Enjoy this short extract from The Cure for Summer Boredom
Prologue
Friday, June 14
Early o’clock
At sunrise on the last day of school, a
naked, beer-maddened trucker ran amok on Main Street. I wasn’t there myself,
but a handful of reliable witnesses and a couple dozen of the unreliable
variety reported that he jogged up and down the street just as bold as a yard
dog let loose, his naughty bits swinging freely in the tender morning light.
Sheriff-Mayor Dolan was called out to
collar the hooting and hollering hooligan. He rolled up in his spit-shined
Cadillac, ill-tempered and clad in his robe and slippers since he planned on
crawling directly back into bed once his duty was done.
As the first luminous rays of sunlight
bejeweled the vast Fack Sex Furniture Distribution Warehouse on the edge of
town, the sheriff-mayor proceeded to scamper after the trucker on foot. Drunk
but wily, the trucker led our fair town’s one and only lawman in an ungainly
chase up and down our fair town’s one and only thoroughfare.
It was said that Dr. Flo was the one who
finally captured the screwball streaker. I heard she brought him to bay with
nothing but a glass jar filled with cotton balls and a sterile latex glove.
Just another summer morning in Somwärin,
Texas.
Chapter One
The Hootchie Doctor Hits Town
Friday, June 14
2:58 in the p.m.
How did all the trouble start?
Nine hours after the ruffian trucker made
merry along the length and breadth of Main Street, I, too, went whooping and
cavorting up the roadway. But I was fully clothed and motivated not by booze
but by triumph. Against all odds, I had not been given detention on the last
day of school.
There had been several close calls
throughout the day. In health class, I nearly ran afoul of the Gentleman Gym
Teacher. Fresh and crisp in his snowy Colonel Sanders suit and broad-brimmed
plantation hat, he spent the entirety of the class lounging against the
battle-scarred lectern, delivering A Little Talk about the menace of public
drunkenness in general and men specifically.
Pricked by boredom, I piped up.
“Men like you, sir?”
The Gentleman Gym Teacher’s well-brushed
white hat paused in mid-fan of his gentile self. He offered the class a dark,
yet courteous, scowl.
“Might I beg to inquire who said that?”
I ducked my head and kept my mouth clamped
shut for the rest of the period.
At lunch, needled by ennui, I fashioned a
food-based statuette I entitled “The Trucker in the Raw.” Rashly, I exhibited
it for the consideration of my classmates. When the Lady Principal swooped down
upon us to see what all the tittering was about, I crammed the edible effigy
into my mouth and gazed at her with innocent eyes and bulging cheeks until she
swooped away.
By the final class of the day, I was
determined to take no chances. I settled into my seat next to Annie-Belle
Cutler, rolled my head back, and gazed up at the decorative tile mosaic on the
ceiling.
As the math teacher enumerated the threats
posed by tipsy truckers, I considered the yellow rose of Texas and Viking
helmet, entwined in chummy camaraderie, fashioned from yellow and blue kitchen
tiles donated by the Fack Sex Furniture Distribution Warehouse. Weaving between
dusty beams of sunlight that spilled through the windows was a plump honeybee.
It circled the mosaic as slowly as the second hand was circling the clock.
I was powerfully bored.
I watched as the bee drifted along the edge
of the mosaic to hover just above the classroom timepiece.
“And
now,” said the math teacher. “I will tell you the most important calculation
you must make, should you have the misfortune to encounter a trucker this
summer—”
I cut her off with a shriek of victory. It
was three o’clock!
My cry ricocheted off the ceiling tiles.
The bee shot downward and flung itself stinger-first into Annie-Belle Cutler’s
exposed upper arm. She let out a cry of her own.
“Ruby Bejou,” thundered the teacher.
“That’s deten—”
But judgement was not to rain down upon my
head because, at that very instant, the bell rang.
I jumped to my feet, bashed open the
classroom door, and fled into the bright sunlight.
School was out at last!
Outside, in the infernal June heat, I met
up with my little sister, Pearl. Off we strolled to the Swedish Embassy &
Beauty Parlor & Coffee Shop, Somwärin’s preferred site for enacting the
sins of envy, pride, and gluttony—all at the same time and technically outside
of U.S. soil.
