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The Tibbs Reader: The House at 2814
Bunts stood at the counter, admiring the crazy-horse leather journal– coptic-bound with a tie-closure made of the finest island silk. The initials “G.T.” were hand-pressed into the cowhide in pure gold. A strange symbol, specially designed by Bunts himself, was in-laid into the center of the cover in ivory.
“Fine work, fine work indeed Mr. Chester. Why, this is a MOST DELIGHTFUL tablet!”
The stationer looked at the initials. “Thought your name was Bunts.”
“Indeed! Indeed it is,” Bunts replied. “But this exquisite cahier is a birthday offering for my dearest schoolmate and confidant Gertrude Tork.”
“Lady friend,” the stationer said suggestively.
Bunts lowered his voice.
“Our intimacy transcends the lecherous ideas in your head, Mr. Chester.”
Chester looked at the floor.
“Not that I have failed to muse on those things carnal,” Bunts boomed loudly. “But, as the poet said, “the act of fornication is akin to a rose growing in winter!”
“What poet?”
“A 17th-century bard of the continent. You would not be familiar with his work. Tis’ only available in the most obscure libraries.”
Bunts threw several large bills on the counter while Chester wrapped the tablet in brown paper. Bunts then examined a rack of fountain pens but put each back with a sort of nauseous disdain.
He drove into town and into an older neighborhood of run-down homes. At the crest of a hill at a cross-street, bordered on one side by an unkempt graveyard and on another by a mysterious flat factory of nebulous purpose, Bunts parked the shiny new Neptune.
He turned a corner onto a short street and began passing a series of large ancient homes that had been broken into apartments and empty overgrown lots. The homes became progressively smaller as he descended the hill until he arrived at a series of duplexes.
“AHA! THE VENERABLE 2814. THERE SHE IS, THE FROWZY EDIFICE OF ABOMINATION!” Bunts boomed loudly. A nearby neighbor, senselessly hoeing a patch of dirt, looked up with confusion.
He walked around the side of 2814. It was a duplex (one half of which was boarded) and featured a strange inaccessible porch completely covered with plastic latticework. The day was sweltering– all of the windows to 2814 stood open and bereft of screens like wide-open mouths. He banged at the side door loudly and removed a pure silver cigarette case from his white suit coat.
After some time a busty blonde woman, perhaps in her forties, answered the door in a tight bodice.
“MY DEAR!” Bunts boomed. “WHAT AN ABSOLUTE, UNPARALLELED DELIGHT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!”
“Would you keep it down, fer’ Chrissakes,” said the woman, who grabbed the big man’s hand and led him up a stairwell. The walls were all stained yellow with nicotine.
Bunts closely watched her curvy posterior bouncing up the steps.
“WHAT A DELIGHT!” he remarked.
The room was large but stuffy– a dented box fan failed to provide any breeze and oscillated with a loud, slow creak. Clothes and spent food containers were strewn everywhere. A television buzzed senselessly and the large bed was unmade. A wicker papasan chair was covered with tawdry paperbacks.
Bunts pushed them aside and plopped into the chair. “I SEE, MY DEAR, THAT YOU CONTINUE TO READ TRIFLING MATTERS. WHY, HAVE YOU NOT EVEN OPENED THE GREAT WORKS OF LITERATURE THAT I BROUGHT TO YOU?”
“There ain’t nothing wrong with them terrorist attack novels,” she said. Bunts admired her bosom and lit another cigarette.
“I HAVE BROUGHT YOU ANOTHER MEMENTO TO SHOW MY DEEP, ABIDING AFFECTION FOR YOU DEAR. IT’S A TABLET, ONE OF THE FINEST YOU SHALL EVER SEE.” He handed her the gift. She tossed it on the bed.
“Alright, Daddy. What’s it going to be today? Are the teeth in or out?”
“AH. WHAT A DELIGHT! YOU, MY DEAREST LOVE, ARE AN IMMORTAL OFFERING OF FEMININITY STRAIGHT FROM THE GODS! LET US THANK THEM BY REMOVING THE TEETH– THAT WRETCHED CARTILAGE!”
WHAT AN UNMITIGATED DELIGHT THIS SHALL BE!” Bunts said after a long pause.
He rose from the papasan. The woman removed her dentures and placed them on the bed stand.
The Tibbs Reader: Officer Gentry
Officer Gentry was interviewed in 2014.
Listen, let me first tell you that Gil Gentry is no bullshitter. So, I’ll tell you exactly how it happened, best I can remember.
