by John Kenyon
The old woman next door came out of her house, slamming her door, and throwing the men in the car a dark look. Joseph had forgotten her name—Mrs. Flowers maybe. She stood, hand on hip, until the car sped away. Then she shambled across the grassless lawn in her house slippers and knocked at the door.
“This for you?” she said when Joseph opened it. “Delivery man left it.”
Mama’s package. He took it, thanked her, and closed the door before she could ask about Janice. “All right then,” he heard her say. “Done my good deed.”
He listened as she waited on the porch a few more seconds before shuffling off. Her door slammed a minute later.
Soon that car came round again. Slowed down, idling a house or two away this time. Same two nasty faces checking out Mama’s house. A really bad feeling came over Joseph. Couldn’t have said why ’cept it was Janice’s place. Place where bad things happened. Stay away from Janice’s house was a house rule for good reason.
Joseph grabbed Jasmine’s hand and yanked her toward the back door. They dashed out and down the back alley, knocking over a trash can, dodging some mangy cats and a heap of trash. A dog behind a cyclone fence lurched at them, barking like to kill. Someone yelled, but they kept up their pace.
They weren’t more than a block away when they heard the explosion. Jasmine had just found one of her gold dollar bills on the sidewalk and was holding it up.
“Time to go home to Poppy’s,” he told her, grabbing her hand again. He was shaking harder than when he had to get a shot at the doctor’s office, harder than when he had to speak out loud at school. He imagined what Janice’s house looked like now. Die Hard 2 floating through the air, some of her fancy dresses maybe.
“Do not pass go,” his sister said.
For a minute he thought he’d imagined it.
He turned to look at her, and her grin stretched wider than her face. Teeth sparkled like jewels. She held her gold dollar bill up, jubilant.
“Do not collect two hundred dollars,” he said. It felt strange, but his lips were turning up. Stiff, but good. She nodded and took his hand.
They followed her Monopoly money all the way home.
You Dirty Rats
(or put that in your pied pipe and smoke it)
By Absolutely*Kate
Seems like the cool cats had all left town. I took my fedora off, the better to scratch the ponder of my noggin. Something was off, and it wasn’t just my hat. God, this godforsaken bar was a frigging dive. The kinda place where you could practically watch slime slither. No sooner thought than brought, I thought, just lookee who comes hither. Frieda Zambowzer and her snaggle-toothed sister Gertrude, Trudy to her friends of which I am sure there are none.
My name is Jake Piper. I’m…a fixer. I solve problems, big ones. The slithery sisters would not have called me if they weren’t in deep.
They eyeballed me up and down good and plenty while they ordered up gin fizzes nice and slow, but I was game at avoiding glances I’d best disregard when another morning came knocking. I was in this shithole of a town to do a job, and once I found my focus, I’d clench it. The way things were looking out that jagged excuse for a window, the sooner I got out of Hamelin, Texas, the happier a man I’d be. The taller one, the toothy one, had an irritating way of speaking, something akin to old Mrs. Haggerty, my third grade teacher, when her nails accosted chalkboard. I put my hat back on, nodded to the barkeep for another barley pop. The shorter, rounder sister leaned forward, an insult to good cleavage. “Put that on my tab, Doc,” she cooed, sliding over a stool closer and giving my hand a pat. I gave my full attention to the grizzly barkeep. He poured. I chugged.
I finished the beer in one draught, placed it on the bar motioning for a refill and swiveled my stool to regard the Zambowzer sisters in full. Trudy was eating salted peanuts and wiping her fingers on her Domino’s Delivers T-shirt. Frieda had slid still closer and either had something in her eye or was being flirtatious. Time to get down to business. “Okay, ladies, what seems to be the trouble?”
In my line of road traffic, you tend to see malevolent narcissism coming down the pike a lot, but this deleterious duo had it in spades. Boy, could they deal it. And they fell all over each other trying to patch up potholes they were crumbling into their story. But hey, this was a job, and I needed the bread. I needed it in a hurry, too, but, as they say, that’s another story. The way these gals were driving their points home on all sides of the road, the bum steer was clear, but what they were asking for was a cinch. I knew I could avoid the local constabulary’s pinch and clear outta Dodge, even if I was still in Hamelin. Just about every time Trudy notched her calibration up a screech, cagey Frieda would lean in, oft times with an intruding jab into Trude, to kinda change her tune. Me? I just hankered that she’d change her frequency.
