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Six Sentences: Flash Fiction, Micro Fiction, Writing Contests and More (Writer's Digest 101 Best)

Six Sentences: Flash Fiction, Micro Fiction, Writing Contests and More (Writer's Digest 101 Best)

Installment 11 - Pedro's Reality Ride

Practically a dwarf at barely five feet tall, Pod saw eye to eye with his customers only when stamping around on his Pepsi crates platform behind the pharmacy counter.  His hoof-like shoes, almost hemispherical, had spawned his nick-name, and his sideline sales of misappropriated Quaaludes made him iconic to a select group of eighth and ninth graders, until he was caught and had to make do peddling kitchen quality LSD.  But that was later.  In 1971 he was still clomping around on his platform in the Five Points Pharmacy.

After Cousin Garnet had told Motsie and Vincent about grinding graveyard bones into powder to make people sleep, Vincent had told Martin and his new friend, Lindsey, about it.  The idea turned into conversational fodder, fantasies became ill-thought-out plans, and the day came that fall when a plan waxed real.  A Saturday night right before Hallowe'en, bone powder in Motsie's stash pouch, she, Martin, and Vincent headed by the Whackers', where Lindsey sneaked out the back door to join them.  They would go over to Pod's old farmhouse beyond the Bolton's, and knock him out with a blow-full so Martin could raid Pod's stash of stolen Quaaludes.  

They came through the woods, stopping off first at the Bolton's old Teardrop to smoke some of Vincent's homegrown, and then approached Pod's place from the back.  All the lights were off but the blue flicker of a t.v. set in the back bedroom.  The window was open just a crack.  They crept up to the shrubs and could hear Pod praying, but the shrubbery was too wide for them to blow any bone dust into the window.  It seemed they had no choice but to sneak into the house and blow the powder right through the bedroom doorway, so they slid through the screen door onto the screened-in porch.  Lindsey was elected to squirm through the doggie-door since she was skinniest.  She let the others in, and they all tippy-toed through the dark kitchen in a clump, whispering about which one should go blow the dust into Pod's bedroom.

        "I already suffered enough today, Motsie was touching me on the neck with a dead finger bone in the car while that pervo had his hand in my crotch all the way from Raleigh to Five Points, so don't y'all be lookin' at me!"  Cried Vincent in a stage whisper that had the others loudly shushing him all at once.

         "I already went through the doggie-door for y'all, so don't look at me, either!"  Lindsey was fierce next to Vincent and clearly directing her words to Motsie and Martin.

          "Okay, people, remain calm," Martin began in a very quiet whisper. "Let's not alert the press.  I don't mind slipping through his room to the bathroom by myself and steal the 'ludes, but I think somebody else should go blow Motsie's stuff to knock Pod out first. Motsie did the biggest part already, getting the dead guy's hand bones from a coffin and then grinding them up on my porch, which I also helped, so I'm voting for you, Vincent.  If the pervo had squeezed your nuts in a bad way, you'd ha' said so, so it musta not been all that bed.  You go..."

            Vincent saw everyone looking at him so against his own wishes and better judgement, he reluctantly accepted the velvet pouch and inched to the partially open bedroom door where he lingered for a few seconds and hurried back to the kitchen in a panic.

          "Pod was choking some lady out, y'all!   We should all rush in together and save her before he has her buried in a whiskey keg under the house!"

          Sure enough, now they all heard it.  A woman's voice was in there praying for her life, and getting pretty loud.  Pod's geriatric beagle hopped down from the sofa and trotted to the kitchen, probably thinking that Vincent was somebody he knew, and Lindsey leaned over to pat his velvety head.  

          "If y'all aren't gonna help me save that poor lady, then we might wanta think about gettin' outa here before our fingerprints become associated with the scene of a murder."  Pod's dog was sniffing the bag Vincent had dangling by it's thong, and made a try for it.  Vincent snatched it out of his semi-toothless mouth and bolted for the back door  That spooked dog, who began to bay his beagle bark-howl. Lindsey tried to shush him until the living room light went on and she followed Vincent, with Motsie and Martin right behind.  The unmistakable schlack of a Winchester chambering a round shifted all their gears into overdrive.

        "Damn!" Vincent managed to comment. "Who knew that little club-foot effer could get around so fast?  Like a pony!"

The closest cover was a shed in the far corner of the yard. Pod used it as a garage.  That's where they headed, but the boom that followed the schlack sprayed the shed wall and some of the trees beyond.  A few bits of bird shot found Martin's hind side before he reached cover, but Motsie helped him into the pitch dark shed, and put him into the floor of the car.  Everyone piled on top of him and Vincent pulled the lap-blanket over them all.  No one breathed for the longest time.  Just when Martin whispered that his butt was stinging and he couldn't breathe, Vlincent and Lindsey shushed him saying they heard somebody coming.  Motsie couldn't hear a thing with her face pressed into Martin's hair and Lindsey breathing in her ear, pressed down by Vincent on top of her, and a blanket over all of them.  

  Once they felt pavement under the tires, the radio turned on, and Martin begged Motsie to beg the ones on top of her to move off his rear a little, but the word came back to stay still as stones until the car got someplace where they could jump out.  It didn't go far, luckily, and when the somebody had been out of the car for more than a minute, Vincent poked his head over the back seat like a meerkat to make sure the coast was clear.

        "Man, this is soo weird, y'all!"  Vincent struggled with the dilemma of whether to let everyone in on where they were.  "Why in the world was my mother's car in Pod's shed?"

        Lindsey complained that Vincent was now squashing her legs too much, and poor Martin was crying at the bottom of the pile.  Vincent got out and stood looking at his house while one light after another was turned on.  He just could not put all this together.  Everyone walked around the corner to the McCrary's, half-carrying Martin, who had to be taken to the Saint Mary's ER to pick out the bird shot.  He refused to tell how and where the gunshot had occurred even though it was considered a reportable offense.  The police came and questioned all the kids, but no one was about to tell that they'd broken into a house to steal drugs. 

        Fortunately, the break-in had not been reported yet by Pod, either. After the police left, Lindsey pointed out that Pod would be better off not reporting anything that could bring police investigators snooping inside his house if he had illegal drugs for them to find.  She wanted to know about why Vincent and his friends had waited so late to come by the Whackers' since she'd been outside babysitting all afternoon hoping they could go down to the Bamboo in the municipal garden. When she heard all the details of how the bones had been gotten, she was just disgusted.

"Even if Vincent had blown that dust in there, it wasn't gonna work without the stump-hole powers!  Over in Cottondale, everybody knows about stump-hole, where you people been hiding?"  Inside, she was consumed with envy that she hadn't been in on the adventure with Vincent and his other friends that day. She was jealous that Vincent let Motsie lead him thither and yon like he had a ring in his nose for her to pull, and most of all, it made her sick that any girl could be as bold as Motsie.  She thought Motsie was just about like a man.  "Not even just a normal man," she thought inside herself, "some kind of wild, bohemian man!"

