I walked to Bubba’s for the
safety meeting today. Damn if the shop doesn’t look much better! The monster
worktable has only a scattering of... stuff... on it. Four sets of new
shelves hold a disorganized assortment of... stuff. More shelves line the
outside walls of the shop compound’s shed, the laundry shack and one section of
fence. They hold an assortment of rocks; big ones, little ones, buckets of
turquoise and Apache tears, quartz crystals white rose and smoky, geodes,
calcite, flourite, barite, limonite, Smithsonite, hematite, molybdenite,
diorite, quartzite, sphalerite, lignite, halite, selenite, skarn, galena,
chalcopyrite, azurite, malachite, bauxite, ricolite, wulfenite, perlite,
zealite, Goethite, stibnite, trinitite, obsidian, olivine, garnet-mica schist,
diatomaceous Abo sandstone, psilomelane, cinnabar, agates, petrified wood,
native iron, opals, tektites, crinoids, fossiliferous limestones... et
al.
A coffee tin of
slightly-less-than-perfect diamonds sits on a table by the rabbit hutches.
I point it out to Bubba and
say, “Hey bro, WTH is this? You feeding diamonds to the rabbits?”
He shakes his head. “No
man. Those are the culls, but it’s funny you should ask. I talked to my diamond
guy today. You know that five gallon bucket where I toss the diamonds from the
jewelry I take in?”
I do. I’ve seen it. Bubba melts all the silver and gold down in his furnace and pours his own ingots.
He’s been doing it for THIRTEEN YEARS.
Bubba is ready for “THE
END OF CIVILIZATION!”.
Plan A. I’ve already
called dibs on the concrete block laundry shack. It’s got water and juice. Bob’s
got the extra bedroom. Screw everybody else.
I nod my head. “Yeah.
And?”
Or Plan B. When the shit
goes down, we’re occupying the sturdy Hammel Museum across the side street. The
place is spacious and built like a fortress.
Screw everybody else.
They’ll get a rocket up the ass if they come anywhere close.
Seriously. I’m not
kidding.
Meanwhile, Bubba is out of
Jack. And weed. And somebody stole my pipe off the porch. And I knocked Bubba’s
off the table and broke it. Damn. Shitty neighbors and clumsy oafs.
Seven empty whiskey
bottles sit on a shelf behind him, victims of the safety meeting ritual. He
pours us a shot of Bacardi Gold instead, saying, “My guy said, ‘Box them up and
send them too me. I’ll give you a quote. If we can’t agree, I’ll send them back
on my nickel.’”
Now that is interesting.
“And you trust this guy?”
Bubba nods and smirks.
Before he can say it, I
do. “You own his soul, don’t you.”
He laughs and nods, then
we toast to diamond-bought souls and slam our shots.
“Damn, Bubba, you gotta get
some whiskey, man,” I say with a grimace.
“Help me finish this
bottle of rum and I’ll get some. It’s Two-fer Tuesday anyway.”
“Aaaarrrrgh... Yo ho ho
and all that.”
He pours us another.
Before we drink it the stench of Durian fruit rolls out of the back door in
nearly visible waves. I wrinkle my nose and make a face.
Bubba laughs. “Xena just
got a shipment via UPS from her family’s farm in the Philippines. Fifty bucks
per 5-lb fruit just for 3-day shipping.”
The football-sized dead
husks of Durians litter the front yard like the spiked, armored skins of some
weird pre-historic monsters caught in “THE END OF THEIR CIVILIZATION!”
He grins at me. “Want
some?”
I grimace back. “I don’t
want to be in the same county with that rotten excuse for a fruit, man.”
His face sobers. In
fact, he quickly looks glum. “Yeah, the house is gonna smell like orangutan ass
for a week.”
I snort and shake my
head. “The first bite ain’t bad. It’s got the consistency and taste of a firm
banana custard with a hint of almonds, nutmeg, onions and black pepper. The
second bite, though, is hard to swallow, there’s a taste of... of...”
“Orangutan ass,” he
finishes for me.
I shrug. “If you say so,
bro. I was gonna say funky feet, but whatever. That third bite... man... it was
all I could do to choke it down.”
RB sighs. “I guess you
have to grow up with it. Xena gets a little giddy from the tryptophans. She
can’t get enough of it.”
“I’ve run across dead
rats that smell just like that,” I add.
His eyes pop open wide
as he snaps his fingers. “Speaking of rats...” He points to two shiny metal
boxes--- the size of shoeboxes--- on top of a cabinet against the wall of the
house. “Those two mouse traps came into the shop today.”
