Chapter 4 – St. Christopher vs. The Dead Cow – Transcript

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Christopher Gronlund presents Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Read by me, the author, Christopher Gronlund.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Saint Christopher vs. the Dead Cow”

          We took the Atlantic City Expressway to the New Jersey Turnpike.  Dad turned north instead of south.

“Where are you going?” Mom said.

            “You know where I’m going, Mary.”

            “We’re not stopping for that damned cow, James.  We don’t have time!  It’s out of the way!”

            Like Mom, Dad was not without his own weird superstitions.  He began every road trip with a stop at the grave of Elsie the Cow—it was one of his favorite roadside attractions.  I don’t recall ever seeing a Borden Milk product in the house growing up, but for some reason, a road trip wasn’t a road trip in my old man’s eyes unless we stopped and paid homage to that artifact of the dairy marketing machine.

            “It’s good luck,” he said.

            “How is a cow good luck?” she said.  “It’s not even under the headstone.  It’s buried beneath tract housing.”

            Mom was right, while Elsie’s body rests on land that was once the farm we’re told she loved dearly, the headstone was moved a couple times and now rests several hundred yards away from her earthly remains.  Elsie’s final resting place now has town homes sitting on it!  The year of the trip was the same year Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist came out and I wondered if there was any truth to building housing on a grave; I wondered if building a town home on a cow’s tomb resulted in the same horrors building on an Indian burial ground brought about…at least in Hollywood’s version.  Did the person owning the residence directly above Elsie’s skeleton ever wander down to get a glass of milk in the middle of the night and came face to face with the spectral body of Borden’s most beloved bovine? 

            “You’ve got your Saint Christopher necklace,” Dad said, “and I have Elsie the Cow.”

            Mom pulled her SAINT CHRISTOPHER, PROTECT US necklace from beneath her dress.  “Are you trying to compare a dead cow to an honest-to-God saint?!  That’s blasphemy, James—you’re going to Hell!”  To hear it from my mother, it was like she personally had the power to send people to an eternity in the company of Satan himself.  “I’m serious!  That’s like the Golden Calf, comparing a cow to Saint Christopher.”

            “Is Saint Christopher even a real saint?” I said.  I may not have been religious, but I kept tabs on things, just so I could get under Mom’s skin.  Dad tried hard not to laugh.

            “Of course he’s a real saint!” Mom said.  “What would you know about it, anyway?”

            “Oh…I just thought the church de-canonized him around the time I was born, but what do I know, I’m just an atheist.”

            “Quit being a smartass!” Mom said.  “I’m gonna have to fight hard to get you out of Purgatory, someday, Michael.”

            “Maybe not.  I’m sure the church will one day decide Purgatory doesn’t exist.”  I was on a roll.

            “Stop talking like that—“

            Dad interrupted Mom—he wanted to get back to his favorite cow.  “Look, we’ve never had problems on road trips when we stop in Princeton, first.  We can cut across Pennsylvania and still make good time.  Why break with tradition now?”

            “Because this is going to be a long enough trip without heading north, when we should be heading west,” Mom said.  Before Dad could speak, she added, “If you don’t turn around right now, I’m never gonna let you live it down, James!”

            “Fine,” Dad said, defeated.  “But if anything bad happens on this trip, I’m not going to listen when you blame it all on me…”

          We cut across Delaware and into Maryland in silence; the only noises were the sounds of the twins sharing a bag of marshmallows and Lucky chewing on one of my mother’s makeup compacts.  He got into some green eye shadow, and when he jumped up on the back of her seat, he growled at me with green teeth until Mom told Elvis to throw a marshmallow his way.  After skirting Baltimore, Dad popped in a Slim Whitman eight track, but fortunately for the rest of us, the stereo and eight track didn’t work—we would at least be spared such road trip classics as the Whitman Yodel, the Wabash Waltz, and Please Release Me.

            I tried reading comic books, I tried listening to music on my new Sony Walkman, but nothing worked.  Dad could easily drive fourteen hours straight through; I couldn’t imagine such long hauls in absolute silence, let alone crossing the country like a family of mimes.  Even the twins yakking away behind me would have been welcomed, but they didn’t make a sound.  It was up to me to break the monotony and bring the family back together.

            “Why don’t we all sing, or something?” I said, but everyone ignored me.

            “I’ll start.”  I sang, “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall…ninety-nine bottles of beer…take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall,” to no avail.  I gave it one more try; this time, louder.

