Dan, ‘The Man’, Can: Volume 17 - Through The Desert On A Hearse With No Name

1

 The blue screen on the center console displayed an incorrect reading of the time and a crude digital compass shaped like a polygonal globe that pointed northeast. The midmorning traffic on the Ontario Freeway was scant. Gerald leered through his sunglasses at the vapor of dust and smog on the horizon guarded by unremarkable mountains. He held the steering wheel of the wine red Montero and tranquilly listened to the rattle and bombilation of the highway beneath its flying wheels. Peeking at his wife, Gerald noticed that she was holding the safety handle above the passenger window. He did a double take.

 “Would you relax?” Gerald said.

 “You’re going eighty-two, Gerald,” Jeannie huffed.

 “You never see me crayshin’,” he spat.

 After scoffing softly, Jeannie lolled her head in slight defeat and turned to look out her window. She watched the mute brown-gray landscape which underpinned bleak commercial lots and power lines. They traversed a mountain pass with all the color and allure of a decrepit crocodile before crossing the Moron Rocks, a plebian rock formation as bulbous as it is uninspiring. A curtain of dust preceded the vast opening of tawny desert below littered with joshua trees and singular homesteads of various size and configuration. An arid wind whooped against the Montero like a horde of spectral oxen. Legions of butterflies popped against the windshield like the pattering of fat raindrops. Gerald flicked on the wipers and a soup of bug guts and wetted dust congealed and dripped away.

 Moderately paved streets greeted the Johnsons once they left the cracking, paling highway. Gerald navigated the familiar roads until the asphalt ended and the flattened dirt path began. He decelerated to a lethargic crawl and a veil of dust billowed at the sides of the vehicle. It had not rained in months, and the heavy trucks which frequented this lonely route had totally ravaged its surface of smoothness. The Johnsons’ Montero plainly convulsed against the rutted, corrugated dirt. This was no place for an urban sport utility vehicle. 

 “Well! Welcome to Phelon, California, I suppose!” Jeannie sneered after one particularly vigorous jolt which practically tossed her to the ceiling.

 The Johnsons stopped and idled along a chainlink fence which guarded a spacious plot which looked more like a defunct junkyard than a residence. Gerald examined the property with a detached disenchantment. A good chunk of his income was diverted to this place. All the sundry piles of junk scattered haplessly about the grounds mocked him implicitly, hurling latent taunts at him within the wordless gales that howled and pounded against the Montero. He wondered just how many dollars had ended up here, and what they in actuality afforded. A minute passed like this until Gerald glanced at the incorrect clock on the center console, then he looked at his wristwatch. 

 “It’s ten-thirty-three. C’mon, Lerna,” Gerald whined.

 Jeannie dug the cellphone out from her big black purse and began dialing. After holding it to her ear in expectant silence for a spell, she left a voicemail message to her absentee daughter, who had agreed to meet her parents out front at 10:30 A.M. that morning.

 “Hi Lerna, it’s mom. It’s three-passed-half-past-ten, nearly a quarter-til. It’s almost noon. Give me a call when you get this. Ok. Bah.” Jeannie said.

 More time passed and more frustration fermented within the Johnsons. Their estranged-albeit-wholly-dependent daughter always gave them the runaround, but, with it being near lunchtime, the circumstances were dire; the stakes were high. Jeannie tried in vain to call her daughter two more times (leaving two additional voicemails to boot, each with rising rancor) before the Johnsons decided to turn the car off and enter their daughter’s strange, windswept abode. Beyond the open front gate were several sections devoted to the harboring of gaunt, emaciated animals. The horses stood in their quarters like ghosts of an old war, the gangs of dogs all different sizes and hues but equally starved. Scattered around the lot were cars, trucks, and, most peculiarly, a collection of vintage hearses. All of the vehicles were rotting in the boney sun with dead batteries, sagging tires, and long-expired tags. In a far corner was an unfinished house with no roof, and across from it a disintegrating trailer with a humming air conditioner attached. Gerald waddled with Jeannie passed the barking mass of sequestered dogs and he knocked on the trailer’s chalky door. There was no reply.

