Take It To The Hole (866 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 1.82 on 14 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Rizzo (View user info) at 2004-04-09 16:01:43 EDT
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Sixteen months. I can't believe it took me that long. Sixteen months of calls and visits to Congressman, lawyer fees, sleepness nights, no money, getting shot at, going to jail, the perpetual smell of tequilla vomit, and the agony of never knowing what I had the God-given right to know. When I found out, when it all finally hit me, when I finally figured it the fuck out, it was as obvious as white on rice.
After all, it was Mum I was dealing with here. I should have seen it coming.
At any given time in 1999, the county of Briscoe, Texas had less people living in it than a Puerto Rican extended family. There were only two things special about Briscoe - unless you were one of these twister chaser assholes - and those two things were the buffalo remains and my grandmother. In the 1970s an Amarillo man named Frank Tow found a shitload of old buffalo fossils all over the ass end of Lake Theo. The shit was probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars to any archaeologist, but Frank, being the tobacco-chewing hick that he was and still fucking is, went and turned it all in to a local historical museum. They then reported the shit to the state historic commission, who in turn reported them to everyone in the whole fucking world, bringing national fame to the area, at least in the arena of archaeology.
For sixteen months, I thought my fucking money was buried in that pile of fossilized bullshit.
Mum passed away in December of 1999, at the young age of 126. She was unofficially the oldest woman ever to walk the face of this earth, and she was also the cheapest bitch this earth ever saw. The cunt would politely wipe her ass twice with the same piece of toilet paper, that's how cheap she was. It didn't bother me that she was cheap. I knew that fleabag had eight or nine figures stashed away, and I was getting it all. Every fucking cent of it. I sat there for fifty-nine years, waiting for the day when she would finally put that last GPC filter in her mouth and choke on the fucking thing.
It finally happened on Christmas Eve. I was happy I hadn't wasted my money on a Christmas present for her.
Almost as fast as I had buried her in a pine box, the executor of the will came rapping at my door. He threw his terse ass on the couch, pulled out some papers from his briefcase, and gave me the worst fucking news anyone could have possibly gotten on that Christmas Eve.
"Your grandmother would like for me to deliver this message to you." Then he cleared his throat like some fucking academic. "'My dear grandson. Thank you for the wonderful years together. May you rest in peace and meet me in heaven. Please take this envelope and heed its words well.'"
Then he handed me the envelope. I didn't know whether to burst with joy or implode with agony, but the way it sounded I got the feeling it would be the latter.
I was so fucking right.
It was a handwritten note, short and shitty, like those fortune cookie messages. The executor got his fat ass up and left. Thank God he did, because I would have killed him right there on the spot.
"Tote," it read, "hit Lake Theo. Signed, Mum. P.S. Keep the house."
No check. No cash. No secret password to her bank account. No stock certificates or deeds. I didn't even get the paper deed to the house. Just this fucking handwritten note. She must not have liked the pine box. Whore.
The note sort of made sense to me, and that's what hurt so much. When I was a rowdy teenager I would spend lots of time on the ass end of that Lake Theo. There was always some kind of gaming to be done, and when the gaming was over there was plenty of drinking, smoking, fishing, and fucking to do. I didn't have any mother or father, so Mum tried her best to keep me in line, but her best wasn't shit because she was already on her way to a fucking hundred by that time. She always made threats, though, that bitch. One time when she caught me and my teenage girlfriend Jeannie in my bed fucking she told me she was going to go downstairs, get the meat cleaver and use my balls for matzo soup, and I'll be goddamned if she didn't walk back upstairs with the fucking meat cleaver in her hands chopping away at my locked door. Another time she threatened to blow up our neighbor's dog with dynamite if it didn't stop barking. Only six days after that threat, the town was startled out of Sunday Mass by dog parts flying across Martino Square. Nobody suspected Mum but me because no one had heard the threat and even if they did no one in their right mind would ever think that a woman pushing a million years old could ever get dynamite, much less tie it to a dog and blow it up like a Roman candle.
There was always one threat that stuck out in my mind, though.
She started talking about this one around three years before the end, when she was so old and weak that I would have to stick my face right into her hippo-cage of a mouth to hear her speak. It started on a Monday, after I refused to help her eat breakfast because ... because I was a lazy shit, what can I say? She scowled at her prunes, then gave me the evil eye and pointed that pointy ass finger at me with the big long yellow nail on it, yellow from a century of GPC filters.
