Comeback

IN FRED BAUERLEIN’S world, this was nothing short of an honest-to-goodness commotion, of which he was unaccustomed. The sounds were foreign to him; an agitated mix of slamming cupboards and drawers and clashing stainless steel utensils, but most shocking of all, peppered with language he hadn’t heard since he was in the Navy. The sounds were coming from his kitchen, where his wife, Peg, was making her annual test batch of blueberry cobbler in preparation for the upcoming Blueberry Festival. Fred never said much during their thirty-four years of marriage, but when he heard his sweet wife—who never used an expletive stronger than the word “stinker”—drop a combination F-bomb and phallic reference, he couldn’t resist.

“Something bothering you, Peg?”

Peg was working the butter into her graham cracker mix and didn’t seem to hear Fred. Her glass mixing bowl was clanging off the coffee pot and all the measuring cups and spoons she had scattered about, and she was sweating profusely and muttering to herself. Suddenly she slammed the bowl on the counter and yelled, “Ooh! That stinker!”

“Oh,” Fred said. “The meeting.”

Peg was the treasurer of the Iron Creek Town Board, who had just commenced their monthly meeting the night before. She held a seething hatred for Town Board President Bill Smiffey, as did all the other board members—save for his toady aide, Stuart—but Fred had never seen her this riled. She stopped mixing for a moment and closed her eyes, in an attempt to calm herself.

“Ooh!” she screamed again, furiously going back to work on her mixing bowl. “Did you see the signs? Did you! That cotton, gall-darn pickin’ . . . and that smug little rat toady Stuart . . . it’s executive privilege and it’s in the bylaws and blah, blah, bleeping blah. Ooh! That . . . that . . .  horse fucker!”

“Peg!”

Just about everyone in the town of Iron Creek, Wisconsin had fantasized nefarious plots as to how they were going to get Bill Smiffey. He was a hated man and, even by the most kind accounts, considered as uptight as his black wingtips and navy suits. The not-so-kind accounts usually involved references to certain orifices or were phallic in nature. They were all harmless fantasies, never to be acted upon, and were naturally germane to demographic specifics: the skateboard kids, irked by his frequent anti-skate ordinances, dreamed of egging his house and stuffing potatoes in his muffler; Dave from the hardware store entertained scenarios involving concrete and sharp implements; Jeannie from the bakery leaned toward tainted baked goods, and dreamed of stuffing something special in his jelly doughnuts, which he bought every Saturday. The town cops wanted to arrest him for anything, but he never did anything wrong. He didn’t drink and was always in bed by ten o’clock. And he was, for reasons nobody could explain, always re-elected.

The barroom clamor at the Devil’s Tap Saloon seemed typical for a Saturday night when Fred and Peg wandered in around seven o’clock. Hank Williams was playing on the jukebox, the bells of the pinball machines rang from the back room, and the crack of billiard balls punctuated the buzz of conversation from the nearly full bar. But as Fred and Peg sipped their gin and tonics and began to tune into some of the bar talk, they sensed an unusual tension among the crowd. An edgy tenor hung over the room, displacing the usual NASCAR and Packers beer chatter. And as Fred held his glass up to signal the bartender for another round, it occurred to him that he hadn’t heard a reference to either one of them.

Fred nodded his thanks to the bartender as the drinks were slid in front of him and Peg. And for the second time today, curiosity got the better of Fred.

“How’s she going, Al?”

“In a word, weird. Must be a full moon or something—damn, there he goes again!”

Al charged down to the end of the bar to tend to a commotion. It was Dave from the hardware store, who had just slammed his glass down on the bar and unsteadily hopped to his feet, only to be held down by two or three sets of hands and being told to calm down. 

“Dammit, Dave,” Al scolded. “That’s the last time, got it? Don’t make me do it, Dave, just don’t . . . now simmer the heck down!”

“Hiya, Peg. How’s it goin’?” a man sidled up to Peg, a musty wake of stale beer and body odor bringing up the rear. 

“Hi, Cropper. How are you?” she said with a sigh, knowing she was in for about five minutes of slurred annoyance and myriad odorous assaults. But curiosity got the better of her, too. Cropper had been hanging out at the end of the bar by Dave. “What’s Dave all bent out of shape about?”

Cropper whispered in her ear, “Smiffey strikes again . . .”

“Something about the store?” 

“Yeah. Dave got a letter saying he can’t put out his boulevard displays during the Festival. Something about it being saved for those artsy-fartsy stands so they can sell their cheap crap. Dave’s been wantin’ a piece of Smiffey since he got here. He’s pretty hammered.”