Steve and I were on patrol and we was parked behind a laundromat and on the second floor of the laundromat was this apartment and in that apartment was a girl named Agnes. Now, Agnes worked at The Holiday House which was a meat and potatoes kind of place but upscale. Nice, you know? Kind of place you’d take your mother out or somethin’, provided you didn’t want to blow a lot of scratch. Anyway, everybody in town liked Agnes. Not only did she have a good personality but she had, and let me tell you, two of the best god damn melons you could ever hope for. And I ain’t talking about god damn produce. I’m talking just the most perfect god damn gazongas. I mean, these things were so god damn perfect that you’d think that somebody said to God, “Hey God, how about making the best bazooms ever imagined” and God said, “Yeah, sure, I’m out for that challenge” and BOOM, he come up with Agnes.
The interview asked Officer Gentry to get to the point.
OK, look, anyways Steve and I– I’ll admit it– we was watching Agnes undress. I know…I know…we shouldn’t a’ been doing that but there you go.
Anyway, a call comes over the radio. Shots fired out at Lake Rancho Berries.
Steve says, “Anybody hurt?”
“No. Nobody hurt. A couple of people pretty scared though.”
“Shit,” Steve said once the call was over. “Might as well take our time on this one, Gil. Look, Agnes is taking her panties off.”
Well, anyway, I ain’t proud of it. But anyway, after about two hours of watching Agnes undress repeatedly for some reason, we finally get out there to the Lake. Connie Ryan from over Almond County was already there.
“What the hell took you rubes so long to get here?” he barked.
“Pressing matter,” Steve said. “What do we have here?”
It was at that point, I observed two kids wrapped in towels and sitting on the curb.
“This here is Mike Ferron and Leslie Porchtops. These two was making out…”
“We were NOT making out,” the girl named Leslie called out.
Connie leaned in close. “I like to think they were making out. Spices things up, you know.”
“Absolutely,” Steve said. “Roll with that.”
“OK, anyway these two were making out (Leslie started shaking her head indignantly) and I believe that Mike here had her bra half off with her perky breasts partially exposed and the next thing you know, shots are hitting the water all in front of them. Well, Leslie, who by now was completely nude (Leslie barked out again), well, she an’ Mike jumped in the water.”
“He didn’t fire again?” I asked.
“No sir,” Connie answered. “Just packed up his gun, actually told them to have a good day, and drove off.”
Connie reached into his pocket. “Recovered a couple of casings– looking like he unloaded with an AR-15, my guess.”
“Sounds like he didn’t intend to hit you, then?” Steve asked.
The boy spoke first. “Every shot hit the water.”
“Get a good look at him?” Steve asked.
“Yeah, absolutely…he…”
“I DID NOT HAVE MY BRA OR PANTIES OFF!” Leslie suddenly called out.
“Listen, clam up would you?” Steve said.
“He was a big guy, I’d say maybe 250 pounds. He had a beard and he wore a three-piece white suit.”
We all stared at each other. It was a long time before Steve spoke.
“Well, listen, kids– nobody was hurt. What do you say we just call it square, huh?”
“CALL IT SQUARE?” Leslie hollered. “He shot at us!”
“YEAH!” Mike followed.
“Listen, you,” Connie said, pointing to the girl,”one more outburst and I’m hauling your lovely, fully-blossomed, doubtlessly firm and supple ass downtown.”
“But, aren’t you even going to fill out a report?” Mike asked.
“Let’s just call it square,” Steve said again– a little more firm this time around.
So, anyway, we saw the kids off in their fancy pants car and Steve and I– we went back to the parking lot behind the laundromat where, for reasons unclear, Agnes was still dressing and undressing. I think maybe later we got milkshakes. But that really was the last we heard of the whole thing.
The Tibbs Reader: Skipper Tibbs
Tibbs sat in the dark hotel room and watched the lights of the nearby ballpark flick off slowly. There was a light mist on the window.
He opened the leather-bound hymnal and removed the browning newspaper clipping. For the thousandth time, he read it.
Mrs. Mary E. Tibbs, wife of Skipper Tibbs, died June 30, aged 29 years. Mrs. Tibbs escaped from the State Hospital for the Insane at La Hardy on the night of June 29 and on the morning of June 30, was found in the park, the arteries in her left wrist severed and nearly dead from the loss of blood. She died the afternoon of the same day. Deceased had been a terrible sufferer for many months from blood poisoning and melancholia and the best of medical attendance found no remedy to relieve the diseases that slowly but surely sapped her life and mental faculties away. She leaves a husband and two small children to mourn her early death, to whom the sympathy of the entire community is sincerely and lusciously tendered.