As always, the Swedish ambassador,
proprietor and sole employee of the Swedish Embassy & Beauty Parlor &
Coffee Shop, greeted our arrival with the silken words, “Välkommen till
Konungariket Sverige: För Sverige i tiden.”
We residents of Somwärin had agreed that
this translated as, “Welcome to the Kingdom of Sweden: For Sweden with the
times,” which we further agreed made no sense. But the Swedish ambassador never
failed to recite it in a formulaic voice whenever anyone set foot in this
official government facility, so it was surely a crucial tool of Swedish
bureaucracy.
Pearl and I chorused, “Hey!” which we had
been taught was a genuine Swedish word. But our town’s only native Swedish
speaker didn’t respond with a “Hey!” of his own. He contented himself with
giving us a puzzled look before directing us to two ergonomic Fack Sex chairs
set around an economical Fack Sex table.
“May I interest you girls in a coffee? Or a
plate of lutefisk and a coffee?” he inquired. “I shall get your coffee.”
We disappointed our township’s only foreign
dignitary by ordering a pair of sundaes and sodas.
“Fika, fika,” the Swedish ambassador
muttered disapprovingly as he set our chilly treats before us. “When you finish
these, I shall bring your coffee.”
I’d stuffed myself to bursting before I
noticed that someone was missing.
“Where’s Opal?” I mumbled through a
mouthful of butterscotch.
“Where else?” Pearl said. She tossed a
maraschino cherry into the air to catch in her mouth, but succeeded only in
hitting herself on the forehead. She scraped it off the tabletop and tried
again.
I dropped my spoon with a loud plank.
Could it be that today, just like every day
after school, our big sister was holding court in the school parking lot with
every male—from sixth graders to teachers—in attendance?
“But she promised to come!”
“Yeah, well,” Pearl surreptitiously glanced
at me, plucked the cherry from the floor where it had fallen, and tossed it
skyward again. “She’s gotta get hers while she can. She’s gonna be too busy for
masculine companionship this summer.”
I stirred my liquefying ice cream and
scowled. Our big sister had obtained herself a job this summer and planned to
abandon Pearl and me to our own devices all the dull, sweltering days until
September.
In Somwärin, there was little to nothing
for the teenaged crowd to do during the interminable summer months. As
elementary school kids, my sisters and I had glumly attended “Fun Time Swedish
Language Learning Camp for Little Youngsters,” put on by the Fack Sex
Corporation. It had been a rotten trial, what with rising daily at dawn to sing
the Swedish national anthem, writing gracious letters to the King of Sweden to
thank him for being a beneficent figurehead, and the lack of any form of
protein besides lutefisk.
“You must learn to love this good fisk!”
our teachers would shout, displaying the Viking temper that simmered just
beneath their pale skin, when we surly kids picked at our ammoniacal meals. The
King of Sweden never wrote back, and our Swedish Language Learning consisted of
memorizing such useful phrases as, “Ship three chairs to New Hampshire by
Wednesday,” and “Please forgive my late arrival, boss. I urge you to dock my
salary.” It was no fun time at all.
“So, what’re we gonna do this summer?”
Pearl asked, as she dropped the mangled cherry into her soda and scrubbed at
the sticky red blotches on her cheeks.
“I dunno,” I said.
“Well, we better come up with something,
coz I don’t guess either of us can stand another summer like last year.”
Pearl was wise. Last summer, we three
sisters had passed all our waking hours sprawled in various positions of
lethargy in the living room of the Bejou family trailer as we watched the Sissy
Spacek Movie Marathon on TV and took in vast quantities of grape soda and
Almond Roca until we looked and felt like bloated corpses.
Too old to attend Fun Time Swedish Language
Learning Camp for Little Youngsters, too young to put our scanty Swedish
vocabularies to use in summer jobs at the Fack Sex Furniture Distribution
Warehouse. Our prospects appeared grim.
“I have a bad feeling, Pearl,” I said. “I
have a feeling I’m gonna be so bored this summer. You got any ideas regarding
what we can do to occupy ourselves?”
“No. I figured you might, being older and
all,” Pearl said.
“Maybe Opal will,” I said.
I peered expectantly at the café door.
Miraculously, at that very moment, it swung open.
