∨ Possum Surprise ∧
36
Get Ready
It took a lot of hard planning and no small amount of beer, but the Possum Gras Planning Committee got things hammered out enough to give each member of the committee a list of things they were responsible for.
Taco Bob’s list had one of the most important things – making sure Doc’s place would be available and ready for the big party after the parade went through town. Figuring a surprise party was always the best kind – especially when it was the kind of party that was liable to get a bit out of hand and cause problems – Taco Bob avoided Doc’s place and headed for the real estate office instead.
“Afternoon, Dottie.”
“Taco Bob, come on in. What can I do for you?”
The possum rancher had a seat and held his hat in his hands. Possum Row’s most successful realtor sat behind her desk wearing reading glasses and continued to look over some papers.
“Dottie, me and the boys been wanting to have a party for Doc for a while now, and it looks like we might just pull it off. But we need a little help.”
Dottie glanced up for just a second before going back to the papers on her desk.
“A party for Doc? That’s nice of you.”
“Well, like I said, we been wanting to do it for a while, kinda try to do something nice for Doc since he’s always helping folks out and all.”
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. You and your men going to have a barbeque out at your place? What’s the name again? The Bar None Ranch?” Dottie looked closer at the document she was reading and made a note on a separate piece of paper.
“That was the name when I bought it. We thought that a mite negative, so we renamed it the Bar Is Open Ranch.”
Dottie underlined something and made another note.
“That’s nice.”
“Anyway, what we had in mind was a surprise for Doc, but not out at the ranch, more like at his place. There’ll be a few hundred people, a giant parade through town, carnival rides, contests of all kinds, fireworks – and if it’s anything like the last Possum Gras – likely a few fights and some small to medium structure and vehicle fires.” Dottie had stopped reading and was staring at her guest over her glasses with her hands flat on the desk and the pencil she’d been chewing on hanging out of her mouth. “We got most of the details for the parade, party, and emergency medical teams worked out, we just need to make sure Doc stays out in California long enough we can get everything ready and make it a big surprise.”
Dottie continued to stare. Finally, the pencil fell from her lip.
“You’re going to have a Possum Gras parade and then a party at Doc’s? And you don’t want him to know about it?” Dottie opened a drawer in the desk, took out a metal flask, and took a quick drink. She spun the top back on the flask and held it up.
“Snort?”
“Well, I – ”
Taco Bob caught the flask and took a drink himself.
Ten minutes later the possum rancher left the real estate office with a smile, a light whiskey glow, and a big check mark next to the first item on his list.
♦
“Turns out Doc was supposed to leave again tomorrow, but got a call this morning and is already on his way to California and won’t be back for at least a few days. So we got that going for us. I enlisted us some help to make sure he comes back at just the right time.”
The possum ranchers were all gathered on the front porch, hanging on every word. Taco Bob tilted back in his chair, looking proud of himself.
“And I picked up a bit of news about Doc’s place.” Everyone leaned in a little closer. “That rumor we been hearing about someone opening another sporting house in town?” Hazel leaned so close he fell of the porch handrail; he lay still on the floorboards so as not to miss a word. “Seems some company’s signed a contract on Doc’s place, a company owned by none other than Buck Kracker.” Everyone looked surprised, except for Mumbles who narrowed his eyes and started a low growl.
“Mhm mnm? Mhm mm!”
“He might try to pull it off, but if I was a betting man, I’d lay odds that big black limo been passing through town has something to do with it. Kracker might be working as middle man on the deal.”
“Mhm mm! Mhm m nmn mhn!” Mumbles made a slow movement across his neck with his index finger. Taco Bob held up a hand.
“Now, Mum. You know how excitable Hummer is. You tell him something like that and he’s liable to do something drastic.”
Mumbles grinned a scary smile while slowly nodding his head. He jumped up and started to run off in the direction of the stable, but Horse grabbed the back of his collar before the smaller man got off the porch. Horse held onto the struggling man and looked at Taco Bob for guidance.
“Horse, you best tie him to a tree until – ”
Just then the call to dinner came clanging from the back of the house and everyone forgot about what they were doing and broke ranks for the dining room.
∨ Possum Surprise ∧
37
Get Set
“Is this thing safe?”
“I reckon, it made it here.”
Doc looked over the pile of rusty metal, cracked rubber, and peeling duct tape sitting in a parking place at the airport. He took a wild guess.
“It’s a truck, right?”
“Skunk Johnson’s pickup, actually. Mine’s kinda loaned out.”
Taco Bob got in, but Doc continued to stand a few feet away, staring.
“Like I said – is it safe?”
“Well, there is a bit of an issue with the brakes.”
Amazingly, the truck started right up. Conscious of the time, Taco Bob leaned back in his seat and kicked open the passenger door for Doc.
“Hop on in, Doc.”
Doc carefully put his bags in the part of the pickup bed not yet rusted through, then climbed in. He noticed the absence of window glass.
“What do you do when it rains?”
