‘Less talk, more eatin’!’ someone in the back row called, and there was another
burst of applause–it was heartier this time.
Mayor Charbonneau handed Sylvia a stopwatch and a silver police whistle,
which she would blow at the end of the ten minutes of all-out pie-eating. Mayor
Charbonneau would then step forward and hold up the hand of the winner.
‘Are you ready??’ Hizzoner’s voice rolled triumphantly through the Great Day
PA and off down Main Street.
The five pie-eaters declared they were ready. ‘Are you SET??’ Hizzoner
enquired further.
The eaters growled that they were indeed set. Downstreet, a boy set off a
rattling skein of firecrackers.
Mayor Charbonneau raised one pudgy hand and then dropped it ‘GO!!!’ Five
heads dropped into five pie-plates. The sound was like five large feet stamping firmly into mud. Wet chomping noises rose on the mild night air and then were blotted out as
the betters and partisans in the crowd began to cheer on their favourites. And no more than the first pie had been demolished before most people realised that a possible
upset was in the making.
Lard Ass Hogan, a seven-to-one underdog because of his age and inexperience,
was eating like a boy possessed. His jaws machine-gunned up crust (the contest rules
required that only the top crust of the pie be eaten, not the bottom), and when that had disappeared, a huge sucking sound issued from between his lips. It was like the sound
of an industrial vacuum cleaner going to work. Moments later his whole head
disappeared into the pie-plate. He raised it fifteen seconds later to indicate he was
done. His cheeks and forehead were smeared with blueberry juice, and he looked like
an extra in a minstrel show. He was done–done before the legendary Bill Travis had finished half of his first pie.
Startled applause went up as the Major examined Lard Ass’s pie-plate and
pronounced it clean enough. He whipped a second pie into place before the pace-
maker. Lard Ass had gobbled a regulation-size pie in just forty-two seconds. It was a
contest record. He went at the second pie even more furiously yet, his head bobbing
and smooching in the soft blueberry filling, and Bill Travis threw him a worried
glance as he called for his second blueberry pie. As he told friends later, he felt he was in a real contest for the first time since 1957, when George Gamache gobbled
three pies in four minutes and then fainted dead away. He had to wonder, he said, if
he was up against a boy or a demon. He thought of the money he had riding on this
and redoubled his efforts. But if Travis had redoubled, Lard Ass had trebled.
Blueberries flew from his second pie-dish, staining the tablecloth around him like a
Jackson Pollock painting. There were blueberries in his hair, blueberries in his bib,
blueberries standing out on his forehead as if, in an agony of concentration, he had
actually begun to sweat blueberries. ‘Done!’ he cried, lifting his head from his second pie dish before Bill Travis had even consumed the crust on his new pie.
‘Better slow down, boy,’ Hizzoner murmured. Charbonneau himself had ten
dollars riding on Bill Travis. ‘You got to pace yourself if you want to hold out.’
It was as if Lard Ass hadn’t heard. He tore into his third pie with lunatic speed,
jaws moving with lightning rapidity. And then–But I must interrupt for a moment to
tell you that there was an empty bottle in the medicine cabinet at Lard Ass Hogan’s
house. Earlier, that bottle had been three-quarters full of pearl-yellow castor oil,
perhaps the most noxious fluid ‘. that the good Lord, in His infinite wisdom, ever
allowed upon or beneath the face of the earth. Lard Ass had emptied that bottle
himself, drinking every last drop and then licking the rim, his mouth twisting, his
belly gagging sourly, his brain filled with thoughts of sweet revenge.
And as he rapidly worked his way through his third pie Calvin Spier, dead last
as predicted, had not yet finished his first), Lard Ass began to deliberately torture
himself with grisly fantasies. He was not eatin’ pies at all; he was eating cowflops. He was eating great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher-guts. He was eating diced-up