A vicious blast of heat burst through the
calm, cool air of the Swedish Embassy & Beauty Parlor & Coffee Shop. On
the threshold stood, not Opal, but a sweaty, crazed-looking man.
Breathing hard, he gripped the doorknob for
a moment, then staggered into our midst. His hair was wild and his face was red
and he wore a thick suit jacket wrought in a subtle plaid pattern, like the one
sported by the anchorman who introduced each movie of the Sissy Spacek Movie
Marathon last summer.
“Oh wow!” whispered Pearl, her eyes bright.
“Another drunken trucker! Maybe he’ll take his clothes off for us.”
The stranger stumbled to the counter, where
the Swedish ambassador stood watching warily. The man hung his flushed head and
drew in several deep breaths, his hands planted flat on the shining countertop.
“Välkommen till Konungariket Sverige,” said
the Swedish ambassador. ”För Sverige—”
“Homagawd, so hat…hat…I hada walk…wicked
hat…”
The Swedish ambassador cocked his head,
puzzled.
“För Sverige i tiden,” he said. “Would you
like a coffee?”
“I hada walk so fah,” the man continued,
his voice rattling around the edges of an accent none of us could place. “Dacta
Hershille…”
The Swedish ambassador flicked his eyes
quizzically at Pearl and me, then leaned forward and scrutinized the man.
“Shall I bring you a coffee?” he
enunciated.
“Hah?” the man said, lifting his
sweat-soaked head and squinting at the Swedish ambassador. “No, no. Sorry, I’m
just so…hat.”
The Swedish ambassador’s face brightened
with comprehension.
“Ah! You are not from Texas. You are from
faraway, yes?”
The man nodded, scrubbing the perspiration
from his forehead with the Swedish ambassador’s table-wiping rag, which lay
folded neatly on the countertop.
“And what country do you hail from,
please?”
“Bwastin.”
“I ask your pardon?”
“Bwastin,” he repeated. “Mass’chusetts.”
The Swedish ambassador looked concerned. He
reached beneath the counter and pulled out a thick stack of paperwork.
“Please announce your country of origin and
purpose for visiting on these simple forms. You shall have a coffee while I
inspect your passport. Have you any fruit to declare?”
“No, I just needa speak with Dacta
Hershille.”
The Swedish ambassador frowned.
“Who?” Pearl and I mouthed at each other.
The foreigner dug through the pockets of
his Bwastin jacket and produced a letter bearing the Somwärin town seal of
entwined yellow rose of Texas and Viking helmet, as seen previously upon the
bee-ridden classroom ceiling.
“Dacta Florence Hershille?” the man read,
proffering the letter.
“Dr. Flo!” Pearl exclaimed.
The Swedish ambassador and the outsider
glanced at her. We girls hunched over our sundaes to conceal our eavesdropping.
“You wish to visit Dr. Flo?”
The man nodded vigorously.
“You are ill?”
“No, no, I just needa speak with her about
my lodgings.”
“Please, Mister—”
“Dacta.”
“Please, Mr. Dacta—”
“Dacta Grant. Not Mista Dacta.”
The Swedish ambassador pursed his lips.
“Please attend me here.”
He turned on his heel and vanished into the
kitchen.
The peculiar man sighed and swabbed his
face with the rag again. Pearl and I peeped at him over our spoons.
“Is he a trucker for real?” Pearl hissed.
“No, he can’t be,” I whispered, as I
flicked my eyes over his person. “He hasn’t got the characteristic baseball cap
with a lewd saying, and he hasn’t done the rebel yell even once to relieve his
pent-up enthusiasm.”
I realized the man was staring at my sister
and me. I hunched down in my seat and pretended to eat.
The Swedish ambassador emerged from the
kitchen bearing a steaming cup of coffee and a Swedish-English dictionary. He
set the cup upon the counter and opened the dictionary with a flourish.
“Please indicate your nationality and
country of origin for the immigration records of the Swedish-Texan corporate
commonwealth of Somwärin,” he read aloud.
The stranger slumped over the countertop,
his shoulders hunched in defeat. But only for a moment. He inhaled deeply,
lifted his chin, and raised his eyes to meet the pale blue ones of the Swedish
ambassador.
