Nailed to a Chicken
by Mike Stickel
"It's cold! What do you think the wind chill ish, Sheth?" Wyatt asked.
"How the fuck should I know?" Seth's eyelids were starting to freeze together. "The bank clock uptown said it was thirty-seven below, but that's not wind chill."
It was just past eleven p.m. and Wyatt and Seth had been stomping through the foot of snow and ice that blanketed Riverwood Cemetery, wandering from tomb to tomb, the wind shoving at their backs.
"Which one, again?" demanded Wyatt, breath steaming through his scarf.
"Sauro. S-A-U-R-O. Tyler Sauro. Carmen used to baby-sit him when he was little. He drowned swimming in Lake Ida last summer," Seth said through his ski mask. He was dragging a white laundry bag that held bolt-cutters and a pry bar. "Here we are."
The brothers stood in front of the mausoleum. There was silence until Seth snapped the chain with the bolt-cutters, making a sound like a rifle shot in the dry air. It took both of them to push open the heavy iron door. Once inside, Seth and Wyatt stomped the snow off of their boots. They found Tyler's casket with the help of a penlight on a bottom shelf underneath his grandfather. Grasping the handles, they dragged the coffin to the middle of the vault and sat down on it.
"At least we're out of the wind!" Seth pulled a glass pipe and a carefully folded piece of chewing gum foil from inside his orange and gray snowmobile suit.
"Fucker, I knew you'd bring shum!" Wyatt took a mini-torch from the pocket of his barn jacket. "I thought you shed you had a eish cream habit."
"At least I'm not into kibbles and bits, ratboy," said Seth, referring to his brother's custom of popping Talwin and Ritalin together.
Each held the torch while the other sucked the heroin smoke into his lungs. "I never been shucked-off by a chineesh chick before." Wyatt was trying not to let the smoke escape his lungs.
"Fuck you, asshole. Carmen promised me a hundred bucks and a blow job if I brought her Tyler. You can have your fifty dollars, but I get the blow job!"
"Can I watch, then?"
"OK, but you can't take any pictures." Seth was starting to feel as happy as a baby in a barrel full of titties. "We better hurry or we'll miss the last bus back!" He stood up and banged off the lugs on the coffin with the pry bar and lifted the lid.
"Groash!"
Seth played his penlight up and down the green and black child in the moldy black suit. It was a lot more hootch looking than any movie effects. Without a second thought, Seth grabbed Tyler under the arms and dragged him onto the concrete floor.
"Groash!"
"Quit saying that and hold the bag open!" demanded Seth. Wyatt did as he was told and with a little shoving and bending, they were able to get the dead ten year old into the laundry sack. Seth dropped in the bolt cutters and pry bar and pulled the drawstrings shut. They steeled themselves for what was waiting outside.
The brothers each grabbed a draw string and pulled the cloth sack outside.
"FUCK!!!" they screamed into the wind. It had rained two days before and the tombstones, monuments, trees, everything was covered with a quarter inch of ice. Even the gibbous moon had a halo of ice crystals around it. To Seth it all looked so‹pretty. He couldn't wait to get back to Carmen's apartment with Tyler, fuck her face then spurt between her lips if she let him, get his $100, then go upstairs to his own apartment and write movie reviews.
Seth's secret ambition was to be a movie reviewer for a national magazine. Most of his paycheck from working as a telemarketer went to seeing every movie that opened in town and subscriptions to Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, Film Comment, and others. He had a notebook filled with cliché movie review phrases that he could mix 'n' match to come up with the perfect review, which he mailed to every magazine and newspaper he could find an address for. Just because Popular Mechanics didn't have a movie review column didn't mean they couldn't use one.
"We going out the shame way we came in?" asked Wyatt.
"Yup."
The bag slid easily over the ice-covered snow. The wind blew icy twigs onto their heads. Wyatt smiled when he saw all the evergreen wreaths decorating gravestones and tacked on to the doors of tombs. Fifteen year old Wyatt had always been wildly sentimental about Christmas. He demanded his parents put up the decorations right after Halloween and always helped his dad put up the outside lights. It was his proud duty to assemble and light the manger scene in the front yard with stolen lawn ornaments. He shoplifted presents for everyone he knew and let them know exactly what he wanted for Christmas. He even wore foam reindeer antlers outside starting Thanksgiving day. Wyatt despised the day after New Year's when his weary parents made him take the Christmas decorations down.
