by Deforest Day
—o—
Honey exploded. Again. “You’re not going to Harrisburg dressed like that.”
Mac examined his whipcord trousers, clean and pressed, and the freshly ironed polo shirt. Rosetta was old school. “What’s wrong with this?”
“It’s the state capitol, for heaven’s sake. You could run into the important people!”
“Honey, I’m meeting a guy about to file for bankruptcy, and I don’t want to come across as some hotshot, trying to take advantage of his misfortune. Dressed like this, I can commiserate. Just two blue-collar guys, fighting The Man.”
His logic, as always, annoyed her, and she diverted the discussion to herself. “Well all I can say, is I’m glad I won’t be seen with you, looking like a truck driver. Oh, and Friday I want you in your Ralph Lauren chalk stripe. Rosetta took it to the cleaners last week; it’s hanging in my walk-in closet. I’ll pick up a nice matching necktie in New York.”
Mac already had a tie rack full of Christmas and birthday gifts he'd never worn. He'd been open-collar for most of his life, and the rest of America seemed to be catching up. Politicians had learned they can fake being a Man of the People by going tieless in pre-washed jeans. Too bad they wear them with black wingtips. “Speaking of New York, I thought you’d left. Whose car did I just hear in the driveway?”
“That was Rosetta. She's off to the farmer’s market, for a goat. Against my better judgment, we’re having something called cabrito al pastor on Friday.”
“Rosetta? She doesn’t know how to drive.”
“No, but Doctor Q claims he does. So I told him to take your car, since Mag’s BMW is too small for them and a goat.”
“Hey! I gotta go see this contractor, before he gets to the courthouse, files his papers. I guess I’ll have to take Mag’s convertible.”
Honey, hands on hips, said, “No you won’t, either. Because I’m taking it to New York. I must have picked up a nail at your job site; the Lexus has a flat tire. You can use my car, after you fix the tire.”
He checked his watch. The shakedown at the job site had eaten up valuable time. And money. “Why don’t you fix your flat?”
“I don’t know how, Mac. I didn’t take shop, back at Escatawpa High.”
Mac knew better, but couldn't resist a retort. “No, there must have been a scheduling conflict with Princess 101. Or was it Basic Baton for Cheerleaders?”
Honey's anger, still simmering from the scene at the bank, boiled over. “Oh, that’s so clever. I’m just rolling on the floor with laughter. If you take Mag’s car you will rue the day, you, you prick!”
“Calm down, Honey. Call Triple A to come change your tire.”
He grabbed the bank bag, dashed upstairs and down the hall to Mag’s bedroom, where he searched for the car keys among the paraphernalia on her dresser. Headbands, a button asking 'Who Would Jesus Bomb', and what was either an electrical circuit tester or a roach clip in disguise. No BMW key fob.
He noticed a small oval box, it’s lid a carved and painted flower. A copy of the large Georgia O’Keefe poster above her bed. He lifted the lid, saw the car keys, and the safe deposit key. He gave the poster another look. Mag’s veejay. The girl sure keeps you up to speed.
On the way out the door he tried to hug Honey, but she pushed him away, her eyes blazing the bright blue of a coal-fired furnace. His voice tinged with frustration, Mac told her, “Get a grip. We have a lot riding on Friday.”
Maybe more than you know, Honey fumed, as she watched him scatter driveway gravel with her daughter’s car. She found her phone, and punched in 911.
Chapter Eight
At the same time Mac McClintock was fitting his coffee mug into the BMW’s cup holder, LuAnn Milt, forty miles closer to the state capitol, was sitting down for her second cup at the kitchen table of Mildred Lohman, her next door neighbor.
LuAnn had thrown a housecoat over her nightgown, slipped on Duane’s galoshes, since the grass was a foot high, and wet besides. His excuse being the mower ain’t running right, and he’ll take it over to his brother’s, have him look at it. Or she can.
