The Life and Death of Bayou Billy

By C.L. Bevill

William ‘Bayou Billy’ McCall is an infamous outlaw who dies ignominiously at a very old age. He leaves behind a mixed history of anti-heroism and unethical immorality in the form of legends and tall tales. The two towns in which Bayou Billy simultaneously lived, Sawdust City, Texas, and Albie, Louisiana, immediately begin to bicker over which one will get to bury the notorious criminal and thus achieve the prominence that goes with the burial. Pascal Waterford, the mayor of Sawdust City and a die-hard alcoholic, is cheered by Bayou Billy’s death. He knows that Billy has previously promised his body to Sawdust City in exchange for free utilities. The gain of a tourism attraction in the form of a famous felon’s gravesite will save Sawdust City from economic ruin and salve Pascal’s scruples. Ophelia Rector, a prominent citizen of Albie and owner of the local mortuary, knows of Billy’s similar promise to the mayor of Albie for cessation of taxes and complimentary utilities. Her loving pet project is the restoration of Albie’s cemetery and the promotion of the same into a grand memorial park. Her need for control over Bayou Billy’s cadaver is obsession personified. Both Pascal and Ophelia will fight to the bitter end to discover how low each can sink in their efforts to obtain the rotting corpse of a dislikeable man whose fame was more prestigious than the man himself. Revised in April 2018 for language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.L. Bevill
• Release date: Oct 19, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458186881

C.L. Bevill

C.L. Bevill is the author of several books including Bubba and the Dead Woman, Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas, Bubba and the Missing Woman, Bayou Moon, The Flight of the Scarlet Tanager, Veiled Eyes, Disembodied Bones, and Shadow People. She is currently at work on her latest literary masterpiece.

Book preview

Chapter 1

From a transcript of an interview with Wanda Jean Pritchett dated January 1996. It is noted that the interview was conducted to provide background material for a magazine article on William Douglas McCall AKA Bayou Billy. The interviewer was Stillman Floyd, a biographer interested in William Douglas McCall, who had consequently published a book on McCall’s life through a university press in limited edition. Mr. Floyd indicates that Mrs. Pritchett was eighty-one years old at the time and living at the Sunnyvale Retirement Community Hospital in Gilbert, Arizona. She has since passed away via natural causes, and Mr. Floyd’s papers were donated to the University of Arizona’s library and historical archive:

Floyd: Mrs. Pritchett, what I’d really like to do is talk about Bayou Billy. Just like I told you on the telephone and in my letter.

Pritchett: I need a drink, boy. These folks here won’t let a lady have a sip of whiskey now and again.

Floyd: Whiskey? Perhaps I could, ah, would they let, would they allow you to?

Pritchett: I’m 81 years old, pup. Whiskey ain’t gonna hurt my liver no more than it done hurt me already. I had part of it out in ’89. The big C. And I don’t mean chocolate! (laughter)

Floyd: When I come back tomorrow, I’ll bring a pint.

Pritchett: Make it Jim Beam. I like my Jim. He’s a manly man. In the meantime, let me have one of them cancer sticks I see peeking out of your coattails.

Floyd: Uh, but this is a hospital.

Pritchett: Yes, and I’m the Queen of England. Lordy, you must be the runt of the litter. You don’t got no spark in you at all. (clicking and a deep sigh) Oh dear Jesus in heaven above, that’s almost as good as sex. (pause) And you blush, too, boy. What, you don’t think old women ever had sex? You’re gonna have an eye-opener. Them peepers will prolly pop right on out when you hear the real story.

Floyd: (sigh, another click and another sigh) I need one, too. About Bayou Billy, Mrs. Pritchett. I’d like you to tell me how you met him and in what context.

Pritchett: Context? My daughter read that article ‘bout you, said you was looking into Mr. William Douglas McCall, also called Bayou Billy. I knowed she called you ‘cause she told me she did. Told ya that ya should talk to her old mama. On account that I knew Bayou Billy.

Floyd: Yes, ma’am. Your daughter, Ida.

Pritchett: Ida’s a no-account daughter of a whore. (laughter) That’s a joke, boy. I guess when Ida called ya, maybe ya thought I was Billy’s neighbor or some such nonsense.

