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.