Border Tales Too Book II The Further Borderland (Mis)Adventures of CBP Officers Elvis Mahoney & Co-Conspirators

Border Tales Too

Book II

by

James Whitesell

PUBLISHED BY:

James Whitesell on Smashwords

Border Tales Too

Book II

Copyright © 2015 by James Whitesell

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Border Tales Too

Book II

The Further Borderland (Mis)Adventures of CBP Officers

Elvis T. Mahoney & Co-Conspirators

TOC

Table of Contents, (not as some malcontents may say, Table of Crap)

Prelude/Introduction

Chapter 1 Aridzona

Chapter 2 The Titanic Effect

Chapter 3 A Day In the Life

Chapter 4 Mr. Escalade

Chapter 5 The Doctors

Chapter 6 Nogales On The Job (More or less)

Chapter 7 Operation Slam Door

Chapter 8 Thornton X. Kluster Jr.

Chapter 9 Great Expectations

Chapter 10 Sample from Ausgleich: Scales of Justice

Border Tales Too

The Borderland (Mis)Adventures of CBP Senior Inspector

Elvis T. Mahoney & Co-Conspirators

Book II

Editor's Advisory

Beware!

This is NOT a non-fiction book

Prelude

It was back in the day. Cell phones were still dumb and Elvis was still a little kid. The Slippery Sister Full Immersion Last Anabaptist Church was having its annual summer camp for the parishioners' kids. Skinny eight year old Elvis marched into the camp dining hall and confronted camp director, Bernwell Lil' Ber McDeckle, an easy three hundred pounder who at a single sitting consumed more food that the entire kid population of Elvis' camp cabin number six.

I ain't stayin' here no more, Elvis proclaimed determinedly (Elvis not yet having had the edifying experience of his English teacher grandmother, Rattler Sue, thumping the proper use of English into his kid's brain.) I'm a-goin' back ter home. Elvis continued. Now!"

Home? Why, Elvis? Said Lil' Ber McDeckle. Aren't you having a good time at camp. Elvis remained looking stone cold resolute, so far as a broomstick of an eight year old kid could look stone cold resolute.

I ain't stayin' here, he said in his best shot at a resolute voice that he hoped matched his take on a resolute appearance. And then he dropped the bomb that immediately blew to tiny little pieces the well planned day for the entire resident population of the Slippery Sister Full Immersion Last Anabaptist Church Camp.

There be copperheads in the outhouse.

Copperheads. In the (by far) most frequented point of interest in the camp. The outhouse. Divided, of course, into gender specific segments. Just two, this being back in the day before gender issues took on the cloak of serpentine Byzantium. The issue here, at any rate, either back in the day or forward to today, was not the serpentine permutations of gender but flat out directly serpent. To be exact, copperhead serpent.

Copperheads, poisonous local snakes of notoriously dyspeptic temperament who didn't display the snaky fair play of announcing their presence by rattling, nicely explains what happened next. Pandemonium. Utter goddamn pandemonium. With Bernwell McDeckle, all but three of the kid campers and at least half of the staff screaming and shrieking, four of them running away in terror into the woods where they were lost until dusk when Slippery Sister County Fire and Rescue found them later that afternoon hiding out in the forest undergrowth. Which, they would learn well before the next morning's sun peered over the forested hills of the local horizon, included a large bed of poison ivy. Two other of the panicking campers had eschewed the woods route in the copperhead stampede to clamber to the top of the camp's water tower and yell for help. Which might have worked if a helicopter happened to be passing overhead. Otherwise their hollering for help not likely to be effective, the camp a good two miles away from the nearest neighbor. And he was a deaf octogenarian hermit who'd hated Anabaptists ever since he was nearly drowned by an over enthusiastic new pastor trying to rebaptize him in nearby Stinky Creek seventy years ago come May 15th.

One of the counselors, Elvis' cousin Mildew A. Mahoney, who was the least frightened of snakes among the general camp population, headed for the outhouse. Albeit not with noticeable enthusiasm. And, sure enough, there were a pair of thick bodied and angry looking copperheads lurking inside, democratically positioned on each of the two sides of the outhouse's Great Divide. Cousin Mildew did not linger in removing himself from the vicinity of the copperhead inhabited outhouse and reporting his snaky findings to camp director Bernwell McDeckle. The pandemonium forthwith did a church camp mass migration. Elvis got to go home. So did everyone else. Including the two on the water tower, though it did take some convincing to get them to come down

Hey! Hollered camp counselor Luella 'Linty' Lintschmidt to the timorous pair on the water tower. You can come down now. Luigi Goldberg, the closer of the reticent pair, eyed her suspiciously.

