Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Gump Tibbs’

The Tibbs Reader: The House at 2814

July 20, 2017 Leave a comment

Ferguson Bunts?

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

June 9, 2017 Leave a comment

Officer Gil 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.”

Ferguson Bunts?

“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

May 31, 2017 Leave a comment

Photo believed to be Skipper Tibbs as a young man.

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.

Detective Gee-Temple: The Tibbs Files

May 8, 2017 Leave a comment

Detective Gee-Temple

In April of 2017, The Lankville Daily News began publishing excerpts from the diary of wanted Craughing mass murderer Tibbs Senior, missing since 1967.

Shortly thereafter, I received a request for assistance from the Craughing Area Police Unit (CAPU) in regards to the possibility that Tibbs could still be alive and living in Almond Beach, a once prosperous oceanside community in Eastern Lankville. We knew, of course, of his son Gump, a noted recidivist and Daily News reporter but efforts to discuss Tibbs, Senior with Tibbs, Junior led nowhere. “He is dead to me,” the normally well-mannered son said of his father. “His spirit is a curse and an abomination upon the firmament.” Tibbs, Junior claimed to have none of his father’s personal effects.

A week after the excerpts began appearing in the News, I connected with the East Lankville Beach Police Precinct and was given an exceedingly small file on an individual named “Ferguson Bunts”. The file consisted of three pages, typed on browning onion-skin paper.

“Who is Ferguson Bunts?” I asked.

Sergeant Service, a gaunt, grey man with prominent brows, scratched his chin reflectively.

“He’s a curious individual who appeared in Almond Beach some time around 1967, 1968– prior whereabouts unknown. He purchased one of them so-called luxury villas out in the Almond Beach Prosperity Village. He’s the only one on our books that fits your man’s description and would be the correct age to be this Tibbs.”

I leafed through the file. Three public drunkenness raps. Little else. But there was one recurring detail which leaped out at me.

Subject wearing a white three-piece suit was repeated in all three accounts.

“I think this could be our man,” I proffered. “Course, he would be about 90 years old now.”

“You think he’s still living?” Sergeant Service asked. “Mother of shit.”

Service glanced at the documents and then consulted his Danny Madison Reckoner. “This Bunts is still listed in the white pages. Says he’s still living out in the Almond Beach Prosperity Village. We can ride out there iff’n you want.”

I thanked him for the offer and we set out in the prowler.

The Almond Beach Prosperity Village is located on a stretch of flat, marshy land, a few miles from the ocean. The houses, save for the paint jobs, are all identical one-story cottages with front bay windows, winding cement sidewalks and modest, tasteful shrubbery. Still, the place had aged poorly. It was of another era.

“What’s the population here?” I asked. Service thought about that for awhile.

“Older, I’d say. Maybe you got some young families but they ain’t much good. It ain’t really a vacation hub lik’n it used to be. Peoples tend to stay now in them luxury hotels and condominiums. You gotta’ put the corn down where the cows can get at it, if’n you know what I mean.”

I didn’t. “What does that mean?” I asked.

“What the hell do you mean, what does that mean? It’s a common expression.”

“No it isn’t,” I argued.

“Well, it is,” he responded.

Home of Ferguson Bunts (file photo).

“Listen,” I said. “I want no part of your made-up folksy aphorism. Just drive me out to this address.”

We pulled up to the curb and, just like that, there he was. He was hammering a stake into the middle of his yard– the purpose of the stake eluded me. He was wearing a white, three-piece suit and did not appear to have aged at all– if anything he looked considerably younger. The only conceivable sign of decline was a pearl-handled cane which he leaned on as he hammered but this accessory could have been merely ornamental.

I got out of the car and approached the individual.

“What is your name, sir?”

He looked up. The grey beard in the 1966 photo was now an unearthly black hue.

“WHY HELLO OFFICER. MY NAME IS FERGUSON BUNTS AND I AM A GREAT PROPONENT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT!”

He let out an expansive, booming laugh.

“Mr. Bunts.” I paused. I had to be careful here. “How long have you lived in this house?”

“OH, FOREVER, OFFICER. FOREVER.”

He suddenly let loose with an earth-shaking blow to the stake, driving it completely into the ground.

“MY WORK IN THE FRONT YARD IS NOW COMPLETE,” he announced. He stood up and the pearl-handled cane flashed in the sunlight.

“Mr. Bunts, do you have any sort of identification?”

