“In the ass?” Kameko repeated. “That’s frigid, dude.”
“We want the legend,” Ophelia said candidly. “We want his name. You’re his heir. You can sign a power of attorney over his estate to us and you’ll never have to worry about it again.”
Tamara sat back in the wrought iron chair clearly thinking about what it meant. Kameko took a long gulp of iced tea and said nothing. Finally, Tamara asked, “What about any residual bills? Who pays those?”
“The city of Albie,” Ophelia said. “It’s an investment. We’ll put it in writing if you’d like. It’s what Mr. McCall would have wanted.”
Tamara’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t care what Mr. McCall would have wanted. He certainly didn’t care about his fucking family, why should we care about him?”
“It’s a simple matter,” Ophelia cajoled softly. “I have the papers in the car and I’m a certified notary public.”
“Tam, why not do it?” Kameko said. “You’ll never have to worry about the old cocksucker again.”
“Okay,” Tamara said brightly, coming to a conclusion. Then she added the icing on the cake with smug flair, aware that she was holding someone by their hypothetical testicles and giving them a good, eye-popping squeeze, “As long as the city of Albie buys a couple of my sculptures.”
It was Ophelia’s turn to gape. “Like the dinosaur?”
“No, no. That’s not for sale. Maybe one of the tortured, damned in hell series.” She indicated the statues of molten metal and various bits that resembled humans being afflicted by red-hot needles being shoved under their fingernails. “They start at $30,000 each. The price includes shipping,” she added helpfully.
Ophelia shuddered.
•
An hour later Ophelia was driving away in the Texas darkness with all of the proper paperwork signed and witnessed. With a half hour of dedicated wrangling, it had only cost the price of a single check and a worthless promise of an Albie paid sculpture for the front yard of city hall the following year. But she had Bayou Billy.
Chapter Eight
Excerpt from The Legend of Bayou Billy by Stillman Floyd, University of Texas Press, San Antonio, Texas, 2000, pg. 14:
The most pertinent question that should be answered is why in particular William Douglas McCall would have been chosen as a ‘common man’s’ hero. The answer is much more complex than the fact that he was in the right place at the right time. The years of prohibition and the Great Depression engendered a new dislike for the government of the United States of America. It was from this intense feeling of antipathy for all things authoritarian that an exquisite yearning for heroes came about. Radio shows and the first emergence of the movie theater shaped the heroes that the public demanded. The creation of Superman inspired those who had little next to nothing. Other depression motivated fictional heroes included Dick Tracy and Joe Palooka in 1931, Lil Abner in 1935, Prince Valiant in 1936, and the Lone Ranger in 1938.24 The broadest media available to the ordinary man was the newspaper or the radio and it was widely accepted that sensationalism aided in sales. That which produced an optimistic hunger in the hard hit breasts of the working class was to understand that other underdogs toiled as savagely as did they.
And along came William Douglas McCall. His earlier years as a pickpocket and petty thief did not abet his infamy. On the contrary, if his earlier exploits had been reported as they would be in the present, William Douglas McCall would come across as the worst sort of criminal. He was a man of little social consciousness and no concern for his family, much less man’s best friend as was reported in an early newspaper account. The description branded him as a ‘gentleman thief’ for averting the death of a dog at the threat of gunpoint:
Miss Ella Louisa Burke reports, ‘He stopped the milk truck by pointing his pistol directly at Milkman Kincade’s head and delivered the Birch’s dog from getting run over. That poor animal would have been ground into hamburger if not for “Bayou Billy’s” brave rescue. He’s a true hero.’ 25
Branson Burke Targe is Ella Louisa Burke’s grandson and recounted that The Louisiana Sparrow Press, which printed the above account, lied about many of the details and exaggerated the remainder. William Douglas McCall did stop a milk truck by gun point but not for the benefit of any errant dog, but for the purpose of escape and in the pursuit of his getaway he fractured the skull of Vincent Kincade, the milkman who had the misfortune to be in Bayou Billy’s way. See the copy of Mr. Kincade’s medical report in Appendix B. “If there had been a dog,” Mr. Targe said of his grandmother’s recollections, “The poor thing probably got crushed by Bayou Billy himself.” 26
But those who owned the presses saw William Douglas McCall’s actions in another light. Hopelessness was a festering disease of the 1930s and who better than a man who would stimulate the hopeless to be their version of a cover-boy? Bayou Billy was chosen as the idol for the lowly not by the lowly but by America’s journalists. He was young, relatively good-looking, had a popular swagger, and most-importantly a tendency to put himself in the limelight. Whether this tendency had been intentional is another interesting but debatable question.