"You sunna bitch," she said. "You sunna bitch, just for that Ima do it tonight. Ima take all that money that you tryin to rob from me when I pass on and Ima get a shovel and Ima bury that pile o' money so deep in the Lake Theo tribyatary that you ain't even gonna find it even if you had every summarine and awl-well drill and cheese-and-crackin contractuh in Texas, so hep'me God."
That was the first threat, and a thousand more followed every time I wouldn't help her to her room, or clean her bedsheets when she pissed all over them, or came home with a load on, or refused to wipe her ass for her. She loved using that threat, and she thought it would scare me, I'm sure, but there wasn't a red-blooded American this side of the Mississippi that thought this decrepit old hag could even plant tomatoes in the backyard, much less drag her fortune to Lake Theo and stick it somewhere where the sun don't shine. I didn't give a shit what she threatened. I just wanted her to drop dead so I could sell the house and take her money to Mexican paradise.
Now, as I stood there with that note in my hand, I realized that somehow this witch buried the money in Lake Theo's asshole. I had no idea where to start, so in a panic I grabbed the biggest shovel I could find, brought the pickup down to the fences now guarding the tributary, and found my way to the fork. It was the only place on the lake dry enough to contain solid soil - any other soil would erode and wash away Mum's fortune. I dug until it was dark, and then I dug some more, until Peter Piper the Forest Ranger shot me in the ass with a tranquilizer dart and threw me in the county brig for a week. Something about not being able to dig on a national park or something.
After I got out, I went to the library in town and read every goddamned thing on burying treasures and digging them up. The only thing I learned in a week's time was that I couldn't read all that well, so I hired some hack lawyer to help me out with finding my money in Lake Theo. After taking my pickup as payment and spending two fucking months on my case, he came back to me with the same answer as Peter Piper - no digging up Theo's asshole. Ever. Something about a national park again, but I didn't care. My money was there and I was going to get it if I had to dig up every fossilized buffalo dick in that fork.
My next move was to visit the office of my state representative. After spending hours on end in that heated hellhole on the other side of town, I realized that the only thing this guy cared about was the fucking spicks and their right to life, liberty, and pursuit of jumping the fence. I tried writing him a letter, but I realized I couldn't write that well either. I tried calling him in Washington, but he was never in his office. I tried calling my senators too, but they were always out golfing with my tax money.
I then realized that this government and every other one was a crock of steaming shit, so I sold Mum's house, bought the biggest digging tractor I could, loaded it on the longest flatbed overloader I could find in North Texas, drove it right up to Lake Theo's smelly asshole, and started digging myself.
This time, it wasn't Peter Piper holding the gun. Nope, it was a flock of state troopers holding scope rifles.
Thirteen months in state, and the only reason it wasn't more was because they let me sell the tractor and the flatbed to get a reduced sentence. When I got out, my address was a room in some Mexican neighborhood that reaked of tequilla and puke. I got my ass beat every other day just for being white. When the state finally let me out of that room I wouldn't have an address at all, but I didn't care because I was planning to go right the fuck back to Lake Theo's asshole and start digging again. My money was there. My fucking money was there and there wasn't a cop or park ranger or 16th Circuit Court fucking justice that was going to --
And that's when it hit me, so hard that even the stench of the tequilla vomit seemed tasty.
In addition to being resourceful, Mum was a clever bitch. Most people didn't know that, in addition to smoking those GPCs and collecting Social Security all day, Mum would very occasionally be called on by the Department of Defense to crack codes. She was a modern day John Nash of sorts, and that's where her untold millions of dollars had come from over the years. Not to mention she was one cheap bitch, but sometimes I wondered if that was just a front to keep her under the radar. It was so unnecessary to hide it, in my humble opinion - who the hell would believe that a hag like her could wipe her own ass properly, much less crack codes for the feds? But she hid it, and she hid it well, and she did what the feddies told her to do, and she would go her merry way collecting her checks and stashing it all away somewhere minus enough to get her through her year's supply of prunes and GPCs. You see, I was the only other person that knew Mum had a fortune, and I think she knew that but really didn't care. As the years wore on, and the feds finally stopped coming by, I had the impression that even Mum didn't know she was rich. She just continued to trod on, the GPC smoke trail following her as they searched together for death but never found him. When he finally did find her, the joke was on me.
