Blossom's Friend The Woodpecker

Jonathan Farlow

Woodpecker Woodpecker
Foulest Foul
With Fixed Bayonet
Through Venomous Scowl
Drifting Aloft Like a Feathery Dreg
I Need you Like I Need a Hole in My Leg

Johnny Hart,B.C

July 23,1964

The Blind men and the Elephant.

John Godfrey Saxe's (1816-1887) version of the famous Indian legend.

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk
Cried, "Ho! what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me `tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up he spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee:
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope.
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
(Source: http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html)

I

My little girl presented me with a hand drawn portrait of a woodpecker the other day. Okay it looks more like a cross between the Roadrunner and Phyllis Diller but I took it and got it framed to sit on my desk. It tickled that little girl to death, and it serves as a reminder of something that happened when I was about twelve. A woodpecker just like the one who inspired my daughter’s drawing terrorized Welbourne County and did his part to make sure that the Harvest Festival that started that year would be something that the town of Ashewood Falls would never forget.

I do have to verify one thing. That is that the woodpecker did not act alone. No, the woodpecker had a five and a half ton sidekick named Blossom. Blossom escaped from the J & S circus which was in town that September. It was 1984 and I had taken my nephew.

We were there, probably an hour, two at the most, before Blossom walked away from the circus. She was a regular performer there, both in the show and then afterwards in the parade taking her through the crowd to the midway and her little corral where her trainers would chain her and then pack people onto her back and charge a dollar a ride. We were watching her just before we, she included, left and I asked my nephew if he wanted to ride but he said that she smelled like doo-doo and that he’d rather not. I’ve told myself that if we could have waited just a little longer that we could have seen Blossom make a break for it. From what I heard, circus hands had taken the corral down since they were moving out in the morning and had left Blossom chained to the stob. The chain broke, or it wasn’t latched properly or someone had taken it off for some reason. I don’t know, but fact of the matter is that a few hundred people must have turned their backs or fallen asleep all at once because she just walked out, no sneaking to it. It’s not like something that big could tip toe. I can see her now, stomping out past the ticket booth where the fat lady sat looking down at her cash and didn’t see a thing. Blossom just waltzed out swinging her trunk at the sheer happiness of being foot loose and fancy free.

For those of you on the slow side Blossom was an elephant. A nine feet high, just under 11,000 pound Loxodenta Africana, which is what the World Book calls elephants of the African variety. I am just as stumped as you are on how a critter that big can just stroll off of the Ashewood Falls Driving Range, which is where the circus was always held, and disappear into the dark Carolina night. She did though and it was a good hour before anyone noticed that she was even missing.

II

Right about now your probably wondering where the woodpecker fit into all this. Truth was is that the woodpecker was the only one who saw Blossom leave. He was sitting on the side of a light pole drilling for dinner when he saw her pass underneath him. Seeing her as a definite source for some good grub he flew down onto her back and was not disappointed. Blossom’s back was crawling with these little mites, elephant lice or whatever you want to call them and they were so thick that the woodpecker hardly had to aim to get a mouth full. As Blossom crossed Shiloh Church Road and headed out into the woods the bird just kept eating and eating until he got his fill and, never one to look a gift elephant in the mouth, just curled up behind the elephant’s head and went to sleep.

Blossom was first missed by this wormy looking long-hair with a spider web tattoo on his cheek. He scratched that cheek as he and another fellow pulled out the ramp that Blossom would normally walk up into her car on the circus train and she wasn’t there to lumber up it. Within a minute or two her keeper was there with one of the owners of the circus scratching their cheeks which did not have tattoos and wondering where in sam hill that a five-ton elephant would hide. In side of an hour every employee of the circus from the owners to the midget that shoveled dung were combing the driving range, Shiloh Church Road and the surrounding woods. The only sign that they would find pointing to the direction in which Blossom had headed was a limb broken on a tall elm about six feet off the ground. It was dark before the carnies had started looking for the elephant so the limb went unnoticed until the next morning when the Welbourne County Sheriff, Leo Dorsey had been notified and the word had gone out that a full grown African Elephant had escaped from the circus. For all residents to be on the lookout, and not to try and apprehend the animal themselves. That if you sight the elephant call the Welbourne County Sheriff’s Department immediately. The message went out over the local radio station and all the television stations that broadcasted out of Winston Salem and Greensboro that served the Welbourne County area. It made the headlines in the next day’s edition of the Ashewood Falls Harbinger and for the next few days would be front- page news overshadowing all mention of the town’s first annual Harvest Festival that was to be held the following week-end. Despite all the publicity it would be two days before anyone saw, heard or smelled Blossom, aside from the woodpecker that is, for what good that did.

