Bubba and the Curse of the Boogity

by C. L. Bevill

  “Good?” Miz Demetrice said suspiciously. “Whatever are you doing, Bubba dearest?”

  “Oh, figuring out such.”

  “Don’t forget about tonight.”

  “I haven’t forgotten about tonight,” he said immediately. What’s tonight? he asked himself silently. Feed Willodean. Rub her back. Feed Precious. Take a shower. What am I forgettin’? Shitake mushrooms.

  “Good,” she said more commandingly. “That would be awful.”

  “I need you to do two things,” Bubba said. “Track down that makeup guy from the other movie, The Deadly Dead. His name is Schuler. Supposedly he left Hollywood and lives in the Atlanta area. He had purple hair. I don’t know what color it is now. He was the one who liked scarves.”

  “Scarves,” Miz Demetrice said doubtfully. “Do you know how busy I am right now, boy? I’m busier than a cross-eyed puppy in a room full of rubber balls.”

  “Ma,” Bubba said and forced all of the context of begging, pleading, and Bambi eyes that he muster into the single word (which was difficult to do because she couldn’t see his face, and all he had to use for coercion was his voice), and she folded like Superman on laundry day.

  “Schuler,” his mother said. “I’ll call you back. I reckon it should be to Brownie’s phone.”

  “Something may have happened to mine,” Bubba admitted. “Ifin you kin find Schuler right now and see where he’s at, all the better.”

  “I’ll endeavor,” she said dryly. Then the phone disconnected, and Bubba figured it was because she didn’t want him to ask anything else.

  Bubba finished his coffee and looked at Brownie. “Any ideas?”

  “Let’s look at the film again,” Brownie said. He took his cellphone back and skipped back to the tent while Bubba followed.

  They both looked at the same footage that Risley had shown Bubba. Brownie even brought up the stuff on YouTube so that they could look at it, too.

  “What do you suppose David was trying to tell me?” Bubba asked more of himself than Brownie.

  “One of them loonies told you about this?” Brownie asked.

  “The astronaut,” Bubba said.

  “Why would he?” Brownie took a moment to chortle and mutter, “They’re building a rocketship. Hee hee hee.”

  “He was doing some of the filming on account that the director has spent all her money.”

  Brownie nodded as if using a certified loon as a cameraman made perfect sense. Possibly it did to him. “Well, the word is that the director lady was doing it for publicity, right?”

  Brownie nodded.

  “And you don’t think that all of these—” Brownie waved at the footage— “are hers, right?”

  “No, I don’t think that.” Bubba glowered. “I think Marquita bit off more than she could chew when she decided to film on location.”

  “Mebe the question you should be asking is why,” Brownie said.

  “Why why?”

  “Why would anyone pretend to be a Boo?” Brownie nodded again. “I kin think of a few reasons. They don’t want her to finish her movie. They want the movie people gone. Revenge too. You prolly thought of these already.”

  Kind of. No, I did think of these already.

  “Reasons lead to suspects,” Brownie said.

  Bubba knew that.

  “But mebe you’re only thinking of folks who want to git even with Marquita. Why else would someone want the film people gone?”

  “Gold under the mountain,” Bubba said instantly. “Someone wants the treasure buried there.”

  “There’s real gold under the mountain,” Brownie repeated. “Dang! Kin we go into the tunnels?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then who wants the gold?”

  “Hornbuckle, but she’s locked up, and I don’t think she was running around in a costume.”

  “So, she wasn’t playing the Boo.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, then who else is gold hungry?”

  “Good question,” Bubba mused. “Mebe the owner found out about the loonies digging for gold.”

  “That’s a stretch,” Brownie said. “What else?”

  “I don’t know.” Bubba scratched the side of his head. “Alls I want to know is how to catch a Boo, or Boos, as the case might be.”

  “Well then,” Brownie said brightly, “all you need is the right bait.”

  Chapter 22

  Bubba and The Lure of Mystery

  Bubba had to make some calls, and he had to find some equipment for what Brownie had painstakingly explained to him. After Bubba had listened to Brownie in his entirety, he asked, “You learned all of this from a book?” while thinking, Where was this book when I was growing up? Is this book in our house? Should I be concerned about the state of his mental well-being? That was followed by a short period of consideration and then No. Too late. Brownie is Brownie, and ain’t nothing goin’ to change that.

