by Don Noble
Dumpler hit his putt, which rolled to a stop within ten yards of the green and about fifteen yards from the punji pit. Gordon released Lesly's collar and he shot out from the edge of the swamp and scooped up Dumpler's ball with one smooth motion, turned, and trotted over to the lip of the pit and dropped it on the ground.
It all happened so fast that no one in Dumpler's party seemed to notice.
That bastard, Gordon thought. Probably has these clowns playing with him on taxpayer money—hundred-dollar green fee—five times a week, plus meals, drinks, rooms, tips. Probably costing the taxpayers five grand. Maybe more. Bastard!
Dumpler approached his ball with a frown on his face. The others were standing around at the edges of the green, waiting. Gordon felt his throat tighten.
Dumpler had carried his putter over his shoulder but now swung it down as he reached the ball. He stood just beyond the leafy spot and scratched his ass, looking from the ball to the green. It seemed to Gordon that he could have used a 9-iron here, even with his hunchback crouch, but he kept to the putter.
Dumpler took a step forward onto the top of the pit. As his foot was still in the air, Gordon caught his breath and grimaced. The foot hit the pit. Nothing happened. The other foot stood on the pit as well, and Dumpler addressed the ball.
"Scheisse!" Gordon hissed, and slapped his forehead. He had forgotten to remove the plywood and insert the screen. Dumpler made his putt, which rolled right up the slope and onto the green. He then hunched over the ball and knocked it right into the cup. The others began to nod and clap. Dumpler smiled. The golfing party moved on.
* * *
Gordon sat at his kitchen table, steaming. It had been one of the dumbest mistakes he'd ever made, but he was determined to make up for it.
Later that afternoon he sidled up to one of the bellmen at the Grand Hotel and inquired what room Mr. Horace Dumpler was in. "I have a gift for him," Gordon told the man nicely.
All through the cocktail hour and dinner Gordon secretly watched the Dumpler party. After dinner (in the most expensive restaurant in the hotel—steaks and champagne all around) they repaired to Bucky's Birdcage Lounge for nightcaps. The men sat at the bar talking to several women, one of whom was, of all things, a dwarf, apparently on holiday. Gordon shook his head. He watched as long as he could, then snuck out and got his old golf bag, which he had left with the parking valet. Inside was a large, heavy, finely sharpened ax, a length of rope, an eyebolt, a small collapsible ladder, a measuring stick, a stud detector, a metal rod, a portable drill, and some light string.
He hid in the bushes waiting for Dumpler and his friends to go by; it was close to midnight when he heard them coming. It was too dark to see but they were headed back to their building, which was on the harbor where the boats were docked. Fourth floor. They had adjoining rooms.
Gordon gave it an hour and then went into action. He entered the building in the parking garage and took the elevator to the fourth floor. When he got to Dumpler's room he put his ear to the door. Dead to the world inside.
He worked quickly, taking out the ladder, the drill, and the eyebolt. In the ceiling Gordon made a small hole in a stud that was, fortuitously, directly in line with Dumpler's door. He used the metal rod to screw the eyebolt into the wood.
Bastard! he thought. Probably wasted a thousand bucks more of the taxpayers' money tonight, and he wants to put me, an honest working man, out of business.
Gordon used the measuring stick to cut the rope so that it would put the ax exactly five feet and four inches high in the doorway. That's how tall he figured Dumpler was. He tied the rope securely around the end of the ax handle and ran the rope through the eyebolt, winching the ax tightly against the ceiling; then he affixed the light string to the end of the rope and put the ladder and the drill away.
Gently, on tiptoes, Gordon tied the end of the string to the doorknob of Dumpler's room. He moved the golf bag around a corner, then marched up to Dumpler's door and banged on it five times with his fist. In a crack beneath the door he could see a light come on, and then he heard a voice complain.
Gordon stepped back into the shadows to watch the fun. The door opened and, as planned, that broke the string. This set the ax free in a huge swing toward the center of the door, and whoever stood there—namely Horace P. Dumpler—would get the blade right in the center of his face.
