Crazy Daisy

We’d been "going out" for less than a day, and already she was scaring the bejeebus out of me. Afterall, who in their right mind considers hanging out with their family an acceptable agenda for a first date? And how could a single brief make out session in the back room at work the day before with a person I met a week ago — which had taken place through a bewildering bout of spontaneity, possibly provoked by her relentless yet pathetically laughable attempts at seduction — provide the basis for me being practically her betrothed? In my defense I’ll just say that desperate times call for desperate measures. She, who went by the nauseating name of Daisy, had ensnared me in her web like only a true trailer park spider woman could, in spite of her mind-boggling level of stupidity. It began innocently enough with her buying me about three Cokes every work shift, then progressed to her aggressively hugging me every time she passed through my side of the deli, then to back rubs and extremely awkward hand holding, and then we really got carried away. At the moment I was caught in her web like a blindly horny fly who has come to the wrong place to sow his maggot juice, which is indeed gross yet a perfectly fitting analogy for Daisy.

Even though she and I were both 20 years of age, she did not possess a driver’s license. Therefore I was presently giving her a ride home from our shared place of employment — the deli within the local grocery store, where I’d started working that summer merely as a means of assuaging college expenses. Expenses meaning the crap my parents expected me to pay for — namely books, alcohol, fraternity dues, alcohol, a little bit of gas for my extremely rare trips home, and of course alcohol. Considering that the redneckified social atmosphere of Southern Maryland is positively soporific compared to the fast times of my university, affectionately called the Bury, I was content to remain away on campus, immersing myself in the excitement of the modern college experience. Daisy, on the other hand, had likely never set foot on a college campus before. I thought that the car trip with her on that swelteringly humid June evening would be taken as no more than a simple friendly gesture, but apparently she had other notions. Perhaps her saying "I told my daddy all about you last night, and I said that you’re a really sweet guy, and he said that that’s just what I need right now" should have been an early indication that it was high time to turn around and run for the hills. I was probably the first guy in a long time who was kind enough to pay attention to her for more than five seconds. Aside from that, she didn’t know hardly a damn thing about me. All she had to fuel this ridiculous image of Mr. Perfect Sweet Guy around me was me saying, "Uh, thanks for the Cokes, Daisy" while the other guys at work she bought soda for would just snap, "Put the damn Coke on the counter and go away, Daisy." I still didn’t really feel sorry for her. If only the poor girl had known what I’d been doing at a friend’s raunchy bachelor party the previous night with a slutty bridesmaid — likely at the same time Daisy was having her nice little chat with daddy.

Casting a sidelong glance to the occupant of my passenger seat whilst she incessantly prattled, going on and on about the legacy of her elderly relatives and boasting how her first cousins amounted to well over a hundred people(all of them white trash, I assumed), I beheld her with no small degree of revulsion. I’d long since given up hopes of having an intelligent conversation with her, and if only my automobile featured an eject button that would send her rocketing to the sky and hopefully in the propeller of a passing plane. My eyes were drawn again and again to her stained, bucked teeth that jumped right into an overbite, probably from lack of having been to a dentist in the past 10 years. Her John Deere trucker’s cap, fit too tight over her head of scraggly, unwashed hair, and her work shirt, buttoned all the way to the top button so tightly around her bloated double chin that it was a wonder any air at all could make it through her trachea, weren’t exactly presentable either. Nothing, though, was as horrendous as her voice. That voice! A herd of squealing pigs being slaughtered in the deepest pits of hell could scarcely compare to the magnitude of irritation invoked by the grating, emasculated pitch of her shrill backwoods accent. It reminded me of a mean old redneck school bus driver lady who’s been smoking two packs a day for the past 40 years and loves to scream like a hogtied banshee at the rowdy children under her charge. Worst of all, her voice never went silent.

"My daddy was one of about 23 young’ns in his family, but I think some of them died...my old grandpappy and my great uncle Leroy Sr. used’ta could make a mighty fine batch ah moonshine, but my daddy says moonshine ain’t fit for girls to be drinking...my cousins Jed and Lonnie-May had their first baby last fall, and she’s done got pregnant with their second young’n...yep, they’s both cousins themselves..." None of what she said, not even the farm house infanticide or the incestuous procreation, seemed to be the least bit unusual to her. So not only was she a few shovels short of a tool shed, she was loonier than one of those shaggy homeless guys you see shouting belligerent nonsense to passing cars in the city. However, I couldn’t be sure whether what she said was true or complete bullshit, considering that numerous coworkers had alerted me to Daisy’s habit for being a compulsive liar. It was sort of creeping me out, to be honest.

