The Chupacabra tct-1

by Stephen Randel

  “Well,” began Kip.

  “No, no, no,” Polly interrupted. “First, come sit down over here.”

  They crossed the room and sat down on the red velvet love seat that was placed in front of the fireplace. Aunt Polly’s weight on the cushions pulled Kip closer to her than he would have liked.

  “Okay, now tell me all about New York,” Polly begged. “I just love New York. Adore it. Adore it. Adore it,” she ranted in her startling fast-paced manner of speaking. “Now mind you, I’ve never been, but I was going to go with some of my bingo girlfriends last summer to spend a week seeing Broadway shows, but Esther, that would be Big Esther, she’s one of my bingo girls, not Little Esther, oh, she’s one of my bingo girls, too, they’re not related, but Big Esther is plumb near six and a half feet tall, so we call her Big Esther so there’s no confusion with Little Esther, who ain’t nothing but a whisper of a thing. Anyway, Big Esther says we shouldn’t go to New York until the city’s murder rate declines for three straight years in a row, because two is a coincidence, but three is a trend, at least that’s what Esther says, Big Esther, that is, and with a group of vulnerable Christian ladies, you can’t be too careful. I watch the cable and it’s shocking, just shocking what this country is coming to. An unescorted lady can’t hardly venture out past sundown without fearing for her safety.”

  “Well, really, Aunt Polly,” Kip said, “the city, it’s really not that bad…”

  “And tell me about your love life!” Polly interrupted as she grabbed his hand. “I don’t see a ring on this finger,” she said devilishly. “Oh, my goodness!” Polly clasped her hands to her face. “You should come to bingo with me tonight. I’ve told my girlfriends all about you. And I’ve told them how handsome my favorite nephew is.” Polly pinched Kip’s cheek.

  “You just absolutely have to meet Big Esther and Little Esther, of course they’re not related, oh, yeah, I already told you about that. But anyway, Jolene and Miss Pearl, they’re my other bingo girlfriends; they’d love to meet you. And Jolene, she has this niece named Diane.” Polly grinned from ear to ear. “Diane works in a hair salon,” Polly smiled as she cupped the flaming orange curls of hair bursting from under her hat with her hands. “She does my hair, ain’t she fabulous? And she’s single,” Polly said with a sly grin on her face. “And what a sweet girl. As Jesus as my witness,” she placed her right hand over her heart, “I’ve never heard even one single swear word come out of her mouth, and working in a hair salon without even uttering one single, solitary G.D., you know that little angel is as pure as driven snow.”

  “I don’t know, Aunt Polly,” Kip hesitantly replied. “I was kind of thinking about going downtown tonight to visit an old friend.

  “Well, that just works out great, sugar! The bingo is right downtown. I can pick you up and drop you off to meet your little friend when we finish. Don’t worry. We don’t stay late. We refined ladies prefer to play our cards and leave early. If you stay too late,” Polly whispered, leaning into Kip’s ear, “the crowd gets liquored up and rowdy. You can’t hardly hear your numbers being called. We’ll be gone by eight. I promise. And then you can meet your little friend.”

  “Aunt Polly. Really, I don’t know…”

  “Really, I insist,” interjected Polly. “I’d feel so much safer with my big, strong, handsome nephew escorting me. These days downtown Austin is plumb full of drunken fraternity boys on Friday nights. They roam the streets making a clamor as they stumble their way to the bars and dens of ungodliness on Sixth Street.”

  “But, Aunt Polly, you see…”

  “An unescorted woman on a Friday night in downtown Austin!” Polly again interrupted. “Well, she’s just asking to be taken advantage of by perverts.”

  “Well, okay, if you really feel that way,” Kip reluctantly agreed. “But only if we don’t stay too late.”

  “Perfect, perfect, perfect!” Polly squealed. “This will be so much fun Kip. You’re going to love my bingo girlfriends! Not too late. I promise. Jesus as my witness.”

  “Groceries are put away,” said Bennett as he entered the parlor. “Polly, here’s your lemonade. You feeling better?”

  “Positively!” Polly gushed. “Kip has kindly agreed to be my bingo escort this evening.”

  “Well, ain’t that something,” Bennett chuckled as he handed Polly the glass.

