It turns out that Denny Tario from the old Solid Gold Dancer thingie was there at the bar. Denny was half drunk and whining about no one respecting his hard work. Seems his career slumped a bit when the 80's were declared dead and the retro-80's stuff declined to take him along last year. So he's made a few unsuccessful porno flicks that sold mostly in Canada. Well, Bill heard enough out of him and called him a miserable little freak. Denny said something about scratching his eyes out and that's when the bottles started flying. I just drank Bill's drink and watched. When the fight was over and the bouncers had kicked us out of the casino, I told Bill that I'd been kidding about Microsoft. Boy was he grouchy after that.
It was at this point that Bill realized we were 16 hours overdue to check in with his wife where we'd left her to do some shopping. We knew Bill's nether regions were in a sling unless we thought up something good. So, we held up a liquor store (which went badly, he was there to get money to buy his wife something seeing as he'd lost all the money at the Casino and Bar, an I thought when you held up a liquor store, it was to get liquor!) and after we sorted out the misunderstanding, we got some dough and a case of single-malt Scotch. We then went to pick up his wife. That's when Bill ran over the moose, but we'll talk about that later. They taste like smoked chicken, by the way.
More later-
The stand was at least 20 miles from any town on the maps. It looked like someone had taken 4 trailers (2 doublewide, one triplewide, and an old camper-type) and welded them together. In fact, I think that is what he did. The 30 or so acres around behind the 'stand' was unlike the surrounding countryside in that while the surrounding countryside was replete with grass, shrubs, trees, wildlife, and such- the 30 acres there was pretty much burnt bare dirt, the gnarled remains of a tree, and a small very nervous fox crouching behind said tree. He was trying really hard not to be seen. They guy that ran the stand was named Twitch. This name fitted him well, since that is in fact what he seemed to do much of his day. Twitch had a blue eye, a brown eye that was lazy, and 9 fingers. Now, I know people lose digits now and then, but he had 7 fingers on his right hand and only 2 remaining on his left hand. He said that was his throwing hand, and evidently he didn't always throw fast enough.
He told us to feel free to look around, then followed us nervously everywhere we went asking every 3 or 4 sentences whether or not we were cops. He had the most impressive selection of fireworks I've ever seen, and I've been to Tennessee in the summer. He invited us to try one of his M-80G fireworks. I tried to correct him that is was M-80and he said, no this one is an M-80G with the G representing Giga as in one billion. Bill and I just sort of looked at each other and shrugged. Bill lit it and threw it out back. It exploded just before hitting the ground and the shockwave knocked us flat on our butts. I wasn't even very drunk yet. Twitch got a laugh out of it, the fox tried to scrunch in closer behind the old tree. Twitch then produced one of his patented Cherry ICBM's and lit that, flinging it far out in the back field. The fox saw it and dug quickly under the tree. I don't remember the blast very well, except for the ringing in my ears, the flash-blindness that lasted 5 minutes and the fact that I'm fairly certain the local plate tectonics shifted considerably. As we were edging back to the car, Twitch said he wanted to show us his Roman Candelabra Skyrocket. He said he loves to do it but can't do it too often as it often provokes a retaliatory airstrike from a nearby Airforce Base. We were getting in the car as he was setting it up, and the fox was hurriedly pounding a For Sale sign next to his hole, suitcase in hand. We were down the road a mile or more when we saw it go up. Bill pulled under an overpass and we waited until it was over. A few minutes later as we were driving we noted the full squadron of F-22 fighters on its way back the way we came.
We didn't purchase anything, but I did pocket a small box simply marked BOOM. Think I'll keep it for later, just in case.
~Smoochie
