The Complete Drive-In

1

The Popcorn King was happy.

He was a smiley kind of guy-with both mouths and he could talk that trash. I mean, say you’re in this little universe of the drive-in, and maybe we should say the smaller universe of your car or truck, and all you’ve got is movies. You got no real food, and you got soft drinks for liquid, you’re hypoglycemic to the max and your hope don’t work no more. All you got is this voice, sleek as a starlet’s thighs, soft as duck fluff, as intoxicating as rum and honey. A voice that oozes out of the speaker and flows in your ears, jells around your brain like candied fruit.

The voice of the Popcorn King, telling you how it is, offering you truth, telling you he loves you and will feed you and take care of you, and all you’ve got to do is love him back, and all you’ve got to do is understand that what you see on the screens are the visions of gods, the way it is, ole buddy, and the manner in which you should live, for so speaks the messiah, the Popcorn King.

Yeah, the Popcorn King was happy.

And he was crazy.

And he helped make everyone else more crazy than they had become.

Back up.

Speculate.

This is how I think it came about; the birth of the Popcorn King.

So Willard and Randy go up on the roof during the storm, wandering up there because they are nuts on junk food and high on a kind of love for one another that isn’t quite homosexual, nor exactly the passion of friendship. They’re parasites feeding off one another, trying to make something whole out of two halves.

They wander up there on the roof after they have cleared out the concession with the knife, after they have killed. And maybe somewhere deep down, they realize this is something they don’t like, this killing. Or maybe, like me, they’re so high on sugar it all seems okey-dokey. Or maybe they just didn’t give a fuck all along.

Well, you add all that together, toss in their insecurities, and what you have here are a couple of buddies a couple bricks shy a full load. Or to put it in Yankee terms, “They are on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

There’s this storm, and it crackles and hisses and fizzles and pops, brightens the sky. Sheet-metal thunder rolls. And these guys up there on the roof are working off little more than the impulses of the primitive brain; that part that takes care of raw survival.

And so they yell at the storm (they don’t like the noise, see), call it names. And perhaps by design, because the B-string gods up there are looking for a twist in the plot, or maybe they just don’t like being talked to like that… and maybe there are no B-string gods and my dreams were just dreams and Bob and I only thought we saw tentacles poking out of the blackness and it’s nothing more than an accident that this bolt pops out and zaps the living shit out of our boys, makes them one creature full of power.

Down through the trap they go, smoking like bacon too long in a pan. And they are no longer angry and confused, but they’re not just well done either. They have been given power, and this power has straightened their confused asses right out. It has moved through them like a quick, happy cancer, spreading little roots of energy from head to head, from toes to toes.

They are one sho’-ugly critter now, but they are not aware of that. They feel pretty. In their mind’s eye they are darling. So sweet with that one eye in the center of the top forehead, and the other head without eyes, just two gaps dripping ooze, puffing smoke.

Their brains no longer work independently of one another; this happy cancer has spread its tendrils through them so that their gray matter operates as one. Randy’s eyes are Willard’s eyes. Willard’s muscles respond to Randy’s needs. So, instead of they and them, these two are now one, and say at his feet are a few stray popcorn kernels that are blossoming in the electrical current, popping high up to greet him (“take me, take me”), and he thinks, uh-huh, happy little subjects, these popcorns, and he names himself the Popcorn King.

The Popcorn King is very happy because he feels as if he has been told the ultimate joke by the ultimate jokester, and he has understood the punch line perfectly.

He knows now he is the Chosen One. Feels that what led him up that ladder, onto the roof, was more than just confusion. It was ordained. Destiny.

Yeah, that’s it. He thinks it again. Destiny.

He can feel a network of raw power spiraling through him, replacing the blood and bones inside him with something new; something that makes him master of his flesh (tattoos wiggle like maggots in dung).

