13thWR

ASHES

by

George Lynn

As Max stood thinking about Calvin, a scream came from the little house up the street. By its ragged shrillness, Max judged it to be a woman's scream. An instant later old man Walter Jenkins burst out the front door of the house howling in agony. Walter's white pajamas emblazoned with blue flowers were afire.

Walter stumbled down the front steps of his house and out onto the sidewalk, waving his knobby arms. He pivoted twice, then staggered down the sidewalk past Max. The old fellow was engulfed b" fire. Even his long white hair flamed like a wick. His face wore an expression of accusation. He rolled his blue eyes toward Max, pursed his lips as though for a fiery kiss; then let go with another blood curdling yell.

As if an afterburner had ignited, Walter suddenly accelerated and disappeared behind the tall row of hedges beside the Barr House. He was headed straight for the grand home of Farley P. York, retired air conditioning tycoon.

At this moment Wilda Jenkins, poor Walter's wife, appeared on the front porch of the little house. She squawked wildly and stamped her fat bare feet. Each time she squawked she ripped the bodice of her filmy gown until, finally, her huge breast swung free.

Max turned away from Wilda's odd dance in time to see Farley P. York emerge from his house. York carried a rose tinted quilt slung over one shoulder, and a rolled newspaper in one hand. He peppered down the front steps of his house and pursued Walter's smoking trail. "...really need a beer or two before this sort of shit," he mumbled.

A passing automobile spotted flaming Walter and skidded to a screeching halt. Then another car stopped and another. A middle aged woman wearing red and white Bermuda shorts leaped from the front passenger seat of a Nash Rambler and began to shriek: "Please God ! Someone get a bucket of water! Oh God, Oh God! Please help him, the poor man. Oh God, oh God!" As the lady shrieked for intervention, she yanked out handful of her platinum blonde hair.

By the time Walter was chased down and extinguished there was a sizable crowd. Try as he might, Max could not recall a previous gathering this large south of the lake and north of New Orleans. Lots of people met there that day for the first time and became friends.

After an ambulance arrived and the crowd watched attendants load the smoking body onto a litter, York worked his way over to Max's side. The ambulance sped away, careening wildly around a corner, its siren shrilling. York used the rolled up newspaper to poke Max in the chest.

"It was the varsol!" crowed York. His eyes burned with triumph. "I'm sure of it!" He thrust his quivering face near Max's throat and smacked his lips. York's hand trembled convulsively. They reminded Max of crabs scuttling across the floor of silent seas.

"Well I think I know what you mean, " Max began. "I saw three small hogs eat the charred bodies of two Viet Cong. Sort of turn about..."

York heard nothing. He had already wheeled about in ecstacy and was now yammering loudly to a reporter who had arrived on the scene. The old man waved his rolled newspaper in the reporter's face until the reporter agreed to take his picture.

Max hated York. He despised the clear grease the old fart used to plaster down his sparse red hair, and his mottled hands always trembling and scratching. Now the old bastard would have his picture in the paper. No justice in the world. None whatsoever.

Max returned to the house and walked into the kitchen where his wife, Clara stood naked, her skin cold and marble white.

"That York is driving me nuts," said Max.

"Oh, Max, sighed Clara. "He's just a lonely old man." Clara tilted her head and gazed at Max as he opened a second beer.

"People are getting weird," said Max.

"I know," she nodded.