The Feet of God

47 - ONE OF THOSE DAYS

It wasn’t Valentine’s Day, actually, but I knew what Mom meant.

As she lazed and lolled on the twin bed, stretching her arms, her various folds of voluptuous fat jiggled in some sorta self-induced ecstasy.

“I got the wash and fold done,” I rolled the cart of freshly laundered costumes into the room.

“Come to Mamma,” she waved at me.  As I rolled past her bed, Mom yanked the sheet up to her nose.  “Oh, you smelly little roadie.”

I took this as an invitation to use the lavatory and go wash myself.  I couldn’t get into that bathroom fast enough, tearing off my clothes as I went.  I looked forward to a long shower in luxurious solitude away from everything Cowridge.

“Don’t you come back until you’re squeaky everywhere, because Mamma likes to travel.”

The small bathroom had ugly broken tiles and a stained linoleum floor.  The ceiling was webbed with cracks and seeping orange spots.  It was all steamed up when I entered, and the bathmat was soaked through and through.  When I tried to turn on the hot water, the knob came off in my hand.  Undeterred, I found some toenail clippers to jigger the valve and make the shower work.  I found a couple’a slivers of used motel soap, and relaxed under a dribble of warm water lightly massaging my back.

I soaped my hair and hit the pits, then moved on, while at the same time being very careful not to scrub too vigorously so’s to lose my special manly allure.  A bit more up front, a pass over and up the back, and I was ready to towel off.  Two miniature rags passing for bath towels was slung over the rack and sopping wet from previous usage.  I considered asking Mom if she could spare a clean large T-shirt.

I’m normally a modest kind of guy, but I didn’t feel any particular concern about concealing my gifts from someone so matronly as Mom Cowridge.  Still, I had a little bit of trepidation as I opened the door, thinking she might have certain expectations not in my job description.  But I was totally unprepared to step out of the bathroom and find five pairs of eyes locked on me.  Modesty intervened as Freddy, Cherrie, Bobby, Buffy and Mom was winking and pumping their thumbs.

Then, as if on cue, a powerful fist punched a hole through the door and shook the motel room with a thunderous bang.  Everyone’s eyes shifted from me to the knuckles ripping through the flimsy hollow door.  A steel-toed boot busted open another hole and got snagged, and an angry male voice boomed, “God fuckin’ damn it!”

Seconds later the body of a large man splintered the front door and burst into Room #18.  I suspected right off that this was the infamous fugitive from justice, and former roadie, Slack.  The intruder was holding a steely gray revolver.  He must’a been at least 6’7” tall with arms the size of fire hydrants and legs the size of sewer pipes.  Fortunately for me, Slack was too pissed-off at his old employers to notice a naked stranger cowering behind the bathroom door.

“I found you, you bastards!” the ex-roadie shouted.  “I knew I’d find you, you pieces of shit!  You thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you?”

Mom tried to settle things down, “Now, Slack….”

“Shaddup!  It was you that lied and said I done it!”

“Well, Slack, that was business, and I thought we had a deal.”

“Deal?  Your pretty boy fucked up big time, and you expected me to take the fall?”

Mom tried to be reassuring, “Mistakes were made, but we all need to move forward.”

“First you never paid me for all the work I done, then you leave me with a lynch mob.  You all just don’t give a damn.”

Mom tried to be soothing, “Slack, dear, it wasn’t like that at all.  We were planning to come back for you as soon as we had the bail money together.”

“Bullshit!”

Mom tried to change the conversation, “How did you manage to find us so quickly?”

He grabbed “The Intimate Venue Tour” guide from his back pocket and threw it on the floor.  “I knew where you’d be.  And you can’t hide that bus.  What kind of an idiot do you think I am?”  Slack trained his pistol on The Cowridge Clan all huddled in bed.

“Now, Slack, dear,” Mom tried to sound calm, “please, put the gun down.”

We’ll never know what else Mom had to say.  The pop of the revolver made us all jump.  And when we landed, Mom wasn’t gonna get to finish her thought or any other thought again, since her jaw separated from her face by the bullet’s impact and her body fell lifeless to the floor.

Bobby stared in shock and horror at the newly ventilated Mom Cowridge, his own mouth wide agape.  “Slack, man, here!”  Bobby pleaded, sounding really desperate.  “Here, man, I know you have a ton of reasons to be mad!  But here, c’mon, take this!  Take it, man!  We always meant to pay you!  Honest!”  Bobby produced a wad of $100 bills and fanned them on the bed.  (Where those C-notes came from I could not say, since he was buck naked the whole time.)

Slack laughed.  “Die, midget!”  He emptied bullets in Bobby’s chest, and blood spouted and pooled where his body crumpled into an obscene position next to the bed.

Cherrie seemed to grasp the danger of the moment as she tried to wriggle under the sheet and outta sight.  Slack walked over and tore the sheet back.  He ripped Traveling Man outta her hands and beat her to a motionless pulp with it.

Buffy had already slipped out of bed and gnawed off the wraps on her hand, and the wild pounding of the tambourine was so intense you couldn’t hear gunfire as Slack took her out with a single shot.

Freddy was sitting up in bed with his eyes shut tight, shaking and quivering, his fists stuffed into his mouth thumbs-out, making a high-pitched whine.

Slack snarled, “You can’t fuck with people without paying the price.”  He aimed the gun and fired.  “Yeah, you bet!”

I witnessed the famous thumb part company from the hand of the star of the third most popular singing family in American TV history.  The ex-roadie plugged him with several more shots and erased forever the plastic smile on Fabulous Freddy’s face.

Before this murderous rampage could get any worse, I decided it was high time for me to split the Monett 4 Motel in Elba, Nebraska.  Fortunately, Slack never saw me cringing behind the door, so he didn’t notice when I escaped outta the bathroom window of Room #18 and ran like hell from the scene of the massacre.

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