Uncertain People

The prequal to 'Uncertain Times' (published in 2008)

Uncertain Times started off with a dream sequence about a promising sexual encounter at an Arkansas county fair. Uncertain People starts off with the same scene . . . only it’s no longer a dream. 

Excerpt from Uncertain People:

I walked down the miniature midway thinking about Janie Lou’s statement that Mountain Home was a small town. That statement was true enough. Mountain Home had an official population of about 3,000, but it looked a lot smaller. It was a squashed-up
little town, with one main highway in and out, connecting Northwest Arkansas with Northeast Arkansas. There was also a cut-off highway that angled in a northerly and southerly direction. It had as many mountainous switchbacks as on a Forest Service road in the Rockies and was mainly used by locals to get from here to there. Or there to here.

Most of Mountain Home's businesses were clustered cheek-to-jowl around an old courthouse square. The square's main attractions were a veterans memorial, a rusted flagpole, and a pigeon roost that had once been used as a cannon. At some
point after the Civil War the cannon had been painted black. Streaks of pigeon poop gave it the appearance of an oversized
licorice stick gone bad.

A handful of mom-and-pops were strung along the highway running from Harrison in scattergun order. Zoning ordinances had come late to this shirt-pocket corner of Arkansas backwoods. Any building, regardless of composition or design, was
grandfathered in when city fathers decided that, maybe, operating a motel out of three double-wides or having a '50s style school bus subbing as a small engine repair shop might not be considered progressive.

I stopped at a carnival concession stand and plunked down a half-dollar for a corn dog and lemonade. The items came to forty cents and I told the carny to keep the change. He used his ferret face to give me a look like I had just spit on his shoes.

Prah-Probably on the lah-lam from the law.

All carnival workers are, Bob. It's a rule or something.

Putting aside the milk and honey nonsense, Mountain Home was a retiree magnet. Prime building sites with lake views were selling for less than $300 an acre. And in 1971 Arkansas property taxes, which was the main source of funding public education, were among the lowest in the nation. It stood to reason that since the public schools were under-funded and graduating seniors scored only above Louisiana and Mississippi on college entrance exams, Yankees thought that simply by moving into the state,
the average I.Q. would be raised a point or two.

Southern psychologists call it the Yankee superiority complex. And it all started with the rumor that the North had won the War for States Rights.

The town also had two widely promoted promises on a local real estate brochure that reeled in looking-South Yankees faster that a Zebco in overdrive.

1. "Tornadoes never hit between the fork of two rivers,"

and

2. "No niggers, chiggers or Catholics."

On Point No. 1, Mountain Home was located in the deep V between the confluence of the White and Norfork rivers. Recorded history did not mention a single tornado touching down near the community prior to 1970. That was the year a big twister popped up somewhere over Lake Norfork. The twister skipped over the homes of born-and-reared Baxter Countians in the nearby hamlet of Gamaliel and killed three surly retirees who had settled adjacent to a small cove on the north side of the lake. There is no record of any false real estate advertising lawsuits being filed in the deaths.

The area claim of no chiggers was not fraudulent. It was just a Real Estate lie. There were plenty of chiggers. It's just that no one called them by that name. The local name for the pesky, biting bug was "no-seeums."

There were assuredly Catholics in the area. It's just that no one confessed to following that peculiar religion in public. All most folks in the area knew about Catholicism was that church leaders met in secret, prayed in a funny dialect, thought themselves superior to most folks, and wore pointy hats. Like the Ku Klux Klan. Only Catholics followed the Pope in Italy, while KKKers followed a Grand Dragon in Bogalusa, Louisiana.

Rumor had what locals called "mackerel snappers" holding clandestine meetings in basements, barns, and sheds sometimes used for dog fights.

The only "Pope" anyone hereabouts knew anything about was Williford Pope, who made the local news for catching his wife and her boyfriend, a weekend preacher named Stew Boy Williams, in bed. Being a hardwood logger, Williford dispatched the couple in the only way he knew how. He cut off both their heads with a chain saw. Husquava. Thirty-six-inch blade.

A jury dispatched Williford to the state's infamous Cummins Prison where he went by the name Chainsaw Jack. Chainsaw Williford had no panache.

The 1970 census listed thirty-four Negroes as being residents of the county. That's the government for you. Wrong with a funny-edged vengeance. And using taxpayers' money to show their ignorance.

It was a gospel-preaching fact there were no Negroes in the county in 1970. The Mountain Home Bomber football team did, however, have one person of color on the squad.

Offensive guard Ready Carpenter was very dark-skinned. From the neck down. When he was twelve he fell in a catch-all pond containing runoff from his daddy's hog lot. He got stuck in the muck and stayed there for most of a summer afternoon until his mama missed him at suppertime roll call.

Ready wasn't genetically dark. He was permanently dyed. Sort of a dark brown, offal color. In his shorts, with his red hair and nice crop of face freckles, he looked a little like a Negro who had had a redneck head transplant.

When the census numbers were released, County Sheriff John Henry (Randall) Howlett said, "The numbers released by the Census Bureau depicting the number of colored people in our county are suspect." That was the quote in the local weekly paper, The Baxter Bulletin.

That's not exactly what the sheriff told the reporter. His exact quote was, "The fucking federal government couldn't count its dick
if it used two hands, a slide rule and three masturbation sessions with witnesses. There ain't no nigras in this county. Because if they was any, we'd done arrested us one by now."

I know that's what he said, because I was the reporter that asked for the comment. I also worked hard to capture the public essence of his remarks in the printed version. Journalistic license. Common sense. Desire to live past deadline. Pick one. Hell,
pick all three. . . .

I was thinking about what lead to write in next week’s addition of the paper when I was hit in the back by a runaway pulpwood truck.