            “NINETY-EIGHT BOTTLES OF BEER ON THE WALL…NINETY-EIGHT BOTTLES OF BEER…TAKE ONE DOWN, PASS IT AROUND, AND HOW MANY BOTTLES OF BEER DO YOU HAVE LEFT ON THE WALL, EVERYBODY?”

            “None!” the twins said.  “Shut up!”

             “You shut up!” I said.  I was at least trying to make things better, but nobody cared.

            “Mommy, Michael’s being mean to us, again,” Olivia said.

            Mom swung around, almost knocking Lucky from his perch on the back of the seat and into my lap.  “Stop it, all of youse!”

            Realizing she almost hurt Lucky when she spun around, she grabbed him and coddled his rat-like body.  I returned to my issue of Fantastic Four, but the twins weren’t about to leave well enough alone.  I heard Elvis whisper something to Olivia.  Next thing I knew, she hit herself in the arm and started crying.

            “Oww!!!” she shouted.  “Mommy, Michael hit me!”

            “I did not!” I said.  “She’s lying!”

            Mom turned around again, this time brandishing Lucky like a weapon.  “I said stop!  Do I have to tell your father to turn this car around so I can get the ladle?!”

            I knew she’d never hit us with that damn ladle, but it would take years before the twins realized it was a threat bearing no weight.  They straightened right up and said, “No, we’ll be good.”  Mom looked at me, waiting for a response, but I wasn’t about to let her win with the old ladle threat.  She wanted some kind of acknowledgement from me that I heard her, but I just looked ahead at I-70 through the windshield.  Mom wanted to drive her point home, though.       

“Michael, don’t hit your sister again—“

            “But I didn’t do anything!”

            She rummaged through her purse and found Lucky’s dogbrush.  She handed the brush and the little beast to me.  ”If you need something to do, brush Lucky.”  She reached back into her purse and fished out her cigarettes. 

No sooner than I held him in my hands, he threw up on me!  The twins laughed and Mom handed me some napkins.  “Poor Lucky,” she said.  “Did Lucky-Dog get carsick?” 

“I’m about to be sick,” I said.

“He can’t help it, Michael,” Mom said.  “It’s not like he does it on purpose.”  I wouldn’t be so sure.  “Just brush him and he’ll calm down,” she said, returning to her magazines. 

I cleaned the mess from my lap; Lucky wolfed down a big bowl of dog food before we set out on the trip, and Mom must have also given him a waffle and orange juice, from the looks of things.  I noticed some tiny pieces of hard green plastic in the frothy pile—maybe pieces from one of Elvis’s plastic army men, or chunks of a Tupperware bowl Mom had crammed in the kitchen cabinets Lucky figured out how to get into.

            Brushing him was impossible.  Each time I tried getting near Lucky, he’d bite my hand.  I finally pinned him down so he couldn’t wiggle loose.  Sitting there, trying to keep my hands free from his sharp, little fangs just aching to draw blood, I thought about past road trips.

            We never got along like normal families, but we usually stuck together on my old man’s treks.  We had to stick together, just to stay sane!  Dad could drive for weeks, and if it didn’t take at least five days to reach our destination, he felt cheated.  When you’re forced to stop every twenty miles for side of the road photo opportunities, unity with even enemies like the twins was called for (Dad was convinced that one day he’d snap a picture of us without the twins making funny faces, or without us all looking so exhausted from being packed into a car for a week or more, that we looked tired and used, like truck-stop prostitutes).  When the madness of highway travel became too much to bear on our own, we’d all sing, talk, and play games.  For fleeting moments, we could even pass as a real family, but during the trip that summer, nothing would ever be normal.

            The sound of the brush running along Lucky’s scrawny, fuzzy body was actually soothing.  There was an orchestra of sound playing in the car: the brush along Lucky’s back, the twins quietly muttering to one another in the back of the car, the sound of the tires on the road, and Dad humming Dave Dudley’s “Six Days on the Road“ softly to himself, since he couldn’t play it on his eight track.  Lucky calmed down, and for a moment, I thought he was actually going to doze off.  Then he bit me…hard enough to break skin.  But that wasn’t the horrifying part—what got to me were his glowing red eyes! 

He had looked up at me while I was brushing him, teeth still green and sticky from eating Mom’s eye shadow and a marshmallow.  I gave him a dirty look and locked eyes with him; I had heard many animals assert dominance with a glare and I was prepared to put Lucky in his place.  He won the staring contest, though, when his eyes began glowing red, like a tiny demon from hell.  I wanted to hit him, to try knocking whatever was inside his head free, but I froze, allowing him to make his next move.

