Fit to Die

by J. B. Stanley

  James also rose and stood, shifting back and forth uncomfortably on his feet. “But what if I’m wrong?” he worried. “I don’t want to damage anyone’s reputation.”

  Murphy smiled indulgently. “Don’t worry, Professor. Nothing will be printed in black and white without solid research. I’m nothing if not fair.” She turned to leave. “I’ll let you know what I discover before any story goes to press. Deal?”

  “Okay, thanks,” James agreed quietly.

  “And don’t worry,” Murphy threw back over her shoulder, “your Spring Fling still gets the front page no matter what. After all, you do have an ‘in’ at The Star.”

  James was almost afraid to open his eyes that Saturday morning. The local news had predicted a day of heavy downpours and the entire event was outdoors, from the pig races to the kids’ games. Hesitantly, he got out of bed, stuffed his feet groggily into an ancient pair of maroon slippers, in which the big toes on both of his feet had poked holes through the material, and eased back his bedroom curtains just enough to catch a glimpse outside.

  “Eureka,” he whispered in relief. Though overcast, the sky was already elbowing its way through the dense knot of gray clouds, in a show of strong blue ribboned by pale peach and salmon hues. Toward the east, a foggy patch of sunlight scored its marks across the shadowy trees and gently eased the darkness out of the woods. James exhaled happily. It was going to be a glorious day. He felt it in his bones.

  Throwing on his favorite pair of jeans, which had become distinctly loose at the waist and baggy in the rear, James was pleased to note that he was pulling his brown leather belt a full two notches tighter than when he had first begun the Witness to Fitness program.

  Even though it was barely seven in the morning, Jackson was already on his second cup of coffee and was engaged in a lively debate with the plumber over which brand of toilet was superior to all others. Their voices echoed around the cavities within the gutted kitchen and carried noisily up the stairs.

  “You gonna stay and help us redo the pipes in here, Professor?” the young man named P.J. asked with a sly grin.

  “Now you know he’s got to raise money for the library today,” Jackson answered, clearly seeking to continue the strain of friendly, argumentative banter. “It’s men like you and me who can’t get a single crossword clue right that’ve gotta get good and dirty.” He eyed James seriously. “Still, it’s never too late to show a young dog a trick or two. Maybe tomorrow you and I will have a little Carpentry 101.” He chuckled. “Isn’t that how they call them classes at college? 101 or 500 or 1000 whatever?”

  “Yes, Pop. That’s what they do.” James filled his thermos from the coffee pot now set up in the downstairs bathroom. “I’d really like for you to teach me how to be a bit more handy. I know I’m not much good at it, but I’d like to learn all the same.”

  Jackson looked pleased. “Well, git on for now,” he said hastily. “You’ve been sleeping all morning like Rapunzel. Those computers you want are gonna cost a few piles of nickels.”

  James almost corrected Jackson’s choice of fairy tale heroine, but considering the overall feeling of harmony about the morning, he decided to let it go.

  “That’s Sleeping Beauty, old man,” said P.J. as he put a dirty hand on his hip and threw Jackson a look of mock disdain. “Did you even go to high school?”

  “Sure enough. And listen here, you little whippersnapper, that place has never seen a boy take so natural to shop class as when I was enrolled. Why, they had to come up with all new projects just to hold onto my attention.”

  P.J. nodded as if impressed. “So you’re the one who came up with that tissue holder project. Thanks a lot.”

  Jackson grumbled something unintelligible and James left the two men alone to create an even bigger mess in the kitchen and to add to the growing tower of rubble in the backyard.

  At the field where the Spring Fling was to be held, Scott and Francis were busily directing vendors as to where to set up their booths. Aside from two large food booths from the local businesses (Dolly’s Diner and the Sweet Tooth), James had sought out two other vendors. These were Doggone It! Hot Dogs and Italian Sausages, from Culpeper, and The Way to San José, a Tex-Mex restaurant hailing from Blacksburg.