2

 It was ten till eleven when Gerald finally decided to enter his daughters trailer. Genuine, harrowing worry had crept up to Gerald’s scalp as he imagined what might be found inside. Half expecting the candied stench of decay to embrace him, Gerald tried the metal door handle. It gave, and Gerald groaned up both stairs. Panting for breath after this meager ascension, Gerald gathered himself in the cluttered entryway. A wiry black piglet grunted and approached him from the living room. Its hooves clacked gladly against the grimy wood flooring. Hills, valleys, rivers, and ridges of rubbish covered the entirety of the trailer. Slumping garbage bags spilling with hangers and stacks of old magazines bedecked each piece of furniture, leaving little room to live.

 “Hon,” Gerald called down the hall through a cupped hand.

 The pig wagged its tail and snorted happily as it followed Gerald down the darkened hall to Lerna’s door, behind which the deafening roar of a television could be heard. Gerald knocked politely at first, then more firmly, then grabbed for the crusty doorknob. The door opened partway and exposed a crowded room lit only by the blue-white flashes of television, each window blackened by heavy curtains and garbage bags and cardboard boxes. Supine on a slumping mattress was the inanimate Lerna, who wore earplugs and a sleep mask. A box of wine was tilted on the pillow next to hers.

 “Lerna?” Gerald said.

 Lerna Loranko was unstirred. Awash in crushing waves of sound and light, she appeared to be deceased, a desiccated pharaoh entombed with all its prized earthly possessions. Gerald hesitated and studied the frowning visage of his oldest daughter, his eldest child, and watched for her to breathe as a million thoughts whirled through his mind. A line of red drool leaked from the corner of her mouth. Whether it was wine or blood was unknown. Haltingly, Gerald thusly approached Lerna, calling her name a few more times before shaking her arm. The act finally roused her.

 “Mmm,” Lerna croaked. “Mm-uh.” She pulled out her earplugs and removed the sleep mask. 

 “Lerna,” Gerald said impatiently. “What’re ya doin’, hon?”

 “Dad?” Lerna blurted, her haze shattered with sobriety by the sudden materialization of her father.

 “What’re ya sick?” Gerald shouted over the television, half concerned and half peeved.

 “I’m sorry,” Lerna sung insincerely. “I’m sorry.”

 “C’mon now, get up n’ let’s get lunch. Yer mother’s waiting out front.”

 Lerna complied and rose from her nigh interminable slumber, sitting on the edge of her bed with her feet coming to rest atop a thick layer of garbage, a translucent orange bottle of oblong pills rolling down from the pillow into her thigh. She belched and groaned, filling her shadowy chamber with the sickly sweet smell of cheap booze ripening in gastric juices. The television remained blaring on and Lerna held her head in both hands. Her skull exploded with each beat of her anemic heart. Her slept-in makeup lended Lerna a particularly ghoulish appearance. The wrinkly piglet was gazing up at Gerald with pure love. Gerald told Lerna to get dressed promptly. He was hungry.

3

 Sauntering toward the Montero against the high desert winds, the three Johnsons, two geriatric and one catastrophically hungover, kept an even, sluggish pace. Gerald chided and derided his daughter the whole way through, eyeing the skeletal horses with pity. He again wondered just exactly where his money was going to when his daughter’s entire life - and the animals that she kept - were in shambles. Lerna currently used a walker and sported a velcro cast on her left foot, a result of the cryptic injury by which she received disability benefits from the state. Gerald nearly spat with disgust at the sight of her. They piled clumsily into the Johnson vehicle, all of them sooty with dust. The dogs were all still barking when Gerald turned the key.

 At eleven thirty they finally made it to the Mexican restaurant which Gerald had suggested for lunch. Lerna made it to the front door first and waited pathetically for her aging father to open it, making a point to demonstrate and prominently display her crippled state to her parents. They all entertained the facade, all begrudgingly, all knowing the others believed it not. They sat at a large dark pink booth and placed their orders. Once the menus were retrieved by the waiter, Gerald started laying into his flippant daughter. 

 “Why don’t you get a job,” Gerald growled flatly.

 “I’m sorry,” Lerna recited. “I’m sorry.”

