Cockroach Suckers
By David Niall Wilson
Smashwords Edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Copyright 2011 by David Niall Wilson
Cover Design by David Dodd
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OTHER CROSSROAD TITLES BY DAVID NIALL WILSON:
NOVELS:
Heart of a Dragon – Book I of the DeChance Chronicles
Vintage Soul – Book II of The DeChance Chronicles
Hallowed Ground – With Steven Savile
SGA-15 – Brimstone – With Patricia Lee Macomber
The Second Veil – Book II in the Tales of the Scattered Earth
NOVELLAS:
The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J. Diggs & The Currently Accepted Habits of Nature
'Scuse Me, While I Kiss the Sky
COLLECTIONS:
The Fall of the House of Escher & Other Illusions
The Whirling Man& Other Tales of Pain, Blood, and Madness
UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOKS:
Roll Them Bones / Deep Blue / The Orffyreus Wheel / The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J. Diggs & The Currently Accepted Habits of Nature / Heart of a Dragon / This is My Blood
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Cockroach Suckers
Near The Great Dismal Swamp, everything grows. Bugs thrive. Plants barely hesitate between frost and full, pollen-bearing bloom. A warm winter week can produce things that should sleep until summer. It’s in the earth. Birth, rebirth – death.
Whatever grows must decompose. That is truth. As the sun set in a splash of deep violet and dark purple above the tree line, Jasper Winslow was contemplating that truth. He was rocking slowly in an ancient pressed back chair, watching the road crumble and brushing flies from his sweat-slicked brow.
Jasper wasn’t an old man, but he was no pup. He’d been running his father’s farm pretty much on his own since he turned twenty, and he’d been selling the excess produce at this out-of-the-way, run-down stand for just as long. The boards were gray, warped and without a sign of peeling paint left to indicate they’d ever been white. The swamp was a ways down the road and across a field, but its creeping, encroaching presence worked its way closer every year. The road had nearly washed out in the last flood, and only a dump truck or two of gravel and half a dozen lazy state highway workers had prevented it.
Down the road in the opposite direction, spitting up a shower of dust and stone in its wake, a pickup truck turned off the freeway, bouncing and weaving down the two-lane gravel road. The back of the truck was covered with a blue tarp that flapped in the breeze. Something poked out from beneath that tarp, but it was still too far away for Jasper to see. The truck was Bobby Lee’s, a grimy green colored Ford as old as Methuselah and twice as cantankerous. Whitish smoke billowed from the tailpipe, and the truck listed heavily to the left, obviously struggling under an unfamiliar load.
Jasper reached down to his left, flipped up the lid on a rusted old metal cooler, fished in the ice and water until he found a beer, and pulled it free. He twisted off the top, slammed the cooler closed with a practiced motion, and leaned back again. He drained a third of the bottle in one quick drag, then sat, resting it on the bulky expanse of his belly, and watched Bobby Lee park.
The truck wheezed, gasped, and died with the rumble of an engine that doesn’t want to quit running, despite its inability to do so. The belch of smoke that erupted from Bobby Lee’s pipes was so reminiscent of a giant fart that Jasper broke into a grin.
“You runnin’ that thing on beans?” he hollered, not getting up, but raising a hand in greeting. Bobby Lee was Jasper’s best friend in the world, but it was hot, and Jasper Winslow rose for no man, once he’d started rocking.
Bobby Lee clambered down from the driver’s seat, slammed the door without looking back and grinned. “Got one a’ them nitro bottles up front,” he said, nodding. “Filled it with Hall-a PENYAS just yesterday. You ought to see her run when I punch
that chili button.”
Jasper laughed. With an uncharacteristic flash of energy, he opened the cooler again, grabbed a second cold beer, and flipped it through the air. Bobby Lee caught it neatly, brought the bottle to the brim of his faded Catfish Hunter Baseball cap with a flourish that resembled a salute, and twisted off the top.
“I just bet,” Jasper commented. “Day you waste a Halla Pennya on that truck is the day I quit drinking.
Both of them laughed at that.
“What you got in the truck, Bobby Lee?” Jasper asked, eyeing the oddly draped tarp and the still listing rear end of the truck. “Some sorta tractor?”
Bobby Lee grinned. He took another pull off his beer, and then shook his head. “Nope. I got me a gold mine, is what. I got the answer to all our problems.” He sipped his beer and his grin widened.
Jasper frowned. When he frowned, his brow furrowed, and the expression never ceased to widen Bobby Lee’s grin.
“Don’t think too hard,” Bobby Lee advised. “I know you’ve been conservin’ that gray matter all these years – be a shame to waste it now.”
Jasper considered getting up. Bobby Lee needed his ass kicked, and there wasn’t anyone else around to take up his slack, but for the moment, he held his peace. He was rocking, and that was important. So was the beer, and it was only half done.
“What’s in the truck?” he asked again. This time, his eyes narrowed, and his voice had taken on a cold, empty tone.
Bobby Lee watched him a moment longer, still chuckling, then he spoke.
“You still got that old tin shed you had stored behind your mom’s place?” he asked, ignoring Jasper’s question. “You know, the one you never put together?”
“I got it,” Jasper answered. “So what? What’s in the fucking truck asshole?”
Bobby Lee hesitated a little less this time, but his smile had darkened. “Hold your horses,” he said finally, “and I’ll show you. You don’t have to be an asshole about it - I’m lettin’ you in on a good thing.”
Jasper just rocked. He was one step closer to rising from the chair and doing what had to be done, but he let it ride a last time.
Bobby drained his beer, tossed the bottle aside and turned back to his truck with a curse. “Ought to just leave you here and keep it for myself,” he growled. When he got no response, his shoulders sagged, just enough to be perceptible, and he stepped to the truck. There were three ties holding the tarp in place on the near side. Bobby undid them quickly. Then he stepped to the back of the truck, gripped the blue plastic tightly, and with a flourish, he yanked it free.
