Tail Casserole

Observations from the easy chair

Nothing serious here, just a bit of free time and as I watched one of the new neighbors moving in this came to mind. No underage kids or animals were injured during writing and if anybody recognizes themselves in it, well, now you know you're not unique after all.

I never liked the looks of him from the first time I laid eyes on him. Brice Lockwood is his name. What the hell kind of name is that? I suppose it was the looks that soured me on him; preppy, swaggering, over confident, roaming eyes. I had to give it to him. He was a handsome piece of shit, fit as a fiddle, almost like a young blond Sean Connery living right smack in the middle of our neighborhood.

The Richardson's had sold the house and cleared out to Arizona; he had retired from the local power company and she had put up with asthma for the last fifteen years. The hot oven air was supposed to be good for her so they packed up everything they wanted to keep in a U-Haul and hit the road. The next day Agent Blond strutted up the drive in his white tennis shorts, hairy tan muscular legs and $300 Ray-Bans.

Carole was watching him not knowing I was watching her and I'm pretty sure every other moist adventurous woman on the street was watching everybody else. Maybe it's a hormonal thing, a stud puppet alert gene or something. Within an hour of his arrival, the woman a couple doors down from us crossed over to his house with a warming gift in her hand.

"We need to do that, Charlie. We need to take the new neighbor something to welcome him to the street." She looked over at me with her natural puppy eyes expecting me to agree.

The gal a couple doors down had walked her gift inside and was still tugging the welcome wagon thirty minutes later. She came out with a big smile on her face and her little hands smoothing the bunched fabric of her sundress before she reached her own stoop. That was quick.

"You might want to wait until he recovers from his first welcome, Carole. He might not be up for it." I smiled inwardly.

You see, Brice Lockwood wasn't the first single hunk of meat to hit the neighborhood. There was Chad, Broderick and Wilson before him and I'm sure there would be others following at some point. Brice was just the first one straight across the street from me giving me a perpetual reason for wishing I had a tall hedge row along the front sidewalk.

Chad was a cad, an actual English scalawag from Southampton. He tried to impress us all with his elocution skills but he could never quite mask his working class dock worker brogue he was self-accursed with. It didn't matter. He had his looks and several youngish, middle aged housewives who just clung to every tall tale and word he spoke. Carole was right in there with them chewing on every word.

The Marshall's lived a few doors up the street from us. Frank was a millwright over at the paper mill; large gregarious fellow with the biggest damn feet I've ever seen on a human being. Mildred was a little thing, mousy is the word and as naïve as a woman can get but she was about the hottest looking thirty five year old this side of town. Some of us could never figure out how in hell Frank ever laid hands on her being as ape ugly as he was.

Chad picked right up on Mildred, soothed and stroked her with words and smiles until she was just like melted butter on a biscuit. The lady gossip mill, being what it was, soon revealed that Mildred was sneaking off to Chad's house when Frank was rotating nights at the mill. The thing about the lady gossip mill is that it's as leaky as a sieve; all of us men hear the same things cuz they just can't keep it to themselves, gossips that they are.

Well, it got back to Frank eventually and one night he and a couple pipefitters came off early on the night shift and rolled into the neighborhood on the quiet around midnight. Mildred wasn't in Frank's bed or anywhere else in the house There was only one other place Frank was interested in looking, Chad's little snake nest of a boudoir.

The story I heard from one of the pipefitters long after the incident might have been embellished a bit but I'm sure there was a lot of truth in it. The three of them crossed the street and snuck into the house.

When they found the two lovers, they were going at it hot and heavy with the miscreant sawing his English cad dick right into Frank's prize, balls deep and no rubber to boot. Accordingly it didn't look like Mildred was getting the better deal out of it because balls deep must have meant something different in Southampton than it did in our neck of the woods.

Mildred let out a little squeal and Chad bellowed a boisterous grunt before whatever monstrous size work boot Frank had on his left foot found its target and literally broke Chad's ass. Three sets of burley hands grabbed ahold of the high pitched man of the house until they stood him upright and started to wallop the bejesus out of him. When it was over, the former resident of our street dragged his formerly 6'2", now 5'11" self out the door and into his car before riding off to god knows where.