 “What’re you doin’ all day? Drinkin’ that grog n’ talkin’ on the phone? Don’t y’feed yer horses? Where’s all the hay at? Where all my money goin’ to?”

 “I’m sorry,” Lerna repeated. “I’m sorry.”

 “Gol-ly, Lerna,” Gerald said with bewilderment, his brows contorting. “I shoulda beat the hell outta you more.”

 “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

 “I tried to call you three times today,” Jeannie said bitterly. “Did you get my messages?”

 “Yes, mom, I see them,” Lerna said.

 “Do you enjoy making your mother worry?” Jeannie said.

 “No, mom, I’m sorry.”

 “Well! Ok then!” Jeannie reprimanded.

 “I’m sorry.”

 In one strange, unspoken moment the fire of their ardent bickering arbitrarily died and the mawkish mariachi ballads, clinking of glasses and silverware, and din of lunchtime conversations reappeared, as though it all had floated to a different room in the meantime to give the Johnsons privacy. Gerald laced his fingers together and rested his hands on the table, seeming to turn an idea over in his mind. He stirred slightly before turning to Jeannie.

 “Should we tell ‘er about Ryan?” He asked openly.

 “Up to you,” Jeannie said. Gerald turned to face Lerna.

 “Yer brother’s killin’ dogs. Got shot by peace officers. He lived.” 

 “I’m sorry,” Lerna said, pausing momentarily. “What?!”

 “He’s gone screwy. Bastard.” Gerald said. “I wasn’t ‘round enough. Didn’t beat enough hell outta him.”

 “No he’s not, dad!” Lerna cried. “Ryan? He wouldn’t do that!”

 “Mmm,” Gerald grumbled. “We’ll see.”

 Their hot plates of beans, cheese, rice, and eggs arrived and their conversation fell into another lull. Lerna stirred the brown mush of beans with a spoon, appearing to be in shock over the morbid news regarding her younger brother. She watched the steam pipe from the orange rice, unconsciously avoiding meeting eyes with either parent. All in the world that surrounded her food receded away again, all the sights and sounds melting into some sort of white noise in the back of her mind. She could not think. She didn’t want to. 

 “What’re you doin’ with all those dogs out there,” Gerald said accusingly between bites. “Why aren’t y’takin’ care of ‘em? Is that what yer usin’ them hearses for? Some kinda silly operation you guys got goin’ back there? I know he comes up here. Fixin’ yer pipes.”

 “No, dad,” Lerna said obligingly. She was running on fumes now. 

 “I shoulda beat the hell outta you more,” Gerald said. “Shoulda beat the hell outta ya both.”

 “I’m sorry,” Lerna said.

 “What’re you sorry fer?” Gerald spat. 

 “I’m sorry.”

 Once again relative silence fell upon the round table of triangulated venoms and resentments. Gerald chewed slowly, deliberately, deciding against giving voice to the thoughts bubbling up at present. Jeannie sipped her iced tea and looked over the glass with the body language of a spy. Lerna, strikingly hunched, dug into her meal with a false timidity. Her eyes would not rise above the far rim of her plate. It was striped at the edges. Green and red. Though she had imbibed naught but toaster pastries, sugary cereal flakes, boxed wine, and sleeping pills for the better part of three weeks, this payload of free food had become tainted by the hostility that sank into her guts.

 The meal ended as the clan scooped their leftovers into shiny styrofoam to-go containers. Gerald distributed the green and black mints that came on top of the check. Pulling out a large wad of cash and thumbing through it obtusely, Gerald selected four bills and tossed them onto the table. Confirming with Jeannie that he had paid the correct amount, Gerald then selected five more bills, slid them into a long, bent envelope, and had Jeannie pass it to Lerna. Lerna jadedly opened the envelope and counted the bills before thanking her dad. Five hundred free dollars every month no longer titillated Lerna. The thrill was long gone. They shuffled outside bloated and belching into the Montero and headed back for Lerna’s property.