Floyd: Uh, ma’am…

Pritchett: Oh, don’t mind me, pup. Talking about Billy’s got my blood pounding again. Ain’t had so much fun since Mrs. Tarrant broke her hip down the hall. She said she slipped in the shower, but Mr. Papadopolis said he had her bent up against the wall and pushed a little too hard, if you know what I mean.

Floyd: I, I, I’m not quite…

Pritchett: Slipping her the sausage. Having a wild ride on the baloney pony. The old in and out and in and out. Oh for Christ’s sake. They were having sex! She was lying on the floor screaming! He was standing there with his pants around his ankles, his willy as deflated as the Hindenburg, with this look on his face that said as much as Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. The nurse came in, and seeing as how she’s religious with a vengeance, she thought that the apocalypse had done come, instead of something else, that is. Lord Almighty, what a fuss over two people doing what comes naturally. (long pause) Not that breaking a lady’s hip in the process is quite natural.

Floyd: I, I, uh.

Pritchett: And I would know.

Floyd: You would know?

Pritchett: Let’s see. You want to know in what context I knew Bayou Billy?

Floyd: Yes, ma’am.

Pritchett: In the context that I was a whore, and he was a john. That’s some kind of context, ain’t it?

Floyd: Yes, ma’am.

Pritchett: Oh, Billy was the kind of fella that all the girls used to dream about. Tall, dark haired, eyes that bore into you like Texas oil drills, and that weren’t the only penetrating he did. I worked at a cathouse in Shreveport, Louisiana, down on the Red River. Twenty girls there, all with boobies bigger than Dolly Parton’s. And don’t your eyes be headed south, pup. Thems are all out of air now and hanging down to my belly. Ain’t a thing that’s apt to improve with age.

Floyd: (indistinguishable)

Pritchett: Oh, now, son. You didn’t really want the whitewashed version, did you?

Floyd: No, ma’am.

Pritchett: Later on I was a madam, but then, I was just a whore. I thought having sex for money was just the finest thing since sliced bread. Ifin a gal like me from rural Texas could make three hots and a cot for some cash and flash, then that was a right able way to make a living. Weren’t ‘til later that I realized I could make a lot more bucks if I managed all them girls myself.

Floyd: You were a…prostitute.

Pritchett: Oh, hell no, pup. I was a whore. A prostitute is a fancy word that Christians called us when they been to church with their wives just before they arrested us or did us themselves. I recall one minister, a so-called man of God, who liked to do the chocolate cha-cha while the gal was giving a butterfly flick to his brother. But I do digress, don’t I.

Floyd: Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am.

Pritchett: Never you mind, pup. I recollect that I was about 20 years old the first time I saw Billy. And he was already a legend. Robbing banks all along the Gulf Coast. He robbed a train once, too, although it might have been more than one. I can’t really recollect, but the most famous thing he ever done was to rob a riverboat right on the Mississippi River. Even stole the solid gold ring right off the riverboat captain’s pinkie finger. Yep, he was a daring man. Papers couldn’t write enough about him and that riverboat job. (laughter, then a pause) Of course, us girls knew about him for that. Also, because he had a ten-inch-long willy.

The Present

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Good Parish Hospital,

Shreveport, Louisiana

I believe that I’m going to chop off each and every one of his fingers if he touches me again, Margo Ballard resolutely informed the nursing supervisor, Prudence Barr.

Pru, as she was commonly called, peered over her gold-rimmed reading glasses. It isn’t his fingers that you should be chopping off, she commented. She lifted her index finger to her mouth, wetted it with the tip of her tongue, returned it to the file she was reading, and carefully flipped a page, all without looking away from Margo’s reddened face. It was Pru’s subjective opinion that on most days Margo resembled Winnie the Pooh wearing hospital scrubs. Today Winnie had two enflamed cheeks the exact color of a well-spanked baby’s butt. Additionally, there was a determined expression on her typically kindly face that foretold of a line that had been crossed.

I’d cut that off, too, Margo snarled back, if he had one that was longer than my pinkie.

Pru tut-tutted mildly. He’s 110 years old, how het-up could he be?

Margo’s lips came together tighter than a childproof prescription bottle. Under a battle-worn coat of glossy red lipstick, her flesh became white. Finally, just as Pru was thinking that the younger woman would turn blue before she composed herself, the mouth snapped open and spewed forth vitriol. He grabs my butt and pinches every time I turn my back. So I stopped turning my back. Then he started waiting to call me until his little weenie gets hard, so I could personally witness his wicked woody. Then today, seeing how I didn’t have my back to him, he decided to fight dirty. The woman paused to gather breath and then finished with a rapid denouement, It was a purple nurple.