            “Oww, crap!” I shouted, startling Dad.

            “What’s wrong?!”

            “Lucky bit me!”

            The twins thought it was funny.  “Good dog, Lucky!  Good dog!” they said.

            We rolled past a REST AREA—1 MILE sign.  “We can stop up there and get your hand cleaned up and bandaged,” Dad said.

            Mom turned around, more concerned about Lucky than her first-born son.  Lucky’s eyes returned to their normal shade of brown.

            “Poor Lucky,” she said while taking him from me.  “He’s just feeling cooped up is all.  Isn’t that right, Lucky-Wucky?”  He kicked his back legs, licked her lips, and snuggled up on Mom’s chest.

            “Poor Lucky?  What about me?!”

            “Your father said we’d stop and get your hand fixed.  You’ll live, Michael.”  She turned her attention back to her dog. 

It was nice knowing my mother cared so deeply about my well-being; her oldest child gets hurt and it’s an inconvenience, but her mangy mutt stretches wrong and it’s the end of time.  At least Dad was there for me.

            We pulled into the rest area and the twins immediately begged Dad for change so they could raid the vending machines for soft drinks and candy.  Mom gave them money and told them to get her cigarettes from the machines, too.  The twins had their sugar—Mom had her nicotine.  All I had was a bloody hand and a father who wasn’t quite himself.

            Dad grabbed his first aid kit and took me to the men’s room to get cleaned up.  While packing theInferno that morning, Dad found the car came with its own first aid kit, a red metal box with the words of Revelation 5:16 on it: “And out of the temple came the seven angels having the seven plagues, clothed in pure bright linen, and having their chests girded with golden bands.”  There was something about a first aid kit with a message about plagues that didn’t sit well with him, so he opened it for a closer look.  Once he saw, “’I looked when he opened the sixth seal, and behold there was a great earthquake; and the sun became as black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood.’ Rev. 6:12” written on a package of band aids, he decided bringing along the first aid kit from the garage was a much better idea.

            Dad finished bandaging my hand where Lucky bit me.  I wanted to tell him about Lucky’s eyes glowing red, but I knew he wouldn’t believe it.

            “I’m sorry I yelled at you this morning,” he said.

            “It’s okay.”

            “No it isn’t.  I’ve never yelled at any of you.  Not even your mother.  I don’t know what got into me and I wanted you to know I’m sorry.”

            “It’s okay, Dad.”

            “You know I love you, right?”  It was important to him to let us know he loved us more than anything; even more than side-of-the-road trinkets like stuffed Tijuana frog bands and fake Indian head dresses with state names emblazoned across them in plastic beadwork.

            “Of course,” I said.  “I love you, too.”

            He ruffled my hair and said, “Good.  Nothing can ever come between us, right Buddy?”

            “Right!”

            “If I ever act like that again, you slap some sense into me, okay?” he said.

            I told him I would and he gave me a hug.  We stepped out in time to see the twins making their way back to the car with arms full of root beer, bubble gum, chocolate bars, and a couple packs of Virginia Slims. 

            “You want something?” Dad said, pulling money from his pocket. 

            “Sure.”  I took a dollar and went to the vending machines.  I got a candy bar that was already melted from sitting in the sun all day and headed toward the car.  I crossed in front to get to my door; when I did,the Inferno lurched forward!  I jumped out of the way, dropping my candy as I dove for the sidewalk.  I felt the tire against my leg, stopping just shy of running me over!

            Dad put the emergency brake on and jumped out.  Mom was too busy opening a pack of smokes to notice what happened, and the twins were too busy laughing.  Lucky was staring right at me.  His eyes weren’t glowing, but I knew he had something to do with it.

            “Are you all right?!” Dad said.

            It happened so fast, I didn’t have time to think if I was okay.  I looked over my body—everything worked.  Aside from two skinned elbows and a knee that needed cleaning, I came out unscathed.

            “Yeah, I guess.”

            “I’m so sorry,” Dad said.  “My foot must have slipped off the brake.”

            Lucky continued staring at me.

            “It’s okay,” I said, walking all the way around the back of the car, ready to jump to safety if it decided to lurch back in reverse.  When I climbed into the backseat, Mom, who still hadn’t noticed I was hurt, said, “It’s about time,” and lit a cigarette. “How far to Marge’s?”

            “About two and a half hours,” Dad said, putting the car in gear.  “We’ll see if we can make it straight through.”

