Friday, August 19, 2016

Part 7—Finally (Chautauqua 7 of 7)


(Author's Note: This is part 7 of a 7 part series. To read previous entries, please visit jonpenfold.com)

Chautauqua: A Story in Seven Parts

Inspired by Actual Events

Part 7—Finally

            Now, it’s a week after the Chautauqua Lake incident and my car reeks of something horrible. I have already popped the trunk, which felt like getting kicked in the face, and opened the lid to the cooler, which knocked me clear on my ass. Now, I’m staring at a small Styrofoam container sitting in the bottom. I should just throw the entire cooler out, but instead I decide to do something really stupid. I open the container. The contents inside have turned from worms and dirt into pure liquid. The stench is so powerful that it pushes me high into the air. Suddenly I’m flying backwards at an incredible speed, like a missile, which causes me to travel a vast distance in a short period of time. I luck out and come crashing back to Earth in a large body of water but I plunge far too deep and become disoriented in the darkness. I don’t know which way is up or which way is down. I’m going to drown, I think. But just as I’m about to breath in a mouthful of water, something begins to push me up.
            I gasp for air when I reach the surface and after a few seconds, realize that I’m not even in the water anymore. I look down to find that I’m on top of a giant head that it protruding from a long neck. Well, if it isn’t old Chauty, the Chautauqua Lake Sea monster. Who would have thought that he’d end up saving my life? And ever since that day I’ve never been able to smell awful things. The end.

            “Wait. Wait. Wait,” CC says. “That’s it? That’s the story?”
            “The way I remember it.”
            “So, let me see if I’ve got this right: you bought some worms, left them in your trunk, and a week later, your car smelled bad? And you decided to turn it into a two-hour long story?”
            “My business card does say ‘Storyteller’,” I say. “Didn’t you like my story?”
            “It was good until the end.”
            “What’s wrong with the end?”
            “Well, first of all,” CC says, “there are way too many holes. If you had a cooler in the trunk, how could Tommy be sleeping in it? And, in all the commotion of you guys fleeing the boat, why would you grab the container full of worms and put them in the cooler?”
            “Those are your main concerns?” I ask. “I just told a story that involved my flying a hundred miles through the air, landing in a lake, and being saved by a sea monster, and you’re worried about the logistics of a cooler?”
            “I just feel like the ending needs more. Like, what happened to all the characters?”
            “So you want a ‘where are they now’ ending?” I ask.
            “That would be nice,” CC says.
            “Okay. Here it is. Well, Suzy Q drove her last mile a few weeks later. The mechanic said it looked like a suicide but couldn’t say for sure. It could have been the smell that did her in or the cheap gas from the reservation; probably a combination of both. Tex went on to become an in-house rodeo clown for a major accounting firm in New York City. He also took third place in the 2007 National Yelling Competition. Tommy moved to Alaska, married into the Palin family, and now works fulltime as a Donald Trump impersonator. And as for me, well, you know where I am now, obviously, but for the rest of that summer, I traveled to every town in the southern tier of New York, searching for the Queen of the Dairy Queen. Never found her, though I did land a lucrative gig rescuing skunks out of the bottom of portable toilets; you know, because of my lack of smell and all…
            “I get it,” CC says. “But there’s one thing I never told you about me. In the summer of 2000, I went to stay with my Grandma in Upstate New York. I had a job at the local Dairy Queen, and one night these three guys show up asking for directions to Chautauqua Lake…”
            “No way. That was you?”
            CC smiles.
            “Now,” I say, “that’s how you end a story!”
            I crank the volume back up:

“♫ Like a Bat out of Hell,
I’ll be gone when the morning comes…♪♪”






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