SWEAT: Global Warming in a Small Town & other tales of The Great American Westerly Midwest Page 4

Those people.

  Two of the old ladies are sticking their heads in the window of the cruiser, playing with the cop’s hair and hat and tie, while the old guys spray paint “blow me” on the side and let the air out of his back tires.

  That Steve guy had coffee, toast, and a sweet roll.

  I think that’s about the second time I’ve seen him in here.

  I suppose he eats pizza, ‘cause he is Pizza Steve, and sometimes he just gets sick of it.

  Right?

  He asked about the pie, pancakes, eggs, but he just ordered toast, coffee, and the sweet roll. They are famous, for about six, seven miles. Then nobody’s ever heard of them. In every direction, north, south, east …

  Pizza Guy had on shorts, no socks.

  Which is fine, as long as there’s shoes. I got no problem with that.

  The old people come in here, take up two, three booths, talk loud, repeat themselves.

  They leave butts on the floor, sit around for two, three hours and just order water.

  Some of the old guys take their shirts off, out of the arms and just have their shirts hanging around their necks.

  When you tell them about the policy, they say, “What? I got a shirt on. What’s this? A halter? A plow?

  Well, people are starting to talk.

  Not starting, when did they ever stop?

  Talking about Steve, how he won’t wear sweat pants and how he took the Sox baby, probably because of the name, got rid of it, probably stuffed it down a wood chipper.

  You can rent one in Jason Junction.

  In defiance of everyone.

  And how if we don’t do something about him then we’re not going to get on the Today Show maybe for fighting global warming and nobody is ever going to hear about us, and our kids will be huge nobodies and maybe we might as well die like Jonestown and their Koolaide. That stuff Winnie made the other day would about do the trick. I poured it all out.

  It’s more fun to think about having the whole smiling town schmoozing like maniacs in the middle of the street with Willard Scott than being a bunch of Jennifer Junction Angry Cows losers forever before and now forever-after.

  The grill is sizzling.

  Omelettes.

  Eggs.

  Steve.

  Willard Scott.

  I was riding past the deli windows of Foos Foods.

  And I could see Prof. Carl and Jesse sitting in there in disguise.

  Carl was wearing a headdress of eagle feathers, war paint, and smoking his pipe.

  Jesse had on a pilgrim’s costume with his yellow firefighter helmet. Probably the people who rented the costume before turned it back in without the hat.

  It’s happening.

  They’re all coming for The Pizza Dude.

  There’s pitchforks and blazing brooms and torches made out of rags and yardsticks, and screaming and somebody has tossed a rope over the stoplight.

  There’s old people and little people and everything in between.

  They are going to burn the whole town down if that’s what it takes to find him.

  Before they burn him and hang him they are going to — a couple of fat people — are going to sit on his legs and arms and make him put on sweat pants.

  And pull the waist string tight as it will go, then a little more.

  Well, actually, what’s going to happen is I think someone is going to call in an order for a large supreme and when Steve shows up to deliver, they might try to tackle him.

  Then they will either try to de-pants him or pull the grey sweat pants over his shorts.

  And I think they’re hoping he’ll be worried that anytime he walks up to a door to deliver a pizza there could be people waiting to take him down and sit on his arms and put sweat pants on him and pull the strings pretty tight.

  Tighter than normal.

  Carl and Jesse were watching The Foos. Mary Woo was behind the cash register and Kung Stu was hurrying around, serving a line of customers at the breakfast bar.

  I don’t see nothing suspicious about that, but I have not taken the CCC Trained Neighborhood Observer course either.

  It’s now part of the adult ed. curriculum.

  Anyway, people are hoping that Steve will give in to the pressure and everyone can relax.

  I was just in talking to Moon Walking.

  She’s pretty smart. Pretty and smart.

  She’s beautiful.

  She’s the head librarian.

  Her hair is braided into dreadlocks. She doesn’t mind talking to kids.

  I found that out the time I went in there for summer reading Harry Potter Week and I was the only one who came.

  Moon Walking didn’t mind.

