Bubba and the Late Lamented Lassie

By C.L. Bevill

What could possibly go wrong?

Bubba Snoddy is a good ol’ boy with a wonderful family. His beauteous wife, a sheriff’s deputy, Willodean, is wondrous, his baby has starting sleeping through the night, and his hound, Precious, has taken to the changes with great aplomb. All is well.
Then the sound of bagpipes fills the air. His mother, Miz Demetrice, has organized a Scottish appreciation festival, and everyone in Pegram County is celebrating their Scottishness, whether they have it or not. Bubba is trying his best to take care of the baby while going about his business when he stumbles across...a dead body.

Worse than that, it appears as though Sheriff John Headrick himself is the murderous culprit, and the Pegramville Chief of Police, Big Joe, doesn’t seem interested in whether Sheriff John is innocent or not. Willodean is barred from investigating the crime, but Bubba isn’t. He might be toting around an infant with a Bassett hound trailing behind them, but he’s going to get to the bottom of the late lamented lassie come hell or high water.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.L. Bevill
• Release date: Dec 15, 2020

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.

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Preface

Bubba and the Brief Viewpoint of Precious

Or Mostly

Precious and What the Heck is This

and Why the Heck Has This Happened

and Where’s My Milk-Bone?

Once there was a Basset hound named Precious. She had a pretty good life. There were lovings, plays, dog bones, real bones, and lots of other stuff too numerous for the average hound to remember in one fell swoop. She loved her master, who was a man named Bubba. She had pretty good feels about Bubba’s wife, a woman named Willodean, who would often sneak her treats under the table and never minded that she regularly shared the king-sized bed upstairs with them. (Despite Bubba’s large frame, the bed had more than enough room for all of them.)

Daily bonus stuff included chasing the ball as thrown by Bubba, Willodean, and occasionally the white-haired, petite human named Miz Demetrice. Once in a blue moon the other petite human with the darker skin who liked to stay in Precious’s favorite room at the bigger house, the kitchen, would throw the ball. That one was called Miz Adelia. Sometimes it wasn’t even a ball. It could be a stick or a knotted rope or whatever was about and handy. (Once it was a real bone, something called a femur, and all the humans got upset until they figured out that the creek had washed out some of the family cemetery and deposited bones in a pile at the curve of the creek.) (And boy, did Precious miss that bone. It tasted like dirt and had just the right texture to gnaw upon. Its loss made a hound want to howl with misery.) All of the humans were good for handouts, although some of them were handier than others.

For example, Bubba would readily fork out a treat but then after he would say something like, No more for you, my precious liddle wubba boopnose, which Precious knew meant something like she was about to be forced to go on the infamous and ill-used d word. (The d word. Deadly. Diabolical. Drastic. Diet. Precious knew about those d words. They weren’t a good thing, although they could be a good thing. For instance, when Willodean had gone on one to lose weight after that other miniature human had appeared, she had been twice as likely to give her portions to Precious. I don’t need that extra serving, Willodean had muttered to herself. Precious, you’ll take care of it, won’t you, pretty girl? Precious would and did take care of those pesky extra servings. As the hound of the house, it was her moral obligation to do so.)

Playing, food, and diets aside, the situation had certainly gotten a little crazy once the micro human had materialized onto the landscape. From out of nowhere, it had come like a B-movie super monster. That thing was short, roly-poly, and liked to scream. It screamed in the morning. It screamed in the night. It screamed at bedtime. Mostly, Precious found a pillow and pulled it over her head. Although, she did have the privilege of having long, long, long ears, and those made handy soundproofing devices. Fortunately, the mini one had eventually gotten tired of screaming, which was good for everyone involved. Also, it started sleeping most of the night through, and that was also good. Bubba and Willodean both appeared to have less days with those dark circles under their eyes, and Bubba had stopped drinking coffee by the gallon. Good goodity goodness.

Other times the micro human was loads of fun. It smelled good, mostly. It loved to play with Precious and pat her constantly. It was warm and cuddly. It giggled fetchingly at Precious. Conversely, it produced things that no hound with half a brain would enjoy. Instead of going outside like a normal hound, the thing would pee and poop in the house. (In the house. Right in the house.) Then Bubba or Willodean or Miz Demetrice or sometimes Miz Adelia, would change a cloth thingy around its little butter bean butt. (And if it can be believed, the little thing didn’t even get swatted with a rolled-up newspaper for having committed such an outrage.) That would result in more good smells. (Baby powder was great! Rolling in baby powder was wondrous! One had to run, though, when the humans found out that Precious had knocked over the baby powder container to get it on the floor where she could roll in it.) Inevitably the small being would do it again. And again. And again.