“So you see, Mr. Piper—”
“Jake, call me Jake.”
“Saaay, I like that. Like those old black-and-white movies, ‘everything’s Jake.’”
“Well, let’s hope so, Trudy,” feisty Frieda cut in, still batting those Maybellines. “Tell him about—”
Trudy was quick on the drawl. “It all happened when Sammy left us the—”
Frieda cut that one off at the pass. “When Grammy left us—”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, that’s it, when Grammy left us—uh—her legacy.” Trudy smiled. Frieda bobbed her moptop. I still had more in my glass, so I kept my big mug busy. “It’s a boat, well, a ship, and we need a teensy bit of help to get it back in our hands.”
“You mean it slipped off its moorings?” I nudged.
Trudy snorted. “Not like that at all. It got swiped from us and we want it back.”
“Were you aboveboard or below decks when this heist was hoisted?” Sometimes I couldn’t help crackin’ myself up. It passed the time ’til time to move on. Barkeep polishing the same dry glasses got a new dry chuckle out of that one, too.
“We lost it in a swindle,” Frieda blurted, finally more up front with how she spilled her spiel.
“Yeah, yeah, a swindle. We were bamboozled, flimflammed, we were shills just shallying. We were—”
“Cool your jets, sis, I got the Kodak. You want your merchandise returned and everything will be shipshape.”
“No, actually we want to run a riverboat casino but—ooomph! HEY, cut that out, whatchoo kick me for?”
Frieda railed patent pumps into Trudy’s shins, hard, fast, mean and meaningful. Me and Barkeep unloaded arched eyebrows at the chances of this finally getting good. The girls started mumbling into and over each other and I thought I caught the words “Level with him,” when ol’ Trudy whipped a Madison portrait from some skanky seclusion I didn’t particularly care to reckon about inside the tugged-up portion of a rumpled black Maidenform. Pretty sad. That tugged rumple and only $500 winking up at me. I’d traveled some miles for this job.
“And there’s plenty more where this came from.”
“How much more?” Either the light or my patience was getting dimmer, because it got real easy to see the lightbulb spark over Frieda’s ratty hairpiece.
“Talking ten more.” She said it evenly. Same way she held my gaze. No more slinging flinging lashes. This tight skirt, what there was of it, meant business.
“Hell’s belles—with you getting those rats out of our way, those dirty rats what stole our mother’s legacy, we’d be so grateful there could be two times, three times more—”
“TRUDY! Shaddup your damn yapper!”
Guess Frieda held the purse strings with most else her rolypoly frame held in, and ran or wanted to run again a tight ship. I didn’t care what she wanted to do with it; getting it back couldn’t be that hard and by my calculations it would make for a fifteen thousand dollar payday. “What is the name of this boat I’m looking for?”
“It was christened The Whammy Zammy, after our Grammy Sammy,” the sisters recited in unison.
“Start smoothing the wrinkles out of Mr. Madison’s mates, sisters. I�
��ve got a boat to catch.”
* * *
It wasn’t hard locating The Whammy Zammy. Hamelin had but one marina and the giant paddlewheel riverboat dwarfed every other vessel at the docks. A party seemed in full swing when I asked a topless young lady with one hand on the starboard rail and the other clutching a magnum of champagne for permission to come aboard.
“Granted, handsome!” she giggled, offering the bottle out to me as I climbed aboard. I accepted the bottle and after a slash asked the out-of-uniform swab with the giggle and jiggle, “Would you happen to be the captain of this vessel?” I shall have to remember the line as it seems it is the funniest thing I have ever uttered. “I take it you are not in command then?”
“No, no, no,” she began, now composing herself and reaching out for the bottle. “I’m Tammy from Miami, this is Big Daddy’s boat.”
“Pleased to meet you, Tammy from Miami. Could you tell me where I’d find…uh, Big Daddy?” I was on a roll with Tammy as this once again set her to laughing. I began to suspect it might not be my delivery alone and leaving her there, proceeded up the companionway. How hard could a Big Daddy be to spot?
I was disoriented at the top of the ship’s ladder, for here again was Tammy from Miami, though the sign above her head clearly reported I had arrived on the poop deck. How could she have beaten me here?
