Gertrude Stein cleared her throat. Everyone in Beer Springs, right down to Marcel the Disowned Mime with a predilection for Old Fashioneds, turned to listen.
"Scottie's uncovered. The truth the manuscripts. El-Don and the delivery. The good boxes. To Lolly. By hand. Directed destination manuscripts. Word of mouth. Secret. Slice of deal real estate deal. Longmont Liege. The Beige Widow suicide. Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Lolly's missing. Cue rescue Lolly. Surplus shady business. A foot."
Gertrude came to a full stop.
Keith looked at Michael Sowl. They set their beers down and followed Gertrude out the door.
Police Dog Meth T and Goody Got Two Shoes were sitting in the Mansplaining Room at 'S Natch Funeral Home. They had set up the business as an alternative to the conventional handling of death, but in truth they dealt in pure and untampered death. As always, death provided consistent sales to any funeral business and all the guys had to do was administer hope to the living, just like their competition.
The business duo, Matt Tidal and Dan Zztkanit, had met at a conference. M.T. had been on security detail and Zztkanit was a chemist with a degree from YouGuessedIt University.
A year after setting up shop, they nicknamed each other as part of making their business plan more mundane. Or accessible. They discovered the words mundane and accessible to be, within reason, interchangeable. In general they had a hard time navigating what they wanted to say. They created conferences called "Break Down Body Language, the Decomposition of What Matters." So far they had taped twenty episodes and posted them on YouTube. On average their videos garnered twenty to thirty views each. 'S Natch Funeral Home was ambitious.
The boys were investing in cyber reality. Cyber reality was the new frontier of the Best Expansionist ever conceived, Death. The partners definitely wanted their cut because they had a vision of radicalizing the concept. Again, the partners were facing a continual challenge, rickshawing between the nuts and bolts of the funeral business and their illusions of being involved in a less messy end.
At 'S Natch Funeral Home the Family Mansplaining and Reception Room was carefully curated with comfy chairs and a robust coffee machine. They had even set up a large body basket, organic wicker, in a corner and a roll of linen was mounted on the wall. The cloth cascaded down the wall. Plexiglassed organic refuse was displayed on shelves. Someone had added a large sterling silver mushroom to the line up of urns. Only the mushroom was hallmarked. Everything else came from Temu.
Meth T and Goody were even peddling their burgeoning nouveau-mort wares on major news channels.
"Nourish the soil." Meth T. said with satisfaction to the potential customer sitting by the window.
"We represent the pinnacle of a family friendly funeral business," Zztkanit said.
"You see, my colleague here, Goody, has re-established the process of the organic disintegration," Police Dog said.
"But you will hang up my false narrative on your website for all eternity after I die?" the customer asked, not at all interested in organic disintegration.
"Absolutely," Good said. "Your lies are safe with us." After all, he knew that the rabbi trio had referred the customer from their recruitment business to relieve people of their natural identity and disguise them as Jewish for the evermore. Rabbi Dinah had been inspired by the ideals of Mormonism and the beauty of the matter was that the chosen were pre-claimed while living and sealed in fraudulent identities and then their bodies buried or burned or transformed into something that no one supposedly would ever want to meet again. Of course, there was the commission to consider on all sides. Percentages counted.
Then there were the griefbots, the new project of 'S Natch Funeral Home. Coming soon. It would change the landscape of death and psychotherapy. The abuse created by abusers would never die.
Big Foot was walking through the forest on stilts. The stilts had little deer hooves at their base. He had already circled the cabin twice. The chimney was cold. The roof was packed with snow. He was fleeing from the Viking reenactment people. It had been a close call. Ultimately he had imitated tree bark and escaped detection. The cabin was cleverly concealed in a dip in the forest and tucked away by a thick fence of mossy tree stumps and scattered trunks leaning up against the boulders.
He broke the lock on the boarded up door. Despite the rusty look of the padlock, the iron was quite resilient. A bit deceptive. Once he had set the plank boarding up the door aside, Big Foot found himself looking at a digital padlock system. He ripped the digital lock clear out of the front door, sending the batteries flying, and pulled a crowbar out of his secondhand REI backpack to jimmy the door open. He peered into the cabin. He was sure no one was there, but times had changed. People could look without seeing.
He didn't know if he was safe. The cabin was cold. Obviously no one had been there for weeks. He looked in the cupboard. Metal military tins lined the shelves. Big Foot recognized them as food containers. He was partial to the US Forces version of beef stroganoff. He looked around again. Then he decided he was up for some R&R. He made a fire and sniffed at the contents of the tins. Gingerly he placed a cooking pot near the fire.
After Big Foot had eaten his fill, he stretched out his legs and, his body overflowing the Lazy Boy, he reached down and pulled up some reading material, a short excerpt from Keith Kumasen Abbott's autobiography.
"He had a dream and it shot him." -- Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
GUMM
Come early Tuesday morning instead of hanging around the dorm and waiting until the herd went for breakfast, Keith snuck down to the gym and took his white jersey out of his locker to exchange it.
Down the aisle was a guy with his back to him, dressed in football shoes, hip and shoulder pads and pants. The guy struggled to pull a white jersey over his head. It had the number 68.
Keith walked over to him, relieved to see someone else in a white jersey with a lineman's number like his. Someone to tell him what was up.