Precious tried to show the tiny human how to go outside, but the thing didn’t want to crawl yet. The hound thought that perhaps the newest Snoddy might be a little slow in the cranial area. After all, it didn’t even offer food to her as a testament of her dogliness. (It didn’t seem to eat anything solid yet, which was truly weird.) What human didn’t worship a canine goddess in residence?

Precious had attempted to drag the little person outside by pulling on its shirt or its blanket and had been soundly chastised by both Bubba and Willodean. (Precious did not like the words bad dog one little teensy-weensy bit. Her a bad dog? Blasphemy!)

In an understanding moment, Bubba had also explained that soon the teeny human would stop doing peeing and pooping in its little diapers, and everything would be okay.

The tiny Snoddy clearly needed much more attention than the grown ones. (Even the evil perpetrator, Brownie Snoddy, who was half grown, didn’t need so much attention.) The humans carried the thing around and cooed to it but not as nicely as they cooed to Precious. They fed it with a bottle, and it didn’t even get to sample the good stuff on top of the table. Where was the fun in that?

Precious was, at first, jealous. After all, the little thing was sucking up familial affection at an alarming rate. Then she realized that the micro human was one of the family and wasn’t going away, so it needed protecting just like any of the other humans. She couldn’t wait for it to start crawling and then walking. (Holding the small thing under its arms, Bubba would have it pretend walk, and would tell it that soon it would be outrunning all of them.) (Not me, Precious thought determinedly.) She was going to show it how to catch a squirrel, how to bay at the moon or how to bay at the sun or how to bay at anything that needed baying at, and she was going to introduce it to roadkill. Wonderfully stinky decaying animal flesh that was surely invented only to roll in, would be the culmination of each and every day. (Better than baby powder!) Oh, the glory of future interactions with the youngest Snoddy.

In the meantime, Precious knew where some of those bones from the cemetery had ended up because she had reburied some of them herself. Right next to the oleander bushes in the backyard, because that was what a good hound did. She planned ahead. One always needed to be on their top game around the Snoddy Mansion. Sometimes there were humans with shovels and metal detectors who needed chasing. Sometimes there were bad people who did very bizarre things that Precious couldn’t understand. (Brownie, in particular, frequently teetered on the edge of a line that would put him in the bad people category.) She couldn’t even begin to list all the odd things that had happened on her watch. There had been a party several months before in which a great blazing thing had scoured its way across the skies and scared all of the humans. One had even peed in his pants, and humans didn’t normally do that. (Except the mini one, of course.) Who knew what that was all about?

And the dead humans…

Well, it seemed like there were dead humans everywhere. A Basset hound couldn’t chase a stick without tripping over the dang things. She’d tried burying them, but that seemed to upset the humans, too. Mostly, the live ones wanted to bite their own lips, make anxious noises, and call the other humans that had the vehicles with the flashing red-and-blue lights. It was silly and terribly off-putting to one’s digestive system, so what was a good dog to do?

It was definitive.

A hound had to be prepared for everything.

Wait, is that a squirrel? Aww-woooooo!

Chapter One

Bubba and the Late Lamented Lassie

Bubba Snoddy, a good ol’ boy from Pegramville, Texas, was driving along the road that led out of town and toward the Snoddy Estate. The Ford Explorer XLT, which he was driving, wasn’t like Ol’ Green, which was a 1954 Chevy 3100 truck, and which was, in fact, green in color, and old, er, ol’, to boot. For one thing, the Ford was an automatic, and Bubba couldn’t get past that. (There was a knob positioned in the middle console that changed the gears. He kept wanting to change the gears with a nonexistent handle at the wheel and couldn’t stop his hand habitually from going to that location. The Explorer’s knob wasn’t even in a spot that made sense to him.) Furthermore, it purred like a kitten because it was almost new. It even smelled new, even though all kinds of smelliness had been in it, through it, and on top of it. (Babies, hounds, mechanics, et cetera. Not so long ago, Willodean had captured two of Stanley Boomer’s fainting goats who had both flown their coop. She’d thoughtfully loaded them in the Explorer despite the fact that they really did smell like goats, which isn’t a nice smell, and brought them back to the Boomer’s farm.) It had a satellite radio in it, and he was presently listening to a 70s pop channel because that was what his beloved wife, Willodean, had been listening to when she had last driven the SUV. Karen Carpenter was belting out (They Long to Be) Close to You. Willodean swore that the baby loved—with capital letters, LOVED—70s music. Bubba sang the nonverbal refrain because that was the only part of the song lyrics he knew. (La-la-la-la-la-la.)