The news of the Blossom’s disappearance was lost on the general populace of Welbourne County. Most of them only half paid attention to such news sources as newspapers and television putting more stock in the community grapevine and the gossip that always seemed to be running along it. One of the few people who were paying attention to the elephant story was Ronald Simmons, the director of the county Arts Guild and it wasn’t because he was gung ho to go out and bag it himself. No the only thing that Ronald Simmons ever hunted was his keys every morning and he couldn’t find them half the time. Ronald was more than slightly ticked about the press that the elephant was getting and the little press that the Harvest Festival received. The Harvest Festival had been thought up and organized by Ronald himself as sort of a chance for the whole town to get together and mingle, not to mention charge people for booth space and bring in merchants from all over the state. There would be a parade, music, crafts, merchandise and late Saturday afternoon there would be a barbecue cook off to decide who made the best barbecue in Welbourne County who’s always prided themselves as making the best around. Even better than Davidson County who has always claimed that their barbecue is nationally known.

The truth was that Ronald shouldn’t have worried. Yes the elephant was sponging all of his press but it was the Harvest Festival that was first and foremost on the minds of the people of Welbourne County, especially the barbecue contest. They knew real news when they saw it.

III

It was Daniel McDaniel who saw Blossom first. Daniel had kept up with the story in the paper, but it just didn’t register that the thing that loped into the road in front of him on the old Mocksville Highway was the elusive pachyderm. It was Tuesday night and Daniel had been at Mike’s Bowling for the Tuesday Night All-Stars league where he bowled on a team with mayor Johnston “Birddog” Farley, Mitchell Misenheimer and a couple of the other movers and shakers. After they tore up the other team they sat around the five-pin lounge like they did every week and made a good attempt at drinking the place dry. Daniel had staggered to his Bronco having had about twelve Miller Lite’s too many, assured his buddies for the eleven hundredth time that he was alright to drive and started weaving his way home. He had just crested a steep hill just before he was to turn into Oakton Estates where he lived when this gigantic black shape loomed out at him from the darkness. It was walking up the road making straight for him. As he screamed and swerved to miss it the light of the headlights reflected off of all four of its eyes, one on each side of the head and two small ones, like pin-pricks of light sitting atop it. As the thing angled to the left Daniel had to cut hard to the right and knowing the effects of malt and hops on the reflexes of a terrified man he was about as prepared for such a maneuver as your Grandma is to race in the Daytona 500. The ride of the Bronco got really smooth for a second or two as it left the road and went airborne and then got really rough again as it hit the ground. The impact of the landing threw Daniel up against the steering wheel and his foot pushed the pedal to the floor. The vehicle hit the ground at the bottom of the embankment, bounced over a wood pile, rolled over the top of an old rusted out ’62 Rambler, took out a chicken coup and finally came to a stop, entangled in a large scuppernong vine. The woman who owned the woodpile, the rambler, the chicken coup and the vine, Old Lady Liddy Boumont, was sitting up at the time drinking a Papst and watching Johnny Carson. When she heard the truck crash down in her front yard she dropped her beer, knocked over her spit cup and grabbed a .410 shotgun that she kept in the umbrella stand by the door. She ran out after what she thought would be a pack of raccoons in the garbage or a fox or dog in the chicken house. What she found was Daniel McDaniel trying to crawl out of his driver’s side window and all hung up in that grape vine. Chickens were running everywhere, Liddy’s German Shepherd, Violet was barking to beat the band and the horn on that Bronco had stuck full blast. By the time that she had gotten over the shock of it all Daniel had made it out of his window but was hanging upside down tangled up in the grapevine. Liddy walked around where she could get a good look at Daniel as he hung there, cursing and belching and as his back was to her she raised the shotgun and peppered his backside with rock salt that she had packed into the shells to scare away animals. The result, like the crash, would have been more entertaining if anybody else were there to see it. Daniel screamed something about his mother, or somebody’s mother I don’t know, whipped his body up flipped in mid air and was able to dive head first through the driver’s side window. He raised the glass up in the window got into the back cargo area of the Bronco and covered himself up with an old carpet that he was supposed to take to the dump two weeks before. That’s the way he was when two sheriff’s deputies got there and were finally able to calm down both woman and dog and cut their way through the vine to get to the car.