“INDEED, INDEED I DO OFFICER AND I WOULD BE DELIGHTED TO SHOW IT TO YOU. BUT FIRST, I MUST ASK THE ETERNAL QUESTION– WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?”

I paused again and looked back at the prowler where Service sat with the window rolled up, reading from a lewd pamphlet. I could see that he would be no help whatsoever and I wondered about that.

“Mr. Bunts, you may be aware that a…diary was recently discovered and published in excerpts in The Lankville Daily News. I stopped. His face revealed nothing.

“Anyway, this is simply a routine inquiry into that diary. You see, the man who wrote the diary has been wanted by law enforcement since 1967.”

“WELL, CERTAINLY, HE MUST BE DEAD BY NOW, OFFICER!” he offered in a strangely agreeable and joyous voice.

“He would be of advanced age, yes. But, well, see, the East Lankville Police Precinct returned only one name during our routine inquiry and…well…that name was yours.”

“ISN’T THAT A DELIGHT?” he asked, nearly blinding me with the sunlight caroming off the pearl-handle in a peculiarly strong manner. “BUT I CAN ASSURE YOU, OFFICER, I AM NOT THAT MAN.”

“Did you ever own a hotel, Mr. Bunts?”

Still, his face revealed nothing.

“NO, I’M AFRAID NOT, OFFICER. I FOUNDED AND MAINTAINED A SPORTING GOODS SHOP FOR MANY YEARS. BUT I AM NOW RETIRED.”

I looked again at the meager documents in my hand. I could think of nothing else.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Bunts. Please stay in the area for the time being.”

“Officer,” he said, in a low, foreboding voice. “I am here. I am always here. As are you. As are all of us.”

I looked back at Service. He had not even bothered to look up.

“Thank you, Mr. Bunts.”

I got back in the prowler.

“Think I can get a warrant on this guy?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. “Not in a million years.”

“Why?”

He finally looked up and placed the pamphlet on the dashboard. I noticed the title– Lesbian Circus.

“Find out for yerself. Do some digging. See what happens.”

He suddenly slammed the car into drive and we drove away.

Bunts watched us all the way from his porch.

Further Leaves from the Diary of Tibbs Senior

May 4, 2017 Leave a comment

Tibbs Senior, shortly before his disappearance.

5/23/66

The new menus have arrived! They are an unparalleled DELIGHT!

The frontispiece features a most lovely illustration of a mother bird providing regurgitated victuals to her three chicks. I felt it to be most ideal as we tend to view the Murray as a sort of maternal entity providing shelter and sustenance to the weary traveler.

Insolent Gump, of course, did not care for the design. “It’s shit,” he commented, “tho’ I suppose the mindless simpletons to whom we feed grilled prawn and gravy fries will not know the difference between fine art and banal representation.”

The boy is sullen because Shapely Susan has not called today. The spurious pair had a scheme by which they would picnic by the dried-up pond come evening and, no doubt, enjoy jejune coitus. His papa, however, knows that this monstrous convocation has been delayed permanently. As the poet said, and tears but nourish, in your soul…

5/24/66

Set another car on fire at Ellinor Village. Once again, the throng spilled out into the parking lot and I was able to come away with a case of benzos. On my way out of the pharmacy, I noticed a most fetching straw hat hanging on display in the window. “TREAT YOURSELF MR. TIBBS,” I said aloud.

It fit perfectly.

5/25/66

Young Gump sits about the anteroom in a withdrawn manner, scribbling poems into a calfskin notebook.

“Where is your fair maiden today?” I asked. “Bearing her rump for an aggregation of deviants, I surmise?”

He refused comment. Suddenly, Mr. Oakes stumbled into the lobby. The poor wretch– he was most inebriated and was attempting to carry two enormous ceramic owl lamps.

“MR. OAKES,” I called out. “ALLOW GUMP TO ADVANCE THOSE CAPTIVATING OWL LANTERNS FORWARD TO YOUR CHAMBER!”

It was too late. Mr. Oakes lurched forward and the lamps were smashed into a million pieces upon the tile floor.

“Who knows what the hell to make of it?” Oakes uttered, before passing out.

5/27/66

Junior is positively crestfallen.

He has been making desperate phone calls all day pausing only to restate his desire to join the Craughing Expeditionary Force.

After dinner, he announced that he was making a sojourn to the public library. He set out in his battered orange Neptune and I followed close behind. Within minutes, he pulled in back of the Playpen.