There weren't any snakes? He said, somewhat suspiciously. Linty Luella hesitated.

Well, ah, I wouldn't say that. Luigi's suspicious eyes bugged. Luigi had been terrified of snakes ever since his toddler days when his older brother Guido tormented him with garter snakes he caught in the family garden. As a result of which Luigi was petrified by the mere mention of snakes. And also was biding his time until he got the chance to land a big time get even on his jerky-assed older bother, Guido. Preferably including at least one broken bone.

"Then there are snakes!" Luigi hollered, his companion on the water tower, Mellifluous Grinder (her parents were commercial honey merchants) picking up on Luigi's panic and adding hers. Contributing no little to the volume of the water tower discontent. At which point Bernwell Lil' Ber McDeckle came lumbering up to the base of the water tower.

What the hell is all that racket! Lil' Ber, who was not the most diplomatic of camp directors, snarled.

It's Luigi Goldberg and Mellifluous Grinder. Said Linty Luella. They're scared of snakes.

Melli what? Lil' Ber snorted, having not paid much attention to the names of his charges. So long as every one of the little monsters was there for bed check, all was well in McDeckle's world. Linty Luella explained that Mellifluous was the girl on the water tower's name.

Come down from there right now! Thundered Bernwell McDeckle. We are evacuating the camp. Now! Come down right now! A pause. Or would you prefer to stay up there all night?

I'm not moving as long as there are snakes down there, Luigi Goldberg snapped back at Lil' Ber. No way.

No goddamn way! Interjected Mellifluous Grinder, who had picked up her father's irreverent and salty speech patterns and was prone to blurt them out at inappropriate times. Like now. "No fucking way I'm coming down!" This did serve to roil Bernwell McDeckle's day even more than it already was.

I'm gonna tell your father about your foul tongue. He blurted out.

He'll just tell you to go fuck yourself, epithet fluent Melliflous Grinder shot back. Which, Bernwell knew, was exactly what irreverent old man Grinder would do.

You'd best come down before dark, Linty Luella yelled at the pair on the water tower.

No way! Hollered Luigi.

No fucking way! Rehollered Melliflous.

We identified the snakes, Linty Luella yelled. They are arboreal copperheads.

"Arboreal copperheads? Luigi and Melliflous said almost in unison. What the fuck does that mean?" Added, you guessed it, by Ms Potty Mouth herself, Mellifluous Grinder.

It means they climb trees, Linty Luella said in a dark tone. And also ladders. Luigi took one look at the water tower ladder and suddenly launched himself off the tower and plummeted straight down. Right on top of Bernwell Lil' Ber' McDeckle, both of them tumbling into a heap on the ground. Linty Luella was about to duck, but Mellifluous Grinder decided climbing down the ladder was the best option and promptly scampered down, looking nervously around her as she hit the ground.

Where are the snakes? She said with no little uneasiness.

In the outhouse, Linty Luella replied.

I'll hold it until I get home, Melliflous said with absolute utter finality as Lil Ber and Luigi untangled themselves, got up and the four of them went to get on the camp bus and head home to a land of hopefully snakeless bathrooms.

No one was ever able to prove it, but Elvis' cousin Mildew suspected that Elvis had put the snakes there himself, Elvis none too fond of the Slippery Sister Full Immersion Anabaptist Church's summer camps. What the heck? He was a kid. And kids wanted to do kid stuff and not spend their summer camp days listening to some adult drone on about stuff that mostly sailed way over summer camp kids' heads. There was far too much bone dry religious preaching and lame brained regimented activities and far too little summer camp fun for Elvis' eight year old kid tastes. Even at the tender age of eight Elvis already had a healthy sense of perspective.

And the fact was, though he never admitted it for many years, he did catch the copperheads in the woods and put them in the outhouse. Actually he caught three of them, but one managed to escape before Mildew gingerly peeked into the outhouse. Either that or it had slithered into some corner. Or possibly into the cesspit itself.

A thought even Elvis didn't want to linger over.

