Crime Wave in Pineville

Crime Wave in Pineville

by John Dawson

Pineville, primarily, is a pretty law-abiding place, the extent of our collective civil malfeasance being some occasional jay-walkin’ downtown. True, there’s an occasional fight over a woman at the Bowlarama – we’ve got our unbridled emotions like everybody else - but those are crimes fueled by passion, alcohol and the way a woman gyrates when she’s bowling more than they are lawbreaking for its own sake. But if you’ve got a good reason to stab somebody over a woman in the Bowlarama - and it’s your first stabbing - Judge Moody will usually let you off with a warning and tell the woman to go behave herself.      

When the mayor calls Sheriff Badger and tells him the budget’s tight we get pretty serious about law and order, though. He makes Deputy Oates sit in his wife Charlene’s PT Cruiser at Fourth and Pine wearing a dress and a wig-hat, whereupon he pounces on otherwise law-abiding citizens trying to save a minute or two crossing the street in violation of City Ordinance No. J-1, conviction of which empties ten smackaroos out of the Pineville pocket. The boys at the De Drop think Miss Deputy looks pretty good too, especially at closing time. But word gets around, and the last time he went incognito  – wearing Charlene’s daffodil-dappled sun dress – he only wrote one ticket before the boys were sidling up to the undercovermobile goin’ smoochy-smoochy at him and asking him if they could have the pleasure of the next dance.

Then, in a mindless act of violence, somebody went on a rampage on Palm Sunday last year and shotgunned the heads off all our festive street-corner Easter Bunny Rabbit statues. That was sad because the Ladies Moose had worked real hard on ‘em – paper-mâché takes patience - and next thing you know – overnight, actually - we had five gigantic pastel headless rabbit torsos – or it might be torsi, I don’t know - downtown and people were driving by emptying their trash in ‘em. The Sheriff, despite an exhaustive investigation interrupted only by CSI: Miami and lunch couldn’t pinpoint the perpetrator, although his suspicions centered on Floyd, who’d been seen securing shotgun shells on Saturday and who has a well-known grudge against his ex-wife Georgia, President of the Ladies Moose, ever since she left him. She got the money, the kids, the house, the car, the boat, the Lladró collection and the dog, and Floyd misses (Sparky) the dog. That’s one of our unsolved crimes, but unless Perry Mason or Nancy Grace or somebody gets a hold of it, the fauxlagomorphicidist can relax. The Sheriff keeps it in his Cold Case file in case he – the alleged Floyd - ever makes a deathbed confession. 

The Sheriff’s got one other unsolved case, from the time somebody spray- painted “Bobby Wayne Loves Trina” on the water tower. Despite identifying a person of interest, he couldn’t crack that one either due to uncooperative witnesses and what the alleged tortfeasor’s lawyer – out local Blackstone Hiram Socrates Peabody III - maintained was purely circumstantial evidence. Lots of people carry spray paint around in their pants, Hiram postulated, and he was prepared to prove it.  

We’re not immune to organized crime from time to time either. For instance when the gypsies came to town a couple of years ago. Maybe about a dozen of ‘em, all swarthy and wearing colorful scarfs and stuff pulling up in their Cadillacs smellin’ like the perfume counter at Macy’s. The men pile out and go door-to-door  telling old people their driveway needs paving and charging ‘em $150  to spray paint it. The romnis – gypsy chicks, you know - go downtown and mob into the Dime Store and stuff their pockets with everything they can pick up while one of ‘em – Madame Sonia, I believe it was – preoccupied Margaret by telling her she had extra long love lines and a secret admirer, which is a gypsy trick that will distract any old maid anywhere.

 Once he finished his bearclaw and went out on morning patrol Sheriff Badger caught on to ‘em pretty quick due to you can’t be a smelly gypsy in downtown Pineville without attracting attention. He copped ‘em and caged ‘em up in the calaboose where they built a campfire and played Czardas on their guitars and lavutas. Say what you want about gypsies, they sure know how to have a good time in jail. Hiram went and bailed ‘em all out on the Sheriff’s proviso that they nomad their Romany patooties out of town and gave ‘em directions to Mapleville, having a grudge against the police chief up there. Hiram hauled ‘em out of the hoosegow there too and told ‘em how to get to Elm City, where Madam Sonia got busted at Lucky’s Liquor with twelve bottles of absinthe in her posoti. 

And then of course there’s Junior Estes and his family who’re mainly responsible for the steady flow of matching Federal crime-fighting funds coming into Pine County. But I’m still mad at Junior for stealing my hummingbird feeder and I got better things to do than talk about him right now.