Jasper stopped rocking. He drained his beer, reached around to set it on the cooler, let go of it and missed by six inches. He gripped the arms of his chair tightly, half-rising. “What the f . . “
What rose from the bed of the truck took his breath away. Jasper fell back with a thump, setting the rocker in motion again and nearly tipped over backward. He gasped, tried to speak, fell silent and gasped again. Without thinking, he reached down and retrieved another beer. It was half gone when Bobby Lee, grinning once again, stepped closer, leaned down, and winked.
“What do you think of her? She’s somethin’, ain’t she?” he said.
Jasper gulped more beer, rocked forward and gained his feet. He staggered forward, reached out a hand to steady himself against the truck, and then reached up to run his hand over polished wood that literally swam with tiny intricate detail and what appeared to be words, or letters, or symbols. Who knew? Who the fuck knew and who cared?
“It’s a . . double-D goddam COCKROACH,” he pronounced in amazement.
“The world’s largest,” Bobby Lee agreed, cackling. “Ain’t she a beaut? I picked her up down at the flea market. They tried three weeks to sell her, but nobody knew what they was lookin’ at.”
“They didn’t know it was a cockroach?” Jasper turned, his face a wrinkled map of confusion. “How they hell could they not know that? The fucking thing’s seven foot tall, Bobby.”
It was all of that. Rising up so that its antennae floated above the cab of the truck, the gigantic wooden vermin leaned to its left, apparently off-balance, making the truck list crazily. The detail was amazing, like some sort of ART or something. Jasper scratched his head and tilted his hat back to facilitate the motion. Who in HELL would go to that kind of trouble for a goddam cockroach?
“She’s a antique,” Bobby continued. “Feller said he didn’t know how old it was. Picked it up at an Indian camp about ten years ago. Had her in his barn ever since, but his wife said it had ta go. They don’t make a Raid can big enough, so here she is.”
Bobby was still grinning. Jasper was still frowning.
“But,” Jasper formed both thoughts and words carefully, and this one was a corker. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for it, and so he had to figure it out, one word at a time. “Why?”
“Why what?” Bobby asked. “Why did his wife want him to get rid of her, or why aren’t there giant Raid cans?”
Bobby had sense enough to back up at this, raising his hands and laughing.
“Easy, hoss,” he said. “Hear me out. You ever been out west? I have. I traveled out to Kansas once with my Pa. There’s some mountains over there where ... well, anyway, I went there. You know what we saw along that highway?”
“Fields?” Jasper guessed, trying to follow.
“We saw fields, for sure,” Bobby grinned, “but there was something else. We saw the world’s largest Prairie Dog. We saw the biggest ball of string ever, and we saw the footprints of dinosaurs, preserved in the mud. Every time we saw one of them things, you know what we had to do? We had to pay. You know what Pa said every time, just as we left? He said we was suckers. Didn’t stop him from wanting to see the world’s largest sausage link, or from payin’, but he knew. I know too. That ain’t a cockroach, ol’ buddy. That’s a goldmine.”
Jasper was still staring up at the wooden monstrosity. Its eyes glittered in the sunlight, polished and seeming to glare down at him from their cocked, off-kilter angle.
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about, Bobby? It’s a damned roach. A BIG roach, no mistakin’ that, but still a roach. A goddam filthy infest-yer-house and eat your chicken roach. Where’s the money in that? Hell, anyone sees it now, they won’t buy my fruit.”
“That’s your problem, Jasper,” Bobby said with true sorrow in his voice. “You ain’t got the VISION. That’s why I’m here - why I’m gonna share this good fortune with you. I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do.”
Jasper listened, staring up at the roach, a tickling, creeping sensation transiting his spine as he did. He didn’t like it. The damned wood was slimy to the touch, and no wood that weren’t growing mold should feel that way.
“We’re gonna get that damn shed of yours,” Bobby went on, “and we’re gonna set it up right out yonder.” He pointed to the back of the produce stand. “We’re gonna put ol’ Papa Roach here inside, and then we’re gonna make some signs. All up and down 17 we’ll have advertisements.
Ten miles to the World’s Largest Cockroach.
Don’t MISS THIS - 5 Miles to the Vermin from HELL.
1 Mile to Go - Exit 16A - Produce and souvenirs. You get it?”
Jasper didn’t. He was still staring at the roach.
Bobby leaned in close, whispering conspiratorially in his friend’s ear. “It’s simple, Jasper. We sell tickets. Folks stop to see, buy a ticket, maybe buy some tomatoes and some corn, and they drive on. They won’t be able to help themselves.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding,” Jasper said, turning to meet Bobby’s earnest gaze. “I mean, who would PAY to see . . . THAT?”
“They won’t see it,” Bobby said. “Not right off. It will be in the shed. That’s the key. And the answer is simple. We make our money,” Bobby looked around, as if there were someone to see him, or to overhear a great secret, “off suckers. Cockroach suckers.”
There were no words for how Jasper felt at that moment, so he turned away, sort of tripped back to his chair, and reached for another beer. “Cockroach suckers,” he muttered. “Jesus fucking Christ on a Popsicle stick.”
Bobby Lee trailed after him, reaching in to get his own beer this time, and Jasper didn’t stop him. There was plenty of beer, and it took too much effort to think and yell at the same time.
“You really believe,” Jasper said at last, “that folks’ll pay good, hard-earned money to see the world’s largest cockroach?”
Bobby Lee’s grin was full wattage again. “I know they will, partner. I know they will. Hell, if I didn’t OWN it, I’d rather see the thing myself than the world’s largest link sausage, and I paid for that.”
“How long you think it’ll take us to get that tin shed up?” Jasper asked.
