SWEAT

... global warming in a small town

& Other Tales of THE Great American Western Midwest

by Mike Palecek

Art by Monty Borror

Chapter 16

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.

Chapter 17

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.

Chapter 18

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 toreador 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.

They made it up.

They wanted a baby so bad they just talked themselves into being pregnant.

They talked about it to themselves and then to other people and then when they had to have it, ‘cause it was time.

And then they couldn’t have it go to school ‘cause there wasn’t a kid, and then they didn’t want it do die because that was way too sad.

So they decided to have it be kidnapped.

They thought that it would go away eventually.

But … well you know ...

That could never happen in a small town.

____________________________________

NEXT Week:

"Fences"

... Homeland Security ... in a Small Town

SWEAT

... global warming in a small town

& Other Tales of THE Great American Western Midwest

by Mike Palecek

Art by Monty Borror

Chapter 11

It’s drizzly today.

I imagine myself seated on a bench in downtown London, maybe Duluth.
If I close my eyes it is conceivable.

Jesse in the fire truck — it is actually an ancient brown Honda — is revving up his engine — he likes to think of it as a fire truck and that’s fine.

He is trying to get up enough momentum to beat Gutner in the city truck right beside.
There are not really two lanes.

But since there are no cars parked right now, that allows for Gutner to pull up next to Jesse and agitate.
Those two.

Gutner, I believe, with that thick accent, is European, perhaps Eurasian. Someone said he came here from South Dakota. I rather doubt that account.

To me, he over-compensates by being, or appearing to be, uber-patriotic.

I don’t think that applies to his battles with Jesse. I think that’s just for his own entertainment, but as regards Steve The Supreme Pizza Dude there is more to it than that.

He just wants to fit in, Gut’. We all do. Not me, so much, but others, I believe.

And so he goes on and on about not believing in global warming and wearing sweat pants because as an outsider he sees others doing thus and thus and calling it patriotism.

Gutner, that is unusual spelling.
Maybe Swiss.

I know of a man who was “Jhonny” his whole life because his parents could not spell.

The crimes of our parents forever haunt us.
Hey.

And there they go.

I wear the sweat pants and listen to Sweaty Waters In The Morning, but I do note that Gutner’s belief might be a little misplaced and insincere, not entirely necessary, perhaps.

Jesse had him halfway through the intersection.
But Gutner and that six-banger were just too much.

So Jesse lets off to live another day and turns up the radio in face-saving defiance.
The old people across the street on the corner watched in silence, tossing cigarette butts at the gutter, blowing smoke rings at the police car that just pulled up.

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.

Chapter 12

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.

Chapter 13

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.

Chapter 14

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.

Chapter 15

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.

Gutner 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.

... To be continued.

SWEAT

... global warming in a small town

& Other Tales of THE Great American Western Midwest

Stories by Mike Palecek

Art by Monty Borror

http://www.rockyborrorpictureshow.com/
I'm happy to be a kid of the 80's and 90's. I'm happy to have the good fortune of being able to do what I love. I draw comics for independent companies such as Heske Horror and graphic novels for companies the size of Insomnia Publications. I'm lucky. A lot of guys from my background don't get to do that. I'm happy to have met Mike Palecek through a publisher, Mike Annis, and work together on projects we really can believe in instead of chasing paychecks. I get to do this...I don't quite believe it either.

Mike and I agree on a lot. Where we don't is small details. But we both realize one thing: think about it. That's it. Before you regurgitate what you have heard, just give it a second to digest. Stop thinking with your gut, start using your brain. Stop emoting, start reasoning. The newest ideas won't come from the same old crap you and I have been spoon fed our whole lives. It's time for something better. I am, at heart a pessimist. I see most of humanity going in the opposite direction as it should. Maybe being American has something to do with that. Maybe a single cheer for a thinly veiled bigot running for office makes me hate the majority of humanity. I see Americans getting more superstitious, angrier at those who are different and it makes me want to emote back. But...I try to let reason win. I really do try.

One quote I do believe is this: "People get the government they deserve." I don't know of truer words ever spoken. If we have a nation filled with idiots, then our leaders will reflect that. I want to ask, to implore, let's give this reason a chance. Let's try this. But, again, I'm a pessimist. I try not to expect too much. In a very few years, I think this nation will go right back to where it was a few years ago..."lie to me, spy on me, build a fence around me. Keep me safe from the unknown." The biggest evil in this country are those that live in it.