Pru wet another finger, and the moistened digit paused dramatically at the corner of the file. A purple nurple, she repeated thoughtfully, as if she hadn’t ever heard that particular term before.

A titty-twister, Margo howled. She demonstrated on air with one hand, putting her thumb and index finger together and turning the entire hand viciously to the right. Including both the pinch and rotation.

Wincing, Pru protectively covered her breasts with the file she held in her hands.

Now I’ve got to explain to my husband that the oldest, horniest felon on this side of the Mississippi groped me and left marks, Margo hissed vehemently. She extracted a bottle from a nearby drawer, opened it expertly, and tipped three pills into her hand. She tossed the pills into her mouth without as much as a whimper. You think Allen is going to understand?

With a heavy sigh, Pru took the file away from her breasts. Margo, honey, what do you want me to do about it? Have him arrested? File a sexual harassment charge? He’ll probably croak before an officer gets the cuffs around his wrists. One hundred…ten…years…old.

Tell you what, Margo said after a moment, sounding remarkably composed for a woman who had just dry-swallowed three 800mg tablets of ibuprofen, you go deal with him for the rest of the evening while I find a bulletproof vest for my chest and maybe one for my hiney, too.

Pru grudgingly agreed and watched as Margo stalked down the white hall. Pru had heard from the other nurses about the resident of Room 512. He was a lustful lecher with a potty mouth that could make a company of sailors blush, wandering hands that were faster than a speeding super villain, and an unpleasant disposition that could make a bull in a ring seem like Mary Tyler Moore on happy pills.

Twenty feet away from Room 512, and Pru could hear a loud discussion in what was supposed to be a quiet hallway. As she stepped closer, she realized the conversation was one-sided and directed at someone who did not answer. When she peeked around the corner of the door to the room, she saw that the occupant was having a heated dialogue with a large potted plant.

The plant in question was a leafy banana palm tree that sat benignly in a corner, neither contributing in nor disregarding the active conversation of its roommate.

Pru stared.

The elderly man in the bed was hooked up to an IV, a catheter, a heart monitor, an oxygen tube, and a blood pressure monitor. None of which stopped him from waving his arms about as he spoke vehemently. …father in nineteen ought six drove my mama and my six brothers and sisters across the plains in a covered wagon. And after that ride, I had so many blisters my hindquarters was on fire for a month. I told my father that if I got on another wagon in my life, it would be too soon. And dammit if I didn’t. I rode horses, trains, even flew on a plane in 1946, but I ain’t never got back on a bastard wagon. In fact, I made sure I burned three of ‘em on the ferry landing where I hijacked a boat to get to the Northern Belle. He snorted and a snot bubble came out of the tubeless nostril, expanded to the size of nickel, and acrimoniously popped. The Northern Belle was the last riverboat that was ever robbed. And me and my gang done cleaned it out. Boat was chockablock full of rich Yankees with cash to spare. Playing roulette and blackjack and drinking la-de-dah brandy and smoking fancy cigars. One feller like to faint when I pointed my pistol in his face. He chuckled and waited expectantly as if the plant would chuckle back.

Pru had heard the story before. Often the details varied. Occasionally it was two burned wagons, and the name of the riverboat became the Northern Belle Queen or the Queen Belle of the North. Sometimes the vociferous occupant had done the tube snake boogie with the riverboat captain’s pretty wife in the course of the robbery.

Since the robbery had taken place some seventy-odd years previously, the details were blurred in the elderly man’s mind, and it was probably confirmable that he was the last living witness and participant in the crime. No one was left about to dispute particulars and accuracy. No CNN back in the day, Pru lamented wryly.

Pru had once read an article on the iniquitous event. Perhaps the reputation of the man in Room 512 would have withered away and died after a natural death. There had been a long life of bragging and felonious behavior to emphasize his petty criminality. However, the media had been starved for an attention-grabbing news event. Prohibition had been on its death legs, and Hoover had still been in office. People had slowly begun to acclimatize to the poverty of the Great Depression, but the lack of money and jobs and the rash of foreclosures had caused the common man to distrust the official figure. Heroes were far and few. When the presently elderly man had led his gang in a brazen robbery of a riverboat filled with wealthy Northerners, he had also burned wagons, a post office, and a barn during their escape in order to distract the authorities. He also had reputedly stopped to bribe two poor farmers in Louisiana into giving the gang food and water. The act of leaving the farmers alive caused what would have been called a viral reaction in the present; he became a hero. Until Bonnie and Clyde blazed their way through five states a few years later, William McCall became the hottest thing since Moses had parted the Red Sea.