“Beats me, I ain’t ever drove this contraption before coming out here to pick you up.” Taco Bob started grinding gears, looking for one that would catch. “Oh, I almost forgot. Doc, if you don’t mind, could you put that concrete block on the rope in back? I think we’re about ready here.” Doc put the block on top of his bags and jumped back in just as something in the transmission caught with a crunch and the truck lurched ahead over several parking curbs before Taco Bob finally got it pointed in the right direction. He’d had some practice on the way to the airport with timing the traffic lights for the least amount of braking, and started making good time heading for Possum Row.
“How’d your visit out there in Hollywood go?”
“The usual, and I don’t want to talk about it.” Doc pointed. “Pull in here and I’ll buy you a beer.”
“Doc, we kinda need to be – ”
Doc reached through the place where the back window would be and tossed the concrete block out. Between the block dragging, some screeching of what was left of the brakes, and a convenient dumpster, Taco Bob was able to stop the old truck not far from the backdoor of a bar on the bad side of Armadillo.
Before they could get inside, a helicopter roared by overhead going in the direction of Possum Row. Doc stopped walking and stared.
“Damn if that don’t look like that helicopter they had at the Gras a few years ago. Remember that? Dropped live possums with little parachutes over the crowd. Who would have thought the possums would try to climb the parachutes?”
“Yeah, that was pretty bad all right. Smashed the hell out of a bunch of cars and put three people in the hospital.” Taco Bob looked at his watch. “Doc, I need to be getting Skunk’s truck back and – ”
Doc reached for the door to the bar.
“You asked me, I’d say you’d be doing the man a favor if you didn’t bring that thing back. Come on inside and let me buy you a beer. I got women problems I need to air out.”
As soon as they got a seat Doc launched into the st
ory of Dottie. He told of the cancelled trip to the Star Trek museum when he’d had to leave town early, her calling him out in California to go on about real estate stuff and to schedule a meeting for that very evening, and most importantly – Doc’s uncertainty of where he stood with her.
The possum rancher listened as patiently and politely as he could under the circumstances. He glanced at his wristwatch.
“It’s two minutes later than the last time you looked at your watch. You need to lighten up, Taco. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so anxious.”
Doc leaned back in his chair and finished a glass of beer, then poured himself another from the pitcher. Taco Bob looked at his watch.
“I gotta visit the facilities.”
As soon as he got in the restroom, Taco Bob pulled out his cell and made a call.
“I got him, but he’s shanghaied me into a bar along the way. In spite of my telling him otherwise, the man seems to think you’re mad at him about something.” The exasperated yelling from the phone caused the possum rancher to take the phone away from his ear for a few seconds. When the yelling stopped, some instructions followed. Taco Bob headed back to join his friend.
“Doc, we gotta get on over to the Row. Skunk called while I was in the can and said there’s someone at your place needs to see you.”
“That so? Who?” Doc frowned and studied his glass of beer. “Probably someone wanting to borrow money. Oh, what the hell, let’s go. I could use a nap anyway, I never seem to sleep right in California.”
As soon as they got the truck going again Doc sat back in his seat and started working on his usual post-Hollywood foul mood. Before long they were coming up on the outskirts of Possum Row.
“If the sale of my place goes through maybe I’ll build a new place like I’ve been talking about. Something different, some kind of house this town hasn’t ever seen before. Possum Row could use some shaking up, anyway. I never lived in a place so stuck on keeping everything the same. There’s never any changes, never anything new, and there damn sure aren’t ever any surprises. Though I got to admit, they may be onto something about not wanting changes.”
Taco Bob drove around the big bank building on the corner just then and slammed into a stack of hay bales placed conveniently in the middle of the road. Dozens of colorful parade floats blocked their way, and hundreds of people cheered when they saw the pickup hit the hay bales. The crowd surged toward the old truck and carried Doc to the first float, which had ‘We Love Doc!’ written in gardenia blossoms across the front. A flabbergasted Doc Seymour was deposited on a king’s throne in the middle of the float to renewed cheers from the crowd. Besides the throne, thousands of flowers, and Doc, the only other thing on the float was a giant white cardboard box tied with a pink ribbon. At the crowd’s urging, Doc tore open the box and a beautiful, smiling woman dressed like an angel jumped into his arms – Dottie.
A drum major blew a whistle and the Screaming Pocket Gophers Marching Band launched into a rousing rendition of the theme from Jaws. The float lurched forward, sending Doc stumbling back onto the throne. Dottie jumped onto his lap and gave him a long kiss, which started the crowd cheering yet again.
∨ Possum Surprise ∧
38
Possum Parade
It was a beautiful early spring day for a parade. An intriguing combination of smells from the flowers, cotton candy, tractor fumes, and horse manure floated lazily in the air. Overhead the sky shined bright and clear, except for one small helicopter pulling a Dominos Pizza banner and a few dozen patient buzzards.
The street through the small town of Possum Row was filled with colorful floats, marching bands, horses, funny cars, odd animals, and odd people. The crowd along the road cheered, laughed, and sang. Children and adults alike clamored for the candies, prizes, and strings of beads thrown from the floats.