“I love him to death,” LuAnn said, as introduction to this morning’s chapter in the never-ending saga of her marital adventures. She took a sip of coffee and lit her first Salem of the day.
Mildred stirred non-dairy creamer into her coffee, added two packs of Splenda as she waited. As always, she had to prompt LuAnn for the juicy details. “You love him to death. What’s the ‘but’?”
“But either that new partner of his goes, or I do.”
“You talking about that dog?”
“Yes, I’m talking about that dog. Can’t sleep out back like a normal hound, has to be right in the bedroom with us, stretched out across the foot of the bed, you step on him every time you go potty.” LuAnn gave her head a slow shake, rattling her hair curlers. “I never realized, when them Homeland Security people gave the department a new K-9 vehicle, it come equipped with its very own dog.”
She tapped ash into one of the Old Milwaukee cans still on the table from last night. “Or they’d send Duane off for six weeks, learn him how to work with his new canine partner. Never mind he come back with Corporal stripes, is now number two in a three-man department.
“For that matter, what’s Shaleville need with a dog can sniff out every kind of explosives there is, and twice as many drugs? I can’t keep a little herb in the house no more, Mister High and Mighty finds it, then sits there making that god-awful noise, until Duane confiscates my stash, gives the damn dog the reward signal, in their case a kiss atop his head. I swear, Duane pays more attention to that bloodhound than he does to me.”
Mildred had heard variations of the same story since Duane came back from the FBI school with his fancy patrol vehicle, equipped with satellite navigation, internet connection to the FBI computers, and a special seat designed for the dog.
Bugle Boy, first assigned to Primary Passenger Screening at Washington National, graduated at the top of his Transportation Security Administration K-9 class, with the ability to differentiate between the explosives Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, Cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, and Trinitrotoluene, as well as cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. Occasionally he confused the chemical composition of Ecstasy with the olfactory indicators of estrus, and therefore had the annoying habit of shoving his wet nose in the crotch of female passengers.
After leaving a damp patch on a U.S. Congresswoman he was demoted to baggage inspection. It was there he came upon a fellow TSA employee, on her hands and knees, trying to free a stuck suitcase in the tunnel of the X-ray machine.
Bugle Boy inhaled deeply, and was instantly infatuated, and then proceeded to display his amorous intentions. They travelled through the machine and onto the conveyer belt, locked in canine carnality.
Down the chute they slid, round and round the baggage carrousel they went, the woman screaming for help, beating her assailant with a screening wand, as the bloodhound raised his deep-throated voice in primal jubilation.
Passengers awaiting their luggage watched in various states of awe, wonder, and revulsion. A group of Japanese tourists furiously shot both still and video images, but is was an enterprising college student who captured the event with his iPhone, uploading live to the Internet.
As a Federal Civil Service employee, Bugle Boy could not be fired without a highly public hearing, and therefore was quietly packaged with a new K-9 vehicle.
The combination was swiftly snapped up by Congressman Sheldon ‘Shelly’ Varnish, a man addicted to any pork that might impress his constituents, many of whom were registered voters in Shaleville, Pennsylvania.
Chapter Nine
Mac picked up I-81 a few miles from the farm, kicked it up to seventy, and figured out the cruise control. It was much simpler than the convertible top. After a brief struggle in the driveway, he settled for the Code Pink ball cap and John Lennon sunglasses on the passenger seat.
He made a mental note to call Jack. Everybody says your wif
e goes into labor, then you drop everything, and go with her. If big league pitchers can miss a rotation, then his foreman can take a few days off in the middle of H. Poitrine and Associates' biggest event of the year.
The problem was, only one guy could fill Jack's shoes, and his name was McClintock. He knew he should be at the job site, but the temptation of picking up a couple of trucks at fire sale prices was too much to ignore. And being there wouldn't make Spider work any faster.
He called Mags, got her voicemail, told her to find out what hospital, send flowers. Or are you supposed to send something for the baby? He and his first wife never found time to make one, she being more into having fun than starting a family. With Honey the subject never arose. Apparently once was enough for a girl like her.
