Vernon God Little

Mom scurries across our porch with a tray of listless ole joy cakes. She's in Spooked Deer mode. She looked this way the last time I saw my daddy alive, although Spooked Deer can mean anything from her frog oven-mitt being misplaced, to actual Armageddon. But her mitt's right there, under the tray. She heads down the steps past our willow, the one with her wishing bench under it. The wishing bench is quite a new feature around here, but already the damned thing's listing into the dirt. She pays no mind, and flounces up to Pam's car.

'Howdy pardner,' she says to me, dripping with that cutesy-shucksy Chattanooga-buddy-boy shit she started when I first showed evidence of having a dick. Feel the bastard shrivel now. I pull away, in vain because she chases me, covers me with spit and lipstick and fuck knows what else. Placenta, probably. All the while she smiles a smile you know you've seen before, but just can't put your finger on. Clue: the movie where the mother visits this young family, and by the end they have to grapple fucken scissors from her hands.

'Gh-rrr.' Vaine steps between us. 'I'm afraid your pardner here absconded from our interview.'

'Well call me Doris, Vaine! I'm almost a Gurie myself, I'm so cozy with LuDell, and Reyna and all.'

'Is that right. Mrs Little, let me explain where things stand…'

'Well these cakes are just singing out to be tasted – Vaine?'

'I'm afraid I don't make the laws, ma'am.'

'At least come up to the house – no point getting hot and ornery, we can straighten things out,' says Mom. I stiffen. You don't want Gurie poking around my room or anything. My fucken closet or anything.

'I'm afraid Vernon will have to come with me,' says Gurie. 'Then we need to take a look through his room.'

'Well, God, Vaine – he hasn't done any wrong, he always does like he's told…'

'Is that right. So far he's done nothing but lie, and when I trust him alone he absconds. We still can't account for him at the time of the tragedy.'

'He wasn't even there!'

'Not what he told us, he told us he was in math.'

'It was the time of our math period,' I correct. Print me a fucken T-shirt, for chrissakes.

'Then there's no need to worry,' says Gurie. 'If you have nothing to hide.'

'Well but Vaine, the news says it's open and shut – everybody knows the cause.'

Curie's eyelids flutter. 'Everybody might know the effect, Mrs Little. We'll see about the cause.'

'But the news says…'

'The news says a lot of things, ma'am. The fact is we've run this county dry of body-bags, and I, for one, hold the opinion that it'd take more than a single, unaided gunman to do that.'

Mom stumbles to her wishing bench, abandoning her cakes to the side. She overbalances a little as the bench settles unevenly into the dirt. The fucken bench settles a different way every week, like it's indexed to her head or something. 'Well I don't know why everything has to happen to me. We have witnesses, Vaine – witnesses!'

Gurie sighs. 'Ma'am, you know how accessible the so-called witnesses are. Maybe your boy knew. Maybe not. The fact is, he absconded before our interview was over – people with airtight alibis just don't do that.'

This is how long it takes Pam to lever herself out of the Mercury. It grunts with relief as she lets go the frame. Fire ants catapult across the seat.

'I took him, Vaine. Found him near dead from starvation.'

Gurie folds her arms. 'He was offered food…'

'Fiddledy-boo, the Pritikin diet wouldn't even feed the nose on a growing boy.' One sweaty eye snaps to Gurie. 'How's it going, Vaine – the Pritikin diet?'

'Oh – fine. Gh-rr.'

That's Gurie stuck through like a bug. The crumpled-looking stranger with the camcorder catches my eye from under the Lechugas' willow, then looks at Vaine. He still has a smile without promise, a chalk smile that strikes me edge-ways, don't ask me why. Gurie pays no mind. She just fixes him in the corner of her eye. The guy wears tan overalls with a white dinner jacket, like ole Ricardo Moltenbomb, or whoever Mom's favorite was who had the dwarf on Fantasy Island. He eventually penguin-walks over the road, fixing his camcorder onto a tripod. It tells you he's either a tourist, or a reporter. Only way to tell reporters these days is by their names – ever notice how fucken bent your local reporters' names are? Like, Zirkie Hartin, Aldo Manaldo, and shit.

'So,' says Gurie, ignoring Moltenbomb. 'Let's get this child into town.' Child my ass.

'Well wait,' says Mom. 'There's something you should know – Vernon suffers from a kind of – condition.' She rasps it like it's cancer.

'Heck, Momma!'

'Vernon Gregory, you know you get that inconvenience!'

Jesus, fuck. My overbite grows a yard. Moltenbomb chuckles from the roadside.

'We'll take care of him,' says Gurie, wiping a hand on her leg. She nudges me down the driveway with her body; effective law-enforcement if you have ass-cheeks like fucken demolition balls.