It always had been.
"T .... A .... God ... DAMN IT!"
There was one aspect of Mum's house that remained a mystery to me. Behind the acres of trees in the woods she owned was a well. It had been dry for so long that no one even cared that it was there. When I was a young kid, even too young to have chest hair, a man came by from the North Texas Something-or-Other Board and informed Mum that she was going to have to dig up the old well because of safety reasons. Mum hit him on the head with her cane so hard I thought she knocked out his eyeballs, then she chased him out of the house like a fox chasing a rooster out of the coop. He clucked like one too, and we sure as shit never saw him again, but once in a while I would wonder why Mum had defended that well so vigilantly. About a year after the event, on a peaceful summer evening in mid-June, I went to the well behind all the trees, sat on its edge, and stared into the void. Shortly after, I saw Mum trodding along with her cane to meet me. Even then she was eighty years old, and I had never seen her trod that far away from the base before, but she made it out to me, put her old yellow hand on top of mine and smiled.
"Totey, hopefully you'll grow up to be a good boy. And if God don't decide to take me away 'fore my time, I'll tell ya few stories about this here well. Just remember two things, k? Numero Uno, this is the key to that there c'ment hole in the ground." She handed me an old copper skeleton key. "And numero Dos, never, under any circumstance, are you ever to set foot in that well, because once you do you'll never get out, no matter how hard you try. Ya understand?"
"Yes, Mumma. But what's the key for?"
"You mind ya Ps and Qs about what that key's fo'. You ain't old enough yet t'understand, but someday you will. Now let's go back and finish cookin the turnips."
Yeah, Mum was a clever bitch. On Sundays she would get the New York Times sent to her by a lonely old man who loved to do her favors. She'd finish the whole fucking crossword puzzle in forty-five minutes, then move on to the games like the word searches and the mumble-jumbles. As far as I knew, she finished every puzzle in that Sunday Times for as long as I lived, even right up to the week where she kicked the bucket. She was smart, and she was a hell of a lot smarter than I ever gave her credit for.
Staring at the mumble-jumble in front of me, I finally got a taste of how cruel that windbag's intelligence could be.
The skeleton key had been hanging on my keyring since that mid-summer evening, and while I couldn't get into Mum's old house, I wouldn't need to, nor would I need to alert the new occupants because there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell they knew about the well. I ran the six miles from the Mexican hellhole I had been living in to the acreage behind Mum's old house, not even stopping once for air. Years back, after Mum had told me about the well, I stole a bundle of rope from the general store in town and made several nooses, not to hang myself but to support my body weight as I scaled the walls of the well to get to the bottom of whatever the secret was of this hole in the ground. Each time I tied the noose around my body I had chickened out, always hearing Mum's voice in the back of my head about never getting out once I went in. And every time I tried walking away I heard the well's siren song, beckoning me to find out whether or not that skeleton key sitting on my keyring really did have a lock in which it fit.
Now I knew.
The rope was still where I had left it, in the makeshift shed behind the well, and it was in fairly good condition. At this point I didn't care if the rope would break or not. I would have dove in that well head first if I had to. The trees around the well were much bigger now than they were then, and they would have no problem supporting my weight. I tied one end up real good with square knots to the biggest trunk in the bunch, then I rolled it out to the edge of the well with the noose around my waist and started scaling down like a Mexican fucking window washer.
Hit Lake Theo, my ass. There wasn't a goddamned thing in Lake Theo worth my time except my childhood memories and some old crusty buffalo dicks. The whole message was Mum's way of fucking me where it hurt the most. Fuck me all those years, Totey, and I'm going to fuck you right back.
"Tote, hit Lake Theo." I never had to dig at all. All I had to do was rearrange the letters.
Tote, hit Lake Theo. Hit Lake Theo, Tote. TAKE IT TO THE HOLE.
The bitch never wanted me to go down there because that's where her fucking money was.
I didn't have a flashlight, and I didn't need one. I knew the well would be deep, and I knew at the bottom I would find something that could be unlocked with the skeleton key. About halfway down the hole, a good fifty feet down, a flock of bats came flapping through the tunnel, and one bit me right through my dungarees. I was so mesmerized I hardly noticed. I probably got rabies right there, but who cares? It's nothing that a hundred million dollars couldn't cure.