“The mountebank!” I cried loudly, nearly blowing my cover.

He entered via the back door which was most heavily guarded by two ruffians. I decided to wait and thusly, removed a bottle of Old Lankville from beneath the seat.

 

Once dark, I slid out of the car and found the familiar duffel bag in the trunk. I crossed the alley and entered a most forlorn stairwell leading upstairs to a series of shabby apartments. Number 14 faced the alley.

I removed a most curious device from the duffel bag. Indeed, I had purchased it many eons ago, out of the back of a gaudy comic magazine. It had somehow defied time and remained a most prized tool. By the simple press of a button, suction with the power of a tornado (as it was once advertised) tore the lock straight from its moorings.

A man with uncombed hair and a filthy tank top slowly rose from a chair. “This is my…” but I daresay, he could not finish his sentence. The .22 split his face in half. I pushed the corpse behind a hamper, killed the lights, and set up a nocturnal watch upon the Playpen.

Hours later, the rear door of the Playpen was violently pushed open and Junior was tossed unceremoniously to the curb.

“THE GOLD GOBLET FULL OF THE IMPURITIES OF YOUR IMMORALITY SHALL OVERFLOW!” the juvenile cried out drunkenly.  I raced downstairs.

Two thugs stood over the spawn. “Listen you! Get the ____ out of here or we’ll tear ya’ apart!”

“GENTLEMEN,” I said, skipping lightly across the alley. “GENTLEMEN, I THINK THIS MOST DISAGREEABLE SITUATION MAY BE RESOLVED FORTHWITH. ALLOW ME TO INTERVENE.”

I got Gump to his feet. “MAKE A MOST HASTY RETREAT TO THE CAR, YOUNG GUMP.”

I smiled at the men. Then, I leaned in close.

gentlemen…you are no doubt familiar with Satan’s pony?

They each took a step back.  One said, “you look familiar.”

“NO, I’M AFRAID NOT GENTLEMEN. YOUR ADVERSARY, SATAN’S PONY, PROWLS AROUND YOU, LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO DEVOUR.”

do we understand each other gentlemen?

I knew I would have no further trouble. I drove Gump home.

Further Leaves from the Diary of Tibbs Senior

May 1, 2017 Leave a comment

Tibbs Senior, shortly before his disappearance.

5/20/66

Saucy Young Gump has become most imperious.

This morning, he pushed over a cart of linens.

“These sperma-stained bedclothes toppled here in the mezzanine, if you will, represent my contempt for this revolting hostel,” he stated.

I removed my belt but the lad was quicker and tore it from the loops with great alacrity.

“I see the tables have turned, Father,” he said, a glint of cruelty in his eye. “Perhaps, indeed, I should tan you. I wonder if a man, if he possessed a certain archery, could maneuver a strap deep into the recesses of another man’s hinterlands.”

I could stand no more. I sallied forth to the kitchen and began mindlessly pushing a spoon through a pan of scrambled eggs. The profligate son had unnerved me, there could be no question.

Later, the boy approached me again in the anteroom, that same glint in his eye.

“Father, do you recall how earlier I was speaking of the hinterlands?” he asked.

Stunned, I could offer no response.

“Well, I have just probed them, tho’ not with a belt.”

At that, Shapely Susan appeared, appropriately enough, behind him in the darkened chamber.

He let out a booming laugh.

When I returned to my room that night, I made some notes upon the vellum and then burned them in the fireplace.

There would be no need for any evidence. They were now clear in my mind.

5/22/66

The Playpen is located on a stretch of mean, seedy structures on the outskirts of town– edifices which stand in stark contrast to the natural beauty of the surrounding desert landscape. It is illuminated by a garish flickering neon sign and a small contingent of goons stand alertly around its entrance.

I parked across the street and surveyed the scene for nearly an hour.

Then, I made my approach.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen. I wonder if you could tell me if your most enchanting artista de striptease Shapely Susan is performing tonight?”

“You like her Pops?” said one of the thugs. “Got an ass that won’t quit, am I right?

I grimaced momentarily but affixed the affable smile back upon my countenance.

“Oh, you are indeed right, my friend. It is a most agreeable posterior, there can be no arguing that. But, pray tell, what time will she be treading the boards, if you will?

“What the hell is this guy talking about?” one of the other delinquents called out senselessly.