“Not more’n a day,” Bobby Lee speculated, getting serious. “I helped my Pap put one up in his yard last spring. Not much to it, once you get started.”
Jasper nodded, and the nod worked itself naturally into a slow rock. He stared up at the truck and met the multi-faceted gaze of Martha Stewart’s worst nightmare steadily. He wanted to tell Bobby Lee to take the thing and hit the trail. It was a damn-fool idea. He knew it, and Bobby Lee should know it, but – damned if it didn’t sound as if it might actually work.
“Shit,” Jasper muttered.
Bobby Lee let out a whoop, knowing he’d won.
“You be here first thing in the morning,” Jasper growled. “Be ready to work, no hangover. If we’re a’ goin’ to do this, we’re a’ goin’ to do it quick. I still got fields to plow, and produce to get in. If I let it go, we won’t have a thing to sell except tickets, and I doubt that’s gonna work out too well.”
“I’ll be here,” Bobby Lee promised. Then he turned back to the truck and grabbed the ties on the tarpaulin, pulling them tight and cinching them to the truck bed.
Once the huge bug was covered over, Jasper felt a little better. There was something in the smooth, wooden surface of the things eyes that was unnerving. He knew it was silly, but that didn’t change a thing.
“Damn thing gives me the willies,” he said, reaching for another beer and staring at the blue-draped figure.
“Hope it gives everyone the willies,” Bobby Lee commented. He reached into the cooler and fished out another beer for himself. “I’ll have this one more, then I’m gonna hit the road. Smackdown is on tonight, and directly after that I’ll be gettin’ me some shuteye. I feel destiny callin’.”
“That ain’t destiny,” Jasper chuckled, “it’s indigestion from all them Hally Penyas you ain’t feedin’ to your truck.”
The two laughed and drank their beer in silence. Both of them kept giving the truck sidelong glances, but neither of them mentioned the thing in the back again. Not much later, Bobby Lee mounted up into the cab of his pickup and, honking like an idiot, backed up in a cloud of dust and trundled his huge cargo off down the dirt road toward the highway. Jasper cleared his produce, locked what he could in his makeshift office and stacked the rest in the back of his truck. He didn’t have far to go. Two back-roads turns and he’d be on his own road, tucked back up in close to the swamp.
Just before he left he hefted his cooler onto the tailgate of the truck and slid it in, closing up behind it. He glanced at the road, thought about it for about ten seconds, then grabbed a last beer “for the road” and hopped in behind the wheel. He wasn’t likely to meet one of North Carolina’s finest between the stand and his home, but by his way of thinking, he was drunk enough already to get the ticket, no reason to deny himself a pleasant drive by leaving all the beer in back.
Shooting a white tail of dust and gravel spitting out behind him, Jasper gunned the truck into the growing twilight.
~ * ~
When Jasper pulled up in front of his stand the next morning, he saw Bobby Lee’s truck already parked over to one side. There was no sign of his buddy, but around back of the shack dust was rising, like there was a herd of something rushing past. Jasper parked, hopped down from his truck, and started around the side of the building to see what was what.
He stopped at the corner and stared. Bobby Lee was going to town on the ground behind the stand with a rake, clearing away brambles and bushes like there was no tomorrow. He’d already cleared a space about twice as big as the metal building in the back of Jasper’s truck would need, and that ground was bare, scraped even and squared off with perfect edges like Jasper had never seen.
“Bobby!” he called out. “Bobby Lee what in HELL are you doin’?”
At first, Bobby didn’t seem to hear him, just kept right on a rakin’ and shuffling around that rectangular patch of cleared ground. Jasper leaned down, picked up a rock and whipped it through the air to collide with the seat of Bobby Lee’s pants. That got his attention.
“Wha...” Bobby Lee whirled, his rake held high in a comical parody of a martial arts stance. Then he saw Jasper.
“I said,” Jasper repeated, “what in HELL are you doin’?”
“Just wanted to get me an early start, that’s all,” Bobby Lee said, grinning sheepishly. “I stayed up kinda late last night. Guess I talked a bit too much about her,” he cocked his head in the direction of the wooden behemoth still tarp-covered in the back of his pickup truck. “Irma got tired of it and chased me out. I slept in the truck until the sun came up, then I came here and got started.”
Jasper blinked, glanced down at the ground, and at the rake in his friend’s hand, then back up to Bobby Lee’s eyes. “Just how much coffee you had, Bobby?” he asked at last. “I ain’t seen that much work out of you in the last year, and you don’t even look like you broke a sweat yet.”
Bobby Lee glanced down at the ground as if noticing the cleared patch for the first time. He leaned on the rake, reached to his back pocket for the bandanna tucked into his hip pocket and brushed it across his face. It was more out of habit than necessity. Jasper could see the man was as cool and fresh as if he’d just gotten up after a long night’s sleep.
“Hell of a job,” Jasper commented. “Gonna make settin’ up a durn site easier.”
Bobby Lee nodded. Now that he’d stopped working and started seeing what he’d been doing, he’d taken on a sort of glazed expression. He heard Jasper fine, but didn’t seem to really be paying any attention to him. He was looking at the earth he’d cleared, and glancing up now and then at the truck, as if there was something he couldn’t quite make sense of.
“We have to put her here first,” Bobby Lee said at last, tossing his rake aside. “I ain’t seen the door of that shed, but I’m betting it’s not big enough to take her in through. I brought us some pallets I had out back ‘a my place to keep her out of the dirt.”
Jasper blinked. He hadn’t thought about it, but damned if Bobby Lee wasn’t right. They’d have to build the shed around that thing, and even then it was going to come close. The peaked roof of the shed would top out at around eight feet in height, and the roach ran over seven. Jasper shook his head.
“We’re damn fools, is what we are,” he commented, turning away. “Damn fools.”