The air around him hums (no particular tune) with that blue electrical current. (And while I’m hypothesizing here, sports fans, let’s have some of those paper bats-now real-flap around his head, let’s have some paper skulls-now real-roll at his feet and nip at his heels like happy pups.) He walks among the carnage of the concession, sees: the manager with his face through the counter glass, his blood having splashed the wrapped and boxed candies and congealed like cold gravy; the little girl that was kicked to death, looking like strawberry pulp; other dead folks, including the Candy Girl (later I would see her corpse in the window, hanging there like a prize cold cut in a butcher’s display); and he moves through the blue air, into the film room, (the bats at his head, the skulls at his feet), sees that there are three projectors, pointing like ray guns in three directions at three six-story screens.

He goes over to one of the little slots by one of the projectors and looks out, sees The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He goes to another and looks out, sees the tail end of I Dismember Mama. He examines the last projector slot, sees The Toolbox Murders.

He sighs contentedly. This is his domain. His throne room. His damn concession stand. And all those people out there watching those movies are his subjects. He is their King, their Popcorn King. And he is a fun kind of guy.

But what’s this? A bunch of fat men on motorcycles are riding around and around in circles out front of his palace, calling him names (had one of them actually called him “dog puke”? Sure sounded like it), yelling for him to come out.

The little people are upset. A rebellion is brewing. The peasants are revolting.

Time to nip this crap in the bud.

So he steps out with the gun fused to his hand, the tattoos shucking and jiving like snakes on hot glass…

And from there, I have given you an eyewitness account.

When it was over and the tattoos had settled down, and the King had waved, he went inside the concession and closed the door. And Bob went out of the back of the camper, sneaky-like, cranked the truck, turned right, bumped over the dead biker and his bike, worked us to the far end, turned right at the fence, found a front row in what was called the East Screen of Lot A. We parked in a slot next to a big yellow bus with CHRIST IS THE ANSWER IF YOU ASK THE QUESTION, THAT’S WHAT I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU written messily on the side in what looked like rust-colored paint. And underneath in dirty-white letters, much smaller, was AIN’T BEING A BAPTIST GRAND?

On the other side of us was an old Ford. It looked empty. The occupants were probably dead, or had joined up with some others and gone to a new location.

Bob got a speaker off the post, more out of habit than anything else, put it in the window, turned the dial high as it would go, and we watched, or rather looked at, The Evil Dead. Ash, the character in the movie, was sticking his hand into a mirror, and the mirror had turned into some kind of liquid.

We sat there feeling numb until Bob said, “I don’t think coming over here is going to help much, but I’m sort of in the mood for a change of scenery… Maybe out of sight, out of mind… And I don’t think his tattoos can come this far… too much distance between the concession and us.”

“Agreed,” I said.

It wasn’t much, but comparatively, this was the best part of the drive-in for us to hide out. For some reason, East Screen had had a lot less badness going on. There had certainly been some stuff happening over there; Crier, who knew everything had told us about it, but compared to the rest of Lot A, and certainly B, it was pretty tame business.

The movies changed as usual, and I could imagine the Popcorn King in the film room, going from projector to projector, switching them as needed. (Didn’t he need sleep?) That part of Willard that had been a projectionist was coming into play; he knew how to keep things going.

Bob and I dozed a lot, and when we were so hungry we couldn’t take it anymore, we’d go to the camper and lie down and eat, chewing slowly, sometimes talking if we had something to say, listening to the movies filtering into the camper from the speaker in the cab window. It got so I was having a hard time remembering what life was like before the drive-in. I could remember Mom and Dad, but couldn’t quite see their faces, recall how they moved or talked. I couldn’t remember friends, or even girlfriends whose faces had haunted my dreams at home. My past was fading like cold breath on a mirror.

And the movies rolled on.

At certain intervals, the old yellow bus next door to us would crack its back door, and out of it would come this rail-thin man in a black coat, white shirt and dark tie, and with him was this bony, broad-shouldered, homely woman in a flowered housedress and false leather slippers. She walked without picking her feet up much.