  We spent the whole week wearing wizard robes she made with stuff her mom had. We made brooms and potions. She said I was Harry and she was Hermione Granger.

  It was a blast.

  Moon Walking is an activist.

  She told me.

  She’s a junior at JJHS.

  She’s an anti-global warming activist.

  She’s the only one there is.

  She doesn’t wear the sweat pants. She wears like pajamas and beads and she’s got earrings in her tongue and ears and other places.

  She smells like cinnamon and lilacs.

  M.W. Head Librarian.

  That’s what the wooden name plaque says on the front desk.

  She got the job when she showed up to volunteer and there was nobody there.

  There was a cigarette burning.

  There was hot coffee in the pot and coats on the hangers, a hat on the floor.

  There was poop in the pot and bikes in the rack.

  It was a librarian abduction.

  So she stayed and she became the head librarian. It’s a big job for a high school student, but she seems to like it, like Don the cop and Nona the waitress. I don’t know what they’re like when nobody’s around. Maybe they throw things.

  If we knew about the Wal-Mart greeter at the time, M.W. says, we could have called him in to CSI the library, but she cleaned so we can’t.

  M.W. says global warming is nature fighting back.

  She says it’s bears shooting hunters. And skinning them and gutting them.

  And geese dive-bombing those big whitish green hunks of poop into hunter’s mouths, and rivers puking up blood, and fields rolling and bucking like a horse and throwing the farmer into the ditch with a big gash in his head and maybe across his arms.

  She says it’s the woods stabbing the lumber man in the stomach, with three, four or sometimes nine guys on one pokey branch.

  Sometimes I walk her home from the library on my bike.

  She doesn’t seem to mind.

  She likes everybody.

  The ones who tried to capture The Pizza Man were in here this morning.

  It happened last night.

  Coup d’et ha … ha.

  Attempted.

  They used Radio Guy’s house and still Steve fell for it.

  It was a small cheese, thin crust. The city’s assassination budget must be tight.

  It was Gutner and the Waters boys and Don the cop was sitting there in the cruiser.

  All of them were crowded into Sunshine Booth whispering about it.

  Idiots.

  It didn’t really happen.

  He got away.

  When Steve pulled up to the house numbnuts Don had his stupid cop car parked out front with the lights flashing and the siren going.

  So Steve was kind of on alert when he came to the door, is how they tell it.

  “He knew,” said Don.

  “Of course he knew,” said Rick Waters. He drank the rest of his water and began crunching ice in his front teeth, staring at Don.

  “Why?” said Rick Waters.

  “Standard operating procedure,” said Don.

  “S.O.P.”

  Rick shook his head and rolled his eyes.

  “Not … when you are doing the crime, ding-dong,” said Rick.

  Gu
tner began arranging the salt and pepper and napkin holder.

  While the others argued and began shoving each other across the table/under the table with their feet, Gutner nudged the shaker toward the edge, pushing the salt to hang over.

  He pulled dental floss from his shirt pocket and tied one end around the napkin holder and the other around the neck of the salt shaker.

  Then he gave the salt a final finger flick, sending it over, hanging in mid-air, banging against the table, sending salt across the floor.

  “Da Peeza must die. He vil drag de whole town, then entire plant, vith him, iv ve do nuthingk.”

  “Nuthingk?”

  Ron laughed and looked at his brother to say, nuthingk?

  “How does that get Sweat Sox back!” said Don.

  He had to holler because just outside the window the cruiser was parked in the lot with the lights flashing and the siren blaring. Don had decided to do that until the town crises had been overcome, global warming and the missing Sweat.

  “Who carezabout dat?” said Gutner. “If he wilt not ware da svets ve vil alsuffer de consequenzes.”

  Who do they think cleans up the salt around here?

  Fucking Nazis and their fucking salt, all over my floor. Just who do they think is going to clean that up?

  Not their mothers.

  Hello, Robert S. Thompson reporting from the flood area.

  You’ve heard it said, the saying, “If the creek don’t rise.”

