didn’t? What would you do? I’ve really gotta hear this one.”
“I’d have the good sense to take a gasoline bath and go lay down somewhere with a dry book of matches. That’s what I’d do my own self.”
“D.T.N.B.?” Craig put in. Asking what a whole lot of people were dying to know.
“Stands for: Dead Things Not Buried. Good one, ain’t it. That’s what got me out of the pen. Government come down there and recruited a bunch of assholes to round you rotten tops up, take you all up north and burn the whole load of ya. Can you feature that?”
“Bullshit,” Craig said. “The government has minority laws in place for us. We have rights.”
“Believe what you want. I really don’t give a hoot. All I know’s I got me a trailer out in that parking lot choked with your kind.” Jimmy smashed his cigar in the bowl of chili.
“Thought you were going to finish that?” Craig said.
“What makes you think I’m not?”
The two glared at one another for a time.
Jimmy pulled the bowl in close and started grubbing. In between mouthfuls, he said, “Watch this.” He unclipped his cell phone from his belt, pushed a button, and said, “Yeah. Get your rears in here . . . Yeah, now. And bring some rope.” He set the phone on the table. “Now you’re gonna see."
“Fred,” Craig said, “telephone the police for me, would you please?”
“Touch the phone, Freddy,” Jimmy said, “and you’ll be roped up and in the back of that semi parked out front there. I got two big boys on the way in who’ll make good on it. Don’t smell at all pretty back in there, neither.
Fred kept his place behind the bar. And all of the sudden I was wishing that Pee had more teeth to fuss over in the john.
Two blue-uniformed men came tromping in the front door, every bit as big as Jimmy, just not as ugly. One held a burlap sack, the other a large rope looped around his shoulder like a cowboy. Each wore latex gloves.
“Isn’t anyone going to help me?” Craig hollered. “My God, people!”
Jimmy said, “How the hell your kind can still talk is somethin’ I reckon I’ll never get a rightful answer put to.”
No one tried to help.
“You heartless bitches!” Craig wailed, backing away.
Then the two uniformed men were at him, each one grabbing an arm. Craig jerked to free himself and, from inside his shirtsleeve, his entire right arm came away with a wet sound. Grayish liquid stained his shirt.
“Get that arm out of that long sleeve,” Jimmy said. “That’s just somethin’ he can try and hit us with later on.”
One of the two men produced a large knife from a sheath attached to his belt, and he swung it high and fierce and brought it down like some unwholesome butcher.
I looked away and lit a smoke. I looked back. The one without the knife tossed the sheared arm into the burlap sack. I felt the hot sting of vomit tease the back of my throat.
“Get a rope on him!” Jimmy spat.
“I need some help here, Jim!”
“I ain’t got no gloves on, Howard. Get Rog to help.”
“He’s done went and pulled his back again.”
“Damn you two, “Jimmy said, huffing and belching. “Here, I’ll put a boot down and you rope him.”
Howard bent to the task and said, “Damn, those burps smell like chili, man.”
“Just do your job, Howard.”
“This isn’t even our jurisdiction, Jim. We ain’t supposed to be roundin’ up dead this far south until--”
“Just shut your pie hole and do your job.”
I tamped my half-smoked cigarette out, swallowed the last of my beer, and by the time I looked back, they’d leaned Craig up on his feet. He was wrapped tighter than a mummy in those ropes. Head to toe.
“Nothin’ beats ropin’ steers and queers,” Jimmy hooted.
Howard and Rog hoisted Craig up and out the door like he’d never even been there. Nobody said a word to stop them.
Jimmy reached down and fingered the cigar poking out from his last few bites of chili, thoughtfully, as if he meant to pull it free and put a flame to it. He didn’t. Instead, he announced, “Get used to it. What you saw here, this is gonna be happenin’ a bunch more in the future. D.T.N.B. It means somethin’.” He lumbered for the door. Once he reached it, he turned back and said, “Guess I might as well ask, since I’m already here: Any other rotten tops in this place? . . . Maybe I should just have a quick look around.”
It was more than obvious that the few remaining drunks were far from dead. Ol’ Jimmy Dean just wanted to swing his sausage one more time before parting company.
I had the worst feeling that Pee was at that moment going to come waddling out from the john, griping about that last tooth. I had to say something for the little guy; something to get Jimmy and his goons on their way.
“Hey,” I stood up, stretched by back, “you mind showing me that truckload you got out there?”
Jimmy looked me up and down. “You wanna see a trailer choked with death, do ya?”
“Sure.” I said. “I mean, I can’t stand the smell more than the next guy, but yeah, I think I’d enjoy seeing all those rotten tops”--Jimmy showed me those yellow teeth--“stacked like Lincoln Logs. Sure.”