Introduction

His parents named him Elvis. Not after the King, Elvis the Pelvis, as 99.999% of the human race assumed. Elvis was named after his great-great-great grandfather Elvis Hieronymus Mahoney, a legendary figure who for a half century distilled the best moonshine in the hills of home, while at the same time avoiding the federal spoilsports trying to spoil his illegal (frickin' feds!) moonshining sport.

Anyhow, Elvis was his devoluted namesake. Elvis T Mahoney, to be exact. The 'T' standing for the Celtic Tearlach but 'T' for Tumult more to the real world puckish Elvis point. Elvis was on his way to becoming a United States Customs and Border Protection--CBP officer. This fact utterly dumbfounded every single person--including his great uncle Tingweld, who nearly swallowed his--albeit admittedly kinda loose--false teeth in astonishment--who had known him in the various phases of his life. Beginning with his famously mischievous childhood in Slippery Sister County, his adolescent teetering balance on the line between legal and illegal and his late teenage experimentation in chemical alternatives. Which ended with his futile attempts to reach Mars, or at least the moon, without the need for mechanical assistance of stuff like space ships or rocket boosters. Though he did somehow manage, in-between liftoff attempts, to grab a degree in computer science (involving considerable purely academic interest in the techniques of computer hacking.) Following this he decided he wanted to see something of the world. Which was what the Army recruiting sergeant smilingly promised him. Soon thereafter he was darkly cursing the recruiting sergeant and the sergeant's progeny onto the seventh generation as he dodged RPGs and IED's in Iraq. A half dozen fragments of which buried themselves in Elvis' unwilling corpus. Resulting in his not so silently cursing all the numbnuts politicians who got America into Iraq in the first place. But it also got him a Purple Heart, an honorable discharge and a place at the CBP table.

Which was where he was at this moment. At a table. In a CBP classroom.

Chapter 1

Aridzona

Arid Zone. Snarked the towering ramrod backed woman at the beginning of her Aridzona Orientation. That's where you are going, folks. Before she could continue the classroom door popped open and Marchetta Schneeschuh, the Education Department boss, poked her head in and motioned at the tall woman to come into the hallway. I'll be right back," Tall Woman said as she walked to the door.

That babe sure is hot, whispered Vesper Nunk to classmate Elvis as the door closed behind Tall Woman. I'd sure like to put the Vesper Nunk brand on that great ass of hers. Elvis stared at Vesper as though he'd just climbed up the cell phone tower next to the cafeteria and then dove off it. Landing dead center on Nunk's not so bright noggin.

You'd cohabitate with a Florida panther before you'd bed that one, Vesper. Elvis replied. She isn't just a handful, he added while Vesper's noggin was busy trying to figure out what the hell cohabitate meant, she's a whole truckload of handfuls. And Elvis knew whereof he spoke. The gossip hotline at the academy wasn't up to sizzling fiber optics standards, but it wasn't far behind. Tall Woman was by general acclimation a darn good looking but seriously overbearing member of the female species whose detractors wisecracked that she walked like she had a piece of rebar stuck up her ass. Elvis couldn't find fault with that impression. She did walk like a perambulating telephone pole. At that vertical point however the analogy took a permanent detour. True, she was as erect as a Montana lodgepole pine repurposed to telephone pole duty, but with the noticeable addition of a handsome set of very untelephone pole like boobs and an equally non linear telephone pole like posterior. Nor did Elvis fail to notice the smack down visual impact of the woman's startling intense green eyes. Reminding him of the disquieting blinkless stare of a Sonora grey wolf at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum outside of Tucson, making him leery of all canines, including Dachshunds and Chihuahuas--which are known for sneak attacks on the feet and ankles of the unsuspecting--for a full two and a half months after his zoo visit.

Lawanda Lipsnitle was her name. An innocuous sounding name that belonged on an altogether different planet from what she actually looked like and who she was. Kind of like calling a barracuda prowling the shoals off the Florida Keys Mr. Fishie. To most who knew her she was flat out intimidating. Especially to her students who referred to her as, no surprise, the barracuda. One of her more imaginative students likening the psychological impact of her entrance into a classroom as ....like King Kong's twin sister crashing through the door.....but with nicer legs.