Bubba glanced in the rearview mirror and could see the top of the baby carrier which was thoroughly strapped into the seat. It was positioned backwards, as was recommended and well away from any of the side airbags in the passenger doors. (American Academy of Pediatrics had deemed it so, and thus it was so.) He saw a baby fist lift up a rattle and a voice announced, Buh!

Grinning, Bubba agreed, looking forward again. Buh, little baby, he said back. Buh all day long. But don’t fall asleep until we get home on account ifin you do that, you’ll wake up just as I take you out of the car. Then you won’t nap, and you’ll be as cranky as the Wicked Witch of the West and prolly the Wicked Witch of the East, too.

Buh! the baby said again. There could have been an argument about the meaning of the single syllable, but Bubba knew the baby was agreeing with Daddy.

Bubba had taken baby to Culpepper’s Garage where he worked. Gideon Culpepper, the owner of said garage, wasn’t exactly pleased. However, once the town realized that the latest Snoddy was in residence at the garage, customers had swarmed to see the child. Some of them had even purchased things from the garage, so Gideon had been mollified. Bubba had brought a portable playpen, which was a fancy word for a baby jail, although this one had deluxe accommodations such as a removable bassinette and a baby changing station. He could break that sucker down in 33.5 seconds if properly motivated. Since the baby was just about to start pushing up and rolling, the playpen was the right locale for keeping a child out of trouble. (That kind of trouble was readily available at a mechanical garage in spades.) When the youngest Snoddy figured out how to climb out of the pen, they would have to come up with a new plan.

But that was then, and this was now and now was okee dokee finokee. Baby was sleeping more. Bubba and Willodean were sleeping more and better, too. Precious was sleeping more. It was entirely likely that the entire town of Pegramville was sleeping more.

Most importantly, there hadn’t been any murders.

Bubba very nearly stopped the SUV next to the nearest tree so that he could knock upon its wood. Thinking about the dreaded subject was likely to cause the problem. He had heard about self-fulfilling prophecy from David Beathard just before the wedding. That was when David was a super steampunk villain (or maybe he had been a steampunk super villain) and not a psychiatrist, but still it was a valid psychological theorem. David Beathard, one needed to understand, was an on-and-off resident of the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being. In addition to being psychologically challenged, he was a first-rate sidekick who’d helped Bubba on several occasions. Bubba would even call the man a friend, when he wasn’t lost in the persona of being a burlesque queen, for example.

After all, there hadn’t had a dead body since the wedding, and that had nothing (much) to do with them. David had told him about the self-fulfilling prophecy, and it had self-fulfilled by the bucketful. Bubba had been so anxious about a murdered soul popping up at the wedding that one had done exactly that. He frowned to himself. He hadn’t murdered anyone, but that self-fulfilling prophecy was a killer all by itself.

Bubba wrinkled his face. No, he was wrong. There had been a dead body since the wedding. That one had been at Bazooka Bob’s. Bubba had been lured into finding that one. Surely, that one couldn’t count against him. He hadn’t been thinking about bodies at the time; he’d been thinking about cribs. How does a baby crib even conjure up an image of a dead body? It does not. He nodded his head firmly. So there. That there self-fulfilling prophecy can go suck a bag of eggs upside down and backwards.

Regardless of the Bazooka Bob affair, shortly thereafter there had been mysterious goings on up on Foggy Mountain when those movie people came back to do another horror film. The Curse of the Boogity-Boo had been released a month previously and was doing very well. All that publicity about the mountain being decimated by a privately constructed spaceship, hadn’t exactly hurt interest in it. It had probably helped. A famous director named Risley Risto, who had once tried to frame Bubba for a supposed murder, had told him, No publicity is bad publicity. Possibly that wasn’t the exact quote because Bubba certainly didn’t have an eidetic memory (Nor does the author, for that matter.), but that was the gist of it. The movie studio and the producer, Marquita Thaddeus, had taken advantage of all of it, and voila, the movie gained legs.

Bubba hadn’t been concerned with all the publicity at the time because Willodean had gone into labor at an opportune moment. (Not that she picked that moment on purpose; it was Murphy’s Law as it pertains to shizz happening all at the same time and in a way that was most dramatic. And if Murphy didn’t have that law, then he should probably add it to his list. Bubba might even write Murphy a letter about it one day.)