The woodpecker had been asleep atop Blossom’s head and had been awakened by the soft roar of Daniel's Bronco as it got nearer. For a second the bird had started to fly off to the sanctuary of the trees, but instinct told him to stay where he was. His perch felt safe and since he had first chosen this particular spot, things seemed to have gone right. There was an endless supply of food that teemed along the elephant’s back and neck, and there were no more of the worries that a woodpecker has to contend with: No cats, no foxes or other predators. Everything that would normally hurt him seemed to be leaving him alone. So why not a car? The woodpecker just hunkered down and gripped the elephant’s head as they made straight toward the oncoming vehicle. At the last minute his new home seemed to win the war of dominance as the Bronco ran off into the woods on the side of the road. The elephant kept on lumbering down the road for a few more minutes before she took an old logging road and walked off down into the woods again. As he felt the safety of the trees once again drape over him the woodpecker hunkered down on Blossom’s neck again and went to sleep. Blossom found some low lying trees and picked around in them for leaves to eat before she lowered her head and dozed as well.

Daniel McDaniel was let out of jail on $500 bond and through the influence and persuasive abilities of Mayor Johnston “Birddog” Farley avoided jail time on the agreement that he attend Alcoholics Anonymous and otherwise keep his nose clean. He would also have to do 1,000 hours of community service, which through a deal struck by Mayor Farley included the hours spent at his job as head of planning and zoning for the county. In a private deal between himself and the mayor he agreed that he would never again mention the dinosaur that charged him out on Old Mocksville Road that night.

IV

The morning after Daniel’s run-in with the triceratops (that’s what Daniel’s six year old son said it sounded like) barricades were already laid out by Welbourne Avenue, McLean Boulevard, Main and Depot streets and every other thoroughfare and alley in the downtown area, cordoning off the area for the much-awaited Harvest Festival. As Ronald Simmons checked his list and checked it twice almost every vendor that had been invited to the festival had agreed to come. Those who hadn’t wouldn’t be missed, and as he shut his planning folder and headed down to the county office complex to give his final report to the board of commissioners, he had already declared the festival a rousing success.

At that same time Horace Spinks was putting the final touches on his big business venture, the newly refurbished Columbia Theater. He had gotten with Ronald Simmons and planned for the official theater opening with Gone With the Wind to be on the Saturday of the Harvest Festival. The unofficial opening would be Thursday night with Citizen Kane, The Wizard of Oz, Duck Soup with the Marx Brothers, Horace’s own favorite comedy, and, in response to a request from his most staunch supporter, Slobber McAllister, for a good old sci-fi movie, The Blob. The last Horace saw as a contribution to the history of motion pictures only for the fact that it was Steve McQueen’s first major role. He did, however, promise Slobber and seeing as he was at that moment stripping and waxing the floors, it was the least he could do.

V

While the administrative duties of the Harvest Festival were on Ronald Simmons’ mind and Orson Wells and Judy Garland were on Horace Spinks’, the only thing that was on the mind of Duncan Reid and his wife Mandy was barbecue. Duncan owned the Pig Palace, a five star, according to the owner, barbecue joint just outside of Nazareth. Although they had been married for going on seven years and all in all it had been a good marriage, Duncan and Mandy did not discuss barbecue. They could talk each other’s ear off on any other topic, politics, religion, money, sex, Rusty or Dale, Ford or Chevy, Carolina or State. The important topics that always seemed to drive two people apart never caused a ripple in the Reid’s ocean of marital bliss, but barbecue. That was another thing. Duncan was born and raised in Welbourne County and cooked barbecue the way it was supposed be, God’s way. Pig meat, chopped and thoroughly blended, but not drowned, with the special sauce, the family recipe, the recipe that he used at the Pig Palace and that his daddy had used in all their backyard barbecues while he was growing up. Mandy was a Texas girl and, when she heard the word barbecue, she thought of beef still on the bone and covered with a thick tangy sauce that stuck to bone, flesh, clothing and whatever else it came into contact with.

Both Duncan and Mandy heard about the contest separately but within minutes of each other and had not spoken since. There was no fight, no blow up, no falling out, but each knew that one word, one hint at a put-down of each other’s cooking and that would be it. We’re talking hatchets and butcher knives and pistols at dawn. At first all was fine. Duncan did most of his cooking at the restaurant while Mandy did hers at home. Then Wednesday, while a lot of the town was at the newly refurbished Columbia Theater watching The Wizard of Oz, Duncan started missing the gallon of sauce that he had mixed up for the festival. He had mixed it up that morning at the house after Mandy had left for work and had forgotten and left it in the kitchen. He drove back home and, not seeing it on the counter where he was certain that he had left it, had the all-out nerve to ask Mandy where it was.