Lawanda was one of the instructors at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. A place known as FLETC by acronym and as Flea-Tick by the typically irreverent student body. FLETC was no conspiracy theorist's top secret government base. It was a genuine plain sight federal government facility. At least that part of it that was in plain sight. It lay more or less quietly plunked down in Glynn County in seacoast southeastern Georgia hardly an hour's drive north of Jacksonville. Where all the really good bars and hot night spots were--FLETC nearly emptying out on the weekends and holidays when the students, and plenty of the staff, with beady eyed eagerness thundered off the base headed for a lively time in 'Jumpin' Jack City'--otherwise known as Jacksonville. YP2 (You Play, You Pay), the local STD clinic, invariably saw a considerable up tick in business following party time in Jumpin' Jack City. Often requiring the grouchy staff to work overtime and miss important local events like Roll One Free night at Gobsmack's Bowling Alley and Medical Marijuana Clinic.

You ain't never celebrated the fourth of Joo-lye till you done did it at Betty Sue's Sports Bar and Massage parlor in Jumpin' Jack City. Mumbled, dreamily, one of the students, Bert Alteric, through bleary eyes one Monday morning in Mortimer Beddow III's Personal Search Techniques class. No one, including the instructor, had any comment to that and for sure not a soul ventured to correct the guy's English. Bert was a bare knuckle martial artist who absolutely no one wanted to match up with in the class hands-on physical training exercises, even though his IQ wasn't exactly soaring towards the Einstein level. Call it (way, way, way) pre-Einstein--but don't say that in his surly presence. And you can bet it was another absolutely no one moment when it came to even whispering within his earshot his covert nickname of Dumbbell Bert. A name he had earned with such notions as eschewing limes, and all other citrus fruits just in case, after hearing about the horrors of contracting Lyme Disease. Bert, however, was smart enough to know that as a Purple Hearted Afghan War vet he was perched at the top of the hiring list for a lifetime sinecure with the federal government.

The last laugh, Dumbbell Bert would often say with a knowing smirk, was on me.

Tall Woman, aka the Barracuda, instructor Lawanda Lipsnitle was giving a peculiar kind of orientation talk to a group of sixteen students--Dumbbell Bert no longer among them, having been recycled for remedial instruction for the third time--in the thankfully air conditioned classroom As far as almost everyone was concerned, with the perpetually grumbling exception of the team of possibly illegal Hispanics and Caribbean islanders on the grounds keeping crews, everything else could suck as long as the air conditioning was chugging away and doing its air cooling job.

Air conditioning, a few CBP years later Elvis declaimed to his buddy, Pancho Soltero, is the foundation of modern civilization in the southern United States. And is the direct cause of the classical flowering of our culture. To which Pancho retorted in more or less typical fashion in any attempt at communication with Elvis.

Goddamnit, Elvis. Either get laid or get drunk. Or both. But for sure get a frickin' life, Elvis. If I was interested in philosophy I would have stayed in the seminary. Elvis blinked.

What seminary? You got a liberal arts degree at the University of Arizona. You were never in a seminary.

Exactly! Pancho said. And you studied computers. Not philosophy. Pancho snorted, making a 360 degree sweeping movement with his arms. Look around you. We are on the frickin' Mexican border. In Arizona. And we work outdoors. No air conditioning. How does that fit into your foundation of civilization idea?

It fits perfectly. Elvis shot back. We are here, sacrificing ourselves in the frying pan heat of Arizona, to save the World of Air Conditioning from being overrun by the teeming sweating masses of humanity. We are like Leonidas at Thermopylae. Or Michael Jordan defending the Bulls home court hoop. Or Missy Mentaklic's mother defending her daughter's chastity from me back in the day.

Elvis, Pancho said somewhat wearily. You need a hobby. Bad. Real bad. Something that will lock down that mind of yours and keep it quiet. Get a hobby!

I already did, Elvis spit back at Pancho. Pancho's eyebrows did a quizzical.

You did? Pancho skepticed. What?

Tequila, Elvis said.

Back to Flea-Tick, but still on the subject of air conditioning.

You gotta have a sense of perspective, said Vernal Bondlick at FLETC after turning down yet another promotion and transfer as a line supervisor at the sweltering port of Brownsville in the dead center heart of Double H--Humid and Hot--part of Texas. These students need me here, he added, and I'm much more effective at FLETC than I would be down in Brownsville.

