by C. L. Bevill
Brownie did a kind of war dance around the model and deftly avoided the parachutes that were tugging the model in a southerly direction. “I want to fire rockets!” he yelled. “Explosives in a model! That’s so cool. I bet the replacement scoutmaster would be down. Did you know my old scoutmaster moved to Alaska? He has to live in an igloo! Not really, but he should!”
David and Jesus trotted into the clearing and immediately sighted the pint-sized rocketship. David clapped his hands together and bellowed, “IT WORKED PERFECTLY!”
Professor Augustus Blenkinsopp strolled after them, trailed by Thelda and Daniel Gollihugh. “Of course,” the professor stated imperiously, “the trajectory was on par with a sub-atmospheric earth range of the equation of parabolic canons. Math, you see, is the work of God.” He paused and added, “It’s my sincerest belief that God must be a master mathematician.”
Bubba was suddenly reminded he was supposed to be watching the film set until Risley could round up some sort of professional security. (Just like the cabdriver Bert Mullahully had been.) Allowing all and sundry to traipse about pell-mell about wasn’t really living up to the high standards of which he’d pledged. Then he remembered that he hadn’t pledged anything and letting the people get their rocket wasn’t such a big deal. He also remembered something else.
Bait. Bubba brightened. “Hey, y’all. I reckon you fired this here rocket.”
“All the way from the Snoddy Estate,” David proclaimed. “It’s fifteen point three miles in a direct line.”
“Dan, I shore could use your help in somethin’,” Bubba said directly. Then he turned to Brownie. “Would you take Dan there with you and find some tools? You know what we need. And Dan, I don’t want nothing to happen to the boy.”
Dan looked doubtfully at Brownie. “Happen to him? What about what will happen to me?”
Brownie grinned at Dan, looking up, up, up at the much taller man. “Don’t worry, Mr. Gollihugh, I won’t let no one hurt you. Also, kin you tell me about the time you peed on a police car with the police officer still in it? Was that Big Joe or one of his officers?” Brownie led Dan away while Dan looked over his shoulder once at Bubba in a pleading fashion. “I figure it’s like when I tased Matt Lauer except the police officer didn’t fall over and twitch.” Off they went with Brownie nattering on.
David and the professor were crouching by the miniature S.S. Stormspike discussing flight paths, weight ratios, and thrust quotients.
“You, ah, programmed that mini-me to come here?” Bubba asked.
The professor snapped open a compartment and revealed a black box with bouncing red numbers on it. “Everything is computerized, and David here told me there was a very good clearing here at the right distance. The fifteen-mile distance is an approximation of the velocity needed to take David to where we need him to go, plus we had the correct GPS coordinates. Of course, we need to attach the rocket boosters to the vessel before that in order to have adequate power in by which to propel the vehicle into a high atmosphere track.”
Bubba tried to absorb that, and all he got was the part about attaching rocket boosters to something to something something something. The knowledge bounced around in his head like a Super Ball. Finally, he said numbly, “You’re goin’ to attach things that go boom to that rocketship.”
“Of course,” the professor said. “How else would you obtain spatial orbit? Throw it by hand?” He guffawed at his own joke.
“Uh, David,” Bubba said, “that don’t sound particularly safe.”
“Risks are understood!” the professor bellowed. “Did Neil Armstrong cry like a little baby? Did Buzz Aldrin ask for his teddy bear? Did Jim Lovell say, ‘Whoopsie daisy!’ I think not!”
“Fret not, Bubba,” David said. “We’re compensating for safety issues on a non-NASA level.”
“NASA!” the professor said scoffingly. “NASA is for pussies!”
Bubba rolled his eyes but only halfway.
Chapter 23
Bubba and the Sneaking
Suspicion of Suspects
“Okay, y’all kin take your rocket and skedaddle,” Bubba commanded in his best do-as-I-say voice. “This here is a closed set and all and stuff is goin’ to be happenin’.” He only half-believed they would actually follow his direction.
“I have permission,” David said promptly. “I talked to Marquita about it, and she said something like, ‘Whatever, dude.’ Plus, she said if I saw the Boo again, I could take pictures and post them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. She was rather insistent on that part. I think she’s partial to Twitter, though.” He looked at Bubba and asked with a very serious expression, settling both of his eyes in a direct line with the other man’s, “Bubba, have you, in fact, seen the Boo?”