They’d walk toward the center of the row, and there would be others there, and they would form a crowd, and the man in the black coat, white shirt and dark tie would go before them and talk, move his arms a lot, strut back and forth like a bantam rooster. He’d point at the movies now and then, then at the group. He’d hop up and down and stretch his facial muscles and toward the end of this little exercise he’d be into much hand-waving you’d think he was swatting marauding bees.

When he tuckered out, everyone would gather around him in a team huddle, and stay that way for some time. When they broke up, they all looked satisfied. They’d stand around while the rail-thin man bowed his head and said some words, then each went on about his limited business.

Every time this little event occurred, the couple coming out of the bus, I mean, and Bob saw them, he’d say, “Well, gonna be a prayer meetin’ tonight.”

It got so it irritated me, him making fun of them, and I told him so.

“They’ve got something,” I said. “Faith. It’s been ages since any of these folks have eaten… not since the King took over the concession, and look how they act. Orderly. With strength and faith. And the rest of the drive-in…”

You could hear screams and chainsaws frequently, and not just from the screen. Now and then a shot would puncture the air and there would be the sounds of yelling and fighting. But not here at East Screen.

“They’ve got food somewhere, Jack. Faith ain’t gonna take care of an empty belly. Trust me on the matter.”

“You’d have to have faith to know anything about it,” I said.

“And I guess you do?”

“No, but I’d like to.”

“It’s all a lie, Jack. There ain’t no magic formula, no way to know how to go. Astrology, numerology, readings in tea leaves and rat droppings, it’s all the same. It don’t amount to nothing. Nothing at all.”

Crier came by to see us.

We were out leaning on the front bumper of the truck, watching the people over at North Screen running around like savages, killing one another, wrecking cars. Bob had his faithful twelve-gauge companion by his side, just in case radical company from over there should come by and want to kill or eat us.

None did.

I figured the reason for this was threefold. Each screen had sort of become its own community, and strange as it was, each tended to stick together; they liked killing and eating their own. Least at this point. Two, Bob had the shotgun and he looked like a man who would use it, and there was the fact that the Christians, as I had come to think of them, had formed their own patrol. The patrol walked around the perimeters of East Screen regularly, armed mostly with tire irons, car aerials and the like, but also a gun or two. The third reason they left us alone was just a surmise on my part. I figured they were patient and were saving us for dessert.

Well, anyway, as I was saying, we were out leaning on the bumper of the truck, and along comes Crier. He looked bad. His lips were cracked and his eyes had a hollow look, as if they were shrinking in their sockets. He was using the hoe handle to keep from falling over. He seemed to concentrate heavily just to put one foot after another. I wanted to give him a piece of jerky bad, but Bob, anticipating my thinking, looked at me quickly and shook his head.

Crier came up and sat on the bumper next to Bob, let his head hang, got his breath. “I hope you boys aren’t going to kill and eat me,” he said almost pleasantly.

“Not today,” Bob said.

“Then you wouldn’t have anything I could eat, would you? I feel like fly-blown shit. You boys look pretty good. Maybe you got some food.”

“Sorry,” Bob said. “We did have, but we ate it. We saved a little of what we got at the concession each time, but now that’s gone. No more stash.”

“Well,” said Crier, “I always ask. It don’t hurt to do that. Getting so there ain’t no use my doing this anymore, this walking around to report the news. Everyone is news now, and no one wants to listen anymore. They just want to kill or eat me. This hoe handle has saved my life a dozen times. Maybe more. I did get beat up pretty bad, though. My ribs are cracked, I think. Hurts when I breathe too deep or walk too fast.”

“What can you tell us about the Popcorn King?” I asked.

“He went in there and he hasn’t come out. Nobody can get in there neither. That blue light around it would fry an egg. I know, I seen an old boy get his hand burned off trying to go in there after the King and some food.”

