by C. L. Bevill
Bubba glanced up and saw that the floor above him ended and a rock wall appeared. The house was butted up into the mountain. Some clever architect had taken advantage of the natural terrain to build it. There was one portion of granite that supported the weight of one entire side of the large house.
It was also where Old Man Hovious had begun tunneling into the mountain. At least Bubba thought that it was Old Man Hovious who’d done it. He supposed it could have been the commune or possibly some other unnamed owner from before that. In any case, someone had roughed out a door-sized opening and gone for broke.
Bubba looked inside and saw that the tunnel went downward and off to what he thought was the west. He had previously thought that the alleged tunnels were limited, but this resembled the stuff of legends. The place had posted no trespassing signs on it for over twenty years, although that obviously hadn’t worked, or people had kept their mouths shut about the extent of the tunnels.
He looked around for something to light the way and ended up remembering the flashlight feature on his cellphone. Holding the phone up he went into the tunnels and hoped he wasn’t going to run into something bad. Like his mother, for example, or perchance an errant IRS agent.
Wires ran down the tunnels and started taking lefts into other rooms. Bubba wasn’t interested in exploring every aspect of the tunnels, so he kept to the main one, ducking his head to look at each one. Some had supplies in them. One had a pyramid-shape pile of slightly rusted canned food. (Mostly carrots and peas, but there was a sampling of corn and beans.) Another one had a wall filled with water in gallon jugs. There were moth-ridden blankets in army green and grizzled gray. There was a generator that had been jury-rigged so that its exhaust trailed away to PVC pipes that went through the rock walls and presumably exited somewhere on the outside.
Bubba began to think the place was a deliberate maze that Old Man Hovious had created. (To keep the communist horde from finding him and transforming him into a Leninist stooge?) Just as the thought flittered through him, he caught sight of what looked like very narrow railway tracks. Like an old mine, he thought.
While Bubba’s mind was processing how that could be, something big and dark jumped out at him, and Bubba nearly had a need to change his underwear.
Chapter 8
Bubba and the Onslaught of Folks
Who Ought Not Be There
“AHHHH!” someone yelled.
“AHHHH!” Bubba yelled back. He stumbled away from the flailing figure and promptly dropped his cellphone. The light on the phone immediately went out, which was par for any course that Bubba ever went on, not that he was a regular golfer. (Goofy golf twice in his entire life, and the place had been named Yo Ho Ho and a Bundle of Clubs. Clearly it had a pirate theme. That had been David Beathard’s choice when he was so piratically inclined. Then there had been a haunted house mini-golf course in the bottom of a funeral home. Apparently, the funeral home hadn’t been doing a lot of business and needed to expand, possibly because it wasn’t located in Pegram County where corpses were abundant. The name was Pray Before You Stroke, and a free round of golf was included in every funeral package. How could that be beaten?)
“AHHHH!” someone yelled again. “IT’S THE BOO! I GOT THE BOO! HE’P ME BEFORE THE BOO ETS ME WITH FAVA BEANS AND A FINE CHIANTI!”
Bubba suddenly relaxed because anyone who would yell that they had the Boo couldn’t be the Boo themselves. (Also, anyone who could paraphrase on the fly from The Silence of the Lambs couldn’t be the Boo, either.) “I ain’t the Boo,” he said. “I thought you might be someone…playing the Boo.”
“You ain’t the Boo,” the voice said suspiciously. “As a matter of fact, you sound like…”
“WHERE IS IT?” another voice yelled from further into the labyrinth. “I got the dart gun! I got animal tranquilizers! We’ll be on Entertainment Tonight by sundown! Just hold on, brah! Don’t let it et your heart! Ifin it sez something satanic, pray about walking through the valley of the shadow of death and whatsit!”
“You got a light, so I kin see where I dropped my cellphone?” Bubba asked politely. This whole thing was taking his mind off his other problems, but if he couldn’t call Willodean because he broke his phone, he was going to be mildly perturbed. He was going to have to go back to the cellphone store and goodness knew they always enjoyed seeing him come considering what happened to his phones on a regular basis.
“I dropped it,” the first voice said.
There was an echo as another person tried to rush through the tunnels. Loud clangs and bumps indicated that person was tripping over all and sundry. Then there were the floating strains of a third person yelling, “Wait for me! There could be two Boos! It could et my ASSSSS!”