“Why would you think that I’d want that mess?” she snapped from where she stood with her back to him at the stove and ding ding, the gloves were off and the fight was on. They screamed, they cursed, they threw things and somebody’s shin, I’m not saying whose, took a right hard kicking. At about ten o’clock the volume of the war had gotten down to a dull roar and by eleven both combatants had reached the seething stage. Duncan had made himself a banana sandwich and stomped off into a back room to fix a screen in one of the windows. He didn’t even want to think about barbecue, but Mandy fussed around hers for awhile until she had worked her dander up for round two. She kicked open the door and walked right up to Duncan with what she wanted to say teetering on the end of her tongue. He turned to face her and threw his hammer down on the table lest he have an urge to use it. Mandy started by telling him that his barbecue was slimy and tasted like a possum after it had sizzled on the road for a good week or two. She then yanked his sandwich out of his hand and started in on how he was a good-for-nothing, dim-witted, ugly piece of Welbourne County white trash. He just stood there silhouetted by the light of one old lamp sitting on a table just inside the window. As he raised a hand and opened his mouth to respond, Mandy saw a very long, snakelike object reach from between his legs, grab the sandwich out of her hand and disappear from whence it came. All Duncan and Mandy could do was to stand there staring at each other for a good minute or two before they thought that it would be a good idea to forget barbecue for the night and go to the movies after all.

Blossom had missed her new friend. Throughout their time together the woodpecker would leave and fly up into the trees, but he would always be back in a few minutes. This time, however, he had been gone for a good while and Blossom had missed the pleasant feeling of the bird pecking around on her back and had been combing that section of the woods hoping that he would return. Then a familiar smell turned her thoughts to food and she made her way to a big house on the edge of a large field. The smell was bananas. Blossom loved bananas and whenever she had performed well in the circus her handler, George, always rewarded her with whole bunches of bananas. She had stopped several feet from the house and started to turn away because of the loud and savage sounds coming from inside. She could smell meat cooking, which was a familiar smell as well but very unpleasant, as well as sweat and aggression. The smell of bananas, however, although it was faint compared to the others, pulled her right up to a window in the house where the sounds and the other smells were the strongest, but so was the banana smell. She wanted to get away from this place, but she wanted the bananas even worse so she sent her trunk in after it. The sounds stopped, a relief to her, but the almost overwhelming smell of fear replaced it so she grabbed the banana, stuffed it in her mouth and left. As she was walking away chewing what turned out to be a very strange tasting banana, the woodpecker came back and lit on her head. He started pecking around and Blossom had to close her eyes and sigh at the pleasant, content feeling that it gave her.

VI

Slobber McAllister and his best friend, Gene Pickard, left the newly refurbished Columbia theater just after 10:30 that night. They had skipped Citizen Kane, seen The Wizard of Oz Gene wanted to see that one and a little of the Marx Brothers movie because Horace Spinks said that it would be so good. It was stupid and they walked out and sat down on the curb until 11:00 when The Blob was supposed to start. While they were sitting there, Slobber smoked cigarettes, detailed the movie scene by scene and analyzed the merits of the film as compared to the Japanese monster movies, which he preferred, and the giant atomic bug movies of the 1950’s. Spurred by the comment from Gene that he was glad that monsters weren’t real, Slobber assured him that not only were they real, but the woods in that area were full of them.

“You heard of that girl over round Jamestown?” Slobber hollered at Gene as he stepped over to the drink machine for a Coke “She stands on a curve and hitchhikes and when people pick her up, she gets in the backseat and gives them an address. When they get to that address, she’s gone and then they knock on the door and ask about her and the girl’s Mama says that she died in a car crash on prom night ten, twenty year ago.”

“You ever seen her?” Asked Gene, sitting back down and throwing the bottle cap into the storm drain between his feet.

“No, I haven’t. I rode by there once, but it was middle of the afternoon and they only ever see her at night.” They sat in silence for a little while as the flesh on Gene’s neck began to squirm and he glanced up and down the street to make sure that a ghost wearing a prom dress wasn’t sneaking up on him. Then Slobber looked at his watch and said that it was time that they headed back in. As Gene struggled to get to his feet Slobber threw down his cigarette and mashed it out with his foot.