There was a muffled sound of locks being turned and then the door sprang open. Simultaneously the heavy ax, its razor-honed blade gleaming in the hallway ceiling lights, swung down toward the door. Gordon waited intently for the grisly thud.
But this did not happen. Instead the ax swung back, and then back and forth several times, before dangling to a rest in the middle of the hallway beneath the eyebolt. Puzzled, Gordon stepped out of the shadows, and there in the doorway was—the dwarf! Dumpler had apparently picked her up in the bar and brought her back to his room! The ax had swung a good foot and a half above her head.
Scheisse! Gordon thought. How could I have known?
* * *
Gordon followed Dumpler all that day and the next, trying to find an angle. He noted that at precisely five p.m. Dumpler visited the indoor swimming pool. He liked to dive, it turned out, and was fond of doing flips on the diving board. There was no lifeguard and few other people visited that particular pool, as there were several outdoor heated pools they could go to.
On the third day Gordon waited for Dumpler, hiding in some plants by the indoor pool. The revenue chief arrived exactly on time. The dwarf was with him—that could be a snag. She sat down in one of the lounge chairs beside the pool but Dumpler took off his robe to reveal only a bathing suit. His hump gleamed like a polished dromedary's dome in the ceiling lights.
Gordon slipped out into the hall and went to the reception desk. "Could you page a Mr. Horace Dumpler?" he asked innocently. The receptionist obliged, and Gordon sidled back toward the hallway where he saw Dumpler striding importantly through the doors leading to the reception desk.
They passed quickly in the hall; Gordon deliberately stared at the wall hoping Dumpler wouldn't recognize him. He didn't, though Dumpler did find something vaguely familiar about the encounter.
Gordon walked quickly into the pool area and stripped off his shoes, pants, and shirt. Underneath he had on a bathing suit. He went straight to the diving board clutching in his hand a bottle of Johnson's baby oil. He stepped out on the diving board and there squeezed the contents as discreetly as possible onto the very end of the plank. Then he bounced once, held his nose, and went feetfirst into the warm, heated water.
This ought to break his crooked neck, Gordon thought as he got out of the pool. Then he went over and engaged the dwarf in conversation.
Dumpler returned looking puzzled, muttering something about strange things happening in the hotel. Seeing that the dwarf was engaged in conversation, he went immediately to the deep end of the pool, stepped up, and addressed the diving board. Measuring distance like a football placekicker, Dumpler backed all the way up and then ran forward.
When he reached the end of the board, he hit the baby oil and took off in the air, sort of like Rocket Man. But instead of doing a half flip as Gordon had envisioned, landing on his head on the springing board, Dumpler did a complete flip and a half, landing on his ass on the end of the board, which then propelled him—sproing!—straight up in the air once more for two additional flips before he hit the water in a kind of modified swan dive.
Both Gordon and the dwarf, whose name was Lorraine, watched this spectacle speechlessly. Dumpler's head soon emerged from the water and he cried out, "By God! Did you see that!"
Lorraine began to clap and shout. Dumpler staggered up the steps and out of the pool, into the waiting arms of his lover. They both jumped for joy.
"I was twenty years in the circus and I ain't never seen anything to match it!" Lorraine exclaimed.
Dumpler, noticing Gordon, said, "Say, haven't I seen you someplace before?"
Gordon sto
od for a moment twisting his hands. "Well, yes, you have. I have the boat that takes people up in the Delta."
"Oh, yes. Of course." Dumpler extended his hand to Gordon, who shook it lightly. "Say, I'd like to take that trip again. I'm here till the end of the week. How about it?"
"Well . . ." Gordon replied. He was thinking, thinking, thinking . . .
"My golf buddies have to go back on Friday . . . so it would just be me. I hope that's all right."
"Ah, yes, yes, certainly," Gordon told him.
"You know what I liked about that last time?" Dumpler enthused. "The alligators. I liked the way they come out in the springtime—especially that big fellow. How big did you say he was?"
"Seventeen feet. Maybe a little longer. Nobody's been exactly able to measure him."
"My, my," said Dumpler, "a man-eater. My, my."
"Yes," Gordon responded, serenely now. "Just meet me at the dock at eight a.m—or should we make it nine?"