“Please,” he said. “Fathalovagawd, just
tell me where I can find Dacta Hersh—Dacta Flo—whateva you call her. No one
came to pick me up at the airport. I hada hitch a ride off a fammer driving an
honest-to-Gawd turnip truck. He dumped me five miles outsida town and told me I
hada walk the resta the way in this heat.”
“That must’ve been Farmer Bill,” Pearl
whispered.
“Where is Dacta Flo?” the man articulated
each syllable with the clipped precision of a tailor wielding a pair of pinking
shears.
The Swedish ambassador hung his head in
shame.
“I have failed,” he said miserably. “Mr.
Dacta, these two girls are native English speakers. They will assist you. I
cannot.”
Pearl and I looked at one another in
surprise.
“Us?” I said.
“But we’re still eating!” Pearl whined.
I kicked her under the table. Nothing this
exciting had ever happened to either of us before.
“Please excuse me. I must file a report
confessing my incompetence,” said the Swedish ambassador.
He withdrew a clipboard from beneath the
counter and trudged across the room to the beauty parlor section of the Swedish
Embassy & Beauty Parlor & Coffee Shop. He slumped into one of the pink
plastic hairdryer chairs, lowered the glass hood over his head, and covered his
face with both hands, his entire frame radiating bleak Nordic sorrow. It was
best to leave him alone when he fell into such moments of nihilistic
introspection, so Pearl and I stood and motioned to the newcomer to follow us.
“This way,” I half-shouted, to facilitate
comprehension.
Out on Main Street in the downpour of
torrid sunlight, the man began to sweat vigorously. He mopped at his forehead
with the back of his hand, then opened his mouth to speak. Pearl and I perked
up our ears, eager to learn his outlander dialect.
“Is it always this hat? It’s only June—how
can it be so hat?”
He paused and looked at me, then at my
sister.
“I’m sorry about this. I can’t imagine what
your motha and fatha would say, you two helping some man you neva met before—”
“Oh, our daddy’s a trucker, and he’s off
trucking around from one end of the country to the other and making trouble in
every town he hits. He and Mama are long-divorced, so the likes of him wouldn’t
mind, I don’t guess,” Pearl burst out cheerfully, all in one breath. “And
Mama’s been known to say you’ve got to be neighborly to neighbors and
neighbor-like types, so she wouldn’t mind.”
“As long as you aren’t a trucker,” I said.
“Are you?” demanded Pearl.
Every summer, for as long as I could
remember, truckers had been showing up in Somwärin with their semis and their
Class A commercial driver’s licenses and their synchronized impulses to loiter
destructively around town while the employees of the Fack Sex Furniture Distribution
Warehouse—including my own mama—loaded their trucks with easy-to-assemble
Swedish furniture bound for stores throughout the great U.S. of A. and the
lesser republic of Canada.
Somwärin was the sole North American
distribution hub connecting the Fack Sex Corporation’s clandestine
manufacturing plant in Mexico (called “Southernmost Sweden” on the shipping
receipts to Norwegianify the furniture’s Hispanic origin) and the rest of the
continent. Unfortunately, not a single Somwärinite in the company’s employ had
ever learned to read Swedish. Thus, the simple task of filling the waiting
trucks dragged on and on during peak shipping season each June, during which
time the warehouse workers—including my own mama—baffled their brains over
invoices requesting mysterious objects such as fåtölj, skåpdörr, and
nattduksbord.
With nothing to do during the warehouse
workers’ period of functional illiteracy, and with a handsome stipend from Fack
Sex for each day they were idle, the truckers holed up in a gauntlet of seedy
motels on the outskirts of town where they whored, drank, and mischieved the
days away. When at last their trucks were fully loaded, the truckers always
held a blowout of decadent debauchery and incomprehensible inebriation known
along every highway and byway of the Northern and Southern Americas as the
Trucker Jamboree. Then, sated and hungover, they drove off into the sunset,
leaving us in peace. Until next summer.
Pearl and I crossed our arms over our
chests and glared at the man. He blinked in confusion, then said, “Oh, the
Teamstas Union! No, no, I’m not a Teamsta.”
He laughed. We didn’t see the humor, so we
didn’t join him.
“Then what are you? Nobody but truckers and
Swedes from the home office in Stockholm ever come to Somwärin,” said Pearl.