  “Dad, you wouldn’t you have any interest in joining us…would you?” Kip asked hopefully.

  “That some kind of trick question?” Bennett growled as he plopped into the chair on the other side of the room and pulled out his pipe. “I’d rather be stripped butt naked and tied to a fire ant hill.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Bingo!

  The late afternoon sea breeze fluttered the thin red drapes in the open windows of an isolated beach house set along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Inside the house, a telephone was ringing. A heavyset drug cartel lieutenant sitting in the open living room of the beachside home reached to answer it.

  “Hello,” the man said into the phone.

  “Is everything in place?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.

  “Everything is ready,” the heavyset man replied as he watched the waves roll gently onto the shore outside the house. “Preparations in Houston and Guatemala are complete. I just confirmed it. All we need is for your man to make the delivery on time.”

  “He’ll make it,” the voice on the phone replied.

  “We’ve never moved a shipment this way before, and never one this big.”

  “He’ll make it, but I want your men to be extra careful,” the voice said.

  “Security at the ports shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “I’m not talking about the port authorities,” the voice said. “I’m talking about the other cartels. Outside of Juarez, another shipment was taken in the desert. Some people seem to think we’re responsible.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” the heavyset man replied. “We don’t even have any men there.”

  “Not that we knew of, but I’m afraid we did.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Right now, nothing,” the voice said. “Just make sure that the shipment gets here. Once we have it, if the other cartels want to go to war, then we’ll go to war. And once we have the shipment, I’ll take care of our friend who is causing all these problems for us in the desert. Call me when you have everything loaded for delivery. I’ll be at the ranch.”

  “Sí, Padre,” the heavyset man said as he hung up the phone.

  • • •

  Late the next afternoon, Aunt Polly picked Kip up in front of the big white house in her Mary Kay pink Cadillac. She was wearing the same floral dress as the day before, Max’s muddy paw prints almost cleaned away. Without her big white hat, the enormous mane of curly red hair bloomed in every direction like a crazy clown wig.

  “Hop on in, sugar,” Polly said as she rolled down the driver’s-side window. “We don’t want them starting without us.”

  Kip plopped into the white leather passenger seat of the hideously colored car while Polly peeled out from the curb in a cloud of dust before he even had a chance to close the door behind him. Polly drove them toward downtown, traveling well in excess of the speed limit and rarely paying notice to pedestrians, other motorists, or traffic signs. Kip reached for his seatbelt as Polly checked her makeup in the vanity mirror. Failing to notice the traffic light turning red in time, Polly laid on the horn while the crossing traffic screeched to a halt as she swerved left and right past several cars that were already halfway through the intersection.

  “I declare!” exclaimed Polly as she retrieved her lipstick from her purse. “Some people in this town just don’t know how to drive.”

  Polly barreled down the road, weaving back and forth between the lanes as she applied another garish coat of red lipstick to her already shellacked lips. Placing the lipstick back in her purse, she ins
pected herself again in the mirror, puckering her lips and sucking in her cheeks like a fish.

  “Perfect,” she approved with a smile. “Can’t go to bingo looking like some kind of dirty-legged streetwalker.”

  After a few more blocks of driving, Kip’s right foot was cramping up from continually pressing down on the imaginary brake pedal he envisioned on his side of the floorboard. Reaching again into her purse, Aunt Polly pulled out a bingo marker.

  “Here, sweetie,” Polly said as she handed the marker to Kip. “I want you to use my lucky pink bingo dauber. It gets a bingo almost every night; well, it’s been on a bit of a cold streak lately, but almost every night. Although, just between you and me, I think it ain’t the dauber. I think that Penny ain’t being straight with me. She’s the stuck-up old coot selling the card stacks at the door. I think she’s purposely holding out on me because my pralines beat hers in this year’s Travis County bake-off. I just know she’s manipulating my numbers.”

  “Well, Aunt Polly, I’m sure if you kept track of the numbers called and gave your old cards to Avery, he could use his setup to perform some kind of regression analysis and determine whether you’re being cheated or not.”

  “Avery!” Polly screamed. “I wouldn’t ask his opinion about anything,” she continued as she rolled her eyes. “That boy is touched and no doubt probably touching himself as we speak.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kip replied, chuckling. “He is definitely a bit of a character.”

