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 hay 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.
‘Doner 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 ‘.hat 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 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 — ‘Googr 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,
basso 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 in his own lap and told folks later he only thanked Providence he had been wearing his coveralls. And Miss Norman,
who taught Latin and English Fundamentals at the Gretna Consolidated High School,
vomited into her own purse in an agony of propriety.
Lard Ass Hogan watched it all, his large face calm and beaming, his stomach suddenly
sweet and steady with a warm balm it might never know again – that balm was a feeling
of utter and complete satisfaction. He stood up, took the slightly tacky microphone from
the trembling hand of Mayor Charbonneau, and said …
17
‘”I declare this contest a draw.” Then he puts the mike down, walks off the back of the platform, and goes straight home. His mother’s there, on account of she couldn’t get a
babysitter for Lard Ass’s little sister, who was only two. And as soon as he comes in, all
covered with puke and pie drool, still wearin’ his bib, she says, “Davie, did you win?” But he doesn’t say a fuckin’ word, you know. Just goes upstairs to his room, locks the door,
and lays down on his bed.’
I downed the last swallow in Chris’s Coke and tossed it into the woods.
‘Yeah, that’s cool, then what happened?’ Teddy asked eagerly.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t knowT Teddy asked.
‘It means it’s the end. When you don’t know what happens next, that’s the end.’
‘•Whaaaat? Vern cried. There was an upset, suspicious look on his face, like he
thought maybe he’d just gotten rooked playing penny-up Bingo at the Topsham Fair.
‘What’s all this happy crappy? How’d it come outT
‘You have to use your imagination,’ Chris said patiently.
‘No, I ain’t!’ Vern said angrily. ‘He’s supposed to use his imagination! He made up the