The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek - Rhett McLaughlin Page 0,1
crowd for Leif and Alicia, his dad’s camcorder heavy in his backpack, the muggy August day hit its first sour note as Rex realized he’d forgotten to put on deodorant. He stuck his nose under the collar of his No Fear T-shirt to get a sense of exactly how dire things were.
It was awful. Almost horselike.
“Stop smelling yourself in public, sweetie,” Martha McClendon whispered. “People are staring.”
Rex pulled his nose out of his shirt. If his mom thought this was bad, she was going to hate his plans for the afternoon, which hinged entirely upon people doing just that: staring.
“Let’s see if we can find your father.” Rex’s mom led him through the masses gathered in the parking lot of the sole strip mall in Bleak Creek, North Carolina, pragmatically named the Shopping Center. It was home to a majority of the local economic powerhouses: Piggly Wiggly, C.B.’s Auto Parts, the Fish Fry, Thomble and Sons Hardware, Morris Coin Laundry, and the living testament to Bleak Creekians’ year-round appetite for celebrating Jesus’ birthday, Cate’s Christmas Cave.
Every few steps, Rex and his mom returned the customary polite smiles and heys doled out by familiar faces. His shoulders tensed up as they made small talk about the weather with Sheriff Lawson, whose mirrored aviators and perennial look of disapproval did nothing to stem the mounting feeling that maybe his dad’s camera should stay zipped in his backpack. There was still no sign of Leif or Alicia.
They arrived at a massive barbecue smoker resting in front of the laundry. In Bleak Creek, it didn’t take much to justify cooking a pig. Today’s excuse was a Second Baptist Church fundraiser to replace the copper pipes that had been stolen from the church’s organ (for the second time—it had happened just six years before, too). Everyone knew who had taken the pipes (Wendell Brown, again), and everyone knew why (to fund his cough syrup addiction), but in a way, people were appreciative, because it had been three weeks since the last “pig pickin’.”
Rex spotted his dad in his usual white shorts about ten feet from the barrel-shaped smoker, staring at the grillmaster Wayne Whitewood with a combination of awe and resentment. Whitewood and his mane of perfectly coiffed white hair were beloved in Bleak Creek for many reasons, one of which was his opening of the Whitewood School, a reform school for wayward youths, in 1979. The school was seen as the primary reason Bleak Creek had made it to 1992 unscathed by the “Devil music and crack pipes” that plagued the big cities. That alone would have cemented Whitewood’s status as a pillar of the community, but he was also considered to be one of the town’s premier pork gurus.
Rex’s dad had worked hard on his own barbecue stylings for the better part of a decade, but he’d never been bestowed that great honor, the highest a Bleak Creek man could receive: being asked to cook a pig for a town event.
“I think it’s because I’m a mortician,” he’d say. “People don’t like the idea of me touchin’ people then pigs.” Steve McClendon was the owner and operator of the McClendon-McClemmon Funeral Home, formerly known as the McClemmon Funeral Home. When Martha’s father, Mack McClemmon, died in 1984, Martha had convinced Steve to move the family back to her childhood hometown and try his hand at the funeral business. The result: a funeral home with a name few locals could correctly pronounce on the first try.
Today’s choice for chef was a no-brainer, as Wayne Whitewood was also Second Baptist’s organist, the player of the very instrument for which this entire event had been planned.
“We gotta get Whitewood his pipes back!” said Mary Hattaway, the secretary at Second Baptist, a thin woman with highlighted hair that spiked in the back, giving her an unintentional resemblance to Sonic the Hedgehog. She repeated her mantra as each new person arrived at the pay table, raising one bony fist in the air.
“Picking up any tips?” Rex said, attempting to break his father’s trance.
“Huh?” Steve said, recoiling as if Rex were a door-to-door salesman before realizing it was his son. “Oh, no, not really. I know most of these techniques already.”
“Right, of course,” Rex said. It was unclear what techniques his dad was referring to, as Whitewood was just sitting there reading the Bleak Creek Gazette while the grill did its thing.
“You ready to join us, honey?” Martha asked Steve. “You’re probably makin’ Mr. Whitewood nervous.”