“Then why doesn’t it kill the King?” I asked.

“Don’t get me to lying. I ain’t got the slightest,” Crier said. “Maybe conditions were just different then.”

“So, that’s it on the King,” Bob said.

“Well, almost,” Crier said. “Those bodies his tiger dragged inside

… He’s eating those. Got them hung up in the window there, and every time you look, there’s less meat on them.”

That would be right, I thought. Willard and Randy showing their power, showing that they have food, that it’s behind glass, hung up nice and neat, and that the rest of us are lowlifes scrounging for popcorn kernels, killing one another and tearing the flesh off the bones like hyenas. But not him, not the Popcorn King. He’s got it all fine and clean and well lighted, and he probably slices his meat off with a knife. Has soft drinks to go with it. Maybe some chocolate almonds for dessert.

“The concession at B?” Bob asked.

“Taken over again,” Crier said. “But there isn’t any food left. Those Banditos had already cleaned it out. Did I tell you I found a third of a bag of popcorn under a car a few movies back? Over at North Screen too. Just lying there, and hadn’t nobody seen it. Kind of in the shadow of a tire, part of the way under the car. I ate that sapsucker on the spot… Man, you boys got it made in this section.”

“Right now,” Bob said.

“Why don’t you stay over here then?” I asked.

“Got to keep moving. It’s my way. Besides, I don’t know that your neighbors would want me moving in. I’ve been coming and going as I please so long, they let me do that, but I don’t know about moving in.”

“A word from us wouldn’t do you no good,” Bob said. “We’re sort of low man on the totem pole here.”

“Don’t need a word. No matter what happens, got to keep moving. I used to drive a beer truck, you know. Always on the road… Got divorced twice because I couldn’t stay still. Had to stay on the go. Get home and I wanted to drive around. One reason I liked drive-ins. You came and sat in a car, and when you watched the movie it was like you were driving through a new world or something. All you had to do was put your hands on the steering wheel and imagine… Sure you boys haven’t got a thing to eat?”

“Nothing,” Bob said.

“Then I’ll hobble on. Take care. Hope the next time I see you ain’t neither one of us so bad we want to eat one another.”

“Same here,” Bob said.

Crier climbed the hoe handle and started off again, moving down the row of speakers, heading for the pathway between East Screen and North.

“We should have fed him,” I said. “He looks bad.”

“Everyone here looks bad, Jack. It ain’t practical to go feeding folks. Even Crier. He gets good and hungry, he might conk our noggins and take what we got. He’s all right, but he ain’t nothing more than a human being.”

“Which as a group you don’t nave a lot of respect for, do you?”

“It’s damn near got so I don’t have a drop,” Bob said.

I thought about the Christians, their meetings, their faith. It gave me moral strength. Their attitude assured me that there was more to humanity than a good meal, a cold beer and a roll in the hay. There was something strong and noble there too, something that, like a seed, needed fertilizing, and I told all that to Bob, and he said he thought beer, a good meal and a roll in the hay were just fine, and as for the seed that needed fertilizing, he had a strong suggestion for the type of fertilizer that would best be suited for such a seed.

You just couldn’t talk to Bob. He was too narrow-minded.

And so we got worn down and went to sleep, the speaker rattling movie dialogue and sound tracks through the camper as we drifted into nocturnal lands of cold shadow and dark dreams. And it was then that the Popcorn King came to us over the speaker, oozed into our brains and outlined his plans for us, told us how we fit into the scheme of things. And I will admit, they sounded inviting, these plans. He would be there to watch over us, feed us, give us a point on which to fix our wretched lives. And finally there was that voice, that lovely voice that was kind of Randy’s and kind of not; that other voice that was kind of Willard’s and kind of not, the one that hummed softly, shucked and jived, put a word in edgewise in just the right place. Those voices, those honey-poison, hot and cold voices of the Popcorn King.