The reason I’m telling you about crime is that last Saturday morning there were some strange goings-on down on Aunt Mary’s street. Frank Franklin, must be four hundred pounds of him, well, he was perambulatin’ his way down Acorn because Doc Feely had told him to get some exercise once in a while before he keels over and can’t get up. 

When all of a sudden…

Plunk!

Frank whoops and hollers and grabs his behind and jumps up about a foot, which is a significant thing for him to do because of gravity, you know. Aunt Mary’s sitting out on her porch espyin’ him, trying to balance her teacup of Wild Turkey against the sudden seism and surmising he’s got hold of some Mexican food that ain’t agreeing with him. But no, when she hollers does he want some Milk of Magnesia, he goes “No, (blue-streak blasphemies expunged) somethin’ just bit me on the ass!” and he’s stompin’ and rompin’ around, fussin’ and cussin’ and ranting reprobation at the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees.

Plunk!

“Yowch!” 

He jumps up again and lands with a thud – Frank’s got probably the most impressive thud this side of the Mississippi - and he’s rubbing the company hindquarters and glaring around for a malefactor or scapegoat or anything he can crush with his bare hands in senseless rage. But of course bees don’t buzz up to you post-bite and how-de-do themselves. So muttering imprecations against all past and present stinger-situated critters wherever they are, Frank impels himself on down the street massaging the tender spots and using language his mother – they’re Baptist - wouldn’t ever approve of.

Aunt Mary takes a thoughtful nip out of her teacup and ponders the foregoing affront to Frank’s backside. She’s fixing to go into the house for her fly swatter – bee abatement being the aim - when here comes Butchie Bowers on his bicycle.

“Hey there, Butchie boy, how’s your grandmama?” Aunt Mary hollers out.

“I dunno, why don’t you go ask her,” he sasses. But right then… 

“Yowchee!”

 He unboys his handlebars for a minute to assess the sudden posterior damage, for he too had been victimized by an assailant – or assailants – unknown. Experiencing a powerful piercing pain in his patootie he swerves and collides smack into Aunt Mary’s maple tree and bites the dust like The Rifleman just shot him off his horse.

“Hey! Who done that?” and he’s whining and sniveling about it and Aunt Mary goes “What happened there, boy?”  

“Somethin’ just bit me on my bottom, Aunt Mary.”

            Plunk!

“Yikes!”

Well, even an eight year-old who had to repeat first grade knows enough to get out of Dodge when he’s being besieged by bellicose bees. So Butchie, eyes wide with trepidation and fear - if it’s not too much of a cliché to say that, it never bothers Stephen King -  gets back up on his bike and peels off, looking over his shoulder like  Santa Claus is chasing him to get all his toys back.

Well, Aunt Mary as you might know is an existentialist. If the innate nature of hymenopteras – biological bee behavior, in other words - make ‘em bite fat folks’ fannies or nail kids on their kinderkeisters, who is she – or anyone - to question that? We’re all but specks in the universe, you know what I’m saying?

 But having sat out on her front porch every Saturday morning since Rip van Winkle yawned she’s never seen even one – much less two – people being buffeted by a bee like that. The anthophilacs of Acorn Boulevard are traditionally well-behaved lil’ fuzzy-buzzy-wuzzies, is what I’m saying, and even an existentialist – particularly an existentialist - can recognize an apoidean anomaly in her front yard when she sees one.   I sure would.

But...she’s figurin’ unless the Lord has popped a plague down on Pineville – which she wouldn’t be surprised, the way some people behave – what we got here is a enigma-wrapped mystery, and since she’s been reading Agatha Christie for years she knows her enigmatic mysteries backwards and forwards.        

Anyway, about this time, here comes Billy Butts sauntering down the street whistling the William Tell Overture. 

“Hey there, Billy boy, whatchoo up to?” Aunt Mary goes. “Want a piece of apple pie?”

Well, you know Billy, he’s a greedy little toad and can’t resist a piece of pie so up he comes and down he plops, and Aunt Mary – alert as always, you can’t get anything past the old goat -  notices a slingshot sticking out of his junior Wranglers. So after bribing him with a second piece of pie he rats himself out and confesses he’s been hiding back of the hedges and sling-shottin’ bb’s at people he don’t like with his new birthday slingshot. 