“No wonder he’s upset. It’s probably his biggest weekend of the year.”

“Yeah, guess ya can’t fight city hall, right?”

“Well, I wish someone would. Goodness gracious, just when you think it can’t get any worse.” 

“Betcha wish Manlee was back, he’d sure kick up some dust. Remember? He used to give Smiffey fits.”

Peg laughed as she remembered some of the tussles Smiffey had with Manlee South, a former board member who used to take great relish in sticking it to him at every opportunity. “Oh gosh, he was a lot of fun. You’re right, he’d sure make it interesting, to say the least.”

“I just talked to him last week,” Cropper purred, a mischievous grin on his face. “He’s been thinking about makin’ a visit.”

“For the Festival?” 

“For the Festival, Peg.” 

“Cropper, I think it’s high time I bought you a drink.”

Now just about everyone in the small town of Iron Creek, Wisconsin had fantasized nefarious plots about how they were going to get Bill Smiffey. But what was born in Peg Bauerlein’s head when she found out that Manlee South was coming to town was the Immaculate Conception of connivance; the toppermost of treachery; the Second Coming of conspiratorial comeuppance—and it was all so delightfully simple: Bill Smiffey was kicking off his re-election campaign with a speech at the Blueberry Festival. Manlee South hated Bill Smiffey with a burning passion and savored every opportunity to stick it to him. It was going to be a beautiful day. 

Manlee Jefferson South was born in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma on the Fourth of July in 1946 and has been growing ever since. His vertical ascent finally topped out at six feet six inches at the age of twenty-five, but his girth has never ceased, a growth more reminiscent of an oak tree than typical potbellied human obesity. He just kept getting wider and thicker instead of fatter, landing somewhere in the neighborhood of 340 pounds. He had rudimentary reading and writing skills and spoke in a stunted vernacular, having little use for proper conjugation or certain function words, which he considered unnecessary. He sounded like Tonto from The Lone Ranger. 

After his 1966-67 tour in Vietnam, he was off to San Francisco, landing smack-dab in the middle of the hippie scene, which instantly bored him. So instead of dropping acid and talking about peace and love, he amused himself by getting into bar brawls in neighboring Oakland—a fortuitous choice that landed him in the movies. His audition consisted of him single-handedly clearing out a strip club and getting cracked over the head with a large potted fern. Witnessing the melee was an aspiring young director from Baton Rouge named William LeRoux, who had just procured the financing for his first feature with the $35,000 settlement he got after getting hit by a bus, though transit officials contended that the converse was more accurate. LeRoux envisioned a monster movie about a swamp-type creature that arose from the bayous of his native Louisiana. And when he saw a drunken Manlee grunting and stumbling about with the fronds of a large fern dangling from his head, he heard the angels sing. 

LeRoux offered Manlee $500 and went to work on banging out an almost dialogue-free script, which Manlee never saw, and didn’t need anyway. A security guard friend of LeRoux’s allowed him access to the wardrobe department at Beaumont Pictures—dubiously renowned for some truly awful sci-fi and monster movies of the 1950s—so he could cobble together a costume for Manlee, which turned into a patchwork of rubber monster suits hastily sewn together, whose obvious flaws were to be covered by lots of seaweed. Shooting began immediately in a drainage ditch outside of West Hollywood, which consisted of Manlee coming out of the water in various threatening poses, and chasing or carrying Anika Forsberg, a buxom Swedish import whom he continually groped at every opportunity. The scenes of her fighting back and slapping the Creature was true anger, and LeRoux loved the vérité quality it gave his film.

The Swamp Creature went straight to the drive-ins in the summer of 1968, and became a cult sensation when it made the bill of some midnight movie showings, usually paired with movies like Reefer Madness or Plan 9 from Outer Space. There was enough buzz to warrant a sequel, Revenge of the Swamp Creature, and LeRoux completed his trilogy with Swamp Creature 3: Out of this World, which featured the Creature battling eerily similar-looking creatures, except they were from outer space, and were the ones without the seaweed.

With his trilogy complete, LeRoux had designs on more serious features, which left Manlee out in the cold. There was only one offer on the table, and it turned out to be Manlee’s swan song as the Creature, an adult film titled Creature of Deep Delight—which featured the Creature terrorizing some lusty resorters at a woodsy cabin. Manlee had the dubious distinction of making the first monster porno.                                             

Festival day was always a long day for Fred Bauerlein. Peg was up at the crack of dawn, fretting about in a nervous manner as she put the finishing touches on her contest entries. Fred’s primary job of the day was in the reassurance department, a formidable task not to be taken lightly when it came to Peg and competition baking. And coupled with his dislike for the interlopers who streamed into town, and his disdain for large crowds in general—all simmering away on a steamy July afternoon—it felt like three days rolled into one, and Peg wouldn’t allow him his first beer until well into the afternoon. But as Fred made his way to the kitchen for his first cup of the day, he encountered a very different Peg. She was soaking up the streaming sun through the kitchen curtains, cradling a cup of coffee and smiling as she enjoyed the goldfinches flitting about the thistle feeders.