Motsie had taken to the idea of hitch-hiking that previous summer.   Since Martin and Vincent were keen for adventure outside Five Points, they made good company for Saturday-trips during the school year to Chapel Hill, to Dillon, S.C., or to Raleigh.  Vincent was now growing his own in the sun room since his dad had left and his mom was around less and less, so if Motsie didn't have the good stuff from her cousins in Benvenue, Vincent would stingily share a little something from home.  

In Chapel Hill, they took turns at being a blind harmonica player on the wall until they panhandled enough spare change for lunch across Franklin Street at Hector's.  In Dillon, they did the same thing at South of the Border until they had enough for a strip of photobooth snapshots that Motsie mailed to her Cousin Garnet along with a postcard to substantiate the lie about her and Martin having gotten married there in the Summer of Love when they'd been 13. At Dix Hill, they visited a compulsive car-thief friend who was locked up in the creepy Spruill Forensic building, roamed the oak grove, walked the tracks, and followed up on Cousin Garnet's idea about getting some bones from a graveyard.  Potters Field at the insane asylum had declined due to erosion, vandalism and the elements of time.  The adjacent city dump had garbage trucks driving over the edges so that some of the coffins had slid down hill and were slightly exposed. This made it easy.

"The cafeteria ladies are poking around the edge of the dump with little dinner forks," Vincent laughed breathlessly as he leapt over the tracks and climbed through the kudzu to Martin and Motsie.  "They don't look like they like it too much. They were mostly cussin' and sayin' they were gonna quit if they found any bodies." 

"I dare Motsie to go find some bones!"  Martin chirped to Vincent's obvious horror.

"I'll do it, y'all,'  Motsie grinned mischievously.  "But y'all come with me as far as those benches by the Kirby building and act like we're just visiting Potter's field to see relatives' graves.  Then I'll slip away down the hill by the dump and see if I can blend in with those colored ladies and offer to help poke around.  And by 'help,' of course, I mean get some bones."

"I bet any of 'em 'd be glad to give you all their forks and head straight to the bus stop.  But I doubt you'll find any bones with a fork," Vincent was quick to add."  

"Well, I have my KA-BAR,"  Motsie lifted her skirt to show most of her thigh and the leather sheath.  

        Motsie left Martin and Vincent smoking another joint on the benches, and she headed across the field and down the hill to the edge of the dump where the action was.  It seemed to take an awfully long time, but Vincent each lay on a bench after the joint, and looked up at the oak leaves and the clouds swimming east behind them, talking about stained glass and aquariums, and other stuff stoned boys think of when there's nothing better to do than look up.  Motsie eventually came back looking triumphant, the velvet pouch raised up in one hand showing several pointy angles, and laughed at them for laying there like hobos on park benches.

Hitching back to Five Points, some swarthy foreigner in a hideous avocado green 2-door Opel Kadett insisted that Vincent be the one to ride up front.  Motsie and Vincent were fine with that, and crawled to the back seat to enjoy the free ride home.  Motsie thought the reason Vincent kept turning around to glare was him recoiling with disgust as she repeatedly touched his neck with a finger bone to make Martin giggle, but as soon as they got out by Martin's house he told her that the foreign man had been groping his crotch all the way.  

"Gross, man!" Martin laughed and snatched one of Batboy's pretend gravestones from behind the kitchen for Motsie to use as a grinder.  She smashed at the bones on the concrete stoop behind Martin's kitchen, making splinters more than dust, and two or three of the knuckles just shot off to the side yard like rocks from a sling shot.  A neighbor's cat got to one of them before they could retrieve it, and ran off to enjoy her snack. 

Then they had gone to look for Lindsey at the Whacker's where she babysat during the day every weekend, and had gone over to do the magic on Pod that landed them in the ER with Martin in the middle of the night.  Motsie at least was going to be able to call her parents with a good excuse for missing curfew, being there in the emergency room, and Lindsey could use the same one on the Whackers.  Martin's parents had driven everybody over to the ER when they showed up, but even though Martin had some explaining to do, he was keeping his lips buttoned.  Vincent just went home with Motsie. 

        They put the bone dust in a stump hole right before mass the next morning.  In church, Motsie told Vincent the truth about the bones.  She'd gone down the hill where the cafeteria ladies were poking around, and talked to a couple of them.  

        "They weren't trying one bit hard to find those coffins!  They were deliberately poking around as far between the obvious graves as possible.  One said I was crazy, and nobody had any business in a graveyard at all unless they were either burying somebody or getting buried.  About then I noticed a faded old bucket of Colonel Sanders right there in the dump.  I just got some desiccated drumstick and wing bones out of it.  They were handy.  They looked convincing. I wouldn't ha' touched you on the neck with a real people bone, Vincent; I's just playin'."

Vincent was immensely relieved, and even laughed about the trick.  

        "Maybe the stump hole powers'll end up makin' 'em as effective as human bones for some future trick!"  Vincent could usually find the practical solution to fit most circumstances.  

        When he finally did go home that evening, there was an extra car in the driveway, and Mrs. Beeching explained that a friend of hers had had a break-in and didn't felt safe at home, so would be staying with them for awhile.  The friend was taking a shower in the master bath just then, but when Vincent was helping his mother set the dinner table in the fancy dining room, not the kitchenette, he heard the clopping of Pod's hoof-like shoes down the hall. 

Installment 10 - What happens in the Bamboo

"Lucky for Cousin Garnet she's crippled, so they can't whip 'er and they never make 'er do a single chore. She said she left Thumbelina-the-whore lookin' like a baby-doll after some youngun's done playin' with it, an' she went around like that all week, like 'a mouse after it chews it's hand off to get out o' your trap, an' then sits between you an' the t.v. showin' you 'is bloody little stump like you're gonna feel sorry for 'im. Cousin Garnet was thoroughly disgusted."

Motsie had hopped out of some random car she'd hitched a ride from, and caught up with Vincent and Martin a block before secret place they called the Bamboo. The boys were walking their bikes and had a new girl with them who brought a little tow-headed harelip boy. Motsie didn't shut up for a whole minute put together while they all headed around the curve to the path down into the garden.

'So, they'd ha' been in Cousin Garnet's room, gettin' Thumbellina-the-whore all stoned on Henderson's closet stash, which she brought me some today, by he way, and they had some saltines and peanut butter ready in advance for munchies. One o' those Taint girls kinda accidentally on purpose smeared a peanut butter cracker on Thumbellina's hair, knowin' she'd wouldn't dare bathe in that claw foot tub with a drowned ghost. They had put the supposed dry shampoo and pretend leave-in conditioner right on the dressin' table."

The path down the hill was unplanned, like a deer-path, and cut through rhododendron on a steep bank with no other stairs than jutting roots. Lindsey, the new girl Vincent had invited, made sure the little hair-lip didn't trip or get a branch-slap in his pitiful face. Vincent came last while Motsie led the line and Martin stayed right behind her to hear all this juicy story.

"Were they all gonna sleep together? All those girls? In the same bed? Or with sleepin' bags like scout camp?" Martin was very detail oriented.

"Let's not talk about scout camp, Martin. Y'know?" Vincent began to sound nervous.

