Small Town Grievances 3: if the devil lived on Earth he would own a car-wash in this very town
The long, dumb night continues:
Light mania as Mayor went AWOL for about 72 hours, from dinner Sunday. There were concerns—Sunday evening is a blue time for all, where all the glumness of the week collects, like useless overseas coins in the town fountain. Did he make the foolish decision to take a stroll in the dark? Our forest is deep, the river is fast and thankless. Our bike trails are absolutely filthy with stinging nettle and the soccer field has an owl problem.
Short period of lawlessness following Mayor’s disappearance. The pet shop was flooded and all the nudie books were stolen from the library. Enormous spike in bandwidth as citizens began visiting the banned websites from other towns. Sheriff Carl was only able to restore order by going house to house at dinner time and beating the shit out of anybody he met.
Perry R. who runs the video store, called a meeting to nominate himself as interim mayor. His chances were slim: the video store has astonishing penalties on late returns and plays its instore music at such deafening volume that it can be heard as far away as the hospital, where doctors need to make important phone calls, and victims of surgery need their rest. Many lawsuits.
More nominations for new mayor: Rodney B., a man knowledgeable about the aluminium trade; Annalesse M., who grew up in a city far away. Lorraine F. put her hand up, but only to suggest we take the opportunity to revise the town’s stance on using firearms to annihilate the birds that become trapped in our homes.
Tony M., of the car-wash, took to the stage to announce to everyone that he had wasted his life in the pursuit of wealth and material pleasures, when he should have been studying music. He said he has an artist’s soul but was led astray by the dazzling promises of the car cleaning business. “I probably would have made love to 1000 women by now if I hadn’t been such a bird’s ass about money,” he said. “It still makes me sick to spend a dollar. I wouldn’t even own a clock if Marion didn’t threaten to divorce me unless I bought one. Gaze upon me, young men and women present: I have CDs for sale, once I get my son’s computer working. You can sign up in the lobby.”
Mayor turned up Wednesday afternoon, when someone found him shivering on the roof of the library, still dressed in his dirty Sunday kimono. From the looks of it he’d gotten stuck stargazing and survived by drinking puddle water and eating whatever came in on the wind. It must have made a hamburger out of his brain because he was raving when they brought him down. “My children,” he yelled. “I have so many wonderful things I want to tell you about the things I saw. But they will all be too painful, too painful, for you to hear.”
That night I received one of Tony M’s CDs. Bad stuff, it somehow gave me indigestion. But in this world there are many fates worse than listening to a bad song out of pity. For example, my stepmother has skin so dry she regularly has to go to the hospital about it. There’s a charity and everything.