that guy - part 4
Gus lay nearly flattened in the old recliner, feet up, and he peeled the peanut butter-side from the jelly-side making a V of the sandwich, sighted it up with the matching V of his filthy, white-sock-footed feet and squawked at Crawly (whose given name was, by surprising coincidence, Crawford, and then jokingly, as children will do, Crawdad - cause he was a small boy, prone to shuffling, and he wrinkled his face too often for any child to get away with - and, and finally Crawly - so yes - Crawly was in fact Crawly. No joke.), squawked and spit at Crawly, “Damn it to hell, put the lid back on the coffin, I’m trying to eat for Chrise-sakes!”
“Shit on you!”
“Put the god-damned lid back on, I can’t stand the stink of him!”
Cause Creepy didn’t say it but the rot gave him the jitters. The corpse was what, five weeks? Six weeks? And even with the makeshift embalming job they’d given him, lousy mess that was! The bastard was just falling apart in the box.
“If you don’t like it, why we got’im here in the firs’place? We could’a just as well cut’m up, slop’m off down the chute, send’m out double-poly - and fuck you yourself shit-stain!”
Gus flung the jelly-side at Crawly, hit him in the big-hair side of his teenage grunge head. “You don’t speak to your father like that. Put the lid back on, stop asking questions! Who’s telling you to ask questions? You got a place to sleep, food on the plate – and by the look of it, half the side of your head! Ha-Ha! Plus, this,” he waved a limp peanut butter-side at the coffin, “A lesson in poetry.”
“Crap, and anyhow, how much longer? I got two tickets for what-fuck-its'is, for Babe’n me.”
“Soon. I saw him last night. He had the door open. I went to see if Babe heard anything and there he was, like a mouse, nose out, tail straight. Soon.”
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