This is chapter three of a story that will run all week.

“I’m taking a break.  I’ll be next door at the Grounds for Divorce for a coffee in case of an emergency.”  Chad was out the front door, but not before noticing how sweet and fresh Mrs. Drury smelled as he walked by Register 4.  

He stopped by his brown Dodge Aries wagon parked under the oak tree and got his wallet from the glove box. Getting back out of the car, his sleeve caught on the gear shift selector and darn near tore the cuff right off of it. The button went flying and so did the curse words. He bent down to look for the button and hit his head on the steering wheel. He just hoped the group at the GFD hadn’t witnessed the whole episode. He was afraid if New Guy said anything, he was apt to sucker punch him right in the kisser.

“You look more like it’s a Monday than a Wednesday,” Lucinda said as he walked in.  

He flopped into a chair at the big round table in the middle of the cafe.  “It’s been a week.  And we’re only on day three.”

Rusty from the hardware store looked up and said, “You’re early for your lunch break.  Or late for your morning coffee break, one.  You’re throwing my whole schedule off.”

“Like you have a schedule,” Lucinda retorted.

“The Manager has taken a couple days off, so I can come and go as though I had my own free will,” Chad said.  “Apparently supervising the striping of the parking lot was more taxing than it looked and he needs some down time.”

“We all need some down time,” Pastor Peterson said.

“Don’t get me started,”  Chad sighed.

“Reminds me of the exchange between John Montagu and John Wilkes, both British politicians in the 18th century.  Montagu was also the 4th Earl of Sandwich, the namesake and possibly inventor of the sandwich,” New Guy said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Rusty asked the exact thing everyone around the table was wondering.

“During one of their many verbal battles, Montagu reportedly spat at Wilkes and said, ‘Upon my soul, Wilkes, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox.’  Wilkes replied, ‘That depends, my lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.’” New Guy said.

Rusty was turning red.  “What the hell, New Guy?”

“There’s a message in there somewhere,” Pastor Peterson said.  “Not sure what it is or where it is, but there’s a message.  That said, what’s got your dauber down, Chad?”

“Life.  Not turning out like I thought it would.  Do you remember the Ed Sullivan Show?  The guy spinning plates on top of sticks?  Running back and forth, keeping them all going at once?”

“Speaking of old TV shows, did you hear the guy from Starsky & Hutch died?  The blond one?” New Guy asked.

“I swear to god!” Rusty muttered under his breath.

“Rusty, want a refill?”  Lucinda has a habit of showing up when she needs to.

“Yeah, I heard.” Chad said, deflated.

Chad went on to relay the basics of his last couple days. Last several months, as a matter of fact. No details that would embarrass anyone, just an overview. New Guy seemed to be paying more attention than Chad preferred. Pastor Peterson was nodding along in agreement with the details that were actually offered. Lucinda was keeping the CMC mugs full, wondering if anyone was ever going to order anything.

“It actually feels good just to share.  Felt like I was going to burst inside.  It’s all just a lot,” Chad said.

“What you need to do,” Rusty started, “is put your big boy panties on and man up.  That’s life.  That’s what we all deal with.  It ain’t for the faint-hearted.”

Even New Guy thought Rusty was kind of abrupt.  It was obvious Chad was struggling.

“Rub some dirt on it!” Rusty finished.

“In addition to that wisdom, there is some other advice I might offer,” Pastor Peterson began.

But before he could say anything else, Lucinda said, “Isn’t that your Dodge Aries wagon?” as she pointed out the window.

Sure enough, the turd brown wagon was rolling across the parking lot on auto-pilot, gaining speed as it passed the cart corral, narrowly missing Mrs. Drury’s ’77 Plymouth Fury Brougham sedan.  Chad got up and ran towards the front door, but it was too late.  The wagon piled right into the side of the Dr. Pepper truck that was unloading right in front of the Piggly Wiggly.

“Probably a good thing it hit the truck.  Coulda wiped out the whole front of The Pig,” New Guy observed.

The whole group from the big round table got up and walked out to the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly.  What they saw could not be accurately described in the Stockton Telegram Dispatch, despite the best efforts of the reporter that was on the scene within minutes.  The cans of Dr. Pepper were exploding and spraying a fine mist of carbonated pure cane sugar and caramel syrup over all the cars in the parking lot like a returning warship pulling into New York Harbor.