After the baby had been born, Bubba and Willodean were pretty much ocupado all the dadgum time. He wouldn’t be able to tell another soul who was running for U.S. President, and he probably couldn’t tell someone if their shoes were untied. He was lucky if his own shoes were tied and that was when he was wearing cowboy boots. His mother, the not so sainted Miz Demetrice Snoddy, had informed him in passing that there were tourists aplenty in the area. Someone had even started up a local Boogity-Boo tour on Segways. It went to where the old Hovious place had been wiped clean off the face of the Earth. It also toured the Dew Drop Inn, where it was said that Marquita Thaddeaus had been inspired by a local telling the story of the Boogity-Boo. Finally, it toured a remnant of Sturgis Creek where it was said that on moonlit nights in the fall, one might be inclined to run into the reluctant, recalcitrant beast itself.

Good luck getting those Segways down in the swampy areas by Sturgis Creek. And ifin you do, good luck getting out.

Buh!

Buh, Bubba agreed. He heard the jingle of identification tags from a dog collar and had an idea that Precious had just sat up. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the hound nose the baby, a questioning prompt by a prodigious snout.

The baby giggled.

Precious chuffed lightly and then rearranged herself in the next seat. Someone had told Bubba that he needed a dog seatbelt for her, but he hadn’t arranged that yet. Also, there were no seatbelts in Ol’ Green and that made it hard to connect a baby seat or a nonexistent dog seatbelt there. That is why I’m driving this one, he explained to himself. This is why all them nice people pitched in to give us this here Ford. Then he reminded himself that he needed to finish about 3,000 more thank-you notes. ($1500 in stamps alone, and he’d already spent around $800 on thank-you stationery. He’d gotten his cousin’s son, Brownie, to fill about a hundred. He’d paid the mischievous Brownie in lessons on how to use one of the muzzleloaders that his mother kept in the house, although he had not used real gun powder. Then he’d seen some of the things Brownie wrote in the cards and that was the end of that gravy train. He just hoped some of the people who received Brownie’s thank-you notes had a good sense of humor.)

Cher came on the satellite radio singing, Gypsies, Tramps, & Thieves.

Bubba whistled along with the single-named diva. Then he sang the refrain. The baby giggled again. Likely the amusement was caused by Bubba’s bass singing voice which wasn’t really suited to the song.

The baby said, BUH!

I know, boo, Bubba said. It ain’t like when your mama was home. I mean, it was nice to take paternity leave. I should send Gideon Culpepper a thank-you card for that because I don’t reckon he does that too often. Anyway, Mama had to go back to work, and she was itching to do it, too. He wrinkled his nose. She did text us twenty-three times today. Did I remember the right formula? Did I remember your favorite binkie? Did I include the blue and the pink blankies? Did I pack my lunch? Did I make all them fellas at the garage promise not to come near you without washing their hands? He sighed gustily. Like I would forget to do all that. Wait, did I eat lunch today?

Buh, the baby commented mildly.

Precious woofed softly. It sounded like she might have skipped lunch, too.

Bubba’s stomach growled. Sorry, girl. First thing when we git home. Food for you. More food for baby. Food for me. Then it’s bath time!

Precious growled.

Not for you, darlin’, Bubba reassured his hound. For baby. Smells like garage, and I don’t reckon Willodean will like that much. He quickly sniffed his right armpit. I don’t smell like garage. I smell like something else and that ain’t good, neither.

Bubba observed the quiet road ahead of him. Fall had come to Texas, and the weather was nearly perfect. He was sleeping more than seven hours a night. The baby was doing great. Willodean was happy, having trimmed down to her pre-baby weight without trying much. (Bubba had discovered that his wife could and would jog down the long driveway to the Snoddy Estate at top speed. Sometimes she even took the baby in a jogging stroller. Sometimes Bubba went with her, but he was only good for a short charge.)

Life ain’t bad, Bubba said to his child and partially to his hound because his hound was almost like his child. No almost to it. Precious is our fur baby.

Bubba nodded. He glanced through the windshield at the skies halfway expecting something to be dropping on top of him. A house mebe or a meteor or a Boogity-Boo who was fleeing the tourists out to catch him in living color on their cellphones. He considered. A Boogity-Boo might be able to fly. No one really knows for shore.

He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the rattle shaking in time to Cher’s words. Then she trailed off, and Blondie came on with Heart of Glass.

Buh! the baby protested, plainly partial to Cher.