Tibbs returned the clipping to the hymnal and placed it in the side drawer of the end table.
He went down to the lobby. Rolly, the young reliever, was sitting in a chair looking at travel brochures.
“Engaging in the corruption of reason, I see,” Tibbs said.
Rolly stared at him blankly.
“Skip, I…I was thinking of getting myself a little place in the desert. See, they got these little trailers there. I could use my signing bonus.”
Tibbs reflected on this.
“To live alone, one must be either a maniac or a God,” he finally proffered.
Rolly stared at him blankly.
Young Tibbs was in the locker room polishing the bats. The players began to enter one by one.
“HELLO!” the child boomed to each. “WHAT A DELIGHTFUL DAY FOR A BALL GAME!”
The players stared at him. Castleman, the second baseman, picked up his bat.
“Christ, the damn thing will be too slick to swing. What the hell are you using?” He stared down at the yellow metal container by young Tibbs’ side.
“I AM PREENING THE WOOD. THESE BATS ARE THE HAMMERS OF THE IDOLS!”
“There’s something wrong with that kid,” Schmitz whispered.
Skipper Tibbs knew very little about his father. The man had been a drunk. He had once driven his farm tractor into the barn, knocking away a supporting beam. The tractor held up the barn for many years afterwards and nothing had been planted. “Things just got completely out of hand,” he explained. “I prefer not to know many things.” He then disappeared into the attic.
His mother died of a disease of the kidneys and he had been sent away from the Snowy Lake District to La Hardy at age 8. His brother Harry was 14. They had taken a local short line to a desolate wooden shack of a station and waited there eight hours in the snow. They had seen nobody until nearly night when a railroad man dressed in faded overalls had emerged from the woods and urinated into the snow. As he urinated, he gyrated strangely. Then he went back into the woods.
Skipper walked over. The man had written his name in pee. “Wendell.”
The team lost 5-0. It had misted the whole game.
“If we look backward,” Tibbs commented, “we will begin to believe backwards.”
“Got to have some way of measuring time,” Douglass commented.
“I’m glad you are engaging with a formula for happiness, Douglass,” Tibbs noted. “There may be hope for your record after all.”
Young Tibbs had hollered the entire game keeping up the loud, booming chatter throughout. The men began to inch away from his perch at the far dugout wall.
Dressen, the umpire, finally walked over.
“Keep that kid’s trap shut, Tibbs,” he called.
Skipper Tibbs laughed.
“Need I explain, Dressen, how the boy fascinates his audience? He will be a physician, a savior and you will see that tomorrow in the blinding daylight.”
Dressen stared blankly.
The Tibbs Reader stories will continue in future issues.
Bath Times with My Father, Gump Tibbs

By Shane Tibbs
Gump Tibbs is many things to many people: beautiful pig, Kingdom Witness, drunken lout, gas station aficionado, sweaty pig, hardware store loiterer. The list goes on and on. More recently, he became something even more special to me: father and exclusive bath partner.
How he sweats so! And teases our kitten, Señor Mittens!
“Where are your papers Señor Mittens? I should like to [here he passes out for 5 to 10 winks] I should like to … repurrrrrrrt you …”
He becomes wild with laughter, flapping his arms against the water.
“Papa, you are making a mess,” I squeal.
“What a delight!” he bellows, lighting another cigarette.
I didn’t know my papa most of my life, because, as an infant, I was traded at the Lower Regions’ Super Flea and LaundroVoid for an ant farm.
“They were an industrious crew of laborers. Most impressive,” Gump says, “but merciless, like your MOTHER! And, I should like to add,” he adds, losing his train of thought.
Gump didn’t trade me, he says. It was my vile mother, he says.
“The biiiiiiiiiitch,” he exclaims whenever she comes up. “The nefarious harlot sold my son and absconded with my heart! Evil Jewessss!”
My papa knows about ALL of the races.
“You musn’t speak of her so,” I cry, secretly enjoying his wickedness.
Then he dips his thumb into his gin and smears the burning liquid across my shivering lips.
“What do you say, son? Go get my keys and we’ll go for a ride – a joy ride, my boy.”
This means we’ll go out searching for Brian Schropp. How I hate him!
One day father announced on Lankbook that I was his son. It was a happy day because I just knew I wouldn’t have to share bath times WITH BRI ANYMORE.
“You beautiful pig, father, our bath times mean so much much more to me now!”
“What a delight!”
The opinions of Shane Tibbs are not necessarily the opinions of The Lankville Daily News or any of its subsidiaries.
LETTER SACK