the New Pantagruel

Hick Con

by Chris Blair

ex rose up through a black sleep, startled and awake, but desperately keeping his eyes closed. The dream again. He took a deep cleansing breath, flushing out guilt and other toxins. The hum of muted conversation from the front seat of the car congealed.

“Hudson, you bring our liquid sustenance?” Newaygo asked.

“To be sure,” Hudson replied with an unforced camaraderie developed of years.

“Better have, you two-bit hack.” Newaygo brazened a sharp turn, then went back to drumming thick fingers along the steering wheel, keeping time with the meek performance of “God Is a Bullet” resonating from the CD player.

“One case of Heady Brew, on sale at Buckhorn, lovingly chilled in the cooler under two bags of ice, awaiting consumption. Give a hoot, don’t pollute. Think before you drink.”

Hudson gripped the edge of the dash to steady himself against Newaygo’s erratic driving.

Berkeley sat up in the back seat of the GMC Jimmy and calmly exclaimed, “I don’t live here.”

Berkeley always awoke from a sound sleep in the middle of a flashback.

“Wake that lazy sonofa–” Newaygo swung the wheel wildly to the left, launching everyone half a foot out of their seats. A Charlton Heston medallion, commemorating the NRA president, danced wildly below the rearview mirror. The Jimmy burbled over another pothole, crested a prominent hill, and slowed to a stop on the edge of a barren plateau speckled with half-dead live oaks.

Tex raised his eyes to a perfect blue sky, gently speckled with puffy clouds. The day was sunny and warm as a recently fired gun, stocked with the occasional breeze. He hesitated, knotting his white bandanna around his neck, then pushed open the door and stepped out, stretching and flexing just-woken muscles. “How come y’all didn’t wake me? Miserable dream had me in its clutches.” He thumbed sleep from his eyes. “I swear, that durn road puts me to sleep every time.”

Hudson arched thick eyebrows. Newaygo scowled.

Tex pursed his lips. “No teller of tales ought to let himself be pressured into using any other language than what he intends.”

“Obstinacy suits you,” Hudson agreed.

Berkeley jumped out of the Jimmy’s back seat, working the empty pump-action of his Remington 870 12-gauge from the hip, and yelled, “It’s a fine day, praise the Jolly Green Goddess!”

Newaygo grimaced. “Now this. Hell, Berkeley, that hippie cannon legal for shooting skeet?”

Berkeley grinned deviously and whooped again, brandishing the shotgun over his head like a pump-action bishop’s miter. He had painted tiny flowers in multiple colors all along the exhaust breach. They matched his daisy-speckled shooting vest.

Tex shouldered a timeworn Model 12 Winchester and heave-hoed a red-white-and-blue cooler the size of a small steamer trunk out of the back of the vehicle. Newaygo scooped up five folding chairs and Henrietta, his vintage over-and-under 20-gauge. Hudson was already scouting a shady spot under the edge of a live oak, casting an eye about for a good spot for launching the blue rocks.

“Not too close to the trunk,” Newaygo groused. “Last convention, Tex shot off a huge limb and nearly killed poor Berkeley here.”

“His head still bears the mark,” Tex breathed slyly, setting the cooler near the live oak’s trunk.

Berkeley looked up from unloading a case of blue rocks, the spring-loaded launcher and its tripod. “You mean that kind of professional accident isn’t covered under workman’s comp? What kind of assembly is this? That kind of mishap would be fully covered at Gavis Con Deep South.”

“Gentlemen,” Hudson intoned after dropping the ammo bag in the perfect spot, “who is our first master of the clay pigeon House? How should the decision be made? Perhaps,” he asked through a malignant display of teeth, “it should be who has struck the target least within the last six months?”

Berkeley and Newaygo turned slowly to Tex.

Tex squirmed. He didn’t belong here, working beside these men he’d known for years. “Bastards, you know I been short-sighted for months.”

“Perhaps the Con will liberate your muse.”

“Tex it is,” Newaygo said, presenting him with a chair.

Berkeley piled the first cast of blue rocks and the launcher into Tex’s arms and mock-saluted. “At ease, son of the South.”

“Bunch of rat finks,” Tex mumbled. “Half-breed jackalopes. Which side you want me on?”

“Now Tex, do you see any southpaws here?” Berkeley pointed to a spot fifteen feet away. “Always to our left.”

Newaygo rummaged in the cooler, around the sandwiches in plastic bags, grabbing a Heady Brew. “Breakfast of champeens.” He popped the top with a squat middle finger and took a swig.

Hudson ignored him, unzipping a black leather case to reveal an ugly Savage 10-gauge. He held it up admiringly. “Like a mule’s kick,” he proclaimed.

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