So Mike and I will continue on, hoping to shake a few out of apathy. But I think he may be more of an optimist than me. I think he can change a few minds. Hell, he's at least got a pessimist like me trying. You gotta give him that.

CHAPTER 7

Good morning.

Or, buenos dias, bon jour, gutentag, s’appenin?

As the case may be.

I am seated, watching rush hour traffic, as it were, at the main intersection of our downtown area.

Each of the four corners has a nice, new wooden bench.

Each is dedicated to the spouse of some prominent local person who felt guilty enough to invest money into a gold engraved plaque and who now knows it will never be enough, not one bench or a hundred.

All in all, they are most comfortable. I choose where to sit primarily according to the direction of the wind, according to the radio report.

There is not a shit load of traffic, but some.

There’s Ed and Earl Edwards, the Edwards twins, heading off for their construction summer job.

Here comes, there goes, our UPS route driver, Myrna Meyers.

She’s a little woman, wiry, always moving, always on the go. If she were a Christmas tree it would be most difficult to place a star upon her head. It’s like there’s someone chasing her. She also works at Casey’s, and, and in fact someone is pursuing her. There is usually an attorney or sheriff’s deputy trying to hand her a subpoena to appear in court.

Well, awhile back she went out for cigarettes and skim milk and actually never came back. She’s got nine jobs, literally, this, that, Pizza Farm. She doesn’t live anywhere, changes in the various employee’s rooms. She still sees her husband and goes to all of the children’s activities. This is something she wanted, so the family is trying to be supportive. They are in counseling, not Myrna, but the husband and kids go every week, I guess.

On the bench kitty korner from me are a group of elderly hooligans, a gang of them. Ever since they got the casino you don’t want to mess around with them. People almost don’t come downtown if there’s a bunch of them standing around.

They have been known to shoot steelies, steel marbles, at autos, using wrist rockets.
They put graffiti on the building sides and doors: FDR, I Like Ike, Ben Hur Rocks. The high school kids find it disgusting.

Oh, well, here’s something.

Here comes Michael Sullivan Oh. He farms just east of town.
Must be bringing the tractor in to get some work done. I see he’s wearing his grey sweat pants already, as am I. I’d say it’s about 70-30 by now, but the momentum seems to be in favor of this thing.
Well, Michael is an interesting case.

His mother is Irish. His father Japanese. They met at Berkeley.

Michael went with them to one of Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid concerts and had an epiphany of some sorts is how I understand it. They moved to Iowa and saw all the empty main street stores.

Michael decided to bring back Midwestern agriculture his own self. He and the wife have sixteen children and she’s expecting again. They farm one hundred sixty acres with a little, what I would call a normal tractor.

They have livestock. He wears coveralls. He’s also studying crop dusting at CCC this term. She has chickens, collects the eggs, for egg money.

They milk and use it themselves.
The children walk together to town to school, eschewing any roads, cross country, a la “Little House on the Prairie,” I suppose. Many times all they do all day is walk back and forth.

What they are doing is hoping they can bring back the 1940s and 1950s, is what I think, with busy downtown streets on Thursday nights.
I certainly wish them well.

We might get some notice from the bigger papers in the area. It’s kind of a novelty, the sweat pants promotion.
Who knows, maybe the Today Show will come right down here to the four-way some morning to talk about the brave little town that would not be fooled, that could, that stood tall.

The cold, hard facts. That’s all we want.
All we need.

I kind of wonder how the different folks will come down on all this.

Geez, now there is getting to be more traffic this morning than I ever remember encountering, with the possible exception of the July 5th Parade that one year.

July 4th would not work because of not being able to find the key to the lock on the historical society storage garage where they kept the old stuff they wanted to put in the parade, so it all had to wait a day. Made for a large turnout, all the commotion and stress and such.

There goes Betsy Pomp. Betsy Rose Pomp, our six-feet-nine inch elementary principal. I dare say six-feet-six would have been sufficient. She did play basketball here and at State. She can dunk it. I’ve seen her with her girls in their driveway.

There’s the Schmidts, Rubie Bell and Paulie. They are bikers, ride ten-speeds wherever they go, have parrot tattoos up and down their arms, all that, wear their hair in ponytails, with black kerchiefs around their heads.

He’s got thick blond hair and hers is as black as the nine of clubs. They go to the Unitarian Universalist Church on Water Street, have a couple of adopted children, don’t believe in God, and voted Libertarian in the last election.
I’m not certain how I know that. Maybe it was that waitress.