“You know, I been to the Devil’s Tramping Ground.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a place off in the woods over the line in Davie County. It’s a big circle in the woods and nothing grows in it, no plants, there’s never any tracks, no nothing. It’s just sand and they say that’s where the devil goes to plan his evil deeds. He just walks in that circle until he’s wore off everything and left the ground bare in just that spot.”

“Hmmm.” Gene and Slobber were quiet as they showed the ticket girl the stamps on their hands and walked into the lobby where they stopped at the snack counter.

“You wanna ride over there and take a look around? Maybe camp out?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Think about it a little bit. We might get a look at old Scratch himself.” Slobber looked at the line ahead of them and then made for the theater door, pulling Gene along behind him. “Let’s go on in. I don’t want to miss the opening credits. The Blob’s got a real cool theme song.” He started singing and skipping as the two entered the theater and headed down the aisle toward the front row. “It crawl’s, it creep’s, it flies, it slides…..”

VI

Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat, rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat. In the hours around dawn S/Sgt. Buddy Powell, USMC retired, slept the sleep of the young, the righteous and the heavily sedated. Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat. Spread eagle on his bed wearing only a pair of ratty boxer shorts, having since kicked all the covers off onto the floor, the wheels in his mind began to turn, spurred on by the noise just outside his bedroom window. Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat. As the room around him began to brighten with the light of a new day, he was back with the 15th Infantry, on the beaches at Normandy. His legs began to pump and he could feel the sand beneath his feet as he charged over the dunes. He could hear the screams and the shells exploding all around him and he could smell the salt air, the smoke and the blood as the sound rang through the house again. Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat. Something brought him out of it just after he had vaulted over a sandbag wall after the same teen-age kraut that he had bayoneted forty some years before. He sat bolt upright and looked around the room as if he expected an SS to come at him out of the closet. Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat. He froze at the sound and fought the temptation to dive for cover. When he heard it again, his mind had cleared and he crept out of bed and walked to the open window. Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat. There was a big red-headed woodpecker on the drain pipe outside ramming his beak into it like it was a tree. Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat. Buddy crept back to his bed and got his service revolver, a Colt-45 that he took apart and cleaned every Thursday, from underneath his pillow. He went back to the window, drew a bead on the bird and thumb cocked the pistol just as the bird’s head went back to hit the drain again. He had just began to squeeze the trigger when something akin to a tentacle grabbed him by the wrist and pulled his arm down as the gun went off. Buddy caught sight of the woodpecker flying off just as he was yanked from the window and thrown flat of his back in his grandchildren’s kiddie-pool just under the window. What it was that had pulled him out of the window he didn’t know, but he looked up and stared it right in the face. It was huge and black and it had two glowing red eyes. Its teeth were as long as he was tall and the tentacle waved back and forth over him. He froze where he lay as a wind-up frog kept bumping him in the end of the nose and the water drained out of the pool through a bullet hole in the bottom.

Buddy’s wife Mabel was asleep in the front bedroom where she had taken to sleeping to avoid Buddy’s freight train snoring. She hadn’t heard the bird or the gunshot or her husband’s screaming. What woke her up was someone pounding on the front door. Buddy was white as a sheet and soaking wet. He didn’t answer any questions as she unlocked the door and let him in; in fact, he ignored her completely as he tore through the house like a scalded cat. He called the sheriff, got his shotgun out of the cabinet, loaded it, locked the door, drew the drapes, grabbed his wife by the arm and took her into the closet where they hid until they heard the sound of Sheriff Leo Dorsey calling from the front porch.

VII

Blossom’s trainer, George; his assistants, Spider and Landon; as well as Henry, the midget who did most of the shoveling up after the elephant, made their way down a thin gravel road right at dusk that Friday. The sheriff had gotten a report about some old guy who thought he saw the elephant although all anybody, including George had gotten out of him, was that he had seen a demon from the darkest pits of Hell, that he had stared evil in the face and that God had pulled him right out from under the beast’s fearsome gaze and brought him to his bosom. George didn’t care about all the religion crap, but from the description, minus the fire and brimstone, it sounded like an elephant, or some whacked out weirdo’s description of one. The sheriff’s deputy had been patrolling the area for an hour or two before the sheriff had come and gotten George and driven him to the old man’s house. The deputy had found a pile of dung on the side of the little gravel road and radioed the sheriff who brought George to verify that it was indeed elephant droppings and, finding a few more nuggets down the road, they figured that Blossom had headed that way. The police had to go back to town to help get ready for some stupid festival that the town was having so they just dropped George and the assistants off there on that road and left. They did have the decency to radio the Davie county sheriff who was going to meet the carnies at the county line, which was just a mile or two away.