“Pops, I think she goes on in 20 minutes. Now, if you want to see her exotic dance, you gotta’ pay ten dollars.”

“NO PRICE IS TOO HIGH GENTLEMEN,” I boomed out. “WHAT A DELIGHT THIS WILL BE!” And I removed a ten from my calfskin wallet.

“Sure will, Pops. Nobody gets the tent pole raised like Shapely Susan.”

 

I entered the den of iniquity. There were several round tables in front of a miserable, poorly-lit stage and a worn and tattered red velvet curtain hung limply closed across it. The patrons were most deplorable and there was a fetid smell of smoke, inexpensive hops and unlaundered clothing about the room. I approached the bar.

I shall choose not to put down the sorrowful particulars of the show that followed except to say that it was most foul. Nonetheless, the assembled seemed to enjoy it immensely and threw many a bill upon the stage. When the pasties were finally removed, the roar was nigh-maniacal.

During this most outrageous spectacle, I had noticed a door to the left of the stage and immediately following the strumpet’s program, I made for it. It was a darkened, carpeted hallway which turned towards the right and appeared to go behind the stage. As I made this turn, I ran into a white-suited bruiser who appeared to be guarding a series of dressing rooms.

“Hey, man, you…”

I removed the .22 with the optional silencer from my suit jacket pocket and shot him in the face. He collapsed against the wall and a pool of blood and gore expanded beneath him. I stood for a moment and listened beyond the wall. Faintly, I heard the canned trumpet music and the hoots of the debauched aggregation.

I began calmly opening doors until Shapely Susan appeared before me. She was slathering her cheeks with foundation before a most distasteful and garish mirror.

“What…you come to see my show Big Daddy?”

“I have indeed, dear. I have indeed. And this delightful proscaenium. I am impressed that you have secured such an engagement.”

“Who? What you talking about Big Daddy? I ain’t understanding them words.”

I laughed and removed the .22. She dropped the foundation sponge.

“I’d like you to come with me, dear. Get your coat made, no doubt, of some trapped mammal.”

We left by the back door.

 

“You gonna’ blast me, Pops?” she said, once I had turned the car out onto the desert road. “What for? Cause Gumpy did me up the butt?”

“I’d like to request that you not speak, my dear, especially of such…endeavors.”

“Can I play the radio then?” she said.

“My dear, I’ll be driving you to the crossing. There, you will take a bus into the Lankville Outlands. If you are amenable to this assignment, then we shall have no problem. And, of course, you will receive a most magnanimous remuneration.”

“Daddy, I can’t understand them words.”

I laughed heartily.

 

Two hours later, we reached the crossing. I parked along the riverbank and watched the customs guard in the booth above. He was asleep.

“Now, here in this case, my dear, is a thousand dollars. You will take this and walk along the right foot bridge into Lankville. Do not come back.”

“A thousand clams, huh, Daddy? What, you want to sack out or somethin’?”

“YOU ABOMINABLE CRETIN!” I shouted. I began breathing heavily. “Listen, I want you to disappear. Do not come back to Craughing, do you understand?”

She looked at me for an interminable period. It was as though the idea was coursing slowly through her brain.

“Yeah, I guess I get it, Daddy. Why you want to keep me and Gumpy apart?”

“JUST GO, TART!”

She opened the door. I watched her traverse the foot bridge into Lankville. The guard never woke up.

It was near morning when I returned to the Murray and finished this entry.

The Diary of Tibbs Senior will continue in future issues.

Further Leaves from the Diary of Tibbs Senior

April 27, 2017 Leave a comment

Tibbs Senior, shortly before his disappearance.

5/15/66

I was standing at the stove, boiling my toothbrush, when that intemperate moppet Gump, Junior burst into the kitchen.

“Father,” he said, breathing hard. “I wish to join the Craughing Expeditionary Force. It is my intent to kill many of our Lankville overlords.”

I let out a booming laugh.

The affairs of a simple hotelkeeper preclude involvement in worldly matters but in the service of that odious whore that is context I should note that a series of Lankvillian tyrants have infiltrated the 65th parallel and established a most abhorrent suzerainty over our Northern brethren.

“Why, young Gump,” I said, once my guffaw had subsided, “you are too young, my boy. And, I should add, your services are needed here, at the Murray.”

“____ the Murray, this lousy dungeon of vice!”

I removed my belt and whipped the ruffian mercilessly.

He is clearly his mother’s child.

