“But Captain, I thought we were trying to save me.”
“Yeah, and I guess I did give you my word that I would do that…”
Notmie could tell that discovering the significance of what had just occurred was important to Captain Alex, who, after he had spoken, began to wiggle his fingers at Notmie and whisper, “Think of me, think of me, think of me…”
“Is that supposed to be some sort of subliminal message?” Notmie asked. “Because those are usually supposed to go under the other person’s radar, hence the ‘sub’ prefix.”
As soon as it’d slipped between his lips, his face froze, surprised at what had just come out of his own head. Something about it seemed correct, but he wasn’t really sure what a prefix was, and he wasn’t sure where he learned about that sort of thing.
Whoa, I never had that happen before…
He tried to figure out what had just happened, but before he could get to the bottom of it, Captain Alex said, “Wow, Notmie, you know French and Greek? You’re not nearly as stupid as you act.”
“German, and no. And I wish you wouldn’t think that your flattery is going to have any effect whatsoever on my decision to help you or not.”
Captain Alex made a feeble attempt at feigning shame. “Yeah, I’m sorry Notmie, you’re far too genius for my petty manipulations to have any sway. I’m sorry I underestimated you.”
“Darn straight you did. Wait. Are you trying to flatter me again?” Notmie narrowed his eyes on Captain Alex and scanned for sincerity.
“ Never! I would never try the same trick twice on you, Notmie. You’re far too wise and respectable and beautiful and smart and wise and respectable for anything like that to work.”
Notmie smiled.
“Yeah, I guess I am rather beautiful. Okay, I’ve decided to help you, Cap’n. What can I do?”
“Well, I’m thinking that if we wait until that French fellow leaves and then follow him in our limo, he might lead us to where there are answers. We’ll just have to be discreet.”
“Yeah, and since the limo’s black, they will never notice they’re being followed.”
“Exactly, Notmie, exactly. It’s foolproof. Now let’s go back to the table and sit down and be unsuspicious, ok?”
“Unsuspicious is my middle name,” Notmie said, leaning up against a shelf of French bread, which came crashing to the ground under his weight.
The two of them stared dumbly at the spoiled loaves of bread strewn across the dirty floor
“Heh,” Notmie said in an awkwardly loud voice as he looked around the restaurant at the faces staring at him, “that is the most unsteady bread rack I’ve ever had the misfortune of brushing up against,”—he pointed scornfully at the bread on the floor— “and trust me, I’ve bushed up against many-a-rack in my day, er, bread rack, that is.”
People kept staring as he continued on about his past history with bread racks.
“…Why, just the other day—”
He was about to continue before Captain Alex grabbed his arm and whispered, “You call that unsuspicious? Moron!”
They walked past all the staring customers and finally took a seat back at their table.
“It’s really a shame about the bread,” Notmie said after a long silence between them, “I mean that’s all just going to be thrown away now. Think of all the starving children it would have fed.”
“Notmie, will you shut up? This is no time to have charitable sentiments, and it’s your own dang fault that the dang thing fell down, not the manufacturer of the dang thing!”
“There he goes,” Notmie said to nobody in particular, shaking his head and staring toward the front door of the café.
Captain Alex forged on with his rant. “Yeah, you’re right, there I go! Do you understand why I might be a little irritated with you?”
“No, I mean, there goes Sinclair. He’s leaving, see?” Notmie pointed in the direction he was staring and sure enough, there went Sinclair and his two buddies strolling out the front door.
“Oh! Hurry! Get up! Let’s go!”
They hurried out the front door of the restaurant and stumbled around for a bit as their eyes adjusted to the sunlight.
“Ahh! It’s like Disco Ball Blindness!” Notmie shielded his eyes and flailed around for something to steady himself by.
“It’s like what?” Captain Alex was lost on this one. So far he’d been fairly successful with figuring out what Notmie was talking about, but not this time.
“Hey look! Sinclair has a limo too! And it’s black as well! Amazing!” Notmie exclaimed.