“Ding-ding.”
You hear that?

It’s the bell.
The ice-cream truck. It used to be the ice cream truck. In the 50s and 60s.
Now William Rodgers drives it to work every morning, right past here.

It used to be William’s grandfather’s little truck. He drove it around to all the neighborhoods, every one, without exception, in the summer, selling or giving away ice cream to the kids.

When ol’ man Rodgers died of an appendicitis attack, while he was on the route — the route and the truck sort of died too.

Well, when William grew older of course he remembered his grandfather, and sometimes those Down’s Syndrome people have a little more on the ball as far as emotions, feelings. They’ve also got displaced big toes, if you’ve ever had occasion to be in attendance at adult night at the pool when a gaggle of them arrives.

In any case, William has his own business, Toon Town. His father and mother helped him get it all up, do the books. He buys and sells used music, CDs, some instruments, also some movies, video games.

He’s also on the city council, has been since he turned twenty-one, three, maybe four years ago.

Well, William, Will, is no dummy. He knows who he is, probably to a greater degree than most, perhaps attributable to his parents. He understands he is disabled, what caused it, what it means, what his future likely holds.
He also knows, being on the city council, that the whole fire department thing just hasn’t been working out for the city.

So he decided he’d turn that old ice cream truck into an emergency response vehicle, get it back into service.
He formed the Jennifer Junction Volunteer Appendectomy Squad.

He’s got his team and his beepers all in place. Everyone is trained to do on the spot major surgery. They carry little pen flashlights, sharp pocket knives, needle nose pliers, what have you, No. 9 wire, alcohol wipes.

Well, I’m tallying pairs of sweat pants, and in this morning commute crowd, I’d count three in the affirmative and ten and more with the anti’s.

Of course, you can’t see below the waist on those who are driving, so this could be a so-not reliable survey.

I have heard talk that a citywide, statewide, national, international search is already underway to try to find sweat pants sufficient in size and number to fit around the simply enormous posteriors of the, well, many of the citizens of the hamlet of Jennifer Junction.

The big sweats.
Oh, well, mine here are large.

They come in XL as well, double, triple and beyond, I suppose to infinity.

I have heard you must journey to a major metropolitan area or go online to procure four, five and six XL.
That paper says that Rick’s Sporting Goods has a full supply of smalls, medium, large and one-X.

There are four double-X and the last XXXL was sold at five minutes to five yesterday afternoon.

The Rossbacher family has an ad running on eBay hoping to procure six pairs of XXXXXXL with elastic waist bands.
The city has put together a team of full-time volunteers searching Craigs List, 24-7.

The editorial page of Bob’s News has opined that Jennifer Junction ambassadors be sent wherever necessary: India, China, Bolivia, Bozeman, in order to find the right sizes.

“It’s that important. If we can’t act on something like this, when will we ever?” they said.

The article went on to say we should “peruse the planet, browse every byway, tilt at every windmill, jousting, battling the global warming dragon — become men and women of La Mancha, seekers of sweats, doers of amazing deeds.

“Go for it.”

CHAPTER 8

I’m sweatin’.

It’s hot.

I’m pounding as fast as I can, trying to keep up with Jesse and Carl in the pumper truck Honda.

I put my head down and stand up and watch my legs to see how hard I’m going and throw the butterfly handle bars side to side.

I can hardly breath.

It’s humid and hot. It’s that darned humidity and it’s that darned heat.

I don’t know where they’re going. I was sitting downtown talking to that one guy who sits there.

Jesse comes flyin’ around the corner right through a red light.
Robert S. Thompson said it was pink.
Anyway, I took off.

It’s mostly downhill or flat around here. That helps.

Whenever Jesse looks in his rearview mirror I look the other way. His side mirror is busted out.
They must be in a hurry from how fast they are going.

Or it’s just because I’m on a bike. I can’t wait until I can get my license. I told Mom that Dad said he’d get me a car. She said we’ll see. She always says that.

We flash past the cop shop and I see ol’ LaVerna looking outside through the bars of her window.
There’s a drive where the cop cars pull in and out that goes right by LaVerna’s cell, like she’s back at her old job.

Just as I suspected.

Jesse pulled into the Foos Foods parking lot. I yanked over behind a rusted mini-van where I could see through the van windows and still be on the other side of the van where ol’ Sherlock and Watson couldn’t see me.
I wondered if they were going to citizen’s arrest The Ol’ Foos.

