Ransom of Brownie

by Bevill, C. L.

  “I won’t,” Brownie said and crossed his fingers behind his back. He also crossed the toes on his right foot. He couldn’t do that yet on his left foot, but he kept practicing.

  “So we kin take the masks off, and he’ll just pretend it was some other two fellas,” Tom said.

  “What kidnappers?” Brownie asked. He loudly tapped his left foot against the coffee table while reaching into a second pocket. This time he retrieved a pack of cards without ringing the bell. “I am totally getting better at this.”

  “See?” Tom asked.

  “I was probably drugged,” Brownie said. “It makes everything very fuzzy.”

  Laz stared at Brownie. “I’ll think about it.”

  Tom scratched at the pantyhose. “I might have to go to the doctor. Every time I breathe in deep I wheeze. Hawww. Where’s my inhaler?”

  Brownie held it up in his right hand. “It was in that other pocket.”

  Tom took it and Laz sighed. “I don’t care to go out again right now. It was a right hellish trip down to the south side. People pulled up next to the truck and said nasty things to me. That ole lady, whatshername, Mike Holmgreen’s granny. You remember Mike? He tried to burn down the high school because he was failing algebra. Well, his granny cut me off and cussed me up one side and down the other. Said I was a horrid, awful person and deserved to be strung up by you-know-what. She said dental floss should be used. Do you know what dental floss would do to you-know-what?”

  “What did you do to her?” Tom asked.

  “Ain’t done nothing to her nor any of her kinfolk,” Laz said forcefully. “But then not three minutes later, the librarian pulled up beside me and said I was a…let me see if I can recollect it properly…an abominable blight on the ass of humanity.” He nodded. “Yep. Think that was exactly what she said. An abominable blight on the ass of humanity. I don’t know what that means, but it don’t sound good.”

  “Huh,” Tom said.

  “Then I stopped at the red light on Main Street,” Laz went on, “and one of them loonies stuck her head in my window and said something like ‘Thou roguish, common-kissing bum snatch.’ I bet that ain’t even in the big dictionary at the library. I don’t even know what a rougish common-kissing bum snatch is.”

  “She said what?” Tom asked.

  “That’s Thelda,” Brownie said, with another successfully intrusion into a pocket. This time he got a dollar bill. He deftly slipped it into his own pocket. “She always speaks like that. It’s usually bad.”

  “By the third time I dropped off an engine, I was getting right aggrieved,” Laz said, “and that fella at Bufford’s Gas and Grocery tole me I had something writ in the dirt on the tailgate of my truck.”

  “What was it?”

  “It said ‘I ♥ Clubbing Baby Seals!’ in giant block letters,” Laz said darkly. “You dint write it, did you, Tom?”

  “I would never,” Tom denied hotly. “Baby seals are so danged cute. Them big eyes just like love in the air and that white fur. I could cuddle them up and— never mind that. You don’t really love to club baby seals, do you?”

  “OF COURSE I DON’T!” Laz yelled.

  “Might have been Melvin or Jed who writ it there,” Tom suggested. He wiped another line of drool from his chin. “Clubbing baby seals,” he muttered. “Terr’ble awful thing to do.”

  “Awful,” agreed Brownie. He recovered another item from a pocket. It was another Premium Flavored Lubricated Latex Condom packages, but this one was Strawberry Surprise. Brownie wondered why a weird balloon would be flavored. Nobody licked balloons.

  “Tom!” Laz said as he saw the condom packet.

  “What? I dint have anything else to use,” Tom said reasonably. “It ain’t like it’s open.”

  Brownie did a little butt-wiggling victory dance.

  Chapter 6

  Wednesday, November 13th

  Brownie Gets Busy

  and

  The Arrival of the Beast From Hell

  Laz and Tom got up the next day around 6 a.m. Brownie was already up because he had things to do and reprehensible campaigns to put into place and a mad scientist laugh to perfect. Then he had made pancakes and bacon. A fella, even the wicked, merciless, crazed villain type, couldn’t have enough bacon, in his mind. And Brownie’s mother really wasn’t much of a cook, so he had learned by hook or crook. (When properly motivated, Virtna could and would cook the living heck out of a premade frozen meal. Fudge was better at grilled cheese sandwiches, but he still burned them three times out of five. Brownie had gotten used to the crispy black flavor of a grilled cheese sandwich to the point where a non-burned grilled cheese sandwich didn’t taste quite right. In any case, Brownie had been learning about cooking from Miz Adelia. His cinnamon rolls had made his own mother weep with joy. But then, Virtna had wept a lot in the last seven months. His father said it had something to do with the pregnancy, but Brownie didn’t know what that meant.)