Bubba’s eyes swung to the side, and he saw a folder perched on the front passenger seat. Dang, he thought. The folder contained Willodean’s work papers. She needed to get it to Sheriff John Headrick, her boss at the Pegram County Sheriff’s Department. She’d said something about it the previous day, but circumstances had changed, and she’d left the Ford for Bubba so he could transport the baby safely. She’d gotten a ride with another sheriff’s deputy and forgotten the paperwork.

No problem, Bubba said glancing at the time on the Ford’s display. We’ll just swing by Sheriff John’s place on account that he’s got to be home by now. Drop those bad boys off. Let Miz Darla coo over the baby and git you all home for supper.

Precious whined hopefully at the s word.

Bubba reached over and unlatched the glove box. He found a package of Milk-Bones and opened them with all the expertise of a man who’d done it many, many times before while driving. He flipped one over his right shoulder, and Precious yipped happily. He heard a crunch that indicated he was successful. Then the baby said resentfully, Buh.

Soon, my child, Bubba said as he figured out what road he could take to swing back into the Pegramville neighborhoods to get to Sheriff John’s ranch-style house. He passed downtown Pegramville and noticed a crowd of people all wearing skirts. He immediately blanked his mind because many of the people in the crowd shouldn’t have been wearing skirts because they weren’t really the skirt-wearing types. (Ain’t that becoming more acceptable nowadays? he asked himself. It is, but not so much in Pegram County. Mebe next year.) There were even two news vans, and he thought he might recognize one or two of the reporters hanging about. (He had met a few of those in the last few years.) He briefly narrowed his eyes as he recognized one of the reporters as someone he’d chased down the lane on the day of his wedding.

Twenty minutes and a complete package of Milk-Bones later, Bubba parked the Ford Explorer on the street outside Sheriff John’s house. It was in the middle-class section of Pegramville, not butted up to his neighbors but not a mile away, either. It had a nice brick façade and lots of mature trees in the yard. The English Boxwoods were neatly shaped, and orange and purple Halloween lights glittered as they hung on the eaves of the roof. Sheriff John’s official Ford Bronco sat in the driveway behind the red Volkswagen New Beetle belonging to Sheriff John’s wife, Darla.

Everything was quiet and Bubba couldn’t even hear traffic from the highway when he opened the door. He let Precious out, helping her so that she didn’t spill onto the asphalt into a brown-white-and-black puddle. Then he unbuckled the baby and hoisted the child into the crook of his arm.

The baby was bald with only a little dark hair on the crown of the head and had cornflower blue eyes that studied the fatherly one intently. Buh, it said appropriately.

Buh, Bubba agreed and adjusted a little hat on the baby’s head. The hat said Lil’ Cranky Pants.

Finally, Bubba closed the passenger door, opened the front passenger door, and retrieved the folder. It was a struggle to get everything and everyone where they needed to be, but he was used to the good fight. It’ll be just a minute, he muttered amicably. We’ll let them goggle over you and then git home. There’s a Barcalounger with my name on it. Room enough for a baby and a hound.

Precious grumbled as she made her way over to an oak tree and marked it meticulously.

The baby pointed with the rattle. Buh.

No marking trees for you, Bubba said. Little poopsie whoopsie head. You’re goin’ to learn how to potty like an adult. How long will that be? A year and a half? I need to read my book on this to make shore you’re meeting all your milestones.

Buh.

Or Ma will tell me, Bubba added. His mother seemed to have completely memorized sections of books such as Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care. 6 th Edition. There was some question about whether Dr. Spock was the chicken and Spock of Star Trek was the egg, or vice versa, but it didn’t matter to the content of the book. She could also spout verbatim gems from the Mayo Clinic’s Guide to Your Baby’s First Year. However, her favorite had to be Big Daddy’s Guide to Young’uns written by Dan Big Daddy Sully. (While highly entertaining, Big Daddy tended to go off on parental tangents such as what beer paired well with Gerber’s Natural Banana with Vitamin C, and everyone already knew the baby was not eating solids yet.) (The beer was only for the parent, mind you.)

Bubba had gotten utterly and absolutely tired of his mother starting sentences with, Big Daddy says…

He paused as a remote sound came to him. It took a moment, but it sounded like someone was playing a song with bagpipes. Furthermore, the song was finally somewhat identifiable as an AC/DC song. He was fairly certain it was an AC/DC song, however, he couldn’t be sure which one it was. You hear that, baby? he asked his child, thinking that somewhere Angus Young was wincing.

Buh, the baby said, apparently not confident of what the paternal figure was questioning.

Precious took a moment to tilt her head after having marked every tree in Sheriff John’s yard and the front stoop besides.