The Present
Friday, July 14th – Saturday, July 15th
Sawdust City, Texas
It was after nine PM when Pascal Waterford dropped Gibby Ross off at City Hall to pick up her neglected car. Sawdust City was inert save for the jam-packed Walmart and the Gray Goose with its usual crowd trickling in piecemeal on a Friday night. Gibby sluggishly climbed out of the dog catcher’s van and cast Pascal a vinegary look through the open window. “It’s not too late, you know,” she said and the tone in her voice was hard to discern.
“Not too late?” Pascal repeated dumbly. “Of course, it’s too late. Are we idiots or what?”
Gibby sighed and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “I’m going home and taking a long bath,” she announced determinedly.
Pascal leered engagingly at the inopportune moment. “How big is your bathtub? You’d be surprised what I’d do to get another vote, baby,” he said.
“Not really,” she snapped. “I’ve seen it before.” She ticked off items. “There was the time you had your hand down Mrs. Laural’s cleavage at the New Year’s Ball at the Club, looking for an allegedly misplaced olive. There was that first rate fawning to the owner of the Mercantile Bank and paying exacting attention to his gluteus maximus. I thought you were going to have to have your lips surgically separated. That was one of the most shameless acts of politician ass kissing since Bill Clinton admitted what kind of underwear he wore on MTV. And what you said to that poor little woman at the hospital’s morgue.” She tut-tutted her tongue in a manner that reminded Pascal of his saintly grandmother and it immediately gave him indigestion.
The licentious expression on his face faded like a candidate who has just lost the Presidential race. “It was the dwarf’s fault,” he complained. “She wouldn’t be coerced.”
“Little person,” Gibby corrected.
“Little person,” Pascal amended. “It’s pretty fucking obvious she’s a little person. She’s about the right size to suck my…uh-oh,” he stopped himself because Gibby’s face had just turned about the color of her stained, prune colored dress. “Sorry,” he offered lamely. “I’m tired, half-way hung over, and I could use a stiff belt.” And he couldn’t believe he’d just offered an apology. Somewhere the devil was laughing his ass off.
Gibby hitched herself straight up and looked at her employer frankly. “What will you do next, then?”
“Talk to those bankers,” Pascal said firmly. “We’ve got to have money or it’s a no go.”
“I could win the lottery,” Gibby offered with a hint of wry amusement.
“You and me both, babe,” Pascal muttered. He looked into the rear-view mirror and saw the shining steel reflection of the casket in the back of the dog catcher’s van. Then he watched as Gibby walked away toward her moldering Volkswagen Jetta.
Pascal had a vague idea that it w
ould probably be better to gauge out his eyes with red-hot pokers than to get involved with a woman like Gibby. What’s her full name? He looked at the account books enough in the last six months that not only did he know everyone’s middle name but their social security numbers were memorized as well. One never knew when one would have to steal someone else’s identity for the purpose of escaping a maddened throng of pissed off and bankrupt constituents. In any case, Gibson (Was she named after a guitar or what?) Joslyn Ross was thirty-eight years old, unmarried, with no dependents. She withheld ten percent of her salary into her IRA and withheld the full amount of deductions for herself. Her wages weren’t garnished for anything and they were automatically deposited into the bank. That is, if her paycheck doesn’t bounce higher than a Super Ball.
