Little Mike avoided his irate grandmother and climbed directly down into his mother’s arms.
“I forgot how I got up here,” Karla said, still crouching on the crossbar.
“Just drop, we’ll catch you in the mattress,” Eddie Belt said. He was disappointed at not getting to exhibit his firefighting techniques.
“No way,” Karla said.
“Why not? We’re trained volunteer firefighters,” Eddie said.
“Don’t listen to them, they’re just hoping to get a better look at your snatch,” Jacy said.
“Duane, back the pickup under me and I’ll drop onto the hood.”
“You’re just eight feet up,” he said. “Dangle off the crossbar and I’ll set you down.”
That proved doable. Just as Duane was setting Karla down they heard a roar from the crowd on the courthouse lawn. Bobby Lee, another trained volunteer firefighter, was backing the city’s one fire truck across the lawn. He had already raised the ladder and was preparing to rescue the distraught Jerry Cooper. The crowd reluctantly made room for the fire truck.
Bobby Lee had not bothered to remove his sombrero despite the fact that he could not see out from under it very well. Instead of backing up slowly, until Jerry Cooper could grab the ladder, Bobby Lee roared backward. The ladder struck the courthouse ten feet south of where Jerry clung, and went right through the wall of the building. The shock dislodged the luckless human fly, who plunged, unflylike, into the shrubbery.
“If we’d been over there instead of over here we might have caught him,” Eddie observed. He and several other trained volunteer firefighters still held Junior’s mattress.
“Oh, no,” Karla said. “Now look. Bobby Lee’s punctured the courthouse.”
The sight struck Jacy as hilarious. She burst into peals of laughter.
“This centennial gets better with age,” she said, gasping for breath.
Duane ran over to see if Jerry Cooper was hurt, but could find no trace of him. He had crept out through the shrubbery and left town. Several weeks later, curious as to what had become of him, Duane discovered that he had given up rig painting and was driving a beer truck. He felt rather bad about it—Jerry had once been a competent human fly. Perhaps it had been unfair to ask him to climb the courthouse at night.
Meanwhile the ladder had pierced the courtroom where Lester and Janine were hiding. Their startled faces appeared at a window. Neither of them appeared to be clothed.
“Hey, knock it off!” Lester yelled to an audience of hundreds of drunks.
Bobby Lee, conscious that his rescue effort had misfired and that he was an object of ridicule to most of the crowd, was trying to drive the fire truck off the lawn. But the crowd, now that life and death were no longer at stake, went back to their drinking. What Bobby Lee hadn’t noticed was that the ladder was stuck to the courthouse. When it had opened to its fullest length, the truck stopped. Bobby Lee put it in low and gave it all he had, but the truck wouldn’t budge. It was stuck to the courthouse as firmly as Sonny’s car had been stuck to the Stauffers’ house.
The refusal of the ladder to come loose infuriated Bobby Lee. He jumped out of the truck, threw his sombrero on the ground and stomped on it.
“He’s ruined our one historic building,” Jenny said. “What a terrible way to end our beautiful centennial.”
Janine Wells had put on her nightgown. She leaned out of the window, looking bouncy. Several drunks were trying to persuade her to come down and dance with them.
“Look at Bobby Lee, he’s having a fit,” Karla said. “He’s cute when he’s mad, unlike you, Duane.”
Nellie came over and handed Little Mike to Duane.
“Just hold him while I dance one dance with Joe,” she said.
Duane carried Little Mike around for the next hour, during half of which Little Mike slept soundly on his shoulder. He searched through the crowd, hoping to find Minerva, but Minerva was nowhere in sight. The street was so thick with dancers that he could never even spot Nellie again, though Dickie had reappeared and was dancing with Jacy. After several circles of the courthouse, with Little Mike snoring on his shoulder, the only relative he encountered was Karla, who refused to take her grandson.
“Come on, take him for a while,” Duane said. “Marriage is fifty-fifty.”
“Marriage is the survival of the fittest, and I can’t dance with a baby on my shoulder,” Karla said, before allowing herself to be led off by Junior Nolan.
