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“I vote for Cluck-in-a-Bucket,” Grandma said. “And I don’t want drive-thru food, either. They screw you at the drive-thru. I’m going to get a double Clucky Burger with bacon and cheese and special sauce. And I’m going to get cheese fries.”
“You’ll be up all night with heartburn,” my mother said.
“I never get heartburn,” Grandma said. “You’re the one that gets heartburn. I’m going to get my purse.”
My mother unplugged the iron, Grandma returned with her purse, and I loaded everyone into Ranger’s Porsche Macan and drove to Cluck-in-a-Bucket. Cluck-in-a-Bucket is on the edge of the Burg. It’s fast food at its best. Cheap, greasy, and salty. The building is yellow and red inside and out, and on weekends some kid desperate for money dresses up in the Clucky suit and struts around the parking lot. Everyone in Trenton, either sooner or later or all the time, eats at Cluck-in-a-Bucket.
TWENTY-SIX
I PARKED IN the Cluck-in-a-Bucket lot, and we all went in and ordered our food. I got two pieces of chicken and a biscuit, my mother wimped out with a salad and grilled chicken strips, and Grandma went full on with the double Clucky Burger.
“This is nice,” my mother said. “We should do this more often.”
“I agree,” Grandma said. “It’s good to do things like a family. Going out to eat is so civilized, too. You get to sit and relax and enjoy your food and you don’t have to do the dishes after.”
We were in a booth by a window, and I looked out and saw Lula pull into the lot and park. She got out of the Firebird and waved at me on her way to the door.
“I was driving by on my way home and I saw your car here,” Lula said. “It’s a good idea to have lunch out like this. Do you mind if I join you? I don’t want to horn in on a family outing.”
“Of course you can join us,” Grandma said. “Go get your food. We just got started.”
Lula came back with a bucket of chicken parts and a bucket of biscuits.
“It’s good to see Stephanie getting out after her traumatic day yesterday,” Lula said. “Everything happened to Stephanie yesterday. First off, she wasn’t watching where she was going, and she got hit by a van.”
“I was watching,” I said. “And it wasn’t just any old van. It was Stanley Pooka’s van. I saw him drive by and I went to look for him. He must have pulled into a driveway or, for all I know, he could have been in someone’s backyard. Anyway I went to cross the street and he came roaring out and ran me down.”
“Who’s Stanley Pooka?” my mother asked.
“He’s an idiot college professor at Kiltman,” Lula said. “He was building fireworks in one of the fraternities there, so he could fill them with bubonic plague–infected fleas and shoot them off over the campus. Then the fleas would jump on people and give them bubonic plague and everyone would die.” Lula buttered a biscuit. “Actually everyone might not die. Some people might just have their fingers and toes and dicks drop off.”
“How would a man tinkle if his dick dropped off?” Grandma asked.
“It would be a problem,” Lula said. “I guess he could tinkle like a lady.”
My mother was speechless. She had her fork halfway to her mouth, and she was frozen.
“Wait a minute,” my mother finally said. “This man, Stanley Pooka, intentionally hit you with his van?”
“He sort of clipped me with his right front quarter panel,” I said. “It wasn’t a direct hit.”
“And that’s how you got all these scrapes and cuts?” she asked.
“That wasn’t even the worst of it,” Lula said. “He kidnapped her and took her to a house where he kept his fleas. He had another guy there, too, and he was sucking the blood out of him to give to the fleas.”
“He wasn’t sucking the blood out,” I said. “He was using a syringe.”
This wasn’t going well. I’d wanted to take my mom to lunch to get her calmed down. I’d wanted to give her the facts so she wasn’t upset by exaggerated rumors.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said. “I’d like to relax and enjoy my lunch.”
“No,” my mother said. “I want to hear about this. What happened to the man who was giving his blood to the fleas?”
“His name is Becker,” Lula said. “He’s a college student, and Pooka kidnapped him, too. And when Stephanie got there she rescued Becker and then Ranger rescued her.”
My mother was holding her fork so tight her knuckles were white, and her eyes were scary looking. “What happened to Pooka?” she asked.
“He got away,” Lula said. “Everybody’s looking for him, and I don’t know how anyone can miss his beat-up white van. I bet you anything he’s riding around distributing his plague fleas, right under the nose of the FBI. He’s like the invisible man.”