"What, Vincent? What's wrong with scout camp?" Lindsey was still naive.

"Oh, nothing, we were working on that outdoor survival merit badge, and," Martin redirected towards a near taunt, "Vincent had a nasty poison ivy experience."

"Lay off it, Martin, or I'll tell about that contest you won." Vincent's face turned red, probably with anger.

Martin whipped around and glared at Vincent, "At least I didn't have to be taken home."

"You got poison ivy that bad? Lindsey tried to appear solicitous.

"We had to pull a bunch up where we were pitchin' our tents. Martin, I'm gonna kill you."

"Everybody else's was limited to their hands, but Vincent...."

Vincent interrupted Martin "That's it. Martin's tent buddies all had a race to see who could..."

Martin interrupted Vincent, "So Motsie, you were tellin' about your cousin's bedroom, go on, go on!"

The path opened into the garden by a horse-shoe shaped gazebo covered in climbing roses, and at the center was a big fountain in a pool of goldfish and pennies. Motsie led the way to the edge and stepped into the water while Martin took his shoes off and did the same thing.

"Oh, yeah!" Motsie found her place and went on. "So on top o' havin' eight chimneys full o' bats, their house is even haunted. It's on the list of haunted houses in Benvenue an' everything. Cousin Henderson sleeps at the top o' the staircase, and he says he hears footsteps comin' up every night, eighteen steps, and a couple o' times he peeked out 'is door an' saw this red-haired lady comin' up completely nekked, an' followed 'er all the way to the bathroom door. Sometimes if they go in the bathroom at night, she's layin' there in the tub full o' water, with her hair floatin' all around her face. Anybody'd love to have a slumber partty there, but still, I mean, there were Taints involved, for Pete's sake.

"Huhu always said never associate with a Taint, 'cause it'd be like committin' social suicide, and these girls are pure tea Taints through 'n through! So all's I can say is, Thumbellina-the-whore must be some real trash to take up any invitation from a Taint, is all I can say."

"Just sayin'," Martin said, smiling.

"They really were the grossest two little girls I've ever seen" was Vincent's opinion. "Motsie's cousin said they hafta share a toothbrush, but they don't want to mess it up by usin' it too much 'cause their dad might beat up if he has to spend 'is likker money on a new one."

"Gee, Vincent, I bet you were wishin' you'd let Mr. Whacker drive you down to Cottondale when he drove me home, instead o' havin' to be around that, right?" Lindsey's desperate attempt was lost only on Vincent, and Martin stayed Motsie's hand from pulling the bowie knife from under her skirt.

"Oh I'd love to go see Cottondale, Lindsey, but we had an exciting time in the cemetery up there with Motsie's Cousin Garnet. They tell each other the biggest lies, like Garnet actually believes that Motsie and Martin went down to..."

Now it was Motsie's turn to interrupt, "went down to the Cow and got Thunderbird wine when we were only nine, haha, big deal. So anyway, Cousin Garnet said they all fell asleep on her featherbed, and along about sunrise Thumbellina scared the wits outa them screamin', 'cause they'd sorta forgotten about it while they were sleepin' like innocent little angels. Some o' her hair was still attached, but it looked all gummy, and most of it was stuck to the pillow, and half o' Thumbellina's face was peeled off, raw."

Motsie had opened a velvet pouch that hung from a thong around her neck, pulled out an EZ Wider and a hairy red bud without seeds. She had everyone's undivided attention as she twisted up a fatty one-handed and stuck it all the way in her mouth to seal the deal.

"Let's head into the Bamboo, y'all." And with that, she nudged Martin's foot out of the fountain with hers, and he led the parade back up the bank into a thick swarm of healthy green bamboo, impenetrable from the road above where they'd all met up.

"I can't believe the girl didn't at least cut the long part to match the short part. Aren't there any beauty shops in Benvenue?" Vincent was incredulous.

"Well," Motsie finished up just before entering the clearing, "Cousin Garnet said she went around like that all week, but on Sunday she was singin' her damn solo at the First Baptist, wearin' her mama's big ol' Eva Gabor beehive wig."

"Wow, Cousin Motsie!" Martin was clearly impressed. "I sure wouldn't mind goin' up to that reunion sometime, or at least to Benvenue, and get a look at some o' those people."

"Well, that's not gonna happen, Martin. Your branch o' the tree has been severed."

"Oh, maybe somebody back there on your side chewed it off to escape, Martin" And that was the surprise quip out of Lindsey's mouth!

Everybody except Motsie had a good laugh, and then Martin halted in his tracks, turned on the ball of his muddy foot, ran right by Motsie and the others in a pale panic. Motsie was next to reach the clearing, and abruptly did the same, followed by Lindsey and the hair-lip boy. Some guy had been squatting in the back of the bamboo clearing with one arm drawn across the lower half of his face like the masked marauder, pants down around his ankles and his other hand jerking on his business. Only Vincent dawdled at the edge of the clearing, and called to them over his shoulder, "What? I mean wait!" But it took him a minute to reach the rose beds where the others were sitting, bent over laughing into the fountain.

Installment 9 - Dead Reunion in the Summer after the Summer of Love

"If you get some bones from a graveyard an' grind 'em up to a powder, you can blow a handful in somebody's window so they won't wake up while you prance around in their house and do whatever you want." 

"Is that a fact?"  Motsie's eyebrows went up.  "What would you do in their house while they're asleep, Cousin Garnet?"

"Oh, well I'd like to sneak in an' cut Thumbellina-the-Whore's damn Toni home permanent right outa her peroxided hair."  Garnet was getting sophisticated for eleven, close to becoming an entertaining peer for Motsie who was three years older.

Motsie hadn't brought Vincent to the reunion the first year they'd been friends, seventh grade, but she and Cousin Garnet had come up with the plan to have a separate reunion this year at the Benvenue cemetery to include their dead relatives, and Vincent would make fun company.  He was easily spooked and then later told you he enjoyed it and wanted to do it again, like the Ferris wheel.  

He hadn't particularly wanted to sit on anyone's actual grave or headstone, but perched on some coping around the edge of a family plot beside a crepe myrtle while Motsie and Garnet stretched out on top of one grave after another, smoking what they'd stolen from Cousin Henderson's closet stash and speculating about which were the laudanum addicts, drunks, and horse thieves in the family.  There were no farmers or teachers according to Motsie's and Garnet's family lore, at least not in the version Vincent would be hearing.

"Well, I know a whore too," Motsie launched into a new variation on an old theme.  "She's been tryin' to make out with Martin since she transfered to Five Points from R.J Reynolds Jr. High after Christmas."  Motsie's string of lies to Garnet had turned to Harlequin romance themes during the las year or two, and Martin was the unknowing protagonist. They'd secretly eloped to South of the Border, and honeymooned in Stumpy Bolton's abandoned Teardrop trailer.  Martin and Garnet were never going to meet, after all. 

"Her hair's villager-long, an' she just flicks it all around like a sweaty horse shakin' off flies."  Garnet was definitely interested, and loaded a big hit for herself while she listened to Motsie.  "I was thinkin' I could do her a little favor with some Drano liquid in a sample bottle of Pert shampoo like they hang on your front doorknob sometimes.  Plus, no need o' diggin' anybody up."  