  “Books, YouTube, Boy Scouts, television, and Grandpa Derryberry,” Brownie said enthusiastically. “Grandpa Derryberry was a marine for 23 years, and he has this one book in his library. Well, he’s actually got about twenty of them, and they cover all kinds of stuff that a fella like me likes to read about. Mostly they’re U.S. Army manuals and not for the Marines, but you know about that since Miz Demetrice has some she reads, too.”

  Bubba did know about that. In fact, he’d brought a few home with him when he’d been discharged from the army. He hadn’t known at the time that his mother ate it up like it was a bag of Lays potato chips. (“You cain’t et just one.”)

  “There’s the Improvised Munitions Handbook and there’s the Guerilla Warfare and Special Operations one. There’s one about Incendiaries, which is a big word for things that go boom. Big bada boom. You wouldn’t believe the things that you kin rig up to explode.”

  Bubba interrupted with, “We don’t need that one, boy.”

  “I know. There’s Survival as well as Unconventional Warfare Devices and Techniques, but my absolute favorite is the one I read until I had to use five rolls of Scotch tape to fix it.” Brownie sighed. “Grandpa Derryberry is the best pawpaw ever. For some reason Ma don’t approve of us hanging out together, but Grandpa Derryberry just ignores her, and Pa don’t mind unless I blow up his tool shed, which I swore I wouldn’t do again.” He held up his hand in the three-fingered Boy Scout salute as if affirming that he would forever honor his vow to his father. “Lots of other things to blow up besides a stupid shed. Are you shore that we cain’t do a little teensy-weensy bit of demotions?”

  “No explosions,” Bubba snapped. He sighed and looked around. “So, this is the easy part.”

  “Yup,” Brownie agreed. “You think we kin play with some of the makeup stuff while we’re here.”

  Bubba couldn’t decide if that would be a good thing or a bad thing. “I reckon. Let me have your phone so I kin call Ma.”

  “Don’t tell mine where we’re at, or there’ll be heck to pay,” Brownie warned as he headed for the makeup tent. A moment later Bubba heard, “Fake blood! Plasticine claws! Oh, great googly woogly, a real authentic Boo mask! Are those devil’s horns? I’m in heaven! I have died and gone to heaven!”

  Bubba called Willodean first. “Brownie,” she answered. “Your mother’s looking for you. She says you’re sending texts, which is what you do when you’re up to something. No stun guns, insect swatters, or fireworks, right?”

  “It’s Bubba,” he said. “Brownie’s with me. I ain’t seen a single stun gun, insect swatter, or firework.”

  “Bubba, darling,” Willodean said. “Your mother peeled out of here in the Caddy while yelling up at me not to get of the bed and to be positive I had my service weapon loaded and under my pillow. Why ever would she do that?”

  Bubba scowled. “Why does Ma do anything?” He paused. “I might have asked her to do something that she thought meant I was in danger?” He made it sound like a question but then rapidly followed with, “Not that I’m in danger. Ain�
�t no one about exceptin’ me and Brownie, and as I’ve said he ain’t loaded for bear. He might have a Swiss Army knife, but that takes him about ten seconds to git a single blade out.”

  Willodean didn’t say anything.

  “You all right, sweetums?” he asked solicitously. “Does your back hurt? Do you need some ice cream? Is Precious keeping your feet warm?”

  “Oh, you’re so up to something yourself,” Willodean finally proclaimed amicably. “Tell me honestly, do I need to call John to back you up? I have other things on my mind, and I’m not inclined to see if I can get my bulletproof vest over my middle section.”

  Bubba looked at the detailed plans that Brownie had scrawled onto some scrap paper he’d found. He didn’t think Sheriff John would help, and the official police vehicle might scare away the fish. “No, I’m good. I’ll call Daniel Gollihugh to see ifin he kin he’p me. Mebe a few others.”