  “Now, then,” Polly said as she flew through another traffic light, just turning red. “Before we get to the bingo, you have to know your proper etiquette. First, absolutely no ‘Jumping the Gun,’ that’s calling a bingo before the caller says the number. Some people call a bingo when the number is posted on the big board but hasn’t been officially announced by the caller yet. Always wait for the caller,” she added as she wagged a finger in Kip’s face. “Makes me furious when people don’t!”

  “I’ll try to remember.”

  “Second, no ‘Calling a Falsie.’ That’s calling a bingo when you don’t really have one. Miss Pearl gets particularly agitated with Falsies. This one time, she tore up her cards after this man called a bingo, only to find out that drunken cowboy had mismarked his numbers. If the floorwalkers, they’re the ones that check the cards and confirm your bingo, hadn’t stepped in to restrain her, she would have knocked that S-H-I-T kicker’s head plumb all the way to Round Rock. Oh, and speaking of Miss Pearl, if we get there first, mind you don’t sit in her lucky seat. I’ll be sure to point it out. This one time, some rookie, not one of the regulars, took her seat by accident and it dang near got ugly.”

  “Don’t take Miss Pearl’s seat. Check, got it.”

  “The final rule, and this one is real important, don’t go making lots of noise or commotion while the caller is announcing the numbers. My bingo girlfriends and I take this one real serious. Nothing worse than being distracted when you’re playing multiple cards.”

  Kip grabbed onto the dashboard for support as Polly took an abrupt right turn, passing through a stop sign and bouncing the Cadillac’s right rear tire over the curb.

  “Now when I say don’t make a racket,” Polly continued as she honked twice at the car in front to pull over for her to pass, “I don’t mean you can’t talk. In fact, the girls and I, that’s Big Esther and Little Esther, they’re not actually related, and oh, I told you that already, Miss Pearl and Jolene, we take turns calling the numbers back with our little nicknames.”

  “Nicknames?”

  “Nicknames for the numbers. It’s like B-46 is called ‘In the Sticks’ because it rhymes. Get it?”

  “Sure.” Kip nodded.

  “And I-22 is ‘Two Ducks on the Pond’ because the twos look like curved duck necks. You’ll catch right on in no time.”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  “But even though we call our numbers back, we keep our voices down so we don’t disturb the players like some of the riffraff do. They don’t sell alcohol at the bingo, but it’s BYOB, so some of the lushes that show up bring their own booze and get right pickled. Hold on, dear.”

  Kip mashed his imaginary brake pedal again as Polly navigated another intersection. Wish I’d known that before, he thought, as he wondered if he could convince Polly to stop at a liquor store so he could pick up a fifth of bourbon to get him through the evening.

  Polly put the car into a power slide as she tore into the bingo hall parking lot and came to a screeching halt in a handicapped space. Leaning over across the seat, she pressed her ample bosom into Kip’s lap as she reached for the handicapped parking tag in the glove compartment.

  “My arthritic hip qualifies as a disability,” she said as she hung the tag on the rearview mirror and rolled herself out of the car.

  Kip took the pink marker and followed Polly as she wobbled into the bingo hall on her strained stilettos.

  “What in the hell am I doing here?” he whispered under his breath.

  “Penny,” Polly said to the frowning grey-haired woman sitting at a folding table at the entrance to the hall. “I’d like to introduce you to my escort this evening. This handsome gentleman is Kip. He’s my absolute favorite nephew and will be joining the girls and myself for our bingo. He’s just in from New York where he’s one of those fancy high investment gurus, and super successful, I might add.”

  “Charmed,” a clearly perturbed Penny deadpanned without looking up from the Cat Fancy magazine she was reading. “What’ll you have?”

  “Oh, the usual. Plus the same for my nephew.”

  “Forty a piece,” Penny replied as she pushed the stacks of cards across the table while still reading her magazine.

  “Here, let me get this, Aunt Polly,” Kip said as he reached for his wallet and pulled out four twenty-dollar bills.