And adding to William McCall’s infamy was the fact that the cops hadn’t caught him until the 1950s. They wouldn’t have ever caught him if his then most-recent wife hadn’t turned him in. She had seen a reward for his capture and decided the money was too good to pass up. Room 512’s inhabitant had destroyed a federal building which was a federal crime that didn’t have a statute of limitation. So into prison he went, where he promptly escaped and remained free for another ten years. It turned out that the common man had a long memory, and the occupant was still a hero. Sightings were frequent but most folks waited days before reporting it. Recaptured in 1964, the fellow was living in the deep bayous of Louisiana with his sixth wife and three children, making a living hunting alligators and shrimping. He was imprisoned for another twelve years and eventually became very ill with kidney disease. An outgoing president of the United States had been a particular fan of history and had taken pity on him, pardoning him in the final days of his administration. Prison officials were grateful. Apparently, there wasn’t a lot of extra money to provide costly dialysis for convicts.

In his later years, Room 512’s resident lived alternately in two towns on either side of the Sabine River. One was Sawdust City, Texas and the other was Albie, Louisiana. William McCall remained on the Texas/Louisiana border for the last ten years of his life. He had firmly stated and restated his belief he could escape across the state line a little easier because of the proximity of the two towns, regardless of the fact that he hadn’t committed any crimes during the previous twenty years. He owned two homes, each in the respective towns of Sawdust City and Albie. His seventh wife had occupied one and a fifty-year-old girlfriend occupied the other.

The hell you looking at, girly? the elderly man demanded belligerently. White hair barely covered a spotted dome. Faded blue eyes sparkled with mischief not yet past. He rattled the IV pole with one hand and stuck his chin out as threateningly as he could. I done pushed my buzzer going on five minutes ago, and that other silly wench showed up and got all upset on account of my little booby touch.

Pru grimaced and resisted the urge to cover up her sweater puppies. I know what you did, she said firmly. And if one little minute particle of your flesh comes in contact with any part of my flesh, you’re not going to be known by your outlaw name anymore.

No? Room 512’s occupant challenged.

Pru approached the bed and pulled the sheet off with a quick tug. Then she yanked up his hospital gown and exposed his shriveled privates. The resident of the room didn’t appear to be particularly deterred by the action. As a matter of fact, and despite the catheter, the wrinkled penis twitched. I’ll have a new one for you, she declared with a scowl. She unhesitatingly extracted the catheter, tape and all, listening to his howl of pain with no small satisfaction.

Waiting for the elderly man to finish a long string of explicit profanity, Pru picked up a carrot that the man had left from lunch. She demonstrated with a disposable scalpel, produced out of her smock’s front pocket. She swiftly sliced it in half and let the two pieces drop on the bed just on either side of the man’s desiccated Jolly Roger. You won’t be Bayou Billy anymore, Mr. McCall, she said positively and cheerfully. She expertly sliced the air with the scalpel in her gun hand. "You’ll be Bayou Betty."

William Douglas McCall, once popularly known as Bayou Billy, swallowed convulsively. His eyes jerked downward, leading Pru’s gaze to what had caught his attention. His tiny tally-whacker was getting a full on chubby. The scalpel in Pru’s hand drooped accordingly, and she groaned with equal parts of dismay and disgust. Quickly her eyes came back to meet Bayou Billy’s, and he grinned, showing that his dentures were still in the container on the nightstand. Her eyes unconsciously dropped again.

Pru was frozen like fish sticks at the supermarket. The little weenie got hard and stood as proudly as if it had just had a degree conferred upon it. All that was missing was the diploma. Then just as Bayou Billy was about to make what should have been the lewdest, dirtiest, nastiest comment of his life, his chest hitched twice. The air in his lungs whistled out his mouth, and his naughty blue eyes began to dim.

Pru’s eyes went wide. Bayou Billy should have reached for the Bible or perhaps the button that would feed him another dose of morphine or even for the nursing supervisor in a mute plea for assistance. Instead, he reached for his one-eyed trouser snake as if it would save his life.