The professor snorted loudly in a pooh-poohing manner. “Science has never proven the existence of a bigfoot-like creature,” he offered. “Even the giant ape of Asia left a smattering of fossils to verify its reality. Gigantopithecus was purported to have stood as tall as three meters and weighed in at over a thousand pounds. Despite having left only teeth and a few mandibles, it was still confirmable by preeminent anthropologists and zoologists. But it is evidence all the same unlike this paltry excuse for an urban legend. The Boogity-Boo. What utter claptrap.”
“Bigfoot is the hiiide and seeek champion ooof the wooorld,” Jesus said. “Art Father iiin heaven iiis indeed cleeever.”
The professor groaned. “Science must be proved and reproved. If an experiment is not valid, it cannot be repeated, and the same is true of the biological world. Show me a walking, talking, er, grunting, Boogity-Boo, and we’ll talk shop.”
As if answering the professor, an eerie howl reverberated through the clearing. The sound was half-mournful displeasure and half-screaming agony, and it ripped through the area like a tornado on a March afternoon.
The professor flinched, clutching the mini S.S. Stormspike closely to his body, reaching around it as if he were holding onto another person’s waist. It was as if he was saving the model rocketship from ultimate doom, and possibly he was doing just that. He craned his neck trying to see all the way around them. His eyes were as large as full moons, and it was clear that he wanted to ask the question of what the heck had that been, but he kept his mouth shut.
“I’m workin’ on it,” Bubba stated unequivocally as if the noise hadn’t just occurred. “If a Boo be about, I’m about to bag it.”
“Thee be what?” Thelda asked, looking around.
“I be bagging Boos,” Bubba said, “but first things first. This place needs to be empty. You know the production is suffering because of all of the publicity.”
David helped the professor with the model rocket, which was about six feet tall and not easy to carry. He took one end while the professor took the other. “Of course, we know about that,” David said. “Everyone thinks it was the former FBI agent who was running about in a Boo suit.”
“I’m beginning to see why my colleagues said never to come to Pegram County,” the professor muttered. He glanced around as though he could now see the cause of the howl they’d all heard and were pointedly ignoring.
“So my mother, Miz Demetrice, talked to several of her cronies in various fields,” Bubba went on. As far as he knew his mother actually hadn’t talked to anyone but the clerk at the Ramada Inn, however, people didn’t need to know this. “Drumming up excitement.” He peeked around cannily as if trying to gauge the level of furtiveness in the clearing. “Don’t tell anyone but a group of investors is coming this evening.” He drew an index finger over his closed lips, locked the pretend lock with a ninety-degree turn, and then imaginarily threw away the invisible key.
Thelda watched the spot where the key would have fallen and then knelt to look for it.
“Eecret-say,” David said with evident glee. He elbowed the professor who nearly dropped the S.S. Stormspike Jr. “I love those! It’s an eecret-say.”
The professor stared at David in a very odd way. “Maybe y
ou should tell me about your qualifications on the drive back because I’m beginning to suspect that falsities were represented,” he said to David. “And by the way, I don’t think we can fit the five of us and the model into your Smart car. Perhaps the eminent Mr. Snoddy here can give a few of the others a lift.”
Bubba shrugged. He needed a few volunteers anyway. Whether they knew they were volunteers or not was beside the point.
As David and the professor lugged the model into the woods, the professor said, “Are you sure this is safe? I heard that noise, but I think I’m more scared of that kid. That is the same one from The Today Show, right? I nearly ruptured myself when I saw that, but that was on T.V. Maybe I should get his autograph.”
“If you wanted his autograph, you shouldn’t have called him a little fungus-eating, William Shatner wannabe, then, huh?” David asked.
“He bent the axiomatic etheric oscillator, so I was entitled to call him a little fungus-eating, William Shatner wannabe,” the professor said. “How many people do you know who have bent an axiomatic etheric oscillator? Pretty certain Alan Shepard didn’t do that when he hit the golf ball.”
“Two golf balls,” David said. “Get your moon history right.”