While Doc and Dottie waved from the lead float, Taco Bob joined up with some of the other possum ranchers on their float. Since the theme of their float had turned out to be ‘Recycle Roadside’ the possum ranchers wore their traditional ranching clothes and threw crushed beer cans, dented hubcaps, pieces of tire recaps, and dried roadkill to the perplexed crowd.
The bankers once again had the biggest and fanciest float, pulled by a brand-new shiny tractor and featured overweight men in expensive suits and pretty women dressed like lingerie models who threw handfuls of shiny replica silver dollars and thousands of credit card applications to the enthusiastic throng. A sign on the dentist’s float announced their theme to be, ‘Giving Back to the Community’. The float featured a giant tooth waving to the crowd and a handful of dentists surrounded by several shapely women in skimpy nurse outfits tossing real teeth to the shocked parade-goers lining the dusty street.
Horse and several others in their traditional possum-rancher attire walked along in the parade, grinning and waving and throwing candies to the crowd. A giant parade balloon nearly twenty feet long and shaped like a possum was tied to the big man’s belt.
Because of a special town ordinance Trapper Tom rarely came into town and spent most of his time at his fire-spotter tower out in the badlands. But he was allowed to come to town once a year for the Gras. As usual, he had pockets full of snakes and toads, clothes made from poorly tanned animal hides, Einstein hair, and B.O. that could peel paint off a battleship.
This year, instead of sneaking around through the crowd scaring people, he marched in the parade – scaring people. Skunk Johnson jumped off the possum float and ran up to the crusty old trapper, who was bent over in the middle of the street poking a stick around in a steaming pile of fresh horse manure.
“Yo, Trapper. You looking for something in particular? Or are you just enjoying the view?”
The cagey old guy gave Skunk a hard look.
“Yer that ant digger, ain’t ya? I never did like you.”
“Well, you ain’t exactly on my Christmas wish-list neither. I was just gonna say, if’n you don’t move yer bony old ass, that float there’s gonna run flat over you.”
The old man stood his ground and started to say something else, but Skunk dragged him out of the way of the cattleman’s float just in time. The old codger looked at the huge float and then at Skunk.
“I reckon you done saved me, young fella. Code of the West says now I gotta follow you around everwhere for the rest of my life so I can save you some day and get us squared up.” Skunk noticed a really bad smell that for once wasn’t coming from him.
“That ain’t really necessary. Just knowing I done my good deed for the decade is thanks enough for me.”
“Well then, let me at least give you this here as a token of my heart-felt appreciation.”
Trapper Tom stuck the wet end of his manure-probing stick in Skunk’s hand and scurried back to his place in the parade just in time to fling a few pieces of candy to a couple of little kids and a generous handful of small horned toads and lizards to a group of giggling teen-aged girls talking on their cell phones.
Skunk tossed the stick onto the cattleman’s float, wiped his hand on his shirt, and noticed a person about his height in the crowd dressed like a possum. The costume was not at all unusual at a Possum Gras, but the ten foot long string of firecrackers trailing behind was. The person in the possum costume saw Skunk looking and gave him the finger.
♦
Buck Kracker was not happy about his cattleman’s float being so close to the end of the parade. There’d been a delay due to some problems with getting his prize bull – Widowmaker – to hold still so his cowboys could secure a rope around his neck. By the time the enraged bull was tied to the center of the float and the paramedics had carried off one of the cowboys, Buck had lost his place up towards the front.
Buck wasn’t sure if it was the lingering aftereffects of the steak sauce he’d eaten a couple of days earlier, or the eye-crossingly bad smell coming from somewhere, but he suspected he was hallucinating. He kept seeing several sets of beady eyes looking out from the pockets of the
old man walking in front of his float, and Buck didn’t like it. He shook his head hard, then took a long drink from a bottle of French champagne before going back to throwing things to the crowd.
“Susie, you sweet thing, slide me another box of steaks over here. Thanks, sugarpuss.”
Before going back to throwing steaks to the crowd, Buck made a quick grope at the young woman he’d hired from the model agency. Susie decided that was it and told Kracker where he could shove the box of steaks before she bailed off the float. Kracker shrugged to one of the nervous cowboys in charge of holding Widowmaker.
“Must be a lesbian!”
Kracker grabbed a two-pound ribeye and slung it hard at the crowd lining the street. The big steak hit a kid square in the face and knocked him out of his wheelchair. The cowboys all busted out laughing, and one gave the thumbs up.
“Nice shot, boss!”
After Kracker got his laughter under control he noticed deputy Raddick’s horse easing over real close to his float and checking out the impressive undercarriage on his bull.
“Raddick, what the hell’s wrong with your horse?”
“Damned if I know. Come on Joel, leave that bull alone!”
Next was the float from Hummer’s, all made up like a movie set from Gone With the Wind. A sign on the front proclaimed their theme for the year to be: “Bringing up the Rear, But Never in the Rear!” When word spread about the coupons the girls on the float were tossing to the crowd, a small stampede of men broke out running towards the last float in the parade.
Things were going smoothly until someone dressed like a possum tossed a long string of lit firecrackers under the already angry bull riding on the cattleman’s float.
∨ Possum Surprise ∧
39
Mayor
Possum Surprise Page 12