Bubba has been at war with
the mice in his house for... you guessed it, thirteen years, a house he owns
without ever having actually bought it.
He walks over to the
boxes and points to holes the size of a toilet paper roll in the side of each.
“The mice go in the hole. There’s a trigger smeared with peanut butter. Once
it’s activated, a spring-loaded grate sweeps them into a holding chamber,
unharmed.”
“What’s the point in a
mouse prison? You can’t turn them loose. They’ll just come back.”
He grins that evil Bubba grin.
“I sell them to people with snakes.”
I chuckle and shake my
head. Like I’ve said before, Bubba sees everything in terms of net worth, even
mice.
He walks back around the
table and says, “Come over here.”
So I do.
He hands me a pellet
pistol, then picks up a pellet rifle. “When they go in the hole, you can pick
them off easy.”
I arch the wizard
eyebrow at him. “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose, bro?”
Bubba laughs at me. “A
man’s gotta have a little fun.”
Ping... squeak!
A quick glance reveals a
limping mouse. It stops, raises up on its hind legs, sniffs the air, gets a
whiff of Durian Fruit, wobbles for a second, then drops four feet to the
concrete floor.
It twitches once.
Sweet Pea, the Rhodesian Ridgeback lion hound, trots over to it, takes a whiff, then swallows it in
one gulp.
Damn dogs. They’ll eat
anything, but you can’t expect a dog that big to actually hunt mice. “Oh,” I
say. “You use them for dog food, too. I knew you wouldn’t waste a perfectly
good dead mouse.”
A vision flashes in my
head: rank upon rank of mice assaulting Bubba’s house to the tune of “The Rat” by
Dead Confederate; “I throw my curse
across all your days... stupid human, shit for brains...”
“Hey man,” I add. “You
better hope the little critters don’t figure out how to wear those Durian Fruit
husks. They’ll not only take over this house, they’ll take over the world and
cause the “END OF CIVILIZATION!”
Hammel Museum here we
come, with a sack of killer Durian IEDs, and chased by an army of armed and
armored mice.
Xena comes out the back
door, barefoot, smiling, giggling, wearing short Daisy Dukes and a tight purple
t-shirt that shows off her phat braless breasts. She whines, “Buuu-bbbaaa, I ate that whole Durian. I think I’m drunk. I might puke later so I don’t o.d.
or get fat.”
Four freaking pounds of
it? Ho-lee shit!
(At least by tomorrow
morning anyway.)
Bubba pours an extra shot
of rum to go with the two still sitting on the table. “Come on, baby,” he says.
“Tell me how this rum goes with Durian.”
When she first arrived, Xena wouldn’t touch an alcoholic drink with a ten-foot pole.
Freaking Bubba. Now she’s
doing shots in the middle of the day.
Maybe he is Satan.
I wonder what “net
worth” he sees in her. He probably made her sell her Philippino soul to him
just so he’d bring her back to the U.S.
Which she loves with a
passion unsurpassed for anything... but Durian Fruit.
I know she got tired of
outrunning Fundamentalist Jihadists and out-fighting Anti-Government Rebel
Bandits. You know, dressed in heels, wearing make-up and Press-on Nails, an A/R
15 strapped to her back, riding a dirt bike as fast as it will go while talking
on a cell phone with the Extended Family Network finding out where the bad guys
are RIGHT NOW.
Xena rocks, but no
wonder she eats Durian Fruit and drinks!
Maybe everybody should be
an immigrant for a day, just to put things in proper perspective.
Meanwhile, the mice
march on. You think the Chinese and Indians are numerous?
There are more mice in
this country than dollars in US public debt.
That’s a lot of freaking
mice. Maybe we should make mice our national currency. At least they’re
tangible and the interest piles up according to the differential growth rate
equation, not some bogus criteria nobody understands, but believes nonetheless.
We could send 17 trillion mice to China and still be looking good.
We could even throw a
bunch of “currency” at world hunger and presto! Everybody’s happy.
Except the phat cats.
They exterminated all their rodents with poison and inquisitional torture
traps. They’ll be broke and every third-worlder will be rich.
Until the phat cats
figure out the mouse-tax system. Then everybody’s screwed.
Like now.
But, that would
definitely beat “THE END OF CIVILZATION!” everybody keeps
talking about and I’ve got a fair sized population of “money” right here in my
neighborhood, both the four-footed denomination and the two-footed.
Better yet, make it
lemmings. I see thousands of those every day.
Oh. Can I borrow some
cheese for the traps? I never stop at the end of the maze long enough to
collect mine.
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