5/16/66

Young Gump woke ill-tempered this morning and was rude to several guests, including poor Mr. Oakes, who had clearly spent the night in a deep state of inebriation. The fledgling shoat also dropped a plate of gravy fries into Mrs. Stocksdale’s lap, causing the wretched matron to launch into a series of coughing spasms from which, I feared, she would not recover. Later, I encountered the dissolute lad in the parking lot.

“My boy, I would like you to join me tonight in making an offering to the seventh emanation of the divine hierarchy between Earth and the Godhead. I believe it will assuage your boyish desires.”

“Father, it is my most luscious intention to join the CEF. I shall do it with or without your approval.”

“And while we are on that subject,” the plucky schoolboy added, “I would also like to announce my intent to wed Shapely Susan.”

“WHAT!” I screamed. “That common ecdysiast that works at that den of iniquity, the Playpen! A THOUSAND TIMES NO!”

The devilish spawn grinned.

“Father, you are indeed most hypocritical. Is my own mother not one of the premier striptease dancers in all of Craughing? Answer me that?”

I could not. The boy was right.

But such depraved nuptials must most certainly be stopped.

5/19/66

I could not prevent this most eldritch dinner to which I was subjected this evening.

Young Gump appeared in the doorway of an upstairs chamber which I was preparing for a visiting dignitary. Behind him, lurking in the shadowy hallway, was a most curvaceous blonde.

“Father!” he announced. “This is Shapely Susan. My fiance. We shall all break bread together tonight at the Bun Boy.”

I did not want to be rude although I could not fail to notice that this harlot had the face of a half-breed.

And so, we drove to the Bun Boy.

Mr. Failing himself was our waiter. He is a slim, insignificant man, known for his fatuous statements at community association meetings. Failing was staring hard at the bust of my soon-to-be daughter-in-law.

Gump (the pure gall) ordered for our entire woeful assembly.

“Tell me, dear,” I said, after Failing had hopped strangely away to the kitchen. “Of the eternal poets, who pray tell do you hold in the highest regard?”

“Who?” she called out in a most unpleasant voice. “What’s he talking about Gumpy?”

Young Gump tore into a lard bun– the specialty of the house.

“Don’t worry about him,” said the abominable spawn. “His education belies his crudity.”

“Who?” she called out again. A most unpalatable tone, the likes of which I had never before heard. “What you talking about Gumpy? What you all talking about?”

“Forget it, darling,” young Gump declared, his mouth discharging shards of lard biscuit. “You are my soulmate. Tonight, we shall make love all over one of Papa’s giant poetry anthologies.”

That was it, all I could stand. I threw a ten down on the table.

“I will not tolerate such outrages!” I yelled. The dining room of the Bun Boy went silent.

“Hahahaha! Go home then, Father, go home to your miserable hostel. Your kind is not needed at the Bun Boy.”

Then the wretch planted an enormous kiss on the cheek of the pitiable harlot.

I walked home, disgusted.

I must think of a plan.

The Diary of Tibbs Senior will continue in future issues.

Gump Penetrates

April 17, 2017 Leave a comment

By Gump Tibbs

It’s time for another penetrating interview with Gump Tibbs. Today, Gump interviews police chief and Bureau of Probes Director Houston Gee-Temple.

GT: Did you see that…cake…that they had for the President?
HGT: What?
GT: Let’s move on.
HGT: Alright.

Gump nods off briefly.

HGT: Are we moving on?

Detective Gee-Temple

GT: Of course! What a delight!
HGT: Did you have any other questions?
GT: I didn’t…I didn’t…hit that guy.
HGT: What guy?
GT: Let’s move on.
HGT: Alright.
GT: I don’t know…
HGT: What?

Gump collapsed into a corner and the interview was ended prematurely.

Crop of Death

April 17, 2017 Leave a comment

By Shane Tibbs

“No, my boy! My voracious piglet! My intemperate shoat!” howled Gump, hunched over, his besmudged white suit hanging at his sides. He patted his brow with a kerchief, screwed up his face into the headlights and hastily stuffed the rag back into his pocket.

Behind the wheel of the car: Shane Tibbs, rubbing the pad of his bare foot against the gas to a slow, steady beat. Blank stare.

Brian Schropp sat some yards behind Gump, propping himself against the curb, and, having removed his glasses with one hand, rubbed his eyes with the other.

Through sobs he whinged and spat:

“I’m sorry. I. AM. FUCKING. SORRY!”