  Well, the goddamn creek has risen.

  There is water running down every gutter in Jennifer Junction.

  As for now, my bench appears safe, but for how long.

  Jenny Creek has filled and overflowed, no thanks to the melting north and south poles and a chunk of Greenland broken off and free in the Atlantic the size of Uruguay, the Channel 14 weather man now tells us.

  My toes are wet.

  How nice.

  Here we go.

  And no one can find The Big Sweats.

  Many of our citizens have been forced by circumstances to form improvised grey sweat pants — with the red script Fighting Angus logo — out of bed sheets, overhead awning, Boy Scout tents, parachutes, whatever is at hand.

  It’s not the same and maybe it has something to do with Jenny Creek. It’s hard to think rationally with minnows and carp swimming past.

  It’s not normal.

  Nothing will stay frozen either. Not in the meat freezer at Tim & Tony’s, not in the refrigerators and back porch freezers in any of the homes.

  Some people have taken to wearing six and seven pairs of sweat pants to try to reverse events. We’ll know more by the end of the week, I would imagine.

  Gutner and The Grey Sweats have intensified their efforts to capture Steve.

  So much is happening.

  The Fighting Angus lost to Jason Junction last night, 5-4, while our Fighting Cowettes were victorious, 9-2.

  Professor Carl and Jesse almost had The Foos, but they got away.

  The two sleuths waited in the fire truck in the alley behind The Foo Home, all the lights off in the vehicle except the interior ceiling light.

  It was about midnight, maybe a little after, when they coasted up.

  They stared in at The Foos, seated at the kitchen table, in the kitchen window, facing the alley.

  Talking, just talking.

  They kept conversing, talking … with each other.

  Back … and forth, is how Jesse describes it in his recapitulation.

  Mary Woo … then Lorenzo …. um, Larry.

  Back … and forth.

  The professor and Jesse took a break to split up a Ho-Ho for snack.

  When all of a sudden!

  In Jesse’s window and also in Carl’s window!

  The Foos!

  Just standing there, leaning over like they do, looking in and smiling.

  “Ahhh!” said Jesse and Carl.

  “How do you do?” says Mary Woo.

  Jesse said, fine, and I think Carl nodded, surrepticiously slipping his bit of Ho Ho into his mouth lest it be the last normal food he sees for years.

  The Foos invited Jesse and Carl in for jelly sandwiches and milk.

  Jesse and Carl walked up to the house with their hands laced behind their heads.

  Jesse and Carl didn’t leave until morning.

  Larry Foo gave Jesse a jump with the Trailblazer, and then he and Mary Woo just stood in the alley, holding the jumper cables, waving at Carl and Jesse drive away down the alley.

  I guess The Foos are no longer suspects in the Sox baby case.

  The Foos did not know the Sox’ had a baby, since they are always working.

  They would also like to get a Korean baby sometime, they said.

  And there they go!

  That’s the third time they’ve gone by, not stopping for the light, old ladies, dogs, nothing.

  Gutner and Ron Waters in the light blue, robins-egg blue pickup are chasing Steve The Incredible Pizza Dude all around town.

  PizzaMan has attained a sort of cult status around town as The Dude Who Would Not Die because he was able somehow to escape being captured during delivering the cheese, small, thin-crust, which is now on permanent display in the front desk case at the library.

  Behind Gutner was Don in the black and white with the lights flashing, sirens, of course, full-blast, windows down so he can smoke during the pursuit.

  I heard later that Jesse and Carl would hear all what was going on down where they were sitting on The Foos front porch with Mary Woo and Lorenzo, too.

  They were drinking shots of Jack Daniels with water crescents and Twinkie slices. Jesse said its Mandarin cuisine.

  Steve stopped at a light and some old people toughs jumped in the back seat. He was zipping and sliding and swerving, coasting through stop signs.

  He was busy.

  It’s like that song my grandpa had ‘em play at his funeral.

  Faster horses, younger women, bigger sweat pants, more pizza.

