The Complete Drive-In

6

“How y’all doin’,” a big naked man said. He was holding his limp dick in one hand like it was a symbol of authority, and there was enough there to look authoritative. I was glad I was clothed, otherwise I would have been mucho big-assed embarrassed. A wiener like that belonged in some kind of museum, or maybe peeking out from under a circus tent in the snake section.

As an added note, a leech hung off his left thigh in a decorative way.

“I don’t know we ought to welcome you or not, seeing as how I figure you weren’t just driving through. But, I reckon some kind of howdy is in order, so, Howdy, goddamnit.”

He opened his mouth in a big grin at this comment, and showed us just how many teeth he was missing.

Men and women, and even one child, were amongst the crowd. I guess there must have been fifty or so. A number of them leaped on the large catfish that had washed in ahead of us, and with fists and bone clubs they were carrying, they beat it about the head until it stopped thrashing.

The naked man never even looked at this business. He just kept twiddling with his dick.

“That’s some cannon you got there,” Grace said to the naked man, “but I don’t know I like it pointed at me. And, now that I mention it, it seems to be a larger cannon than a moment ago.”

“I just try and display a little at a time,” the naked man said. “I don’t want to scare nobody… You look so good.”

“Thank you,” Grace said. “I try to take care of myself.”

“And you look good too,” the naked man said to Reba.

“You’re hurting my feelings,” Steve said. “I just had a hell of a bath, and no good words about me?”

The naked man grinned. “I’m down here much longer, and you’ll start looking pretty good too. My name is Bjoe. It’s really Billy Joe, but everyone called me B. Joe, so I just shortened it to Bjoe, one word. I could tell you all kinds of fascinating things about me and my life, but I think you probably got other interests.”

“That’s the truth,” Homer said. “Where the fuck are we?”

“Why, silly,” said Bjoe, “you’re inside a giant catfish.”

“As Steve here said,” I said jerking a thumb at Steve, “I’ve never seen a catfish like this. How come it’s got all this rigging? The lights and such? The caves up there in the meat?”

“Sometimes,” Bjoe said, “I think about it and my head hurts.”

“I feel sick to my stomach,” Homer said. He turned from us and vomited onto the grillwork. We all stood there watching it leak through the holes, down into the bubbling mess below.

“You got a mite of sea sickness,” Bjoe said. “Had that myself at first. No telling how long I had it. We can’t tell one day from another down here. Not even false days. I mean, they’re ain’t no real light, just them bulbs. And there ain’t no night. Ain’t nobody wants to turn off the light. There’s some dark up in them caves we cut into the meat, and there’s dark down there past them wrecked cars and such, but, hell, you don’t want to go down there. There’s things on the other side of them cars you wouldn’t like to meet in a dark fish ass.”

“Things?” Cory said.

“We don’t know what they are, but they’re fucked up and goofydoofy.”

“Goofydoofy?” Grace said.

“Yeah. They don’t like the light though. You see, they was here before the lights.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I just reckon it. Well, I kind of know some things, but it’s a long story.”

“Got a feeling we ain’t gonna be catching no train or nothing,” Steve said, “so, we ought to hear it.”

“You will,” Bjoe said, dropping his flesh hammer so that it flopped against his thigh like a paleeel. “But first thing we got to do is eat. Got to eat when you can eat. We’ll show you the ropes, since I figure you’re gonna be permanent.”

“Now there’s a word,” Grace said. “Permanent.”

Reba said, “I never knew how permanent the word permanent sounded, until just now.”