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Christopher Gronlund presents Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Read by me, the author, Christopher Gronlund.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Of Half Buried Cadillacs and Fully Possessed Chihuahuas”
When I woke up the next morning, I heard Mom and Dad talking—it was still dark. The episode with Bubba really got to Mom, and she was laying down the law to Dad, telling him how it was going to be.
“James, since I won so much playing bingo and you’ve lost your wallet and have nothing,” she said, “I think what I say is gonna stand from now on. And I say from tonight, forward—for the rest of this trip—we’re sleeping in hotels.”
Dad looked as disappointed as a little kid called in early on a summer evening. Ever since the visit to Yellowstone years before, he couldn’t convince Mom to take traditional camping trips anymore, so he had to settle for second best: sleeping in tents on road trips, or in the backyard with me.
“Okay,” he said. “But can we at least sleep with the windows open?”
“No,” Mom said. He knew pushing the issue would get him nowhere, so he shut up.
Breakfast that morning was gas station junk food: strawberry Zingers, Honey Buns, and doughnuts washed down with chocolate milk. It only took a few minutes to make it to Cadillac Ranch. The sun was just peeking over the horizon; Dad wanted to get there before anyone else.
“I don’t think this place gets crowds, James,” Mom said on the drive there.
“It’s famous, Mary,” he said. “You never know with these things…” He just used it as an excuse for an early start. The more time spent on the road was more time for adventure in his mind.
There’s just something about ten Cadillacs buried face down, halfway into the flat earth in a wheat field in the Texas Panhandle—you either love it or hate it. Mom hated it, of course. Had it been a field full of pink lawn flamingos, she would have stood in awe, insisting Dad take plenty of pictures. But Cadillac Ranch offered nothing for Mom, except a chance to complain some more.
“This is crap!” she declared. “A total waste of good cars! Cadillacs are classics, not like that station wagon you bought.” Dad could have argued that point; I’m sure he saw the Inferno as a distant cousin to the Cadillacs, but he knew better than give Mom what she wanted. “We should bury that piece of junk car of yours totally! None of this half out crap.” She lit a cigarette and Aunt Margie moved her way like a moth to flame, hoping for a handout.
You could count me in as one who loved Cadillac Ranch; it was one of the neatest things I had ever seen—the kind of thing kids love. To Dad it was so much more—to Dad, it was a testament to humanity. Burying Caddies in a wheat field and calling it art was what separated us from animals, like Lucky. That someone even thought about burying cars in the earth, and that people came from all over the country to have a look—to Dad it was a thing of beauty. No admission; this was a gift to mankind for free, making it “truer” art in Dad’s mind than something one would pay to see in a gallery. No one even selling souvenirs on the site—just ten Cadillacs face-down in the dirt!
“Isn’t it beautiful, Michael?” Dad said.
“Yeah, Dad.” I didn’t see the beauty in it, but knew it meant a lot to him so I went along. “It’s neat.”
He peeled his T-shirt off and handed it to me; something came over him. “Hold this, please.”
He went up to the ’59 Coupe DeVille and ran his hand along its body, as though it were a horse and he were asking for permission to climb aboard for a ride. And that’s precisely what he did: in a flash, he climbed atop the car and stretched his arms toward the sky. He looked like a pagan god, standing atop the half-buried car, calling the sun from the horizon to do his bidding, the master of his own Stonehenge of rubber and steel and spraypaint. He let out a primal “YAAAWWWWWWWP!!!!!!!” then inhaled deeply.
“What’s wrong with Jimmy?” Aunt Margie asked, blowing smoke into the morning air.
“He’s nuts is what’s wrong!” Mom said. She turned her attention to Dad. “James, you get down from there right now.” She said it like she was scolding one of the twins, or me.
As if ripping his shirt off and climbing on top of one of the cars wasn’t weird enough (even for Dad), what he did next was even more surprising. He turned toward the horizon, so his back was facing us, and he leaped backwards, pulling into a little ball—he was doing a backflip! He was no gymnast, though. He spun too much and landed flat on his ass and slumped forward.
“Jimmy!” Aunt Margie shouted.
“James!”
“Dad!”
We ran up to him and I thought he was crying, but he flopped on his back in the dirt and laughed.
“That’s not funny, James!” Mom said. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”
He kept laughing.
“Stop that right now!” she said, but he didn’t. She stomped off with Aunt Margie trailing behind. “I’ll be waiting in the car…”
I wondered what made Dad act the way he did. I thought maybe he was simply stressed and needed a release, that all the years of living with Mom and taking her crap had welled up inside him and communing with the sun on top of the epitome of American machinery was the only way he knew to let it go. A religious experience. My theory wasn’t far from wrong.