Fatso Frank Fartface – Billy’s sobriquet,  not mine- he explains had been in front of him at Luby’s last Friday night and had hogged up the last five salmon patties so Billy had a grievance – salmon patties bein’ his favorite so he had to eat meat loaf - and he’d been angling for a good  retributive opportunity ever since. And Butchie of course being short and tubby and having blonde hair and freckles – picture a porky half-pint Tom Sawyer – naturally invites picking on, he goes. Aunt Mary sees the justice in that and says well, who’s next, Billy?

So he pulls out a list and it turns out that for a kid he’s got more enemies than Richard Nixon. He’d already crossed Frank and Butchie off, but there were about eight, nine more names scrawled on it. Teachers, girls, nerds, Jehovah’s Witnesses, cats, you name it.

Speaking of which, Simon - Aunt Mary’s cat you know - jumps up on the railing and looks Billy right in the eye. One time he - Billy - flung an beefsteak tomato at him and got him – Simon - smack in the puss. Well, nobody crosses Simon and he chivvied Billy up Aunt Mary’s maple tree and kept him up there for the next three hours.  

“You ain’t fixin’ to shoot Simon, are you boy?” Aunt and cat stared at him. 

Actually, Aunt Mary’s wishing that’d happen so Simon’d chase him up the tree again. But Billy remembers those lonesome hours without lunch or pie and he don’t want no part of it so he’s vehemently denying any plan or plot to plink or plunk the cat. Simon’s peering at Billy like boy, mess with me again and watch what happens this time. And - fortuitously facilitating my plot development like nobody’s business - up drives Sheriff Badger and Deputy Oates with their sireen blarin’ and tootsie-pop ablaze.

“Howdy Sheriff, what brings you over here?” Aunt Mary goes.

“Got two reports of wild insects runnin’ amok and stingin’ citizens in the gluteal region, Aunt Mary,” he goes, and he’s fingerin’ his nightstick like if he sees a criminal bee he’s gonna know what to do about it.

“Get up in that tree, boy,” he says to Deputy Oates, “and see if there’s a beehive in it.” So it behooved the deputy to shinny on up the tree and in a minute he hollers down that there ain’t no beehive in this here tree, Sheriff, just a family of five unfriendly finches and a boatload of bird poop.

Well, all policemen love a mystery, and Sheriff Badger starts rubbing his chin and looking around for clues. Billy, up on Aunt Mary’s porch, slinks down and stashes his slingshot in her peony pot, just in case suspicion falls on him, which it usually does when there’s hooliganism afoot. The sheriff comes up to the porch, pulls out his pad and licks the end of his pencil. 

 “Now Aunt Mary, the alleged victims say you were sittin’ here on the porch and saw the whole thing.”

Aunt Mary yeps and sips.

“OK then, tell me everything that happened this mornin’ and don’t go omittin’ no details.”  

“Well I got up about six-thirty, made some coffee, gave  Simon some buttermilk, read the paper, yakked on the phone with Rhetta Calhoun for a while, then I took my crossword puzzle into the bathroom. But I don’t know what a Spanish rope with five letters is so I had to give up. Then I had a bowel movement…”

“No dang it, start just before the first incident.”

“Don’t be bullyin’ me, boy, I remember when you were a school crossin’ guard in short pants. Anyway, I’m sittin’ right here and all of a sudden the ground commences shakin’ and my wind chimes start tinklin’ so I figure it must be either an earthquake or Frank Franklin takin’ a walk, and sure enough, here he comes.”

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

She thinks about it for a minute. 

“Just the sidewalk takin’ a deep breath.”

“What else?”

“Well, he was holdin’ a box of Krispy Kreme like it was a baby.”

“Hmmm. See any bees?”

“Nope.”

“Wasps?”

“Nope.”

“Yellow jackets?”

“Not lately”

“Hornets?”

“Hairnets?

“Hornets!”

“Not a one, Sheriff, although I can’t say we run in the same circles.”

The Sheriff turns to Billy. “Hey boy, you know anything about this?” 

“Hell no Sheriff, I ain’t done nothin’,” he brazens out like he’s John Dillinger tellin’ J. Edgar Hoover heck no boss, I didn’t rob that dang bank.

            “Don’t say ‘hell,’ boy.” That’s Aunt Mary correcting the lad.

“Well, I guess I’ll be canvassin’ the neighborhood door-to-door,” the Sheriff sighs and says, and he trudges off, makin’ Billy a little anxious because living two doors down, getting a slingshot for his birthday and being warned by his mama not to go shootin’ Elm Citians or cats, he doesn’t exactly want the Sheriff knock-knock-knockin’ on his front door and discussing a mysterious spate of bruised backsides in the area with the Big Cheese.  