“Hey, I play golf once a month with the deputy administrator of NASA,” the professor retorted. “Don’t tell me about my sporting/space history.”
“Bubba,” Jesus said. “Are you really expecting bigwigs to invest in the movie?” For once Jesus wasn’t drawling his vowels. He adjusted his sheet, and Bubba was glad that the sun wasn’t shining in such a way that would reveal exactly what Jesus was or wasn’t wearing under it. (Jesus had a habit of going commando, but sometimes he chose to wear a jockstrap with little crosses on it.) (Obviously, Jesus and Thelda had both “lost” their flight suits at some point, although Dan was still wearing his, complete with the high-water legs.
“It shore would be nice, considerin’ folks be desperate to keep this thing goin’.” Bubba said a little prayer for all of his lies and half-lies. God would understand that he meant well. After all, it was only a matter of time before someone got hurt. It might be the person pretending to be the Boo, or it might be a person who got in the way of the pretend Boo, but that wouldn’t change the hurting. Worse, someone might even get killed, and Pegram County didn’t need any more corpses. (Somewhere there was a sign with a large red circle with a slash through it that covered up the twisted and very dead shape of a cadaver, and if there wasn’t, then Bubba was going to make one and put it on both ends of the town and probably one at the front gate of the Snoddy Estate, too.)
“Thou odiferous remnant,” Thelda said. “Thou crusty fen-sucked vassal.”
Bubba frowned. “Thelda, I surely like you, but medieval English ain’t the best way to communicate.”
“It’s the early modern period,” she said, “just after the late Middle Ages. I would expect someone with a degree in history to know that.”
Jesus and Bubba stared at Thelda and she shrugged, adding, “Thou jarring, elf-skinned plebeians.”
“I studied American history,” Bubba muttered. “Anyway, yes, folks be coming today around 8:00 pm. I need to pick up and git things ready so it doesn’t look all torn up. Y’all give me a hand?”
Jesus shrugged. “A piiizza might moootivate me. The sooon of God is aaalways motivated by piiizza.”
“Thou shall not order puny, puke-stained anchovies,” Thelda said.
“And a cheese one for me,” Dan called as he followed Brownie into the clearing. Brownie and Dan both held various implements and supplies and dumped them unceremoniously onto the ground.
“I’ll et any kind of pizza,” Brownie said. “Did y’all hear that noise before? That was a fox in season. It sounds like a woman gittin’ murdered, don’t it? My pa says it sounds just like Ma, but I ain’t never heard my mother make a noise like that.” He added under his breath, “I hope I never hear her make a sound like that.”
“Okay, git to work,” Bubba said because he didn’t want to talking about a vixen in heat in any conversation with Brownie ever. “You tell them what needs doing, and I’ll make a few more phone calls and then I’ll order pizza. You reckon they’ll deliver to the Hovious place?”
“No, they won’t,” Dan said. “I done tried that before when I was playing the Boo, and let me tell you, they don’t even care to stop for you when you’re in costume. I reckon I was lucky he was a lousy shot with his deer rifle.”
Bubba thought about it and decided to call the best pizza place in town. (It was the only pizza place since the other one had gone out of business when the owner had decided to move to Tahiti and live on the beach drinking rum on ice. Bubba supposed the man had enough of Pegramville and could respect that decision.) They might deliver halfway, and he could tell them a little something that was supposed to be a secret.
Bubba found the number on Brownie’s list of contacts for some reason. (Brownie had spent some not inconsiderable time in Pegram County and liked pizza as much as the next juvenile delinquent child.) “My Big Fat Italian Pizza,” came the answer.
“Hey Henry,” Bubba said. Henry Leroy was the mayor’s brother and owner of My Big Fat Italian Pizza. It was definitively auspicious that he owned a pizzeria, since he also made extra cash by siphoning gas out of vehicles whose gas tanks did not have a lockable cap. What stealing gas had to do with pizza Bubba did not know, but what Henry did have were people who made good pizza. Furthermore, the name of the pizzeria was just silly enough to fit into the whole Pegram County air of lunacy, so it was all cookies and cream.
“Bubba? That you, boy? The things I’ve been hearing about you,” Henry said. “Boos, babes, bottles, and ice cream.”