When her house finally reared itself into view upon the conclusion of the agonizing car trip, I let out a faint, "What the...?" and thus interrupted her perpetual schpeel of senseless babble.

"What’s that, baby?" she rasped, causing me to wince heavily at her precocious use of that term of affection.

"Uh, it looks cozy," I said. She clearly wasn’t capable of discerning the spiteful sarcasm in my voice. Her place of dwelling was little more than a crummy shack on the side of the road right across from the volunteer fire department. Its peeling walls were painted a distinct shade of eviction notice pink, and the scraggly, crab-grassed surrounding yard was graced by a collection of dilapidated old pickup trucks, work vans, dented Camaros, and ancient tractors. My Honda Accord seemed just a tad out of place, yet I was sure that my dish water-soaked, chicken blood-stained, flour-dusted deli boy uniform would be appropriate. Grinning like a nincompoop, Daisy latched onto my arm immediately after we exited the car and forcibly dragged me towards the shack, despite the fact that my feet instinctually dragged.

As we ascended the rickety steps of the ramshackle back porch, a pair of shabby cats, whose fur was likely infested with fleas, scurried down past us — escaping the house. I envied them. I was apprehensive to say the least, and my brain was about to implode as I tried to figure out how the hell I got sucked into this situation. I had no doubt whatsoever that I was about to join the company of some thoroughly rural folks. On the contrary, having been a denizen of Southern Maryland my whole life, I was no stranger to the company of hill billies and the like. In fact, I’d never been drunk before without at least one or two rednecks nearby. I’d befriended many a hick in my day over a 10 ounce Bud Light can, and therefore held a glimmer of hope of assimilating peaceably with whomever I was poised to be acquainted with. Either way, I had a lurking suspicion that I might be the first college student to ever set foot on the premise — and make it out alive without getting tarred, feathered, lynched, and sodomized. Worst case scenario, I’d walk in, get cornered by some inbred monster, and whimper in terror when he’d lustfully drawl something along the lines of, "Drop your pants and grab your ankles, boy." I could almost hear a pair of banjos dueling, do do doo do doo do doo do do...

"Get ready to meet a whole lotta people!" crazy Daisy cheered as she yanked open the back door on the porch and thrusted me into the house. I felt like a flopping fish that just got tossed onto the deck of a boat. A boat of scurvy-infected pirates, probably. Standing in the midst of a cramped, cluttered kitchen that called to mind the culinary atmosphere of post-nuclear attack third world country, I found myself being presented before a table upon which dinner was being devoured. The main course consisted of some foul meat, possibly fried possum. Right away I caught sight of a pair of shotguns hung from the wall below a mounted buck’s head in the room beyond the kitchen. Big fans of the Second Amendment, I mused. Around the table sat a stocky, pug-faced, mean-as-cat-pee-looking middle-aged man, evidently Daisy’s father; three burly, sneering, beady-eyed construction worker guys in their 20s who resembled the old man, likely Daisy’s brothers; and a pale, sickly-looking teenage girl with the same malnutritioned, uneducated, and, above all, inbred aura as the rest of them — definitely Daisy’s sister. She’d already informed me that, "My momma done gone and run off last year." Who could blame her?

Six forks scratched on plates at once in alarm as the eating came to an abrupt halt, and every head jerked towards the doorway in unison. Through the grimey kitchen window the sharp rays of sunset shot directly into the eyes of the diners, causing them to horribly contort their faces and throw up hands as visors in their attempt to discern who this intruding stranger was. Daisy, on the other hand, threw her arms around me obliviously, saying, "Lookee what I brought home! This is David." She said it as though she were a little kid bringing home a new pet turtle, yet the lecherous way she inflected her words and pawed at me hinted that this introduction was far more sinister. Not a lot was going on in her pea-brained head at the moment, nor ever does, but it was plain to see that she considered me a piece of her property — as if that one foolish make out session had declared us engaged, hook-line-and-sinker. If her father had jumped up right then, grabbed his shotgun, and said, "Boy, you better marry my daughter or I’ll blow your goddamn head off" I would not have been too surprised. For the time being, though, I just forced my best awkward smile.

