While Aunt Sue returned to her sewing and Legless to his seventeen inch color television with remote, Stu leaned against his mother’s kitchen counter and nursed his coffee while she bustled about the kitchen making him breakfast of bacon and eggs and toast. Of course, he never missed the hearty breakfast when he’d been around the Half-lings. They liked a bit of crispy bacon and grilled tomatoes, too. The elves weren’t as big on it, but he’d managed just fine in Murkwood, once he’d convinced them to buy some chickens from one of the human settlements. Glimmergroin had been a big help, too, once Stu had convinced him that the chickens shouldn’t be plucked and boiled. Legless had never quite gotten used to the idea of eggs sunny side up.
Joanne delicately cleared her throat. “I was speaking with your father this morning, dear, and he mentioned some of what you told him last night---You know about Eye-O-More and--ah---Boomer and the rest.”
“He remembered?” Stu was genuinely surprised. He’d sort of figured his father’s alcohol levels precluded a few long term memory gaps. Or, at least he’d hoped so.
“You know,” she continued, not looking at her son. “There are places that can help.”
“I don’t think there’s a cure,” Stu glanced over at the table. Legless had his nose pressed against the television screen. Gimlee had his hand pressed against Aunt Sue’s bare thigh beneath her pleated skirt. Stu gulped. Those awful images of the dwarf and his aunt naked leapt back into his mind and once more he found himself wishing he could remove his brain from his head and dip it in bleach. Or maybe battery acid.
“Sure there are, dear. Drug treatment centers advertise all over the tv. Do you remember Louie Sanders? You know, you two played football together. He was high on that crack cocaine stuff and ended up perched in the big oak tree in front of the court house, naked as a Jay bird and armed with a BB gun. It took the sheriff’s department three hours to coax him out of the tree. Your father says they airbrushed the picture in the newspaper so you couldn’t see his thingy. Of course, his mother was just mortified by it all. Anyway, he went to one of those hospitals, the ones that dry you out, and everyone says he‘s doing much better. It‘s a pity about the divorce; although, I really can‘t blame Jane. I‘d be a little reluctant to take him back, myself.”
Stu’s eyes opened wide and he stared at his mother in disbelief. At his mother’s kitchen table sat a dwarf and an elf and she thought he was on drugs? Of course, he thought, he’d think he was on drugs, too, if he could hear himself. Sometimes he wondered when he’d wake up from his crazy dream and be back in his old recliner. “What happened to my stuff?” He changed the subject.
“We put it in the garage,” his mother answered, letting her son guide the conversation once more. She'd said what she needed to. “James took the bike, of course.”
“Sh--You let James have my Harley? Fu--Mom!” Stu flapped his arms in frustration and coffee sloshed on to the spotless floor. “You shouldn’t let James any where near a motorcycle. Do you have his number? I’m calling him and telling him to get his a-ah-h--happy self and my bike back here right now.”
“He needed something to drive to California.”
“You let James drive my fu--uh-Harley to California?” Stu could have wept.
“And he’s doing pretty good, too. He’s got himself a job at a law firm. You can hardly see the scar at all.”
“What scar?”
“From where he wrecked.”
“Oh, holy shi--oot--Mom! You gave James my Harley, let him drive it to California and he wrecked it?”
“Well, he wasn’t in California when he wrecked it. He was in Aspen, skiing.”
“Oh, well, that changes everything.”
“It wasn’t like you were using it,” Joanne countered as she expertly turned the eggs. “You didn’t say a word. Just--poof!--and gone. We didn’t know what to do or to think. We notified the police you were missing and they poked around a bit, but didn‘t find anything suspicious. I couldn‘t understand that. I figure someone who ups and disappears is pretty suspicious, but they said since you were an adult, you had a right to come and go as you pleased. Anyway, the bank wouldn‘t close your account without a death certificate and we couldn‘t get one of those without proving you were…well, you know. You‘ve probably still got money in your account, if you need it.” She turned from the stove with a plate of fried eggs and bacon. “Stu, that man has his hand on Aunt Sue’s thigh.”
“I’m trying not to think about it,” Stu diligently refused to turn and look. He squeezed his eyes shut when Aunt Sue giggled.
“I think they shared your old bed last night,” Joanne whispered.
“Thank God for menopause,” Stu replied without thinking.
Suddenly a chair scraped across the linoleum and Legless dashed across the room and flung himself against Stu’s chest. “Poor Cindy Jo lost her baby. And every one thinks she might fade, too.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Stu patted Legless’ spiked hair as the elf sobbed into his shirt. “Mom, who the hell is Cindy Jo? And why didn’t you tell me about Billy Bob‘s funeral?”
Joanne looked momentarily confused. The strange man leaning against her son unnerved her greatly. Perhaps it was the proprietary way he looked at Stu. Or maybe it was the long handled knives that were always on his person. “Cindy Jo is a character.”
“She seems like such a nice person,” Legless gulped. “It’s so terrible what happened to her. It’s not fair that so evil should befall a woman such as she.”
“On television,” Joanne tried. “It’s Aunt Sue’s soap opera, Baitshop Silhouettes.”
“Fu-c-udge,” Stu growled. “Legs, listen. Cindy Jo ain’t real. She’s a --ah--well, see that‘s just a television show.”
Glimmergroin wasn’t nearly as distracted by Aunt Sue’s thighs as he’d seemed. “I feel sorry for Bobby John. He was so looking forward to being a daddy. I am sure he’d have been a good father. He‘s devastated by the news.”
“He is a very religious man,” Sue added as she rummaged through a stack of bobbins. “The Good Lord never gives us more than we can bear. Of course, if he ever finds out that baby wasn’t really his, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Legless lifted his head from Stu’s chest and sniffed. “Whose child was it?”
“Big Al‘s, of course. That Yankee and Cindy Jo have been carrying on for years. It’s a wonder they ain’t been caught yet.” Aunt Sue peered over the tops of her glasses. “It’s Tammy Sue I feel sorriest for. She knows them no-accounts killed her boy, but no one will believe it. Everyone says he’s the one who started the fight in that pool hall, but we all know different. Billy Bob was a good boy.”
“Every one will mourn his passing,” Glimmergroin mopped his watering eyes with his beard.
“We should do something about it,” Legless’ eyes narrowed with grim determination. “Perhaps, beloved, we were sent here to stop this terrible injustice. Do you think Sorry Man’s evil has invaded this world, too?”
“Evil is everywhere,” Aunt Sue dropped a bobbin into place and began threading the sewing machine. “It is up to each of us to fight against the injustices of the world.”
“Then that, my dear lady, is exactly what we shall do.” Glimmergroin’s feet hit the floor with a bone jarring thud. “We shall be the Three Walkers.”
“Look here,” Stu shook his head. “You can’t go around thumping people with your axe, Glimmergroin. It don’t work that way here. Besides, these people, they ain’t real. You can’t fight what ain’t real.”
“Have you learned nothing, beloved? We could not see the evil behind the Black Gates, yet we knew it was there. No, I will not sit idly by and allow Billy Bob’s murder to go unpunished!"
Joanne Martin plopped the plate onto the counter with a ringing crash that made the toast and eggs jump. “Well, fuck me with a spork!”
“Mom!