“And you, sir, are no Swede,” said I.
The man held out his hand. I looked at it,
wondering what he wanted me to give him.
“My name is Richard Grant. Dacta Richard
Grant, actually.”
I narrowed my eyes at the sight of his
ruddy palm, covered as it was with the sweat of his brow. I declined to shake
it.
“I’m Ruby Bejou, and this-here’s Pearl.”
“I’m twelve and she’s fourteen and Opal’s
seventeen and Mama says she’s twenty-nine but she’s really thirty-four and how
old are you?” Pearl concluded with a squawk as I jabbed her in the ribs.
“Why’re you here if you’re a doctor? We
already got ourselves a doctor in Somwärin,” I said.
“Dr. Flo,” Pearl supplied.
“Yes, I’m awara that. I’m with a federal
program that sends dactas to medically underserved communities. A request for
an ob-gyn was sent from this…town. So here I am. It sounded like a good idea
when I signed up in med school,” he sighed, swiping his hand like a windshield
wiper across his dewy face.
“What’s an opie gee whiner?” Pearl
inquired.
The doctor smiled and replied, “Ob-gyn. It
stands for obstetrics and gynecology.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Obstetrics is the care of mothas and
babies before and afta birth. Gynecology is the diagnosis and treatment of
disordas of the female reproductive tract.”
Pearl and I glanced at each other, glanced
at the doctor, glanced back at each other and burst out laughing.
“A hootchie doctor!” we squealed, holding
our sides and gasping with giggles.
The hootchie doctor didn’t look pleased.
Pearl and I snickered all the way to Dr.
Flo’s clinic, which was located three doors down from the Swedish Embassy &
Beauty Parlor & Coffee Shop. To our collective dismay, it was buttoned up
tight, the blinds firmly drawn and the front door locked.
“Wicked pissa,” muttered the hootchie
doctor.
“I bet Dr. Barney’ll know what to do,” I
said.
“There’s anotha dacta in this town?” the
hootchie doctor said.
“Dr. Barney’s better than a doctor,” Pearl
said, steering him across the blazing pavement of Main Street. “He’s an animal
doctor!”
The hootchie doctor did not seem delighted
by this news. Nonetheless, we ushered him through the welcoming door of the Vet
‘n’ Pet Shop, Pearl’s favorite place in the whole wide world.
The physician grumbled in Bwastinese under
his breath as Pearl darted between the dimly lit aisles of cages filled with
furry fauna and creepy critters.
“Lookit, Ruby! Lookit the bunny! Lookit the
salamander! Oh, I love you—what are you, a hedgehog? Lookit how cute he is,
Ruby, look!”
Tipped off by the alarmed bleats of the
animals my little sister was terrifying with adoration, Dr. Barney emerged from
the back of the Vet ‘n’ Pet Shop, a mouse squirming in his hand.
“Well, hey there,” he said, his eyes
sliding from me to the stranger with mellow curiosity.
“Hey, Dr. Barney, this-here’s a hootchie
doctor, and—and he—”
I could not continue. I was overcome. I
doubled over with laughter.
The hootchie doctor sidestepped me and gave
Dr. Barney a smile.
“Hi, I’m Dacta Richard Grant from the—”
“Oh, the ob we asked for,” Dr. Barney said,
transferring the mouse to his breast pocket and reaching out to shake hands.
“Howdy-do, Dick?”
Dr. Dick eyed Dr. Barney’s mousy palm and
unsubtly occupied both of his hands with the task of rustling his letter of
introduction from his jacket pocket.
“I’ve been trying to track down Dacta
Hershille.”
“You mean Dr. Flo?”
“Is that really what she prefers to be
called?”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s a matter of
preference. We’ve just always called her that. Heck, my name’s not Barney, it’s
Owen Maple. Don’t ask me why they call me Dr. Barney, Dick.”
“I—pardon me, but I’d ratha not be called
‘Dick.’”
“Well, sure,” Dr. Barney laughed. “But
considering the line of work you’re in, I think you’d better get used to it.”
“Um. So where is Dacta…Flo?”