Bubba nodded to himself. It was the three stooges. They’d come back from the dead and were haunting the movie set of The Curse of the Boogity-Boo. Of course, McGeorge had only said one of their real names, the one who was generally considered in charge, but where there was one there were generally the others. (Although the last time Bubba had encountered them there had only been the two, and boy had those two truly gotten their comeuppance.)
One of the tunnels got brighter and someone with a flashlight came barreling into the intersection. The vivid beam went from the first man to Bubba then went back to the first man and then immediately went back to Bubba.
“Oh carp,” the second man said. “Oh, carpity carped carpers on a carp,” he added for good measure.
A third one carrying another flashlight barreled into the second one, and the second one cursed.
“Oh, hey Bubba,” said Tom Bledsoe who was the third one. Tom was a habitual pickpocket who frequented the bars of Pegramville when he wasn’t participating in some cockeyed plan to kidnap the orneriest child this side of the Mississippi. Tall and lanky, he often was overlooked until he was conspicuously absent from the place where folks discovered their wallets missing. He had even once swiped the wallet of Bubba’s former commanding officer and had only returned it upon imminent threat of severe bodily damage.
That made the second one Jasper Dukeminer who owned a Ford Courier truck from the 70s. The type of vehicle owned by a person was often how Bubba remembered them. Sometimes Jasper was a felon who tried to steal cars. (There had been a particularly memorial event when he’d attempted to steal Jeffrey Carnicon’s Dodge Challenger and Vermicious Knids might have been involved or possibly Jasper should lay off stealing and then taking his grandmother’s medicines.) Other times he worked at the manure factory. Somehow or another he’d missed the foray into kidnapping. He’d also helped out the wedding planner for Bubba’s wedding by weeding the grounds and getting the Snoddy Estate ready for a big to-do. (The fact that the to-do had turned into a resounding to-don’t certainly hadn’t been Jasper’s fault.)
And the one who’d run into Bubba first, the ringleader, was none other than Lazarus Berryhill. He’d done time for robbing a 7-Eleven. (Bubba considered. There might have been three or more 7-Elevens and a chasing by a mob of enraged clerks that resulted in Laz running his car into a ditch and hitting an electricity pole. The oldest town in Texas, Nacogdoches, had been without power for an extended period of time which in turn had caused a cascade effect of heart attacks, car wrecks, and a house being burned down; events that were still discussed when people from Nacogdoches got grumpy. All of which had also resulted in Laz Berryhill being permanently banned from both 7-Elevens and Nacogdoches, Texas. Nacogdoches had also placed a codicil on that that, and even his corpse wouldn’t be permitted within the town limits.)
“Bubba,” Laz repeated nervously, “I thought you was the Boo.”
“Awwk, awk, awk,” Tom said because he suddenly recognized the danger he was in from Bubba. After all, Laz and Tom had kidnapped Brownie while the boy was visiting Miz D. and Bubba during his mother’s difficult pregnancy. Tom had asthma of some type and was patting his pockets frantically while juggling a massive Maglite flashlight until he finally extracted an inhaler, which
he put to use immediately.
And of course, the thought of Brownie’s mother’s difficult pregnancy instantly reminded Bubba of Willodean. He glowered fiercely, and he knew that the three could see him glowering because all three of them winced in unison.
“Cellphone now,” Bubba said because his tolerance of idiocy was limited at best.
Jasper pointed with his flashlight. “There it is.”
Bubba knelt and swooped it up. The screen was broken, but he wasn’t surprised. This was why the people at the store didn’t want to give him the unlimited warranty, but Bubba was cleverer than that. That warranty had saved mucho dinero from exiting his wallet.
“Did you, ah, see anyone?” Laz asked carefully. “Or anything?”
“You mean, did I see the Boo?”
“Well, ifin you might have seen something like the Boo,” Jasper ventured. “We’d appreciate it if you’d tell us.” He hid something behind his back that Bubba suspected was a dart gun. Where had the trio gotten an animal tranquilizer gun, and was Bubba going to have to call the local veterinarian’s office to warn them that they might be missing some products?
Bubba examined his cellphone in the light from Tom’s Maglite and grunted. “Does Marquita know what y’all are doing down here?”