"So, you wouldn't actually dig up any of your own relatives would you?"  Vincent hesitantly tried to suggest a negative reply from Garnet while Motsie fired up a hit.  Garnet was younger, and wore leg-braces, so she he figured she ought to be easier to persuade.  "Not to mention, by the way, I see you have some black folks living right across the road.  They'd prob'ly come get you even if the ghosts didn't.  "

"Naw, those coloreds over there are the docile sort,"  began Garnet.  "But I'd prob'ly not try to dig up any o' these up here, with their bein' so well buried."  She craned her neck toward the back end of the cemetery where the oldest graves still dangled their C.S.A. standards from shepherd's hooks.  "But you see those slabs on down the hill?  One of 'em is cracked in half.  You can look inside an' tell it's partly sunk in.  It might not be too hard to get to some o' those bones."

"But how would you keep their ghosts asleep while you chop off a hand to grind up?  You ever think about that?"

"Oh, they wouldn't care, Vincent, it's not like they're gonna be usin' it."  This was Motsie's logic as she rolled to her feet and reached down to help Garnet up.

Vincent saw they were pretty close to going down that hill to check things out, and he immediately claimed he needed to go back to the regular reunion, the one with Motsie's alive relatives, to use the bathroom, but Motsie was determined to go see the broken grave and insisted he pee on a tree.

"What? You want me to pee on your great granny's grave?  She'll prob'ly come out with a bunch o' switches just 'cause you said that!"

"Oh, I don't think ghost switches hurt a bit.  Besides, I heard she used a razor strap to whip children.  Do it on the crepe myrtle if you're worried."

"But it's serious, Motsie. I-I-I need to use a real bathroom."  Vincent danced a little twist with his thighs clenched together, and it made the girls laugh.

"Well, there's always the one with its slab broken and a hollow place you can sit on.  I really doubt I'd dig the the bones up today unless we'd brought some raid for black widows."

"Oh, great! Just what I want on my butt.  Thanks a bunch, Motsie."

"A'right, bok-bok chicken, we'll be really fast and then take you back to the alive reunion.  Come with, though."  She called the last over her shoulder as she followed Garnet down.

Martin squatted behind the Lamm family marker, watching them get littler,  Garnet's braces clanking back at him from further down the hill, leaving him to bake in the August heat next to a rainbow hedge of crepe myrtles, his pants still fastened.  He was definitely going to blab to Martin the story about Martin and Motsie being married the very next time they played Truth or Dare.  He'd also come up with a dare to send Motsie alone after bones from the Cottondale graveyard.  

"Maybe black people's ghosts would put some fear of the Lord into you more than these lame Benvenue whites'." Vincent laughed quietly to himself.  "Maybe I'll get Sampson to help me set a booby-trap, you crazy Motsie." 

Installment 8 - Crazy Talk

Dix Hill

Lunacy was such a source of pride in Visitation County that satisfaction practically oozed as people lamented Aunt Betty's reality fugues and Cousin Bo's various personalities.  Nervous breakdowns, schitzophrenia, and all the available manias were such sure-fire chitchat starters, that adults at cocktail parties spoke of little else.

Mannerly lunatics remained at home, looked after like pedigreed pets, regardless of any mortal danger they might have posed to themselves or others, mainly for bragging rights.  Stints up at "the Hill" were only the last resort when some nut became such a nuisance that the complaints of envious neighbors grated the family's last nerve.   In those cases, the inmate puffed with smug joy for the conversational mileage this was going to provide later on.  

Even though wild squirrels in the family tree were as common as the Cherokee ancestry they all bragged having, no matter how blond or how black, the folks who came up short regularly lied while those blessed with a gracious plenty were coyly modest. The McCrarys, for instance, could afford modesty.

Before they started letting "Batboy" bivouac on the Hill, neighbors had to admit that Lester McCrary was a good contender for the asylum if not 1313 Mockingbird Lane.  If he wasn't lurking in the window wearing a vampire cape and plastic fangs, shining a flashlight up under his chin, he was skulking in the shrubbery out front, waiting for anyone to stroll by so he could jump out at them, jabbering some jibberish in their faces that only he could understand, or tending to his "pretend" graveyard behind the kitchen.  This was all cute and endearing when he was a little kid, but when several neighbors' kitties went missing, and there seemed to be a matching number of fresh dirt mounds by the McCrary's place, a delegation was formed to have a word with Batboy's parents.  Nothing definitive was discovered in the play-graves, but there was a small bag of lime on the porch that Mr. McCrary insisted he had been using around the hydrangeas to achieve their spectacular blue.  The delegation had to admit they were the deepest azure on the block, and they left with no more than the promise that Batboy would be examined in Raleigh by Dr. Pediaditakis, and they'd follow whatever the doctor ordered.  

Martin was just as eager for Dr. P. to put Batboy up in Ashby Hall for a week as the neighbors were, and get him out of his hair, but the good doctor just put him on some stelazine, and opined that his maladjustment was due to something in his home-life that Mr. and Mrs. McCrary were never willing to discuss with others.  In an effort to avoid further confrontation, they rewarded his crazy behavior with a decommissioned Jeep mail truck and weekly bags of quarters from the bank which Batboy could carry down to Jupiter's Den, out of sight, out of mind, and out of trouble.

At Jupiter's Den, Batboy sprouted roots to the Bally Wizard pinball machine and met the already infamous Randy the Rabbitnapper.  The two of them came up with a plan the Daily Times captioned the "Cottondale Kitty Caper," where they catnapped Blackie, a pitiful, decrepit black panther that Cottondale High had bought cheap from the Ringling Brothers as their team mascot. According to the article, what originally appeared to authorities to be a typical schoolboy prank between rival schools, turned out to have started as Rabbitnapper's newest scheme to score ransom money after enjoying "Old Puss's musky charms" for a few days. It was further reported that "when Lester McC., 14, showed up for the heist in his decommissioned mail-truck carrying a bag of lime and two shovels in the back, Randy R., 15, knew he'd been out-classed," and evidently ran home to tattle to his daddy.

It took days for the police to be bothered with having to investigate, since Randy's dad didn't exactly rush right out to alert the press.  In fact, the discovery of the near-dead panther in a stairwell of the abandoned Galilee Orphanage was made by a group of men who claimed to be itinerant stage performers, preferred to remain anonymous, and offered no explanation as to why they were in town at all, much less what they were doing at the orphanage.  They were happy to split the fifty dollar reward offered by Cottondale High without further ado about it, though, and were on their merry way.

The Cottondale Kitty Caper was a clear violation of Randy Rabbitnapper's juvie probation for prior rabbit-napping.   Supposedly, he was to take the class bunny home one weekend, but the following Monday he didn't come to school and, taped to the front door, there was a note made of letters cut from the Visitation Times headlines, demanding $15.83 in cold currency to be sent across the Five Points Municipal Gardens pond.  The bunny would then be sent back in the same boat.  Maybe he thought they'd use a radio controlled boat, but how the rescuers would know where to direct the boat, or how Mr. Flop-Ears would be prevented from tipping over or leaping to his death is an eternal mystery.  Principal Hawkins and two Parks and Recreation employees closed in on Rabbitnapper in the nick of time.  What he got instead of $15.83 was an afternoon in juvenile hall, followed by a belt-whipping from his mama, a ten-day suspension from school, and probation.