  Willodean was silent again. After a lengthy pause, she said, “You’re keeping it from me because you’re worried it will spike my blood pressure.”

  “Something like that, but really it’s pretty mundane in comparison to other recent events in our lives,” Bubba quickly reassured her. “I mean it’s positively boring in contrast. I might fall asleep right here and now. I’ll be snoring and all. Drool be running down my cheek. Yuck balls.”

  “That isn’t reassuring,” she told him, “but I think you’re doing the right thing. Bet you haven’t been worrying about me while you’ve been doing whatever this is.”

  “I worry about you all the time,” he said. He instantly felt guilty because he didn’t actually worry about her all the time, just most of the time, and she was onto him.

  “Which is why you need to get your mind on other things.” Bubba could almost hear the smile in her voice. “You have Brownie the great vampire slayer. You have your intuitive brain, which is much more discerning than people give you credit for, and you have me. I think it’s a trifecta. Furthermore, it’s going to be a…what, quadfecta in a week or two.”

  “Ah shucks,” Bubba said because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Go and do your thing,” she told him, “and remember I love you.”

  “As I do you,” he said, and it was very nearly the most important thing he’d said for years and years. Certainly, it was in the top five. (Unquestionably the top two.)

  Bubba disconnected and checked to see that Brownie was peering into a mirror on a specialized vanity set that Simone Sheats used to get people ready for filming and drawing black circles under his eyes. He speed dialed his mother and it connected immediately.

  “Bubba?” Miz Demetrice asked. “I found that boy. He’s staying at the Ramada Inn up the way. He looks pretty much the way he did the last time I saw him, although his hair is now pink, and he’s wearing a scarf that clashes with the pink hair. Orange, you know. One never wears pink and orange together. Horrors.”

  Bubba thought about it. So, Schuler wasn’t in Georgia but was in Pegram County instead, just at the same time as all the stuff that was going on. (Plus, Bubba didn’t think he owned anything that was pink or orange, and if he had, he would have never thought to pair the two.) It wouldn’t be a stretch for the makeup artist to know that Marquita was going to be filming in the area since he was still in the field. For all Bubba knew, Simone might have told him. “Did he see you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Miz Demetrice said. “Looks occupied. He’s drinking a cup of coffee at the restaurant and is looking somewhat down in the dumps. Mayhap he heard something he didn’t want to hear.”

  “Would you watch him for a bit?”

  “Dearest Bubba, I have a million and one things to do and am busier than a mosquito at a nudist colony, so the answer is no.” Miz Demetrice chuckled. “However, I have bribed the motel clerk to text me when the illustrious Schuler leaves, and that’s about all I kin do for you.”

  “You’ll text this phone ifin that happens,” Bubba said.

  “The instant,” she swore. “I foreswear I shall not delay, forsooth, too. Whatever. I have to go.”

  “Wait,” Bubba said, “what about Tandy North?”

  “The actress? Isn’t she still…oh…acting? I heard she was having a fling with Brad Pitt or maybe it was Johnny Depp.”

  “She’s supposed to be at that motel, too.”

  “She isn’t in the restaurant, Bubba lubba. Because it is a nonsmoking motel, she’s probably smoking on the pool deck seeing as she is the huffiest puffer of smokers ever. That is, if she’s still here and hasn’t fled back to the land of fruits and nuts.”

  “I believe we kin give California sincere competition on that nickname,” Bubba muttered. “Before you amble off to errands and such, kin you just check to see ifin Tandy’s still there?”

  “Yes, you owe me fifty-five dollars and thirty-five cents, by the way, because that is what I had in my wallet, and that is what the clerk demanded in addition to an IOU for forty-five more dollars. I’m not shore how I will convince the young man to give me the information on Tandy.” Miz Demetrice paused obviously to ponder the issue. “Perhaps I offer him something more personal.”

  “Ma,” Bubba grumbled, “I don’t care for jokes like that.”

  “I was thinking of a tour of the estate or an invite to tonight’s party,” she snapped back. “Lord above, where did you git your mind from?”

  “You know exactly where,” he bit off. His mother abruptly disconnected while he was left staring at the phone screen.