Bobby Lee didn’t answer. He was already headed toward his truck, the tarp, and the giant wooden body beneath. While Jasper unpacked his own truck, setting up the tomatoes and beans in neat rows on the bench out in front of his stand, Bobby unfurled the tarp, rolled it and tossed it to one side. Then he got in behind the wheel of his truck and very slowly backed it toward the space he’d cleared, being careful not to catch the edge of his tailgate on the corner of the produce stand.
Jasper paid him no mind. He knew there’d be a short rush on the vegetables just before noon, and he needed to get them out and in place to be inspected, detected and selected, as his ol’ Pap had used to say. No time for cockroach nonsense, nor for Bobby Lee himself, if it came to it. That boy needed any help, he’d have to holler for it.
That call never came. Jasper plunked down into his old rocker, kicked up his boots like he’d done a thousand times before, and started rocking. Mrs. Tefft dropped by on her way back from dropping her kids at school and picked up two pounds of fresh tomatoes. Edna Johnson came by for her regular order of green beans and potatoes, and Sheriff Ben Grouse pulled up in his cruiser to grab a small basket of strawberries for his Missus. Jasper never charged the Sheriff for small things like the strawberries, and in return Jasper never got charged with anything himself. Like drunk driving, or illegal parking. Or running a produce stand without a business license. Things in the country had a way of working themselves out.
All that while, Bobby Lee was out of site back behind the stand. None of Jasper’s customers commented on it, though Sheriff Grouse eyed Bobby’s old pickup suspiciously while he perused the strawberries.
A couple of times Bobby Lee walked past to Jasper’s truck, grabbed parts of the shed out of its long, corrugated box, and headed back out of site, but he didn’t say a word. He was moving fast and he kept his head down, mumbling to himself all the time. Jasper figured it for cursing, but the one time Bobby Lee came close enough for his friend to hear, all that came across was some sort of rhythmic mumbo jumbo.
“What you doin’, Bobby Lee?” Jasper called after him. “Takin’ up that rap music?”
Bobby Lee didn’t answer, and Jasper wasn’t inclined to raise himself out of his seat and follow after to insist on it. Truth be told, he didn’t rightly care what Bobby Lee was sayin’ as long as he didn’t say “Come on back and help me, Jasper.”
The noon rush passed, and Jasper was popping the top on his second beer of the afternoon when he finally started to feel guilty. Bobby Lee had been working quietly all morning long, since before Jasper himself had even arrived, and not a finger had been raised to help him. It was true that Jasper had provided the land, the shed, and all the moral support a fella could want, but it was also true that he’d agreed to be part of this cockamamie project. The least he could do was make a solid effort to pitch in and do his part.
Besides, the pile of shed parts still left in the truck was getting pretty small, and Jasper was beginning to wonder just what the hell Bobby Lee was doing back there. They’d agreed to move the cockroach into the cleared spot first, and then build the shed, but it seemed like Bobby Lee had changed his mind somewhere along the way and just started building. Hell, from the banging and clanking Jasper had heard, the damn thing must be just about finished, and that was a job. Jasper had built one just like it out back of his house for storing lawn tools and making home brew.
Shifting his weight forward, he sat up, drained his beer, reached with practiced ease into the cooler and brought out two more. Then, with a long, drawn out burp, he stood and headed around back of the stand.
For the second time that day, Jasper Winslow stopped dead in his tracks. He felt the bottle in his left hand slipping free and gripped it very suddenly, stumbling back. Bobby Lee’s truck stood off to the side again, but it was empty. The damned roach was nowhere to be seen, and standing smack-dab in the center of that cleared plot of land, the shed had taken shape. More than that, it was perfect. Jasper had had two cousins and his old lady helping, and he had not managed to get his shed up in near the time or manner that Bobby Lee had done this one by himself.
Bobby Lee was nowhere to be seen, and Jasper, taking a deep breath for courage, stepped forward to the door, slid it aside, and stepped inside. The building’s interior was shadowed. There were no windows, and even the sunlight that slipped in behind him through the door could do little. Jasper stepped forward, blinking, and ran smack into something hard after the second step. Something jabbed his cheek hard, something smooth and cool. Something sharp.
“Damn!” he grunted, stepping back. “Bobby? You in here? What in hell did you DO?”
There was no reply, but Jasper heard the murmur of voices near the rear of the shed. He reached out with one hand, letting the beer bottle crack gently into the side wall of the shed, and followed the left wall around, being careful not to move too fast, in case any more of the damned cockroach’s double-D goddamned appendages felt inclined to give him a whack.
About halfway back, Jasper stopped. The shed had gone deathly cold. And quiet. The shadows, which shouldn’t have been very deep in a building with open eaves and the front door slid wide, clung to him, blocking his vision. The mumble of voices had shifted to more of a drone, like a bunch of midge flies hovering over the swamp. The tone rose and fell in a steady, hypnotic pattern, but there was no sign of Bobby.
Jasper turned and edged his way back toward the front. He had a big Halogen search light in the back of his truck he used for deer spotting. That would light this place up and show him what was what.
Thing was, the further he slid along the wall toward where he knew that door had to be, the further it seemed he still had to go. He saw the cleared dirt outside, plain as day, but his breath was coming in short bursts, and he knew, without seeing it, that it was shooting out of his mouth like fog. It was cold enough Jasper felt the frost that suddenly coated the beers he held, and the burn of the cold glass against his skin. His toes were numb, and each step he took toward the door, and the light, was an effort he wasn’t sure he felt like making.
Then the sound stopped. A hand fell heavily on Jasper’s shoulder and he screamed, jumping back against the pressed metal wall so hard it dented. He gripped the beers so tightly he wondered if they might shatter.
The shed had grown lighter. Bobby Lee stood in front of him, grinning like an idiot, and holding out a hand for one of the beers.