He and Honey needed to talk. These outbursts—the artwork, the kiss—were becoming a daily event.
Last few years she'd been living on a different plane. Gucci and Dior, her weekly trip to New York. What the heck was a facial, and how much time did one take? Why did she need a personal trainer? Was she having an affaire?
They started out as a couple of hustlers, trying to make it. And when they teamed up, started making a few bucks, she became a different woman. Had he become nothing more than a meal ticket? They needed to talk.
He crossed I-80 at Hazleton, was halfway to Harrisburg, when traffic narrowed to one lane, and flares sputtered on the blacktop. He couldn't afford to wait, and ducked down the exit ramp.
At the stop sign a grizzled geezer in an orange FirePolice vest and a flashing blue light on the roof of his pickup said, “Take a left, follow the sign to Shaleville. About a mile past the old breaker take another left, it’ll get you back on the Interstate.”
“What’s a breaker?”
“Hell, mister, y’ain’t never seen a coal breaker? Separates the coal from the rock. ‘bout the size of one of them pyramids they got over to that E-gypt. Can’t miss it, y’ got eyes.” He examined the Code Pink hat. “You from the city, ain’tcha?”
Mac looked at his watch, the TAG Heuer; a birthday gift from Honey. He could still make it, if this little car was as fast on windy back roads as the TV commercials promised. He slammed into the first of its five gears and left rubber on the road.
—o—
Harry looked at his watch, said, “Where's that guy with our money?”
George turned, peered through his smoked glass window, said, “Here he comes now. I wonder why he’s driving a forklift.”
Spider raised the six-foot long forks to window level, and speared the Escalade like a heron hunting frogs, pinning the four occupants in their seats with five hundred pounds of steel. Then he lifted his load fifteen feet in the air, and bumped across the rough ground toward the concrete levee. Muffled screams and yells and curses accompanied the brief trip.
—o—
Mac’s BlackBerry was where he left it, and Honey scrolled down the phone menu, looking for Spider. He impressed her as a man who could change a tire as easily as string his grandmother's clothesline.
“Good morning, Spider,” She said. “Honey Poitrine here. I have a flat tire, and Mac said to call you. He just left for Harrisburg, and I'm supposed to be in New York.”
Spider had to press the phone hard against his ear to hear the boss’s wife above the growl of the forklift at full throttle. “I’m kind of busy right now, Ms. Poitrine.”
“Oh, please, call me Honey. We didn’t get a chance to really talk, yesterday. If you're going to be a permanent part of our little corporate family, I need to get to know you better.” She wondered if that was over the top. She paused a beat, considering. He seemed pretty dense, the first time they met. Oh, what the heck. “If I'm not waiting by my car, I'll be inside, taking a shower.” She then added, with a hint of Delta in her voice, “Just follow the sound of running water.”
She heard tires on the gravel drive, and stepped outside. It was Dr. Q and a goat, but no Rosetta. The doctor told Honey he'd dropped the señora off at the local sacristy, for some major spiritual repairs. “I’ll pick her up later, after the exorcism. We were having a teleological discussion on our way to the farmer’s market.
“That’s the marvelous thing about Rosetta, she has such a purity of faith, she has never questioned the fundamentals of her church. Her tenets have been unaffected, tainted may not be too strong a word, by the 21st century. Or the 13th, for that matter.”
In deference to the customs and laws of the 21st century he was wearing bib overalls he'd found in the old barn, and a John Deere T-shirt.
“When I offered to contribute some peyote to Friday’s feast, she called my various South and Central American religions ‘cannibal cults’. Then I said ‘takes one to know one’, and she took offense, as the blindly devoted often do. So I explained that it was the Spanish Conquistadors who brought their own version of cannibalism to the New World, in the 16th century. Of course she lapsed into her usual disingenuous ‘¿Que?’ in response.
