woodchuck intestines with blueberry sauce poured over them. Rancid blueberry sauce.
He finished his third pie and called for his fourth, now one full pie ahead of
the legendary Bill Travis. The fickle crowd, sensing a new and unexpected champ in
the making, began to cheer him on lustily.
But Lard Ass had no hope or intention of winning. He could not have
continued at the pace he was currently setting if his own mother’s life had been the
prize. And besides, winning for him was losing; revenge was the only blue ribbon he
sought. His belly groaning with castor oil, his throat opening and closing sickly, he
finished his fourth pie and called for his fifth, the Ultimate Pie–Blueberries Become Electra, so to speak. He dropped his head into the dish, breaking the crust, and
snuffled blueberries up his nose.
Blueberries went down his shirt. The contents of his stomach seemed to
suddenly gain weight. He chewed up pastry crust and swallowed it. He inhaled
blueberries.
And suddenly the moment of revenge was at hand. His stomach, loaded
beyond endurance, revolted. It clenched like a strong hand encased in a slick rubber
glove. His throat opened.
Lard Ass raised his head.
He grinned at Bill Travis with blue teeth.
Puke rumbled up his throat like a six-ton Peterbilt shooting through a tunnel.
It roared out of his mouth in a huge blue-and-yellow glurt, warm and gaily
steaming. It covered Bill Travis, who only had time to utter one nonsense syllable–
‘Goog’ was what it sounded like. Women in the audience screamed. Calvin Spier, who
had watched this unannounced event with a numb and surprised expression on his
face, leaned conversationally over the table as if to explain to the gaping audience just what was happening, and puked on the head of Marguerite Charbonneau, the Mayor’s
wife. She screamed and backed away, pawing futilely at her hair, which was now
covered with a mixture of crushed berries, baked beans, and partially digested
frankfurters (the latter two had been Cal Spier’s dinner). She turned to her good friend Maria Lavin and threw up on the front of Maria’s buckskin jacket.
In rapid succession, like a replay of the firecrackers:.
Bill Travis blew a great–and seemingly supercharged -jet of vomit out over
the first two rows of spectators, his stunned face proclaiming to one and all, Man, I
just can’t believe I’m doing this; Chuck Day, who had received a generous portion of
Bill Travis’s surprise gift, threw up on his Hush Puppies and then blinked at them
wonderingly, knowing full well that stuff would never come off suede; John Wiggins,
principal of Gretna Elementary, opened his blue-lined mouth and said reprovingly:
‘Really, this has… YURRRK!’ As befitted a man of his breeding and position, he did it in his own pie-plate; Hizzonner Charbonneau, who found himself suddenly presiding
over what must have seemed more like a stomach-flu hospital ward than a pie-eating
contest, opened his mouth to call the whole thing off and upchucked all over the
microphone. ‘Jesus save us,’ moaned Sylvia Dodge, and then her outraged supper–
fried clams, cole slaw, butter-and-sugar corn (two ears’ worth), and a generous
helping of Muriel Harrington’s Bosco chocolate cake–bolted out the emergency exit
and landed with a large wet splash on the back of the Mayor’s Robert Hall suitcoat.
Lard Ass Hogan, now at the absolute apogee of his young life, beamed happily out
over the audience. Puke was everywhere. People staggered around in drunken circles,
holding their throats and making weak cawing noises. Somebody’s pet Pekinese ran
past the stage, yapping crazily, and a man wearing jeans and a Western-style silk shirt threw up on it, nearly drowning it. Mrs Brockway, the Methodist minister’s wife,
made a long, bass belching noise which was followed by a gusher of degenerated
roast beef and mashed potatoes and apple cobbler. The cobbler looked as if it might
have been quite good when it first went down. Jerry Maling, who had come to see his
pet mechanic walk away with all the marbles again, decided to get the righteous fuck
out of this madhouse. He got about fifteen yards before tripping over a kid’s little red wagon and realizing he had landed in a puddle of warm bile, Jerry tossed his cookies