Just west of Knoxville, Tennessee is a little place known as Sweetwater. It hunkers off a four lane divided interstate, nestled next to the one of the more important locations associated with the Manhattan Project and, besides, features a flooded underground caving system that a family of four can tour in glass-bottom boats for the same low price as a six-year-old's new fall wardrobe. Sweetwater also boasts a Waffle House and an all night gas station promising clean restrooms and fresh Krispy Kreme donuts.
Stu hunched in the back seat of the Lincoln, legs pulled up in the seat with his knees against his chest and hand locked in a death-grip around the ‘oh shit’ handle, and prayed. In the front seat, in the driver’s seat more precisely, his darling Aunt Sue clutched the steering wheel with both hands and squinted through the windshield, rocketing the car at an astounding fifty miles per hour along I-75. Her high beams glowed eerily in the fog, tail lights of other motorists barely visible ahead. Every once in a while the rock rocked side-to-side as motorists passed them in the hammer lane.
Next to Aunt Sue perched Glimmergroin. The dwarf grinned from ear-to-ear and kept one hand on the dash and the other on Sue’s thigh. Legless sat on the edge of his seat next to Stu and leaned forward until his pointy chin rested nearly atop Glimmergroin’s head. A gospel station faded in and out on the radio. What should have been an hour and a half drive had stretched into four.
“Aunt Sue?”
“..then of course, Lester had his triple by-pass and Mable went plum crazy.”
“Aunt Sue?”
Legless shifted on the seat. “Wasn’t he Little John’s father?”
“And Big John’s,” Sue answered. “Big John was a policeman and he got shot one night by a fisherman.”
“Aunt Sue!”
“WHAT?” Her eyes glanced up in the rear-view mirror and connected with Stu’s while the big car drifted from the slow lane towards the median.
“If you grab this exit up here, we can have a restroom break,” Stu said and pointed a finger towards the exit ramp. His toes curled in this shoes and he tried not to scream as the nose of the Lincoln came perilously close to the grassy dip in the road that separated west bound from east bound traffic.
Stu had begged his Aunt Sue to allow him to drive. William had recommended, at his own peril, that perhaps Aunt Sue would find the drive exhausting. He’d just managed to duck the swinging handbag. Joanne had pleaded with Aunt Sue to allow Stu to drive, citing the fact that Aunt Sue had no idea how to read an atlas. In the end, they’d all climbed into the Lincoln with Aunt Sue at the wheel. Some were more enthusiastic about it than others. Stu didn’t really need a pit stop and, frankly, with all the food his mother packed into the cooler for their trip, he doubted he’d ever have to buy food again in his lifetime; he just hoped the ploy would get Aunt Sue to let him take over driving.
“Oh, good, I could use a break. My muscles are tense from all this driving. As I was saying, turned out to be all a big mistake. Big John wasn’t shot at all. He’d gone undercover to catch poachers. The fella as what shot him was some foreigner from Mississippi who was in on the whole plot. They had themselves quite a ring of poachers stretching all over the south east. Rabbits. Deer. You name it. So anyway, after Big John faked his own death, Mable went a little crazy. Of course, all that was understandable being as Little John had been sent to the state pen.”
Glimmergrion and Legless hung on every detail. Stu clenched his teeth. He’d given up explaining to the dwarf and the elf that Baitshop Silhouettes wasn’t real.
She approached the exit ramp, dropping her speed to a crawl. Stu wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a snapping turtle on the road shoulder out-pace them. At the stop sign at the end of the ramp, she waited until an eighteen wheeler was almost on top of them before pulling out on to the two lane road. Stu nearly bit his tongue in half.
In the well-lit parking lot, they clambered out of the car and a man dressed in a leather jacket with a long scraggly beard and eyes like a zombie instinctively locked the doors on his beige panel van.
“You can’t take those in there,” Stu cautioned as Glimmergroin and Legless pulled out their weapons.