“Are you okay, Dad?”
“I’ve never been better, Michael.”
I handed him his T-shirt and he pulled it on after knocking dirt from his back. “Why’d you do that?” I said.
He looked at me with intense purpose, like he was bestowing some ancient secret. “Michael,” he said, “there are moments bigger than our thoughts that can’t be explained. That was one of those moments and it was special. I can’t explain it anymore than that. It’s healing…”
We both stared at the sunrise. Over the years, I’ve heard many people talk about Texas having the best sunsets, but the sunrises are pretty impressive, too. To begin the day looking at something so beautiful…it sent us on our way energized and ready to tackle all that lay ahead.
We had hardly made it into New Mexico when Dad saw a sign advertising a reptile farm. BIG TEX’S RATTLESNAKE PIT AHEAD—10 MILES!
“James, we can’t stop—we don’t have time,” Mom said. “Haven’t we seen enough reptiles on this trip already?” Mom should have known better than to give Dad an option.
“These are snakes, though!” he said. “Rattlesnakes! We got an earlier start than usual, and the kids would love to see it, I’m sure. Right kids?”
Elvis and Olivia went nuts—the thought of seeing something as venomous as themselves appealed to them, and I’m sure their minds instantly set to work figuring out a way to get copious amounts of snake poison into their big brother’s body, while making it seem accidental. I wasn’t as enthusiastic.
“How ‘bout you, Michael,” Dad said, looking at me in the rearview mirror. I was still thinking about Bubba penned up somewhere; how if I wanted to see rattlesnakes, I should go out on the plains among the rocks and see them as they’re meant to be seen. “Rattlesnakes, Buddy! How cool is that?”
I knew we were going to end up stopping, regardless, so I said, “Yeah.”
The reptile farm wasn’t nearly as big as Clyde McAllister’s Gator Village and Civil War Memorial, but how big does a side of the road attraction featuring a pit of vipers need to be? Judging by the one other car in the parking lot, they did twice as much business as Clyde McAllister, with maybe one fifth the square footage.
We wandered in and were greeted by a rail thin guy carrying an almost full Dr. Pepper bottle. Just like Lance, he wore a belt buckle so huge, that it reminded me of a satellite dish. He had tobacco stains around the edges of his mouth, and introduced himself as “Big Tex” (even though we were in New Mexico and he maybe weighed a hundred pounds in cowboy boots and leather chaps). At first, I thought maybe he’d eaten a chocolate glazed doughnut and forgot to wipe his mouth, but as he talked, he constantly spit tobacco into the bottle (if you ever visit the American Southwest, a word of warning: never drink from a Dr. Pepper bottle that isn’t yours, or one that has left your sight—you just never know what may be inside).
“Big Tex” took a headcount and told us admission would be twenty dollars. Dad instinctively reached for his wallet, quickly remembering he’d lost it. He looked at Mom, who was probably thinking she should have remembered she was the breadwinner du jour, and therefore, should have simply told Dad to keep driving when he saw the sign. Instead, she forked over the cash and said, “This is the last stop for something like this, James. Including the drive home…”
Big Tex took her money and noticed Lucky between her breasts.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we got a no pets policy. One of these snakes sees that little guy and they’ll think he’s dinner.”
“I just gave you twenty bucks and you can’t make an exception?” she said.
“Sorry, ma’am. Those are the rules.”
“Fine!” She set Lucky down. “Go to the car and wait for Mama, Lucky! Mama will be right there.”
He ran beneath the swinging saloon doors and hopped into the Inferno.
Mom looked at Big Tex. “See if we ever come back here.”
Big Tex’s Rattlesnake Pit was pretty much just that—a pit full of rattlers. He had a couple aquariums with other snakes lining the walls, complete with little signs like GARTER SNAKE: NON-POISONOUS—SAFE TO HANDLE; COPPERHEAD: PRETTY DURN POISONOUS—WATCH OUT!
The highlight of Big Tex’s place was the old redwood hot tub he’d converted into “THE RATTLE PIT!” He built a little deck and railing up to the side of the hot tub—you climbed a couple stairs and looked down on his pit of poison. In what appeared to be an old pool cue holder, he had fishing poles with balloons tied to the ends so you could hang a balloon over a rattler’s head and watch it strike the balloon.
“Rattlesnakes and balloons!” Dad said. “That’s a picture dying to happen. Go for it, Buddy!”
Normally, I’d be going nuts over something like that, but I kept thinking about how wrong things suddenly seemed after meeting Bubba Bear.
“Nah,” I said. “I’m not feeling so good. I think breakfast is catching up with me.”