This being Batboy's first real brush with the law, and him being a minor, all charges were dismissed in lieu of him spending the rest of that summer break at Dix Hill.  He loved it so much he determined to make it a regular thing. Martin had to ride along with his parents on visitation day, which he disliked after the novelty wore off.  He and his friends had visited other people there plenty of times before, and the friends were glad to ride along with Martin's family.  They'd "ditch the fam," as they called it, and sneak down to the basement looking for the dusty torture equipment that was rumored to be stored there, Motsie's idea, or skip like Dorothy and friends on the Yellow Brick Road down to Potters Field and count dead crazy people's graves, over 900 of them, speculating over what had killed them, Vincent's favorite, or sit on the west slope over the railroad tracks smoking pot and playing Truth or Dare, as Martin always loved. 

Installment 7 - Inside Galilee

Empty Ripple and Mad Dog bottles booby trapped Motsie's way to the back door. The scattering of feral kitties was followed by pairs of yellow or green eyes staring at Motsie from the corners and under the beds. The stump of a storm candle stood pegged to the center of the floor, and Motsie plucked it up along with a bottle to light her way to the door. Chicken bones and feathers lay scattered everywhere, and the corridor exhaled mildew, rot and something like burnt rubber through the doorway, but Motsie thought nothing of it. She could still hear bits of the conversation outside the window.

"One of the priests was just burning a wasp nest under the eaves, "Vincent was explaining, probably to reassure Lindsey. He went on while Motsie made her bottle torch that "...the time the place really burned was way longer ago, but they still kept orphans here after that, so there prob'ly weren't any of the dangerous kind of ... y'know...ghosts...." Lindsey was saying somethin ignorant but Motsie let their voices trail off as she made her way to the stairwell and doorway.

Motsie thought the whole story about Crybaby Lane was a slanderous myth started by ignorant Baptists like Lindsey. Ghosts were just the spirits of sinners in Purgatory, mainly Baptists, she was sure, and there were never any Baptists in Galilee. Anybody with one eye and half sense, she thought, would have known that since souls in heaven can't be ghosts, and all these orphans had to be Catholics baptized as babies, so there could be no Catholic orphan ghosts 'weeping and wailing in this vale of tears' on Crybaby Lane.

The the door to the back stairwell groaned like a bobcat's snarl and the stairwell reeked like the men’s room at the Esso. Motsie sincerely hoped the huge lozenges on the steps had been deposited by feral cats and not nasty people, even though Motsie calculated that loads of that particular caliber could only have been pumped out by a pretty good-sized barrel.

A spontaneous about-face led Motsie to a fresh idea that would teach that Lindsey a lesson. Curtains still festooned the front office, so Motsie went in and crawled onto the radiator, unfastening the drapery hooks from the rod, giggling to herself that she'd carry them into the belfry to wear as an angel costume to angelically proclaim something profound against Baptists.

The stairway at the front corner didn’t stink, and Motsie made quick time running up the steps in the dark. Upstairs was so tidy, she'd have easily believed no one had been upstairs since the orphanage closed except for the aroma of Old Spice and the deep laugh of some men, probably hobos or winos down the hall. She edged closer to the chuckling and stopped by the belfry door to make herself into an angel of the Lord before climbing up, wondering what those metal springs were squeaking about and what all that grunting was for. Hobos sure were racket makers, she decided, but at least they were a tidy folk, unless they'd been the ones using the back stairs as a litter box instead of the bathroom right next to them.

She swished her new curtain-wings dramatically, mentally rehearsing the angelic proclamations she might make, and the right curtain knocked over the candle and its Ripple holder with a bouncing clang clang clang that ended in a roll across the floor. The hobos hollered like ladies and bolted down to the farther stairway yelling "Lord have Mercy" and "feets don’t fail me now!" She heard their bare feet slapping on the stairs and their prayerful yelps all the way down Crybaby Lane. The next sound Motsie heard was the Jeep cranking up. The screech of peeling rubber was unmistakeable, and all she saw once she reached a window were the tail lights flicking on a hundred yards away, as Martin, Vincent, and Lindsey all ditched her.

“Oh, holy cow…” Motsie cut loose a string of unrepeatable cuss words she liked to refer to as the "Rosary." She sprinted across the dusty tiles to climb up the belfry and see if she could tell where the Jeep was heading but, as soon as she opened the belfry door, something furry brushed across her feet and, in an unplanned double-take, she conked her face on the edge of the door and saw stars. Her nose started bleeding. Her right angel-wing slid down her arm and flailed around before pouncing down the dim passage to that back stairwell that had smelled like the Esso men’s room.

Had she best leave now and walk home or wait for them to come back, Motsie wondered. The belfry was right there, though, incredibly dark except for three slashes of moonlight slanting across the bricks high above. One sliver of rope and edge of bell flattened themselves into the middle slash like tattoos. The brightest lights in sight from the belfry openings were at Channel 3, two lonely blocks beyond sparkly black-oaks full of fireflies, scratchy claws of ancient fiancées left waiting for centuries with their diamonds and rage. Motsie identified with them already as she watched those yellow-streaked traitors park and hop out of the Jeep to romp and frolic in the fountain without her! Right back down the ladder she shinnied, and grabbed the rope, pulled and pulled so hard that the bell’s swinging weight lifted her off the floor by the rope like a rag-doll. Those chicken livers in the fountain had better the hell hear her ringing this damn bell and get their sorry asses back for her!

Up the ladder she scurried again, deafened by the continued clanging and echoes in the masonry tower, and hung the other angel wing curtain with her nose blood drizzled down it out the belfry opening. When she saw the Jeep pulling off Crybaby Lane onto the bare dirt near the window she'd come in, she rushed down the ladder to run meet them. Sounded like babies crying in that cat poop stairwell when she flew into it with her breath held. Halfway down the first flight, in a pool of moonlight through the window, lay the hugest feral cat Motsie had ever seen, a rabid Carolina panther she was sure, just like the Cottondale High mascot, glaring up at her from the next landing.

She rustled the right hem of her maxi skirt up to draw the KA-BAR from its sheath just for safety, and she slipped on a mammoth plop of scat and slid her heel down the edge of the first step, bouncing on her behind down the rest of the flight right to the cat's fist-sized paws, felt it's whiskers tickle her face and smelled his tuna breath. That didn’t slow her down a bit, though, as she bounced right out of its powerful but clawless embrace and slammed the door between herself and the devil-cat, and then limped full speed into the pair of round headlights. Motsie knocked Vincent off Martin’s lap halfway into the hump over the drive shaft with his head on Lindsey’s thigh, and replaced him on top of Martin.

Motsie was like, “Drive, bitch, get us the hell outa here!”