Maybe it would be official since Jesse’s the fire department and Carl’s the college.
I watched Carl and Jesse until the Mexicans came out and drove away their mini-van.

Then I just put down my kickstand and sat with my arms crossed, watching the scene.
Jesse saw me and then said something to Carl.

They both turned around, then waved me to come up and talk.
“Hey,” said Jesse, ‘cause I was at his window.

“Hey,” I said. “Stakeout?”
Jesse nodded.

Carl kept his eyes on the store.
“We got a report that the Sox couple were on their way to the store,” Jesse said.
I nodded then looked at the store.

You can see practically the whole thing and everyone inside through that giant window.

The Sox’ yellow school bus was parked there all right, taking up the whole east side parking area.
“We just don’t know what might be going down,” said Jesse.

I saw Bobbi and Jim at one of the checkouts.
“You want me to go ask them?” I said.
Carl looked at Jesse.
“That might work,” Carl said.

“Okay,” I said. I pushed off to coast down to the front doors.
“Be careful, kid,” I heard Jesse whisper like he meant it.

The Sox’ were still paying when I got in there. I could see Carl and Jesse out the window.
I waved.

Jesse waved back. Carl put a hand to his brow and looked down at the pavement.
When I came out I got my bike and walked it over to the brown Honda fire engine.

“They kidnapped their own kid, right kid?” said Carl.
“It was The Foos,” said Jesse, still in whisper mode.
“LaVerna’s chirping, huh?” Carl added.
“Spillin’ her guts,” said Jesse, now in a normal voice.

“They needed Huggies,” I said.
“For when they get li’l Sweat back.
“That it?” said Carl. “Nothing else?”

“Huggies … diet Pepsi,” I looked at the clouds to think. “Chips. Nacho chips, big bag."

The Sox bus diesel engine cranked. They pulled slowly toward the exit, showing us plainly the “Go Cows” logo on the side, homemade, but not too bad.

I looked down at Carl. He was still watching the store.
Inside the big front window The Two Foos, Mary Woo and Larry, makes two, smiled and waved.
Carl and Jesse stared.

I stood on my peddles, not moving, trying to balance. I finally had to drop down.
I looked out toward the highway and the ball field, looking for someone I knew.

CHAPTER 9

I could see Ron On The Radio through the big front window of the station.

He was sitting at his big desk with the big microphone, with the big American flag on the wall behind him and a clear jar of assorted candy in front of him.

Tacked over the flag was the biggest pair of grey sweat pants in the world.
I try to hold onto the building and stand on my bike. My front tire is almost flat.

I’ll need to get air at Cenex. It’s free. Some places it costs.
It smells like feed in the air. We’re not that far from the elevator. It still smells even though it’s closed for the casino.

It smells like caramel corn, too. I look around to see where that’s coming from.
I can hear someone walking in high heels.

It’s the lady from the office supply store. She gets dressed up to work there.
Ron On The Radio can see me now.

They have a microphone outside that I don’t know where it is, but I can hear it.
He’s talking about sweat pants and America and baseball and the war and last week’s United Methodist early service and next week’s Apple Pie Day.

People are supposed to put hot pies in their windows and if somebody walks all around instead of driving you’re supposed to be able to smell ‘em.

You can listen to him if you want if you’re downtown.

“Family values, that’s what we’re talking about, people.
“Tradition. A good day’s honest wage for a day’s work. Hot, honest labor. Sweat. Sweat pants.
“Our Founding Fathers and Mothers wore them, though you don’t hear that from the liberal media. They did not worry about warming.

“As American as American can be.
“And if you think for one moment …”

Here comes a bunch of those seniors.
They are really starting to run wild, that’s what some people say. Pretty soon you won’t be able to go downtown without being harassed by them.

Harassed means like pushing or something.
They walk right by me like I’m not here. They wear shorts and sandals. The old guys aren’t wearing shirts.

Wal-Mart’s got a new greeter on the north entrance door.
I already know him, Walter White Man.
He’s rich.

Maybe he’s lucky, I don’t know.
He has the Enchanted Companies.

It’s Enchanted Golf Course, Enchanted Bowling For Less, and the Enchanted Feed Lot.
They weren’t called that when his dad had the company.
Walt says he’s been on an alien space ship, mother ship. He came to talk to my class one time. I’m not sure if Miss Porter still lives in town or not.