Across the pit from me, a fat kid with a crew cut, glasses that made his eyes look as big as baseballs, and a striped shirt was bonking a docile snake on the head, trying to get it to strike his balloon. When it finally did, Dad snapped a picture and smiled. He turned back toward me.
“You sure? Just one picture?”
“Okay,” I said, feeling guilty.
I grabbed a fishing pole and waved the balloon over the snake pit, but the snakes seemed to not be into it just as much as me.
“Agitate them a little bit…bonk ‘em on the heads, that should work!” Dad said, camera readied.
I did, but the snakes did nothing. I let the fishing pole droop into the tank and stared at Dad. He wanted that picture more than anything—capturing the very moment a poisonous viper hit his son’s balloon, making a pop and scaring the snake half to death (no wonder the snakes didn’t want to strike). I zoned out until I heard Dad shout, “Michael!”
He was yelling at me! I couldn’t believe it—against my own will, I tried getting the snakes to strike for his amusement, and now he was yelling at me!
“Michael!” he yelled again. “Look out!”
He wasn’t yelling because I didn’t get the snakes to strike; he was yelling because a rattlesnake had wrapped itself around the fishing pole and was crawling up it like a branch, toward my arm! I flinched, sending the snake off the end of the pole, through the air, and landing on Mom!
“AAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!” Mom shouted as she rushed about, doing her best to keep the dangerous end of the rattlesnake as far from her as she could. Instead of tossing it from her shoulders and running away like a normal person would do, she thrashed about, running in circles like a cartoon character. She fished her lighter from her purse and tried setting the snake on fire! Mom figured that would do it, but in her panic, she couldn’t get the lighter to work. Dad rushed over to save her; the snake was about to strike! When it finally did, Lucky came to her rescue.
He charged across the floor (how he knew Mom was in trouble is beyond me), and leaped with all his might, taking out the snake that would have struck Mom right between her eyes! He flopped to the floor with the middle of the snake firmly in his teeth, thrashing about like a feral little mongoose against a cobra. He got the upper hand, biting the snake several times and rendering it useless for a fight. He took it’s head in his mouth and swallowed the snake in a few quick bites, stopping for a moment at the rattle, where—I swear to God—he looked right at me and shook the rattle like a warning before swallowing the last bit of snake!
“That’s why we allow no pets!” Big Tex shouted as he ran over. “That dog just ate one of my snakes!”
Mom puffed out her chest, dwarfing Big Tex and sending a message to back down. “That dog just saved you from a huge lawsuit!” She looked at Lucky, making sure he was okay.
“I think it would be a good idea if we left, guys,” Dad said.
* * *
We passed a few more signs for side of the road attractions: caves, more reptile farms, and UFO landing sites. Dad knew better than to ask if we could stop.
The incident at the reptile farm shook us all up—we drove along in silence, making our way across the state in record time. In a weird way, it was nice seeing Lucky save Mom—it meant maybe there was still a glint of the good Lucky in that little body after all (“good” being relative when it came to the mean little canine).
Dad finally pulled in for gas late that afternoon. Mom grabbed Lucky and jumped from the car.
“Gotta pee!”
“I’ll be in after filling up,” Dad said, as she ran in. The rest of us got out to stretch our legs and see what the convenience store had to offer in the way of food. When I entered, I heard the cashier telling Mom, “Excuse me, Ma’am. You can’t be bringing your dog in here.”
“What is it about this state and no dogs allowed?” she said. “Nobody else in this country has a problem with him. It’s not like he’s a drooling Great Dane, or something.”
“Those are the rules,” the cashier said. “Sorry.”
Mom opened the door and set Lucky down on the pavement. “Go to the car, Lucky! Go to the car—Mama will be right back,” she said. On her way to the bathroom, she huffed at the cashier and said, “That’s a stupid rule.”
“Like it or not, it’s still a rule,” he said as she opened the door to the lady’s room.
The twins went straight for the marshmallows. I grabbed good “road trippin’ food,” as Dad called it: pork rinds, tiny chocolate and powdered donuts, soda, bubble gum, and plenty of beef jerky; some sandwiches and chips, as well. Mom came out from the bathroom, grabbed what she wanted, and we all headed for the register. Dad timed the fill up perfectly and met us. He took one look at everything I held and gave me a thumbs up; I grabbed exactly what he wanted, too.
“This all together?” the cashier said.
“Of course,” Mom said, hoping to start something with the guy who put her beloved Chihuahua out. Everyone was smart and ignored her.
“Yes. And the gas on pump four,” Dad said.
“That’ll be fifty-three sixty-seven.”