His defiance lapsed, he slouched against the curb with a whimper.

Chained to the back of the Lankville Motors Luxe Marquis was a rusty harvester.

Shane purchased the equipment at the Lankville Outland’s Distant Farms Machinery Auction a week earlier.

After producing Gump’s change purse (chatelained black velvet; silver frame at center displaying a rhinoceros’s eye embalmed in amber) and paying with three large uncut diamonds, Shane had been asked about his crop by Lanes Kravitz, sole proprietor, DFMA Ltd.

“My crop?” replied Tibbs junior.

“Yessir.”

Gump Tibbs

“I plan to attach this device to the back of my Daddy’s car and mow down Brian Schropp in cold blood. I suppose you might say my crop is death. Will it do?”

Kravitz tilted his weather-beaten face skyward and squinted.

“Well,” he said after a pause, “You have to understand: the harvester, or more simply put–combine,” Kravitz paused again. “You see, it’s name comes from it’s capacity for combining the three separate operations comprising harvesting—reaping, threshing, and winnowing—into a single process.”

“Reap. Thresh. Winnow,” Shane now muttered to himself through clenched lips, as he lurched forward in fits and starts. The spikes of the machine, leaping from the pavement at odd intervals, clanged and hissed.

Gump was now fully erect, balancing on his toes, his back arched, the contents of a liter of gin splashing against his face and mouth.

Harvester (file photo)

“Shane, my boy, the balance of your emotion has tilted too far in the service of indiscretion. To be behind the wheel of a motorized instrument is a deadly proposition! But I grant you–you have my word, my word, my boy–you shall endure no punishment by my hand nor furthur discomfiture by my affection. I am not mad at you for filching my auto. Slightly amused, in fact,” Gump added with a nervous laugh.

With max force, Shane jammed one foot on the brake and the other on the accelerator. The Luxe Marquis’s rear tires bucked against the road as the back end of the car waved to and fro. Smoke engulfed the desperate trio.

Through the haze, Shane screeched with the tires in terrible discord:

“I WILL NOT SHARE BATH TIMES WITH BRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!”

Brian stood up with false bravura then promptly fell to his knees, clasping his hands together into a fist:

“Never again, never again,” he shuddered, “never again, never again,” now clambering forward on his knees one painful, awkward motion at a time, “never again, never again,” each breath more labored, more insistent than the last, “never again, never again . . . NEVER AGAIN!”

Satisfied, Shane slid the shifter into park and scooted across the bench seat.

“Daddy, drive me home.”

Son of Tibbs

April 7, 2017 2 comments

By Shane Tibbs

Watched Mom die today.

Except for the rush of pleasure when the lights dimmed in her eyes I felt nil.

Gump however was emotional. The pig. The goofy pig.

He said something poingant. Which I realize begs a porcine pun for which I am however too high class.

He said he was sorry he fought her in court so long. That lawyer arguments aren’t necessarily those of decent people. That he was ok with her having had two kids at the age of 16 and 19 and having to leave. He said that it was fine. That he ‘hated the bitch’ but understood ‘completely’.

“Gump, bitch, pass me a gin juice box”

“I got these at Grummy’s, my boy. Where you get your Lucky 7s.”

“I hate that place.”

“Sure, ok.”

Gump’s Reflections

April 5, 2017 Leave a comment

By Shane Tibbs

My father often reflects. I discourage this activity. He can’t handle it. It’s not his fault but the “inevitable reverberation of some childhood trauma echoing through [my] vast body,” which are his words not mine. Nevertheless.

He told me my mother is dying.

I said:

“Ok Papa that’s fine with me. And anyway I hold no grip over the reality of bodily expiration.”

He said:

“My boy, my piglet, my little one.”

And trailed off.

We drank about 14 beers apiece and wondered aloud how it’s only black kids on the bus these days. You’ve probably never heard the ‘n’ word so many times between people. The chicken guy was there. He’ll sign off.

Later they found him in a tree.

Reporter Tibbs Arrested in Tree

April 5, 2017 Leave a comment

By Bernie Keebler

LANKVILLE ACTION NEWS: YES!

Lankville Daily News penetrating reporter Gump Tibbs was arrested this morning in the Western Outlands, sources are confirming.

Tibbs, who was visibly intoxicated and registered a blood alcohol level of 0.36%, is currently in custody.