“Whoa, that is sort of a coinciden… Notmie, that’s our limo!”
And as it began to drive away, Captain Alex did one of the stupidest things humans are known to do out of desperation: he chased after it. Has no one realized that humans are easily outrun by cars? Well, Captain Alex, at least, hadn’t noticed this, and even after the limo was out of sight, he kept running, though it was in a very large circle, since he still favored his left leg after being hit by the limo earlier that day.
Notmie found this all very funny, and fell over laughing and holding his sides. (He actually landed on a rose bush, which stopped the laughing and caused him to whimper in pain and wonder where it had come from, since he swore it hadn’t been there just seconds before).
Part 9
Backseat Adventures
In all actuality, the rose bush had been there this whole time; Notmie had just been too wrapped up in all the excitement to notice. But he still said, “Wow! A magic rosebush!” before picking out a few thorns and jogging up to where Captain Alex now sat crumpled in the middle of the road.
Notmie felt that it would probably be best if he went and comforted his friend who was now in the fetal position and weeping like a baby.
“Cap’n, shouldn’t you move out of the middle of the road?” Notmie scanned for cars that might speed by without noticing the two of them hunched over on the ground.
“Ahh! Don’t touch me, Notmie!” Captain Alex’s arms sprang from the ground and began waving madly, trying to shake Notmie’s hand off of his shoulder.
“This is all your fault!” screamed Captain Alex with crazy eyes. “If you hadn’t gone and knocked over that stupid bread rack, we wouldn’t have missed the limo and we wouldn’t be stranded out in the middle of Paris!”
“Well,” began Notmie as he plucked a few thorns out of his cheek, “if you’ll just think logically about this whole thing, you might realize that there was really no fault on my par—”
“Raaaug!” Captain Alex sprang, wrapping his hands around Notmie’s throat and shaking violently.
As the two wrestled in the road, Notmie attempted to defend himself without much success.
“Captain, it’s not my fault!” was what Notmie meant to say, but what it came out as was a bunch of gurgling mixed with, “CaAaAaA-pin-not myeee—ult!”
Just when Notmie thought he might be about to meet his untimely death, Alex released his grip, clinging to Notmie’s shoulder and sobbing violently.
“Er… uh, it’s going to be all right, Captain,” said Notmie awkwardly, mechanically patting his new friend on the back, “we’re going to get through thi—aargh!” Notmie threw himself and Captain Alex out of the road just in time as a car came whizzing by.
The car screeched to a stop and then reversed until it had pulled up next to the duo. They could just make out two silhouettes in the front seat of the car, and as the window rolled down, the larger of the two (and indeed it was larger than most silhouettes tend to be) poked its head out the window.
“Are ya two fellas all right?” she asked in a gruff voice.
“Yeah,” said Captain Alex as he wiped the tears off of his face, “we’re just a bit stunned.”
“Did ya hear that, Hal?” said the woman to the small man in the driver’s seat. “Ya almost killed those two poor boys! Can ya imagine tha guilt I would’ve had to live with if ya had?”
“Ma, I gotta pee!” said a
voice from the backseat.
“Sue Ann! Ya better hush up this second. Don’t ya see I’m havin’ a conversation?” the woman yelled toward the back of the car.
“Ma, I gotta pee too!” said another voice.
“Billy, ya better just cross yer legs and hold it till I tell ya, ’ cause I’m tryin’ ta have a conversation with these here men!” replied the woman.
“But Ma—” was all the kid could get out before the woman stuck her plump arm into the back of the car and started flinging it around, looking to make contact with flesh.
Then she turned her attention again to Notmie and Captain Alex who were staring in surprise at the strange family.
She smiled, and as she did so, Captain Alex saw that she had more teeth than he’d expected her to; she seemed to have about six.
“So, what’re y’all two boys doin’ in tha middle of tha road in tha middle of nowhere all slumped over on each other for?” she asked.
