by William Bebb
*****
Bo drummed his fingers impatiently on the squad car's dashboard. He sighed and watched Willie Dunn standing in line inside Rebekah’s Doughnuts & Treats shop. It felt like he’d been sitting there for thirty minutes since Willie pulled into the parking lot saying, “Just a sec, be right back,” and trudged inside for a midday sugar and cholesterol fix.
Bo pulled his pocket knife out and cleaned some gunk out from under his fingernails as he tried to be patient. After finishing all the fingers on his right hand he looked in the store again. There was only one more customer in front of Willie. It was a middle aged woman who bore a remarkable resemblance to a woman he used to see a lot on TV and always despised. He could only remember her first name: Rosie.
The Rosie lookalike was wearing a leopard skin style pair of spandex pants and a bright purple shirt which swelled out around her stomach. It made her appeared like she was hiding a beach ball under it.
A fat little girl wearing identical clothes to her mom could be heard through the store's window. “Not that kind. I don’t like lemon filled- yadda yadda yadda.”
He tuned out the girl's loud shrill whining voice and started work on cleaning the fingernails of his other hand. After all of them were immaculate, he leaned back saw the big lady pull a checkbook out of her purse and start writing. Bo sighed and looked at the siren switches on the dashboard and felt sorely tempted to flip them on.
The bell on the store's door rang and he looked up.
It was the elephantine mother and daughter coming out. The fat girl carried a big white box and trudged ahead toward a neon-green SUV and then he glanced at the mother that was lumbering after her little girl. (Who really wasn't all that little) The mom gave Bo a wave with her jumbo sausage-like fingers, as he read the words I’m not fat- You’re just anorexic, that were printed across her enormous purple shirt.
He waved back with a single flick of his wrist and the mother rewarded his wave with the most nauseating and unsettling wink he’d ever been the recipient of. Bo shuddered slightly and looked back in the store window.
UN-fucking-believable! Bo thought, feeling his head pounding.
Willie had taken a seat on a counter stool. (A stool that was never designed for someone of his generous proportions or weight)
Bo pulled out his cell phone and snapped a picture of Willie’s ass flaps of flab hanging down on either side of the stool. He smiled as he saved the picture with the word Yummy visible on the store's glass window and Willie’s saggy butt perfectly framed just behind it. But his smile faded when the counter girl brought Willie a large cup of milk and set it in front of him.
Bo gritted his teeth as Willie opened a newspaper that was on the counter and started reading while drinking some milk.
“That’s it,” Bo said, flipping on the siren and emergency lights. At the same time he grabbed the handset and flipped the car's speaker to public address mode. “This is the sheriff's department. Come out now or you will get hurt.”
Willie jerked and almost fell off the stool, spilling milk on his shirt in the process.
The counter girl handed him a big white box and he came out a few seconds later giving Bo a dirty look.
He handed Bo the box of doughnuts through the open passenger side window. “What’s the idea of trying to give me a heart attack? I got some for you, too.”
Bo shut off the lights and siren and glanced at the box. “Looks like you got enough for the whole sheriff department. Can we please go now?”
Willie squeezed into the car and backed it out of the parking lot. “It’s not like this trailer park roundup is anything serious. It’s just a waste of time and gas running all the way out there. We could be doing something useful, but no. Hand me one of the cream filled ones, will ya.”