“Eager beaver, ain’t ya?” he said. “This is a good thing the government has us doin’, buddy.” He produced a wallet from his back pocket. The badge looked official enough.
“Hell,” he said, “we might just be a bunch of jailer assholes, but we do the job and we do it right.
“They got this program goin’ all over up north. Workin’ our way down, see? Guess you could say we’re sweepin’ the nation.” He laughed at his own joke. “Takin’ ‘em all up into Maine and burnin’ ‘em in what their callin’ Death Camps. Go figure. And I thought I was a asshole.” He looked hard at me. “Well, come on then, buddy.”
So, we went. On our way, I gave Fred a look that said, “Keep Pee Wee in that fucking john.” Fred nodded as if he heard every word my eyes had said.
***
It was a Mack semi, parked under the only overhead light in the parking lot, and printed on the side of the trailer, in formal lettering was D.T.N.B.
I wanted to puke. You see, in the pub, even on the way out the door, I was still trying to convince myself that these three were just a couple of roughnecks driving a pickup truck. Three jackasses out to stir a little trouble.
“You ain’t got sissy pants up in there yet?” Jimmy asked of the other two, pointing down at Craig.
“We were waiting on you. I told you that Rog threw his back a good one.”
“Damn reefer heads. Rog, I don’t give a good shit about your back. I hope it breaks in two just so I can laugh in your face about it. Now, lift that door, then lift that rotten top up in there, or you’ll be out of work come mornin’ time. This guy here’s eager to see what his tax dollars are workin’ toward. So get it done.”
Rog chucked me a look to strike me dead, and then proceeded to roll open the trailer door. What lay in wait was enough to bring a tear to my eye. By the tiny runner lights at the top of the trailer’s interior, I could make out a hundred or more bodies heaped like a messy pile of cordwood. Men, women, babies. All rough-handled and arms twisted and legs bent back on themselves and necks cranking at terrible angles. Cries came from all over the place in there. Some loud as shrieks and others muffled by the sheer weight mounded on top of them. It seemed even the dead were grudging death.
I thought I spotted Pee wrapped up in there, and my heart all but stalled in my chest. It turned out to be a young boy.
“You cryin’ over there?” Jimmy wanted to know.
I wiped my eye and told a lie. “The children. I used to have a little one.”
Jimmy patted me on the shoulder. “I can feel that, buddy. I used to have me a whore sweeter’n whip cream on a chocolate bunny’s asshole. She’s long dead now. Had to burn her up.” He poked me in the ribs with his elbow.
Howard and Rog picked Craig up from the ground and swung him into the trailer like yesterday’s garbage. He landed with a thick thud.
“Go get me a torch.” Jimmy said.
Howard walked up to the cab of the truck and soon came back with a flashlight and he handed it to Jimmy.
“Check this out,” Jimmy said.
The flashlight only showed me the gore in clearer detail. The way the ropes embedded into their bloated bodies. How the ones on bottom seeped rancid fluids. Jimmy stopped with the light and picked out a single hand reaching up from the skeins of rope. The fingers were twisted and bent like a Nazi symbol.
"Did that myself,” Jimmy said. “What do you say about that, buddy?”
I didn’t say a word.
“Well, well, would you take a gander at who we have here.” Jimmy said.
It was Craig, of course. The beam of light was trained on his left eye, which was about the only thing showing through all those ropes. A single opaque eye, glaring. He looked hard at me. Accusing me of not helping him.
“I’m headed back in,” I said.
Jimmy fished his wallet from his back pocket, produced a card, and handed it to me. “You ever have a problem with a dead thing not buried, you just call the number right there on that card. You hearin’ me, buddy?”
“Sure. I hear you.” I went inside.
***
I sat down at the bar and took a long drink of my beer. I lit a smoke with shaky hands. The rattle and hiss of the Mack semi pulling out of the parking lot filled the small Pub like some opening band to the very day of reckoning.
“What did they show you?” Fred whispered.
I gave him a look. He knew what I was saying.
Pee scaled back up into his bar stool. I couldn’t help but to grin.
“Don’t even ask what took me so long,” he said, sounding like an old man with his dentures out.
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Yeah, well, I could see it in your eyes.”
“I’ve been looking straight ahead. How could you see anything in my eyes?”
He grunted, said, “Richy, do you know how hard it is being a dead dwarf in a world peopled by living monsters?”
I peered at him for a second or two. He matched my look.
Then I said, “You know something, Pee? I think I do.”
He lowered his brow and said, “You’re a real dickhead, Richy. Do you know that? A jolly white dickhead.”
I laughed and drained my beer and rapped it three times on the bar top.