“My mama ain’t home,” he hollers out to the Sheriff, lying through his lil’ snappers. Billy’s mama was in the kitchen making a sweet potato pie.

Aunt Mary looks at him. “Look here boy, I won’t tell anybody, but I think you’d better let me hold onto that thing until the heat dies down.” 

  Billy, pondering that if the Sheriff grills the Big Cheese and she spills the beans   slingshot-wise that suspicion will inevitably fall on him and that uncomfortable, possibly rude questions will ensue, whereupon accusations and denials will follow;  inevitably, there’ll be a demand to surrender the evidentiary slingshot or else. This will bring about the tearful admission which, knowing the Big Cheese, will result in a spanking and no pie for a week. He can see it all unfolding before his juvenile mind’s eye.

So he wipes his fingerprints off the wicked weapon and hands it over. Billy watches Criminal Minds every week getting tips from serial killers, and he knows it always baffles the fuzz when the murder weapon ain’t got no prints on it.   

“Now you go on down the library, boy, and start workin’ on your alibi,” she goes, abetting the lil’ hooligan like she’s Ma Barker barking at Alvin Karpis. So Billy skeedaddles off, whistling Alley Cat and wondering if the new MAD Magazine is in yet.

 Aunt Mary pours herself a nip and looks down at the slingshot.

Have you ever had one of those deals where something triggers an association with something else? You know, drenches up a forgotten memory from the abyss of your psyche or whatever it is?

 Just the other day, for instance, I was out in the shed looking for the mousetrap when I tipped over a box up on the shelf and here comes flutterin’ down my collection of Zorro comic books, which I haven’t thought about for years. I picked one up – The Mystery of Diablo Canyon – and for a few minutes there I was again, riding Toronado around Pineville, slashin’ Z’s on everything and exerting merciless justice on the oppressive elements of society. Reminiscing, you know. Going back to the thrilling days of yesteryear in my fool head.

Well, Aunt Mary’s gazing down at Billy’s slingshot, and her mind start drifting back through the misty years…way, way back… and before you know it, she’s on the playground at St. Gregory’s Elementary School when she was a little girl and Viola Turnipseed  pulls out a slingshot she’d stole off her brother Timmy.

All the little girls gathered round, trying to figure out how it worked. (Girls aren’t wired up to understand the finer points of slingshots, though. They think it’s just a waste of a good rubber band they could be usin’ to tie their hair up). But junior Aunt Mary goes “Hey, lemme see that thing,” and she picks up a  hefty pebble, loads, squints,  aims, and from clear across the playground – we’re talking forty, fifty feet at least - scores a bulls-eye on Sister Mary Cletus’s blessed Benedictine butt. Sister jumps up about three feet – making her the first Flyin’ Nun in history – and she’s wondering how in heaven’s name a bee got through about twelve pounds of heavy black Sister fabric.

Well, the girls had a good hee-haw about that and admiring Aunt Mary’s marksmanship - maybe you don’t know how bloodthirsty little Catholic schoolgirls are - goaded her into doing it again. So she takes aim at Daniel Applebottom’s enormous rear end – Daniel had such a big butt that the school bus driver had to coat the door with Crisco in order to slide him up the steps – and sure enough here comes a distant squawkin’ and whoopin’ and hollerin’ and they see Daniel jumping up and down like a tub of lard on a hot tin roof.

Well, girls keep secrets better than boys do, and Aunt Mary never got found out as the St. Gregory’s Playground Assassin. The memory had receded into her mind and lain dormant all these many years. Sister Mary Cletus, rest her old Killarney soul, never did know what really happened and went to her grave still praying for that bee.

But now, contemplating at Billy’s slingshot, Aunt Mary felt an awakening memory.

“I wonder…” the old reprobate mused to herself, dwelling in a hazy existentialist netherworld of time-traveling schizophrenic desire. Then in another fortunate plot-advancing coincidence, here comes Floyd walkin’ down the street on his way to the De Drop for a few snorts to get his day started. 

From an aesthetic standpoint – Pineville, as you know, is an exceptionally good-looking town – Floyd isn’t what you’d call your Diamond Dapper Dan or somebody. Impeccable he ain’t. He walks around in baggy jeans and a grimy, sweaty sleeveless tee shirt half the time and he’s about got as much hair on him – don’t look in his ears unless you want to get grossed out - as our grizzly bear, Davy Crockett, out at the zoo. Children growing up in Pineville think Floyd’s name is “Ewww!” because that’s what people say when they see him.  