The blow knocked me about five stumbling steps forward before I caught my balance. I swung around, expecting to see the grille
of a 1956 Jimmy about to run me down.

What I saw was almost as scary.

A man about the size of a Caterpiller dozer tire was in a three-point football stance and just as I squared up, he charged! I dove to the side and he missed me. What he didn't miss was a tall, skinny man walking down the midway holding the hand of a young woman who, in turn, was holding the hand of a little girl.

The human missile hit the skinny guy in the sternum with his right shoulder driving him backward at least ten feet. A couple of somebodys forgot to turn loose of a couple of somebodys' hands. Both the woman and the little girl went flying backward at approximately the same rate of acceleration as their escort.

From my prone position next to a corn dog stick, several paper cotton candy cylinders and what looked like a pile of poddle crap, I watched in utter fascination as the woman and girl went panties-over beehive hairdos. The little girl crashed into the colorful bunting of the dart-and-balloon booth. The woman slammed into the back of the legs of a man getting ready to throw a dart. The action-reaction rule of physics came into play. When struck, the man pitched forward and stuck the dart in the carnival barker's Adam's apple.

The first thing that came out of the barker's mouth was a nice spurting waterfall of blood. The second thing was: "HEY RUBE!"

For a micro-second, everybody on the midway froze. Then, as if by some sort of peculiar carnival-type osmosis, carnival workers appeared from everywhere. They started pounding on the innocent dart-stabber like he was James Mason in the final scene in Island of Dr. Moreau.

Bob thought how the cah-carnival workers resembled Moreau's experiments in more ways than one.

The woman screamed. The kid joined in. The two actually harmonized. I made a mental note to ask them if it was intentional or did they just happened to have perfect pitch. Bob wondered if they sah-sang in an all-girl quartet?

The darted carny tried to scream again but what came out was more of a gurgle than a cry of distress.

For some reason, a couple of carneys turned their attention to me. As they advanced I pointed to the huge man still lying in the midway. "He started it!" I shouted in a voice that I intended to drip with authority.

The carneys picked up the cry. "He started it! He started it!" Then they jumped on behemoth with the fervor of a southern sheriff confronted by a long-haired civil rights organizer named Ignatius Zerbowski.

Someone tugged at my shirt and I spun around on my butt intending to kick the living shit out of whomever it was. It was Janie
Lou. I decided not to kick her.

"Get up!" she said. "Let's get out of here."

As plans go, this one seemed well thought out and extremely logical. We walked toward the parking lot and she attempted to
brush off the dirt and debris I had collected when I dove out of the way of the human freight train. She spent more than a little time brushing off the area between my ribs and my upper thighs.

Thank God for small favors.

"What the hell was that all about?" I said.

"Skeeter Bloodworth is jealous of you."

I waited. Nothing else was offered up.

"Who's Skeeter Bloodworth and why is he jealous of you?" I asked.

"He thinks he's my boyfriend and he probably saw you trying to take advantage of me behind the carnival tent," Janie Lou said.
"He … well … sort of keeps an eye on me."

"Take advantage of ….? Never mind. You mean he follows you around and spies on you and stuff?"

She pursed her lips. The gesture caused an instant erection that could have been used in the log rolling event in the Lumberjack Championships.

Wah-whoa! You hang around her and yah-you're gonna get in sah-serious trouble.

One can only hope, Bob.

"Skeeter is …." Long pause. "Possessive. He believes we are dating and that I've agreed to marry him. He told my Aunt Edna he owns me."

"Why would he believe all that? Why would he tell your Aunt Edna …?"

"My Aunt Edna is his shrink. He tells her everything. I went with Skeeter to the senior prom a couple of years ago. He's been following me ever since."

Cah-couple of years ago? Mah-more like a cah-couple of decades ago.

If you can't think something nice, don't think anything at all.

Yah-you're a pain in the psy-psyche.

There. Wasn't that better?

We were walked toward my Jeep in the back side of the parking lot. I stopped, grabbed Janie Lou by her shoulders and turned her to face me. "You went to the prom with Skeeter Bloodsucker …."

"Bloodworth."

"… whatever, about twenty years ago and he has been following you around ever since?"

"Has it been twenty years?" she said. "Time sure flies when you're a virgin."

"Answer the question."

"Yes," she said, batting her eyes at me like a two-dollar whore with the pink eye. "He thinks he loves me."

"Have you ever though about going out with him again?"

"I can't do that. We're first cousins."

I guess my eyes crossed because when I could see properly again, Janie Lou was rubbing my forehead with cool fingertips.

Janie Lou told me her father, James Letus Lauter, and Skeeter's mother, Bertina Edwina Beatitude Bloodworth, were brother and sister. Skeeter was directed by one or both of them to take Janie Lou to the prom. Janie Lou didn't have plans to go to the prom because no one asked her. She started early in life telling anyone who would listen that she was a virgin.

No one wanted to date a professional virgin on prom night.

I pondered the information. But she had sent my thoughts down a divergent path. “Letus? Your father’s name was ‘Letus?’”

“His father was a preacher. He named my father after his favorite part of the sermon.”

“What?”

“You know, Letus pray.”

God hah-help us.

God’s busy, Bob. Besides, we’re at a carnival. God doesn’t visit carnivals.

Then I said to Janie Lou, "How does Aunt Edna fit in the equation? She gave me a look similar to the one my third-grade teacher gave me when I tried to cut off Cowboy Meachem's penis during a session of show-and-tell.

"Aunt Edna is Skeeter's mama," she said.

Jah-jesus! Incest is one tha-thing. Mental incest is jah-just plain spooky!

"Skeeter's shrink is his mama?" I guess I screamed it. People stopped and stared.

"If a person can't talk to his mama, who can he talk to?"