by C. L. Bevill
Bubba blinked tiredly. Someone had said something about some kind of festival, but he hadn’t paid much attention. His mind had been calculating how much he had to pay the hospital and how much he had to pay Lawyer Petrie and how much he needed to pay the veterinarian, hopefully having enough left over to purchase groceries to slip into the Snoddy’s pantry in the big house. His mother would happily feed Bubba without complaint, but he didn’t feel right about that, so he continued to buy canned and dry goods that wouldn’t spoil. He also periodically slipped twenty dollar bills into the purses of his mother and Miz Adelia when he thought he could get away with it, but that had been less and less of late.
In the midst of mentally counting his pennies, Bubba looked up and saw the mammoth-sized face of Judge Stenson Posey grinning out at him. The billboard had been mounted over the second-floor windows of the building containing Carla’s Hair Do’s and Bill’s Stationery. Bill had gone out of business three years before and moved to Puerto Vallarta to start a bed and breakfast there. (Reputedly, clothing was optional at the B&B.) The door of the former business had a realtor’s sign on it, but Carla was still cutting and snipping to her heart’s content. In fact, she had added a nail salon in one corner of her half of the bottom floor. Miz Demetrice had shown him her tiger-striped, inch-long nails a month before.
Bubba hadn’t realized that the judge had such a large smile. It reminded Bubba of the voracious snarl of a vindictive boar that had once charged him. Bubba had wandered off the beaten path on his way down to Sturgis Creek to do some fishing and interrupted a sounder of boars. They had taken exception to his disruption, and Bubba had been forced to climb an oak tree, which was no mean feat considering that the oak tree wasn’t full-sized and tended to lean to one side with the onslaught of his weight. However, some of those boars had tusks that would rip an artery into mincemeat.
But the judge didn’t have tusks, just the big smile. Election time again? Bubba rubbed his head. His stomach was hurting because he had skipped lunch, and his head was starting to react to the lack of nutrition. Add on all the other stressors and Bubba thought he was getting a migraine. Or I’m becoming a hypochondriac. Either one.
During an intermittent speed-up, the driver of the Nissan Cube in front of him slammed on his brakes. Bubba slammed on his brakes, but the brakes sank into the floor, and the pitiful noise repeated itself in spades. Ol’ Green thought about stopping and apparently decided it was too much of an effort.
People all around turned to look at the noise. Seconds of time magically elongated, and he attempted to figure out if he should hit the Nissan Cube, which was likely made of plastic from top to bottom, or the crowd of people who stopped to stare or the telephone pole which had a sign on it that said “Festival ToNITE! People ARE Dying to Attend!”
Bubba saw Stella Lackey holding onto the arm of her son who was visiting from New Orleans. As she watched Bubba’s truck, her dentures slipped out of her mouth and fell to the sidewalk. Tom Bledsoe, who had recently gotten out of jail, had his hand in the back pocket of a pair of pants that were not his own pair of pants. Tom hesitated mid pick-pocket to goggle at Bubba. Melvin Wetmore, who was the mechanic from Bufford’s Gas and Grocery and who, with each arm, was holding onto two curvy blondes in their twenties, turned his head, and his eyes widened behind his large black-framed glasses. Bubba would have marveled that a balding and cross-eyed man in his fifties could pick up such younger, cute women, but Melvin was like catnip to kitties.
Then Bubba took out the telephone pole with the front passenger side fender of the Chevy. The metal crumpled with a shriek of outrage. The pole made an ominous cracking noise, and the entire crowd of people moved en masse out of the range of its impending plummet.
The telephone pole creaked again, and the crowd went, “Oooooh.” The creak slowly drew to a wary silence and nothing followed.
Bubba peered upward and saw that the wires had kept the pole from falling on the building that housed Carla’s Hair Do’s and Bill’s Stationery.
I kilt the telephone pole, he thought woefully. Ifin it had blood and guts, it would have strewn them all over the sidewalk and them people and probably the street, too. Good thing it don’t.
Then the truck made another heart-wrenching screech that had several people stepping back in alarm. It chugged painfully, and Bubba’s stomach dropped down a few inches. Finally, it snapped audibly as if someone broke a large pencil, and died.