It did not, and Bayou Billy died with his hand on his penis, an act which he liked just fine.

Chapter 2

From an article in The Louisiana Sparrow Press, dated August 7th, 1931:

Bayou Billy Strikes Again!

Brazen Louisianan Titillates Townspeople!

Southern Express Robbed at Gunpoint!

Thousands Stolen by Gentleman Thief!

William McCall, called Bayou Billy by locals, robbed the Southern Express train on Monday, August 3rd as it stopped for water and offloading of cattle at Monroe, Louisiana. Called unabashed and gallant by Mrs. Myra Renee Teasdale of Natchitoches, she states, He is the boldest man I have ever met. So audacious and daring. If I were twenty years younger, I would set my cap for him. Mr. Wayne Gibson of Winnsboro says this of the intrepid champion from Texas, Billy was as cool as ice cubes in Alaska at December. The train engineer of the Southern Express, Mr. Samuel Cutler of Houma, declares, I was right proud to have been robbed by Bayou Billy. He’s a right genuine man and a true Southerner.

Mr. McCall is known to have taken as much as ten thousand dollars from a bank shipment being transferred on the Southern Express. Bank official Mr. Elliot French says, We will tender a reward for the capture of Bayou Billy in the amount of five hundred dollars. We are unconcerned if this treacherous villain is bestowed to the bank or to the authorities dead or alive.

In his escape, Mr. McCall was reported to have saved a dog from being run over by a careless milkman. Miss Ella Louisa Burke reports, He stopped the milk truck by pointing his pistol directly at Milkman Kincade’s head and delivered the Birch’s dog from getting run over. That poor animal would have been ground into hamburger if not for Bayou Billy’s brave rescue. He’s a proper hero. Sightings of the legendary Bayou Billy continue in the Monroe area.

The Present

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Sawdust City, Texas

Pascal Waterford woke up with a sour taste in his mouth. If the truth were told, it was more than a sour taste. His eyes remained closed while he mentally catalogued to what the taste could be attributed and to what it might be compared. Eating cottage cheese left in the fridge for a month? Definitely not. Swallowing an ashtray full of cigarette butts? No. Licking the bottom of a sewer grate after a rainstorm washed up everything dead? Maybe. Drinking too many bottles of Corona and smoking five cheap cigars while playing poker with the guys down at the Gray Goose? Ladies and gentlemooses, we have a bingo!

Pascal did a quick check while keeping his eyes shut. He patted this body. Naked, all the parts seemed to be present and accounted for. He patted the bed. Not only did the bed feel like his bed, but there was the right amount of firmness with a butt-shaped depression where his tuckus normally resided. Also, there wasn’t a woman lying next to him whom he would have to identify from drunken fits and starts that could only remotely be called memories. Unpleasant taste and pounding headache aside, he thought that maybe he came out all right this time, however, that was considering he couldn’t recall half of the previous night.

Alert and sober, with good intentions he’d stopped in at the Gray Goose Inn. There had been a brief conversation with Mrs. August about the Race for Lymphoma the next month, which would take place on Sawdust City’s main drag, go through the park, and then through the cannery’s parking lot. There had also been Bob Cumberland, Bryant Mansfield, and George Hiram playing poker at the back table, giggling like teenage boys at an R-rated movie. Bob had called Pascal back and asked him if he wanted to sit in for a few hands. Pascal had thought that playing a little friendly game of poker was good political acumen. After all, Bryant had given Pascal one of his biggest donations in the last race. Then George had bought Pascal a drink, a Corona longneck with a slice of lime quaintly parked in the mouth of the bottle.

Pascal clearly remembered the thought that had occurred following the arrival of the drink. Just one. That was inevitably the thought that had always gotten him in trouble. Just one, cowboy. Just one little ol’ drink and then you can go home and get humping on all those things you need to do. You know, like do some cold calls, work out some more strategies with the campaign manager, work on the website, call the council members and get cracking, you tired, old drunken fool.

That had been pretty much the end of that. Just one had turned into One more. One more had changed into Well, another one won’t hurt. Well, another one won’t hurt had become It ain’t like I can’t stop anytime I wanna. Then Bryant had passed him one of those stogies that smelt like the hind end of a wino after a bout of diarrhea. And who can smoke one of those things without washing out their mouth with the taste of bottomless alcohol, preferably from an imported bottle? Why, no one of sound mind couldn’t, of course.