  An area farmer had sold James a mountain of hay bales in order to create the pig’s racetrack. There was no seating for spectators except for some extra hay bales set back from the racetrack boundaries, but James knew that no one would mind standing in order to view such an entertaining sight as five heats of pigs snorting and scrambling their way around a dusty circle while people wildly screamed out their names. James also felt confident that he lived in the kind of town where the few hay seats would be reserved for the elderly, disabled, or heavily pregnant women of the community. It was simply one of the many unspoken codes practiced by small towns all across the South. Another such code was to arrive at a fair in a state of near-starvation—breakfast skipped and stomachs churning—so that each and every type of food offered could be sampled before the day’s end.

  Megan Flowers was fully prepared for a ravenous crowd. James was amazed at the sheer number of sweets she had baked and at the amount she was apparently intent on making throughout the day.

  “Like my deep fryer?” she asked James cheerily. “I’m going to fry Oreos and Twinkies and rice crispy bars. They were all the rage at the State Fair this year. We’re also serving homemade raspberry lemonade. Some of Amelia’s friends from school have volunteered to help us man the booth.”

  Amelia appeared next to her mother bearing a large tray piled high with layers of frosted sugar cookies divided by sheets of parchment paper.

  “Look at these, Professor. Amelia came up with the design.” Megan put a proud arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “We call them our ‘bestseller’ cookies. Here, try one.”

  Megan placed one on a paper napkin. “It’s almost too pretty to eat,” James said. Each cookie was shaped like an open book. Vibrantly colored icing formed the edges of the book covers and thin, black lines of frosting created the appearance of stacked pages. On one of the open pages, a single word had been written. The cookie James held read WISDOM in script icing letters. The other open page was covered by wriggling stripes of chocolate, producing the effect of lines of text.

  “We put words on all the cookies to remind folks of how much we cherish our library.” Megan gestured at the cookie tray. James noticed other flattering terms such as COMMUNITY, FRIENDSHIP, DISCOVERY, and LOVE.

  “Love?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “Hey, you’ve got self-help books, don’t ya?” Amelia quipped. “Tell you all about loving yourself and others. Do I need to mention Dr. Phil?”

  James bit into his cookie, chewed, and then smiled. “Amelia, if the clothes you design turn out half as original as these cookies, then you are going to take the fashion world and turn it right on its head.”

  Amelia flushed and moved away to unload more baked goods from her mother’s van. James could see cardboard cartons mounded with chocolate brownies, butterscotch squares, éclairs and donuts on sticks, pretzels with dipping sauces, miniature Key lime tarts, bite-sized cheesecakes, and palm-sized pies such as pecan, chess, and Megan’s mouth-watering caramel apple crumb streusel.

  “You’re going to make a killing,” James commented, tearing his eyes away from the multitude of treasures within the van. “I’d better get out of here before I hijack that vehicle.”

  “Stop on by later and we’ll fix you up a fine snack. On the house, of course. If things go well today, you might just have saved our business, Professor.” Megan tied an apron around her narrow waist and began taping price lists to the front of one of the many folding tables set up to display her wares. A small tent provided shade and Amelia was beneath it, busily assembling the largest deep fryer James had ever seen. James was amused to hear both the women humming softly as they worked.

  After leaving the Flowers women, he stopped at the other food booth
s in order to welcome the vendors and to purchase a large coffee from Dolly.

  “You’ve got a winner with this event today, Professor,” Dolly said, winking at him.

  “Only ’cause you’re here.” James winked playfully in return.

  Next, he helped Scott and Francis create an elaborate pen system using hay bales and chicken wire to contain the droves of pigs awaiting their chance to race. Both Jake and Lenny, the two farmers who had so thoroughly muddied up the library carpet, arrived shortly after eight in order to assist in erecting both the starting gates and the racecourse.

  “It was awfully kind of you to help us out with this, gentlemen,” James said in appreciation.

  “Never mind that, sonny,” Jake said, shifting a wad of bubble gum from one cheek to another. “We wanna make sure we know the turf so when that rat bastard Billy Ostler tries to pull some of his shenanigans, we’ll be ripe and ready for him.”