Anyway, here he comes and Aunt Mary, bygone memories aswirl in her decrepit old head, unconsciously, enigmatically – as if guided by Agatha Christie herself - fingers Billy’s slingshot.

Suddenly, there she was again… back…back…way back… yep, she was  lil’ Aunt Mary on the playground again, forty years ago…it’s a sunny day…the sky is blue…she’s squintin’ and drawing a bead on Floyd that’d make William Tell write home.

Thwap! 

Plunk!

“Ow! What th-!” (More improper language censored, although I generally believe in the First Amendment and quoting people correctly but Baptists might be readin’ this and they buy books) 

Floyd’s massaging his aftquarters, all agape with angst and agony like when you stub your toe on the coffee table and he’s gawking all around like he’s back in Korea takin’ sniper fire and can’t see the heathens. 

Aunt Mary shakes her head and snaps back into the present.

“Careful Floyd, we’ve already had two people stung by bees today. You want some Cloverine?” she goes, stashing the slingshot in her apron and suppressing the well-earned chuckle of a markswoman who’s still got it. 

Floyd’s cussin’ up at the tree and rolling up his sleeves like he’s fixing to tear it from limb to limb.

“Sheriff’s already investigated, and the best thing you can do is just go on away before they get you again,” Aunt Mary goes, doing her part for the Pineville Neighborhood Beautification project.

So Floyd stalks off, embittered as any angry angostura salesman. For the next hour he treats the regulars at the De Drop to what he’d do, in vivid vivisectional detail including his private parts, to the next bee, wasp, yellow jacket or hornet that crossed his path. He had to stand up at the bar for a while, too, until the flame in his fundament flickered out. But Chloe mixed him up a lil’ brandy and white crème de menthe to make him feel better.

Well, news travels fast in Pineville, and here comes old lady Armbruster bang-bang-bangin’ at the door, telling me I better go see if Aunt Mary’s OK because she just heard there’s a plague of fire-breathing locusts attacking people over on Acorn and she ain’t answerin’ her phone. She dodders there on my doorstep for a minute and asks me if I think it’s Revelations come, and I go well, I don’t exactly know, but I’ll go on over there and have a look-see, Miss Armbruster, if you’ll move your old skinny fanny out of the way.   

 I’m hoping The End isn’t really at hand though, because I’ve got stuff to do today. For one thing, I promised Theodore Hogg I’d come out to the Old Folks Home to have a piece of his 94th birthday cake. Theodore’s not only spry, but frisky too when he’s not all medicated up.

Well, I can see there’s a fuss goin’ on from halfway down the block. There’s the Sheriff’s squad car, the City Streets and Sewers truck, Ben Willard’s All-Seasons-All-Pests truck, and a crowd of inquisitive eyeballers, all looking up into Aunt Mary’s maple tree and trading theories.

“What’s goin’ on Aunt Mary?” I go, taking a seat on the swing next to Simon and giving the beast a pat on his fuzzy head.

“Well, er, it seems like we got some insects with a bee in their bonnet and they’ve been, uh, stingin’ people out here all mornin’ long.”

I’ve known Aunt Mary all my dang life, and I can tell when she’s got something up her sleeve. I direct an inquisitive, piercing stare at her – like Hercule Poirot looking at the maid - but it’s lost on her because she’s slurpin’ Wild Turkey out of her teacup and raptly watching all the ado out front.

Ben’s talking to the Sheriff. 

“And I’m tellin’ you Sheriff, first off, there ain’t no beehive up in this here tree, bees don’t even like maple trees and not only that, it’s an apian axiom – ask anybody - that  bees don’t bother people who ain’t botherin’ them. If you want to get stung by a bee, you got to stick your nose in his business or fool with his honey.”

“So it couldn’t have been a sociopath bee who stung Frank and Butchie and Floyd?”

“That’s what I’m sayin’.”

“Wasp?”

“Equally nope.”

“Yellow jacket?”

“Ditto nope.”

“Hmmm. Hornet?”

“Hell, nope.”

“Hmmm.” 

Frank speaks up. “Now Sheriff, I never said it was a bee, I merely postulated on that.” 

“You what?” The Sheriff looked at him, wondering what postulatin’ is and if he can give him a ticket for it.

“I mean, what else could it have been? I sure didn’t imagine it. Lookie here!” 

Frank turns around and pulls his pants down, moonin’ the community and destroying months of good work by the Neighborhood Beautification people. He bends over and displays his battle scars and even from Aunt Mary’s front porch, I could see just fine. It looked like two little red Tootsie-Pops sitting in the Mojave Desert.  