Yesterday Carl and Jesse were in there all day, on one of those hard-plastic benches, surveiling him while he greeted.

They think he might know something about li’l Sweat, maybe part of the bunch, the gang.
Carl and Jesse must have all the inside dope.

Or, they could just be lonely, like Walter maybe.

Sittin’ at Wal-Mart is at least better than sittin’ at home.

CHAPTER 10

Pssst!

Djew hear that?

Gutner, in Bogota Booth, he says it was Steve the pizza kid, guy, who took Little Baby Sox.

“He yis owt all de night long, driving aroundt, looking in all de winnows, seeingk who is up and who is fuckingk or sleepingk.

“He looks in all de winnows. He has no wooman, no chilt. He sees one he likes, he takz-it.

“Zooom! Off he goz-again.

“See?”

Gutner works for the city so he has coffee all over town and talks to a lot of people. So he would know.

I think he’s awesome. His starched brown work shirts are always so fresh and pressed every day, and they look nice with his grey sweat pants and shiny black work boots.

This gum is old. I’ve got some more in my purse wansome?

If you don’t like blueberry there’s vanilla.

Yes, I have been made aware.

Steve the pizza kid, guy, dude, wont’ wear the sweat pants.

He’s in the definite minority by now, I dare say.

He has told the local newspapers on record that he does not believe in all this anti-global warming crap, and I quote.

Which must mean he is in favor of global warming, which is thoroughly disagreeable and will not sell him many pizzas.

And something I would think his employer would want to look into.

And cut his dick off.

And poor li’l Sweat Sox, poor, dear, sweet Sweat, what has become of you?

He’s a traitor. That Steve.

A dickless coward.

That’s what ol’ Gutner said about Pizza Steve this morning.

One time a woman did that with her husband, cut off his dick. Then tossed it in the front yard on her way to work. That got in the news.

I’m not sure if a pizza delivery guy has ever had that done to them. That would have been on the news.

Gutner was eating sausage and talking about it.

I don’t know why he’s so serious about the sweat pants. He’s really into the whole thing. He wears sweats all day.

Sometimes he wears two or three pairs at a time.

And when he sees Steve on the road he stares. Sometimes he sticks his head out the pickup window and stares and yells.

And makes that one sign.

There’s a certain hand signal that some of the pro-sweats are using.

Take your two fists out in front of you, put them together and then pull them apart, like you’re pulling the draw string on your sweat pants tight.

It also kind of resembles a garrote being pulled around somebody’s neck if you ever saw The Godfather.

To be continued. ...

SWEAT

— global warming ... in a small town

& other tales of THE Great American Western Midwest

Stories by Mike Palecek

Art by Monty Borror

http://www.rockyborrorpictureshow.com/
I'm happy to be a kid of the 80's and 90's. I'm happy to have the good fortune of being able to do what I love. I draw comics for independent companies such as Heske Horror and graphic novels for companies the size of Insomnia Publications. I'm lucky. A lot of guys from my background don't get to do that. I'm happy to have met Mike Palecek through a publisher, Mike Annis, and work together on projects we really can believe in instead of chasing paychecks. I get to do this...I don't quite believe it either.

Mike and I agree on a lot. Where we don't is small details. But we both realize one thing: think about it. That's it. Before you regurgitate what you have heard, just give it a second to digest. Stop thinking with your gut, start using your brain. Stop emoting, start reasoning. The newest ideas won't come from the same old crap you and I have been spoon fed our whole lives. It's time for something better. I am, at heart a pessimist. I see most of humanity going in the opposite direction as it should. Maybe being American has something to do with that. Maybe a single cheer for a thinly veiled bigot running for office makes me hate the majority of humanity. I see Americans getting more superstitious, angrier at those who are different and it makes me want to emote back. But...I try to let reason win. I really do try.

One quote I do believe is this: "People get the government they deserve." I don't know of truer words ever spoken. If we have a nation filled with idiots, then our leaders will reflect that. I want to ask, to implore, let's give this reason a chance. Let's try this. But, again, I'm a pessimist. I try not to expect too much. In a very few years, I think this nation will go right back to where it was a few years ago..."lie to me, spy on me, build a fence around me. Keep me safe from the unknown." The biggest evil in this country are those that live in it.