“County hospital,” Dr. Barney said, as he
slipped half a saltine cracker into his pocket, which began to undulate like an
alien fixing to bust out of his chest. “Some kid got sick over at the school
and she had to ride ‘em in. She’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe the day after, if
the young’un takes a turn for the worse.”
Dr. Dick looked alarmed.
“I see. The thing is, I undastood that she
would tell me where I’m going to be living, where my office is, when my luggage
is going to turn up.”
“Oh, I don’t know anything about housing or
luggage, but I can show you your office right now, if you want. Dr. Flo put me
in charge of getting it all set up for you.”
Dr. Dick brightened considerably.
“Yes, I’d very much like to see it.”
“Okay, just gimme a sec.”
Dr. Barney turned and moseyed into the
depths of the Vet ‘n’ Pet Shop. Dr. Dick and I followed him, leaving Pearl
behind to coo over a profane parrot. Dr. Barney strode past the dog kennels and
the operating room. He opened a nondescript gray door, flicked on a light, and
withdrew the mouse from his pocket. He stuck it in a small wire cage bolted to
the cheap wood paneling that covered the wall and began to wash his hands in a
steel utility sink.
“Like it?” he inquired presently.
Dr. Dick smiled an uncertain smile.
“What?” he said.
“This space. I cleared it out as best I
could. Used to be a storage closet. Feel free to take down the feline anatomy
charts if you want; might give the ladies the wrong impression,” Dr. Barney
chuckled as he shook his hands dry.
Dr. Dick’s eyes grew and grew and grew.
“You don’t mean…”
“Dr. Flo said you’d only need a small
space, since you deal in such a…restricted area of the ladylike body, as it
were.”
“This is a joke, right? Haze the new dacta,
ha-ha, very funny, I get it. Where’s my real office?”
Dr. Barney met Dr. Dick’s desperate gaze
with a mild smile.
“We can get you a shorter exam table
eventually, once we have the funds. This-here’s my old equine table, but we
don’t see too many horses ‘round here nowadays, so I figured I could spare it.
I may need to borrow it back at some point, though—just be forewarned.”
“Oh my Gawd,” said Dr. Dick. “The town
physician can’t possibly think I can practice medicine in the back room of a
pet store—”
“Technically, this-here’s a pet shop slash
veterinary clinic, Dick.”
“Is she insane?”
Dr. Barney shrugged and replied, “You’ll
have to take that up with Dr. Flo when she gets back.”
“I…I…I…”
Dr. Dick’s face had assumed an unhealthy,
milky hue. I sensed he was overwhelmed. Dr. Barney gave me a little nod and I
took him by the elbow to escort him away from the storage closet that was
causing him such dismay. When Pearl saw the snow-white shade of Dr. Dick’s
visage, she abandoned her beloved beasts and trailed us out of the Vet ‘n’ Pet
Shop without protest.
Back in the brilliant sunshine, my sister
and I took a few steps back and observed Dr. Dick. Would he dash up and down
Main Street in a rage, pausing only to lob a few stones through the windows of
Dr. Flo’s clinic? That’s what I would have done.
Or perhaps he would entreat first the sun,
then passersby, with a profanity-permeated plea for justice and a bottle of
Southern Comfort to take his unfathomable affliction away. That’s what Mama
would have done.
In either case, Pearl and I would be
eyewitnesses and much in demand when the gossiping began.
Dr. Dick stood very still for several
minutes, squinting numbly into the sultry distance.
“I need a hotel,” he said finally,
frustration and a light sunburn putting some color back into his features.
Instantly, I set upon him in horror.
“Oh no! You can’t go to one of the motels!”
I said. “Only truckers stay there.”
“Ruby…” Pearl said.
“Filthy hellholes, all of them. You so much
as look at one of them motel beds and you’ll catch a disease. A disease of your
secret parts.”
“Ruby…you’re not thinking what I think
you’re thinking?” Pearl said.
“Come to our house. Mama will let you stay
with us.”
“Ruby, no!” Pearl said.
“She’d never forgive us if we let
Somwärin’s one and only hootchie doctor bunk down at a nasty ol’ pay-by-the-day
when we can demonstrate the Bejou family’s sense of hospitality.”
“You’re gonna get us in so much trouble,”
Pearl said.
But I was the oldest and I had veto power,
so we took him home.
And that’s how all the trouble started.