VIII

I have to get off the subject here somewhat and tell you that Slobber McAllister slept in the nude. Disgusting thought I know and you’re wondering why I took the time to mention it, but I promise it is important. Slobber couldn’t even close his eyes wearing anything more than what the Lord gave him, and as he and Gene Pickard bedded down at the mysterious nearly bare patch of earth called the Devil’s Tramping Ground, Slobber stripped off and slid down into his sleeping bag. Gene didn’t think that they should go to sleep and he really thought that Slobber should have kept his clothes on. If this was indeed the Devil’s Tramping Ground and Satan could show up any, minute, they should be awake and clothed just to be ready.

“It don’t matter,” said Slobber raising up onto one elbow and eyeing his friend through the dim light of the miniscule little campfire that they had managed to create. “It’s the devil. You think that a pair of blue jeans and a leather jacket’s going to do anything against the Prince of Darkness? He’ll get you no matter what you do.”

“Well, I want to be awake with my drawers on if he does.” They were both silent as Slobber settled down again and Gene reached over from his sleeping bag and tried to stoke up the fire with a stick, but it only seemed to get lower. “Nothing you can do, huh?”

“Not if he wants you. You can pray and go to church and believe in God and all that stuff to protect your soul, but if he wants your body, he’s gonna get it.” More silence as Gene sat up and began to poke at the fire harder, sending embers up into the air but not doing much to help the flames.

“You pray today?”

“Yep. You?”

“No.”

“Boy, you better get to it.” Slobber said and turned over hoping that Gene was going to shut up and let him get some sleep. “You wanted to come see the Devil’s Tramping Ground. Here it is.”

“Yeah, in the daytime. Not camp out here.” Gene snapped as he threw some twigs onto the fire.

“I asked you if you wanted to spend the night and you said yes.”

“I did not.” Slobber rolled over with both his finger and his mouth ready for a row when, simultaneously, the fire went out and the sound of a stick breaking echoed through the woods. After he and his deputies met with Ronald Simmons and assured him yet again that all would be well with the Harvest Festival the next day, Sheriff Leo Dorsey headed back toward the Day Mill Road where he had left the fellows from the circus to look for the elephant. The thing had yanked Buddy Powell out his bedroom window that morning and then, according to the elephant keeper, had headed northwest toward Davie County. Buddy wasn’t any help. All he would do when they tried to interview him was preach about his salvation and sing I’m Gonna Be There When the Roll is Called up Yonder while Mrs. Powell played along on the clarinet. One of the deputies, James Myers, had found some leavings not a mile away on Day Mill so they had left the carnies and headed into town so Simmons wouldn’t blow a gasket when they missed the meeting. He felt bad about leaving them there, and they weren’t too happy about it, so he radioed Arnold Ruth, the sheriff in Davie County and had him meet them at the other end of the road where it crossed the county line.

He radioed Arnold again to see if they had seen the elephant and he said that the trainer had seen some tracks but that was about it. They made plans to meet at the county line and that he would take the circus folk back to their trailer and they would try again in the morning.

Sheriff Dorsey got to Day’s Mill Road at a quarter of nine and, as he approached the county line, he could see the Davie County sheriff’s cruiser. The spotlight was on and was shining along the tree line on the right side of the road. Just as he registered it all Gene Pickard came running between them from the left in a sleeping bag. Leo looked after him and had just hit his spotlight when the elephant that everybody had been looking for barreled past and started closing in right on Gene’s tail. Dorsey couldn’t get his door open before Slobber McAllister streaked out of the dark and passed the elephant just as it grew even with the Sheriff’s passenger side door, his pasty white, buck naked body shining in their spotlights like a lighthouse beacon. By the time that the officers could get out of the cars, get coordinated, and take off after the runners all they could find was Gene’s sleeping bag, a very scared tabby cat and Slobber McAllister, who Leo picked up about two miles away as he headed down the highway.