After several hours of being alone with her, Pascal also knew something else. Her feet did not stink. And he didn’t know why he’d ever thought that they had stunk. He also had discovered that she was frightfully naïve, agonizingly devious, and wretchedly all-seeing. She was patently aware of all his foibles and some of them that he didn’t want to admit to having. She even knew about one or two that he hadn’t been aware of having.
Gibby was the kind of woman his campaign manager, Hewitt Donally, had warned Pascal about. She knew too much and she had a tendency to say what she meant. Hewitt had said, “If you’ve got a White House intern in your closet, or a picture of yourself hugging a busty blonde aboard The Monkey Business while you were married to a gray-haired nun, or an ex-wife with a grudge, or a spread in Gays Guys Magazine, you better kill her, burn it, bribe her, or admit it in the beginning before it comes back to bite you on your big idiotic ass.”
Oh, Pascal had his secrets. Mostly they were not much as far as secrets went. One failed marriage had produced one fourteen year old, rebellious son who lived with his mother in Houston and wouldn’t talk to Pascal on the phone, much less see him in person. If there was a Texan who wasn’t divorced, then it was because his wife had died before he had the chance to get a divorce and for parental/child relationships, who cared? Also Pascal liked to drink too much. But everyone in town knew that. Furthermore, if a man lived in East Texas and didn’t like to drink then he was a pansy or worse.
Pascal looked in the rear view mirror again. There was that dammit reflection with the big mouth again. It looked like a tired, middle-aged man with a huge problem. It was also sneering at him again. “Well, you did it this time, didn’t you, dick-weasel?” it said disdainfully.
The light came on in Gibby’s car when she unlocked her door and opened it and Pascal hesitated while he watched her clamber in. A moment later, her engine caught and she waved at him when she drove past. He said despondently to his reflection while watching her tail lights flicker, “Yeah, I did it. I’m the king.”
The reflection said, “Your mama’s so dumb she uses Wite-Out on the computer monitor.”
Nothing perked Pascal up like a ripe insult that begged to be answered. “Your mama’s so dumb she takes an hour to cook Minute Rice,” he replied promptly.
The reflection developed the concentrated face of one challenged uniquely by the ultimate foe. “And your mama’s so dumb that she makes Homer Simpson look like a Nobel Prize winner,” it shot back.
“And your mama’s so dumb her cereal bowl came with a life guard,” Pascal barked immediately.
“Your mama’s so dumb she’d need twice as much sense to be a halfwit,” the reflection pounced.
Pascal had to think about that one. “Okay, you got me.”
“So what now, you pimple-popping, sweat-stained dingbat?”
“I’m going to stop at the Gray Goose,” Pascal decided with a bleak smile.
“Oh, fer the love of Christ,” the reflection whined. “Not that again.”
Pascal examined the reflection and saw that it was his own face again. The expression there was equal parts determined, confident, and desperate. It was a pitiful combination and one that certainly was bound to cause more trouble.
Then the reflection added woefully, “No Kamikazes this time, huh?”
•
From the moment Pascal stepped into the Gray Goose he was bombarded with offers of free drinks. He was somewhat confused at the upswing in his political and social status until he realized that half the patrons knew about what had become ‘The Notorious Bayou Billy Dead Body Strategy.’ Although he and Gibby had kept the plan close to their proverbial chests, the feeble evidence of the borrowing of the animal control department’s van combined with the removal of cages within tipped a few more perceptive people off. Then the issuance of directions to the Good Parish Hospital in Shreveport as well as to the Caskets R Us outlet in the same city seemed to give the ghost. No pun was intended.
Several secretaries had put two and two together to get sixty-five and three-quarters. The gossip poured out of City Hall like a fingerless Dutch boy was trying to keep water from flowing out of an obviously laughable dike. Soon the entire town was aware that something was afoot and Sherlock Holmes was nowhere to be found. Certainly, if Sherlock Holmes had not been a fictional character and had been to be found, then he probably wouldn’t be caught pissing into the wind in a backwater hole like Sawdust City. However, by the time Pascal and Gibby had returned to the town, their deeds, or lack of deeds as the case may have been, were legendary. It was nearly as celebrated as Bayou Billy’s iniquitous ten inch penis.
