Stalking-Feet Losers Do the Pan-damn-demic

2,086 words

Stalking-Feet Losers Do the Pan-damn-demic

NOTE: Don’t shoot me. I’m just the messenger.

I can’t undo it. Just don’t needle me.

Things definitely got worse as they weirded out. After all, it was the day of the Covid, Deherald Krump thought. The ruddy, paunchy, middle-aged manager of a Moderna-vaccine production and distribution facility in Visalia, CA, Krump crumpled a little, imagining the toothbrush of the angel of death had already passed over him, decayed, while the villainous vaccine’s needle bent and misfired. He felt a harking, honking, halitosis gum pain that he knew would never go away and most likely lead to a root canal, eternal migraine, and sudden death. Isn’t that what all the ads advised patients to be wary of? No root canals for him. He dreamed of the canals in Venice — even Venice, CA. He just had this feeling. Surely, everybody’s felt it. Something you want to, but you can’t undo.

Today, an historic roll-out of the Visalia facility’s vaccine, destined to save his part of the world, was scheduled. No harm, no foul. No pain, no gain. No pressure, and no pressure points. No blood pressure at all, when he realized this was a chance for destiny. To somehow go right. Or, if it didn’t, somehow, to public-relationsize it, hand-sanitize it, so he was not equated with the villain. So many things to go wrong, so little time. Why had he ever taken this job? He hated shots.

Today could at least be predictably worse than the day of the locusts, a veritable chomping away at the very fabric of humanity, Krump thought. Chomp, chomp.

Even if it was just one brown outfit short of fashionable shorts. He’d seen a lot; most of his employees looked good in those ugly earthy brown delivery uniforms, and the tight white lab coats. They even posed for and provided a never-ending photo calendar, which the company sold online. They encouraged folks to look ahead as well as at behinds (which, clients assured them, they never but sorta always did, anyway).

The calendars had led some of his now-employees to apply for jobs at Visalia Vaccinations. Some of the less-bright ones had thought they were applying at Visalia Vacations, and were not so happy when they learned they worked at needles in a haystack, rather than at Club Un-Dead. Such was the case with Krump’s latest unprepossessing “needle noses,” as he privately called his whistling-while-they-“worked-ers.” These two newest ones could be dangerous, if they had a brain, but then he thought, “Naw. No way.”

But Krump knew the workers were getting weirder, the days were weirder, life was just plain weirding out altogether, all around, all over. And he was expected to roll with it, the punches, the shots in the arm, your best shot wherever, the whatevers. He shrugged. What did it matter? The noise, the frenzy. When humans get the word there is a high percentage of death lurking, they don’t always react that healthily or sanely.

Take his two newest delivery drivers, for example. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something not quite right. But he ignored that little gut tingling, that hint of a ringing bell in the innards. And his vaccines needed to get from here to there, as quickly as possible, however possible, and these guys seemed only slightly weirder than average, and willing. These days, you took what you could get. And everything was a hair off. You had to be grateful, just staying alive, one way or another, and overlook the dandruff. You just never knew what was coming at you next. Might as well be weirdos in a vaccine delivery truck.

“How hard could it be. You drive a truck, deliver some stuff supposedly, hostage the vaccine, live the sweet life. Better than digging a ditch,” the pug-nosed priest with ring-around-the-collar told his companion, as they checked off their shipment slated for the nearby Some Things That Matter Home for the Elderly. It was also known as Something’s the Matter, at Visalia Vaccines.

The priest’s future partner-in-crime, one of the ugliest, hairiest broads who ever roamed the face of the earth, could rival the dinosaurs, if she wore purple. She was decked out in what appeared to be a discount couch covering, which had probably seen as much action in the last 20 years. Solid, and solidly square. Her fold-out had definitely faded. The bloom was off the chintz.

“Nobody’s perfect,” she’d say, at the drop of a hat, which she carried with her and the priest nixed.

“Too much,” he’d said.

Like he was such a fashion maven! He was much more a ravin’ maven, she suspected. But he was the guy in charge of the caper, and she submitted to his wisdom, however ridiculous it seemed, even to her. They were taking their best shots. She shuddered. Zowie, how she hated shots!

“Millions of shots, millions of dollars, milllions of stories in the naked city,” the priest mumbled. “Just bless me, I gotta sin.”

Criminal minds only twist so far — then they turn the wrong way on a one-way street. Usually to a fast dead end.

After the first of several shrewd perusals, Krump tried to ignore the new drivers, concentrating on those he knew were tried and true deliverers of the goods. Who was he to question, after all? Only the manager of a million-billion vaccine doses, that’s all. Not like he’s going to save the world or anything. He might save himself, though, with the kind of dough they were talking about for supplying the vaccine. And the federal government doesn’t lie. Everybody knew that for a fact.

And this was California, after all, and the age of whoopsie-do, as well as Covid-voodoo. Disneyland, Mickey Mouse, Hollywood all blended into a vast, surging dream surf of sunshine and high land and endless gottabe’s. Out of that, emerged the high-octane mixture of both high- and low-life.

He watched and tried not to cringe as the two new deliverers from evil attempted to read the webmap of their vaccine route. They hunched over it and muttered.

“We take a right by the Opera House…”

“…And a left by the Pussycat Lounge.”

Obviously drivers of direction, taste, and vision, Krump concluded, as the two argued between “The Hilton,” and “St. Mark’s Cathedral.”

“Don’t be stupid!” the priest chided the ugly woman. “They don’t have beds at St. Mark’s.”