Jasper teetered. He leaned heavily on the wall, despite knowing full well it had been erected by the grinning idiot standing before him in about half the time the job should have taken. It held.
“Hell, Jasper, what’s wrong with you?” Bobby Lee asked, as though nothing was the matter. “You look like you seen a ghost. Or maybe,” Bobby grinned, turning and raising a hand to the wooden monstrosity behind him, “a giant cock-a-roach?”
Jasper heaved off the wall, lurched to the door, and stumbled out into the late afternoon light. He took in several deep breaths, and then turned back. All he saw was Bobby, sipping on his beer and staring back at him. The shed behind Bobby’s back had no special characteristics, beyond being extremely well-constructed. There was no way to penetrate the shadowed interior from where Jasper stood, but he heard no soft voices and he saw no deeper-than-normal shadows. The air was warm, moist, and filled with mosquitoes.
Jasper shook his head. He glanced down and noticed he was still holding his unopened beer. With a quick twist, he decapitated it and tossed down half the bottle.
“Maybe you’ve been sittin’ out in the sun too long, Jasper,” Bobby Lee commented. “You don’t look so good.”
“You didn’t see, or hear, or feel anything wrong in there?” Jasper asked, eyeing his friend suspiciously.
“Like what?” Bobby Lee scratched his head and took a draw from his beer. “I was in the back, tyin’ down the straps to hold that big old money-makin’ baby in place. I didn’t see or hear a thing.”
“I don’t reckon you want to tell me how you got that thing out of your truck, neither,” Jasper observed, his eyes narrowing.
Bobby Lee never blinked. “I backed her up and used the winch. How in hell did you think I got her in the truck, Jasper? I ain’t no Superman.”
Jasper blinked. He hadn’t expected such a simple answer, and if he could’ve gotten his body to contort to the right shape, he’d have kicked himself in the ass for not thinking of it.
“Is there somethin’ wrong, Jasper?” Bobby Lee asked.
Jasper turned away and lurched back toward his seat, and his beer. He didn’t say a thing until he was seated once more in his old rocker, staring out at the dying sun and route 17 passing in the distance. He reached for another beer, tossed another one to Bobby, and closed his eyes, leaning back.
“So,” he said at last. “Just when did you expect we would start drawing in these ‘Cockroach Suckers,’” he asked.
Bobby was grinning when he opened his eyes, and the two talked well into the evening, watching the sun dip deep orange behind the line of trees that bordered the swamp. Finally, when the last of the beers had been emptied, Jasper rose shakily and headed for his truck. He left the produce baskets as they stood and grimaced at the expected tirade when he reached home without them, drunk. Didn’t matter. For once, Jasper was convinced that Bobby Lee might border on human intelligence, and might actually, God forbid, be right about something. They were going to make them a pile of money, and it was going to start the very next day.
Bobby Lee stood beside Jasper’s truck and helped him up into the seat, slamming the door for his friend.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, partner,” Bobby said. “Bright and early.”
“You done a piece of work today, Bobby,” Jasper replied. “Maybe you should sleep in a bit. Won’t be any good tomorrow if you’re all worn out or hung over.”
Bobby winked at him, and something in that gesture, something sparking deep in his friend’s eye, sent the cold a shiver through the air, and the murmur of distant voices caroming off his skull and ricocheting about his mind.
“Don’t you worry about me,” Bobby said, his voice low. “I’ll be here, ready to rock.”
Jasper turned the key in the ignition and brought his old truck to life. He punched down on the gas and shot out of the small gravel lot onto the feeder road without a word. He was shaking, and his skin was coated in sweat.
“Damn beer,” he whispered, gunning his engine and praying not to see a cop.
Bobby Lee stood, watching his partner depart, and then turned back. He didn’t head for his own truck, but slid through the door of the metal shed and pulled it tightly closed behind him. Moments later, the night filled with the drone of a thousand mosquitoes, or the grating crackle of Cicadas in season. The blood-red sun drenched the skyline and melted to black.
~ * ~
Jasper saw the signs before he was within five miles of his stand. The first one was simple, square and white, black lettering.
“LOOK - 5 MILES”
Then they got progressively larger, and more explicit, as he moved along 17. Jasper didn’t take 17 very often, but this morning he’d had to restock his beer cooler in Elizabeth City, so he’d come in the popular route - the way his customers would come in.
“DON’T MISS OUT”
“3 ½ MILES TO YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE”
“2 MILES - THE WORLDS LARGEST AND HARDEST TO KILL”
“ONLY ONE MILE, TURN IN ON LEFT”
“½ MILE TO WORLD’S LARGEST COCKROACH! TURN NOW!”
This last sign was sub-titled with the words “Fresh fruit and produce, inquire within.”
Jasper turned down the side road and gunned his engine, spinning his tires and shooting dust and gravel into the air so thick he couldn’t see the road behind him. He saw that even the dirt road itself hadn’t escaped the signs. There were small ones and large ones, some proclaiming TOMATOES and others with large brown roach feelers raised high and eyes bugged out, starin’ at the road.
When he pulled up in front of his stand, he saw that there was a walkway, flat river stones set into the loose dirt of the field, running around back of the produce stand. A huge white wooden finger pointed the way around the corner toward the shed in back. Jasper climbed down out of his truck, slammed the door in case by some miracle Bobby Lee hadn’t heard him, and followed where that finger pointed.
The shed was transformed. Sometime in the night, Bobby Lee had brought in paint and turned the drab, beige-colored pressed metal into a gleaming, multi-colored monstrosity. The base was black, but there was orange trim, and there were pictures, cockroaches running this way and that, little roach motels in pastel, Miami-Florid sorta colors, and to the right of the door a large can of raid with feet, holding a finger to its button and spraying toward the entrance.