“Pascal!” Larry Browder yelled amicably. He was the Sanitation Department Administrator and was known to frequent the Goose when his wife frequently kicked him out of their house. “Get your tushie over here and have a beer.” He yelled at the bartender, “A beer for Hizzoner!”
Pascal froze. Someone clapped him on the back soundly. Several other someones clapped other parts of his body. Someone pinched his ass and he was proud that he didn’t turn around to see who it had been. Several people lined up to order him drinks. Well, he thought. It would be rude to turn down drinks from constituents.
Bob Cumberland said, “Pascal, you sly dog. How did you do it?”
“I was in the right place at the right time,” Pascal said sincerely, not knowing exactly what he was talking about.
Hewitt Donally rushed over to Pascal and embraced him sloppily. Pascal immediately knew that Hewitt was three sheets to the wind. “Thank God,” he gushed. “If anyone could come up with a save-our-ass plan, it had to be you.” He belched loudly in Pascal’s face.
“Jesus,” Pascal said. “What have you been eating? Calamari?”
“Clams,” Hewitt said. “And I’m allergic to seafood. I had to have a shot. Then I had to have three drinks to forget about the shot. I’m probably not going to remember tonight by midnight. I may wake up in Tijuana with a new tattoo on my ass.” He thought about it. “Or as a male whore in a cheap brothel. Either one sounds good.” He lurched away while Pascal stared.
By the time Pascal made it to his regular table in the back, four beers, two martinis, one glass of ouzo, and three shots of whiskey were waiting for him, all courtesy of impressed friends and citizens. George Hiram and Bryant Mansfield were waiting with cigars in hand. “Damn if I ain’t impressed, boy,” Bryant said cheerfully. “Good show. Have a drink.”
Pascal looked at the array and winced. I’d look like an idiot if I turn these down. No Kamikazes there, either. Only a sip. Beer. Just beer. The rest I can sweep under the table and who the hell ordered me ouzo? Just a sip of beer. Just a little old sip. Then I can get back to business. Trading business cards. Making cold calls. Calling those bankers in Dallas. Sure, they’ve got money hanging out their assholes. They love to give money away.
He took a sip of beer.
“So what’s the plan, Pask, old man?” George said.
Bryant leaned in for a closer look. “Tell us the plan.”
“The First Annual Bayou Billy Festival,” Pascal said firmly. “Tours. Concession stands. Parades. Bars. A museum. Maybe we can get the river boat that Billy robbed. We can have it haule
d up on land and make a bed and breakfast out of it.”
The other men hooted with laughter. “Got to give you a hand, Pask,” George said with a snigger. “You’re a dreamer. That’s going to cost hundreds of thousands.”
“Hundreds of thousands,” Bryant repeated thoughtfully. “Where’re you going to get your hands on that kind of moolah?”
“I can get it,” Pascal said, determinedly. He took another sip. Just one beer. Just one, little ol’, itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie beer. Just one. Then I’ll get back to business. Yessirreebob.
Bobby Joe Bruce Lane stumbled up to Pascal and slapped him so hard on the back that Pascal was surprised that his teeth didn’t fly out of his mouth. “Your Honor,” Bobby Joe Bruce said. “Goddamn. I mean, Goddamn. I would have never believed it. But everyone is talking about it and it was in the paper yesterday. Just God-diddly-damn.”
Pascal nodded at the Chief Financial Officer of Sawdust City and shrugged. “I was only doing what any mayor would do.” Then he took a swig of beer because he didn’t particularly like Bobby Joe Bruce and the more alcohol that was consumed the more endurable the company became.
“Did ya hear?” Bryant said to Bobby Joe Bruce. “The First Annual Bayou Billy Show. Right here in Sawdust City. Home of Bayou Billy. We’re gonna rake it in.”
Life and Death of Bayou Billy Page 9