The little mousy wife never knew god before that night and now all she does is sing the praises of Jesus. Frank kept her around because the same god knows he'd never find anything as hot as what he had, even tainted as it was, with an ape mug like his. God owed it to him anyways for making him get in the ugly line twice.

Since men never tell gossip tales, the women folk never really knew what happened to good old Chad; Mildred breaks out into a gospel sweat at the mere mention of his name. That pipefitter never did tell me what happened to Mildred that night but he had a damn good smile on his face when he shook his head...

"Charlie, do you think our new neighbor would like one of my famous casseroles?" She was serious. Her casseroles are to die for and if she took even the smell of it across the street somebody was going to die.

"No, I wouldn't do that. Me and the fellah's, we're thinking meat."

"Oh that would be good. We could invite him over for a barbeque." Carole went prancing off to do what excited women do when Agent Blond moves into the neighborhood; call into the gossip line.

She took a casserole over to Broderick when he moved into the bungalow on the corner and the little sniffing hound nearly camped on my doorstep for second helpings. The Davenports, at least Wendy and her chronically unemployed and unambitious daughter Chloe were a little more creative.

Broderick Thompson was a Boston transplant trying to pass him off as a New England blueblood in our quaint southern town; blueblood was another term for carpetbagger in most of our circles, especially if they hailed from Boston. Wendy was a thrice divorced buckeye that latched onto one of the locals here who was suffering a bout of rebound fever after his first wife ran off with what passes for a milkman these days, a frozen meat truck salesman.

Chloe was Wendy's daughter from her first marriage, 20 years old and a football team or so past precocious. Wendy herself was a baker's dozen beyond prime but reality never slowed her step. The two of them set off for Broderick's place one afternoon while Jimmy Davenport was working a shutdown weekend at the plant. They were tugging a cooler of something behind them, each of them skimpily dressed on the way to lounge in Broderick's big pool.

They both waved when they pranced past the house and I waved back smiling at the spectacle. It wasn't the first trip to the pound for either of them and I guessed it wouldn't be the last although the next one would be under something other than the Davenport family name.

Jimmy's cousin Jamie lived the next street over behind Broderick's place with a fence between the properties. He was a jack of all trades doing all kinds of work for anybody with cash to spare. A few years ago he put French drains in a lot of the backyards including ours as well as the house Broderick was living in. Everybody treated him like a star after that with invites to every barbeque.

Jamie's teenage kid told me the story after I promised to buy him and his running buddy a case of beer for his graduation party although we pretty much knew the aftermath as it happened; couldn't help that.

It seems Jimmy had caught on to the antics of Broderick with Wendy and Chloe and decided he wasn't going to take any more of it. Broderick was an odd fellow, aside from being a walking peccadillo, he was also suffering from what my wife calls OCD; he couldn't stop washing his hands. If he washed his floor once he had to wash it twice and even a third time. I watched him wash his damn car three times one afternoon. If he found dirt on his clothes, he'd change. At our barbeques I always put a little extra sauce on his pulled pork sandwich just for fun.

Well, about an hour after the mom and daughter duo sashayed past my place with both sets of ass cheeks on prominent display, Jimmy and Jamie were setting the stage for a little entertainment of their own.

Jamie's kid had a peephole cut in the fence so he could watch the prurient goings on when Broderick had his assorted visitors in what he thought was his private playground. That's how they knew; the kid watched them fucking a few times, told his dad who then let Jimmy know.

They were at it again that afternoon. Broderick had both of them propped up on their knees, asses up, side by side, Momma and daughter and he was grunting the schlong into both of them, a few strokes at a time while they wiggled their rotund behinds skyward. When it was time for the money shot, they both slipped onto their haunches and he proceeded to paste both of them with the 'reward'. Mama and Baby Girl just gobbled it up and at that precise moment the real money shot came.

