Utah Saints (pt 6).

I told the guy in the shitter that if he didn’t get the fuck out I was gonna let it rip right over top of him, and even with him out the way I still barely made it fore my insides went out. Hurt like a sumbitch, sharp up and down through me. God.

When I come out there’s a kid bagging up the trash with the most fucked up face I think I ever seen, like somebody carved him up real good. Did that shit hurt? I ask him, and the kid looks at me like I’m an asshole. Good, I tell him and wash my face hard and hot.

She comes out of the other toilet – that black chick from Dixie’s picture, and the only way I can tell that’s cause of them butterfly tattoos on her arm. Her face ain’t really even a face no more, all beat to hell and swole up closed on both eyes and her mouth black all around it like she been eating berries. I was all set to be embarrassed that she heard me shitting myself but she got bigger things to worry about. You okay, honey? I say, and that sounds so fake. That’s why it’s hard to be nice to be people is it sounds like you’re fucking with them.

She kinda moves her hair around so it covers up her face a little and washes her hands. She’s moving like she’s all busted up inside, too, and I’m about to ask her again if she’s all right and then I get it that Dixie probably did it – no reason to think that other’n I seen him rip people apart and this looks like his doing as much as if he signed it with ink.

Don’t stare, she says, it’s rude. I get out of her way; she can’t pull out the paper so I do it for her, holding it while she dries her hands. Listen, she says, real shaky. Listen, I need somebody. You’re not one of us so maybe you can do it. Right?

I can hear shit cracking in her mouth, and I know that’s a broken jaw for damned sure.

There’s a van, she says, and fuck if she’s starting to cry. Out in back, okay? You can’t miss it. I need somebody, I need, I need, I, I, I need, you see my friend is –

I back up off of her, all the way to the wall. Quiet, I say. I don’t want to hear, no way.

I leave; two guys are up against the wall right outside the door. One of ‘em says his dog bit him that morning so he shot it right between the eyes. They clink beers together. I don’t know what’s happening, I feel like I’m in one of them country haunted houses they used to put on in old farmhouses with everybody in shitty makeup jumping out at you from behind doors and going boo after boo. I been looking for Dixie since the day he got sent packing from Fort Knox. I wanted to see him so bad, I dreamed about seeing him again all the time. We were best fucking friends back then and I just wanted that back so god damned bad and now look at all of this crazy fucked up mess.

After a couple minutes nothing is any better. The freaks keep going in and coming out, walking off one way or the other but always just disappearing into the dark. And when I guess it’s my turn cause I can’t think of nothing else, I go out the door and I do it too.