Vincent was like, “Ow Motsie.you made me spill the bong water on my brand new shirt.”

Lindsey was like, “Aw, Vincent, we’ll get some napkins at the 7-Eleven and you can drive from there.”

Martin was like, “We got spooked by a couple o' haints runnin' out, and then something made the bells chime.  I was really worried about you!”

Motsie was like, "Well why the hell y'all ignos leave me behind if ya really thought there were any ghosts?"

Vincent was like, "Well we came back anyway, didn't we?"

Martin was like, "Let's all calm down and go get straight in Bolton's Teardrop."

Lindsey was like, "Motsie, your face is all bloody and you smell like crap. Literally."

Motsie was like, "Well, if you'd just wallowed around the floor with the Beast of Bladenboro, I doubt you'd be at your finest either, Miss Priss. And before we go to Bolton's, Martin, y'all gotta take me to wash in that fountain!"

Installment 6 - Graduation Night at the Orphanage, pt.2

Channel Three fountain that night

That rump slap Martin gave Motsie at the window when she was hocking up a lung made Lindsey's upper lip curl upward on one side like a bad dog. He had been flirting with her just a second earlier; how fickle, rude and unseemly, she later complained. For the moment, she just ducked over that slutty Motsie's bong to dissimulate her disgust from Martin as she muttered to Vincent, “Is everybody at Five Points High in special ed, or just the ones you like?”

“They’re both in Mensa, Mary. Not retards, just crazy,” Vincent whispered back as he rolled the baggie back up. “Crazy runs in their families. But they’re crazy in the nice way, Lindsey. I saw Martin trying to get next to you, and earlier he told me you looked like Stevie Nicks. I think he’s really dreamy, don’t you?”

“I do like his pretty blue eyes and blond hair, but I’m saving my stuff for someone like Mick Jagger, maybe, or Patrick McNee.”

“Ew!” Vincent laughed out loud and said in a perfectly loud voice, “They’re older than your parents!” Martin heard Vincent and moved back in to see what Lindsey might have said to Martin.

“Okay, Vincent," she went on with a sigh of indignation. "All’s I know is I’m not gonna be a slut like the Catholic girls, and then raise a child by myself up under some bridge, scroungin’ scraps from the dumpster behind Steak & Ale; oh hell to the no! Maybe I'll hold out for Prince Charles. Those English guys have cool accents, and every last one of 'em is rich."

Vincent thought Lindsey was as dream-stricken as Motsie's Cousin Garnet who always swore she'd marry a price, too, but one who kept her waist-high in pot and never made her leave the house before her royal beauticians had gotten through pampering her into gorgeousness. There was a long space before Lindsey continued out of context, "Plus, I don’t feel all that comfortable hangin' out here with the ghosts of dead Catholic orphans Baptized with an Amway bottle instead of the real way. All that satanic stuff gives me the shivery creeps, y’all.” She darted her eyes from one of them to the other, seeking someone's approval, but Vincent was Episcopalian and Martin was Unitarian, so neither was quite sure what the right way was.

“I wouldn’t let the mother of my child live like that, baby," Martin eventually chimed.

"Vincent is my back-up husband," Lindsey quickly announced to Martin. "Right Vincent?”

Martin ignored her and insisted that he could smell the ghost fire and hear the orphans crying, and Lindsey suddenly felt a cold chill pass through her, pretty sure she really smelled a little smoke, too. There was also a funny sound that didn’t fit with summer insects.

“Maybe it’s a cat?” Lindsey was hopeful, but not very.

Vincent was trying to strike a Blue Tip on his zipper. “I’ll probably remain a confirmed bachelor, but we’ll always be friends. First I want to get a college degree in something. Are you going to college, Martin?”

“Oh, hell no, not yet anyway. I was thinking of heading up to the mountains to Penland, play in the mud and make some pottery. Ashtrays and bongs. And take up the banjo, haha!” Martin had just been handed the bong out of turn, universal signal to shut up for a minute. He thrust it back to Vincent's hand and went over to try to crawl into the broken window after Motsie. He dangled there for a minute, Vincent’s eyes on his behind and Lindsey’s eyes on Vincent’s profile.

“Gyah, Vincent. I just assumed we’d eventually end up together, Lindsey hissed, starting low but her volume rising gradually with growing fury, "I can’t believe you just dissed me like that in front of 'lover-boy'. It’s not like you have anything better planned; Motsie’s a nut-case, and you said yourself that that slutty Micheline practically forced herself on you, and that she had way too much pussy juice! I mean, you said! I’m not sayin’ anything, or anything, Vincent, but I mean, I’m just sayin’. You said!”

Vincent gagged on a hit and coughed smoke out his nostrils. Martin came back over from the window and told Lindsey he’d walk her back around front like a true Southern gentleman, offering Lindsey his arm which she ignored, and Vincent followed behind them holding the blue lucite bong like a standard. Martin dared to put his arm around Lindsey, gently guiding her around the corner of the building, glancing over their shoulders at Vincent and then leaned in to whisper, “There’s just no such thing as too much, baby.”

“Oh my God!” Lindsey wrenched free of Martin, sudden;y aware he'd heard her remark to Vincent. She froze a second before whimpering, “I smell brimstone and sulphur... it's the ghostly smoke, y’all, And I don’t mean the weed; that was way back there.”

Vincent dramatically whiffed the air with his eyes closed. “I only smell sandalwood, Lindsey." He clearly was savoring an aroma. "It’s Martin’s soap. Delicious, Martin!”

Martin slid nearer to Lindsey, and Vincent slid nearer him, but Lindsey slid right up next to Vincent, so they were all huddled under a huge oak between the front windows and the patch of dirt and sparse grass where sat the Jeep, cutting their eyes back and forth and wondering who should say something. Suddenly, they all laughed at the same time and spread apart again.

Vincent passed the bong to Lindsey and loaded the bowl out of Motsie’s stash baggie. He got out the Blue Tips to give her a light, and Martin stood right next to her, scanning from the front door to the side door for Motsie

Lindsey felt him against her side and instinctively looked at his face, and followed his gaze to the window. She had her lungs full of weed smoke, but she yelped and saw the same ghostly apparition Martin saw in the front window. She huddled next to him now as Vincent begged them to tell him “What? What?”

It seemed like an eternity they waited behind the giant oak, barely speaking above whispers, searching the entire facade for some sign of poor Motsie, trapped within, probably dead, possibly being tortured by ghosts, maybe even halfway to hell already in the devil’s hand-basket.

There were sudden cries from deep inside, followed by slapping and then the side door exploded as two dark creatures flew out into the night like vampires, practically knocking Lindsey down as they passed, and disappeared among the trees lining Crybaby Lane.

That was all Lindsey needed to see; in about one second she was in the driver’s seat and starting that Jeep whether she knew how to change gears or not. Martin leaped into the passenger seat and Vincent swooped onto his lap, no time for formalities like climbing over to the back. Even the car must have been scared; it had never peeled off before. Then it also had its first epileptic seizure, as Lindsey missed the sweet-spot where clutch and accelerator kiss during shifts, but they still made it the couple of blocks to Channel Three in seconds flat.