Blossom and the woodpecker had been walking through the woods that night and attracted the attention of a big tabby tomcat named William. William had been prowling, looking for the occasional mole or chipmunk when he spied the fat juicy woodpecker. He wasn’t too concerned with the five and a half ton elephant that the woodpecker was riding on so he started stalking them and followed as they walked down a creek bed, biding his time until he could get a crack at the woodpecker. The time came when they all were in sight of Slobber and Gene’s little campfire and the woodpecker chased a mite down onto Blossom’s rump. William saw his chance and lunged for the bird who was able to flutter out of the way and the cat’s claws stuck into the leathery skin along the elephant’s backside. Blossom felt the cat and was more startled than hurt as William’s claws didn’t come close to piercing her skin, but she did pick up the pace and started trotting through the woods making it sound like the devil himself was taking a midnight stroll. The woodpecker, being disoriented, had only one thought in his panic and that was to get back up onto the elephant. As he turned back that way, his aim was low and instead of lighting on Blossom’s back he accidentally stuck his beak in a very sensitive area about a half an inch south of her tale. That hurt and prodded Blossom into a flat out run, taking not only the woodpecker but William with her right through Gene and Slobber’s campsite. They both had heard Blossom coming, hard not to, and were frozen where they lay waiting to see what form Satan would take when he stepped out of the woods. Their campfire had gone out before Blossom got there, so all they could see was a very large black shape making toward them, producing a cacophony of bellows, snorts and screeches. Gene screamed, stood up and started running all in one motion taking his sleeping bag (which did little to hinder his speed)with him. Slobber did take the time to get out of his sleeping bag, but he more than made up for it on the main stretch. His lack of clothes not only made him lighter but decreased his wind resistance dramatically.

IX

That Saturday morning, after over a year of planning, the barricades were put up sectioning off the downtown area of Ashewood Falls. Merchants arrived, booths were put up and merchandise displayed. The floats arrived along with the high school band right at the designated time in the parking lot behind the old Woolworth’s building. The barbecue that had been cooking since two that morning was checked one final time. Ronald Simmons stood in the middle of the intersection at Welbourne and Depot, watched the activity going on around him, cracked open a brand new bottle of Maalox and toasted the crowd.

Slobber McAllister was sitting on top of a trash can in the storeroom at the Dog and Shake watching Gene Pickard sweep up.

“How long you got till you get off?” He asked. His mouth was full of stale French fries that were left over from the day before.

“I get the storeroom swept and Mike says I can go.” Slobber didn’t reply right off but finished his fries and his drink.

“You hear that Daniel McDaniel saw something out on the Old Mocksville Road Tuesday? Something big that ran his car off the road.”

“Mike says he was drunk.”

“Don’t matter none. Something tore up his car.”

“Mike says he tore it up when he crashed through Old Lady Boumont’s chicken house.”

“Oh, Mike, Mike. Was he there?”

“Were you?”

“No, but I can tell you that it was the same thing that came after us last night.”

“It was the elephant that everybody’s looking for?”

“It wasn’t no elephant.”

“That’s what the Sheriff told me last night.”

“He was just trying to keep from scaring you. It was some kind of creature like the blob.” “It didn’t look like no blob. This thing had legs and a big long trunk-nose thing. I even heard his footsteps when he was chasing me. The blob don’t even have feet.”

“I said that it was like the blob,” Slobber jumped up from the trash can, took the lid off and slammed his garbage into it. He was about to slam the lid back down but Gene motioned for him to stop so that he could shovel the dirt that he had swept up into it with the dust-pan.

“Not just like the blob. This thing has a shape. You know like King Kong or The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Gorgo something like that. Don’t matter what it looks like. I’m scared it’s gonna attack the festival today.”

“Why would it do that?”

“That’s what always happens. In every movie every time there’s some kind of get together the monster’s gonna attack right then.”

“So I guess we shouldn’t go then?”

“No, man, we got to go,” Slobber took Gene’s coat from the nail on the wall and threw it to him. “In all them movies the people who is supposed to know what to do don’t. You know the police, the army? They just get killed. It’s the people like you and me who’s not supposed to know what they’re doing that have to save everybody.” He dragged Gene toward the exit, hardly giving him time to lean his broom up against the wall.

They didn’t talk as they made their way down the alley behind the store; they were both deep in thought. Slobber was wondering what they would do if they did see the monster and Gene was wondering if Slobber really knew what he was talking about or if he did engage his mouth before his brain was in gear like Mike said he did. It was because they were quiet that they heard the first footstep, a footstep identical in sound to the footsteps that they heard coming at them through the woods. This time it was coming up the adjoining alley that was separated by the one in which they stood by a high slat fence. At once both their stomachs seemed to do flips inside them and the same astonished thought ran through their heads: I’ll be dog. Slobber’s right! They froze as they listened to the proceeding footsteps growing louder as the thing got closer. Gene looked at Slobber and silently mouthed the words: What do we do? Slobber thought for a few seconds and decided to try the only thing that he could think of.