  “Bacon!” Laz said, rubbing his face. He had forgotten that he didn’t have his pantyhose mask on. It was just as well because the hose were getting more and more holes and ladders in them so that they didn’t really disguise him. (Personally, Brownie would have gone with a Halloween mask. Maybe the wailing ghost guy from Scream. Or a U.S. President. Either one.)

  Tom cried in delight, “Pancakes!”

  “And coffee,” Brownie added. He produced the pot. Step One in his nefarious plan had been to assess all available assets. Step Two was to butter up the two disreputable kidnappers. Pancakes, bacon, and coffee were definitely the way to go. Brownie would have made cinnamon rolls but he couldn’t find any eggs, confectioners’ sugar, or yeast, and he liked to do them just the way Miz Adelia had taught him. (If Brownie had been able to make the cinnamon rolls, the two kidnappers would have been his slaves forever. Bwahaha.)

  “Thank you, Lord, for this bounty we are about to receive,” Laz said reverently and sat at the aluminum table. Tom joined him without further ado. Brownie served with a brisk, “Amen.”

  It took about ten minutes, nine pancakes, one and a half cups of coffee, and six pieces of bacon before Laz figured out that something was missing. He put his hand on his forehead and felt around for the absent pantyhose. “Dang,” he said.

  “What?” Tom muttered around a mouthful of bacon and pancake. He had made his into a combo, although he couldn’t figure out how to incorporate the coffee into it. Therefore, he alternated eating and drinking coffee to get the full effect. Brownie was nearly mesmerized by the two-handed motion. One hand had the cup of coffee. One hand held the pancake/bacon roll.

  “We ain’t wearing our masks,” Laz said. He eyed Brownie as the boy shoveled a forkful of pancake into his mouth. “You promised you won’t tell on us.”

  “I promised,” Brownie said and crossed the toes of his right foot under the table again. It was entirely possible he wouldn’t have to tell on the two men, but he didn’t want to paint himself into a corner. He knew that he might have to rat on Laz and Tom, even though they didn’t seem to be particularly bad people. But circumstances were apt to change at a moment’s notice, and Brownie didn’t want to be in a position where he would have to lie to someone significant.

  For example, if his mother found out that he had been kidnapped, trotted her heavily pregnant self out to Texas, and found out he’d been making pancakes and bacon for the two kidnappers, she might lose her mind. Virtna hadn’t lost her temper with Brownie for quite some time. (And the fact that she hadn’t yelled at him for weeks was positively unnerving.) He figured that somewhere deep inside of his mother, it was building to a head, and he didn’t want to be around when she finally did a Mount Vesuvius.

  Laz sighed. “Great. We’ll go to work, and I’ll call them Snoddys later in the day. How long before you think they can get that money, boy?”

  Brownie thought about it. It was a weekday, and the banks were open. Given the fact that Miz Demetrice’s Cadillac was operational and a fella could rub his rabbit’s foot w
hile knocking on wood and tossing salt over his shoulder, the answer was the tenth of never or when the devil started a snowball fight in hell. “I reckon she’s got to get all her investments into a lump sum and such,” Brownie said tentatively. “Papa Derryberry, that’s my grandpapa, always said, ‘If you’re goin’ to run with the big dogs, then you got to learn how to pee in the tall grass.’”

  “Your grandpapa said what?” Tom asked. He had briefly abandoned his two-handed stroke to upend the bottle of syrup so that Aunt Jemima’s skirts were in an unbecoming situation. Then he squeezed heartily on his pancake/bacon wrap, soaking it well and truly.

  “I reckon it’ll take Miz Demetrice a bit of time,” Laz said. “I bet they’re getting it ready right now. They’re goin’ to need a special-sized bag for all that money.”

