Sixteen

The phone behind the bar rang and Mavis yanked it out of its cradle. “Mount Olympus, Goddess of Sex speaking,” she said, and there was a mechanical ratcheting noise as she cocked a hip while she listened. “No, I haven’t seen him—like I would even tell you if he was here. Hell, woman, I have a sacred trust here—I can’t rat out every husband who comes in for a snort after work. How would I know? Honey, you want to keep this kind of thing from happening? Two words: long, nasty blowjobs. Yeah, well, if you were doing them instead of counting words, then maybe you wouldn’t lose your husband. Oh, all right, hold on.”

Mavis held her receiver to breast and shouted, “Hey! Anyone seen Les from the hardware store?” A few heads shook and a fusillade of “nopes” fired through the bar.

“Nope, he’s not here. Yeah, if I see him, I’ll be sure and tell him that there was a screeching harpy looking for him. Oh yeah, well, I’ve been done doggie-style by the Better Business Bureau and they liked it, so say hi for me.”

Mavis slammed down the phone. She felt like the Tin Man left out in the rain. Her metal parts felt rusty and she was sure that her plastic parts were going to mush. Ten o’clock on a Saturday, live entertainment on the stage, and she still hadn’t sold enough liquor to cover the cost of her Blues singer. Oh, the bar was full, but people were nursing their drinks, making them last, making goo-goo eyes at each other and slipping out, couple by couple, without dropping a sawbuck. What in the hell had come over this town? The Blues singer was supposed to drive them to drink, but the entire pop-ulation seemed to be absolutely giddy with love. They were talking instead of drinking. Wimps. Mavis spit into the bar sink in disgust and there was a pinging sound from a tiny spring that had dislodged somewhere inside of her.

Wusses. Mavis threw back a shot of Bushmills and glared at the couples sitting at the bar, then glared at Catfish, who was finishing up a set on the stage, his National steel guitar whining as he sang about losing his soul at the crossroads.

Catfish told the story of the great Robert Johnson, the haunting Bluesman who had met the devil at the crossroads and bargained his soul for super-natural ability, but was pursued throughout his life by a hellhound that had caught his scent at the gates of hell and finally took him home when a jealous husband slipped poison into Johnson’s liquor.

“Truth be,” Catfish said into the microphone, “I done stood at midnight at every crossroad in the Delta lookin‘ to sell my soul, but wasn’t nobody buyin’. Now that there is the Blues. But I gots me my own brand of hellhound, surely I do.”

“That’s sweet, fish boy,” Mavis shouted from behind the bar. “Come over here, I gotta talk to you.”

“‘Scuse me, folks, they’s a call from hell right now,” Catfish said to the crowd with a grin. But no one was listening. He put his guitar in the stand and ambled over to Mavis.

“You’re not loud enough,” Mavis said.

“Turn up your hearing aid, woman. I ain’t got no pickup in that National. They’s only so high you can go into a mike or she feed back.”

“People are talking, not drinking. Play louder. And no love songs.”

“I gots me a Fender Stratocaster and a Marshall amp in the car, but I don’t like playin ‘lectric.”

“Go get them. Plug in. Play loud. I don’t need you if you don’t sell liquor.”

“This gonna be my last night anyway.”

“Get the guitar,” Mavis said.

Molly slammed the truck into the Dumpster behind the Head of the Slug Saloon. Glass from the headlights tinkled to the tarmac and the fan raked across the radiator with a grating shriek. It had been a few years since Molly had done any driving, and Les had left out a few parts from the do-it-yourself brake kit he’d installed. Molly turned off the engine and set the parking brake, then wiped the steering wheel and shift knob with the sleeve of her sweatshirt to remove any fingerprints. She climbed out of the truck and tossed the keys into the mashed Dumpster. There was no music coming from the back door of the Slug, only the smell of stale beer and the low murmur of conversation. She scampered out of the alley and started the four-block walk home.

A low fog drifted over Cypress Street and Molly was grateful for the cover. There were only a few lights on in the park’s trailers, and she hurried past them to where her own windows flickered with the lonely blue of the unwatched television. She looked past her house to the space where Steve lay healing and noticed a figure out-lined in the fog. As she drew closer, she could see that it was not one person, but two, standing not twenty feet from the dragon trailer. Her heart sank. She expected the beams of police flashlights to swing through the fog any second, but the figures were just standing there. She crept around the edge of her trailer, pressed so close that she could feel the cold coming off the aluminum skin through her sweatshirt.

A woman’s voice cut the fog, “Lord, we have heeded your call and come unto you. Forgive us our casual attire, as our dry cleaner did close for the weekend and we are left sorely without outfits with matching accessories.”

It was the school prayer ladies, Katie and Marge, although Molly wouldn’t be able to tell which was which. They were wearing identical pink jogging suits with matching Nikes. As she watched, the two women moved closer to Steve, and Molly could see a rippling across the dragon trailer.

“As our Lord Jesus did give His life for our sins, so we come unto Thee, O Lord, to giveth of ourselves.”

The end of the dragon trailer lost its angles to curves, and Molly could see Steve’s broad head extending, changing, the door going from a vertical rectangle to a wide horizontal maw. The women seemed unaffected by the change and continued to move slowly forward, silhouetted now by Steve’s jaws, which were opening like a toothed cavern.

Molly ran around her trailer and up the steps, reached in and grabbed her broadsword which was leaned against the wall just inside the door, and dashed back around the trailer and toward the Sea Beast.

Marge and Katie were almost inside of Steve’s open mouth. Molly could see his enormous tongue snaking out the side of his mouth, reaching behind the church ladies to drag them in.

“No!” Molly leapt from a full run, slamming between Marge and Katie like a fullback leaping through blockers to the goal line, and smacked Steve on the nose with the flat of her sword. She landed in his mouth and rolled clear to the ground just as his jaws snapped shut behind her. She came up on one knee, holding the sword pointed at Steve’s nose.

“No!” she said. “Bad dragon.” Steve turned his head quizzically, as if wondering what she was so upset about.

“Change back,” Molly said, raising the sword as if to whack his nose again. Steve’s head and neck pulled back into the shape of a double-wide trailer.

Molly looked back at the church ladies, who seemed very concerned with having been knocked into the mud in their pink jogging suits, but oblivious to the fact that they had almost been eaten. “Are you two okay?”

“We felt the call,” one of them said, either Marge or Katie, while the other one nodded in agreement. “We had to come to give ourselves unto the Lord.” Their eyes were glazed over and they stared right past her to the trailer as they spoke.

“You guys have to go home now. Aren’t your husbands worried about you or something?”

“We heard the call.”

Molly helped them to their feet and pointed them away from Steve, who made a faint whining noise as she pushed the church ladies away toward the street.

Molly stopped them at the edge of the street and spoke to them from behind. “Go home. Don’t come back here. Okay?”