Notmie and The Captain didn’t exactly know what to say, and their pause must have seemed even more suspicious, because the woman narrowed her eyes at them.
“There ain’t no funny business goin’ on here, is there?”
She scanned the pair, looking for understanding, but there was none, so she continued on. “Ya know what I mean, nothin’ funny here, is there? Ya two ain’t ‘partners’ are ya?”
“You mean like a superhero and his sidekick?” Notmie asked, assuming the woman was basing her questions on Captain Alex’s cape.
But it was Captain Alex who realized what was actually being implied, having had it implied toward him more times in his life than he’d like to admit, so it was he who came to their defense.
“Well, uh, no, I don’t believe so, I mean, in most senses of the word we might be, but I believe that in the sense you’re talking about—at least the sense I think you’re talking about—we’re most definitely not.”
The woman looked them up and down a few more times before asking them where they were headed.
“That’s actually a difficult question,” Notmie began, “you see, we don’t exactly know where we’re supposed to be going, but we’re on a mission.”
“Oh really?” The woman seemed a little too interested.
“No, haha, don’t be silly, Notmie,” Captain Alex said. “He’s a little mixed up, ma’am, you’ll have to excuse him.”
“From what I could see,” said the woman, “it wasn’t yer friend here who was cryin’ in the middle of tha road. Maybe it’s you who’s a bit mixed up.”
“Good point!” said Hal from the driver’s seat.
“Shut yer mouth, Hal, can’t ya see I’m tryin’ ta have a conversation?”
“Sorry, sugarlips.”
“So, y’all boys need a ride someplace?” she asked. “It’s tha least we can do for ya after my husband here almost hit ya with tha car.”
Notmie and The Captain looked at each other and shrugged.
“Sure,” started Captain Alex, “where are y’all heading?”
“A little west of Pottersville, just south of Tumbleweed.”
“Perfect!”
Notmie grabbed Captain Alex by the arm and pulled him back a few steps away from the car.
“Cap’n, how is that perfect? We’d just be heading right back from where we came. We don’t know where we should be going. We have no idea where the French dude went. We have no other leads. We’re pretty much screwed when it comes to knowing which direction we should be heading. What if we take this ride and head in the wrong direction? What’ll we do then?”
“Notmie, you raise a good point. Just trust me on this one, okay?”
Against his better judgment, which wasn’t great to begin with, Notmie agreed.
Captain Alex accepted the ride.
“Well then, why don’t y’all two just jump on in this here car and we’ll all have a fine ol’ trip together?” said the wife.
“Okay,” Captain Alex said, opening the back door and seeing three kids, nearly as plump as their mother, buckled up in the back seat, “but there doesn’t seem to be any room in the car for us.”
“Don’t be a dern fool! We can always make room!” she exclaimed. “Tha name’s Mae, by tha way.”
Captain Alex would have guessed “Bertha,” but “Mae” seemed about right, too.
* * *
As Notmie and Captain Alex sat elbow to elbow in the back seat with two of the three children, Mae fumbled over the map, trying to see around the child who was now sitting in her lap.
“Now, Bonnie, ya better just sit yerself still so that I can see this here map properly. Okay, Hal, looks like yer gonna wanna take a left on Highway 36 then go for a few miles before taking a right, then a left, then another right, and then another left onto Highway 226.”
“Pst! Notmie,” The Captain whispered, “those driving instructions don’t make any sense. I have this feeling she can’t read maps.”
“Uuuug! Man, Cap’n, your breath reeks of quiche!” Notmie exclaimed, fanning the air around his nose.
“Well, I did just eat quiche, and so did you, so who do you think you are? Your breath is pretty funky too, so don’t be talking about mine!”
“Ma,” complained Billy in the back seat, “somethin’ smells like a chicken’s be-hind and cheese!”
“Shut up back there, Billy, or else yer Pa’s gonna stop this car and give ya tha whoopin’ of yer life!”
