Vernon God Little

'See, I have this plan how you can get all the pictures you want, hundreds of 'em – today even, when Harris's opens.'

'Aw hell, son, shill my wincer – ya dragged me up fer nothing.'

'Look,' I say, unfolding the sheet of paper. 'See these internet addresses? That's where all those hard-core pictures are kept, for free – even the Amputee Spree stuff that you really like. With these instructions, you can go by Harris's store, take the booth with the computer, and print out all you want. No kidding. With this list, you'll never have to pay for pictures again.'

'Shit, I don't know – I never got with them com-puder machines.'

'Forget it, it's easy. Everything you have to do is written here.'

'We-ell,' he says, stroking his chin. 'How much ya want fer it?'

'A case.'

'Git outta here.'

'No kidding, Sie, this list can save you a truckload of beer over the summer. A goddam truckload, at least.'

'I'll pay a six-pack.'

'We-ell,' I hesitate. You have to hesitate with Silas. 'We-e-ll. I don't know, Sie, plenty of kids'll wanna kill me, after I bust the business like this.'

'Six-packa Coors, I'll go git it.' He swings away into the house like a one-legged monkey. You can't drink till you're twenty-one around here. I ain't twenty-one. Good ole Silas always keeps some brews in stock, to trade for special pictures. Us Martirio kids are like his personal internet. He's our personal bar.

By seven-thirty this Monday morning I'm sat in a dirt clearing behind some bushes at Keeter's, sucking beer and waiting for ideas about cash. From where I sit you can watch the sun piss orange around the rims of those ole abandoned toilet bowls. I have my beers, my joints, and Country music pumping deep into my brain. I'm ready to howl like a coon-dog. I use it all to try and plot my position in life. There's me here, and Mexico down there. Taylor Figueroa in between. All I have to figure out is the rest of it. 'Get to the Nub of Things,' as Mr Nuckles used to say, back when his goddam mouth worked. To be honest, the only new information that comes to me is a whole swarm of lies about my so-called job. Take note of what happens in a lie-world like this; by the time you're in this deep, and you've invented an imaginary job, with an imaginary start time, and imaginary pay, and put your loved-ones through the sandwich routine, and 'Oh my God should I call Hildegard Lasseen,' and all – it doesn't matter anymore whether you admit the lie, or just get fucken busted doing it. People go, 'But he was so credible.' They start to realize you introduced them to a whole parallel world, full of imaginary shit. It's a pisser, I know it, I don't blame them at all. But it's like suddenly you qualify for membership in the fucken Pathology Zone, even though those same people immediately turn around and go, 'Can't make it, Gloria – my folks just flew in from Denver.'

Nah, my slime's so thick, it ain't worth coming clean at all. Take good note; Fate actually makes it harder to admit slime, the farther in you get. What kind of system is that? If I was president of the Slime Committee, I'd make it easier to come clean about shit. If coming clean is what you're supposed

to do, then it should be made more fucken accessible, I say. I guess the shiver that really comes over me is that I just handed everybody the final nail for my cross. All they needed, on top of everything, was a credible lie. You can just see my ole lady on TV when they break the news, don't tell me you can't. 'Well but I even stayed up to pack his sandwiches...'

I fumble a lighter from my pocket, and spark up a joint. I ain't going by Goosens's today. Fuck that. My ole lady's safe with Nana. I'm going to find a way out of here.

'Bernie?' It's Ella Bouchard. She stops behind a bush at the edge of my clearing, and moves her lips the opposite way to what I hear in my ears, which is crawfish pie and filet gumbo.

Just let me say, in case you think I'm secretly in love with Ella, that I've known her since I was eight. Every boy in town knew Ella since they were eight, and none of them are secretly in love with her. Her equipment ain't arrived. You guess it maybe ain't coming either, when you look at her. Like her equipment got delivered to Dolly Parton or something. Ella's just skinny, with some freckles, and this big ole head of tangly blond hair that's always blown to hell, like a Barbie doll your dog's been chewing on for a month. Nobody yet figured out how to deal with Ella Bouchard. She lives with her folks, along the road from Keeter's Spares amp; Repairs. Her folks are like hillbilly types that don't move their arms when they walk, and just stare straight ahead all the time. The kind that repeat everything eighty times when they talk, like, 'That's how it was, yessir, the way it was was just like that, just like that, the way it was.' Probably explains why Ella's kind of weird too. Cause and effect, boy.