Balls shook his head, disgusted. "Naw, naw, Dicky, ya don't understand. This ain't just reg-lar furniture. It's hair-looms. We'd make a killin' hockin' it all to the antique dealer's."
"Wow. Hair-looms... "
"Yeah, man, but—damn. Where we gonna find a U-Haul ta pinch at this hour?" Balls asked aloud just as Dicky pulled the ‘Mino into the back lot of the Crossroads...
They both stared astonished at the object now lit up in the ‘Mino's headlights: a beat-to-holy-hell red pickup truck with a U-Haul hooked to the back.
Dicky said in a hush: "Dang, Balls. You must be cyclic."
"Dang straight. Now you just pull right alongside that pickup... while's I hitch that U-Haul up ta our back bumper... "
««—»»
It was a shame about the fellow in the white shirt. Lud had enjoyed the man's conversation to no end. Not quite sure what to do with him now...
But ole Lud knew he'd think of something that would help the man find his true purpose in life—his Kantian actualization of self and the Godly heart within his existenz.
Lud finally did get his carry-out burger (which, by the way, was composed of fifty percent ground beef and the rest a combination of ground possum and deer), and now it was time to get back up to Maryland and return to the business of his work for God on High. He paid his tab amongst the tavern's riffraff and exited out the back door with his bagged burger.
Well ain't that a fine how-do-ya-do? Lud thought, stopping in his tracks. His beat-to-holy-hell red pickup truck was still there, but the U-Haul connected to it was missing.
Indeed, God worked in strange ways. Lud was not thwarted, for the U-Haul could not be traced to him. But I wish I could see the look on the face of whoever stole it, once he opens the back.
Lud got in the truck and drove away.
Was it a dream? The Writer wasn't sure, rocking and becloaked in spongelike blackness. He was dreaming of a stench—something gone to rot—and the stench, somehow, was proof of existentialism's utter failure as a true philosophy. There was no Kierkegaardian "leap of faith," no confrontation of existence to unveil essence. It was all just rotten meat...
In the dream the Writer struggled against bindings at his wrists and ankles, and could only make choking sounds when he tried to call out, for a gag had been tied through his teeth. All the while the darkness jostled around him. He considered his symbolic function in the dream: he the human intellectual unit straining against the strictures of a naturalistic environment. Can't move, can't see, can't speak. My God, I'm like Kafka's "Hunger Artist!" My free will has been suppressed!
And, hence, so had his innate impulse to seek actualization. In the dream, the Writer, now, was a living symbol.
Which, of course, was all bullshit. There was no philosophical symbology, for God's sake. There was no meaning that existed behind objective truths. Nor was the Writer in the grip of a dream. He was in the back of a stolen U-Haul and he'd been knocked unconscious and tied up by a psychopath who, in years to come, would be dubbed by the police as "Mr. Torso." This, however, he could have no way of knowing yet, nor could he know that said U-Haul, by an ironic happenstance worthy of Jean Paul Sartre's "The Wall," had been stolen yet again by two more psychopaths named Balls Conner and Dicky Caudill.
The Writer would find out in due time what the rotten smell really was...
"Dang," Dicky complained at the traffic light that would take them onto Governor's Bridge Road. "What's that fuckin' smell?"
Balls leaned his head out the ‘Mino's window and sniffed. His lips puckered within the redneck goatee. "Shee-it, Dicky. Damned if I know." He narrowed his eyes through a rumbling pause. "You thank it's comin' from the U-Haul?"
"Naw. Probably a deer're somethin' died in the woods. But nows that ya mention it... I wonder what's in the U-Haul... "
The light changed, then Dicky turned the ‘Mino onto a forest-lined road which seemed to plummet.
"Didn't feel like there were much in it when I'se hitched it up ta our ball," Balls offered. He sniffed the air again and made a face in the dashlight-tinged dark. "But it don't make no difference what's in it. We'se'll dump it all at Crafter's house ta make room fer what we pinch."
"Yeah," came Dicky's sophisticated concurrence.
The narrow road could've been an abstractive esophagus which was swallowing them into darkness that just kept getting darker. The night was digesting them. Balls snuck a crotch-squeeze when Dicky wasn't looking. For some reason the recollection of cranking the manual drill into Ida's pregnant gut still had him all hot'n bothered. I'se gonna have to do that again, he told himself. Drillin' pregnant chicks in the belly's a damn sight more fun than playin' cards. "Man, Dicky, I'm chompin' at the bit ta see what Crafter's got. How far ya thank his house is?"
The ‘Mino slowed at the conclusion of Balls' query. The headlights illumined a barely visible turn-off, and there stood a mailbox peppered with buckshot holes. E. CRAFTER read the little sign atop. Dicky grinned. "Here we are, brother."
They pulled in to find themselves driving up a steep incline through woods even more dense. An owl hooted, and they could see fireflies dotting the forest on either side. Finally, then, the road emptied at the top of a massive hill, and there sat the house. Dicky idled the car toward the front door, then cut the big engine.
The nightsounds amplified, engulfing them. Balls and Dicky stared upward.
"Shee-it," Dicky muttered.
"You got that right."
The house stood as a narrow, three-story ruin that looked like it might fall over. The paint had long since blistered off its plank walls, showing only weathered gray wood. A front porch, if you wanted to call it that, had actually collapsed at one end, while the screens that had once enclosed it hung in tatters. The many trees around the house were gnarled, overly twisted, and appeared to be dying.
Balls shook his head. "This place makes my Daddy's shack look like fuckin' Graceland. What a dump."
"Ain't no one been livin' in there fer years by the looks of it. Your buddy Tooler was pullin' yer leg."
"Guess yer right but—shee-it—Bud Tooler? Man, he was a straight up guy, had his head on straight. Ain't no reason fer him ta lie or git his info so fucked up."
Dicky smirked. "Head on straight? I thought you said this guy raped a chick in a Good Humor truck'n got caught 'cos he went back ta steal ice cream cones."
"Tastee-Pops," Balls corrected. "You know, the things that push out the cardboard tube? But, yeah, I guess Tooler's full'a shit."
They both got out before the monstrosity of a house. The moon glowed a sickly mucus-yellow right behind it. Balls passed Dicky a flashlight. "We gots ta have a look anyways, I guess."
"Cain't hurt."
Balls looked over his shoulder. "Aw, but let's empty the U-Haul first."
"Shore."
When Balls unfixed the latch and swung the U-Haul's door open—