After that, Pascal didn’t remember anything in particular, although there were vague notions that whirled in his head. There was a faint impression of filling an inside royal straight against George’s full house, eights on top of threes. There was also a foggy recollection of an amicable agreement that Bob would trade his wife for Lindsay Lohan in spite of the whole her-life-is-a-train-wreck-and-I-can’t-look-away thing. As to the remainder of the evening, Pascal reckoned that only God and the police might know how he got home.

His eyes finally opened, and he stared upward at the familiar water stain of his ceiling. The stain was in the shape of Elvis in the early years, and Pascal figured if he got desperate for money, he could cut out the piece and auction it off on eBay. Definitely home, he thought gratefully. Not in one of the pits that were alleged to be motel rooms at the Happy Go Lucky Motel on Route 6. Not under the freeway bridge sharing body warmth with two pigeons. Not in bed with a woman who Pascal wasn’t quite certain had in fact been born a woman.

Turning his head, Pascal surveyed the immediate area. The side of his bed that he was not occupying was still reasonably made and empty. The door to the bathroom was wide open and shower-like-cleaning-up-after-horny-hose-monkey sex noises were not ominously emanating from within. He couldn’t smell bacon and eggs being fried in the kitchen. It was a safe conclusion that he hadn’t dragged home the well-nourished barmaid from the Goose for a round of drunken, soggy loveplay. She’d probably turned him down like the last time.

What day of the week is it? Pascal ran a hand through his graying hair and debated moving from the bed. Pressing matters included the fact that he had to urinate like a Russian racehorse and that if it was a weekday, then he needed to be at city hall before 9 a.m. in order to keep certain members of city council off his back.

One eye rolled to the left and checked out the clock on the nightstand. It said 8:20 a.m. and a little red dot denoted that it was Thursday. If the clock was accurate, and he thought that it was seeing as though it was one of those atomic dealies that reset itself through a satellite connection every time the power went off and then came on again. That was good also. It meant that Pascal had time to shower and get to the office before people started pounding angrily on his front door.

Lifting his head carefully, Pascal considered his next option. He could brush his teeth, then shower, and then puke his guts up. Or he could puke, brush his teeth, and then shower. Or he could simply stick his head in the toilet and pray for a strike of lightning to take him away from everything.

For certain, lightning did not strike, but Pascal had forgotten about it as he didn’t quite make it to the bathroom.

* * *

Wondering if the lady who came to clean his house once a week would up and quit on him once she had seen what he left on the bedroom floor, Pascal found himself in front of his bathroom mirror. With an extended examination, Pascal saw a man in his forties. His hair had once been dark brown but now was an equal mix of salt and pepper. Then there were the marks that indicated he had lived his life hard. Crow’s feet like a Google Earth map, jowls dropping around a square jaw, bleary reddened eyes with some baggage on bottom (and they weren’t Samsonite’s), and the pale, wizened skin of an agoraphobic in the springtime.

If Pascal had looked down, he would have seen the beginning of an abdominal bulge that said everything about how much he liked beer and nothing about the way he occasionally used his rowing machine. He also knew his butt hadn’t exploded with the blitz of middle age. Lifting an arm, he flexed a bicep and was mildly amused to see a muscle pop up instead of flopping south. The ladies still liked him when he was cleaned up. He had a good set of teeth, recently whitened by a dentist three towns over.

Pascal looked closer at the reflection and was startled when it sneered back at him. He was equally startled when his reflection began to speak to him. What you say, P.? You look like the man. Or maybe you look like a sun-fried dog poop in high summer. The answer, left unspoken, wasn’t the one he wanted to hear.

Instead Pascal said, I never slept with another man’s wife. I never hit a man when he was down. And I never, ever cheated on my taxes.

The reflection sneered again, one lip curling like a rock star. You slept with Johnny Robert Smith’s wife.

Pascal protested, He was dead.

Only two days before.

Still dead.

The reflection sneered harder. And you hit James Leroy Baker in the kidneys when he was on his knees puking from you slugging him in the guts.

James Leroy is a dirty rotten cheating butt hamster and deserved to be hit while he was down, Pascal said vehemently.

And in 1999 you claimed you had three children on your taxes instead of one, the reflection went on as if Pascal hadn’t spoken.