So Mike and I will continue on, hoping to shake a few out of apathy. But I think he may be more of an optimist than me. I think he can change a few minds. Hell, he's at least got a pessimist like me trying. You gotta give him that.

CHAPTER FOUR

Hey!
Hi!
It’s me Tommy.

I’m sweatin’ myself to death.
Somebody took Sweat Sox.
The Sox baby.
He’s a boy.

It’s just a baby, that’s too bad. That makes me sad, kind of.
Somebody said it just happened.
“’scuse me, sorry, Hi.”

That’s why I’m flyin’ over to Carl’s. He would know. He knows everything. No, really. He’s got his own college.
I’d say it’s about a week old, the baby. The college is older than that.
I can’t remember when it was born.

I didn’t even know they had a baby, really, until this morning somebody said it was kidnapped.
They think is was The Foos who took it. They’re Korean and they’re probably gettin’ even for all of their babies we’ve got. Lots of people have ‘em. We got X-Box. Mom says that’s enough for now.

The Foos, Mary Woo and Larry.

They don’t speak American and they don’t look at you and they’re always talking to each other, making secret plans maybe.

Bobbi, Mrs. Sox, said, she’s my P.E. teacher, she was, I’m not sure if she will be next year, she said that if it was a girl they were gonna call it Sweet Sox.

“Isn’t that just precious?” she said.
We said, yeah, kind of.

And if it was a boy, Jim, Mr. Sox, was gonna call it Sweat, because it would be a boy and playing sports and always working hard and being a good example to everyone about running wherever you were going and giving 110 percent and hustling and always “working up a lather” is how he said it.

I’m riding around everywhere telling everyone, seein’ if they’ll help look for li’l Sweat.
I saw Nona, she’s working this morning, since it’s Saturday and it’s busy. She just waved at me out the front window. She’s smart. She knew what I was going to tell her. She wanted me to keep going, telling lots of people.

I saw Judy, the Lesbyterian minister. She had on her Army uniform. She has to be the Army recruiter too, since it’s a small town. All the ministers do, I guess.
I waved and she saluted. That’s pretty cool.

Paul, he’s the janitor at the middle school and high school, somebody else does the elementary building. Paul was in his pickup in the parking lot of Foos Foods. He was getting toilet paper and Pine Sol.

I told him maybe he shouldn’t go in there, but he did.
Paul knows everything about every sport or every kid who ever played sports here.
He lets The Swarm play football with a Pepsi cup full of gravel and folded over, out behind the bleachers during football games. He’s not supposed to, but it’s better to have The Swarm on your side.

I know.
The Swarm is about a hundred little kids who run around town doing whatever they want. They surrounded me once on my bike. Lucky for me it started pouring out or I was dead.
I just saw LaVerna. I went flying through the drive-up. I thought she’d wanna know.
I skidded out, then sat there waiting for her to look up and smile. Usually she at least smiles.
A car behind me honked.
I turned around quick.

Not a loud honk, more like a beep-Hi.
“Hey,” I said.
I came around to the passenger side and walked up with them while Christopher’s mom pulled up to talk to LaVerna.
“Hey.”
“Djew-hear?”
“Hear what?” said Robin, his mom. She’s always listening, even when she’s looking the other way.
“Yes, it’s unfortunate,” said Christopher.

Christopher says things like unfortunate and for-too-it-us, depending on whether it’s something good or bad.
He’s in high school, but he’s short so he talks to me.

Anyway, he’s the state representative for Jennifer Junction. I think he’s the only one who wanted to do it. His mom drives him to the state capital when the legislature’s in session. When he’s sixteen he’ll probably drive himself. That’s what my mom said.
The Mexicans walked through, wearing their nice Saturday shirts and jeans, on their way somewhere.
Then Don pulled up in the cruiser and circled the parking lot.

“Seeya,” I told Christopher. I pedaled up to Don. He stopped and rolled his window down to smoke.
“Hey-Tommy.”
“Heard anything new?” he asked me.
Well, I told him who I talked to so far and where I was going, nothing else.
Don sat there with his window down, air-conditioning the bank parking lot, smoking.
I sat on my bike next to his car.
I tried to sit and balance without touching the ground.
There wasn’t much else to say. Don has kind of limited interests.
He’s okay as a cop.
Somebody said he likes it.

“Well, seeya, Tommy. Stay out of trouble.”
He flicked his cigarette. He always says that and flicks his cigarette butt away from me. If he was a jerk he might flick it at me. But then I wouldn’t stop and talk to him, if he did that all that time.