“I see you met my sister,” this upper-deck Tammy offered, taking me by the hand. “I’m Pammy from Miami. We both work for Big Daddy.”
“Yes, I see,” I said, not truly seeing but sure things would come clearer. “About that, I am looking for Mr. Daddy.”
“He’s not so hard to find,” Pammy from Miami said, pointing out a man dressed like Colonel Sanders entertaining a bevy of, no doubt, other “ammys” at the poop deck bar. Not a hint of laughter from Pammy. Dead ringers the two but clearly Tammy with the more sophisticated funny bone.
Funny how I wanted to follow that funny bone, a lot of those funny bones actually. Which honed my awareness to keep my gaze steady on the main guy’s; far better to get to the big prize, then I’d be free to amble any nubile ’ammy’s way. This Big Daddy character was some character indeed. Halfway white-suited reality and the other 80 percent a ringer for a Bugs Bunny cartoon star. He was that big. You know the star. I felt it already from hearing his southern good old boy pomposity gladhanding over the top—or in this case over the topless—of all his pretty minions.
“Ahhh say, ahhh say, it seems we have us some sort of fancified visitor aboahrd our good ship o’ good times. Whah, welcome tharah, boy, welcome! Come on ovah hereah and state yourah bidness. Pammy, a special drink for our new city slickah friend. Or are you Tammy?”
I thanked Pammy from Miami and made my way over to the bar and the man who would look perfectly at home cradling a red and white striped bucket of southern fried yardbird. I was not surprised to see goon one and goon two angling bulk to intercede questions concerning my business. A quick note from the harmonica my great-grandfather gave me would easily reroute their concerns to their stomachs and have them making way for the galley. But I bided my time. Wanted first to size up my adversary.
Foghorn Leghorn. You can hear him, see him in your mind’s eye, clear as a cart careens on one crooked wheel in a Piggly Wiggly. This guy was a bona fide Looney Tune. Out of habit and for security’s sake, I slid my hand into the left interior pocket of my sport jacket. Naturally, it was right there. So too was the strong-arming of the strong arms of the two gargantuan goons most likely dubbed Biff or Todd or—
“Biff! Jed! Now leave the boy alone. He’ll mahnd his mannahs, I cain tell people. I cain.”
Couldn’t stop the soft smirk, I was that close to naming cartoon lackeys. I kept my hand right where it was. Let it linger there a heartbeat. Then, slow, strong, steady, I held Big Daddy’s gaze with friendly forcefulness, pulled out and brandished my trusty silver hunk of protection. Biff and Todd/Jed jostled in a numbed flash, exhibiting the awe of nine-year-old lads at a Tonka display at a toy store at Christmas. Mesmerized. The Sweet Harmony Harmonica was noted for that on first impressions. Clearly more than gleam and sheen, its spark conjured back first moments of making music happen in an unexpected and very cool way. Thing was, the mesmerizing continued with the Sweet Harmony.
Mesmerizing itself is an art, a scintillating skill. Utilizing Mesmerism, you look with a purpose, you hold your intent, you impress your will. I needed to impress my skill on Big Daddy’s will in order to collect on my bill. With all the ammo of these handy ’ammies around, this particular exhibition packed the titillation of triumphant thrill. Big Daddy nodded once, twice, and I brought to my lips the sweet harmonica Great-Grandaddy Piper had passed down with all its potent powers to—now, just me.
I blew a few mouth-harp tones out for the cartoon man’s pleasure and approached at leisure. My gaze and paces were measured, gauging the measure of the florid man with the shit-eating grin before me. I quieted his guffaws with my senses and visualized thought control.
Slowly, slowly…
* * *
“Hey, sis, you reckon Piper’s gonna figger the skinny on Sammy?” Trudy Zambowser lamented, fingering stringy bangs over sooty eyes with one scrawny hand while fishing along the sides to the bottom of her straw handbag past old Kleenex and empty mascara tubes for more quarters. “There! Gotcha!” Score. She was seventy-five cents ahead, on a bead for the old Juke.