“Morning, honey,” Peg said to Fred, who was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“She’s gonna be hot,” Fred said, already irritable due to the long day he knew was in store. But he didn’t want to make it any longer than it had to be, so he knew he had to nip the negativity straightaway. So he kissed his wife and said, “Morning, honey. Everything ready?”

“Oh, for hours now.” She hummed as she poured herself another cup of coffee. “I see more blue ribbons in my future . . .” she sang in a bouncy voice.

“What’d you do with Nervous Nellie?” 

“What, me nervous? Such a beautiful day . . .”                                                     

“Man, that’s a good eighteen feet of car,” the pimply clerk at the Rochester Spur station said, admiring Manlee’s white 1973 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. “Sure don’t make ’em like this anymore. California car?”

“Never mind car,” Manlee said, stepping out of the car and eclipsing the clerk, shoving a thick finger at him. “Just put gas in.”

“Whoa—you got it, boss.”

“How far to Cities?”

“About an hour or so.” 

“You sell beer?”

“Just 3.2. The liquor store’s just up the street.”

“Good. Long trip—very thirsty.”

“There like a movie convention up there or something? I mean, if you don’t mind me askin’, I’m like a huge old sci-fi fan, and you were like the Creature or something, weren’tcha?”

“Yes. Very famous. No convention—big surprise, though.”

“Surprise?”

“Enough talk. Very thirsty. How much owe?”                                          

Peg was humbly clutching her blue ribbon for her famous cobbler, trying as hard to conceal her excitement as her competitors were trying to mask their disappointment. With the contest now off her mind, she began to search the crowd for Cropper, curious to know if he had any news about Manlee’s arrival. She spotted him by the pavilion, surprised to see him setting up a tripod and camera. 

“Did you talk to Manlee?” she asked.

“Oh yeah, we’re all set,” Cropper said. “Well, at least my end—I told him what you wanted me to tell him.”

“What does that mean?” 

  “We’re talking about Manlee here, remember? To say he’s a little unpredictable is like saying a liquored up Kanye West is a little unstable—not to mention that he’s driving all the way out from California. But he was sure pumped about your idea. Said he had a ‘big surprise’ for everyone.”

“Oh God. Did he say what?”

“Nope. All he said was, ‘have big surprise’—so your guess is as good as mine.”

“Well, no matter. Where’d you get the camera? Looks like a good one.”

“From the settlement for my back. Ultra HD. Got a state-of-the-art PC to boot. I’m gettin’ all this for posterity.”                                

As Bill Smiffey and Stuart were putting the finishing touches on his campaign speech at a picnic table beside the pavilion, the seven Blueberry Queen candidates took to the stage for the final judging, awaiting their respective turns at the microphone to pitch why they were best suited to the honor. All were born-and-raised locals except for one, a raven-haired, dark-eyed biology student from the former Yugoslavia, who was not only the hands-down favorite in the beauty department, but spoke eloquently as well, compared to her giggly, corn-fed competition, who all overused the word like and loved animals and four-wheeling—and who all quietly hated the beautiful interloper who was so effortlessly cleaning their collective clocks. 

The crowd was swelling around the pavilion, awaiting the last two formal events of the day—the crowning of the Blueberry Queen and Smiffey’s re-election speech—before stuffing their faces with barbecue and the bands began to play. Small packs of men loosened by a few beers were openly ogling the Queen candidates, which was not lost on the small pack of wives eyeing them in a steely fashion, talking about baking and the good crowd turnout, but thinking about retributions to be meted out later in the evening when they were sufficiently softened up.

Fred was in one of the small packs with Dave from the hardware store and his brother Jim the butcher, both flushed from too much beer and sunshine, and both warming up their intended barbs for Smiffey by heckling the well-nourished local girls, which prompted a visit from Peg.

“Okay, that’s enough out of you two,” Peg chided the brothers as she sidled up to Fred. “They’re very nice girls and you two ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

“They look like overstuffed sausages—and I oughta know,” Jim said, poking the blue ribbon on his chest for his blueberry bratwursts, already soiled with beer and barbecue sauce. “But that dark-haired one, boy, what a beauty. What’s her name, Freddie?”