Finally Duane got a beer, sat down with his back against the courthouse, and put Little Mike face down on the grass, where he slept peacefully. Bobby Lee, having stomped his sombrero into straw, came and sat with him.
“I’ll rest for a minute, then I’ll get my second wind,” Bobby Lee said.
While he was waiting for his second wind, he and Duane watched the dance. The twins were break-dancing with one another. They whipped in and out of groups of large shuffling drunks, gyrating, doing splits, whirling on their hands. Jacy and Dickie stopped dancing and clapped for them. Then Janine and Lester, who had just joined the revels, also stopped and clapped for them. Nellie and little Joe Coombs began to break-dance. To everyone’s surprise, little Joe was a spectacular break-dancer, flinging his stocky body around with wild abandon.
“That Nellie, she’s a beautiful dancer,” Bobby Lee said, a throb of love in his voice.
“Not only that, her mother is too,” Duane said.
Karla had joined the twins. She had tried dancing with Junior Nolan for a few minutes, but Junior soon wandered away, a puzzled look on his face. Jacy stepped in and started dancing with Karla. They tried to mimic the twins. Then they began to improvise and the twins mimicked them perfectly. Dickie stepped in and danced with Jacy and his mother.
“By God, I hate to think I’m the kind of man who’d sit around all night and watch other people dance,” Bobby Lee said.
He took a deep breath, handed Duane his beer, and rushed into the street, where he began to shriek and shake, rotating his pelvis in imitation of Elvis Presley. He grabbed Nellie and spun her around five or six times. He imitated, in the space of a few seconds, virtually every dancing style Duane had ever seen. Impressed, Karla started dancing with him. Dickie went back to Jacy, and Nellie to little Joe. The twins, looking disgusted, got on their bikes and rode away.
Janine and Lester came over and sat down by him.
“Duane, you was always a wallflower,” Janine said, offering him some gum.
“No, there are people still living who can remember when I was the life of the party,” Duane said.
“I’m one of them,” Lester said. “I can remember when you threatened to whip my ass in front of the Legion Hall.”
“It’s a good thing he didn’t, I would never speak to him again if he had of, sweetie,” Janine said, taking Lester’s hand.
Lester seemed irritated by this remark.
“Sometimes your logic eludes me, honey,” he said. He got up, wandered off and was soon dancing with Charlene Duggs. Janine watched, chewing her gum with increased intensity.
“What logic was he talking about?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Duane said. “I sure haven’t noticed any logic around here.”
“Sometimes I think it was a mistake that we broke up,” Janine said.
Bobby Lee had danced himself out. He came over and flopped down by them.
“Janine, would you get me a beer before I die of dehydration?” Bobby Lee asked.
“I’m certainly not getting beer for someone who hasn’t even had the courtesy to ask me for one dance,” Janine said.
Before Bobby Lee could reply, John Cecil walked up and politely asked Janine to dance. They were soon doing a lively two-step.
Bobby Lee got up and headed for the beer truck.
“Bring me one,” Duane said. He felt a little left out and a little depressed. He really wanted to drive back out to Suzie’s. Maybe he could apologize successfully and they could continue their talk. He hated it
when conversations ended on an awkward note, as theirs had. He had a sense that Suzie was angry with him, and the sense held him in check in some way. He wanted to go back and talk out their differences, so as not to feel in check, but was afraid if he went back Dickie would arrive with the engagement ring while he was there.
He told himself he was silly to worry about it. It hadn’t really been an argument, just a momentary disagreement. He could not even be sure what the issues were. Suzie had already probably forgotten the whole matter. In all likelihood she was happily reading a romance, or watching TV, while she waited for Dickie.
But Duane couldn’t forget it. Jenny Marlow, dancing with Buster Lickle, waved frantically behind Buster’s back for him to come dance with her. Duane pointed at the sleeping baby. Ordinarily he liked to dance. He could assign Bobby Lee, approaching with the beers, to watch Little Mike. But the thought of Suzie wouldn’t leave his mind.
He looked around and saw G. G. Rawley, a sledgehammer in his hand, standing in front of the Texasville replica. He picked up Little Mike and walked over. Bobby Lee followed.
