Chapter One -- Startings and Beginnings
These were the dark days -- glowing bright in the radiant golden sunlight.
'Twas the height of summertime. Flowers were in shameless bloom. The sun was shining to a degree I considered unsafe. And children were playing happily, laughing in that melodic and wonderful way that makes me want to cleave their fudgy-pudgy torsos with an axe.
The afternoon train had come and smashed up the old dresser I'd left on the tracks. It's what we hicks in the sticks call re-cycling. After you're finished using something, you return it to nature. I'm sure it'll catch on with you city-queers one of these days. We in the backwards neck-brain of America are always doing things.
Take, for instance, Hillary-Joe Krandle, who once did something so important I'm not even allowed to talk about it.
He was quite a celebrity around here. Pretty big time. So that shotgun must have been mighty proud as it was pushed into the back of his neck and exploded his spinal fluid and voice box all over his star-struck kitchen table.
Yep, Hillary-Joe was so famous for something we're never allowed to talk about that he was killed by his own grandson -- Killin' Pete. Pete was himself famous for killin' things. Started out with little things like his dog and nanny, but pretty soon that little rascal was killin' just about everything that moved. Parole officers, seamstresses, cargo trains. He just kills and kills and kills. Like any other vegetarian.
We let him do his thing because down here we just don't mess with a man's impulses. If a man wants to collect stamps, we let 'im. If a man wants to shake hands with another man, that's plenty fine. Anything a man wants to do's all right 'round here -- cept one thing. A man's not allowed to do only one thing here in Blunt: and that's break any of the laws enumerated in our giant, complex book of rules.
Fortunately for Pete, and unfortunately for us, we never made it a crime to kill humans. And we'd fix it, but you know how bureaucracies are.
He killed his grampa Hillary-Joe because of something I said to him. I'd told him, "Killin' Pete, your grandfather is so famous for doing that thing that I bet even you couldn't kill him. You're not so great at killing things. You're all talk. All you do is talk and talk and talk. Hardly any killing at all!" And then Pete walked wordlessly out of the room and shotgunned his magnificent grandfather's neck in half. Boy was my face red!
It was shortly after that that I heard Killin' Pete telling the townspeople that he would kill anyone I ever loved. (What did I ever do to that guy?)
The late-afternoon train wasn't due to arrive for another two hours, so the tracks were dusty but safe as I set out for my daily walk. You see, I need to walk around and use up some physical energy regularly because of the highly exhaustive nature of my work. I wear two hats in this town. I have my day-job and my hobby. In my hobby-time, I am an Explosionologist. I study explosions. When things go boom, I'm usually there with a pen and a notepad, writing down figures and measuring blood loss and teeth. It's very detailed, very awesome work, and if I don't get out of my van/office every now and then and take in a big gulp of the country, well I'm bound to explode myself!
The sun was shining down on the wild and sudden turns along the train tracks here just outside of town. The man who charted the path for this section of the track, it turns out, was suffering from a very serious case of Parkinson's Disease, and nobody had the heart to correct his obviously troubled cartography after he died suddenly of AIDS a couple years ago. Plus, we're all dangerously lazy and many of us consider scavenging train wrecks a career.
I've witnessed 177 train wrecks here in Blunt, and yet somehow they're still funny every time. Oh, I know that's horrible to say when you consider how many human lives and how much financial capital have been lost and/or sacrificed, and I guess that's bad, but all that noise and heat and twisted metal are awesome too, and I'm sorry but there is nothing funnier than when a big ol' train is chugging along, and you think it's going to make it across Blunt's Backside (as the herky-tracked region has been known to be called), and it looks like all those worried passengers are going to be safe after all, and then WHOOPS the train slides off the ol' tracks and then it's 'round and 'round she goes!
I'm sorry, I'm still chuckling.
Anyway, the tracks right now were clear. They mocked us when we sunk the town treasury into paving our rails with gold. They screamed at us, "Gold is too soft a metal for that work! You need steel or iron at least!" But I like to think we got the last laugh -- after the soft gold metal of our tracks gave away and their train out of town derailed, killing every last person.
The Blood River flowed mightily that day!
But back to my walk along the tracks.
I set out, as I said, just to kill some energy. I was working on a hypothesis about the safety of certain massive explosions and I couldn't quite out-grapple an argument in my head over whether the potential negatives of having your brain implode and your flesh torn off your body outweigh the potential positives of that cool shockwave feeling you can sometimes get if you're close enough to a good thing that's blowing up.
I wasn't ten minutes out of town when I came across ol' Dental Dan -- the town farmer. He was stuffing handfuls of seed into his pocket that was lying there after last week's Shippingly Fast train derailed and killed my neighbor Motormouth Chuck -- who hadn't spoken a word in twenty years. I believe his last words were, "Train!"
"Hullo, Dan!" I called out.
"Hullo Judge Hurley!" Dental Dan called out. By the way, I should point out that in my day job I am the town judge.
"Pickin' up some seed?" I asked.
"New shipment came last week," Dental Dan said with his mouth.
"I heard," I said, having heard. "I was just explaining that."
"To whom?" Dental Dan wondered.
"To all the nice people," I said.
"All the nice people, huh. And how are they?"
"They suck."
"Figures," said Dental Dan. "Just keep me out of it."
"You got it," I said, keeping Dental Dan out of the story.
"Hey Hurley," he said as I was setting off again. "I heard about your Aunt. I'm sorry. She was a fine woman. Somebody's gotta stop that Pete."
"Thank you, Dan," I said. "But don't get down on ol' Pete. He's just doing what he does. Ol' Killin' Pete, you know."
"Just don't seem right. Your aunt didn't deserve that."
"Thanks, Dan," I said.
My aunt Blue Jean was the kindest woman in town. Someone once said she was so sweet she could rot your teeth. Doesn't sound like a very nice thing to me, but even so, that doesn't warrant having your body hacksawed in half and set on fire in broad daylight, but again, who am I to judge?
I'm just a judge.
Chapter Two