Of course everybody turns away and retches, but the Sheriff, doing his diligent duty, gets his pocket magnifying glass out and inspects Frank’s butt.

Butchie wheels up and the Sheriff tells him to pull his pants down and show him his tail end, too. Butchie demurs, though, and he tells the sheriff he’s heard about people like him on the Stranger Danger deal and he’s gonna go call the TIPS hotline on him.

“Dang it boy, I am the TIPS hotline. There ain’t no buts about it, har har! And if you’re refusin’ to cooperate with this here official po-lice investigation we’ll just haul you over to the emergency room and some old hag nurse’ll be takin’ your pants off for you. What do you think about that?”

Well, no eight year old boy wants an actual female – especially of the old-hag-school - taking his pants off, so he undoes his  belt and wiggles and bends over, and sure enough, he’s got two little scarlet dots nestled among the freckles, artistically  centered on each of his lil’ chubby cheeks.

Floyd walks up and asks the sheriff if he wants him to exhibit his evidence, too.

“No!” everybody screams in unison, having seen sufficient evidence and not possessing the stomach to look at Floyd’s actual raw hind end.

Well, after a lot of jawbonin’ everybody finally goes away, toting unforgettable – and in some cases as it proved, nightmarish - memories of Frank’s expansive array of butt-epidermis. Everybody was rapt, wrapped up in the entire was-it-a-bee-or-was-it-not-a-bee befuddlement. It was like an episode of The Twilight Zone, you know, where everything seems normal on the outside, but something just isn’t quite right. Perry Mason would have called it The Case of the Bashful Bee.  

  

 Well, a peaceful serenity – if that’s not a redundancy or some other fool writing rule - settled over Acorn Street. The leaves were rustlin’ in the trees and every little breeze seemed to whisper Louise. The bees, unaware of the slanderous allegations against ‘em, were busy as – I don’t know, bees I guess - pollinating like the dickens and minding their own beeswax.   

Aunt Mary starts whistlin’ Flight of the Bumble Bee, which if you don’t think that’s hard to do, try it some time.

“Aunt Mary,” I go, “you can’t tell me you don’t know all about this. C’mon, fess up. Come clean. Lay bare your dang soul!”

“Well…” she goes, looking a little abashed, but whereupon she hauls Billy’s slingshot out and takes aim at her lawn gnome – Grundahl - and lets loose with a shot – Ping! - that sends his pointy lil’ ear flying off clear across the street and spewin’ gnome shards up into the atmosphere.

Well, I’m agog, of course. I’d’ve never figured Aunt Mary to be a secret slingshot sharpshot capable of nickin’ an ear off a gnome at twenty paces. Frankly, my feelings are mixed. On the one hand, I’m fixing to admonish her reckless behavior shooting innocent pedestrians and yard gremlins. On the other hand, compliments on her aim are not unwarranted too. I just can’t figure out which to do first.

“What happened was, I was sittin’ here mindin’ my own business (which she never does, the old liar) and….”

 She tells me all the sordid details – I know that’s a tiresome cliché but I can’t think of a better one right now - about what happened before I got over there, and when she gets to the part about Floyd, well, she gets a sly grin on her face and looks over at me like, I don’t know, maybe Eve did when the Lord asked her why she ate the apple. You know, like she knows she oughtn’t of but she couldn’t help herself, tee-hee.  

“Aunt Mary, give me that slingshot right now, I ain’t gonna sit here and witness a dang crime spree. What if somebody else comes walkin’ down the street right now, and you get another temptation?”

“Hmmm…” she goes, existentialistically.

Well, like Danielle Steele says, you got to have a lot of improbable coincidences or you can’t hardly tell a story, so who should turn the corner but Burt and Sydney Sue Zing, Pineville’s main Christians. Aunt Mary and I braced ourselves to be blessed.

“Hey there, y’all, didn’t the Lord give us a fine Pineville day?” Sydney Sue hollers up, a beatifical look on her sweet saintful face.

“Why look honey, it’s precious Aunt Mary glorifyin’ the Lord up there on her front porch. And there’s her precious kitty cat, Simon, too!”  

If you ask me, anybody who calls Simon “a precious kitty cat” is nuts in the first place, notwithstanding any particular theological context they may place it in. Simon’s got a black soul, just ask any bird or rodent within six blocks. But that’s Burt and Sydney Sue. They could get run over by a truck on a country road and thank the Lord for creating dirt.