            Two and a half hours packed in a car with my family with no hope for escape.  The twins had pooled their money together and bought some soap bubbles on an early stop for gas.  About an hour into our silence, they unscrewed the top, took out the little wand, and blew bubbles, trying to float them over the back seat and onto my comic books and me.  They ended up floating up front near Mom, instead.

“What the hell?” she said, watching a bubble float just before her face.  Lucky popped it with a quick snap of his mighty little jaws, looking disappointed it had no edible interior.

            “Youse guys stop that—those things are flammable!” she said.  “If they touch my cigarette, they’ll pop and it’ll be just like the Hindenburg in here.”

Growing up in New Jersey, home of the Hindenburg disaster, the twins had an irrational fear of zeppelins.  They cringed when they saw the Goodyear blimp on TV when Dad and I watched the Giants play football; they were sure one day a flaming dirigible would blow all the way down from Lakehurst and crash on the house, killing us all.  But they didn’t buy what Mom had said about common soap bubbles being flammable—they were evil, but not totally gullible.

“Daddy, is that true?” Olivia said.

“No, sweetie, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t blow bubbles inside the car.”

We returned to silence, and I decided to take a nap against my better judgment.  Sleeping on road trips is normally a great way to pass time, unless your siblings are evil twins spawned not from their mother’s womb, but from the very bowels of hell itself! 

When I fell asleep on road trips, I became a target once my eyes closed and I was off in dreamland.  The worst thing about the Inferno was the twins had the entire back storage area from which to plot and launch surprise attacks on me.  In the Gremlin, it wasn’t so easy. 

One of their favorite things was asking Mom for her purse, saying they wanted to get some gum.  When she handed it to them, they’d grab her lipstick and draw all over my face.  I can’t count how many times I woke up with “DORK,” “WEENIE,” and “LOSER,” written on my forehead in some strange shade of red or pink only my mother and circus clowns had the courage to wear in public.  Other times they weren’t so subtle; Elvis was known to just haul off and punch me!  I’d awake to sharp pain in my arm and a charley-horse that lasted twenty miles.  Olivia loved waiting until I was sound asleep, then pumping her arm at passing truckers, getting them to blow their airhorns.  I’d wake up in a startle, thinking we were about to get creamed by an 18-wheeler while the twins laughed themselves silly.  Knowing I’d soon regret it, I closed my eyes and dozed off.  Somewhere between finally getting comfortable and a dream in which Lucky was trying to eat a priest, the twins sprung into action.

*          *          *

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!” I shouted, bolting awake.  I felt my face—it was covered in sticky lumps.  I thought they poured battery acid in my mouth!  My head echoed with the sound of a million Rice Krispies—something was popping and burning on my tongue, like having a mouthful of bees.  Elvis shoved a Coke in my face and said, “Drink this!”

I guzzled the drink without realizing it was part of Elvis’s plan—the stinging sensation got worse.  The twins stared at my face, then down to my stomach. 

“Shake your belly around, Dork-Brain,” Olivia said. 

“We want to see you blow up,” Elvis added.

I realized what they had done as Dad pulled the Inferno to a stop on the shoulder so he could see what was wrong with me. They started with a bag of mini marshmallows—biting them in half, licking them, and then sticking them to my face.  After that, they poured two bags of Pop Rocks into my open mouth.  They were putting that old childhood urban legend to the test, the one that says if one consumes Pop Rocks and Coke together, their innards will explode in a massive mess of bloated guts.  The only thing it did was give me gas, but just the fact they believed it would kill me and decided to test that theory was a reminder of just how much they hated me; just how evil they were when they put their heads together.

            “Are you okay?!” Dad said, laughing.  He knew what happened—he saw it all unfold in the rearview mirror, but didn’t stop it.  To my father, a big part of road trips was pulling pranks of each other, and in his book, this rated right alongside putting shaving cream in someone’s hand, then tickling their face so they’d scratch and make a big mess.

            “Yeah, I’m okay,” I said.

            “What happened?” Mom said, turning around.  She saw my face covered in marshmallows and shook her head.

            “The twins happened,” I told her, picking marshmallows from my face.

            Mom put her hand out.  “Gimme those.”  I gave her the marshmallows and she fed some to Lucky.

            “They tried killing me.”

            “How did they try killing you?” Mom said.

            “They put Pop Rocks in my mouth and gave me Coke!  They thought I’d explode.”

            “Did you explode, Michael?”