A typo, Pascal defended himself. Merely a typo. It seemed like a shame to have to make the fine outstanding folks at the IRS do all their paperwork again. It ain’t like the government is going to miss that thousand or so dollars. And I could have three children someplace. I have broken condoms before.

What about how the town is going to take a header into a toilet? How long has it been since the financial officer used a black marker instead of a red one? The reflection raised an angry fist as if it would come through the glass in order to beat him senseless. Then the curled lip wavered, and the reflection’s anger melted away in an expression of abject disgust. Take a shower, douchebag, before you’re really late.

As Pascal turned away from the mirror, he thought he heard, "How in the name of Holy Jesus Christ did the town of Sawdust City ever elect you to be the mayor?"

And even though Pascal wasn’t supposed to answer what he thought he might have heard, he did so anyway. Also, he wanted the last word. The other guy got caught wearing Victoria’s Secret lingerie and lipstick two days before the election. It didn’t photograph well in the local papers.

* * *

As Pascal headed out the door, the first thing he noticed was that his 2004 Ford Expedition was parked reasonably straight in his driveway. Also, and more importantly, it didn’t have a large bloody human-sized dent in the grill. The third thing he noticed was that his neighbor, Thaddeus Worth, was in his front yard pulling dandelions. Thaddeus yelled across a disorderly row of azaleas. Hey, Waterford!

Pascal checked out the shine on his loafers. His head was pounding like the pipes at a Blue Man Group concert, and he wasn’t sure if he had finished barfing yet. He was also pretty sure that ralphing on the flowers wouldn’t be good for them. Speaking to his crabby neighbor Thaddeus wasn’t high on his priorities. The eighty-seven year-old Korean War veteran found little in life that was positive and had gone on record as stating that politicians were comparable to a particularly troublesome dingleberry on a day that he was all out of toilet paper.

Thaddeus, Pascal said cordially.

Thaddeus stepped closer to the azaleas, and his antique blue eyes pierced Pascal. You look hungover, boy.

Pascal chuckled good humoredly even while he was certain the vein in his forehead was about to rupture. He could play the good old boy when he felt like it. A couple of beers with the boys at the Goose. You should come down, Thaddeus. We need a man like you to show us the ropes.

The elderly man wasn’t complimented. Instead, his eyes sparkled with mischief. Pascal caught the look and interpreted it to mean, I know something you don’t know and when you find out you are going to poop bricks…boy. But what Thaddeus said was, Trash was late again yesterday. Dogs got into the Parker’s can and spread chicken bones from here to eternity.

I’ll talk to the Sanitation Department, Pascal replied obediently.

Thaddeus smiled thinly and waited.

Then Pascal added, And the Animal Control Officer.

The backbiting look on Thaddeus’s face revealed the inner workings of the man’s mind. He might have been eighty-seven years old, but he had a brain like a bear trap and not the nice animal-safe kind, either. It was the kind of trap an animal would have to succumb to in abject agony or chew its leg off in an effort to escape. Pascal sighed and waited for the other bomb to drop, but Thaddeus continued to smile with an icy veneer until the younger man said, Got to get to city hall, Thaddeus. Things need doing that ain’t going to be done standing here.

Thaddeus nodded shortly and watched Pascal back out of his driveway and leave. Pascal glanced in his rearview mirror once and saw the elderly man still watching him. Pascal checked his visor mirror to make sure he didn’t have a great, gooey green booger flying out a nostril and wondered what the old man was contemplating. Thaddeus Worth’s signature had been first on the last recall effort. On the recall drive before that, Thaddeus’s signature had been second. His eighty-eight-year-old sister, Thomasina, who lived with him, and despite suffering from Alzheimer’s, had beaten him to the punch.

Pascal was pretty sure the aged pair sat on Thaddeus’s porch on Friday and Saturday nights with a video camera and a pitcher of pink lemonade, so they might catch Pascal in the act of doing something. They probably didn’t know what they were looking for, except perhaps a golden opportunity. Something interesting to sell to America’s Funniest Home Videos or maybe a new show like America’s Most Idiotic Public Figures.

Whatever it was, Pascal hoped he was making their decade. After all, they would probably keel over any minute due to their advanced ages. He could only hope that one of his drunken naked chases after imaginary pink elephants down the cul-de-sac wasn’t the cause of their passing. Or if it was, they got a really good kick out of it and mentioned it to St. Peter at the pearly gates. Allegedly, there was no such thing as bad press.