Vernal's boss, Angie Flockwell, shook her head slowly. The students needed him? Hah! Did Europe need the bubonic plague? The students would likely rather have a root canal without anesthetic than suffer through more of Vernal's verbal classroom drones. Vernal was such a boring instructor that his students had to gobble caffeine pills and, according to a student snitch sucking up to Angie hoping to alter his provisional assignment to a frigid windblown port in the Aleutian Islands even native Alaskans tried to avoid, sometimes scarfed Ritalin to try to (usually without much success) stay awake in Vernal's so-called classroom. Angie was willing to do just about anything to get rid of him. Including promoting him upstream. Vernal was, in Angie's own heated words, just fucking clueless and dumber than a dead carp. His classroom lectures so droningly tedious even the local cricket population in the building was lulled into deep cricket sleep. Which explained why every cricket eating critter in the neighborhood was hanging out around somnolent Vernal's classroom waiting to ambush any crickets so unwise as to come within Vernal classroom range and forthwith doze off into oblivion.

Let me finish, Vernal, she said as patiently as she could. This promotion and transfer to Brownsville? She said, her voice rising to punctuate the question mark in her tone. "It is indoors. In the office." Vernal blinked. Twice.

Indoors? He repeated. Not outdoors?

Nope. Indoors. And it's air conditioned, Angie added with the sure handed deftness of a veteran picador who'd learned things the hard way.

Air conditioning? Vernal, who to tell the truth detested teaching, said with considerable emphasis. Indoors job? Angie nodded affirmatively.

When do I leave?

At which point Angie mentally dropped to her knees and fervently thanked the God of her understanding for removing the Vernal wart from her instructional FLETC body.

Anyhow, returning to the imperious Lawanda Lipsnitle and her captive student audience.

This bunch of sixteen nicely air conditioned students had just graduated and were about to head out to their new assignments as Customs and Border Protection--CBP--inspectors on the Mexican border. Where the door out of their nicely air conditioned world would slam tightly shut behind them with the absolute humorless finality of the losing side in a Super Bowl. Their destination? America's very own geographic heat sink. Arizona. Or, as Lawanda put it, Arid-zone-a, when she gave them her Welcome to Aridzona orientation. Which, to those who experienced it, fell more within the reasonably delineated parameters of a disorientation.

Arid Zone. Lawanda Lipsnitle repeated. That is where the name of the state of Arizona comes from. Arid plus zone. With the 'd' dropped and the 'e' replaced by an 'a' thrown in at the end to make it sound like it belonged along with the other God awful hot 'a' ending places out west. California and Nevada and Utah.

Excuse me, Instructor Lipsnitle, said a skinny red-headed guy in the front row of the class. Elvis. Who rarely knew when it was a good idea to keep his mouth shut and his foot out of it. He'd already had several sparky encounters with Lawanda in the FLETC classrooms and was none too fond of her bulldozing ways. If the Emperor Nero had been a woman, he some time later told his brother, Lispus, she would have been like Lawanda. To which Elvis' other brother, Lispus' identical twin, Crispus, replied.

Nero? You mean the guy who runs the hardware store in town? Nero Bolinski?

"No. Nero. The guy who fiddled while Rome burned. The light of recognition snapped on in Lispus' usually blue eyes. Oh! You're talking about Sherman's march to the sea and his burning down the town of Rome down there in Georgia. So who was the Nero guy? Sherman's camp fiddler or something like that?" Elvis stared at the ceiling, temporarily speechless. Which was not especially unusual when he was talking with what he called the Ispus Twins.

Never mind, he finally said. Let's just say Lawanda was one hell of a difficult woman. Another light of recognition.

Oh! Like mom! Another inspection of the ceiling. Finally Elvis spoke again, having realized the futility of trying to scale Mount Ispus and taking a detour they would recognize. Elvis then intoned a sure fire Ispus rotary connection....

Never mind. Let's go grab a beer.

Anyhow, back at FLETC, Elvis wasn't about to let this one pass. Since when did Utah end in an 'a'?

Utah doesn't end in an a, Elvis repeated. Lawanda lasered the upstart beanpole a sizzling hostile glare, reminding him of his ex-girlfriend, Melinda Cindy Sue Mascot, when Elvis somewhat reluctantly admitted he'd picked up a slight bit of STD on his last deployment in the Army. In Lawanda's mind she was the guillotine and Elvis was her next customer. She even envisioned--with no little relish of the poetic justice variety--his head popping off and plopping into a basket. Looking as clueless in death as he was in life, a classic WTF expression on his recently deceased face. And then she demonstrated just why they kept her on as an instructor at FLETC despite her nearly complete disinterest in the art of teaching. She was never, absolutely never, at a loss for words and always ready with an answer that, if not correct, was obfuscating enough so that the ensuing semantic cloud bank shut down any further sailing into the Sea of Dubiety.

