Utah Saints (pt 8).

The kid says his name is Carl Lee Ransom; I’m letting him drive, partly ‘cause I’m real tired and partly ‘cause he’s having a good time doing it. We’re going west to St. Louis. No real good reason to go that way, but it’s as good as any other.

Carl Lee lets go of the wheel to scratch and the truck starts to drift, bumping over those little yellow smiley-dots that go down the middle of the road. C’mere you turd, he says, grabbing the wheel back when he notices – he ain’t retarded, I guess. He ain’t right, neither, and I think it’s got to be from his papa beating up on him or something like that. He’s got all these marks that go up and down his arms, like somebody marking prison time, and he says each one’s something bad he did so his papa would heat up a quarter and roll it over his arm and make him say the apology. The apology, he says when I ask, The one that goes I-am-so-very-sorry-and-promise-to-God-that-I-will-never-be-bad-again-or-I-will-go-to-hell. I got to say it until papa says he’s done.

Un-fucking-believable. And I thought my old man was bad.

Look at the birdies, Carl Lee says. He waves at ‘em and I got to pull the wheel back a little bit to keep the truck in our lane. Hi birdies! he says, and then his face kind of falls down and he starts fucking crying of all things.

My papa is with the dead people, he says, snot running down his face. He can’t find his skin and I don’t want him to keep talking to me.

This kid has a different mood about every two minutes, and that talking about shit that only he can see is starting to get to me. But with him all you got to do is change the subject and he’s good to go. What’s that sign say? I ask him, pointing a billboard we’re coming up on.

Welcome to Goliath! he says, and that’s it, the waterworks are gone. Ham, Ham, Ham, he sings. He likes my name; me, I hate it. My daddy said it was my ma’s dad’s name and it was a sissy name, but he said I definitely did look like a little piglet when I was born so maybe it worked out okay. He used to make me say little oinking noises when I was a kid. Cancer ate him up by the time I was ten.

I pull the zipper up as far as it will go on my jacket, the one they gave me in the Army. The heater in this truck is a piece of shit, it’s taking forever to do any good.

I gotta poop, Carl Lee says.

You talk like a little kid, I say. How old are you?

Twenty-one, he says. He smiles at me, and I just about die looking at a grin like that. I’m gonna be twenty-two pretty soon.

Then you gotta talk like a man, I say. Don’t say you got to take a poop, say you got to take a crap or a shit or something like that. You got it?

I got to shit, he says. I got to take a great big shit, a big brown long shit.

I can’t stop laughing, and the more that I laugh the more he piles on the words saying he’s gonna take the biggest, longest, stinkiest, loudest shit in the entire history of the world. Fuck, I ain’t never laughed this hard. Never.