Jasper’s jaw dropped, and his legs turned to rubber, but before he could collapse to the newly-lain stone walk, Bobby Lee hurried out the door of the shed and grabbed him by the arm, steadying him. Jasper gaped at his friend, who was wearing a button-down shirt, a clean pair of black pants, a damned belt.
“Wha...” Jasper never got it out.
“Mornin’ partner!” Bobby Lee said. “I did a little sprucin’ up, seein’ as how this was our first day in business, and all.”
“Sprucin’....but..”
Bobby Lee cut him off again. “Don’t you worry about it partner. I didn’t expect you to be here to help. I just got the bug, you know? Get it? GET IT?”
Bobby Lee was shaking him, and Jasper wished it would stop. He couldn’t decide whether he more wanted to collapse to the ground or puke, and the shaking wasn’t helping him with the decision. Then Bobby whirled back toward the front of the produce stand, supporting Jasper by the grip on his arm, and led him to his rocker.
“You don’t worry ‘bout a thing, Jasper,” Bobby said. “Any customers show up, you send ‘em around back to me. I’ll handle it from there. You stay up here, sell the fruit, smile at the people, and watch out for ol’ Sheriff Grouse. I expect we’ll see him before the day’s out. I got his paperwork all finished and signed in my truck, but I figgered I’d let him have the satisfaction of figurin’ he’s got us by the balls before I showed it to him”
Mention of the sheriff broke Jasper out of his fog.
“What papers? What did you do, Bobby Lee? Why would the sheriff...”
“Well, you don’t think he’ll drive down 17 and miss those signs, do you?” Bobby Lee asked, keeping his voice low and slow, like he was talking to a recalcitrant mule. “I tried to get as many out there as I could. Got to rememberin’ those signs for the biggest ball of string I was tellin’ you about, and just let my imagination go, you know?”
“When did you sleep?” Jasper asked finally. “My God, Bobby Lee, where did you learn to paint like that . . .” Jasper waved his hand back in the general direction of the shed and its not-quite-dry murals, “over yonder? And where in HELL did you get a button-down shirt that had all the buttons?”
Bobby Lee’s grin never faded.
“I feel like a new man,” Jasper, he said. “I feel like this has been my destiny, you know? Everyone has to find them a place in life, and I reckon I walked into mine when I hit that flea market the other day.”
“You was born to rip off suckers on a giant wooden cockroach display?” Jasper asked, trying to sort it all out in his head. “That what you’re sayin’, Bobby Lee? You tellin’ me your momma raised you and fed you and tried to put you through school just so’s you could build a home for a giant bug?”
Bobby Lee blinked. Just for a moment, Jasper thought he might be getting through, and then the light in Bobby Lee’s eyes faded out, and blinked on again, high-beams flashing.
“That’s exactly what I’m sayin’, I guess,” he replied. “You just send them folks around to see me,” he added, “and don’t forget to sell them their ticket first.”
Jasper glanced down to where Bobby’s gaze had strayed, and noticed a big roll of paper tickets on the old wood table next to his cooler. The tickets said $5 ADMIT ONE. Jasper shook his head. He was about to comment further when Bobby Lee abruptly turned on his heel and marched back around the corner to his shed. Jasper thought about following to press whatever point was forming in his mind, but something made him sit tight. He didn’t want to go into that shed again. He didn’t know why, would have denied the sensation altogether if confronted with it, but there it was. He remembered those voices. He remembered the chill, the dampness, and the way his steps had slowed as if he were wading through butter.
Jasper got up, set to work putting out his produce and clearing away what he’d left behind the night before. He pointedly ignored the walkway leading behind his stand – until the people started coming.
Over the next week, the produce stand became something of a sensation. It seemed like everyone from the Outer Banks and Kitty Hawk to Raleigh and Durham had heard the news. There was a new roadside attraction, and they were flocking to it in droves. Jasper’s small garden had proven unable to keep up with the sudden demand for fresh tomatoes and strawberries, and Bobby Lee worked straight through one weekend to get pavers in to create a real parking lot. The drive coming in from 17, which had been nothing more than a gravel and dirt side-road, more discouraging than inviting to anything with wheels, had been resurfaced by the county, who were quick to see what the new attraction was doing for the tourist trade and local businesses.
The white signs on the freeway had been replaced by a longer series that ran up and down route 17 and onto some of the bisecting and intersecting roads with exits. In the middle of the bypass on the way to Virginia, there was a huge black sign with dripping green letters proclaiming.
“STRAIGHT FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP. NO KITCHEN IS SAFE - NO TRASH CAN IS SACRED. HE’S BIG - HE’S THE BIGGEST DURNED COCKROACH IN THE WORLD - 18 Miles, South 17. FRESH PRODUCE - T-SHIRTS - SOUVENIRS - PEANUTS ”
The sign featured a giant, comical bug crawling over the top of the letters, huge antennae blocking the long, flat view of cotton fields beyond. It was only one of many signs, and it wasn’t kidding about a bit of it. Racks of t-shirts lined the front of the parking lot. The produce stand itself had grown, incorporating a double-wide trailer with siding that housed vats and bins of rubber and plastic cockroaches and giant mosquitoes, rubber snakes and bumper stickers that said, “I Saw it and Lived” and other such things. Jasper’s mind was whirling so fast form one new thing to the next that he nearly forgot the shed out back, and what lay within.
He sat out front ever day, watching them, curious coming and sort of dazed and glazed going. They bought the shirts, and the produce, bags of peanuts and handfuls of rubber bugs. Jasper had never had so much money in his life, and, for once there didn’t seem to be a legal reason he couldn’t keep it.
