Carl Hiaasen – Double Whammy

“I got you something.” Decker handed him a brown bag.

Skink opened it and grinned what was left of his TV smile.

Inside the bag was a new pair of black sunglasses.

Just before midnight he suddenly groaned and passed out again. Decker tore up his own shirt for a compress bandage and wrapped the bad eye. He held Skink’s head in his lap and told Garcia to drive faster.

Minutes after they crossed the county line into Harney, a highway-patrol car appeared in the rearview mirror and practically glued itself to the Chrysler’s bumper.

“Oh hell,” Al Garcia said.

But R. J. Decker was feeling much better.

Deacon Johnson was proud of himself. He had gone down to the welfare office near the Superdome and found a nine-year-old blond girl who was double-jointed at the elbows. When she popped her bony arms out they looked magnificently grotesque, an effect that would be amplified dramatically by Charlie Weeb s television cameras. Deacon Johnson asked the girl’s mother if he could rent her daughter for a couple of days and the mother said sure, for a hundred bucks—but no funny business. Deacon Johnson said don’t worry, ma’am, this is a wholesome Christian enterprise, and led the little girl to his limousine.

At the downtown production studios of the Outdoor Christian Network, Deacon Johnson took the little girl, whose name was Darla, to meet the famous Reverend Charles Weeb.

Twirling his eyeglasses in one hand, Weeb looked relaxed behind his desk. He wore a powder-blue pullover, white parachute pants, and a pair of black Nike running shoes. A young woman with astounding breasts was trimming his famous cinnamon-blond eyebrows.

Deacon Johnson said, “Darla, show the preacher your little trick.”

Darla took one step forward and extended both arms, as if awaiting handcuffs.

“Well?” said Charlie Weeb.

Darla closed her eyes, strained—and chucked her elbows out of joint at preposterous angles. The sockets emitted two little pops as they disengaged.

The statuesque eyebrow barber nearly wilted.

“Bravo!” said Charlie Weeb.

“Thank you,” said Darla. Her pale arms hung crookedly at her sides.

“Izzy, whadya think?” Weeb said. “I think we’re talking the big P.”

“Polio?” Deacon Johnson frowned.

“Why the hell not?”

Deacon Johnson said, “Well, it’s very uncommon these days.”

“Perfect.”

“Except everybody knows there’s a vaccine.”

“Not in the bowels of Appalachian coal country,” Charlie Weeb said. “Not for a poor little orphan girl raised on grubworms and drainwater.”

Darla spoke up. “I live in a ‘partment on St. Charles,” she said firmly. “With my momma.”

“Talk to this child,” Charlie Weeb said to Deacon Johnson. “Explain how TV works.”

It was a good thing for Charlie Weeb that there was no audience for the dress rehearsals. At first Darla insisted on popping her elbows in and out, in and out—just to show off—and it took Deacon Johnson quite some time to make her understand the theatrical importance of timing. At a given cue Darla was supposed to roll her eyes, loll her tongue, and fall writhing onto the stage; when she rose again to face the cameras and audience, her polio would be cured. To demonstrate the success of his ministrations, the Reverend Charles Weeb would then toss her a beach ball.

The cue for Darla’s fit was to be when Weeb raised his arms and implored: “Lord Jesus, mend this poor Christian creature!” The first few times, Darla jumped the gun badly, collapsing on the word “Jesus” so that the sound of her limp form hitting the stage stepped all over Charlie Weeb’s big climax. Once Deacon Johnson had coached Darla past this problem, the next challenge was teaching her to catch the beach ball. The first few times she simply let the ball bounce off her chest, and the noise of it smacking the lanyard mike nearly blew out the engineer’s eardrums. Darla dropped the ball so many times in rehearsal that the Reverend Weeb lost his Christian temper and called her a “palsied little twat”—a term which, fortunately, the child did not understand. When Weeb demanded that they go back to the lidocaine-injection method, Deacon Johnson quickly intervened and suggested now was a good time for lunch.

Miraculously, the live Sunday broadcast went off without a hitch. The crew did an extraordinary job making Darla appear sallow and gray and mortally ill. When the cue came, she collapsed perfectly and—after much thrashing—arose beaming and cherubic and healed. Reviewing the videotapes later, the Reverend Weeb marveled aloud at how deftly and invisibly little Darla had reengaged her elbow joints. Only on slo-mo could you see her do it. And, at the end, she even caught the beach ball. Charlie Weeb had been so genuinely overjoyed that he hadn’t even needed the glycerine tears.

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