“They might have waterbeds. They got holy water, get it?”

“And you got waterbugs.”

Krump thought he caught a tattoo of a vulture on the gravel-voiced woman’s left extremely well-developed bicep, as well as a fist flexing.

“We’re here with the convention,” the priest said to Krump, as if that explained their location confusion. “We thought we’d try something new while we wait for the keynote speaker.

“What convention?” Krump asked.

“Oh, the one that’s here.”

“Oh, that one!” Krump and the ugly woman chorused.

“The Shriners,” the ugly woman studied Krump. “The ones packed with the clown in teeny cars.”

“Say, who are you, anyway?” Krump demanded. “I have a feeling I’ll need to remember your names. I haven’t exactly seen you before.” Or anything like you, he thought.

“I’m Father Gold and this is Ms. Mine.”

“I suppose that’s better than Father Vac and Ms. Cine.”

“Hey, a boss who’s a card! Ain’t that a shot in the arm!” Ms. Mine guffawed.

“Life is full of new experiences.”

And the priest was pretty full of IT, Ms. Mine thought.

And circumstances were just life itself, Krump amplified Ms. Mine’s thoughts. And some folks should just keep their big mouths stapled shut. To match their great thought processes.

Meanwhile, in another star-crossed part of town (not even close to back at the ranch, but at least as cheerful), an active (more or less) crime scene was almost in progress. This was Visalia’s lucky day! Two for the price of one. Criminals galore, swinging in the wind, with not a brain cell to spare among ‘em. When you’re hot, you’re hot. And when you’re not, you’re, well, these guys. Did they just grow ‘em this way, here? Some places and times seem more conducive, amenable, perceptible, persuadable, felonious, per capita, than others. And sometimes they strike gold, and sometimes they strike out. Such an old, sad story, full of hiccup and cough, cough losers. Who think this is their best shot, their turn at the big-time, the moment. If they could only connect the dots. But that’s why they’re the immortal un-artists them, and we’re hanging in there us. Their stars are aligned just a hair differently, askew in their cracked crowns. The agony and the irony.

The Visalia Vaccinations delivery truck (looking like a teeny shrunken-head version of UPS and driven like mad cannibal media mailers on cannabis) pulled to an unscheduled stop at the Visalia Watering Hole. Where water was advertised as a luxury, an extra. The blinking neon sign in the middle of the day said so. The weird couple from the delivery truck felt the need for something to soothe their delivery “parchedness.” This looked like the place. But what did they know? It definitely seemed “hole-ish,” and like not much unman-made water had ever passed its way through the slippery elm arms of the two swinging doors.

As they contemplated the entrance, out came hopping two dollar-slingers, yelling, “Call a cab! Call a cab! We gotta get outta here!”

Anyone who’s ever heard the classic rock anthem “We Gotta Get Outta This Place (if it’s the last thing we ever do!)” by the classicly world-famous The Animals might be able to sympathize. Likewise, from the musical “Sweet Charity,” “There Must Be Someplace Better Than This.” Really? Okay. Take us there. Take us away. And hop to it!

Oooh, and ain’t it all the truth? Much ado about something for nothing. Or money for something like that, and the clucks are free. So many clucks, so little adough. And to become a celebrity while being a cluck, well that’s just gravy. Chicken-fried gravy. On a beer-bottomed bun. Instant fame on a cracker clutz. The space between bold and stupid is infinite and just a hop away, it turns out. If you don’t know the right folks. And aren’t the blooded right folks. And don’t have a clue as to who the right folks could be, on a cracker. In bed. But there you are, anyway. Stuck sideways in the middle of a watering-hole hold-up. Why had their mothers bothered to tell them anything?

Isn’t it just amazing how many non-compos mentos criminals there are in the world, who think they are perfectly fine, compos-mentos-wise, and it’s the rest of us that can’t think or see or shoot straight? Ya gets what ya pays for always. It takes a villain to wreck a chillin’ (or maybe chitlin?). Villains are nothing if not wrecked chillins, or chitlins, to begin with. Train wrecks. Delivery truck wrecks. Cab wrecks. Hopping hot-foot on-foot wrecks. Wrecking balls aimed at themselves. And they hate shots! Potshots and gunshots. Gumballs and gumboots. And not-easy money.

“Forty-hour weeks and taxes deducted ain’t the life,” the priest was fond of saying. “No, we have a better idea, way, plan. Something that actually works for us. Tax-free. With more to come. Easily. We are chief financial officers of our own fates. Captains of our own million-dollar souls. We are robber barons!”

“Robber barons!” he repeated, as the couple of not-satisfied-as-yet criminals hot-footed past them, smacking the ugly woman right on the nose as they exited the scene of the not-crime-time-yet watering hole.

“I knew I shoulda worn a hat!” the ugly one said, rubbing her nose and glaring at the priest, who was left holding the door, but not yet, the bag.

He just had a feeling, though.

“But I don’t know how to fix this! I can’t undo it,” the priest said.

A passing nun patted his arm and suggested, “Try God, not vodka.”

“Of all the gin joints…,” he muttered, letting go of the wooden door. “Everybody’s a comedian or a patron saint!”

Trying to blend in and look nonchalant, with the sirened cops on the way, he mumbled, “I’m just here for the water. And maybe a football game.”

“That would be a shot in the arm,” the ugly lady said.

“No arm, no foul,” the priest replied. “We gave it our best shot.”

“Next time, I’m the priest!”

“And I bet you can’t undo it, either.”

#