“Pa couldn’t whoop me if he tried!” Billy replied.
It wasn’t so much what Hal said to his child, but the quiet, restrained manner in which he said it that was so chilling. “Yer darn right, I couldn’t whoop ya, Billy, but I sure could kill ya.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, does it?” Notmie whispered.
He was relieved when Captain Alex shook his head because it meant it wasn’t just his brain being slow again.
“Didja hear that, Ma?” Billy whined. “Pa said he was gonna kill me! Ya wouldn’t let that happen, wouldja, Ma?”
“I would if ya don’t shut yer pie hole!” she replied. “Right here! Right here! Dat gum, Hal, ya missed tha turn!”
“Ma, I gotta peeeeee!” Bonnie complained from her mother’s lap.
“No ya don’t, child.”
“But I really do! I do! I do! I do! I do!
“No, ya don’t!” yelled Mae, and Bonnie fell silent.
* * *
After they had all evacuated the car, they stood waiting on the side of the road while Mae tried to sop up the urine soaking into her pant legs.
Notmie watched the efforts for a minute before turning to Captain Alex and saying, “Cap’n, I’m not so sure we should keep riding with this family. They’re kind of… screwy.”
“I agree, Notmie, but there’s not a lot we can do. They’re going to where we need to be, so we might as well go along for the ride.”
“I guess you’re right. But they’re just taking us back to where we began. What ever happened to you trying to find out your little French mystery?”
“Sometimes you got to go back to the beginning and start all over when your options seem to dead end,” Captain Alex spoke, looking out over the bland, brown scenery.
“That doesn’t make any sense, Cap’n, but I guess you know what you’re doing, right?”
“Not at all, Notmie.” The Captain looked bravely into the distance. “Not at all….”
Part 10
Cop Stops and Schnapps
Hal had just finished putting the dried floor mat back in the car when he called over his shoulder, “Ya boys almost ready?”
“Now, Hal, don’t rush ’em, they’ve just had time to stretch their legs!” scolded Mae.
Hal, who had found himself lightly coated from head to foot with the drying urine of his daughter that he’d just spent half an hour cleaning, seemed to have had enough of his wife’s bossing. “Listen here, Mae, I ain’t meanin’ to hurry ’em, I just didn’t wanna stay here if they’s ready to go.”
“Ya sassin’ m
e, Hal? I may be yer wife, but I won’t hesitate to lay a hurt on ya!” And as she spoke, Mae raised her hand, winding up to land a nice little blow on her husband, but before she could, Notmie interrupted.
“We’re ready to go!” he said awkwardly and a bit too loudly.
“Right then,” said Mae, “Let’s load up again. Billy! If ya don’t get yer ass in tha car in five seconds, we’re leavin’ ya! Same goes for you, Sue Ann! Hal, where’s that tiny-bladdered Bonnie of ours? Bonnie! Get yer rear out of the road right now, or else I’m not gonna cry at yer funeral when ya get run over!”
“But Ma, there ain’t even no cars out on this road,” Bonnie protested.
“Don’t matter one inch. If there was a car, it would be sure to hit a little brat like you who can’t hold yer pee! Now, all of ya: get in this here car!”
The party loaded up and set out again, only now with the windows rolled down after whining from the kids who claimed the car smelled “like grampa after he’s been drinkin’.”
After a few more well-timed threats from Mae, the car was silent. Fifteen minutes passed before Notmie dared break the silence. “Cap’n,” he said, leaning close, “I’m feeling kind of car sick. I need a window seat or else I might throw up.”
“Ohh no you don’t,” Captain Alex replied, leaning toward Notmie to keep from being heard. “You saw what that crazy woman did to that poor child when she peed! There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that we’ll have a ride if you puke all over their car. Come to think of it, I don’t know if you’d even survive the whole thing without her beating you to death… Either way, you don’t get a window seat, and puking isn’t an option, so hold it in!”.
The Fraud Page 8