“She might,” Laz allowed. He gulped visibly and asked, “You still mad at us, Bubba?”
“Now what might I be mad at you about, Lazarus Berryhill?” Bubba asked reasonably.
“We dint hurt the boy none,” Tom said immediately. “As a matter of fact, we still be cleaning up the junkyard. Laz’s ma is rightly pissed at us. She’s still so mad she skipped two latch-hooking conventions, and you gotta know how much Tayla Berryhill loves a latch hooking convention. She got a burr in her saddle that could have its own saddle.”
Bubba knew very well that Laz meant was Bubba still angry that Laz and Tom had kidnapped Brownie. As a matter of fact, Bubba wasn’t happy about it. Laz and Tom had fled the county and possibly the state because they thought all would fall down upon their heads, but Brownie had refused to identify the culprits, and it was very possible that the two men had suffered more than their fair share while Brownie had been in their grasp. Most importantly and in direct relationship to their continued status of being aboveground, the two men really hadn’t harmed a hair on Brownie’s head. (On the contrary, Brownie had apparently had such a good time being kidnapped that he couldn’t wait for it to happen again.)
“That kid stole my dog,” Laz muttered.
“Did he now?” Bubba rumbled.
“And it’s just as well,” Laz said quickly, “because I couldn’t give him the attention he needed. Right, Tom?”
“Right,” Tom agreed just as quickly and gave himself another shot of his inhaler.
“So you’re the tunnel people,” Bubba said, sticking the broken phone into his jean pocket. “What makes you a tunnel expert or two or three?”
“There was that one time I tunneled through the floor of the bathroom shower at Huntsville with this older fella I knew there. His name was Shishkabob McCandless, and he’d bin there for twenty and more years for kidnapping, so I-uh-I’ll stop talking now.” Laz looked at the ground. He waited precisely ten seconds before he added, “I got that idea from that Steve McQueen movie The Great Escape. You’d think they wouldn’t show that one in the pokey.”
“Weren’t that the time y’all broke a water pipe above you and you two almost drown?” Tom asked helpfully.
“Shut up,” Laz snapped.
Bubba decided that the three of them were too dumb to have concocted a story about the Boo, much less come up with a costume to fool the film crew.
“You thought I was the Boo,” Bubba said.
“Mebe.” Laz immediately shut his mouth.
“Y’all mapping this place,” Bubba said. “It’s bigger than I would have thought.”
“We got some of it done,” Tom said and pulled out a sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his shirt. “We think that it used to be a mine of some kind.”
Bubba thought of the narrow tracks. “Something no one knew about. Mebe when the commune was here they found the entrance, or maybe Hovious found it.”
“Mebe,” Laz said again. “I went to the library, and Miz Clack said they used to mine lots of things in this neck of the woods.”
“Mostly lignite,” Bubba said. “You should listen to the rest of what Nadine Clack has to say because I know she dint say that there was a gold mine hereabouts.”
Laz’s face wrinkled with distinct displeasure. “That ain’t exactly true.”
“And you think you’ll catch the Boo with a dart gun,” Bubba went on, “and git some cash some other way.”
“There’s a beer company in Washington that’s offering $1,000,000 for a safe capture of a bigfoot,” Tom offered. “We don’t aim to hurt it none. Just capture it and git that million dollars. I’m buying an island in the Caribbean with my portion.”
“Don’t forget about that International Inquisitor one,” Jasper said. “That’s $5,000,000 for definitive proof of a bigfoot. De-fin-a-tive!”
“That be a tabloid,” Laz said. “Ain’t no way they’ll fork out $5,000,000 of cashola, but the beer company will. Sure as the rain will fall during hurricane season.”
“I don’t understand why a beer company would want proof of a bigfoot,” Jasper muttered.
“It’s ‘cause they’re in Washington state, and that’s where bigfeet come from,” Tom said. “Also because it sells beer.”
“But ifin bigfeet come from Washington, then what’s the Boo doing in Texas?”
“Shut up both of you,” Laz snarled.
Bubba wondered what would happen if the moron triplets managed to shoot Armand LaPoo in the ass with their dart gun. As sure as the rain would fall during hurricane season Daniel Lewis Gollihugh would put aside his Buddhist leanings for the period of time that it took him to violently teach the three that there wasn’t any such thing as the Boo, but there was such a thing as ticked-off, seven-foot-tall redneck who had been known to throw people through windshield when he was angry.
