Bad moon over Kemble

Anybody who has read this blog more than once knows they're dealing with a notoriously unreliable narrator.

Hell, I can't narrate my own narrative without getting bogged down in side-stories and what-ifs...

Which is how Gaddafi turned up in Gaza playing chess with Shalit...

But no matter; this much is true:

It started with a short ride in a fast car.

We picked up Mrs. Traynor last night, in the way-too-fast Mustang Fifty.

Now you wouldn't normally assume that you could get from the depths of Grey County to Wayne County International Airport and back in one night.

But we had a really fast car.

Oddly enough, we had no trouble at all when we got to the border.

We let Mrs. Traynor do all the talking. She used to be an English teacher at the local high school.

She knows her subjunctives from her dangling particles, and by God can she cast a spell.

So we're at one of the little sheds just off the interstate, and we're trying to charter a plane to Las Vegas.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

We can get there and back on a Lear for $20,000.

Great! I just happen to have a platinum Visa card with a 20 k max!

Then they run the card through. Available credit, 79 dollars and 28 cents.

There goes our Vegas dream.

So we headed back to Mrs. Traynor's modest cottage just off the main street in Kemble.

By now the night was over and the sun was ris. We were relaxing in the front yard of Mrs. Traynor's place, drinks in hand, when the bus from the Word of Life Tabernacle turned the corner and headed up the street.

Here's the word on the Word of Life Tabernacle; they don't just hate sin, they hate sinners, and they make no bones about it.

They have a mission, or an "outreach" as they like to frame it, which involves sending a bus around the entire county picking up kids whose parents are too pickled to take them to Sunday school.

We're somewhat into our cups and not feeling the slightest obligation to make nice with the Word 'o Lifers.

My children were raised into a robust agnosticism.

The farm manager's kids went to synagogue.

Mrs. Traynor never had any children.

So when the bus stops in front of Mrs. Traynor's humble cottage, to pick up the Robinson kids across the way, three middle-aged Las Vegas wannabees rise out of their lawn chairs, turn their backs, and drop their pants.

Bad moon over Kemble.