There was a long moment of utter silence where everyone in the vicinity processed the information.
“Say, Bubba,” Melvin said, “you forget to put the seal in the transmission?” He pinched both blondes at the same time, and they giggled in stereo.
The driver from the Cube peered out of his window. “Did I do that?”
“Bubba’s brakes failed,” Stella Lackey called. “Any fool could see that.” She reached down to pick up her dentures, and her son visibly winced. “Three second rule,” she cackled at her son and shoved the dentures into her mouth, adjusting them with the tip of her index finger.
Bubba sat in the cab for a moment wondering how much a telephone pole was going to cost. If a cell phone cost $400 and a parking enforcement boot cost $800, then a telephone pole had to cost about $2000, or at least it did in Bubba’s sardonic computations. Maybe $4000 with all those wires going to and fro, and hey, all the labor involved to put it back the way it’s supposed to be.
He clambered out, and the driver from the Cube pulled his head back in at the sight. Bubba, after all, was six feet four inches tall and weighed in at two hundred forty pounds, most of which was muscle. Certainly he wasn’t the tallest man in the county, but Cube’s driver didn’t know that. Because Bubba was frowning furiously, the driver of the Cube apparently did not think that was a good sign.
“Jeez,” the driver of the Cube said, hurriedly rolling up his window. Bubba ignored him and walked around to survey the damage to the front right fender of the Chevy.
I kin fix that, Bubba decided. A little pounding. A lot of Bondo. A lot of paint. He reached down and gave a mighty yank. The metal of the fender squealed chillingly and popped back out. Now I kin even drive home, ifin I can get the engine to start again. And I remember to glide to a stop because something is definitely wrong with my brakes.
Bubba looked around and sighed. Most of the townspeople and various visitors were waiting for the fireworks to begin. He rolled his eyes and thought he should call the police. The police meant he might get a visit from the gorgeous sheriff’s deputy, Willodean Gray. Indeed, she didn’t necessarily work in the city proper, but as it was crowded and all, one never knew. The city of Pegramville could have asked for extra crowd control from the Pegram County Sheriff’s Department. Bubba wasn’t due to see Willodean until the next day, but the possibility of the event happening sooner brightened his already dismal day.
People still stared. Bubba stared back. People looked away or at the photographs of hair in Carla’s Hair Do’s windows or at the fascination that was their shoelaces.
“You okay, Bubba?” Herbert Longbloom, owner of the local five and dime store, asked. “You want I should call an am-boo-lance?” He held up his cell phone in demonstration of a possible call.
“I reckon not,” Bubba said back. Then he looked at the telephone pole again. “But I think the telephone pole needs the EMTs. Maybe you should call the telephone company.”
Herbert gave the telephone pole a dogged look and went to work on his cell phone.
Bubba sat down on the bench that sat in-between the sidewalk and the street. Ten years earlier, the town council had decided to install park benches all along Main Street in anticipation of a bus service that had never appeared. The iron of the benches was rusting, and the wood was splintered, but it was still hardy enough to hold a big man.
The man sitting on the other side of the bench didn’t move.
Bubba sat and put his arms behind his head as he stared at Ol’ Green. “Say, you don’t mind ifin I sit a spell, do
you, Lloyd?” Bubba asked for it was none other than Lloyd Goshorn sitting on the bench beside him. Lloyd was the town’s gangly handyman and avid chain-smoking individual who lived in a shack half of the time. When it was really hot, sometimes he slept in the creek, covered with mud. How he managed to avoid drowning in the creek, Bubba did not know. Once Lloyd had been mistaken for the Fouke Monster down from Arkansas, and his buttocks had been peppered with rock salt. He had told that story so many times that people had started calling him the Sturgis Creek Monster, but it had died away quickly.
Lloyd didn’t say anything, which was odd because Lloyd loved to talk. Recently he loved to talk about Bubba and Willodean’s marriage, which kept growing in tall-tale fashion, and which hadn’t actually happened. Yet, Bubba added hopefully.
“Come on, fella,” Bubba said, “you ain’t still holding that running you down in the street thing against me, right? I dint hit you. I avoided you by at least a foot.”