I could see Sherman and I was kind of waiting for ol’ Don to flick his cigarette, so I could go see what ol’ Sherman was doing.
He’s the mailman for this part of town. They give those jobs to service men, my dad told me once.
I asked Sherman about that once and he laughed, not at me, he said he was a draft-dodger in Canada and never got to go to war. He got the job anyway because the rest of the people at this post office are cool, he said.

My mom says they are all a bunch of drug addicts and it’s a wonder anybody gets the right mail in this town.
“Hey, Sherman.”
“Tommy, my man.”
Sherman stops and waits for me.
He’s got a black and grey beard and ponytail, and he wears a Packers cap, with mailman shirt and shorts, long black socks, black Mailman Shoes.
I tell him right away about Sweat Sox the baby.

“LaVerna’s got him,” Sherman says, ducking his head to look over the top of his glasses at the bank drive-through.
“Who else has the motive? Cui bono?” says Sherman.
I didn’t say nothing. I had to sit on my bike and think about it. Sherman kept going. I just sat there for a while.
It was getting even hotter, I could tell.

From where I was I could smell chlorine and popcorn, so I peddled slow, almost falling over, over to the pool.
Some of the lifeguards were there, putting on lotion and whistles. Some were giving lessons to the bankers kids, while the parents in the cars stared holes in the heads of the lifeguards to pay some attention to their stupid kid that they don’t drown during swimming lessons.

Linda is the head lifeguard.
She’s been there for a long time, since I’ve been going. And now that they built the indoor part of the pool to go with the outdoors, she’s got a big job. I wouldn’t want it.

She also has to buy beer for all the teenagers and she gets other stuff for other people. I’ve seen Sherman shoving dollar bills through the fence to her. It’s a lot to keep track of with the pool and everything else, I’ll bet. People are always looking for her, bothering her.

She’s too fat to climb up on the lifeguard tower anymore, so she stands by the fence with her whistle in her mouth and watches.
I guess she used to be pretty. That’s what Don said. I guessed he was talking about Linda. I don’t know who else it would be.
Anyway, she said it was The Foos and LaVerna all right.

She said Don was thinking about going over and arresting LaVerna right now, is what she heard on the scanner in the lifeguard room.
I need to go talk to Carl.

CHAPTER FIVE

I can’t stand that kid.

Looking in the window all the time. I think he does it at the house too, little perv.

I’ve got customers. I can’t worry about whether some bimbolicious bank teller stole some little kid.
Not when I’ve got orders waiting. Call the Red Cross. I’ve got ketchup bottles to fill.
Look at this.

This is what I have to deal with. Missing kidnapped kids. Like who’s got the luxury …
Here.
See?

Each friggin’ napkin is stamped with some business name.
Jack & Jill Plumbing. Fern’s Family Dental Care. Jennifer High School. Jesus Junction.
And guess who gets to stamp each and every one, between wiping runny noses and filling salt shakers and cleaning off syrup bottles?
KJEN Radio, Raul & Saul’s Friendly Hometown Bank, Jane June John Kent Marc & Mary Attorneys at Law.

I’ve worked here at Tony & Tina’s Café for a few years now.
It does not get old, not really, when you think about it. I’m a people person.
I need a smoke. Come outside for a sec.

I hear a lot. People think I’m not listening — and I’m not — but I can’t really help it.
I guess ol’ Ron was home one afternoon, about four.
He and his son and daughter and better half all ended up in the kitchen. This was before school let out for summer.
Yeah, had to be.
“The weather man insists it’s not getting warmer,” Ron says to everybody and no one, stepping in front of his daughter to grab the milk and getting the famous Rachel Waters evil-eye.

“No mention of it.
S’cuuuse me.” He ducks under his son’s arm to reach the cheese.
“They’d tell us, if it was real. Yes they would.”

He sat at the table with his milk and sandwich and chips while the other three kept working on gathering their stuff.
“And yet, the U-U’s keep saying global warming this, the polar monkeys that, those poor glacier guppies there.
“We’ve got to put our feet down. Enough is way more than enough.
“Sweat pants.
“It’s not that warm out. In fact, it’s kind of chilly, especially in the evening lately, after the sun goes down.
“That is the stark reality we are dealing with here.
“Could you reach me the pickles, shweety?
“Thanks.”