  “And them rolls of quarters,” Tom added.

  Laz glared at Tom. “That was plumb silly to put them on the demands.”

  “A man always has a need for quarters,” Tom explained to Brownie, pushing the last bit of the pancake/bacon combo into his mouth. He caught the syrup drip with his finger and then licked it.

  “Yep,” Laz said complacently. Then he repeated, “I bet they’re getting it ready right now.”

  I bet they’re not getting it ready right now, Brownie thought, on account of that they don’t got a million dollars. They could trade me for some of that fancy silver Auntie D. got from her family. It might be worth a few bucks. Or Bubba might give up his truck. He sighed mightily. Best ifin I have my fun and get outta here all on my own.

  “So you’ll stay in the little room while we’re gone,” Laz said to Brownie. “Remember all them lions, tigers, and bears out there?”

  It was dogs, snakes, and bears as I recollect, and bombs and bear traps, too. Brownie nodded while crossing his fingers under the table.

  “Shore about that?” Tom asked.

  “Yard is closed, and the gates will be locked. Boy doesn’t know the combo. Ma ain’t due back ‘til next week. It’ll be okay.” Laz let out a mighty burp. “That was some good chow, boy. You the best kidnapped victim we ever had.”

  “I wonder if when birds burp, it tastes like bugs,” Brownie pondered.

  There was a mutual cleaning up which consisted of throwing away paper plates and plastic utensils and leaving the frying pans to soak in the sink. Tom escorted Brownie to the little room and closed the door.

  Brownie waited until he heard the van leave then let himself out, rubbing his hands together. Step Three.

  * * *

  “I don’t want to have to tell Virtna and Fudge,” Bubba said. There were several reasons for this. One was that Virtna was really, fantastically, and enormously pregnant, and the last time Fudge had called, he’d said sadly, “Virtna eats pickles with ice cream on top. Then for a change she wants ice cream with pickles on top. I want to barf. Then she starts crying a lot. She used up three boxes of Kleenexes and five of my best shirts. Then she wants gherkins again except dipped in crunchy peanut butter. Last night she complained that her waist line was gone forever and that it would never come out and that if this time it wasn’t a girl, she was stuffing it back. It done took me ten years to talk her into another one after Brownie. Ten years! And she swore she would kill me if the baby turns out like Brownie.” After Brownie was a common theme in the Louisianan Snoddys’ lives. It should have been shortened to A.B. Life was Before Brownie (B.B.) and A.B.

  Brownie was such a…special child. Yes, special was about the best word Bubba could use. On one hand, he could be kind and thoughtful. (He had protected all of them from the Christmas Killer, although it was a remote possibility that Brownie had seen a unique opportunity to use his handmade Taser on an actual human being. Bubba internally shook his head. Brownie didn’t seem to be that devious.)

  However, Bubba knew that his cousin had a special piece of paper tacked onto the wall beside the telephone. It said something like, “We cannot confirm or deny that Brownie Snoddy lives at this telephone number. Our legal representative is Dewum, Cheetem, and Howe at 555-555-1234. We have no knowledge of what may or may not have occurred and deny our culpability.” This piece of paper was pinned there for a very good reason. (Their commonly used legal representative had his assistant type it up so that they could have it on hand for the also common occasion that the phone rang and it was someone calling about something Brownie had done.) Also, it allowed the Louisianan Snoddys a little bit of space while they figured out what Brownie had been up to and how much they were going to have to pay someone.

  “I don’t want to tell them,” Miz Demetrice said. “It’s my belief that there’s a little demon baby in that woman who don’t want to come out until it absolutely has to, and ifin I tell them, the baby will come out early, and they’ll blame me. And I know that Fudge and Virtna have plans to send their children here for years to come, so the child will come here with a big chip on its shoulder and plan a devious retribution of magnanimous proportion. All because I told them about Brownie being kidnapped.”

  “Listen, Ma,” Bubba said. “Mary Lou Treadwell knows that the sheriff and Willodean were out here. She’s prolly told half the county by now. It’s only a matter of time before someone lets some budding reporter know that some dang thing done happened in Pegram County again. Then we’ll have a more of them news people than you can shake a stick at.” Bubba thought about it. “And I have shaken a stick at them.”