Well, I don’t know. Something seemed to creep over me. A kind of fog or miasma, I mean, is about the only way I can describe it. You know how when you’re staring aimlessly at something and after a minute lose your focus so your eyes are open but you’re not actually seeing anything? Then your jaw drops and you’re sitting there in a semi-conscious daze, slobberin’ and looking like a moron? That’s me. I’m all stupored up… when all of a sudden…

My mind starts driftin’ back…back… through the years…to the carefree, bucolic cuidad of Capistrano… back to the golden, halcyon days of yore. And through the foggy mists of time, I’m tellin’ you, all of a sudden it wasn’t me sittin’ there.

 “Producir el catapulta, la tía María, y rápidamente! La hora de la justicia está cerca!”   

I’d snapped.

Aunt Mary looked at me a little funny but handed it over. As if in a surrealistic, nefarious netherworld – I don’t know if you know Bosch - I watched myself load it, and as Burt and Sydney Sue walked off, I take a bead on the dastardly Senor Corporal Garcia – I mean Burt’s – butt and let loose.

            Plunk!

“Jesus!” Sydney Sue leaps up about three feet.

Whoops. Missed.

“Sing His praises, hallelujah!” Burt goes, not realizing that Sydney Sue wasn’t jumping in exultation of the Lord, but rather complaining to Him about a sudden sharp pain in her shake-and-bake region.

Plunk!

“Holy Crap! Yowch!” She’s exhortin’ and dancin’ around on the sidewalk, even though Baptists aren’t supposed to dance or use vulgarities like that. 

“Y’all be careful out there you two, there’s somethin’ been stingin’ people all mornin’,” Aunt Mary hollers out at ‘em with a twinkle in her old Annie Oakley eye. 

“Praise Peter if the precious bees ain’t misbehavin’ today!” Burt goes – he’s always on-the-spot with Baptist non-sequiturs -  and being a nurturing husband like the Thessalonians recommend, he offered balm with his hand to Sydney’ Sue’s affected area which made her feel better within minutes.  

Meanwhile, I’m sheathing my catapulta in my calzones with a roguish grin, confident that los malvados officiales shall be brought down and that good people everywhere will one day live in la paz y la justicia.  

“La libertad, la justicia y la igualdad para todos los ciudadanos de la multa Pineville!” I murmured tersely.

Aunt Mary looks over at me with a conspiratorial glance – like we’re the Spanish Bonnie and Clyde or somebody - and says “Well, Zorro boy, did that make you feel better?” 

I shake my addled head and the mists of yesteryear begin to clear, and the enormity of what’d just happened began to dawn on me. About the only thing I know to compare it to is when you wake up in the morning with an ugly woman whose name you don’t remember. You know, like you’re coming out of a bad dream and realization smacks you in the face. I’m still pretty hazy about the whole deal.

Anyway, Aunt Mary pours another nip in her teacup, and I go get a Porky Pig shot glass out of the kitchen and join her. Medicinal purposes on a stressful day, you know. We sit there for a while, each of us lost in our own private thoughts. Hers,   mystic and existential, and mine, well, I’m trying to remember if I need to stop and get toilet paper before I head home. 

Anyway, after while,  I tell Aunt Mary it’s getting late and I’ve got to go over to the Old Folks Home to see Theodore and have a piece of his birthday cake. She says OK, she’s gonna turn on the news to see what all they’re sayin’ about our lil’ conundrum here, and she turns and winks at me – the old reprobate - like we’re a couple of cats who’ve got the canary tied up in the basement.

I decide to stop in at the De Drop to see how Floyd’s doing and what the community’s saying about the day’s bee-wilderin’ events. Since I’m thirsty again, I decide to just cross the street instead of going down and waitin for the light, and the next thing I know here’s Miss Deputy Oates, wearing coral lipstick, a blonde wig-hat, some Maybelline mascara and a size 12  Sears dress and he’s accosting me in the face and whippin’ out his ticket book.

“J-1, that’s ten dollars,” he minces at me like Shirley Temple. 

I tell him – after my initial stunned amazement – that I can’t believe he’s actually out here in a dress oppressin’ innocent citizens on Saturday afternoon. I’m like, you can’t catch a stupid bee so you give jaywalkin’ tickets to taxpayers? Who pays your salary anyhow? Thomas Jefferson would…

But it don’t matter, he interrupts,  because the Sheriff told him that unless they write up a boatload of jay-walkin’ tickets the next few weeks, there ain’t gonna be anymore Krispy Kreme and hot chocolate in the morning, and that’d be a crime. So he writes me the dang ticket and starts peacockin’ down the street like he’s Penelope Cruz or somebody. Tell you the truth, I think he enjoys being a girl.