By the time I reached the bottom, evening had turned to night and light didn't exist. I felt around looking for something on the ground, but the only thing there was some moss and me. Cursing, I started feeling the walls of the hole, and that's when I found it - a door, a little metal door with a hole in the shape of a key. Jackpot. I almost blew my load as I fished the keyring out of my pocket, my hands a shaking mess as I tried to get it in the hole like a teenager's first time. When it finally went in and it actually shifted in the lock, I couldn't contain all the thoughts in my head. How did Mum climb down here all those years? Who put the iron box in the wall of the well? How much fucking money was in the box? Jesus Christ, how much fucking money was in that motherfucking box?
I pushed hard right on the key, heard the spring release, and felt the door open. And then, for a second or so, there was light. Just for a second, I guess.
It's amazing how clear things seem when they're finally revealed to you. The one thing that always amazed me about Mum was her ability to do things. She was so old, but somehow she got things done, and always without my help. Yeah, I guess I was a bad grandson, and that's not what she expected of me after her son-in-law and daughter had suddenly died the way they did. They were good churchgoing people like Mum had been at one time, and I guess she expected me to grow up that way too, even in their absence. There must have been a point in time when Mum realized that she would never be able to rely on me. I always thought that Mum just forgot about me and did things all by herself, and that was fine with me. It was never that way, and there were lots of signs, but the most obvious one, the sorest thumb of them all, was that fucking dog. You know, the one that went kaboom all over the square. How could I have been dumb enough to think that Mum had actually been the one who did the kabooming? Sitting where I am now, I know that the little old man who delivered the Times to Mum was a whole hell of a lot more than just some lonely fuck looking to score on a windbag. He was a rock quarry guy, one of those guys that made things go kaboom. Like dogs. He loved blowing up dogs.
He loved my Mum. And she loved him. And that left no room for ol' Totey here.
I know that somewhere, somehow, that motherfucker has my Mum's money, and that's just the way she wanted it. And right before the dynamite in the bottom of that well blew me and half of Mum's old acreage to smithereens, I realized that there was no question who did all Mum's dirty work all those years. Nope, there wasn't a doubt in my mind. That motherfucker took Mum's money and then blew me up, just like that dog in the town square. He blew me up for the dog I was, the dog I am, and the racist, scumbag, son-of-a-bitch dog I'll be for a long, long time.
Mum was right. I never did get out of that well. And based on the fact that my soul's still sitting here in this pile of rubble after all these years, I never will get out of this well, no matter how fucking hard I try.
I should have seen it coming.
User Reviews
Submitted by spedmonkey (user info) at 2005-07-01 16:51:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by bob (user info) at 2004-10-16 23:17:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
fucking shit dude. thats great.
Submitted by antluvdog (user info) at 2004-06-16 16:51:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by jwlmar10 (user info) at 2004-06-15 15:30:14 (#)
Ranking: 0
This is why youre in debt. You waste your money on stupid shit like getting your posts on top of the page.
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Come on, asshole. You have no idea what my situation really is. Don't make comments unless you know what you're talking about.
Submitted by Hairsphincter (user info) at 2004-06-15 20:02:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Here's some value for that dollar, Rizzo old boy.
Submitted by Tom (user info) at 2004-06-15 19:48:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by jwlmar10 (user info) at 2004-06-15 15:30:14 (#)
Ranking: 0
This is why youre in debt. You waste your money on stupid shit like getting your posts on top of the page.
You are the BIGGEST fuck to ever log onto ubersite. Nuff said.
Submitted by jwlmar10 (user info) at 2004-06-15 15:30:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
This is why youre in debt. You waste your money on stupid shit like getting your posts on top of the page.
Submitted by JohnGalt (user info) at 2004-06-15 12:43:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by EatMeCompletely (user info) at 2004-06-15 08:54:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was a great story. I don't think that I blinked once while reading it. Well, maybe once, but not twice though.
Submitted by Caldur (user info) at 2004-06-15 01:53:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow.
Submitted by Mercutio (user info) at 2004-06-04 11:57:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Absolutely amazing.
Submitted by ruthless <musicbug23.at.yahoo.com> at 2004-05-19 19:35:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I cannot believe how fantastic this is. Excellent.
Submitted by chipolatte (user info) at 2004-05-19 19:19:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Really fucking good.
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2004-05-19 17:40:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This story got my panties wet.
Submitted by Insanethemind (user info) at 2004-05-19 14:40:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Great, great writing, Rizzo.