Appalachian Galapagos (41 page)

"Must you tell this
again
?" Judd asked, a pained expression on his face. He ran his Budweiser can across his forehead.

"Sure I gotta tell it again, bro," Kenny Joe said, stepping back as fire flickered up too high over the burgers, a result of too much lighter fluid. His camouflage hat brim was
singed
, as were parts of his red beard. "Max didn't hear it yet."

Max grinned. "Actually, I heard it a couple of times. However, any good tale is worth another
tellin
'."

"I must agree," Bailey said before taking a long sip of his beer. He was not wearing a shirt and his furry belly was distended to the point that he appeared pregnant. He was wearing red suspenders to hold up his baggy Wrangler jeans.

They were in the Butler brothers' back yard, sitting at a picnic table. A wooden fence ran around the freshly mowed green lawn. John Wayne, Kenny Joe's dog, was lying underneath a massive weeping willow about forty feet away, his legs twitching back and forth as he dreamed of chasing rabbits. The sun blared down from the brilliant blue sky, basking the yard in a warm glow.

"So he walks up to Judd," Kenny Joe continues. "has this t-shirt on that don't fit him right. Makes his belly stick out more, you know? He has this maroon cowboy hat on that's so damn big you can't believe he ain't
kiddin
' around—one of those twenty gallon bastards. He's got this acne-scarred face and these large
saggin
' eyes. Fucking rainbow suspenders. And Judd sees him
comin
', and he starts to get that face on like he has on right now. His 'the world hates me' face."

"The world does hate me, you bastard," Judd said, offering a painful smile.

"Judd gets this face on and looks up to the fat fucker. The fat dude goes, 'Excuse me, partner. I'm so sorry to bother you, but I wanted to tell you something. My wife and I both agree, you look just like me.' He looks himself up and down. 'I agree, I'm slightly
bigger'n
you, but other than that, we could be twins. Don't you agree? Will you pose for a photo with me?'"

"I was speechless," Judd added. "I didn't know what to say."

"So this dude's wife comes over with this instant Polaroid camera," Kenny Joe said, pulling out a photograph from the pocket of his red-checkered flannel shirt with cut-off sleeves. "Judd, being the nice guy he is, stands up and poses with him. Judd is a bit on the pudgy side, something I am sure we all agree on. But he ain't fat." Judd shook his head slowly, eyes closed, but he was smiling. "The lady snaps the photo and I ask her to take another one."

"I agree Judd ain't fat," Bailey said, nodding. "I would go with the word chubby if I was forced to it. Maybe pudgy. Perhaps stout."

"Not only that," Judd said, frowning and smiling at the same time. He barely heard Bailey as most of the time he had him on perpetual ignore. "Kenny Joe says to the wife, with the straightest, most deadpan face you could imagine, that he 'must've fallen into
The
Twilight Zone'
because he can't believe just how much we look alike.'" He pauses and glares at Kenny Joe. "God, you're a dickhead."

Kenny Joe grinned and gave the photo to Max. "And here is Judd and his twin."

Max kept his face blank, obviously holding back a dam of roaring laughter. Bailey was leaning over sideways to see the photo, his hand resting comfortably over his massive belly.

In the photo, Judd was dwarfed by one of the largest people Max had ever seen. Judd looked like a midget next to the gigantic man, his face lit up with a sheepish and embarrassed smile. They looked
nothing
like each other.

Max looked up at Judd, looked back to the picture, then back to Judd again. "This is just scary. You look
just
him, give or take a few pounds."

"I must agree," Bailey added, a scholarly look on his face. He looked over to Judd, studying him with his fingers on his chin, one round eye making a judgment as he nodded. "It's
frightenin
'."

"Very
frightenin
'," Kenny Joe said, putting a few blackened hotdogs onto a paper plate. "My blood runs cold
thinkin
' about it. It's almost like some weird-ass science fiction shit is
goin
' on, or
somethin
'."

The men were all silent for a few seconds, the sizzling of the hamburgers the only sound, then they broke out into a simultaneous roar of laughter.

Bailey fell from the picnic bench and onto the grass, clutching his rotund gut as he shook, his face red. Even Judd was laughing, his eyes clenched tight as he held his shaking side.

Judd snatched the photograph from Max's hand, wiping tears from his eyes. "Man, oh man. This kind of shit can only happen to me. And to think I'm only thirty-two years old. Do I have a whole lifetime of this to look forward to?"

Bailey got up from the grass and began working on his balloon again. It was a project he had been laboring over for the past few weeks. He had an enormous helium machine and thousands of extra-strength balloons.

It didn't really look like a balloon at all, but more resembled four lawn chairs tied rigidly together with string, rope and duct tape. In between all of the chairs was a red, white, and blue cooler in which he planned to put a case of beer when he went on his 'expedition'. Bound to the side of a decaying chair was a BB gun.

The men watched Bailey quietly, all of them trying to imagine their portly friend floating blissfully through the heavens with a can of beer in his hand, an enormous grin on his bearded face. The image conjured up instant smiles.

"You really think that thing is going to fly?" Judd asked, walking over and staring down at the decomposing invention. Long pieces of plastic hung from at least two of the lawn chairs.