Cans were rolling under cars, shopping carts, and out on to Sam Houston Street where they’d explode being run over by passing cars and trucks.  Becky, over at the Ben Franklin, thought it must be a terrorist attack and got Chief Martin on the horn.  “Swear to goodness, they’ve got a Tommy-gun!  People are running for cover!”

KFSX sent their reporter out to try to get a live-on-the-air report from witnesseses.  New Guy was more than willing to explain everything that had happened in detail that far surpassed the actual events.  The sun seemed to be baking the Dr. Pepper right into the finish of the cars most heavily soaked, Mrs. Drury’s Plymouth Fury Brougham sedan being the one to take the biggest hit.  Chad looked in the big plate glass picture window and saw her looking in shock as her pride and joy baked and bubbled in the Fort Stockton sun in a shower of soda.  He’d never seen her cry before.

He looked down at his torn sleeve, buttons missing from the cuff and realized he must have put the Aries in gear when his sleeve caught on the gear selector.  “Don’t look now, but I think you got a few more plates to keep spinning, my friend,” New Guy said as he walked back to the Ground for Divorce for some more Folgers.

Stray dogs seemed to come out of the woodwork, licking the cars, the shopping carts, and eventually each other.  “Must be the pure cane sugar,” Rusty noted.  Whatever it was, they were eventually covered with the sticky substance themselves.  That apparently released pheromones, or natural instincts, but an unnatural chain of events took place thereafter.  Dogs were humping each other under the old oak tree, in front of the Dr. Pepper truck, and all the way around the Piggly Wiggly back to where the dumpster was.  

Becky called Fort Stockton Animal Control.  “You ain’t going to believe this . . .”

Mayor Goodman rolled up on the scene and took control, making the call that school ought to be canceled and the children picked up by their parents and taken home so they didn’t witness the rampant canine copulation taking place in public, much less walk through the sea of soda forming in front of the store.

As Animal Control set up a Command Center in one of the cart corrals, the heat of the sun, the carbonation of the Dr. Pepper, and the freshness of the reflective yellow paint of the freshly striped parking lot combined to cause the paint and the soda to run together.  The result hampered the efforts of everyone involved.  Several pairs of dogs became ‘stuck’ in more than one way.  

Mrs. Cottle, in a hurry to get home before her afternoon soap operas started, disregarded the instructions of the emergency personnel involved and tried to make a beeline for her Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight. She tripped over the bright yellow caution tape and went down like a fat kid on a teeter-totter. Paramedics had to use the jaws-of-life to get her unstuck from the asphalt, her mew-mew getting shredded in the process. A couple of the paramedics saw things while lifting her up that even Mr. Cottle hadn’t seen in years.

Pastor Peterson helped Chad get the front bumper of the Dodge Aries unstuck from the Dr. Pepper truck, jumping up on down on it till it dislodged. Of course, it was more slippery than Mayor Goodman’s campaign promises. He almost wound up with the Pentestar ornament from the grill lodged in his butt cheeks. “What’s your deductible on this Bad Boy?” he asked Chad once the Dodge was dislodged.

“Five hundred bucks,” Chad said.  Another five hundred he didn’t have.

The reporter from the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch kept asking him where the Manager was, so he could be interviewed for the article. The guy from Animal Control asked him if there was a hose around somewhere. “A couple of these dogs are stuck tighter than that wagon was on the Dr. Pepper truck. Need to spray ‘em down.”

The paramedics were trying to tell Mrs. Cottle they’d call her husband to come get the Oldsmobile.  By then she was getting used to the attention and told them not to worry about it.  “One step at a time boys.  You might want to check my vitals one more time.”

Lucinda brought a cup of Folgers out to Chad a couple times, more to check on him than to keep him caffeinated.  Pastor Peterson eventually had to get back to Almost United Methodist for the Grief and Recovery class he had that afternoon.  “Truth be told,” he told Mrs. Howard, his secretary, “there’s probably more grief and recovery needed over at the Piggly Wiggly than there is here.”

That night the Aries limped into the driveway in Morningwood Manor, the subdivision where Chad and Prudence had built the house of the dreams, rather than their budget. The wagon had left a trail of yellow parking lot paint and Dr. Pepper like a giant snail crawling through Fort Stockton. Every step he took made his Red Wing Iron Rangers stick to the pavement and left footprints on the concrete.

He pulled off the boots and stuck them to the welcome mat in front of the door.  He walked in slowly, hoping to smell something cooking for dinner.  Prudence poked her head around the corner to be sure it was him.  “Don’t even start with me,” she yelled.  “You have no idea the kind of day I’ve had.”

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