Local fire departments participated in the rescue. It is unclear how the reporter became stuck in the tree.

Gump Tibbs

“Mr. Tobbs [sic] was very hostile during the rescue and subsequent arrest,” noted Detective Houston Gee-Temple, who was the first to arrive at the scene. “He had a bunch of firecrackers and he was lighting them and throwing them down at us while muttering some nonsense about the cup of abominations being nigh full.”

“It was a strange scene,” noted Gee-Temple after an eerie silence.

Police had been on the lookout for Tibbs, who is currently wanted on public drunkenness, crass public urination and destruction of property charges.

“My Papa is innocent of all the charges,” noted Tibbs’ son Shane Meyer Tibbs, who, for reasons unclear, was standing by his father’s side with a carafe of hot water. “He is a beautiful, beautiful man. A delight.”

The Lankville Daily News has not issued a statement and no further information was available at press time.

Exploring Gump’s Attics

April 4, 2017 Leave a comment

By Shane Tibbs

I wish I was dead. Everything I thought was real has collapsed … under the weight … of … falsity. Nothing can entice me from the ledge but … the ledge. I am a dead man. Dead man writing.

Such are the jottings I recently discovered in Gump’s journal. It goes on and on like this for pages.

No one can touch me when I’m writing. If I write I am God. I write the word of God. I write the word God. The word is God. God. Word. Word. God.

He gets like this after a few meetings with the Kingdom Witnesses. When we are hot on the trail of a old fashioned bath romp, he rarely writes. I mean his writing has a rare air to it.

 

Beer is tedium,
despair, a ginful
glass of isolation and
whimsical if rum-pous

shelf-regard.

He has talent to spare. I don’t disagree, but then I never do. He’s my pig, I his piglet.

I’d like to continue but I must go nuke him a glass of water just now.

Bath Times with My Father Gump Tibbs

April 2, 2017 1 comment

By Shane Tibbs

I always stand at the sink and run water while papa Gump visits with the Kingdom Witnesses. It’s the same thing every time.

We have a few bath time romps before the gin scrambles his brains. He’s all pig on the inside, you see, but pays the price as his exterior has taken the unfortunate but ultimate form of man.

Don’t get me wrong, or try to tarnish me as an ungrateful piglet, — he’s a hard-charging swine for a four or five day bath time antics bender — but, I think in the end his humanity catches up with him.

Next thing I know he’s hunched in the kitchen nook mumbling about how he ‘senses an enfilade of ultrafine needles to have been fired just now from the vicinity of the mezzoderm’ or some such nonsense.

By early afternoon the KWs are splaying their brochures across the tabletop as he shivers over a cup of water I’ve nuked for him.

“Wouldn’t you like to live for eternity on an earthly paradise? Wouldn’t you, Gump?”

“An eternity of reckless baths? What fool … what fool? What a fool am I.”

“You could master the piano, for example.”

“The piano is little more an exquisite device of torrrrrturrrre for …. children. Trace its unholy lineage to the rrrranks of the bourgeoisie!”

“Mr. Tibbs, do you recall the story of Ruth?”

“Jewesssssss!”

“My papa knows about ALL the races!” I shout from my corner.

“Mr. Tibbs, did you have a chance to browse the . . . ”

“Have I e’er here expounded on my theory of transmigration?”

“Isn’t it a wonderful illustration: the lion caressing the lamb; the young boy petting the upturned belly of a cobra?”

“My theory of the soul,” intones my father in steady whisper, “is that it begins a slow nearly imperceptible exit from the body at birth. An exit completed with your last breath. Which is why you feel deader inside as the years go by but more anxious. Do you follow? That’d be the soul rising up through the skin,” he says pointing his index finger into their faces, “the outer and final layer. I have no opinion on the soul’s subsequent destination.”

“Would you like to make a donation to Kingdom Hall, Mr. Tibbs?”

Father rummages through his vast underwear front pocket and produces an emerald-set change purse. His sweaty, bloated fingers fumbling on the solid gold clasp. The eyes of the KWs grow.

Father laughs.

“It appears my funds have been transmigrated. That’ll be an eternal predicament, my dear-eee-oos.”

I turn the tap to closed as the evangelics collect themselves.

“My boy,” says Gump through a fit of asthma, “run the bath .”

Bath Times with My Father, Gump Tibbs

March 30, 2017 Leave a comment
13575839_10206893164711712_4379516830229927515_o

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.