  I’m sitting here, balancing on my bike, with my foot on Robert S. Thompson’s bench. Robert S. is talking to Nona, who came out for her cigarette break when she heard all the commotion.

  “You think they’re just about to catch him when he puts it in that extra Jap gear,” says Robert.

  “He doesn’t see them,” says Nona.

  “He’s in the zone,” I say. “When he’s busy it’s total Buddhist detachment. When it’s over it’ll be like he just woke up. It’s unconscious, like a basketball player who can’t miss from anywhere on the court.”

  “Confidence,” says Robert S. Thompson, watching them roar past again.

  Nona shook out a cigarette and offered to Robert S.

  He took it. She offered her lighter too.

  Hey, it’s me, Tommy.

  How you doing through all this?

  Some of our NASCAR buffs came out to stand in the streets and on the roofs and hoods of their pickups.

  Ron In The Morning was giving a play by play each time they roared past the radio station big window.

  The bar started happy hour five hours early.

  And just as Rick Waters was unloading a big brown box with a Made In Japan stamp on the top and sides from a stone black SUV with darkened windows, Steve and the newly customized pizza car with the spinning pizza on top squealed once more around the main street four corners.

  He went right between two sets of elderly chicken fighters, holding each other on their shoulders — they do that in the pool and everywhere now, I guess it’s the new thing — in the middle of the street.

  He rammed the curb and the impact through him way left, just missing the front window sweat pants display in Rick’s Sporting Goods Store.

  Rick did not see Steve’s flying spinning pizza-mobile.

  He had just sliced open the big box from Nagasaki with two dozen Infinity-X Sumo Sweat Pants with the customized Fighting Angus logo under the waistband.

  Rick held up a pair in front of him like a torea
dor to examine the new stock.

  Right behind Steve came Gutner in the city truck, like a bull right through the sweats into Rick.

  The truck shoved Rick all the way through the store, slamming into the rear concrete wall.

  Behind them came Don in the cruiser, the windshield smeared thick with blood.

  Don had been unable to miss the four old people.

  The police car cut the old guys at the waist, flinging them and their lovely ladies onto the windshield, bouncing high, then smacking the pavement.

  When you see it for real it’s a lot faster and worse sounding and looking than just trying to imagine it.

  When you just think about something like that your mind shows it to you way slowed down to make it not so bad.

  But it’s very bad.

  So, the dee-new-mahn-t, as Carl says, is that Rick Waters was crushed against the concrete wall by Gutner’s city pickup.

  He broke his back, or rather Gutner broke Rick’s back and hips and he, Rick, got a concussion where he was goofy for a while and his tongue swelled way up.

  But the boxes and boxes of size small sweat pants along the wall probably saved his life.

  They took him by helicopter to Jeremy Junction, and the helicopter radio was tuned to My Midget Music hour is what I hear.

  All four of the old people ended up dying in the middle of the street.

  Gunslingers laid low by new technology.

  Their heads exploded like smashed watermelons.

  Jesse came in a hurry in the fire truck to try to help, and so did William in the ice cream appendectomymobile.

  Then they buried the old dead people that Don hit with the cruiser.

  Don’s not going to jail.

  He didn’t even lose his job. He got a promotion to two-star sheriff, that’s a new one on me.

  And he got a new cruiser, insurance paid off.

  This one’s got a cattle catcher on front, folks love it. They point and smile, glad that somebody finally stood up to the old people.

  Rick’s in a body cast. All he can get on are sweat pants. He sits in a chair in the front window of his store.

  He’s got wide eyes.

  They say he’s still got a concussion. If you walk up close you can see he’s got a shotgun on the floor by his chair. My feeling is he’s going to shoot the first pickup that jumps the curb.

  Baby Sweat, well, yeah.

  Well, they did let LaVerna go.

  She wasn’t too happy.

  She’s back at the bank drive-up. Some people see larceny in her eyes when they pull up. Some see murder. Some see lust. Some see a Luxembourg mountain scene.

  I see pain, real hurt.

  I guess there wasn’t a Baby Sweat Sox.