But as things settled into a rhythm, and he had some time to sit and watch them come and go, little things began to itch at him. Bobby Lee, for one thing. The man never slept. As far as Jasper could tell, Bobby Lee had not slept a wink since the first day he’d brought the damned cockroach to the stand. It didn’t show. Bobby Lee was always smiling, always moving, working, and scheming. The shed out back had grown a foundation of concrete blocks that raised it a good four feet higher off the ground, for instance, and it had happened, seemingly, overnight. There was no sign that Bobby Lee had hired the work done, or that anyone else had an idea how it might have happened, but the next morning Bobby Lee was as fresh as a daisy and ready for anything. So he said.
Jasper had seen the difference the minute he pulled into his reserved spot at the front of the lot. There had already been three families in from Raleigh, waiting for the cockroach exhibit to open, parked in the lot. The shed, which should have been, as always, hidden by the structure of the produce stand itself, was clearly visible, rising into the sky to a height it should not have attained. Jasper had nearly run over a stand full of t-shirts staring at it.
Ignoring the calls and questions of the customers, waiting on him to open, he ran around the corner to the shed. Bobby Lee stepped quickly through door, as if he’d been waiting for his partner to arrive, smiling broadly and waving at the new foundation with a flourish of one brawny arm.
“Well, what do you think? I got to worryin’ over hurricanes and the like, thought I might get ‘er fixed into the ground a little more permanently.”
Jasper stared up at the ludicrously tall structure and frowned. His mind was framing all sorts of questions, most of them starting with the words “How in the HELL,” but none of them would quite make the journey to his lips. He stepped toward the doorway, and reached around to where he knew the light switch was mounted on the wall, but before he could flick it, Bobby Lee grabbed him by the arm.
“You might not want to do that,” Bobby Lee said softly.
The touch of Bobby Lee’s hand on his arm was cold. Where their skin met felt like ice had been packed in under Jasper’s skin. He heard the scuttling of what his mind conjured into a mound of thousands of crustaceous, squirming bodies. He stared into the shadowed interior of the shed, and more tiny glittering pinpoints of light than the stars in a cloudless summer’s night sky winked back at him – then were gone. Something huge and hulking centered the shed, larger than the cockroach itself could possibly be, twelve, maybe fifteen feet in the air, instead of seven. The interior of that shed had a cold draft, and the scent of the place was dank and sweet with rot. Like the swamp.
Jasper reeled back from the stench, yanking his arm free of Bobby Lee’s grip. His partner was still smiling, but the smile was brittle, and for the first time Jasper looked deeper into his friend’s eyes. They were bright, far-too bright to be natural. His skin was sun-dried to the point of being leathery - or even papery. And the cold.
“You mainlining ice, Bobby Lee?” Jasper whispered. “What the hell is wrong with you – and – with that place?”
“Not a thing, Jasper,” Bobby Lee said. His voice was as normal and pleasant as ever, but there was no mistaking the way he moved in front of the shed door. It was a sidewise sort of shuffle. Like a scuttling bug, or a man working his arms and legs via strings, like a puppet. Too fast, but sort of clumsy and “wrong”.
“You go back out front and send those folks in,” Bobby Lee said softly. “We don’t want to disappoint them.”
Jasper turned, remembering the customers gathered at the edge of the parking lot for the first time since he’d rounded the corner. He stepped back, started to say something, then turned and fled to the front – to his chair, and his beer, and the line of folks already stretching halfway around the parking lot, all of them wanting a glimpse of that damned giant cockroach.
Jasper wondered if they felt it. He wondered if they smelled the stench, and heard the scuttling feet – the soft, chitinous voices that never stopped speaking or chirping or chanting or whatever-the-hell they were doing. Maybe he was just losing it. Bobby Lee had sure done him a good turn, letting him in on this deal, and one thing was certain. There was no shortage of cockroach suckers in the world. No sir.
Jasper grabbed the roll of tickets and began doling them out, five dollars a pop, to bright, eager faced kids and tolerant parents, young couples on long vacations and truck-loads of rednecks in for a quick laugh. He only paid them half a mind, but one family caught his eye.
They pulled up in a brand new SUV, the kind with a million features, DVD player in back and On Star up front. Mother, father, a boy of maybe 13 in a black t-shirt with the center of his lower lip pierced and his hair spiked like a damned purple and green porcupine, and the girls. They were twin girls, probably eighteen or nineteen, tall and long-legged with matched honey colored hair and short skirts. Jasper couldn’t have missed them if he tried, and despite his need to vend tickets to the next twenty people in line and price t-shirts for another fifteen visitors on their way out, he managed to keep an eye on them until they wound around the corner and out of site toward the shed.
For the next half hour or so, Jasper was too busy to think about them, and that was a tribute to how hard he was working, because there was absolutely NOTHING Jasper loved better than a cute set of twins. He liked to watch TV LAND on cable so he could catch the old Doublemint Girls commercials. It wasn’t until that family was winding their way back out, the boy selecting a truly disgusting plastic roach souvenir, and the mother laughingly holding one of the “I Survived the Great Dismal Swamp” t-shirts across her breasts and winking at her husband, that Jasper remembered them at all.
It was later in the afternoon, and Jasper scanned the diminishing crowd quickly for the twins. They were nowhere to be seen, and he grew almost frantic, staring out over the thinning traffic in the small parking lot to see if he’d somehow missed their trek back to the SUV. There was no one visible inside the vehicle, and the rest of the family seemed oblivious. They laughed and joked a little - or the parents did. The boy jammed a pair of headphones onto his head, cranked the volume on some sort of expensive portable MP3 player, and zoned out. They walked away as a group, straight to the SUV, opened the doors, and got in.
Jasper stepped away from his counter, holding up a hand to those waiting on him to give him a moment. He stepped to the corner of the stand, and glanced around at the shed. Bobby Lee was there, grinning and waving at him, but there was no sign of the girls. Jasper frowned. He turned to scan the SUV again, but its taillights were already disappearing out the feeder road toward 17.