"Look Sheth! A Christmas tree!" Wyatt was pointing at a Christmas tree stuck in the snow in front of a statue of a crying angel with its arms busted off. It's cheap decorations broken and wind scattered around it.
They had arrived at the hole dug under the iron spiked fence that the brothers had slid under. Seth went through first so Wyatt could push the laundry bag under the fence to him. When Wyatt squirmed through, they both grabbed a drawstring and dragged the laundry bag easily behind them, shuffling in baby steps to keep from falling on their asses. It was four blocks against the wind to the bus stop at Hennepin and Lake.
Bored, Wyatt recited one of his favorite books, Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham, out loud. When he finished and started performing Horton Hears A Who, Seth told him to shut up.
"Don't tell me to shut up! Dad shesh to tell you if you don't go back to school, he'll quit paying your rent!"
"You can tell dad to shuck my dick!" Seth knew it was an empty threat. Seth would have to move back home, and he knew his mom and dad couldn't handle that again. Besides, he heard that reading textbooks caused syphilis.
"I'll tell him you shed that when he picksh me up from your apartment Shunday night!"
"Go right ahead, ash hole!" Seth hated having a little brother. What he really needed was some more smoke. He knew a dealer named Al that lived a couple of blocks away. If they didn't stay too long they could still make the last 21A bus east on Lake Street to the office furniture warehouse where he and Carmen had apartments on the third floor. When they got to Astor Street, Seth forced them to go left.
"Where we going, Sheth? The bushtopsh thish way!"
"My dealer's!" Seth shouted into the howling wind.
Standing in front of the dealer's house, even with all the lights on and dog barking, Seth couldn't believe anyone really lived there with all the broken windows and walls stripped of siding.
"Wow! A haunted housh!" exclaimed Wyatt. They walked onto the porch and stomped the snow off their boots. Seth pounded on the door.
A steroid-addled body builder with no eyebrows opened the door with a 9mm in one hand and a chain hooked to the leash of a snapping pit bull in the other. He stared at the brothers.
"Is Aladdin here?"
"Who you?"
"Tell him it's Seth."
The door slammed. They flopped on a broken couch on the porch. Ten minutes later they were about to leave when the door was re-opened by a scrawny guy with ink-blue hair, broken teeth and a matted maroon beard that fell to his waist. "Seth! My favorite trust fund baby! Come in!"
The brothers walked inside the foyer pulling the laundry sack behind them. "You know I don't get my trust fun for another year and a half, Al!" Seth pulled his ski mask off, and Wyatt unwrapped his scarf. They could hear men laughing and shouting, and a woman screaming upstairs over Nirvana's In Utero.
"Who's your bud?" Aladdin gave Wyatt the once over.
"My little brother, Wyatt. He's staying at my place this weekend."
Aladdin stared at the bag the brothers dragged in. "You doing laundry tonight? The radio says it's 65 below wind chill!"
Seth laughed. "It's not laundry! We just stole a kid's body for Carmen from Riverview Cemetery."
"Chinese Carmen? I know her. What does she want with a dead boy?"
"I dunno," Seth shrugged. "Carmen used to baby sit him or something. She promised me a hundred bucks and a blow job if I got him for her."
"That sounds like Carmen! Let's go downstairs and do business, but leave the bag up here. Watch your step."
Aladdin led the brothers past cracked walls swarming with roaches and through a mine field of dog turds to the filthy kitchen. From there they went down a rickety stairway to the basement. A fluorescent shop light revealed rough stone walls, two pit bulls chained to treadmills, the body builder watching a small black and white TV with the sound turned down, and a sobbing, shirtless man, kneeling on the packed-earth floor with his hand crushed in a vice attached to a workbench. Fresh cigarette burns dotted his chest. It was cold enough to see their breath.
"Wow!" exclaimed Seth. "A black and white TV. I've heard about those, but I never seen one before!"
"I traded for it with a rock. How come your brother don't talk?" said Aladdin, staring at Wyatt.
"What time ish it when a elephant shits on a fensh?" Wyatt asked him.
Uh oh, thought Seth.
"I dunno," said Aladdin. "What time is it when a elephant shits on a fence?"
"Time to get a new fensh!" Wyatt burst out laughing.
