The Lankville Daily News

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!”

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.”

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.

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.

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.