Nancy

A Story of Just Deserts

Instead of a chaplain’s clammy hand on her own, his calm voice whispering platitudes on death, and possibly even a casserole donated by some church people . . . instead of all that nice, normal stuff, Nancy was standing over the fold-out couch in her trailer, wondering what to do about her newly-dead dad, sprawled out in his pajamas and getting stiffer by the minute.

Not that kind of stiff, ya pervert.

Nancy chuckled as she thought it. It was the kind of stupid joke her dad would’ve made. Her dead-ass, broke-ass dad who had once again left all the grunt work for Nancy, because he’d refused to plan ahead.

And just as there hadn’t been any goddamn money for a real hospice center, there sure as hell wasn't a fucking goddamned thing set aside for a funeral, either.

By noon, she had a hole dug. A hole that she hoped was big enough to hold her dad’s dead body plus all the dry twigs and cat turds she’d dropped in the bottom. Cat turds make good fires, right? Or maybe that’s just cows.

Nancy had no idea but it seemed to her that all types of dried dookie ought to burn equally well, and he had no room to complain anyway. She used her old skateboard to semi-gently roll the bastard into the hole.

Not that hole, ya fucking deviant.

But when he landed — plop, crunch! — Nancy discovered that the hole she’d dug was actually not big enough and her poor, dead, lazy-ass, cheap-shit, good-for-nothing dad stuck out of it all willy-nilly, like a heavily starched set of long johns crammed into a dresser drawer on top of a bunch of sticks and cat shit. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, can’t you make anything easy?”

Nancy grabbed a bottle of lighter fluid and released her irritation in several violent squirts. A flick! Then a FLOOSH. And just like that, Nancy’s daddy was gone in the burst of fire he’d always deserved. Well, it took a couple hours, actually, and another trip to the store for more lighter fluid and Sailor Jerry, but eventually he was mostly turned back into carbon and Nancy was entirely drunk on rum.

Once the coals were cooled, she scooped up the ashes and the big, burnt hunks of bone into two grocery bags and drove them out to his favorite place.

“Green River” blasted from the ski boat’s CD player as she sprinkled him over the side. She held his blackened orbital bone for a moment, willing herself to cry, when a flashing light caught her attention. River cops. Fuck a duck.

Not literally, ya sick sack of shit.

Nancy stood and hurled the skull fragment downriver as the cop boat pulled up alongside her, shining a floodlight in her face. “Ma’am?”

Three strikes:

Public intoxication.

Unlawful spreading of human remains.

Stealing a boat.

Nancy didn’t resist.