But when the back of the guy's head came out of the jersey, all there was to see was dirty blond hair matted with dirt and leaves.
When the guy turned around, instead of a face, Keith saw a mask with sun brunt red and white skin peeling off the surface and his eyes dim white points and his mouth cracked and chapped lips.
This monster didn't notice Keith at all. the guy turned to stare into his locker.
"Ey-yup, ey-yeah," he called into his locker. "Atta boy." And he patted the door as if a dog. The door squeaked back. "Oh yeah," he agreed.
The manager Ivan hustled down the aisle. "Oh Jesus, no! Gumm! Not yet! What are you doing here? Practice is not NOW!"
Gumm hesitated, and then said to the locker door, "But is it today?"
Ivan relaxed, then lightly patted Gumm's arm. "Right, today. Gumm, come back in an hour or so. Suit up then."
Gumm nodded, still without looking at the manager, as if he understood, and then pulled his helmet over his head.
Ivan squealed. "No, damn it, Gumm! Later. Take the helmet off. Later."
Then Gumm grinned. "Just fooling ya." But he didn't take off the helmet.
Framed by the smooth indigo helmet Gumm's ravaged face seemed even more red and hideous.
The manager took Gumm's helmet by the ear holes, using both his hands, then gently and slowly lifted it off without peeling off any burnt skin.
For a second, Ivan could only stare at Gumm's tangled hair, then he looked inside Gumm's helmet, turned it over and shook it, speckling the cement floor with the dirt, skin, broken leaves and a torn Snicker's candy wrapper.
Gumm's mouth-breathing got louder, until this turned into a mumble, "Ey-yup, ey-yeah, uh, I uh. I'll just loosen up instead, until practice starts." And he jogged in place.
Ivan slapped Gumm's helmet knocking loose more dead skin, dirt clods and leaves, unsnapped the chin strap and slipped it into the front pocket of his pants. Then he looked at the jogging Gumm.
"Can't send you out there at practice with this helmet, Gumm. You're missing a chinstrap, Gumm, gotta go back to the cage."
Gumm stopped jogging and touched his cheek where the chinstrap would have been if the helmet were still on his head.
Ivan held up Gumm's helmet to show Gumm it was missing a chinstrap. He kept the helmet level with his own eyes, too. "You better follow me. We'll get you kitted out right."
Gumm looked from Ivan's face to the helmet and then back to Ivan's face. "So when does the first practice start?"
"It --"
The manager shook his head at Keith, signalling no, don't talk and resumed eye contact with Gumm. "Gumm," pointing to empty chrome snaps for the chinstrap, "let's find you a chinstrap in the cage. You're all sunburnt. You need some treatments, too. Did you get toasted yesterday at the playground?"
"Ey-yeah. I think I fell asleep on the lawn. Down at the playground. But this is our year, idinit?"
"Yeah, this is going to be our year, Gumm."
"Jimbo's gots us some players, eh-yup?"
"Yup, Gumm. Dr. Bulldain got some horses to play for us. But ya gotta watch out for that sun, Gumm. It's August. Hot days now, Gumm. remember that. Hot."
"Ey-yup but cold last night." Gumm nodded, thinking this over. "Last night. That's why I woke up. Windy and cold."
Gumm was led back toward the equipment cage door. Keith tagged along. Once Gumm was safe inside, Keith nabbed Ivan and pulled him back out the door.
"This Gumm play, uh. . .He's on the team?"
Ivan gave a curt nod before he checked the cage to see that Gumm was still walking.
"What year is he?"
As Ivan turned to follow Gumm, he said something. It sounded like seht here.
Gumm sat down in the rear of the cage by some storage lockers.
Did Gumm here the manager say that. Sit here.
Or did the manager say sixth year?
Ivan swung the mesh door behind him, locking Keith out.
Players who are injured or otherwise not ready to play may sit out as a redshirt, Keith knew, but only for a year. They can't play in games; they could only practice with the team. The rule was that players were only allowed to suit up for varsity games for four years. No one played longer than four.
No, the manager said sit here because Gumm sat down. The manager was talking to Gumm.
Or did the manager answer Keith's question? Ivan did say sixth year.
So this Gumm character played for five years going on six now?
That's why his brain was a gumdrop?
Then the white team was nothing but fodder, live tackling dummies. So it was true. Keith was on the Bozo Team.
Big Foot put the loose papers down and stared into the fireplace. He thought about football. He thought about the people who had tried to tackle him. Was Big Foot on the Bozo Team? Or were The Others on the Bozo Team?
(Aside: Of course, Big Foot never read an excerpt from Keith's lost autobiography about his college years at Bellingham in Washington State, those years from 1962 to 1964. This excerpt was sent to Persephone by Michael Sowl's nephew. Question: Where is the rest of Keith's autobiography? By the by, Persephone Abbott holds all copyright to Keith Kumansen Abbott's intellectual property.) Back to the story:
Big Foot began to feel a tad fatalistic sitting in the cabin in the woods. It was a nice cabin. Full of reading material and tins of chow. He began to think he could stay maybe a while in the cabin and enjoy himself. After that he didn't know what was going to happen. It was always that way. Things could go up, or things could go down. He feared the latter. He needed to do some Tai-Chi.
#keithkumasenabbott #keithabbott #bigfoot #sasquatch #football #bellingham #washington #gertrudestein #
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