“I feel naked without my knives,” Legless replied, still remembering the women who’d nearly torn the house down. “What if we are attacked?”
“I don’t think any one’s going to attack us in the convenience store,” Stu said with a smile and nod to a startled group of bikers who revved their Hogs and peeled out of the parking lot as soon as they caught sight of the dwarf’s big axe. “And besides, it’s against the rules.”
Glimmergroin gave Stu a disgusted look. “Too many fuckin’ rules,” he muttered as he threw his axe back inside the Lincoln and waited impatiently for the elf to do likewise with his knives.
As they walked through the double glass doors, the young man standing behind the counter froze. One hand rested near the panic button just beneath his cash register and his eyes nearly rotated in their sockets as he tried to watch the four people who swung through the doors. Aunt Sue headed straight for the back counters with Glimmergroin in tow.
Legless stood mesmerized by the bright lights for a moment, taking in the shelves of canned goods and banks of coolers. He paused at a display of Little Debbie’s and his eyes lit up as he recognized a box of Swiss cake rolls. Slowly his hand reached out toward the box and Stu moved to smack it away when Glimmergroin bellowed, Aunt Sue screamed and both sounds were followed by a loud crash.
The young store clerk dropped like a rock behind the counter, panic button forgotten, his nose pressed to the dusty rubber mat.
Stu spun on his heel and was practically run over by Legless as they sprinted toward the section of the store near the hot coffee. Both slid to a halt and Legless growled low in his throat, his hands reaching for knives that weren’t there, ready for any danger. Stu stared in dumb shock at Glimmergroin who lay sprawled out on the floor, surrounded by split bags of bar-b-que pork rinds and Funyuns and Doritos. Aunt Sue stood rooted to the spot, her eyes wide behind her spectacles, her mouth hanging open.
“Whatdafuck?” Stu flapped his arms helplessly.
“I offered him one of these and he screamed and fainted dead away…”
One of ‘these’ was a hot dog clamped between the serrated edges of dark plastic tongs. The middle bore teeth marks from the tongs and the edges drooped and bounced ever so slightly as Aunt Sue’s hand shook. On the counter sat a roaster with several more hot dogs turning on rollers. Their skins were slightly puckered at the edges from over cooking and they were dark brown and glistening with condensation and juices. The smell of scorched meat permeated the small space.
Legless’ eyes gleamed in horrified fascination and he moved forward and peered cautiously through the plastic cover protecting the wieners. His face lit up with a vaguely malicious grin. “This would certainly give old Hal-drear something to think about. And Arween, too.”
Stu shuddered at the look in the prince’s eyes. He figured he knew exactly what Arween would think. Bending down, he tapped the dwarf’s shoulder. “Hey, buddy? Yo, dwarf, rise and shine.”
Glimmergroin groaned softly and his hands twitched, crushing chips beneath his palms. One dark brown eye cracked open and he stared at the bright ceiling fluorescents. “What happened? Were we attacked? Where’s my fuckin’ axe?” He raised his head slightly and shook it to clear the cobwebs, dislodging crumbs and cellophane bags in the process.
Aunt Sue stepped forward and waved the hotdog. “You fainted.”
Glimmergroin’s eye opened wide and rolled back in its socket. His head hit the yellowed industrial tiles with a thump.
“You’d think he never saw a hot dog before--," Aunt Sue gave Stu a puzzled stare.
“He ain’t,” Stu said as he caught sight of the elf from the corner of his eye. “Uh...Legs?’
The elf had half a dog crammed into his mouth and was humming happily, the corners of his lips upturned. “Hmm?” His long white fingers reached out and plucked another hot dog from its bed and held it in his fist in a manner that made Stu want to squirm.
Aunt Sue finally turned and looked at Legless and she blanched. “Oh, my,” she said and replaced her wiener back on the roaster.
From the front of the store there was a soft squeak and Stu turned in time to see the clerk, who’d finally gathered up enough courage to stick his head over the counter, fall backwards.
“Oh, fuck me!”