Lloyd didn’t say anything.
“Well, maybe six inches,” Bubba allowed. “I did think of it, but it ain’t in me to hit a defenseless man with a vehicle. I don’t go to jail unlessin’ I absolutely have to go.”
Lloyd didn’t say anything.
Bubba turned to look at Lloyd and immediately noticed that the man was relaxed in the seat with one hand wrapped around the iron arm of the bench. The other arm laid across his legs with a smoldering cigarette in between his fingers. His head lolled back against the top of the bench, and his eyes were closed as if he was asleep. Bubba didn’t really pay attention to that. Instead his eyes went to the large knife handle that protruded from Lloyd’s chest. Blood stained his front as it made its way down his button-down shirt.
Bubba leapt to his feet and bellowed, “Oh God, not another one!”
Someone else in the crowd caught sight of the knife in Lloyd’s chest and shrieked, “THERE’S BEEN A MURDER!”
And that’s when the fireworks really began.
Chapter Two
Bubba and the Chain-Smoking,
Gangly, Irritating Dead Man
Friday, August 17th
There weren’t really fireworks. A woman screamed in the back of the crowd. Someone else yelled, “HOT DAMN!” A third somebody said, “No one move! I’ve got my iPhone out! I’m not afraid to use it!”
Bubba simply stood next to the bench upon which the mortal remains of one Lloyd Albert Goshorn rested and stared. Bubba might have been in shock and frozen in place. In fact, all he could do was wonder what it was that he had done that warranted such karma. Furthermore, he wondered what it was that Lloyd had done that warranted such pointy chest-penetrating karma.
Lloyd had been born and raised in Pegram County, and he had been an insatiably talkative man. Although he had been a gossip of the worst sort and not one to mind minor details like the truth, Bubba couldn’t imagine why someone would feel the urge to stab the man through the chest. Not just with an average-sized knife, but what with looked like an oversized machete, judging by the size of the handle, Bubba thought numbly. Doc Goodjoint’s goin’ to have to use some leverage to get that out.
“DIBS!” someone snarled right next to Bubba. He looked over and saw a man in his forties with a bad comb-over pulling a large blue notepad out of a tote. The notepad’s cover with embellished with a large sparkling skull and crossbones. He yanked out a similarly decorated ballpoint pen and thumbed open the notepad.
“I was going to say dibs,” a woman nearby complained. Her black hair was cut in a pageboy style, and she wore a t-shirt that said, “Murder, she didn’t write.”
“He’s all mine,” the comb-over said firmly. “You can be my assistant.”
“Okay, who gets to call the coroner?” the woman with the murder t-shirt asked.
“You can,” the comb-over decided magnanimously.
“Great,” the t-shirt said and pulled out her cell phone. She pushed a few buttons and began talking. “Murder most foul on Main Street and…? What’s the cross street?”
“Manson,” Bubba said automatically.
“Manson,” the t-shirt chortled. “My name is Edwina Kemper and you’re…” she motioned at the comb-over.
“Henry H. Holmes,” the comb-over said. “You can call me H.H.”
“Henry H. Holmes is the primary,” Edwina said into the phone. She looked at Lloyd’s corpse and said, “The victim is a skinny man in his fifties.” She bent to get a better look at the knife handle. “He has a knife in his chest,” she added proudly. “I suspect he might have been stabbed.”
H.H. nodded firmly. “Big-ass knife,” he agreed.
Bubba didn’t move.
Another man stepped in between the bench and Ol’ Green and took a picture of Lloyd’s body with his Droid.
Bubba made a choking noise. “What is wrong with you people?” he asked after he cleared his throat.
H.H. looked up from making an impromptu drawing. “Nothing wrong with this,” he said. “Say, Edwina, you want to write witness names down. Start with this big fella here.” He motioned at Bubba.
“What’s your name?” Edwina asked as she pulled the exact same notepad out of her backpack.
“Bubba,” Bubba said.
“Really?” Edwina dug for a pen and finally emerged with a red one. “Really? We’re out in the country, but really?”