There goes Don. Oh-my-God.
He’s got LaVerna in the back seat.
She smiles, waves with her cuffed hands.
This is a big day for her.
That’s so nice.

CHAPTER SIX

There’s CCC.
It’s uphill.
Like Mount Olympus, Carl says.

It’s almost straight up.
Prob’ly not straight up, but it about feels like it.
There’s Carl.
He’s walking around his yard with his head down, arms behind his back, his pipe in his teeth.
He’s heard.

“Hey-Carl.”
“Hello, young man. Well, what’s to be done?”
I pull right up to him, in front of him, to maybe make him stop pacing. There’s no way I can follow him all over his lawn on my bike with all the nightcrawler hills.
He’s actually pinned between me and the peonies.
White, pink, too.
I say I don’t know.

He just wants to talk, I know that.

His questions are not Socratic, rhetorical. He is not interested in what I have to say.
That’s okay with me. I didn’t come here to really say anything.

Carl is wearing a black professor’s graduation gown and he has on an Afghan Pakol Hat. I know ‘cause he told me.
To me he looks like maybe Sherlock Holmes, in his graduation gown, and pipe, out stalking his yard, unconsciously stepping over and around all the dandelions — now that there is a local murder to be solved.
Well, not really a murder, yet, but it could be.
That would be serious.
There would be lots of pacing required.
People would have lots to say. There might be outdoor barbecues to talk it over, maybe a circus, big church festivals, parades, candy.

It is true that Don is on the case and already has the suspect in the back of his car.
But I don’t think it hurts to have Carl out here in his hat, black graduation gown, brown penny loafers and pipe, anyway. Just in case.
Cherry.
The pipe tobacco is cherry.
Mmmm.

He takes it out and taps or rather beats — Carl likes us to use specific language — against his palm, then the side of his shoe. I think he probably saw his grand-dad do that. There’s really no reason. It’ll just fall out if you turn it over.
“The financier is in official custody,” Carl says, not looking at me, but rather over the lawn, in the direction of the fire hydrant, as if it would speak if only someone would listen.

I am a prop, like the pipe and hat and gown, necessary for the play, but I don’t mind.

It is what it is.

Jesse pulls up in the tan ’88 Honda Accord ladder truck.

He’s trying to get a Dalmation.

He still lives at home and his mother says they are a nasty breed.

Jesse says he’s either moving or just keepin’ the dog in the car. I am not sure what that does to the monthly training sessions.

There’s a lot to consider when you enter the public service field. That’s what Carl says in his public administration course.
Jesse parks in the drive, rolls down the window and cocks his head.
He’s chewing gum. I guess he’s trying to quit smoking, something.

As he tilts his head to look up at Carl and somehow keep the sun out of his eyes, his seed corn cap hits the door frame and now sits on kind of an angle on his head, which turns out is just right for the sun.

And I’m thinking, Watson, I presume.

I smile and they don’t see.

“What about The Foos?” says Jesse.

Carl flashes a look that is all about “The Foos? Hmmmm.”
“Foos Foods,” Carl presses those nuggets with his fingertips into the ground.
“The Foos.” Jesse tamps the ground.

“You think The Foos took Sweat Sox?” I run over trying not to trip and spill the watering can.

I was smiling.
It’s a way small town.

Carl narrowed his eyes, struck a match on the back of his shoe and lit his pipe.
I think even he was surprised it worked.

He gazed at the satellite dish on the side of the house and pursed his lips to make smoke rings, settling for what he could get, which was not that great.

“They’re Korean,” says Jesse. “Cambodian, like that.”
Carl nodded, once … twice.

I silently screamed from the bleachers, urging them on.
I looked from Jesse to Carl and back, and back.

“We’ve got lots of theirs. They took back one.”
“That’s what I heard, too,” I said.
“And …” Carl began to drawl now.
“You’re saying this LaRothschild magnate is connected as well?”
I stared.

Jesse squinted even more against the sun.
Carl puffed.
“And that it is a ring, a wide, wide ring.
“Of babies, mere infants, swaddlers. And boxes … noodle boxes, containers, take-home. Ho Chung Noodles.
“Empty coming in, not so empty going out?
“Is that what you’re saying?”

I stared, then sat back on my seat, since my calves were starting to cramp up.

Jesse put up a hand against the sun and looked at Professor Carl through the space between his fingers.

NEXT WEEK, AFTER THE OLYMPICS:

CHAPTERS SEVEN, & BEYOND ...