"I know it is," Bailey said, wrapping one of the corners in duct tape.

"How the hell you
goin
' to land once you get up there?"

Bailey pointed over at his BB gun. "That's my
landin
' rod."

"So, you're just going to shoot balloons until it starts to float back downwards?"

"Yep."

"That's insanity. Real life does not work like it works in the cartoons, fool."

"Maybe."

"You won't float, Bailey. You'll fall. You'll fall like a fuckin' stone."

"I have faith in myself. Faith is all you need."

Judd ran his hand over one of the chairs. "How you gonna steer it?"

Bailey sighed. "Judd, I'm working on that. Please let me finish it, unless you're
goin
' to help me. I want to get this sucker in the air by at least three today. I have work on Sunday."

The men watched Bailey as he built his homemade balloon, grinning and shaking their heads as their friend made damn sure the beer cooler was secure.

They continued to dig into their seemingly never-ending supply of Budweiser until they were quite drunk. Bailey worked quietly, a look of deep concentration on his wooly face.

"You really think that thing is gonna work, Kenny Joe?" Max asked, tossing an empty beer can into the recycle bin and grabbing a fresh one.

Judd shook his head drunkenly and smirked. "Please, Max. There ain't no way in hell that—that
thing
is gonna carry that fat bastard anywhere." He burped, covering his mouth with his hand.

"Oh, it'll work, bro," Kenny Joe said. "Bailey is the man when it comes to
buildin
' contraptions. He's been making things since we was kids. He has a talent."

Judd snickered. "Oh really? What kind of successful contraption has he built that works? I remember that 'beer machine' he made last year that spit out stuff that looked like neon green diarrhea. It made the both of you so sick that you were hospitalized for three days."

Kenny Joe chuckled. "I forgot about that. That was the worst beer I ever tasted. Tasted like beer-flavored bubble gum. Turned your piss green. That was one of Bailey's only failures."

"Really?" Judd asked. "Well what about that bass boat he built back in high school? You guys sunk before you even got fifteen feet from the shore. Me and Max laughed so hard we could not even fuckin' stand. When I need to smile, I still picture you chubby bastards
swimmin
' toward the shore,
takin
' swings at each other as you go."

"Okay, that was two failures," Kenny Joe said, watching as Bailey applied more duct tape. "Big deal. Every inventor makes a mistake or two in their career. The reason the boat sunk was my fault. I built the bottom."

"Kenny Joe, you are so fuckin' full of shit!" Judd exclaimed, grabbing another beer. "Name one goddamn time Bailey built
somethin
' that worked!"

"He put that entertainment center together you got us for Christmas."

"Oh,
God
."

"Well he put it together, did he not?"

"Kenny Joe, you know what the hell I mean," Judd said. "Name one time he built
somethin
' from scratch that worked. Remember that tree house he built us back in the sixth grade? I do recall
spendin
' the rest of the summer in a fuckin' body cast."

"You never regain a summer like that," Max said.

"Yep," Kenny Joe said. "Summertime ruled when we was kids."

"Sure did," Max said. "That summer Judd got hurt may have been the best one too. Remember when Becky Sue kept showing us her
titties
?"

"Ah, memories," Kenny Joe said, looking wistful. "I've never looked at bee stings the same way again."

"Nor have I," Max said.

"See? I knew it," Judd said. "You try and change the subject. You can't even name one time Bailey built
somethin
' that worked."

Kenny Joe's face went dead serious. "Well...you remember that winter me and Bailey was gone for a month back in high school? Our mama told you we got measles, Judd?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Well, we didn't really have no measles. You see—Bailey built us this time machine, and we spent that month
fightin
' off pirates and whatnot back in the sixteenth century. I didn't think we was ever gonna make it back. That was a scary time, let me tell you right here."

"I must agree," Bailey said, packing his cooler with ice and fresh beer. He didn't even bother to turn around. "I don't think I was never so scared as then. That Bluebeard was a scary man. The way he had them candles in his beard like that made him look like a demon. I think I nearly screamed like a woman every time I saw his ass off in the distance. Fucking
frightenin
', I'll tell you what."

Kenny Joe nodded. "Way I remember it, you did scream like a woman every time you seen him. Don't feel bad, brother, we was just kids then. The worst part of being back in the sixteenth century was they didn't have no Budweiser."

"That was unfortunate," Bailey added. "I never did get used to ale and mead, neither. And the cannon fire
hurted
my ears
somethin
' fierce."

"Yep," Kenny Joe said. "And I never did get used to the shit they used to say. 'Shiver me timbers' and whatnot. What the hell does that mean anyway?"

"Got me. I never did understand that, neither. And I hated when they called me
Matey
too. I ain't never gonna be no mate to a man."

Judd laughed. "God, you two are dickheads. Fuckin' joke all you want. All it means is you can't think of one thing Bailey made that worked."

Bailey approached the picnic table. "Listen,
Assman
. If you are so certain it ain't gonna even go off of the ground, why don't you sit in one of them chairs when I float out of here in about fifteen minutes?"