  “Yessir,” Lenny added, shifting his straw hat back and forth on his head as if scratching an itch. “It’s gonna be a Shenandoah pig that wins this daggone race.”

  After about an hour of stacking hay bales, James pulled an irritating piece of straw from the inside of his sock and decided to leave the swine containment area in the more capable hands of the farmers and the Fitzgerald twins. He was not surprised by the brothers’ adeptness at construction and engineering. After all, they had built the winning float for the town’s Halloween parade and had claimed a handsome cash prize on the library’s behalf. James watched them for a few minutes, his expression reflecting the affection he felt for the two younger men and then turned to check in with Mrs. Waxman and her troop of volunteers.

  Mrs. Waxman was calling out orders in the same voice she once employed to settle down a classroom full of rowdy students. Middle-aged women fluttered to and fro, placing trash cans around the field, decorating the table where entrance tickets were to be sold, and arranging the judging area for the Ladies’ Hat Contest. They jumped to obey their supervisor like fresh army recruits and James would not have been surprised to have seen Mrs. Waxman produce a whistle and command her troops to “fall in.” Still, the bustling women seemed content as they fretted over who should be in charge of the cash box and whether the portable toilets would arrive before the attendees.

  The few ride vendors had arrived the evening before, so the merry-go-round, Tilt-A-Whirl, spinning tea cups, magic train ride, and Ferris wheel were all in place and prepared for the children and adults who would hop onboard and squeal with delight or nausea, depending on how full their stomachs would be at the time. James was not a fan of rides, but he wouldn’t mind one turn on the Ferris wheel, provided he had some company. He decided to ask Lucy to join him. He knew his supper club friends would all be at the Spring Fling and expected to run into Lucy at any moment.

  The day sped by as James ran around the makeshift fairground checking in on vendors, ticket takers, and chatting with congenial townsfolk. At noon, he positioned himself at the racetrack in order to watch the five heats of pigs take two noisy turns around the circle. The crowd roared and laughed simultaneously, and James felt like a five-year-old boy as he giggled at the sight. There was something extremely comical about the frantic movement of those stumpy pink legs as they carried their rotund bodies in clouds of dust about the track.

  He recognized Jake celebrating after his pig Rutabaga won the first heat. A young couple in overalls won the second heat with a pig named Pork Chops and Jake’s friend Lenny was the victor of the third heat with Truffles. A young girl who James guessed to be about seven years old was congratulated for winning the fourth heat, and a man dressed in a pale blue suit and wearing a perfectly white cowboy hat with a turquoise stud in the center of the band won the final heat. James noticed Jake and Lenny sneering at their finely attired competitor and James could only assume that he was gazing upon the notorious figure of Billy Ostler.

  When the final herd of pigs had been shuttled into the starting gates to await the onset of the championship race, two things became clear to all of the spectators. The first was that Billy Ostler’s black pig named Stallion was twice the size of all the other swine and that Chester, the white pig with the black splotches on its flanks belonging to the little girl, was far smaller than its competitors.

  As the announcers spoke the names of the pigs and their owners, the excitement of the crowd seemed to crescendo. When Chester’s name was called, the townsfolk roared out their support, and the little girl, whose name was Becky Abram, beamed with pride. James noticed that her clothes were ill-fitted and faded and that she held onto the hands of two smaller children, most likely siblings, who were dressed just as shabbily. Behind Becky, a plump, weary-looking woman held onto an infant while a toddler tugged at her worn shirt seeking attention. Another small child was perched high on the shoulders of a lanky man who James assumed was the patriarch of the large clan. Like his wife, he wore patched jeans and a flannel shirt that appeared as though it had been slept in several nights in a row.

  James looked back at Chester and thought about how much his family could use the prize money their pet had the opportunity to win. But Chester was so small, a veritable runt in a field of racing giants. Stallion looked like he would devour the little pig as soon as race alongside him. It must have been a fluke that Chester had won his qualifying heat. Everyone else seemed to be assessing Chester’s chances with the same hopeless looks, but before anyone could ponder the dismal situation any further, a loud horn sounded and the gates snapped open. The race had begun!