Fred ran his finger down the names on his program. “Gotta be Maja Djokovic. She’s a student at UWS from Montenegro, the former Yugoslavia.”

“Pretty girl, isn’t she, honey?” Peg said to Fred.

“Yes, she is,” Fred agreed, careful not to sound too enthusiastic.

“C’mon, where’re the damn swimsuits?” Dave snapped with a lecherous laugh. “Just the dark-haired one—not the little kielbasas!”

“Those little kielbasas are gonna explode, they stay in the sun any longer,” Jim added, enjoying his brother’s butcher humor.

“That’s quite enough, you two,” Peg reminded the brothers again.

“Yeah, we want that little pip-squeak Smiffey anyway,” Dave said.

The crowd was thickening in front of the pavilion, awaiting Smiffey’s State of the Town address, a flatulent, eye-rolling affair that led to his subsequent pitch for re-election. The still-gathering throng had a more serious tone than when the Queens were on stage, with hushed grumblings permeating the crowd, like an agitated beehive. Cropper panned the crowd with his camera, playing the director’s role to the hilt, even donning a beret for his shoot. Smiffey impatiently waited to be introduced, but nobody was stepping up to the microphone. Finally, Stuart hastily did the honors, lint brush still in hand. Smiffey flashed his re-election smile and waved to a smattering of polite applause:   

“Thank you and a warm welcome to all our visitors far and wide to Iron Creek’s 46th annual Blueberry Festival. The diversity of all our honored visitors from throughout the Northland is testament to just one of this administration’s many successes—”

The roar of a highly revved engine tearing up the gravel road to the park turned everyone toward the sound. Smiffey heard it too, stopping his speech momentarily, but awkwardly resumed in a louder voice to get the crowd’s attention back. Suddenly a white convertible appeared at the peak of the road and abruptly turned toward the crowd, setting off a screaming, panicked scramble to avoid being mowed down by the car—which was honking madly, with muffled screams coming from the strangely amorphous driver. The car swerved wildly on the slick grass, tearing through several rows of chairs before running over an overturned rowboat and launching into the lake. Manlee Jefferson Smith had come back to town. And he was wearing his monster suit.

Manlee climbed over the door and plunged into the water, flailing his arms in struggling to find his feet, before finally stumbling toward shore. He was tangled in dangling pond scum, his arms outstretched to keep his balance, rising out of the water grunting and screaming, greeting the scrum of cops and firefighters closing in on him. He tossed them aside as fast as they came, but was clumsy in the bulky suit, losing his balance and crashing into more chairs and knocking over a nearby grill. He rolled into the hot coals, inadvertently learning that the chemicals in his old rubber monster suit were petroleum based and had synthesized into a highly volatile compound. Now he was on fire. And like most people on fire, he began to run.    

Five police officers, two sheriffs, four firefighters, and a pair of golden retrievers that had gotten loose in the melee were now chasing a six-foot-six-inch, 340-pound lit-to-the-gills Creature in a flaming monster suit. Now in full, burning panic, Manlee splintered chairs and tables and picnic baskets like Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo. One of the dogs got to him first, tripping him up and chewing on his webbed foot before suddenly turning amorous on his leg. A dogpile ensued as the crush of emergency personnel patted him down and rolled him on the ground to douse the fire, then dragged him off the shore through the gathering crowd. A livid Smiffey was there to greet him, with Cropper right on his tail, his camera now off the tripod to catch all the action up close. One of the cops finally pulled the mask off, revealing the Creature’s true identity.

“You!” Smiffey screamed at him. “How dare you! Officers, I want this man arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law!”

As Smiffey vehemently made his case he turned and bumped into Cropper. “Get the hell out of my way you stupid drunk! Go back to the cotton fields where you belong, you goddamn—oh no...”

A look of open-mouthed panic came over Smiffey’s face when he realized his racist harangue was just captured on film. He desperately tried to redeem himself. 

“I’m so sorry, Steve, you know I didn’t mean any of that,” he pleaded. “Please, I’ll do anything—will you shut off that camera!”

Cropper kept rolling, backing up to catch more of the action. Smiffey followed him, continuing to beg in Cropper’s ear.

A contented smile came over Manlee’s face as he watched Smiffey squirm and grovel, realizing exactly what he had done. He turned to the cop who was still patting down his smoldering monster suit.

“Career over. Still have large cot in back of jail?”

“Sure, Manlee.”

“Good. Long day—very tired.”

“No one makes them longer than you.”

“Just like old times.”