4

 Gerald and Jeannie watched Lerna theatrically stumble and stagger back across the lot to her trailer. Jeannie observed that Lerna was able to hold the to-go box with one hand and maneuver her walker with the other, a feat perfectly unthinkable to someone genuinely disabled. Gerald watched his daughter throw the styrofoam box over the gate which held her dogs, averting his eyes from the hellish feeding frenzy that ensued. His watch read twelve fifty. He shifted into drive and started again down the earthen avenue, which seemed to pitch and throw the Montero more violently than ever before, as though the road were a bouncer ejecting a belligerent oaf from a nightclub. Neither Johnson paid any mind. 

 Back home, Gerald wondered where they might eat for dinner. Like clockwork, he sank into his blue couch, reclined it, and laced his fingers together across his distended gut. No ballgame of interest was on. A small flash of light caught his eye from the other room. It was the answering machine in his office. After watching it blink again, Gerald clapped the leg rest back into the couch and rocked himself back to his feet. He played the message. It was a collect call from a local police station. Ryan had been arrested for being a part of an unlawful assembly in front of the city courthouse.

 Still mentally auditioning nearby restaurants for dinner, Gerald got back into the Montero and paid his son’s bail. Ryan was lucky it was not the weekend, or he would be stuck in there until Monday. Sunburnt and battered, his son appeared homeless and stunk terribly in the vehicle’s confines. Gerald was almost too baffled to speak. Ryan had never been arrested before. Before the dog happenings, anyhow. Gerald wondered sourly why his son had decided to begin acting out in his fifties, of all ages. Then he wondered whether Ryan had ever stopped acting out, or that his acting out had merely changed shapes with the seasons of his life. To divert from this train of thought, Gerald began laying into his graying boy.

 “Ryan, what’re you doin’, guy? Unlawful assembly? You throwin’ clods a mud at peace officers now or what?”

 “Fuck the police, dad,” Ryan seethed. “Black Lives Matter. All cops are bastards. Their foundation and function is solely violence and oppression and they exist merely to protect the property and capital of the elite, ruling class. They are the guard dogs of the owners of this country, and they’re only let off the state’s leash when the powers that be wish for boots to stomp on human faces forever. And all this rhetoric about the ‘good apples’ and ‘bad apples’ is truly a crock, Pops. All the ‘good apples’ that report the rampant racism, violence, child pornography trading, and outright rape that is prevalent in the force, are promptly fired, and their families thereby harassed indefinitely. God forbid they get pulled over, God forbid they share an address with a dropout. Why, more often than not, the victims of roadside rapes are more often than not the pulled-over spouses or children of cops who have left the force and -”

 Ryan’s diatribe was interrupted by the bottom of Gerald’s foot, which booted Ryan out of the passenger door with one quick, brutish kick, which exhibited an incredible, uncanny grace that evidently waited dormant within Gerald, who had also maintained complete control of the vehicle as it happened. Ryan tumbled out onto the sidewalk and a signpost bonked the passenger door closed again. Gerald accelerated back to speed, positively fuming at the heel that his son had turned. Though shot down by the police for nonviolent resistance and arrested with no palpable evidence to speak of earlier in the year, Gerald felt that Ryan had no right to disagree with the Department, an agency that Gerald understood as being a shield which protected society at large from the plagues that might rise up from its underbelly, a great, benevolent savior sitting on a manhole that prevented slimy mutants and monsters from surfacing from the sewers and taking the streets. The remaining drive elapsed in Gerald’s mind, a series of automatic movements guiding him home.

5

 “Our son is a communist,” Gerald griped to Jeannie as he hung his coat. “I bail ‘em out an’ he says he hates the Department. Hmph! I kicked his ayss out the car. Shoulda beat the hell outta him more. Don’t he know he come from a long line of peace officers?”

 “I don’t know, Gerald,” Jeannie said, thinking that he was embellishing details or fibbing outright, decidedly compartmentalizing the incoming data in realtime. “It sounds like he’s probably ready for his supper.”

 “I ain’t feedin’ that pinko sissy,” Gerald said. “Bastard.”

 “Gerald!” Jeannie gasped. 

 “I’m serious!” Gerald doubled down. “No good bastard called me a raper!” 

 “Ok for him,” Jeannie said. “Have you decided where to eat?”

 “No. What do you want, hon?”

 “I was thinking Spunky tonight.”

 “Well how ‘bout Good Ranch?”

 “Ok.”