  James leaned forward in order to gaze downward as the pigs battled for an early lead. Stallion swung his massive head against Truffles’s hip and the smaller pink pig stumbled and quickly lost her lead. From the corner of his eye, James saw Lenny shout out in anger as Billy Oslter grinned wickedly and cheered on his pig. Stallion decided to bully Pork Chops next and he literally pressed up against his rival until Pork Chops was forced to run smack into one of the hay bales. Squealing, he fell down with only one lap to go.

  That’s when Stallion made his fatal error. In the lead, Jake’s pig Rutabaga grunted noisily along the course, dust flying from beneath his dirty hooves. Stallion was closing in on him rapidly, and with so few feet of track to go, it looked like the two pigs would end up in a draw, but at the last second, Stallion turned his head to the side, opened his hairy mouth, and tried to bite Rutabaga on the front leg. Tied up in this manner, they both ended up slowing down enough for Chester to shoot right on by. The congenial pig, who had contentedly run the entire two laps toward the rear of the pack and had therefore successfully avoided Stallion’s bullying attentions, shot ahead and crossed the finish line a black snout ahead of his competitors.

  The crowd went wild, throwing baseball caps into the air and onto the racetrack. James yelled as jubilantly as the rest and returned the merry embraces of the spectators around him. Taking the envelope containing the sizeable check for the first-place winner out of his pants pocket, James threaded his way over to Becky Abram and politely pushed his way through the assemblage gathered to congratulate Chester’s family.

  James shook hands with Becky’s parents and then knelt in the dirt in order to present Becky directly with the check.

  “As they say in Charlotte’s Web, that’s some pig you’ve got there, Becky.”

  Becky accepted the check, her face aglow with delight. “I begged Mama to let me enter Chester. I knew he was a pig with the heart of a lion. I had to use all my saved-up allowance to do it and Daddy was real mad when he found out, but I guess it’s all right now, isn’t it, Daddy?”

  “Sure is, Pumpkin Pie. Your piggy bank just got a heck of a lot bigger.” The man ruffled his daughter’s hair. “She’s a real big reader, sir. Saves all her nickels and dimes so she can buy books from the Goodwill store. Has got one in her hand all the time. Most of them are awful old though. Seems like we just don’t got the time to bring her to town just to go to the library, so she can get the kind of books she hears
about at school.” He looked guilty. “There’s always too much work to be done.”

  “Don’t worry.” James put a hand on Becky’s shoulder. “You give me your address and I’ll have the bookmobile swing by your place twice a month. That way you can check out new books all the time.”

  Becky threw her arms around James. “Oh, thank you, mister! This is the best day of my life!”

  “And everyone in your family gets free lunch from Dolly’s Diner today. And you can all pick out a cookie from the Sweet Tooth. Just tell the ladies working the booths that you won the pig races and Professor Henry is going to cover the cost.”

  The announcement earned him hugs from the entire group of children. By the time they were done, even Chester was brought over and shoved into James’s startled arms. He then left them to their admirers and, smelling a bit like the barnyard, headed over to the food vendor area to fetch some lunch.

  After loading up on two corn dogs, small fries, and some raspberry lemonade, James made his way to the judges’ table in order to be prepared to deliver the check to the winner of the Ladies’ Hat Contest. As the women paraded slowly in front of the judges, Mrs. Waxman made notes on a piece of paper and conferred importantly with her fellow judges.

  More than fifty women had created hats with literary themes. James watched as each contestant passed the judging area and then returned to her place in back of a long line. He spotted Murphy right away, for her wide, flat hat sported a red wooden barn stuffed with livestock and the title, Animal Farm. Right behind her was the organist from James’s church who had designed a To Kill a Mockingbird hat. This was a simple straw affair bearing a mockingbird who had been stabbed through the side using a toy knife. Other hats that caught his eye included an Of Mice and Men bowler on which the creator had sewn Ken dolls and plush mice and the Lord of the Flies crown that had dozens of rubber flies encrusted about its rim and flying skyward with the aid of nearly invisible wires.