“Because she knew exactly what I was talking about, can’t fool a professor of comparative religion, even if he is just visiting. So I pressed forward with a bit of Aristotelian logic.” The Doctor saw that Honey was equally clueless. Americans know almost nothing about everything.
“Deductive reasoning as expressed in syllogisms? I pointed out to our dear Rosetta that Transubstantiation— the conversion of the Eucharistic elements into the body and blood of their Savior, and something all true Catholics hold at the very core of their faith—is also a ritual form of cannibalism. The eating of human flesh on a weekly basis, by a billion believers.
“Well, Rosetta is a simple soul, and was devastated by my impeccable logic. She had what we in the education industry call a meltdown.”
Dr. Q noted the glaze in Honey's eyes, and ended with a quip of fortune cookie strength. “Revelation is a hard reveal, when it proves, after all these years, your faith has been unfaithful.
“That’s why I took her to Saint John’s. Father Bill’s specialty is AA, but he’s a Jesuit, so he should be able to save our poor Rosetta from the ravings of the Feathered Serpent, right?”
Honey cast a jaundiced eye at the goat. “I hope so. Tomorrow she’s preparing a luncheon for twenty.”
—o—
Shaleville’s old Earl M. Swarthout Elementary School was a brick-shaped building, one dating from the 1940's, when people still lived and worked and procreated in Shaleville.
Back when coal was king, and bricks were the choice for a lasting and substantial structure. Clay is a close relative of shale, and that is related to coal, and the latter can be burned to turn the former into brick, so the entire town was one long concretion of deep-red buildings, situated between the river and the railroad.
When the coal ran out in the 1980’s the tracks were torn up, and the right-of-way became a bicycle and jogging trail and popular trash depository.
The river, being independent of humanity, continued to run from its source to the sea, as it had since well before man appeared on its shore. And will probably do so long after he leaves. God Willing, as the more philosophically inclined locals said in response to any remark that could benefit from an escape clause.
After the primary source of income disappeared, the smarter, or at least more literate, locals saw the handwriting on the wall, and pulled the same disappearing act.
The remaining children were bussed to nearby Wellville, a thriving and aptly-named community straddling not the river, but the Interstate highway, allowing easy access to the new Walmart Distribution Center.
So the old Earl M. became the home of the Shaleville Volunteer Fire Department, the Shaleville Community Ambulance, and the three-person Shaleville Department of Public Safety.
Recently reelected to a sixth term, Sheriff Wallace Claxon owned the Tucker Inn, a red brick cube across the town square, with twelve generally vacant rooms on the second and third floors, and the Plugged Nickel Bar & Grill on the first.
Recently promoted, and now high
ly-trained Corporal Duane Milt was responsible for the department’s primary source of revenue, a speed trap on the Shaleville-Wellville road.
The third member of the department was Miss Marge Defarge, a large, shapeless woman of dour mien. Her one salary covered an equally large list of responsibilities; Fire, Ambulance, and Police Radio Dispatcher, Town Historian, Recording Secretary of the Borough Counsel, and finder of lost causes, most recently getting the abandoned coal breaker listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In a matter of moments she would be assigned the additional duties of Jailer.
—o—
Spider parked the forklift where he found it, returned to work, thinking about Mrs. Mac and the sound of running water. What was her problem? A flat tire. Call Triple A, lady. He picked up the box of shock tubes he’d come for an hour ago. Damn, but she's a fine looking woman, even if she is starting to show some miles.
“Not as many as you do.”
“Yes, well, I been in a few more rough spots, so I got a few more rough edges.”
“Both of us is closin' in on the forty mile marker.”
“Now take that daughter of hers.”
“Fine firm flesh.”
“And was looking me over, she dropped by, in her sporty little car.”
“String the rest of that detcord, Spider, stop thinking about pussy.”
“Hell, I can finish this up in the dark with my eyes closed, have it ready to blow Friday morning. Ten minutes to change a tire, maybe get lucky, stay the afternoon.”
“A little R and R.”