“What the hell?” he muttered. He turned back to the counter and went through the motions for the next twenty minutes or so, ushering the last of the crowds out and away. Jasper carefully counted out the days proceeds, which were phenomenal, and packed the bills away into the bank bag he’d taken to carrying in a lock box beneath the seat of his truck. When the shirt racks had been wheeled inside, and the tiny remnant of the day’s fresh produce had been stored for the night, he locked up carefully.
He stepped to the corner of the building, as he did every night, and called out to Bobby Lee.
“You done for the night, Bobby?”
“Just about,” Bobby called back. His voice floated out from the interior of the shed, and for a moment, Jasper stared. There was no light on inside, and it was growing dark outside. The shadows inside had to be deeper still.
Jasper shook his head and turned, walking deliberately to his truck. He had no intention of going home, but he had him a plan, and it involved Bobby Lee watching him leave the parking lot, so he drove on out the feeder road and turned right on 17 toward Elizabeth City. He figured it wouldn’t take him more than five or six beers and a shot or two to be ready to come back.
~ * ~
The hulking signs leading toward the world’s largest cockroach loomed over the ditches and crossroads of Highway 17 as Jasper passed them, winding his way slowly back toward the stand, and the shed, and what lay within. He had no intention of turning in onto the feeder road; that would be too obvious. Jasper had been running his produce stand for a lot of years, and he knew more than one way in, and out. He passed the main road and went about half a mile until a paved road bisected the highway. It bore the same name as a thousand North Carolina roads, Dead End, but he paid that no mind, other than to hope it was just a name, and would not prove prophetic.
The road wound back in along lines of trees that bordered fields outlined by even rows of cotton. Jasper drove slowly and carefully, keeping his engine as quiet as possible. He turned left onto a dirt track and followed the rutted, poorly kept road deeper into the trees. The road grew progressively worse, and it wasn’t long before he found a place to pull the truck in under the overhanging branches and off the road. He parked and popped the top on another beer as he stared off into the darkness across the cotton field.
He could make out the imposing shadow of the impossibly tall shack from where he sat. The odd shape of the building reminded him of a giant outhouse, and he chuckled, downing the beer in quick gulps and reaching for another. Made sense, he reckoned, that a giant roach would end up in a giant outhouse. He wondered why he’d never noticed it before.
When the second beer had been sucked dry, he got out, tossed the can in the back of his truck, and stood, getting his bearings. It was still a good quarter of a mile through the cotton to the shed, but as long as he was quiet, he was sure he could sneak up on the place. He saw Bobby Lee’s truck beside the shed, and there was a dim glow seeping out along the roof line, and near the bottom of the building. Whatever it was Bobby Lee had going on in that place, it was going on now, and Jasper aimed to see it for himself. If Bobby Lee was holding out on him, partying with twins and such, Jasper aimed to be part of that, too. If it was something else . . . he shivered deep inside.
“Partners,” he muttered to himself, “is partners.”
The moonlight was bright; bathing the back of the shed in cold, white illumination. Though it was unseasonably warm, the closer Jasper came to the back of the building, the colder it grew. By the time he broke free of the cotton and into the area Bobby Lee had raked clear that first day, his teeth were chattering, and he threw his nearly empty beer can off behind him, curling his arms around his chest.
“What the hell,” he said to no one in particular.
Moving quietly, he worked his way around the shed on the left side, hesitating as he drew near the corner. He was walking close to the shed, and where his arm brushed the corrugated metal wall, something rippled over his skin. There was a stench in the air, like rotted vegetation, or some sort of hot mud, but there was no heat. Jasper’s heart danced like a bug on a magnifying glass, and for a moment, with the blood rushing to his head, he thought he’d pass out. Then he steadied himself, regretting instantly the contact with the building this required. The walls vibrated, and the vibration translated to sound in his head. The sound was a drone, as though there were a million mosquitoes humming inside, or the wings of a host of wasps beating against the far side of the wall. Jasper closed his eyes, caught his breath, and in that instant he saw them, clinging to one another, climbing and grasping and bobbing with black-gold-black striped stingers primed, dripping poison.
He opened his eyes with as start and pulled away from the wall.
“Jesus Jumpin’ Jehosephat Christ,” he whispered. Each syllable of the words came out in a separate gasp.
He stood wavering between continuing around the corner and turning to run and never look back, moving on to Virginia, or Maryland, starting over. Then he thought of Bobby Lee. He remembered long lazy afternoons fishing, hard days on his daddy’s farm, Bobby Lee at his side, working until they fell down in the dirt exhausted and then washed it all off with a garden hose to start over and do it again. He couldn’t leave Bobby Lee in there, even if Bobby Lee WANTED to be in there.
“Wish I’d brought some raid,” he muttered, and turned the corner of the shed, moving stealthily toward the sliding door in front.
A sickly greenish glow seeped out through the doorway. It reminded Jasper of the glow-sticks they sold at summer carnivals, or the glow-in-the-dark stars he’d hung on his ceiling as a boy. The droning was louder now, and it covered a wide range of tones - deep and resonant to high-pitched and ear-splitting. Jasper pulled a wad of tissue out of his pocket, hoped it wasn’t too dirty, and wadded rolls of it in each ear, blocking as much of the sound as possible.
He stared at the door, trying to think of a compelling enough reason to turn tail and run, but he couldn’t shake the thought of Bobby Lee, and those crawling, touching, stinging bugs.
“Ah, hell,” he said softly. Before he could change his mind, he stepped inside.
If the air had been cold outside the shed, it was frigid when he stepped in. There were lights, but they were soft, and green, and buried in the corners near the rear of the building. Jasper couldn’t see a thing except the huge, vaguely defined silhouette of the giant wooden cockroach. The greenish glow shimmered around the edges of it like the silver lining on a cloud gone rotten. And that was another thing. The stench was horrible. Every breath had weight, as if he were breathing liquid, or some sort of thick gas, rather than air.