"Eight," Dumpler said. "That last trip—don't know when I've enjoyed myself more! Just you and me!"
"Yes," Gordon smiled. "Just you and me . . ."
SWEET BABY
by Ace Atkins
Gu-Win
She'd been so damn cute once, not even six years old, with big false eyelashes and a curly blond wig. People would travel for thousands of miles just to look at her on that shopping mall tour of '08, get her to autograph her signature porcelain doll, or hear her sing her hit YouTube song, "Sweet, Sweet Baby." Onstage, they'd dress her up as a rodeo chick, a genie, a pirate, and even a Vegas showgirl. Feather headdress, tall plastic heels, fishnet stockings, and attitude to spare. Her momma took a lot of heat for the showgirl costume, thousands of letters and e-mails to the cable channel asking why in the world a mother would want her child to look like a gosh-darn streetwalker. But her mother, Big Nadine, would look right in that camera, a Virginia Slim tucked between her fingers, nails long and red as blood, and say there wasn't nothing wrong with the costume, only with twisted, sick minds.
"Did it all start with pageants?" the man asked. He drove the black van in shadow, a hulking shape over the wheel speeding east along Corridor X toward Birmingham. Speaking with no accent, sounding like some kind of Yankee.
"At first," Cassie Lyn said. "After I won runner-up in Little Miss Lower Alabama, that's when I got noticed by Rick. He was the talent scout up in Birmingham. Mainly he worked with rodeo dogs and race car drivers. But he told Momma he saw something in me. They took a video at that pageant in Wetumpka and that's how I got on that show."
"You sure looked good on TV," the man said, following the highway blasted straight through hills of rock and stone, winding its way through the darkness from her hometown of Gu-Win. "You were so photogenic. So sassy. Such a cute little mouth on you. Blue eyes as big as marbles."
"Is that why you come for me?" she said. "Now I'm nearly eighteen."
The man didn't answer as they shot past a Love's Travel Stop and Cracker Barrel settled down in a valley below the interstate, Cassie Lyn hungry as hell, not eating since her evening shift at the video trailer. Cassie Lyn TV. She wondered if he'd feed her before he got to wherever it was they were going. He was a white man, maybe thirty or forty, with thin black hair and a mustache. He wore thick glasses and one of those shiny black windbreakers her granddaddy still wore. Members Only. The man didn't give his name. And she didn't ask.
She turned around toward the backseat of his car and saw a large section of rope, zip ties, and some silver duct tape. A shiny revolver, probably just a .22, showed from his jacket pocket.
"You didn't need that gun."
"Would you have come anyway?"
"I would've hopped in the car with the devil himself," she said. "To get free of that place. Is that who you are? Mr. Satan himself come up to Alabama to find Miss Cassie Lyn, former pageant baby all growed up?"
The man didn't answer, a long strange silence between them as they passed Cherry Road, and headed onto I-65 South that ran from Birmingham down to Mobile. His face flickering in and out of darkness from the tall lights along the guardrail.
"I wanted to hear you sing," he said. "It's sad you don't sing anymore, Cassie Lyn. It makes me so very sad."
"What do you want me to sing?"
"Come on," he said. "You know. Everybody on this planet knows your song."
"'Lady Marmalade,'" she said. "Shaking my little tail in that French maid outfit? Like when I was a kid, on the show."
"Exactly like the show. I even brought you that very same outfit. I bought it on eBay for a hundred dollars."
"That all you want from me?" she said. "For me to shake my tail? Or are you wanting a whole lot more?"
"I don't know. I guess I want everything."
* * *
Cassie Lyn could never remember a time she wasn't famous. Big Nadine said she'd been born wanting to perform, strutting right out of the womb and giving a big dazzling smile to the doctor. Ta-da, I'm here, covered in placenta and blood. When she was an infant, her mother sewed custom outfits for her, satin and rhinestones, denim and sequins, little cowboy hats, berets, and big straw sun hats. She learned to dance at ten months, got her ears pierced before she was one. Cassie Lyn not recalling what life was like without blush and lipstick. Big Nadine saying that God had given her a gift, a pinkish light shining across the sky the night she was born, never mentioning her no-count daddy who she'd only met twice. Their life nothing but pageants, from Baby Miss to Petite Miss all the way up to Little Miss. The plan—to hear Big Nadine tell it as they crisscrossed Alabama from one high school gym, church rec center, or livestock arena to the next—was work your way up to the big show. Miss Alabama. Miss America. Or Miss USA if that didn't work out. On the cable show, Cassie Lyn got famous for saying she was all about the money. Money, honey. Where my money at, Big Daddy? Twitching that little behind and shaking her index finger.