Mom pulled a wad of bills from her purse and handed them over. “We’re giving you all that money and you couldn’t let me bring my dog in? How’s that for gratitude?”
The cashier ignored her. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, right!” Mom snapped.
The twins went right into their fresh bag of marshmallows as I divvied up my haul with Dad. Mom was the first into the car.
“AAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“What’s wrong?!” Dad shouted.
“Who let Lucky do this?!” she said, holding up the backscratcher. Lucky had chewed it beyond recognition.
“Oh, sweet Jesus! No!!!” Aunt Margie said. “That thing done touched the King!”
“Why didn’t somebody keep an eye on him?!” Mom bellowed. “How could youse guys let this happen?!”
“Mary. Dear,” Dad said. “Please. Calm down.”
I thought she was going to hit him. “Don’t you dare tell me to calm down, James David O’Brien!” she said. “Just when things start going good, this crap happens. Why didn’t somebody watch him, damnit?!”
Dad started pleading with her. “Take it easy, Mar–”
“I WILL NOT TAKE IT EASY!!!” she shouted. Her nostrils flared and her face turned beet red. She was about to explode; that was exactly what the Inferno wanted.
“Mom, you’ve gotta stop!” I said. “Stop!”
Everyone stared at me.
“Mom, you’ve gotta believe me. Lucky chewed the backscratcher, but it wasn’t really Lucky,” I said. “It was a demon or something that’s possessed him. It’s trying to get us all to fight. So is the car. The car’s possessed, too!”
“See, told you he was nuts,” Olivia said.
“No duh!” Elvis replied.
“What do you mean, he’s possessed?” Mom said.
“I swear to God,” I said. “He’s possessed!”
Aunt Margie said, “I thought you didn’t believe in God, Michael?”
“Just trust me on this.”
Dad backed me up. “Trust him, dear.”
Mom looked at Lucky. It was like he knew what we were saying. He opened his eyes even wider than usual and did a little pant that looked like a smile. He was trying to look cute.
“He’s not possessed, Michael.”
“His eyes turn red, his head spins in circles. Trust me, Mom—he’s possessed!”
She pointed Lucky at me. “I don’t see any red eyes.”
“Try this,” I said, pointing to Dad’s plastic Virgin Mother on the dash. “Say some Catholic thing to Mary and touch Lucky to her.”
“Huh?”
“Dear, just try it,” Dad said, nodding.
She went along with us. Whatever had hold of his soul knew something bad was about to happen. He started fighting. “Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with thee,” Mom said. “Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”
Lucky thrashed about in Mom’s grip. She was not about to let go.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” she said even louder, ”pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”
Lucky began howling and his eyes finally glowed red. Olivia screamed and ran from the car. Aunt Margie was frozen in her seat, paralyzed by utter terror. Mom touched Lucky to the figurine. He yelped and his head smoked where he touched the Blessed Virgin.
“Amen,” she said, letting Lucky go out of fear. He floated in mid-air, panting! I knew he was about to do something; before he had a chance to react, I grabbed an Elvis statue, took a big swing, and knocked Lucky to the floorboard, out cold.
Mom was in shock—she wasn’t even mad that I may have hit his molera. “We need to find a church…” she said.
Dad rushed into the convenience store
“Can I hel—“
Dad interrupted the cashier. “Is there a church around here?!”
“A couple,” the cashier said. “What do you need?”
“An exorcism!”
The cashier tried not to laugh. “I don’t know of any churches in town that do that. Who do you need exorcised?”
“Our Chihuahua!” Dad said.
The cashier laughed—he couldn’t hold it back any longer. When he finally regained his composure he said, “There’s a place called the Church of the Holy Visage up on Route 666, between Tohatchi and Naschitti. Probably about half an hour’s drive. The guy who runs the place is a nutjob—he might help.”
“Route 666?” Dad said.
“Yeah, I’m not making that up, either. Just a ways up to the right,” the cashier said, pointing down the highway.
Dad ran back to the Inferno and we sped away. As we raced down I-40 for Route 666, Dad suggested we wrap Lucky in a sleeping bag, in case he woke up. Elvis and Olivia handed a sleeping bag to me without an argument. Granted, it was mine, but for once, we were working together. I helped Mom wrap Lucky up—just enough to give him air so he wouldn’t suffocate, but tight enough to at least give us a fighting chance of controlling him if he woke up.
* * *
Surf music plays. A male voice says:
Thank you so much for listening to Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors–it really means a lot to me.
Theme music is provided by Belgium’s best surf band, Pirato Ketchup.
And if you want to know a little bit more about me and the other things I do, check out ChristopherGronlund.com.
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