“It’s a little late to start knocking down the saloon, G.G.,” Duane said. “All the sinners are already drunk.”
“The Lord don’t expect me to win every battle,” G.G. said. “He just expects me to keep fighting.”
Just at that moment something fell into Bobby Lee’s beer cup from a considerable height. Most of the beer splashed into Bobby Lee’s face, and some of it on Duane. Bobby Lee looked surprised. He wiped his dripping face on his shirtsleeve. But when he peeped into his cup he looked even more surprised. He reached in and fished out an egg.
“It rained an egg,” he said, astonished.
G. G. Rawley raised his sledgehammer to start the demolition of Texasville, and as he did a shower of eggs fell on him, at least fifteen or twenty, splattering on his shoulders, chest and head.
As he stood, looking puzzled, a second egg shower fell. A few of the eggs missed and splattered on the ground, but several more hit their target.
G.G. was too startled to move. He looked cautiously into the heavens. Eggs were flying out of the dark skies. Some arched into the street, splattering the dancers. A dozen or so splatted onto the roof of Old Texasville. Some hit the roofs of cars.
“It’s punishment time!” G.G. concluded, a happy light coming into his eyes. “The Lord’s raining down egg bombs on this haven of sots.”
As eggs continued to fall, the preacher became more excited, and also louder.
“He’s set loose the crazy chickens!” he yelled. “He’s freed the hens of hell!”
Duane thought otherwise. From high overhead he heard laughter, and it was the twins’ laughter, not the Lord’s. He tucked Little Mike under his arm and raced for the courthouse, wondering where they got the eggs.
CHAPTER 91
IN THE COURTHOUSE THE FIRST PERSON HE SAW WAS Minerva. She sat on a bench outside the tax collector’s office, listening to her chest with a stethoscope. Minerva never traveled without her stethoscope. Listening to her own heart was one of her favorite pastimes. Occasionally she claimed to be able to pick up sounds from other organs as well.
“It sounds like I’ve got a spot on that left lung,” she said, when Duane appeared.
“I don’t care where you’ve got a spot, take Little Mike,” he said, handing her the sleeping child.
“Why, are you too macho to take care of your own grandchild?” Minerva asked.
“I’m not too macho but I’m too confused,” Duane said.
A stream of kids raced up and down the courthouse stairs. Those going up carried numerous cartons of eggs. Outside he heard shrieks from the direction of the dance, as dancers sought cover from the egg showers.
“Where are you kids getting those eggs?” he asked a boy with ten cartons in his arms. The boy ignored the question and raced up the stairs.
“I didn’t come here to baby-sit,” Minerva informed him. “I was dancing before you were born, and I’m still dancing.”
“The twins are throwing eggs off the roof,” he pointed out. “They’re throwing lots of eggs off the roof.”
“Well, it’s the last night of the centennial, I say let it rip,” Minerva said.
The hens of hell, in the form of the twins, came racing down the stairs. Jack raced out the door but Duane managed to catch Julie’s arm.
“Where are you getting those eggs?” he asked.
“From an egg truck,” Julie said, as if answering a very stupid question. She twisted loose and ran after her brother.
Duane followed the twins outside, but not far out. The roof of the courthouse seemed to be ringed with children, all well supplied with eggs, which rained down like hail. Across the street he could see a semi, parked in front of Sonny’s laundry-mat. A stream of children came and went from it like ants. The truck was clearly the source of the eggs, but why it was there he had no idea.
He ran up to the roof and saw at once that the egg throwers had ammunition for a long siege. Hundreds of cartons of eggs were stacked on the roof, and more were coming. Virtually every child in town was there. He saw Lester and Jenny’s two girls, and Suzie and Junior’s handsome children.
Below there was confusion. Some of the dancers were too far away to be reached by the eggs. Some danced happily on, unaware that anything out of the ordinary was happening. On the sidewalk across the street, Dickie was still dancing with Jacy.