  Bubba glanced around. Now bait. Bait. Bait. Bait. As he was an expert fisherman (1st place for most bass caught in the Happy Hookers Fishing Tourney. The trophy sat in the back of the closet where Willodean had placed it with great aforethought. He only looked at it once in a while when he needed a giggle; he’d never won a fishing trophy that had a girl on it who looked like she belonged on the nose of a WWII bomber.), he was well aware that the correct bait was instrumental in catching the right prey. Without a topwater bait that skimmed the water side to side, for example, one could never catch a speckled trout, and how awful would that be? (Truly awful.)

  The question he had was what was the correct bait. More importantly, how could the suspects know about the bait in a timely fashion? That speckled trout, for another example, was a wily character and prone to waiting and seeing if the bait really was bait or was the bait a Ponzi scheme developed by charlatans in order to lure him from the depths.

  Bubba heard a boom and looked toward the south. More explosions? But I ain’t bin around any dynamite, he thought quickly. Wait, where’s Brownie?

  Bubba shielded his eyes and looked up. It sounded a little like a sonic boom. Brownie scuttled out of the makeup tent and looked up as well. “Hey,” he said, pointing. “There’s something up there.”

  A bird, a plane, Super— naw. It looked like a missile. Its silver shape arched upward and something detached from the back and was immediately followed by an echoing boom. Bubba wasn’t 100% certain, but it looked like a missile. A small missile, but a missile all the same. Naw. Naw. Naaaaaawwwwww, he repeated in his head. Couldn’t be.

  But it was. The missile had arced like the shape of one of the M’s at the local McDonald’s, and just after it hit its apogee, there was another explosion and something shot out of its tail. It abruptly pulled up and a parachute burst forth. In actuality there were three of them. All red-and-black checked and twisting in the wind as they moved. The missile got pulled up straight and the whole kit and kaboodle began to drift toward where they stood.

  “Oh, that’s cool,” Brownie said. “We never see stuff like this in Monroe. I mean, they have stuff, but they never want me to go.”

  Bubba couldn’t imagine why that could be so. He continued to look upward and finally realized it was a smaller version of a rocketship. It was a smaller version of the rocketship. In fact, he’d seen that very rocketship before because it was sitting on the very back ten acres of the Snoddy Estate and taunted him endlessly of his p
resence every time he drove past it. The S.S. Stormspike was an infinite reminder of the fact that he could not control every aspect of his life. Why, look, he had a group of loonies (okay, mentally challenged individuals) who were building a rocket to launch David Beathard to the moon. No matter what happened it was going to end badly. Bubba could only hope that the rocketship would have some kind of fatal (not to humans) flaw that would ground it indefinitely. Bubba brightened. He could go see if he could help that fatal flaw be established, or at the very least, determine if the rocketship was in any form viable.

  Later, he vowed.

  “It looks just like the one on the back of your property,” Brownie said needlessly, “exceptin’ on a much smaller scale.”

  “They be testing,” Bubba said. Testing didn’t sound good to him. Testing sounded like they knew what they were doing and were making logical steps to their ultimate conclusion.

  “It’s even got the same name on it,” Brownie said as the smaller rocket drifted closer, and they could see the large red letters. “You think we should fetch it?”

  Bubba didn’t think that they should fetch it. Specifically, he thought that they should throw it in a ravine and tell the astronuts that it had gone in the opposite direction of town and that it likely fell into Sturgis Creek or that a giant catfish had eaten it.

  However, he abruptly heard the roar of a vehicle and understood that it was too late. The rocket drifted lazily toward them as if it had been attracted to the clearing with the tents and the trailers. He heard the vehicle careen to a stop somewhere below them. Then there were slamming car doors and people yelling excitedly. “There it is!” one yelled. “Thee! THEE! THEE!” another yelled. “It iiis so!” yelled a third. Finally, one deep voice said, “‘It is better to travel well than to arrive.’”

  Someone had travelled well, Bubba thought.

  The scale model of the S.S. Stormspike floated to a patch of grass and gently sat down as if placed by tender hands. Brownie whooped and went for it while Bubba said, “Don’t touch it, it might be hot or somethin’.”