  “Oh, bless you, sugar.” Polly reached up and pinched Kip’s cheek. “Penny, didn’t I tell you he was successful?” Polly beamed. “Now, remember, Penny, you’ve got another whole eight months to perfect your praline recipe if you want to keep me from defending my bake-off title next year.”

  Pretending not to hear, Penny placed the money in a metal lockbox on the table and returned to thumbing through her magazine.

  “See that,” Polly whispered into Kip’s ear as they walked into the main hall. “I told you she was a sore loser. Her pralines taste like plastic.”

  The cavernous hall was brightly lit with fluorescent lighting and filled with long rows of tables. Up front, a small stage held the caller’s podium and the ball machine that randomly selected the numbers. A large electronic board for posting the numbers was mounted to the wall behind the stage.

  The hall was beginning to fill with patrons as Polly dragged Kip down the main aisle. Spotting the girls, she stopped and hastily put her arm in the crook of Kip’s as he reluctantly escorted her down the aisle, wondering what he’d gotten himself into.

  “Oh, ladies,” Polly beamed as she and Kip reached the row of chairs near the middle of the hall the ladies always sat in on bingo nights. “It’s my pleasure to introduce you to my nephew, Kip.”

  “Why, he’s just as handsome as you promised,” Jolene, the peroxide-blonde cougar purred as she extended the back of her hand for Kip to kiss. “What a pleasure to meet you.” She slyly winked at him as Kip bent down to peck her perfectly manicured hand.

  “And this right here on the end is Miss Pearl,” Polly said, pulling Kip away from Jolene’s ever tightening grasp. The short, thin, grey-haired black woman in the baby blue dress nodded in his direction as she peered out from under the brim of her white hat and examined Kip up and down through her wire-rimmed Coke-bottle glasses.

  “He can stay as long as he knows the rules and don’t make a commotion,” Miss Pearl said, glaring at Kip from her lucky seat on the aisle.

  “Oh, my stars, Miss Pearl,” Polly said sarcastically. “You’re one to talk about making a commotion. And down there is Big Esther and Little Esther,” Polly added, p
ointing to the tall, ostrich-like woman and short, pear-shaped woman knitting away furiously next to her.

  “No relation,” Big Esther said, her beak-shaped nose seeming to look down on Kip even though she was seated and he was standing.

  “Howdy there,” Little Esther said to Kip without stopping her knitting. “Come on and sit down. The bingo is just about to start.”

  Kip and Polly slipped down the row of chairs and took the two that had been tipped forward against the table reserved for them.

  “Now, Kip, get your cards all spread out so you can scan them quickly,” Polly instructed. “You have to be organized to win at bingo.”

  Kip complied with Polly’s advice and arranged the cards neatly in front of him. Scanning the room, he noticed a hunched-over elderly man with a pair of enormous hearing aids struggling up to the podium with his walker.

  “That’s Old Man Handlebaum,” Polly explained. “He’s the caller. He doesn’t really hear that well but has a beautiful voice for calling the numbers. If you get a bingo, really yell it out; otherwise, he might not hear you.”

  Kip nodded, noticing the attractive young woman wearing a red sequined evening gown with a white silk sash across her chest announcing her as Miss Georgetown. The blonde woman’s contest smile took up most of her face as she stood with a microphone clutched in both hands, her tiara sparkling.

  Old Man Handlebaum eventually scooted his walker up to the podium and reached to adjust the microphone, sending a screeching wail of feedback throughout the room, causing most of the crowd to wince and cover their ears.

  “Evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Old Man Handlebaum greeted the participants in his deep baritone voice, which seemed more appropriate for a blues singer than a bingo caller. “We’ll begin this evening with a special guest.” He turned and extended his hand toward the perpetually smiling woman. “I’d like ya’ll to give a big Texas welcome to Miss Chrissie Lynn Spotsville, the recently crowned Miss Georgetown.” The room filled with applause for the young woman. The beauty queen alternated between dainty pageant waves and blown kisses to the crowd. “Chrissie Lynn will be competing later this year in the Miss Texas Pageant,” the caller continued. “But tonight, she’ll be assisting me in drawing the numbers for the bingo. However, before we begin, she has most graciously agreed to sing for us her stunning rendition of ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas.’ Take it away, Chrissie Lynn!”