Well, I walk up to the light, wondering what Zorro’d say about officious public servants in dresses sticking their hands in the peon’s pockets. I know what he’d say. He’d say “Maldecir a los hijos de puta oficiosa” or worse because Zorro, unlike Miss Deputy Oates, doesn’t mince his words. I tuck my ticket in my pocket, but… wait… what’s that in there?  

Mi arma de la venganza! 

Yep, a voice had come to me out of nowhere…nowhere…nowhere… then something starts reverberating in my ears…ears…ears…echoing…echoing…like Heidi…and from far, far away comes the soft strum of an Iberian guitar playing La Paloma. I hear the gentle clip-clop of the farm horses on their way to market. I smell the succulent aroma of el gazpacho wafting down through the rolling hills of Verduna. The swallows are circling overhead, oblivious to the drama unfolding below.

 My gaze is drawn to Senorita Penelope Policewoman. He’s tossing his hips east and west like he’s Miss America on the runway. I narrow my eyes and form what my biographers will probably call a grim smile. 

I was watching a TV interview with a bank robber one time, and the guy asked him Spike, how did you get to be a bank robber?

And he goes “Well, Mike, I started knockin’ off lemonade stands when I was just a lil’ toad and from there it just kind of escalated on me. I never meant to live a life of crime,” he says, “but once I got started, I couldn’t stop.” Like potato chips, he goes.

Once you’ve tasted righteous vengeance – or potato chips – you want more, is the more or less lame analogy Spike was struggling to make.  

 Anyway, I duck in the doorway of Chet Lester’s hardware store, produce my trusty catapulta de la justicia, load it up with not one – no, not me, when I fight Opprescion Officiale I go whole hog – but three bb’s, and I take a bead on Senorita Deputy Penelope’s hindermost part – I swear the boy’s wearing a latex girdle with them garter deals hangin’ down, you can see ‘em through his dress - pull back as hard as I can, and – in a moment frozen in time,  the shot echoed throughout Diablo Canyon:

 Plunk!

 Plunk!

 Plunk!  

When he realized he’d been stung through his panties – that can’t be pleasant, but girls, you tell me -  by not one, not two,  but three bees, wasps, yellow jackets or perhaps hornets, he yowled and howled and  did a peppy kheliben – gypsy dance, you know -   right there on the sidewalk.  

Well, although I may have been in a Capistranian haze or daze, my powers of reasoning – always strong – are signaling me and I’m remembering that discretion’s the better part of valor, so I’m thinkin’ that the further away I get from la escena de la justicia de los vigilantes the more valorous and discreet I’d be. So I sheathed my arma de la justicia, rakishly slung my riata – that’s the word Aunt Mary was looking for in her crossword this morning - across my shoulder, whistled for Toronado, and rakishly ambled into the De Drop cantina.

Out of the night,
When the full moon is bright,
Comes the horseman known as Zorro.

Well, to wrap up all my details – I don’t want people pokin’ holes in my plots – later on Aunt Mary and Simon are sitting on her couch, looking at her old St. Gregory’s yearbook and she’s showing him a picture of Sister Mary Cletus and reliving the golden days of yore with him. Reminiscing with her dang cat, if you can believe that. Sister Mary Cletus is gazing beatifically down from heaven and finally realizing that Aunt Mary, not the bee, was behind the incident with her behind all those years ago, so she goes and says a Hail Mary for her.

Billy the Kid’s in his room eating a piece of sweet potato pie, scopin’ out his new pea shooter and working on a revised Enemies List. Grundahl’s sitting in stony, befuddled silence, wondering why he can’t hear in stereo any more. Charlene Oates is rummaging through her drawers and wondering where her brand new Sears pantyhose went to.

The Sheriff and Miss Deputy Oates are out on the sidewalk in front of the De Drop, and they’re bickering back and forth like a Jew and an Arab. About what I don’t know, but it’s evident the deputy – hopping mad and looking like a woman scorned – is expressing some grievances to the Sheriff and the Sheriff ain’t havin’ none of it.

Me, I’m sitting here up at the bar staring at the bucolic velvet deer tapestry, musing on life and bees, sipping on a tequila sunrise – it seemed like a good idea - and thinking a slingshot might be a right nice birthday gift for Theodore. 

Se trataba de otro hermoso día en Pineville.