“Ol’ Jake ain’t gonna find out nuttin’, nowhere, no-how, regarding Sammy,” interjected the no-longer-minding-only-his-own-business bartender/proprietor of Hooligans of Hamelin. With his chest puffed up practically broad as his puffery, brawny George Ramsey Hooligan slicked back his contrary cowlick and checked again the dazzle potency of his grin in the Dewar’s mirror above the microbrew taps. “Let’s just say he’s been taken care of good, real good. So good, matter o’ fact, it’s almost a shame how bad.” A proud guffaw pronounced the jut of his jaw. On the alert just how alert that news flash volted a startle into Trudy’s sister Frieda’s usually cautious cagey peepers. Feeling generous, feeling more the urge to feel lucky, George jiggled a double jigger of rum ’round the rim of the rotund lady’s slender gimlet glass. He pushed the dainty stemware within easy reach of her chipped mauve manicure…pudgy fingers strumming the scuffed bar, attuned to her sister’s sentimental tunes:
You were the start of the dreamin’ in my heart
and now I can’t stop dreaming of you
“Whatchoo tokkin’ about, Georgie?” Frieda glared up into a slow wink sliding down the way a slow wink intended to be slow-mo (heavy on the mojo) slid. Definitely meaning more than vision hid.
Brazen bravado led timbre rather than hush to Hooligan’s low-down whisper, leaning closer and more personal towards the crusty broad he wouldn’t mind rolypolying ’round with one day. Women with pork to their bellies were soft in the sack. Emboldening his move, George took advantage of the absence of her slithery sister, still fiddling coins across the room. Came a swagger of sweet, funky oldies:
I’m waiting for my life to begin
I’m waiting for that train to come in
George generated his best Rick’s Cafe accent, all the better to charm Frieda la femme. “Ya see, kid, it’s like dis—me and my accomplice, we rolled the barrel better than, uh, better than they do the Pennsylvania Polka in Perryopolis. Well, let’s call it a steel drum barrel, so’s youse gets da full big picture in your peepers, dollface—and man oh man, did it make some deep kerplunk!”
“Holy Hannah, George! You mean—”
As if on cue, Hannah Zambowser, swathed in a trim suit of gabardine blue, not looking at all bad for her age, bustled her trim grim gumption from the backroom, bellying it up to the bar. “You swappin’ trade secrets, Georgie Porgie?” she said sweet as clenched teeth can pry. “Lotta fish swim funny in the river who bubble their blabber outta turn. Just for the halibut, I heartily suggest you keep your piehole zipper-zilched. You got that, pally?” She glared him, his ebullience and his c
owlick down, leaned a perfunctory nod to the short hunkered mass o’ lass guzzling her gimlet, with a curt “Frieda,” then hooted “Hallllo!” to the beanstalk bending over the worn Wurlitzer. “You findin’ anything good on that old jalopy of a nicklelodeon, hon?”
“Machine don’t take no cottonpickin’ nickels, Ma. This one’s eatin’ all my quarters, but I took dibs on a tip I reckon was over lingered at table three, so I’m crankin’ ’em out all right. There’s a lotta oldies here. I kinda like that.”
In a little honkytonk village in Texas
there’s a guy who plays the best piano bar.
And when he plays out with the bass and guitar,
they all yell out, “Oh give me Daddy, 8 to the bar!”
He plays the boogie, the funky boogie
and when he plays that rhythm
he puts them all in a trance
* * *
Meanwhile…aboard the good party ship Whammy Zammy, the jazzed audience was slurping up a good time in a spellbound lollygag, tongues a’wag at the smooth dazzling antics of the main act, the man with the grin behind the silver sparkle of the Sweet Harmony Harmonica. No shit, Jake Piper on the poop deck, wowing them in wave after mesmerizing wave of mouth piping melodies to sweet somnambulance. Winding, weaving, wavering his way this way, that way, all the way around the floating pleasure palace, room after stateroom.
Piper took in details of decor and more. He’d started slow and easy, his hypnotic heritage mouthharp zinging vibes of “Rhinestone Cowboy,” which hopped up the minion nymphs of the jolly mean giant like grits on a sizzler. Scantily clad, if that, they pranced their fancy two-steps and bootie scooted their boogie to the obvious ogle of their southern captain’s magnanimous delight. “Big Daddy! Big Daddy!” they called out in pretty squeals, arms all akimbo. “Come dance with me. Come dance with me.” And they sang along, all but one, when Jake Piper led them in song:
