Dandelions Are Nice, but Roses Are Better

© 2012 by Kevin Scott Lewis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/22/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6186-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6184-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6185-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012915147

Cover and Author Picture by Roger McGee.

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Also by Kevin Scott Lewis

Reserved

The March

Courtney’s Calling

Contents

Part One: The Springvine Irregulars

Part Two: Over the Sea

Part Three: The Perfect Inquiry

Part Four: Mary Jane Buttercup, I Particularly Like You

Part Five: Top Heavy

Part Six: Too Many Instigators

Part Seven: Sounds and Static

Part Eight: Peer Plaza

Part Nine: Loosely Bound

The Springvine Irregulars

I

Loony Evans did only one thing to earn the nickname given to him by those who really knew him in Springvine, Georgia. He never failed in using a pair of underwear as a hankie. Out in the public eye, he acted like he didn’t even care who saw him perform his curious habit. He inaudibly used the underwear that resided in his pants pocket for general everyday usage: covering sneezes, mopping his face, and blowing his nose. Seen him cut his finger before and wrap the underwear around it to stop the bleeding until he was able to put an adequate piece of tape on it.

The youth around Springvine really admired him for his habit. He became their hero. They imitated Loony often enough to the horror of their parents and teachers. These Loony imitators seemed to get into the most trouble shortly after a Loony Evans sighting. Loony owned his own surveying business, and he was always out and about so he was frequently seen around town. He wasn’t very tall; in fact, he was a tough little cuss always wearing a short sleeve shirt to help him sport his farmer’s tan.

Loony was also a member of a local group we called the Springvine Irregulars. We had asked him to join our team two months ago and he accepted. Good thing, too, because vicious personal attacks against Loony strengthened his trust in his friends and solidified our group as a whole.

As for this committee I was talking about, my wife Tina and I are two of the charter members. Tina and I got together with some of our close friends and formed the Springvine Irregulars.

Front and center are three sisters that attended school with Tina from elementary through high school. Today these sisters are each a licensed mortician. Mr. Jeffery Mobley, while in failing health, left the business to his three daughters Mandy Vance, Sandy Ferguson, and Dorothy Mobley—Nickel—Perry—Millstone—Maddox after they eagerly showed an interest in the family business.

Mandy, the eldest and the quiet one, has final say in all business transactions. She doesn’t say much, and she is very calculating when making a decision. I swear sometimes I can see the wheels turning before she speaks. She is the leader and the glue that holds the family together. She acts as a mother hen for her sisters and Tina and me.

Warm hands, cold body, in fact is Mandy’s favorite saying.

She married a state patrolman a few years back and they have two daughters of their own Monica and Stacey. Terrence has been a state patrolman for ten years and efficient at what he does. It doesn’t hurt that he’s six foot seven either. Mandy is a striking brunette with short hair and sharp lips in which she likes to sport bright red lipstick on any occasion, working or not.

Sandy is the middle sister. She is two years younger than Mandy. Sandy and Tina graduated from high school the same year. Sandy is the bookkeeper in the family. She resembles her older sister in the face and is the easiest to get along with. Sandy is also the rabid gardener in the family. She religiously keeps the yards cut and flowers planted at her home and at the funeral home.

She’s also a banner hanging freak. She doesn’t need a reason to hang a banner at her house during the seasons, holidays, birthdays, UGA football games, etc. She even tried hanging banners on the front porch of the funeral home but that didn’t work out for her. Her younger sister made vicious fun of the bunnies on the springtime banner Sandy hung for decoration. Sandy hasn’t put a banner back on the porch of Mobley Funeral Home since her sister’s ridicule.

Sandy’s also in charge of the advertising. She’s the one who started handing out business cards that read Compliments of Mobley with the address underneath. Compliments of Mobley cards started showing up in the oddest places around town and have been seen at bachelor parties, birthday parties, and sometimes even on bodies at other funeral homes.

She has no children and is married to Charlie Ferguson, owner and editor of the local paper the Springvine Continuance that’s in print and on the net. He’s a member of our group in good standing. He’s also a good friend of mine who butchers Southern sayings to fit his need or situation. At age forty-five he seems to have mellowed in the last few years. I think his favorite saying now is: Aim twice—pee once. He carries a silver flask around with him most of the time which he says is for medicinal purposes. He’s a fanatic for the University of Georgia. He can bore or excite a crowd over his praise of their football team and back it up with names and stats. He takes special pride in running down other schools in the conference, but put a drink in his hand and he’ll really cut other schools down. He’s generally not an obnoxious drinker except during a Georgia football game. For him, only saints attend Georgia and cheaters attend the other universities. But since he actually graduated from Georgia with a degree in Journalism I do give him some leeway in his talk. Of course, he never misses a home game or the Georgia/Florida game either.

Saucy and sassy, Baby sis, as her sisters call her, Dorothy is the wild one who is a hard worker and yet continues to get into constant entanglements of the heart. She has been married four times with the longest marriage lasting three years. Many wives in Springvine are nervous about her when their husbands stare longingly at her. Daisy, Freddie, and Will are her children. She is a boxy blond who likes to wear V-neck shirts and black boots. Her sisters have to remind her that she is, in fact, in the mourning business. She had to calm it down and dress more appropriately when working at the funeral home last year. She almost gave a little old man a heart attack one evening when she came bouncing in the kitchen of the funeral home not wearing much. He almost went out with a smile on his face. She is three years younger than Sandy.

I called her Lotty Dotty because she simply refuses to wear a bra away from the funeral home. Amid the freckles and such, a lot stared back at you. Out of the office, she wears tissue thin shirts that were chock-full of material so my nickname for her just stuck. Lotty Dotty means well.

The customers don’t mind me, Eric, responded Lotty Dotty with a simple grin. I live life to the fullest. I’m playful. Fickle is more like it.

Mandy or Sandy is the type of woman you’re proud to take and show to your family, but Lotty Dotty is the type you don’t take home but you instead show off to your buddies and hope she won’t dump you for one of them.

When their father retired, Mobley Funeral Home has been run by all women; the only men there are the assistants. No husbands have an official say in the running of the business. Terrence and Charlie actually don’t want to work for or with their wives. This reason alone is why Mandy and Sandy are still married. The sisters run the show. Not only do the sisters run the business successfully, they take care of their frail eighty-five year old grandmother Katherine.

Tina and I, on the other hand, own a successful restaurant called The Brickhouse of Springvine for almost fifteen years. I can work with my wife. We get along most of the time to the dismay of Charlie.

You just do what Tina says, laughs Charlie. Yeah, whatever.

After we formed the Springvine Irregulars, we didn’t invite a new member for almost a year and a half. Our intent was just for fellowship and for relaxing. Then we found the candidate or he found us by accident: Mallard Tomms.

Mallard owned a small construction business. But when the economy screeched to a crawl, he had to do everything from construction work to hauling massive equipment from state to state to roofing to installing gutters just to keep a roof over his head. In his mid forties, divorced, he’s a good guy with his only vices of playing too much Texas Hold’ Em on weekends and being in debt. His nose had been broken several times he confessed from asking for money repeatedly.

I first saw him when I was sitting in the bar of our restaurant the Stout Arms six years ago. He made an impression with Charlie Ferguson and me from the beginning. Some come to our bar to hide, and to drink, while most like Mallard come to have camaraderie. He had been in the bar many times and in the restaurant several times.

He was the type to never ask for help openly, except for money, and to never go to the doctor unless blood was shooting out of him. He believed in old-time remedies. Whenever a wart would spring up on his finger, he would encase it in duct tape for a few days to shrink it. He had also been known to carry a potato in his pocket when he thought he had the onset of arthritis in his wrist—he swore by these and other remedies handed down to him by his grandmother.

According to Mallard, his daddy Seth taught him and his brothers to always speak bluntly no matter who they offended. Seth Tomms was a hard man to deal with and an even harder man to live around after he and his wife Lori had triplets. He never changed for the better.

Seth ran a gambling house near the county line. Back in those days, most everyone knew what he did around here, but Seth was never arrested. Lori finally left Seth for a good man near Albertville, Alabama, when the boys were six years old. Mallard told me she didn’t desert them but she instead escaped Seth. Lori was never seen in Springvine again. Mallard visits her a few times a year with his brothers.

Mallard spoke warmly about his father giving money to people in need through the years. Nobody knew just how much money Seth had when he died several years later. Somebody got the money, but it wasn’t Mallard.

Mallard had two brothers Brewster and Swiss, but Swiss was thought to be a slow learner at first and it turned out he simply wished to be left alone. Swiss didn’t mean any harm and when he grew up he revealed just how smart he really was. Swiss possessed a photographic memory. He now lives in Valdosta helping children with special needs. That was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Brewster was a workaholic. He was currently working in Kuwait as a contractor. I didn’t really know Brewster because he was never around except during the week of Christmas and Thanksgiving.

I have heard around town that Seth had more children by other women, but Mallard said it wasn’t true so that’s all I’ll say about that.

Ole Seth said what he said, did what he said, and liked doing what he did, legal or not. Seth particularly liked his oceans of whiskey, his big tittied women, and his fightin’ dogs.

He didn’t have much to do with the raising of his sons. They were sort of wild you might say. Brewster wrecked four cars and two tractors by the time he was nine. Mallard was a whiz at constructing and then destroying structures around town by the time he was fifteen.

Well, someone from the local community suspected Mallard and his brothers were not going to school so they sent a lady out to the house to investigate. She told Seth it was in the best interest for his sons to attend school. He didn’t really care, but he didn’t want her or anyone else getting too nosy about his operations so he agreed with her. Swiss was the only exception because he took a test and they said he didn’t have to go. Swiss was content with staying home and playing with his rabbits and turtles.

I had the most fun in school even though I hated it, Mallard explained, It was the day we told Mrs. Crews and the principal our full names. My brother couldn’t wait to proudly tell them his name: Brewster Whiskey Tomms.

But then again, smiled Mallard, she liked Mallard Tits Tomms even less than my brother’s name.

That’s what Mallard and his brothers ended up with after their dad named them after his favorite drink, the type of women he preferred, and his favorite dog. I used to often wonder what Swiss’ middle name was, but I never asked him for fear it might embarrass him or bring up bad memories of his childhood.

The next member in the Springvine Irregulars is Cecil Damascena. He lived on sixty acres near the northwest end of town near Choosamee River.

He’s a fanatic of the show Miami Vice. He watches that show on DVD every Monday and Wednesday evening after supper. He is so fanatical he will watch each episode in broadcast order. He can mouth the dialogue just before the actors say the lines. Today when we first meet, I’ll ask, Which Vice? and he’ll go into the last one he watched with a quick synopsis and a list of the guest stars and songs that appeared in the episode.

After a couple of tries, he finally got it right with his current Yankee wife Vicki Grace. She came into his life twelve years ago via blind date. I don’t think she liked us at first, but she tolerated us to the point of now liking us. They have one son by the name of Toby.

Today Cecil is a veterinarian and is partnered with two other animal doctors.

The way Cecil tells it, a ghost, a specter, or something took up in one of the chicken houses that his father had built on their property around forty years ago. The Damascena’s used the chicken house in question only nine months before the chickens started mysteriously dying at midnight. Nothing was visible on their bodies as to the cause of death, and they thoroughly investigated to see if it was a disease or poison that was killing them. Cecil’s dad thought they were being scared to death. They lost near a hundred before they stopped using that chicken house for good. They asked for some help from some of the Universities in the state. Those scientists spent a year trying to find out what was killing or scaring everything at midnight until they eventually gave up without any real answers. Cecil always gives a different answer when asked about the haunted chicken house.

Now the chicken house was a dilapidated building with the tin roof so rusted out it was as brown as cardboard. The walls had almost caved in showing the building’s skeleton in certain spots. Large clumps of bushes and vines were growing all around the edifice trying to mask it as a giant mound.

Cecil had four chicken houses still standing on his property. The unused chicken houses were the only things on Cecil’s property that were falling in. The rest of the yard was filled with trinkets and handmade wooden yard furniture and a giant picturesque gazebo covered in vines.

Even after the scientists left without figuring out anything, Cecil’s dad thought someone was playing sabotage and decided to sit in the chicken house with a shotgun one night. He didn’t make it hardly past midnight before running and shouting hysterically out of the chicken house scaring his family. To this day, no one and no animal will stay in the chicken house after midnight. Whatever does take place happens only at midnight. During the day, nothing goes on, even animals like it in there. At midnight, that chicken house is empty.

Charlie told me one time he knew a writer who wanted to see firsthand what was going on in the chicken house so he could report to others what he had witnessed and put an end to the mystery. He was a cocky son of a gun fresh out of college from the North East. Cecil and his family let him stay alone one night after he begged them to let him. To this day, they can’t get him to come back to Georgia. He left screaming into the woods never looking back. I heard he went and joined the Peace Corps shortly after that incident. I don’t know because Cecil and Charlie have been known to stretch it sometimes when they get on a roll.

I do know that through the years, Cecil and his dad had to constantly run off couples from that chicken house because it became a daredevil’s place for making out just before midnight. The thrill of adventure and facing an unseen danger made this a popular place for couples who wanted to see who could leave just before the midnight deadline.