“Bottles?”
“Baby bottles,” Henry explained. “You know, baby babies. Boo hoo. Wah. Wah. Give me some milk, pretty mama.”
As was often with Bubba’s interactions with people, he didn’t know exactly how to reply, so he skipped to the nitty gritty. “I need pizza up here at the Hovious place. Pizzas actually.”
“I thought the film had closed up,” Henry said.
“No, not closed. Still filming and kin you keep a secret?”
“A secret?” Henry repeated delightedly. “Of course, I kin keep a secret. Do you remember the time my brother puked into Sam Jones’s convertible and didn’t tell anyone but me? See, I kept that one. Then did you know Susan Teasdale dyes her hair, and I mean all of her hair. My wife tole me that one, but I kept it regardless. Also, when Dee Dee Lacour secretly comes to my pizzeria on Friday nights and orders five All-the-Meats and she says she’s having a party, but I’m pretty shore she’s really eating them all by herself. I kept that one, too.”
Bubba made a mental reminder to ask his mother to include Dee Dee Lacour, who was Dr. Goodjoint’s nurse, in more of their women’s club activities. “This is really important. Folks who are goin’ invest in the movie will be here at 8 tonight. 8,” he repeated for good measure. “I’ll need pizzas for now, and I’ll git some for later, too. Or kin you deliver?”
“I’ll have the driver bring it to the bottom of Foggy Mountain,” Henry said, “so just tell me what you want.”
Bubba found his wallet and gave the order while he thumbed through the bifold. He ordered ten extra-large pizzas with various toppings (not anchovy) and threw in a boatload of chicken wings and three of the dessert pizzas for good measure. Then he gave Henry his credit card number and added a tip because he didn’t have enough cash.
“You’ll need drinks, too,” Henry said cheerfully.
Bubba sighed heavily. “Yep, drinks too. Just throw in a selection. Cups and napkins ifin you’ve got ‘em. I ain’t got nothing up here.”
“For you Bubba, anything,” Henry said. He totaled everything for Bubba and said, “That’s $253.53. I gave you a ten percent discount because of your patronage, Bubba, and it’ll be out to you right about an hour from now. I’ll have the driver leave it at the gate ifin you don’t mind about that. It�
��ll be in the bags. You just drop those bags back off tomorrow, and we’ll be golden.”
Bubba glanced at his watch. “No, I’ll be down there or someone will who’ll pick things up.”
“Good talking to you, Bubba,” Henry said and hung up.
Bubba looked at the iPhone. Bait. Bait. Bait. He looked up and saw that Brownie was drawing a diagram in the dirt with a stick. Thelda, Dan, and Jesus stood around him, and they were nodding their heads as if everything was completely aboveboard.
Bubba found another number on the contact list. His mother answered after two rings. “Bubba or Brownie?” she asked.
“Me, Ma,” he rumbled. Miz Demetrice sounded a tad upset. “You got a problem?”
“The band is refusing to play music by Otto Gray and his Oklahoma Cowboys,” she grumbled, “but they will play Jimmy Buffet songs, so we’re having a discussion.” The word discussion was more indicative that it wasn’t really a discussion but a heated debate to see which predator was higher up on the food chain.
“Does it matter, Ma?”
“Willodean loves Otto Gray and his Oklahoma Cowboys, so yes it does.”
Willodean did not love Otto Gray and his Oklahoma Cowboys as far as Bubba knew, but she did like Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. She also liked Elvis Presley and Marilyn Manson, but Bubba had no idea who the latter was.
Bubba heard a man say, “Okay, ‘Tom Cat Blues’ and ‘Bury Me on the Lone Prairie’ but not ‘Mammy’s Little Coal Black Rose’ because people will slam us on social media, and how can you even think of playing that one?”
“It’s from the 1930s,” his mother said.
“People won’t care about that,” the man protested.
“All right,” Miz Demetrice snarled, “then you’ll have to give me some of the Patsy Cline ones like ‘Walkin’ After Midnight.’”
“Ma,” Bubba said.
“What?” she snapped into the phone. “Oh, sorry, Bubba dearest, these people are such prima donnas.”