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