Local hot dog Johnny Hill and his girlfriend at the time was such a couple who liked to spend those thrilling minutes in the chicken house before midnight when they were in high school. He confessed he liked to make girls famous. He said he was in there at least thirty times with various girls during a five year stretch. Through the years, that number increases drastically. But, there was one night when it all went wrong. According to Johnny, all was going well in the darkness of the haunted chicken house, and he and his date were enjoying themselves. He would glance at his watch and thought nothing of it from out of habit. It didn’t dawn on him until he noticed that it had been a quarter to midnight for some time. When he realized that this watch had stopped running, he thought something crawled up his leg.

He ran out of the chicken house flustered. I heard that people could hear Johnny shouting all the way to the train depot in downtown Springvine about a mile away.

Cecil told me he thought Johnny had done gone crazy. Cecil tackled him, and his dad jerked him to his feet. Johnny was trying to drop his pants to his ankles. When his pants were to his knees, a frightened chicken flew out of his britches. It seems Johnny and his girl apparently had gone into the wrong chicken house, one that still had chickens in it. When Johnny calmed down, everyone noticed that his girl was standing beside them naked as a jaybird. Cecil had to retrieve her clothes for her because she refused to go back in the chicken house and Johnny wouldn’t go in there either. She just stood there and didn’t cover up or speak with them until Cecil brought her clothes to her. When Cecil handed them to her, she politely thanked him and then walked in his house to put her clothes on.

Today, Johnny lives in a trailer out on Spencer Trail while trying to pay off multiple child support. He ain’t got a pot to pee in.

Next up in the lineup for the Springvine Irregulars is the oldest and the most respected member, Pastor Roy Bennett. He was with us in the beginning but didn’t become a member until after Cecil. He is the bravest of all of us put together. He was in Vietnam on two tours. And shortly after I had moved to Springvine, he found a home invader in his house. He chased him out of the house and tackled him on top of a boarded up well. They crashed to the bottom of the well and laid there for five hours until help arrived. He told me he had to stay awake so the guy wouldn’t kill him. I asked him if he preached to him while they were down there.

You bet, Eric. He thought he was tough, but he was crying when they rescued us. He was begging the rescuers to get him out of there away from me.

I affectionately dubbed him the name Hitching Post. Pastor Roy liked the name so much he gave permission for his friends around town to start calling him Hitching Post. He thought that name was a badge of honor, and it was. I gave him that name because he had married so many couples around this great state of Georgia. Tina and I were also married by Hitching Post.

His wife Ella passed away six years back from a long and painful battle from several strokes. Hitching Post continues to stay busy because he still has his health and he wants Ella to be proud of him.

He had what I call a clear reference. He never forgot where he came from or who his friends were. He was humble.

He had piercing blue eyes and badly mangled fingers on his left hand from his stint in the military.

A lotta of hurting out there, Eric, he tells me constantly. Just do what you can for them.

Hitching Post participates in many ministries: jobless fair, homeless shelter, soldier and family support group, addiction group, and runaway programs to help kids get off the street.

He has been a kind mentor and a good friend to me through the years.

I can set my watch by the preacher. Hitching Post visits the rest homes, hospitals, and the shut-ins on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. He ministers to the homeless shelter on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. He speaks with a soldier group each Saturday. He speaks at food banks and addiction groups as an inspiration. He leads Wednesday night bible class at six sharp, and he conducts prison ministry on Tuesdays at four in the evening. He eats supper at the Brickhouse every Monday and Thursday at 6:30 without fail.

He actually travels with his homegrown jalapeños in a plastic container and puts them on whatever he eats. I’ve seen him eat just mayonnaise and jalapeños for a meal. He’s says he’s used to dealing with the heat.

II

My redheaded wife Kristina and I are the other charter members of the Springvine Irregulars.

My wife is regionally famous for a spicy salad dressing she created when she was still in college. She calls her original salad dressing Flashy Wayne.

As long as I have known her, she has been what I call a clean freak. She often helps the cleanup crew at the restaurant whether they need the help or not. And at our house, dirty dishes do not exist.

I don’t call her Red Hot just to make me look good because she is my wife or to flatter her hoping I will get lucky later on in the evening. She is exquisite in her looks, and she is extremely smart, dedicated, and a hard worker. She also possesses something else I hold in high esteem, she has quality. She is just a smidgen over five feet seven. Even with her high heels or boots on, I am taller than her, but she says we are