            “No.”

            “Well, then,” she said, popping a marshmallow into her mouth.  “Go back to sleep.”

            “I’m not going back to sleep,” I said.  “There’s no telling what they’ll do next time.”  I had visions of the twins filling my nostrils with dog snacks and letting Lucky mine for munchies.

            “Then read, or count cars,” she said, returning to her magazine.  Dad pulled the car back onto the highway and we were rolling along again.  

            My family kept to themselves.  The twins chit-chatted with each other softly enough to hide any other plans of what they had in store for me should I have fallen asleep again.  Mom flipped through beauty magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour.  The only thing glamorous or cosmopolitan about my mother was every ten years or so, it seemed heavy makeup and kitschy clothes came back in style, but most times, she looked like a clown with a beehive hairdo dyed a vacuous shade of black. 

            Dad was always game for chatting on trips, but I knew if I tried talking with him, Mom or the twins would interrupt, so I didn’t even try starting a conversation.  Besides, I knew what was going on in my old man’s head—he was visualizing all the things he’d buy on the road for his collection: shark’s teeth, stalactites from caves, miniature muffler men replicas, Jell-O molds shaped like states, and snow globes.  He owned hundreds of the things, but said there was always room for another snow globe. 

            I decided silence was golden and read comic books until Mom announced she had to find a bathroom.  Had one of us needed to go, she would have made a big production about how we should have gone at the last stop and remind us Dad wanted to make it all the way to Aunt Margie’s without stopping.  But since it was her bladder about to explode, it was all right.  We found a little gas station and Mom rushed off to the bathroom, but quickly returned.  She said the stench before even opening the door was all she needed to know about what waited inside.  Another stop and another quick turn around; the second stop didn’t have a toilet, just a hole where the toilet once sat.  Apparently that didn’t stop some people from using the bathroom.  Mom said it appeared several people tried using the hole, others the sink, while some were content simply using the floor!  She finally told Dad to just pull over on the side of the road.

            “Mary, there’s no place to go,” he said.

            “James, if you don’t stop, your new front seat’s soaked,” she told him.

            He pulled over to the shoulder and stopped.  There wasn’t a tree in sight, no ditches, no place to hide. 

            “I have an idea!” she said, grabbing Dad’s camera.  Dad liked keeping his camera unpacked and handy on trips, ready to capture an event in a moment’s notice.  “Kids, Daddy’s gonna take your picture.”

            “I am?”

            “Yes, James,” she said, gathering a handful of napkins.  “Come on, kids—I need your help.”

            We stepped into the grass along the highway and Dad readied the camera. 

            “Just make it look like we’re taking a nice family shot,” Mom said.  “Kids, stand over there, right next to each other so no one will see me.”

            She planned to use us as a screen!  She handed Lucky to me and squatted down behind us. 

            “All right, kids,” Dad said.  “Say cheese!”

            When I said “cheese!” Elvis stepped to the side and Dad snapped a picture of my mother that still haunts me to this day!  I punched Elvis in the arm, not caring what kind of vengeance he’d return.

            “Stop that!” Mom yelled.  “I’m peeing!”  There was no doubt about that—we have a picture to prove it!

            Elvis came back at me with a tackle, knocking Lucky from my hands.  He knocked us back into Mom, who caught her darling dog before he hit the ground.  “Be careful of Lucky’s molera!” she screamed.  “Watch his head, or he’ll die!” 

Olivia started crying.  “Daddy, Michael hit Elvis!”

            Dad just stood on the shoulder with his eyes closed, wishing the world would disappear.  A semi rolled by and blew its air horn at Mom, whose legs were straight up in the air, her huge buttocks on display for anyone traveling I-70 to see.  We could have sold prime billboard space on that butt had she not rocked forward to a sitting position so she could give the trucker the finger.  Elvis was working my arms over with rapid-fire punches—he knew better than hitting me in the face.  He had a bad habit of breaking my glasses when we fought, and Mom told him if he ever broke another pair, it was ladle time.  Olivia kept crying until Mom yelled, “Shut up, all of youse!”

            She hiked up her panties, dropped her dress, and walked back to the car.

            “Elvis, get off your brother,” Dad said. 

            “He started it!”

            “I know.  Just get off him, please.  We need to get to your aunt’s.”

            He got one final punch in as he got up—right in the gut, knocking the wind out of me.  What did I ever do to deserve such a family?

            We all climbed back in the Inferno and this time made it to Aunt Margie’s without stopping.

* * *

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