 After watching television for a couple more hours and fetching the mail, the Johnsons reentered the Montero and departed. Ryan had returned from his tedious jaunt home just minutes prior and was currently microwaving last night’s leftovers in his backyard blockhouse. He cracked open a silver can of beer and sucked at the foam like a mythical wanderer at a desert oasis. Ryan had wasted nearly three hours at the precinct that day, so, to celebrate, he decided to waste a few more hours getting drunk and eating lukewarm chicken fried steak. He clicked his stereo on and it continued playing the album he was listening to the night before. Just as he was settling into the stoned, melodramatic mood that the sounds of Stink Roid provided, his cellphone rang. 

 “Hello,” Ryan sang guardedly, rising to turn his stereo down.

 “Ryan?” Lerna said. “Hey, what’s going on?”

 “You called me,” Ryan said.

 “What?! I know, Ryan! What are you talking about?”

 “Ugh,” Ryan sighed. “What’s up, Lerna.”

 “I saw mom and dad at lunch today. They said something about dogs and you getting shot. What happened?”

 “Well I was back here and all a sudden I had two pigs chasing me. Outta nowhere from Pops’ back door. They even knocked him down. I ran down the alley, all the way back up Bell Mar and through the bridal trail, came back down to Bell Mar, and they shot me there. I couldn’t hear what they were saying and they shot me. Pops and Gay saw it.”

 “Ryan,” Lerna said.

 “Yeah.”

 “Are you ok?”

 “Yeah, I’m good,” Ryan said. “Pops just bailed me out, too, though. I was protesting police brutality outside the courthouse and the pigs charged us. I was running away from them. Running away. Then one hit me with rubber bullets and I went down, they clobbered me on the ground, I didn’t even resist. I only ran because I was scared, and they -”

 “Ryan,” Lerna butted in.

 “Huh?” 

 “If I ever hear anything about dogs coming out of Pops’ mouth again I’m gonna split your fuckin’ head open. You hear me? You think I want his fat ass dropping by and snooping around? You think I want him peeking in my hearses and sniffing around my house? Understand?”

 “No, I don’t, actually,” Ryan said, genuinely confused and exasperated. “I don’t know what all the dog shit is about. I don’t know.”

 “Listen. If anything else happens, it’s your fuckin’ life. Understand?”

 “Wha-?” Ryan huffed before Lerna hung up.

 The microwave beeped five times. Ryan, presently dazed, paid no mind to it as he held the unused cellphone away from his ear, almost as though it were on speakerphone. He glared at his coffee table in utter bewilderment, unable to digest the unbridled vitriol and peculiar shadiness his older sister had fired his way. Ryan remained frozen like this until the microwave emitted a reminder beep and he fetched the drab leftovers. He shoveled the greasy remains of the previous night’s dinner into his greedy mouth and finished the meal in seconds. Sinking back into the couch, Ryan finished the beer and sighed. Before long he fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

6

 In the gloaming the neighbor’s dogs barked incessantly. That neighbor. The one who mystified the whole neighborhood. The whole city, really. Kids that happened by the house clutched the chainlink fence and told each other urban legends regarding its origin. Some said it was a funeral home, some said it was a mad scientist’s killing field, some said it was a makeshift graveyard for the mob. The dogs kept barking and barking. They usually only announced the coming and going of the neighbor or one of the neighbor’s visitors. They barked and barked now. The dying light of the sun peeked through the ghostly-white curtains facing south, in a window facing the neighbor, facing the dogs. The dogs just kept barking. They just kept barking. The wind bent the windows and the dogs just kept barking.

 There was a crunchy, stabbing noise sounding off like clockwork and the dogs just kept barking. The sound kept crunching, chewing, grating, and the dogs kept barking. The light was dying and the dogs kept barking. It was a shovel out there. Someone was shoveling the infertile earth. Probably that neighbor, out there in the darkening air like a gravedigger. The neighbor was shoveling dirt and the dogs were barking. The shovel crunched and the dogs barked. They just kept barking. Cracking the blinds just before pitch black. She was out there, the neighbor, salient by her piss blonde hair, shoveling the dirt. An opaque man leant against her pink hearse and the dogs kept barking. They just kept barking.