Those were the good times, the high times, when she and Big Nadine split their time between Gu-Win and their condo in Orlando, Florida, shooting their reality show. Her new stepdaddy with the boat in Tampa. The money had been good, real good, almost enough to make her forget what it had been like when her momma didn't have a car that would run or having to sleep in some crummy old trailer. They went to Universal Studios and Disney World for free. Pictures with Minnie and Goofy. A princess makeover at Cinderella's castle.
Momma said she was proud. So very proud.
Folks comped them rooms at hotels in Las Vegas and over in Branson, Missouri, her big blue-eyed face with big red lips on T-shirts, coffee mugs, and her own line of gentle hand soaps. Momma said the design had been inspired by something called the Shroud of Turin.
But then there was that breakdown at Legoland, caught on a thousand different iPhones for the whole world to see. Cassie Lyn taking her little fists to that sculpture made in her image, the damn thing fat and blocky and seeming to mock her—index finger raised. Big Nadine said that's what killed them. And that woman never forgot, telling Cassie Lyn that was the reason things turned out the way they did, how their whole damn life crumbled and turned to Shit City, making them both broke and unimportant and worse yet, a sideshow treasure back in Gu-Win. Snickers behind their back at the Piggly Wiggly. Folks wanting to lay hands on them at the Shell station, praying for their future. More little kids—cuter and brighter, shaking their asses even harder at Big Nadine's classes at the Baptist church and finally that metal prison where they kept all those cameras. Cassie Lyn TV.
Watching "Sweet, Sweet Baby" twenty-four hours a day on the Internet . . . Rick, the agent's idea. It had something, a revenue stream is what Rick called it. Kept them fed and clothed. But Cassie Lyn knew that wasn't even a proper way to keep a dog.
She worked that goddamn trailer day and night, nothing to do but eat ice cream, stare at those six eyes watching her everywhere but the toilet, while she watched real TV or exercised in her underwear. All you had to do was sit there and take requests from subscribers. A man once offered her
a thousand dollars to eat a banana real slow. Most wanted her to get nekkid but that wasn't part of the deal. Her mother called Cassie Lyn TV wholesome online entertainment. The video trailer was just another step in reality entertainment is what Rick said. This would be just a stepping stone back to the cable network.
But when that man, BIGDADDY88, offered her a way to escape, she didn't give it a second thought. How the hell could it be worse?
* * *
"What are you thinking about?" the man asked.
"That trailer," she said. "Cassie Lyn TV. Big Nadine never did tell me how much money we made."
"It was a subscription service," he said, heading toward the bright lights of Birmingham. Cassie Lyn hoping she was getting kidnapped back to Florida. Florida sure would be something. Palm trees, sand, warm breezes across her bare legs. "It cost nineteen dollars for the first month and then thirty-five after that. If you paid up front for a year, it was an even two hundred. That was really the best deal."
"Is that what you did?"
"Well, that didn't include the tokens," he said. "You probably made most of your money on token sales."
"I know all about the tokens. They make a jingle sound every time they slip into the virtual piggy bank."
The van smelled like hamburgers, burned meat, and onions. There were fast-food wrappers and empty cups down at Cassie Lyn's feet. The man fumbled with the radio, finding a local Christian contemporary station playing that song "Only Jesus" by the Casting Crowns. Big Nadine sure loved their music, saying she'd first heard them on Mike Huckabee's radio show, being real impressed they'd been one of the only American bands to perform in North Korea.
"You can make real good money on the Internet," Cassie Lyn said. "I just wish I knew how much. Big Nadine told me that I didn't need to mess with all that business."