Aladdin looked confused, then angry.
Wyatt asked, "Why did the chicken crosh the road?"
"To get to the other side?"
"Aww, you heard it! Why did Jeshush crosh the road?"
"Huh?"
"Cush he wash nailed to a chicken!"
The bodybuilder sitting on the folding chair turned his tiny shaved head around. "That's blasphemy!"
Seth jerked a thumb at the crying man with the hand in the vice. "What's his story?"
Aladdin looked angry. "Fucker comes here looking for crack with his wife when he already owes me $450! Me and Casper dragged 'em down her and gave him one choice. We entertain him down her while his wife entertains our customers for $10 a pop upstairs till his debt is paid off. We wanted to charge more, but she's ugly as a hat-full of assholes. That's her on the TV. Felix is on the camera upstairs."
"How much have you made so far?" asked Seth.
"One hundred and twenty-five."
"One hundred and twenty-five?"
"One old man just wanted to watch so we let him in for half price."
"Hey, it's Big Jimmy's turn!" shouted Casper.
"You guys gotta watch this. Jimmy's got the biggest prong you ever saw on a white guy!"
They huddled around the small screen. The brothers gasped together when they saw Big Jimmy's tool rise from between his knees.
"That fucker ish deformed!"
"Your old lady will be able to do squat thrusts on a fire hydrant when Jimmy's done with her!" Casper told their vice-clamed guest. His sobbing increased in volume. "Let...me...got!" Aladdin's response was to turn the TV so the crack head could get a better view.
"What can I do you for, boys?" asked Aladdin, suddenly all business. "Pussy, crack, smack or has?"
"Howzabout fifty bucks worth of skag?" asked Seth.
"You got it."
"How's my credit?"
"Always good." Aladdin grinned through a mouthful of broken teeth pulling two bundles from his jeans and stuffing them in a pocket of Seth's snowmobile suit.
Seth put on his ski mask and mittens. "Time to go."
"Before we go, Al, will you let me do shumthing?" asked Wyatt.
"What?"
"I've alwaysh wanted to carve The Cat In The Hat in a guysh back with a rashor blade," he said, looking directly at the crack head trapped in the vice. "Or Curioush George."
"Go for it."
"Wyatt, we gotta go! If we miss the last bus we're gonna have to drag the kid's body six miles down Lake Street!"
"But Sheth!‹"
Seth grabbed his brother's hand and started to pull him up the shaky stairs. "But Sheth, I gotta rashor blade, and I wanna shtay and watch TV!" Wyatt protested. "You're not the bawsh of me!"
"I'll buy you the videotape later!" Seth pushed his brother outside where the cold hit them like a mallet.
"You got shum really neat friends, Seth!"
Half a block away they heard Aladdin's voice behind them.
"Boys, you forgot something!" They turned around and saw Aladdin leave the laundry sack on the sidewalk and run back inside.
"Oh shit!" said Seth, trotting down the sidewalk as fast as he could without slipping on the ice. He grabbed the drawstrings and fell on his ass when the bag caught on a protruding chunk of ice. He crawled toward his laughing brother dragging the corpse sack behind him. Wyatt finally went over to haul Seth back on his feet. They each grabbed a drawstring and walked toward the Uptown business district. The bars were closing and drunks were sliding, slipping and falling toward their cars. They laughed together when they saw a guy gash his forehead when he fell on a parking meter.
They finally reached the bus stop at Hennepin and Lake. The brothers joining the small group around the bus bench. Seth was relieved to see the last bus three blocks away. Wyatt stared at the people lined up for the Saturday 2 a.m. showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Roxy.
"Hey Sheth, next Shaturday can we come back and shee Rocky Horror? I sheen it on video, but I alwaysh wanted to shee it at the Roxshee."
Seth was too ashamed to admit to his brother that he was banned from his favorite movie. When he moved to the south side last year, he went to Rocky Horror faithfully every Saturday night, eventually joining the cast on stage as Dr. Frank N. Furter #4. The management had thrown him out when he performed one night with a noticeable hard on. He could probably get in dressed as another character, like Riff Raff, but he knew it would be wrong. "Yeah, sure," he lied.
"Goody!" Wyatt nudged a well wrapped woman standing with her boyfriend. "Hey lady, how can you tell if a elephantsh been in your refrigerator?"
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