Just as he thought the egg rain might be confined to the courthouse lawn, he saw the twins racing toward the dancers on their bikes, their bike pouches filled with eggs. Other kids followed, on other bikes. Jack and Julie sped by the dancers like Comanches, guiding their bikes by balance. They lobbed eggs over their heads like grenades, or casually flipped them under the dancers’ feet. Soon dancers began to slip and fall. Many were victims of direct hits. The twins disappeared into the darkness, only to reappear moments later, egg pouches replenished. Jack, still wearing his mirror sunglasses, bore down on the dancers at top speed. He only veered aside at the last moment, when his victims were frozen with panic. Then he raced along the sidewalk, flinging eggs far out into the dance. Julie, just as fast, came right behind him, flinging hers at the ground as if she were skipping stones.
Many of the dancers were confused. The kids appeared only for seconds, and then vanished into the night. Most of the dancers were so drunk they never saw them. Eggs that seemed to come out of nowhere hit them and ran down their clothes. After watching for a few minutes, Duane decided to leave town. If enough people realized that his kids were the leaders of the egg bombers he would probably be beaten to a pulp—and even if he weren’t he would certainly have to listen to complaints he would rather not hear.
The question was how to escape the courthouse without being covered with eggs. He found a janitor’s closet and borrowed a couple of large garbage bags. He meant to loan Minerva one, but when he came back to the lobby Minerva and Little Mike were nowhere to be seen.
Duane slipped one of the garbage bags over his head, poked a couple of eyeholes in it and ran out the door. Several eggs hit the garbage bag, but in seconds he was in the street and out of range. Looking back, he saw kids with cartons of eggs getting on the Ferris wheel.
As he turned to go to his pickup, he saw Toots Burns standing by his police car in a very eggy state. He looked as if he had been hit by at least a hundred eggs.
“This is getting a little wild, ain’t it, Sheriff?” Duane said.
“Yep,” Toots said affably. “I just got gang-egged, or egg-banged or something.”
“Where’d the egg truck come from?” Duane asked.
Toots shrugged. “It’s got Iowa plates,” he said. “That ol’ boy that’s driving it picked a hell of a bad time to go for a walk.”
“The driver went for a walk?”
“Yep, he just parked her and walked off,” Toots said. “He’s in for a big surprise when he comes back.”
There were screams from the carnival area. Showers
of eggs were flying off the Ferris wheel, pelting down on kids driving bumper cars. They splattered on the merry-go-round and caused people to flee the cotton-candy stand.
“See you later, Toots,” Duane said. “Don’t get too stressed. It’s just eggs.”
“I’m not stressed,” Toots said. “Ain’t raw eggs supposed to be good for your complexion? I might get even prettier than I am already.”
“That’s what I call looking on the bright side,” Duane said.
CHAPTER 92
WALKING TO HIS PICKUP, HE SAW KARLA AND JACY. They sat on the fenders of Karla’s BMW, having a drink. An ice chest with two fruit jars full of liquor sat on the hood of the car.
“Got anything that don’t have papaya juice in it?” he asked.
“Duane, the whole centennial’s nearly gone by and you haven’t danced a single dance with either one of us,” Karla pointed out.
“I would have, but watching Dickie’s given me an inferiority complex where dancing’s concerned.”
“I think you do have a massive inferiority complex,” Jacy said. “You shouldn’t blame it on Dickie though.”
“Why not, when the whole town’s in love with him?” Duane asked.
“Duane, just because you’re a little bit inferior is no reason to get depressed,” Karla said. She got off the fender and poured him a huge drink.
“I asked if it had papaya juice in it,” he reminded her.
“Oh, don’t be so picky,” Jacy said.
“For your information it’s grapefruit,” Karla said. “Minerva forgot the papaya.” She refilled Jacy’s drink and handed it back to her.
Duane wished he had walked up another street. The women had seemed very peaceful, sitting on the car together. They seemed to share a quiet or serenity or something that he could never share with them. They even shared a mutual appetite for picking on him. Their picking on him was just a form of joking, he knew. Mostly it was even affectionate. The problem with it was that it prompted his agreement; he would start picking on himself, only he wouldn’t be joking. The more the two women joked, the more he would doubt himself. The very bond that they had formed left him out, though he was glad, very glad, that they had become friends.