Bubba waited for a moment for blessed calm to settle over him. It was lunchtime, and he’d had enough of the movie business for the moment. He was going to find his hound, his truck, and drive home to eat something good with his wife. He was going to rub her belly, tell her that all the Hollywood people were still as weird as always, and then he’d come back in the afternoon and see if he could find any trace of the “Boo” in the tunnels.
Bubba nodded at Laz, Tom, and Jasper and swiped the Maglite out of Tom’s hand. “I’ll leave it at the entrance,” he said.
As Bubba moved away, Tom said, “You don’t reckon that boy is about, too? He scares the holy livin’ bejesus out of me. Sometimes I have nightmares about that kid comin’ in my room at night whilst I’m sleepin’.”
“Lord Almighty, I hope not,” Laz said sincerely. “I heard tell he shocked Jeffrey Carnicon with a bug zapper at Bubba’s wedding before they took that fella away to jail for killing that prison escapee.”
“Really,” Jasper said. “Wonder what happened to Jeffrey’s Challenger. That’s a nice ride.”
“Shut up,” Laz said. “You were too afraid of the Vermicious Knids to take it.”
“I was not.”
Bubba managed to tune out their voices before he made his way out of the tunnels, carefully threading his way through decades of discarded household paraphernalia. He sighed as he saw the light from the double doors and paused on the bottom step to turn off the Maglite. He propped the flashlight on the top step and stepped into the muted light of the forest that grew thickly on the top of Foggy Mountain. Even with the sun directly overhead it seemed as though the place was filled with shadows.
Precious trotted over from the nearest woods and leaned on his leg. Bubba knelt to pet her and scratch her under her jowls. “Dint catch a squirrel, girl? Well, let’s go home, and we’ll catch a turkey sammy. Extra tomatoes for Wi
llodean and that mustard she likes so much. Anda tall glass of iced tea. Turkey for you but not too much on account that the vet says you’re a little overweight. Only by two pounds, but we still got to make shore that we’re healthy and all.”
Precious stared at her human. She didn’t understand anything except the word turkey and that was because Thanksgiving was her favorite human holiday followed closely by Christmas. Leftovers abounded, and there were always humans about who wanted to give a pathetic-looking hound a chunk of turkey meat.
Bubba stood up, and Precious eagerly followed him down the path to where he’d parked Ol’ Green.
Of course they ran into someone else.
“Bubba?” someone asked from the woods.
Now what? Bubba asked himself.
Can’t we just go get that turkey? Precious asked herself.
“Is it really you?” someone asked.
Bubba paused ten feet away from his truck. He already had the keys in his hot big hands, and he had to stop himself from getting into the truck and simply ignoring the person. What did his mother say about being polite? “If the creek don’t rise, then it pays to be nice to all and sundry.” However, she also said such golden classics as, “Politicians are as useless as a sidesaddle on a hog,” and “Being polite is like having a screen door on a submarine,” so Bubba had to take Miz Demetrice’s homilies with a grain of salt.
Bubba turned back and saw a woman dressed in camouflage from head to toe. She also held a metal detector and a camouflaged backpack. He frowned as he tried to place her short frame with her dishwater blonde hair and weary blue eyes. After a moment, he figured it out. It was a little odd since the first time he’d met her was about the same time Laz Berryhill and Tom Bledsoe had taken it upon themselves to kidnap Brownie.
“Agent Hornbuckle,” Bubba said. The woman was an FBI agent who’d gotten gold fever when Nadine Clack had given her a copy of the infamous People Magazine article about Colonel Nathanial Snoddy’s stolen gold being hidden somewhere on the Snoddy Estate. He wrinkled his forehead as he remembered some other facts about her such as the detail that she was no longer in the employ of the government, and she had written a book about treasure hunting that had caused a caboodle of other treasure hunters to tramp endlessly over the property. Mostly they left holes and bits of trash that Bubba was forced to fill and pick up. Also, he had to periodically go around the entire property and repost the No Trespassing signs. (Someone either tore them down or shot holes in them or using a Sharpie drolly replaced the a with an i.)