“Get me a rag,” he whispered.

“A what?”

“A rag. Make sure it’s dry.” Gene took a few steps toward the rear door of the restaurant and turned back towards his friend. “Should I get Mike?”

“No, don’t tell Mike anything! You want him to get killed?” Gene ran inside, grabbed a rag from the bin at the sink and ran back out. His boss, Mike Howard, saw him pass by the door to the stock room, and after he had drawn the blinds and locked the door, he headed out back to see what was up.

By the time that Mike was through, Slobber had rolled his scooter through a gate in the fence. He had shoved the rag into the gas tank and was desperately trying to light it with the old butane lighter that he always carried with him, the one that never would light on the first fifteen tries.

“Get against the wall and put your head down!” He yelled. If Gene had kept his head up and if Slobber had thought to look in the direction of the footsteps, he could have seen Blossom the elephant, not a monster from outer space on the other side of the fence. She had been attracted by the sound of the crowd and the music. Blossom had gotten tired of freedom and missed the circus, missed George, missed the little man who cleaned up after her, missed everything, so since that morning she had been looking for anyone that she was familiar with. The woodpecker, having no such ties, went wherever she went and as Slobber laid down his trap the bird was on the elephant’s face between her eyes, pecking mites.

The downfall of Slobber McAllister’s hastily devised trap was that by the time he got the lighter lit, the rag was saturated with gasoline and the air around it thick with fumes. When the butane lighter finally sparked, it set Slobber’s scooter on fire with a pop and a loud whoosh as he had envisioned, but it engulfed him along with it.

It’s debatable as to what Slobber sought to do to the supposed monster by setting fire to his little scooter, but it did stop her in her tracks. That is until Mike walked out into the alley and saw Slobber’s scooter as well as Slobber on fire. He reached just inside the door and got the Co2 fire extinguisher off the wall. He then saturated man, machine and, unbeknownst to him elephant, with very cold carbon dioxide. The combination of the cold gas and the loud hiss put Blossom into motion better than William the cat could ever hope to. Slobber’s monster stepped over the still smoking scooter and headed downtown where the parade was just getting under way.

We were standing at the corner of Welbourne and Depot streets about four rows back from the street and the Ashewood Falls High School marching band, who were leading the parade, had just grown even with us. Mama was trying to help my nephew get onto my shoulders so at least he could see when shouts started coming up from the crowd farther back on the parade route. I thought that one of the cub scouts had fallen off their float or one of the Shriners had wrecked one of their little cars so I stepped forward, pulling my nephew along with me. As I got to the curb and stepped onto the street, the crowd around us rushed back and we found ourselves in the path of, believe it or not, a charging elephant.

I wish that I could tell you something that could make the scene a little more dramatic. When your reading something like this in a newspaper someone always says something to the effect of; “Oh it happened so fast,” or “time seemed to stand still” something like that, but all I remember was catching a glimpse of George out of the corner of my eye. I saw him step out of the crowd as the elephant passed by him and bring something to his lips. I would have thought that it was something like one of those high pitched dog whistles, but it wasn’t. It was a turkey call. He blew it and Blossom stopped on a dime, not a foot from where we stood. Everybody just stood there quiet for a second or two, then George yelled: “Blossum, hup!” and the elephant put its trunk under my nephew’s legs and lifted him up sort of like he was sitting in a swing. Then she stood up on her rear legs and posed like they all do in the circus. The woodpecker took one last poke at the elephant’s head and then flew up onto my nephew’s crown, where he stood up straight and sort of struck a pose like the elephant was doing. The crowd started cheering, except for my mother who had fainted flat out on the asphalt and had to be fanned awake again.

X

• Both Daniel McDaniel and Liddy Boumont gave up drinking and Liddy taped the Carson show from then on and went to bed at a decent hour. She figured that nothing good could happen after eleven o’clock.
  
• Duncan and Mandy Reid became vegetarians and have been happily married ever since.
  
• Buddy and Mabel Powell found religion sold their house, and bought a Winnebego so that they could travel throughout the United States and preach the word of the Lord.
  
• Slobber McAllister swore off of horror movies, except for those japanese monster movies that he liked so good, they weren’t that scary anyway. He also started sleeping fully clothed complete with boots, leather jacket and a .44 Magnum that he lays across his chest every night.
  
• Gene Pickard sworn off of horror movies of any kind.