  “News reporters are about as useful as a pogo stick in quicksand,” Miz Demetrice sighed. They sat in the kitchen, having spent half the night next to the telephone waiting for a call that hadn’t come. The two special agents had brought in another team of special agents, and they had countermanded the ransom note. They had wrapped it up in plastic, and it had gone off to a lab to see if fingerprints, DNA, and/or the hidden writings of a previously unknown disciple of Christ could be assessed.

  Bubba thought about saying that he, Miz Adelia, Willodean, and Sheriff John had planted their fingerprints all over the note, but he restrained himself. He had a good excuse, which was a similar excuse to the others’ excuses. He had thought it was a joke played by Brownie himself.

  However, the fingerprint report should make for interesting reading.

  “Mebe we can get the special agents to call them,” Bubba suggested hopefully.

  Miz Demetrice thought about it. “We could, but it would probably be immoral.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  Willodean came in through the back door. Bubba perked up immediately, noticing that the normally vivacious woman looked a little pale. She’d had about as much sleep as they had, and Bubba thought she might be thinking of Janie, her eight-year-old niece who was a friend of Brownie’s. If Janie was missing, the whole family would have ground themselves into the dirt before they would have given up. Bubba would have told her to go take a nap, but she wouldn’t let go until Brownie had been found.

  “We searched over half the property,” she said, “and didn’t find anything except a bunch of holes. One of those agents, Hornbuckle, decided to dig in some of the holes, and she broke three fingernails. Didn’t know they cursed like that in Quantico.”

  “Ain’t no gold out there,” Bubba said, tired of repeating himself. “I’m going to put a billboard on the front lawn.”

  “I think Hornbuckle got a copy of People Magazine from Nadine Clack,” Willodean said, helping herself to a soda from the fridge. Nadine Clack was Pegramville’s librarian.

  “If I had one wish, it would be that all of that specific edition would mysteriously vanish into the ether,” Miz Demetrice said.

  “Shore helps when they do the biannual tours,” Bubba said. “Half of them try to bring in one of those half-sized shovels.”

  “I think Monday has a raging case of poison ivy,” Willodean said. “He swears you can’t get it in November. I warned him to wash off his hands. Then he went to take a bathroom break, and I’m pretty certain that he didn’t wash off his hands before he did that.”
She smiled grimly. “I guess you can put calamine lotion there, too.”

  “The phone hasn’t rung all morning,” Miz Demetrice lamented. “I want to pick it up just to see ifin there’s a dial tone, but the other agent they left here just stares at me.” She looked over her shoulder to see if the special agent was about and determined he wasn’t. “I think I might have run into that one somewhere before. He looks at me like I’m a criminal.”

  “Maybe he heard about Pokerama,” Bubba suggested.

  “Hush, it’s only illegal ifin you get caught,” his mother chastised. “That’s the great unwritten rule of Texas, you know.”

  “Have you seen what’s in your koi pond lately?” Willodean asked as she sat beside Bubba. One of her hands touched his shoulder, and she took a slug of Dr. Pepper with the other.

  “Well, I tell folks they shouldn’t go down that way—” Bubba stopped abruptly. “Do I hear a pickup truck coming?”

  Both women froze as they listened. Finally, Miz Demetrice asked, “What makes you think it’s a pickup truck, Bubba dearest?”

  “It sounds just like Fudge’s truck with a dead miss in one of the cylinders,” Bubba said and then he thought about it, realizing what that meant. “Oh no.”

  “Oh Lord,” Miz Demetrice prayed.

  “What?” Willodean asked.

  “If that’s Fudge’s truck then it could only be…”

  The noise abruptly stopped and there was the slamming of a vehicle’s door. Even through all of the walls and the length of the long hallway, they heard the glass of the truck window shatter. After the tinkle of glass faded away, they could hear someone saying loudly, “Now honey, it ain’t good to be all riled up in your condition! I’m shore that everything will be all right!”

  The front door burst open, and Bubba hoped that the hundred-year-old glass in the inserts would live through the incident. Feet thundered on the marble, and Bubba hoped the same could be said for the marble. The footsteps stopped abruptly.