Opening my mouth to extend a greeting and break the awkward silence, the intended pleasantry was never formed because one of the brothers, squinting menacingly at me through the sun light, beat me to it. "Close the goddamn door, you’re letting some more fucking flies in!" he barked in a voice akin to Daisy’s, only slightly gruffer. With a scoff Daisy reached back and slammed the door shut behind us. Her trap was now officially set.

******

An hour or so later, I found myself in one of the most awkward social situations I’ve ever had to endure. Presently the entire family plus the intruder — me — were gathered in the claustrophobically small family room, watching an old episode of "Bonanza" on a television that was probably manufactured in the early ‘80s and therefore had fuzzy, color-skewed reception. All seven of us were crammed onto two beat up old couches that appeared to have been salvaged from a nearby junk yard. I found myself scrunched against the far end of one couch, pinned beneath Daisy’s heavy frame whilst she latched onto me with an unyielding bear hug. Scarcely a word had been spoken by anyone throughout the whole time I’d been trapped there in that shack that reeked tobacco and cat poop, and it was beginning to unnerve me. I tried to maintain a tunnel vision towards the TV as hard as possible, yet from time to time I’d be unable to resist casting nervous glances about the room, to which I’d be met with icy glares of suspicion from the beady eyes of the family. It was during one of these strays that the patriarch broke the silence.

"Why don’t you work construction, boy?" he demanded. The old man knew full well that I was merely a humble employee of the local grocery store.

"Uh, um," I stammered, trying to think of the safest answer. "I don’t like the heat," is what came out.

"What a sissy!" chided Daisy’s little sister with a slack jawed grin. At least she was slightly more attractive than her sister.

"Well why don’t you be an electrician or a plumber then?" the father inquired.

"Uh..."

"He goes to Sals’bury Uni-versity," Daisy chimed in. The whole family gawked venomously.

"So you’se a college man, huh?" said a brother, the same one who’d greeted me with the flies comment. "Think yer smarter than the rest of us?"

"Oh, ah..." I stammered. "No, I wouldn’t say — "

"Speak up, boy, I can’t hear you!" he barked back, leaning forward with a slight snarl. I gulped down my throat audibly.

"Jimmy, that’s enough out of you," reprimanded the father.

"I’m just messing with him, daddy," chuckled Jimmy. I still detected a violent level of resentment beneath his good natured front.

"You leave David alone now, ya hear," said Daisy. I exhaled, relieved. Maybe I’d survive this first visit to Daisy’s shack after all. Suddenly, though, the tension came stabbing back like a slaughter house knife with the next attack on the new guy.

"I heard that Daisy and David made out at work!" squealed Daisy’s little sister with a diabolically mischievous grin. In a flash of incestuous rage each of the four men were on their feet, appearing ready to manhandle me. I trembled in my seat.

"Ain’t nobody gonna disrespect my daughter like that!" growled the father. He wasn’t a tall man, but his stocky frame and military-esque mustache lended him an aura of intimidation.

"So you one’a them fast talking college slickers, ain’t ya?" seethed Jimmy, advancing closer. "Think you can just come around over summer, mess with my here sister and take off again, don’t ya!" And with that he lurched forward and grabbed my neck with a vice-like chokehold

"Stop! Stop! Jimmy, I hate you!" screamed Daisy, slapping her brother’s shoulder and beginning to cry.

"Howard, get Daisy and Martha Louise out of the house," commanded the father to one of the brothers. "We need to talk to this boy here." Howard grabbed hold of both his sisters and dragged them briskly towards the porch door whilst Daisy screamed hysterically the whole way. Martha Louise merely snickered. Still strangling me, causing me to gasp and gurgle, Jimmy yanked me to my feet off the couch and slammed me against the wall. Wide-eyed and panting, my gaze darted from the father to his sons, and in a moment of unbridled terror their intentions became clear to me: the redneck men weren’t so outraged as they were horny. The father only had one thing to say to me.

"Drop your pants and grab your ankles, boy."