There was some arguing over there under the bright lights of the parking area, regarding the fact they had left Motsie. Vincent and Martin were both pretty insistent that they ought to go back. Lindsey pointed out that someplace in the Bible Jesus had said to turn your back on Satan and all his ilk, or possibly his minions, she couldn’t remember the words or the exact verse for sure. What she did know was that it had been Motsie who had decided to do the whole Scooby-Doo thing.

“Y’all better come get born again in this fountain so we can be saved!” Dead serious. she hopped right in over the low wall and sat in the shallow pool, showered by she spray.

Martin followed Lindsey right into the water, and Vincent didn’t waste any time behind Martin, but both boys nagged Lindsey on and on about going back for Motsie. Lindsey didn't want to get out of the Jeep over there again, and they agreed she could even drive. Martin and Vincent made a plan to perch in the door opening, scanning for hide or hair of Motsie, and snag her on the fly. Lindsey would hardly even need to slow down.

Even with all that, Lindsey thought it was unwise to tramp back through that ill-fated Crybaby Lane, and resisted going back to look for Motsie. Still haunted by the devilish figured who'd brushed by them, and exhausted from arguing, they all sat dumbly in the fountain facing the orphanage, separated only be their thoughts.  Vincent and Martin felt pretty strongly that they should probably go back for Motsie.  Martin hated to look chicken in front of Lindsey.  Vincent wasn't about to go back alone, or without Vincent, anyway, but If Martin made the first move, he'd follow along.  As far as Lindsey was concerned, though, she was sorry she'd ever come out with these nuts, that she'd even gone to see Five Points High’s graduation, and most of all, that she hadn't stayed at home watching Love Boat and Fantasy Island with her parents and some handy firearms, safe from whatever spooks might lurk about in Cottondale; if crazy ol' Motsie got carried off by the devil, then it was her own damn fault.

Installment 5 - Graduation Night at the Orphanage (pt. 1 )

Galilee Orphanage, Visitation County, NC

Ironically, Motsie was the one voted by her Five Points High classmates 'most likely to commit murder.'  Though she never had a firearm, at least not in her own name, she was known to carry knives, whether in plain view or not.  Other kids had quit playing mumbley-peg with her in seventh grade when she tacked each of Randy Watson's desert boots to the ground during recess with a Bowie knife, and without skewering either of his feet.  She'd started the following grade at Perpetual Conception because of it, and had a little trouble there, too, but that's a different story.

Galilee loomed extra creepily on the night of the Five Points High Class of '74 graduation, backlit by a half moon and surrounded by black oaks glittering with lightning bugs, but Motsie handed her pouch of provisions over to Vincent and boldly penetrated the cluster of friends exiting the Jeep, and left them a cloud of her patchouli to arrive first at the broken window generally known to be the abandoned orphanage's new entrance.

"Hey, y'all boost me in the window and I'll go open the back door," Motsie called as they caught up.

"Motsie you be plum crazy, sho'nuff!" Lindsey mocked nervously from the back of the line in her acquired Cottondale dialect.

"Livin' south of the tracks made you scared of ghosts by osmosis, Jeri Curls?" Motsie returned.  She leaned over and pulled the back of her skirt between her legs and tucked it into her waist band, the leather sheath of a KA-BAR now peeping from the hem on her right thigh.  "I'll only just be a minute."

  "Famous last words, Sacagawea. I bet the orphan ghosts'll get you halfway down the hall." quipped Lindsey under her breath, loud enough for only the boys to hear. Then, backing over to one of the sparkly oaks, she called to them,  "Hey, how 'bout we just smoke under this tree, y'all.  It's a nice tree.  Nothing wrong with this tree. It's protected by fairies." 

Both hands now on the windowsill, Motsie called back over her shoulder, "That's fine, Aretha. You go show Martin and Vincent the new Jackson Five dance routines over yonder while I climb through and get to the door."

"I can't dance. I was asked to withdraw from cotillion," laughed Martin, swooping closer to Lindsey.  

"I could teach you, Martin."  Vincent instantly offered.  "I used to go to Arthur Murray with my mom.  Wanna come over tomorrow?"

   

"Yeah, Martin," Lindsey added, avoiding his advance. "We were on Teen Frolics last year, and Vincent was like a professional!"

With that, Martin popped back over to Motsie who was struggling to hoist herself into the window.  "I'll give you a boost, cuz.  I'm not scared of Catholics. I'm considering becoming a follower of theirs."

Vincent  rolled his eyes as Martin stared at Motsie's behind, both hands on one nether cheek while he shoved her up.   Her solar plexus pressed against the ledge sent Motsie into a convulsive fit of coughing.

"Oh my God, Motsie," cried Vincent. "Step on my back!" He ran over and stooped with his rear deliberately toward Martin, "Grab the other one, Martin!"

Motsie wrestled through the jagged glass, then leaned back over the sill and asked for the matches out of her pouch. Vincent scrounged around for them and lit a Salem Light first to use as a fuse for the bong they'd be toking in a minute, then he reached her the box.

"You could strike 'em on your jeans Vin, They're Ohio Blue Tips. Just lemme take a few out for me to see my way in the hall, and you can hold the box." 

Vincent struck a Blue Tip on his jeans and hit up the long lucite bong. His toking style was different from Lindsey's and Martin's,  wrapping his teeth and lips all the way around it. 

"Man, That's a little bit gross, Vincent. Reminds me of somethin' else, I'm not quite sure what. What's it remind you of, Lindsey?"

"Uh... nothin' I can think of." Lindsey skirted the mossy tree trunk, away from Martin. 

From the tiny portion of void beyond the broken window suddenly lit by a match, Motsie's voice came to them smaller, "I bet I can guess."  They heard bottles knocking each other and rolling on the floor, and then she was gone from them.

Installment 4 - Motsie's great ideas

Vincent's car in Martin's yard

Motsie climbed into the back seat behind Martin and leaned up between the front seats to cock Vincent's rearview mirror where she could see Martin's face while she ran her fingers through her scraggly hair, smiling at Vincent's annoyed sigh.  Vincent elbowed her back into her seat and readjusted his mirror for longer than necessary.  Motsie whispered into Martin's hair, "Not that it's a contest, cousin, cuz we both know who'd win, but I had to see my probation officer today."  She inhaled she scent of sandalwood soap before sitting back. "Would you reach my bong out from under the seat, please baby?"    She pulled a baggie out of her bra and rested it on his shoulder where he'd have to touch her hand when he reached for it. 

"She told me I'm getting terminated unsuccessfully 'cause I got caught back in New Hill Saturday.  Bitch.  And next month was going to be my last visit, too.  I know it's not jail, cuz, but I thought you'd feel better knowing you aren't the only one who can't ever run for president someday."

"What the hell is there in New Hill to attract you?" Martin wanted to know.  "A couple o' old farms along a deserted old road, a few pitiful trailers and that haunted house."

"Oh I just deliberately detoured through there when I was heading to Wrightsville.  Those trailer-dwellin' rednecks that had shot at me the other time finked on me this time for doin' a little thing I like to call 'taking out the trash."