200 gallons of old farmer Melvin's settling sludge came shooting up out of the French drain next to Broderick's pool laying a fine slick of brown awfulness across the surface of the water and pelting the sliding glass doors, or in this case the screens on the other side of the patio.

"Oh my god... oh my god!! What the fuck is this?? It smells like pig sh- OH MY FUCKING GOD!!"

Oh, and Jamie also ran a septic tank pumping service and had a few commercial accounts with a couple farmers outside of town.

Broderick was nearly messing himself which might have been a slight improvement over his current condition. He was running around hysterical like while Wendy and Chloe sat there crying like the angel of death had just struck all around.

Jimmy had let me know beforehand I might want to go visit someplace for a few days and I took him up on his advice. I poured Carole into the car and I volunteered to visit her folks for a couple days and after she shook off the expression of wonderment we motored out of the neighborhood, driving past Broderick's slowly to take in the scene.

Wendy and Chloe were running up the street naked, arms flailing, covered in pig manure only to find them locked out of Jimmy's house. Broderick was outside trying to hose himself off screaming like an escapee out of Perry's Nuthouse and the stench? ... I was looking forward to hugging the mother-in-law and pounding beers with my teetotaler father-in-law while watching old re-runs of Jimmy Swaggart; it was that bad.

We hung out in hell for a couple days and by the time we got back, somebody had hosed down the backside of the house and drained the pool and tried to clean up the inside where the splatter had hit the screen. Broderick had been taken to the mysterious 8th floor at the hospital downtown and was still there as far as anybody knew.

Wendy talked her 2nd husband into taking her and Chloe in for a few days while Jimmy staked a For Sale sign in the yard and by weeks end all was settled down again.

"Maybe I should take up tennis, Charlie. Whatcha think?"

Agent Blond was outside again in his tight white shorts talking with the neighbor woman to the other side of us. She's one of those touchy feely kinds of gals, always rubbing up on you when she talks and giggles a lot.

"I think you should update your life insurance policy if you start up with that, Carole. You never know what could happen and I could use the extra."

Speaking of insurance, Wilson used to sell Life and Casualty until he went into school teaching when he ran out of friends to sell to. In spite of his good looks he could never get the neighborhood housewives to part with their money. They'd part a whole lot of other things but money? No way. So he ended up teaching business and typing at the high school and that's how he met Dana White and her daughter Cindy.

Dana was a late thirties bottle blond who worked at the Savings & Loan where Carole and I did business; married to Donnie, a regular joe who was a city cop during the day and worked security at the paper mill on some evenings as a fill.

Cindy was a handful; eighteen and still trying to get her junior year behind her. It didn't help that she was stripping at the all nude bar down on the town line. Of course Donnie didn't know anything about it and the county boys who patrolled that neck never mentioned it to him. In a word, she was trouble.

Wilson was one of those muscle jerks who spent inordinate amounts of time in the gym and performed hairy chest parades for all the neighborhood ladies while mowing his lawn. Of course Carole would take it all in, dreamboat eyes and all. She took him a lasagna casserole one time and spent an hour showing him how to warm it up in the oven. I don't know why she bothered, Dana White was there the whole time and the two of them had dinner in the backyard after Carole left.

Apparently Wilson was putting the schlong to Dana on a regular basis whenever Donnie was working security at the mill and on the off nights he became a regular at the Kitty Time lounge sneaking Cindy a ride home since her car was impounded for unpaid traffic tickets. Gossip mill has it he was putting a fuck into the young girl as cab fare. It could have all just been a rumor except for the little feet kicking the roof of Wilson's car one evening when I circled behind the DairyAll after picking up Carole's Super Frostie Slam.

It all came to a head one evening when Donnie came home early and caught Wilson banging Dana in his backseat right in the driveway of their home. Before they could react properly or maybe because they were scared, Donnie hooked up the winch chain on his truck to Wilson's bumper and hauled both of the miscreants down the street leaving two heavy black patches of tire the whole way to Wilson's driveway.