"Sir, she said to Elvis with a tightly controlled voice, having zero tolerance for anyone criticizing her. The 'h' in Utah is silent. So Utah really does end in an 'a' in a directly real sense. To say otherwise is a mere splitting of hairs. A pause, while she icicled the red-headed guy again. And you don't look like you have many to spare." This brought a welcome respite to the typical heavy tension in any class Lawanda presided over. The whole class released their tension in a series of chuckles, smirks and a couple of short-lived belly laughs. Which also locked deep in the brain of the red-headed guy named Elvis an iron clad promise to himself that one day, some way, he was gonna zap Ms Glib but good. And the zappier, the better. Belittling him in public was bad enough. But that was mere verbal pocket change compared to his touchiness about the possibility of going bald. Which was a distinct possibility. Even a sizeable chunk of the women in the Mahoney clan back in Slippery Sister County showed some degree of baldness after the age of forty. And a good half of the men were balder than the most hairless of newborns, looking to local birds passing overhead like giant golf balls teetering on the summits of the fleshy humans below. Which were, in the bird world, dandy targets for the widely practiced avian sport of excrement bombing. Given the widespread dislike of wearing hats in the Mahoney clan, in the summer months there were more men with bird dung flecked sunburned heads in Slippery Sister County than any other comparable population anywhere in the U.S. and most of alopecic Anglophone Canada. (The French speakers being more hat-oriented, especially in rural Quebec.)

But Elvis, Elvis being Elvis, couldn't just accept a small defeat and let it go. Undeterred, he pushed his foot farther into his mouth.

None of that changes the facts of the real origins of Arizona's name. I had an Army buddy who was a Tohono O'odam Native American from the big reservation south of Tucson. He said that the name Arizona is an English language take on O'odam words for something like place of water or of small springs. He paused, while the rest of the class drew a deep breath preparatory to the imminent arrival of Hurricane Lawanda. Elvis continued, shoving his foot into his mouth at least as far as his tonsils, which, however, did not prevent him from speaking. Arid zone might describe what the hot part of Arizona is like, but it has nothing to do with the name itself. Almost everyone in the class held their breath, expecting Hurricane Lawanda to come ashore at any minute to make landfall and forthwith hurl Elvis all the way to the outskirts of Gatorbit, Alabama. Nope. No Hurricane Lawanda.

We'll take your word for it, sir, Lawanda said in a voice that was as close as she could get to sweet and agreeable. Well, OK. So not very close from a reasonably objective viewpoint. But close by Lawanda viewpoint. Which was in her eyes the only point that counted. Now let's move on with the orientation. She looked at her watch. We want to get you out of here in time for lunch. That grabbed everyone's attention away from Elvis and Hurricane Lawanda, lunch one of their favorite times of the day, right up there with breakfast, supper, midnight snacks and the Naughty Bits Hour on the Porn Channel on cable TV.

"Aridzona is hot, folks," Lawanda continued, thinking to herself that she sure as hell wouldn't want to be sent to that God awful hot desert place. No water. No trees. But lots of sand and sun, not to mention rattlesnakes aplenty. Which made her wonder why there were so many rattlesnakes when Aridzona was frickin' empty of almost all forms of life. Non-human life, anyhow. What the hell did the rattlesnakes eat? Leftover fries and chunks of Big Macs littering the sides of the highways? Now that she thought about it, she remembered seeing a photo on the internet of a rattler gulping down a Big Mac. Her skeptical brother DeVonage Lipsnitle insisted it was photoshopped but Lawanda wasn't so sure. Rattlers had to be adaptable to survive the influx of several million wheeled vehicles of various types, all of them capable of flattening a passing rattlesnake into the thickness of a rattlesnake belt. Rattlesnakes were one of Lawanda's least favorites of God's critters. Up to and including rattlesnake belts. Especially rattlesnake belts, considering the camouflaged way they would try to sneak up on an unsuspecting person. The rattlesnake might have been beltified, but Lawanda was certain the malevolent spirit of the snake still dwelled in the rattlesnake belt, no matter how flat it was.

She once dated one of her fellow instructors, a handsome, if by general acclimation leaning heavily on the vain side, six foot two sandy haired guy from the rattlesnake country of West Texas. Chuck Wooderfled. Whose