Martin caught right on.  "Oh, yeah, takin' out the trash! Better than rollin' the trees with t.p. stolen from the 66.  I'm definitely gonna do that to Faulkner.  Where's your litter basket, Vincent?  Let's go down Flat Ridge Road right now."

"Oh, heck no, I'm no litter-bug!"  Vincent gasped.  He pulled out of Martin's yard and aimed toward the Five Points Municipal Garden.  "Which way we heading, boss?"  He made sure to look only at Martin, not at Motsie, in case there was any doubt who the boss might be.  "Bamboo or the orphanage; not Faulkner's."

Motsie giggled at him and went on, "I just sorta chucked it out the window as I drove by their trailer, Fabulous Knobs blaring on KIX.  Last I saw it was blowin' across their pitiful excuse for a crappy yard, bottle caps glinting in the sunset in my rearview mirror.  Oh, here's a Zippo, Martin.  The police report listed a November phone bill, a prescription bottle, and a fall semester report card from ECU, all in my name and with my mother's address.  Note to self: Next time, make sure there's nothin' incriminating in the litter bag first. Hey. What's this, Vincent?"  Motsie held something metallic up to examine in the streetlight, "Why is there a pulley on my seat?"

Vincent snatched it right out of her hand.  "Never you mind that pulley, Motsie!"  He called over his shoulder, as he cranked the window down with the other hand, swerved into the wrong lane, and chucked it out.

"Whoa, Nellie! At least one hand on the wheel, man; I almost spilled the bong!  So now you're joining Motsie and me in our life of crime,  Vincent?  It's gettin' kinda cold, can you roll up the window back up?"  Martin had loaded the lucite bong and was twisted around in his seat, offering to light it for Motsie, but she waved him on and kept talking.

"He's got a bedspread back here on the floor, Martin.  Nice, it's chenille! Want it?"  

Vincent swerved again.  "Oh, no,  Motsie, it might be really dirty.  Better leave it on the floor,"   and he readjusted his mirror on Motsie, sped up a little before he raised the window glass like Martin wanted.

"Something stuck on it, like a twig, what?  Were you doing something with this in the woods, Vincent?"  She teased.  "Oh, a little ring!   Look Martin, almost like one I had when I was little, remember?  A sterling silver dogwood flower.  I put mine in my grandaddy's coffin at the wake.  Can I please have it?" She thrust it into the dashboard lights between them, and Vincent recoiled as though she were brandishing a copperhead.

"Take it, take it, please!  I don't want it!"

Staring at Vincent, Martin finished loading the bowl.  "Man, maybe this hit should be for you, Vincent.  You are way over-tweaked."

Once Motsie had adjusted the little band and was admiring the ring on her little finger as she went on talking as if there had been no interruption.  "Dad thought the trailer trash had hit the car with a shotgun blast, 'cause it was split wide open in the trunk where I'd backed up and got skewered on a reflector pole turning around at the exit ramp.  He went to file charges on 'em, but I eventually confessed to that, too.  Sorta.  I told him it happened in Five Points though.  Really I had been rockin' on the pole for ages, skewered through the trunk, spinning my wheels and burning rubber.  Four Marines stopped and bounced me til I got off, but the trunk got all ripped up."

Martin could barely croak the words out through his laughter and still not lose any smoke. "That sounds so wrong for so many reasons, Motsie!"

"Why?  Oh, I get it," she laughed.  "You're nasty.  I almost let Dad blame them, too, but bearing false witness is a sin." 

"But lying is an art," he snorted, and Motsie couldn't have agreed more as she now accepted the bong, laughing with him.  

"I loved the part where you had your dad's woody wagon speeding a hundred up US-1 in the oncoming lane, passing cars with your lights off, trying to lose the losers," Vincent recalled.

Martin continued for him, "Mason's foot pressing yours on the gas pedal, Ray Junior and the purloined pie-safe sticking partly out the back, the rednecks with rifles gaining ground on you in their Camaro, and Raymond crying all the way."

Vincent made a whiney mock of Ray Junior's girlie voice, "'just slow it down to eighty an' I'll jump out here on the roadside!'  Y'all are lucky you didn't die in a head-on!"

Motsie finished her drag and reloaded for Vincent.  "Yeah, my real crime was being stupid enough to believe Mason and Ray Junior wanted me to come out because they liked me.  What an idiot I am!  Supposedly, they were gonna streak through Shakey's and I'd be the get-away driver.  Who knew they were going to rob a pie-safe from a haunted house?  Vincent, you wanna grab this bong the way you snatched that pulley while ago?  Don't fling it out the window, though! And then the d.a. had two bailiffs actually trot the thing out into the courtroom; oh brother!  Hit this, Vincent.  And it didn't even look any good, whitewash peeling off all over it.  I was embarrassed on their behalf, couldn't even steal something pretty.  Hey, Vincent."

"Oh, sorry.  Martin, Can you either hold the bong or the steering wheel so I can get my hit?  Please?  Yeah, they shoulda just stole something little, maybe a crystal goblet or an ash tray, y'know!  That's all I woulda taken.  What about you, Martin?"  Vincent pulled a good long toke off the bong Martin was holding for him.

"Unless you count Batboy's bedroom, the last haunted place I went was Galilee Orphanage on graduation night.  I didn't steal anything.   Damn, you suck hard, Vincent! So, Bethlehem again tonight?"

"Yes.  Whatever you say, Martin.  This is your night,"  Vincent smiled.  "Just don't be ambiguous..."

Martin jerked his head around and exchanged a glance with Motsie, suddenly adding,  "But I shouldn't stay out long, Daddy being dead and all."  He reached between the seats to sqeeze her knee, pleadingly. 

She grabbed his hand, only for a quick squeeze back.  "I know," she said. " Hey, turn on the eight track, Vincent.  Got any Arrogance up there?"

"We might pick up Tom Scott's Underground Sound on KIX.  We don't all have a fancy new car with an eight track like your mama's mammoth Thunderbird, Motsie. Anyway, we're almost at the orphanage.  Look, the moon is even just about as full as our graduation night!"

"Fuller, Vincent; that night was a half moon,"  Motsie answered instead of Martin,  draping herself through the front seats again to twist the dial through screeching and scratching until KIX cam in full flare with Glass Moon On a Carousel, and everybody in the car started bobbing heads and singing the chorus with Dave on the radio. "But just like y'all's graduation night, the weed is from Cousin Garnet's again.  I think the night after tomorrow night the moon'll be all the way full; we should bring a ouija board.  Oh, look, y'all!  Is that a pack o' drunk hobos sprinting across the driveway?  I bet they saw another black cat."

Vincent let the gears drop to neutral and coasted up crybaby Lane to the decrepit building,  "Well I bet they're running 'cause there's light in the upstairs of the orphanage, look, y'all!"

Martin and Motsie followed Martin's stare, Motsie practically lying on the console and handbrake since Vincent had pulled up so close.  "Oh, cool, y'all!  Let's get even 'stoneder'  'n go up there!  This time y'all are comin' with me."