Lights went on all over the neighborhood and the two of them ran buck naked inside the house while Donnie went home and piled every one of Dana's sets of clothes onto the front yard. Cindy hadn't gotten home yet so he waited until she did and told her all the great news about her mother being the neighborhood whore and with whom.

Now, the thing about Cindy is that she's one of those possessive teenagers. If she had it in her mind that something was hers, well, it was supposed to be all hers. Dancing naked and splashing young pussy and tits in front of strangers was never taken into account in her mind. Wilson was supposed to be hers and not somebody else's not to mention her own mother's.

Wilson, being the natural nimrod he is figured that while he might be out of the momma pussy for a while, the baby girl was still dibs. He showed up at the Kitty Time like always and Cindy purred and meowed like she always did except this time she did it with cat eyes, evil live meat eating black cat eyes.

Right about closing time, she ducked into the changing room while Wilson meandered out to his car sans one rear bumper. As soon as he sat in the front seat spot lights and black fatigue clad troopers stormed his vehicle with assault rifles at the ready and two drug sniffing/ arm eating German Shepherds at attention with laughing mouths.

They hauled Wilson out by his arms and ears and cuffed him on the ground before finding five pounds of meth under the seats and a loaded cheap revolver in the glove box. Against all protestations, Wilson was hauled off to the county lockup and was later convicted of possession with intent and is still doing time at a medium security prison in the upstate.

Rumor has it that Cindy spent a good many nights paying for that stash the best way she knew how. As for Dana, well, Donnie played the drug dealer whore ploy to good effect with Cindy's cooperation and forced her to leave town with a couple suitcases and $5,000. An old quiet couple bought Wilson's place...

"Daaa..ummm" whispered Carole under her breath hoping I couldn't hear her panting in the midst of all that quiet.

I peered outside to see if I could locate the source of her moisturizing gasp and lo and behold if Brice Lockwood didn't have his damn near twin standing next to him. If it wasn't for the newcomer's dark locks I'd have thought they were identical. They were double agents, black and blond. The two of them could have been a commercial for hair gel or toothpaste.

"Charlie, they must be brothers. We need to be neighborly and take something over to them. I'm going to do that. I've got that extra Ambrosia salad that I know those two boys could use."

I could see the determination in her eyes and I knew the look. I didn't stand a chance so I acquiesced. I've never minded the look. That's just how she is. She might just be gone longer this time, that's all.

After dinner, Carole fancied herself all up and put on a dab of that sensual perfume, I can never remember the name of it. Elizabeth Taylor used to sell it on the TV. She likes bright red lipstick while I like that light, pale gloss. She wore the red; lots of cleavage and smiles. She was ready. I just sat and watched.

Off she went while I watched out the window. It was a warm evening so she didn't need a cover. She pressed the doorbell, no answer. She pressed it again and the same. Not to be defeated she did the same again before walking off to the side of the house and entering through the side gate. Some of the neighbors use the side entrance as often as the front.

Carole disappeared for several moments and I assumed she was having her desires sated so I turned to the TV to catch the end of the Braves game. As soon as I settled into the strike count I caught movement from across the street. Carole was walking back faster than walking over, much faster with the Ambrosia still in hand.

She entered the house flustered and short of breath and somewhat pale looking.

"Are you alright, dear?" I asked, concerned for her condition.

She looked at me with eyes wide.

"Jesus ... Sweet Jesus, Charlie." She stuttered to get her words. "He was, well, he was, you know and the other one was, he was... I'd have never believed it... those beautiful boys. What is wrong with this world!"

I just nodded and agreed.

"Do you need some help, dear?" I asked after relieving her of the Ambrosia.

"Yes, please, honey. Can you get the zipper on my back?"

"It'll be my pleasure... Oh, I see you went up to size 22 this time. It's more comfortable, isn't it, just like I told you."

I had to run up to a 48 myself last time I went shopping for pants so I understand. I'm guessing when we hit seventy in a few, maybe we'll be back down to where we were when we were sixty. Must be the casseroles and ambrosia salads.

MFH