Stella Lackey stepped up. Her dentures rattled about in her mouth before she managed to say, “His name is Bubba. Bubba Snoddy, and the dead fella is, uh, what was that name again? Bob Pullifinger. Right. He’s a local handyman and playboy.”
“He was a local handyman and playboy,” H.H. amended. “Now he’s a dead local handyman and playboy. Murder by knife. Into his chest. Bet it went right into his left atrium and dissected his mitral valve.”
“What did you see, Bubba?” Edwina asked.
“Mostly the back end of a Nissan,” Bubba said. “Then a telephone pole. I dint see an atrium or a mitral anywhere. And his name ain’t Bob Anysuchthing.”
Stella interjected, “Sure it is, Bubba. Bob Pullifinger. My right hand to God.”
“Did you see who killed the handyman/playboy?” H.H. asked.
Bubba glanced at poor Lloyd. Next thing that would happen was that Big Joe Kimple, Pegramville’s Chief of Police, would come and say Bubba did it. Men with steel-toed boots would likely jump on Bubba as if he were “it.” Then Bubba would get to go see the inside of the city jail again, unless the city jail was full, and then he would go to the county jail and visit with Tee Gearheart, the county jailor. If Bubba was really lucky it would be all-you-can-eat taco night at the jail, and Newt Durley, the town’s habitual drunk, would be blissfully absent via rehab or some other jail.
“I dint do it,” Bubba said automatically. I should just get a t-shirt that says that. Mebe a tattoo across my forehead, too.
Edwina eyed him suspiciously. “Only guilty people say they didn’t do it.”
“We need a suspect list,” H.H. announced. “Bubba’s on top.”
“But I just crashed my truck,” Bubba protested. “I dint have time to murder nobody.”
“A likely excuse,” Edwina said. “Where were you when the victim was being stabbed?”
“When was Lloyd, er, Bob, stabbed?” Bubba asked, feeling as if he had landed on Mars, and the Martians were crowding around him issuing mandates about the size of his cranium. At any moment they would be pulling out ray guns or something with which to probe him.
H.H. said, “Wait.” He reached down and pulled out a piece of paper from the pocket on the front of Lloyd’s shirt. The sheet had magically avoided any of the blood spills. He unfolded it even while Bubba said, “You should let the po-lice do that.”
“We don’t need no stinking police,” H.H. laughed and read the paper. Edwina moved to peer over his shoulder. Several interested parties in the growing audience began to take more pictures with their phones, and, in the case of one teenager, a palmcorder gleefully recorded everything in digital form.
&nbs
p; “See. Robert I. Pullifinger aka Bob. Time of death was seventeen hundred thirty hours,” H.H. announced. He glanced at his Timex. “It’s seventeen hundred thirty-five hours now. Bubba can’t be the killer,” he professed boldly. There was a massive, coordinated sigh of dismay. He looked around as if several dozen people weren’t looking at them and avidly listening. Then he stared at Bubba as he asked, “Were you supposed to crash the truck right here?”
“Maybe he stabbed the handyman/playboy and ran to get to his truck but was stopped by traffic,” Edwina suggested. “The traffic could be part of it.”
“How can you possibly know the exact time of death?” Bubba asked.
“It says so on the paper,” H.H. declared as if Bubba was mentally incompetent.
“Wait!” someone yelled from the audience. Bubba looked and saw that it was Doris Cambliss. She was an elegant woman in her fifties who looked years, if not a decade, younger than she actually was. Dressed in a pale yellow silk blouse and matching trousers, she didn’t really fit into the crowd. Doris ran the local bed and breakfast, the Red Door Inn. Once it had been an infamous bordello, but Doris had finally given up the ghost, so to speak.
She pushed to the front of the crowd and said to H.H. and Edwina, “I saw an albino with blood stains limping down the street! He was mumbling something about getting even with the handyman/playboy.” Her words were stilted as if she had practiced them. “He had a flyer that said ‘Beware of the one-eyed little person at the Belly-Up Saloon.’”
Bubba stared at Doris, aware that his mouth was open and that any amount of flies could buzz right in and out at will.
Doris paused for breath and then deliberately winked at Bubba.
Bubba sat back down on the bench next to the dead man. “Ya’ll are crazy,” he said.
