The Last Man Standing

And Sandra is refilling the glass in front of Bernadette from a pitcher of the sweet ice tea? I just painfully shook my head in bafflement and went back to enjoying our meal.

Gotta admit I love mutton, especially as skillfully prepared as this. It is some local pride, that our mutton has a different flavor as they graze across these Highfalutin' Mountains. Not force-fed that bland, factory manufactured crap used in the feedlots.

Meaty and fatty with an assortment of tender vegetables. It amazes me how the cook avoided overcooking the vegetables.

Each piece of carrot tasted like a carrot. Each piece of celery, turnip, snappeas, lima beans, tomato, a variety of garden greens, onions, even the potatoes. Each retaining their distinctive flavor and texture but still blending into perfect harmony.

The girls were chatting 'n stereo. That just gets me every time! Drove their teachers up the wall but separating them? You'da thought they were Siamese twins from their hysterical carryin'on when they'd be forced to part. Finally everyone just threw their hands up in the air and let'em be.

The pair were telling me how Mrs. Callahan was related to the Mayo clan. Having eaten many a time at the Mayo family table. I would happily admit that the Twin's Mother and Grandmothers were also terrific cooks. Mayhap it's genetic?

When they'd givena moment to interject, I expressed curiosity at how the cook got the vegetables tender but not overcooked. The two women looked at each other and grinned, then simultaneously leaned forward and whispered the secret.

Brown up some bones and shreds of the meat and fat with some aromatic vegetables and herbs and then boil'em down for a couple of days to make your stock. Strain off the juices with some wine or sherry or even a stout if you want. Bring that to a simmer, then add in the cubed mutton that had been seared brown. Cooking in the stock just until the meat is still pink inside.

Scoop out the meat from the juices and set aside. Then add in half of all your chosen veggies and bring up to a boil. When those get very soft, take a blender into the mixture and puree. Stir in some heavy cream.

Once it's a thick creamy soup, then add back in the meat cubes and the rest of the veggies and let it all simmer for half an hour or two, on low heat. Stirring frequently. That's how you create delicious.

I gave them a puzzled look, in a suspicious tone asked "Yahall left out the Pickled-Iasc Sauce...."

They looked shocked at my shrewd accusation.

"....Didn't yah?" I pressed.

Their eyes got so big and they sort of looked at one another with a mortified expression. Before shamefacedly nodding their heads in admission of their deliberate commission of an important omission. Then we all laughed at the attempted trickery.

It was the Twin's turn to look puzzled, intrigued they asked "How did you know Larry? About the secret ingredient."

I smugly retorted "How often have Ah been a guest to yah home? Ah didn't just sit around the kitchen gossiping. Ah was paying attention to yah Mama and Granny's cooking techniques."

"A man? Learning from women? Who'd have thought it possible!" They quipped at me. Again we were laughing, then with a mischievous tone, they continued.

"But it's a secret"

" known only to the Cistine Eireans!"

" So now you're going"

"to have to get yourself"

"a Saint Paddy's tattoo, boyo."

I snorted at that! Reverend Kendricks would have a conniption fit if I showed up sporting a Papist decoration. He'da be a chasing after me with a skinning knife in no time flat! That man has absolutely no sense of humor that'd I'd ever known of him.

"These here results are spectacular!" I muttered around a piece of carrot.

Each of us had seconds and then I went for a third bowl. Man, I was starved. I had deliberately avoided eating more then a small breakfast and for lunch a couple of power bars and a can of energy shake that Saturday afternoon before the confrontation.

I hadn't wanta risk taking a punch or kick to my stomach that could possibly cause me to aspirate.

Since the fight, with all the blows I'd taken to my face and body, all I wanted to have for the last couple of days have been blended frozen fruit smoothies.

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This mutton's cooked as tender as a baby's bottom. Slowly masticating, it only caused a small bit of jaw pain.

'Gahwd, this is sooo good! Ah'll just suffer on through in manly silence! These here ain't tears of pain. Nope. No way, Hosahy. These be tears of enjoyment at this delicious meal. That's mah claim and Ah'ma stickin' to it!'

Suddenly I noticed both of my dinner companions had stopped talking and were looking at me with expectant expressions. I tried to figure out what'd I miss? Taking a moment to take a swipe at the tears running down my cheeks with a wad of paper napkins, then dab at my chin.

Seeing the blank look on my face, they repeated themselves. I felt Sandra hovering over my shoulder, listening.

"Larry, is there anything you can tell One about what happened Saturday?"

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I sorta fibbed and replied (implied?) that I was told by Sheriff Edison not to talk about it until he'd had a chance to question everyone involved. Considering the damage done, that could take a coupla days or two or four more if I had to guess. Till Joe and company are all conscious again.

Instead I told the sisters about the threats to Janey and Aztec and how I had called Little Joe out on his bigoted smear campaign.

The ladies gushed how brave I was for publicly standing up to Worster's bullying.

I was thinking how bravery is good but strategic planning was smart. Remembering how I'd put together my trap for the goon squad.

It's useful having old war buddies in distant places. Richmond and I'd had each other's backs through more'n two years in Iraq and then nearly two more in Afghanistan. We both earned our Arrows and our Purple Hearts.

When I called him and explained my crisis, he came through to my rescue with a bunch of his friends.

And no damn way to trace them from two states over.

Ain't no blackfolk living around here. They're not at all welcomed. The Mexican croppers are barely tolerated just long enough to get the fruit harvested. Aztec has gotta be the only colored condoned in this pasty white enclave of dedicated rednecks.

First, most everybody was afraid of my Aunts who had adopted Aztec. Then Big Joe Worster, who I'd be guessing courted my Aunt Olive many years before, gave the redskin his protection through High School. At least as long as my adopted blood brother only chased the Mexican girls and women. And earned a notoriety for his quarterback sacks among the teams we played against.

A sports reporter, who'd overheard a couple of opposing players complaining to their coach, nicknamed him "The Snake". Turns out the Mexican women he was a'lovin' called him "Gran Serpiente".

He claims it was the best way for him to learn Spanish. As when he was brought north, Aztec had only spoken Nahuatl until he was adopted at age four.

Our High School Spanish teacher Mrs. Jones finally got it through her thick head that being born in Mexico, don't make him a Mexican.

Wouldn't want to em-bare-ass any Republican Presidents or Presidential nominees with the specifics of their actual birthplaces, now would we? But I've to been wonderin' why the RNC can't get their collective heads out of their oliphant anuses, long enough to find a viable sane AND business competent candidate. Who'd actually been born in this country?

And what the hell is wrong with Generals for POTUS? I mean the original Constitution was written with the Executive Branch of the Federal Government as a military dictatorship. With Franklin's Postal Service as the Secret Police. Too bad Gen. George Washington didn't live forever.

Generals for President again would encourage them to at least try winning all these fucking wars! I guess we just don't wanna risk spoiling the profit margins for the onepercenters by permitting actual victories.

Hell, I'd be ecstatic if we could resurrect Ulysses 'Unconditional Surrender" Grant and Tecumseh "Swath of Devastation" Sherman! That'd have all those separatist dixiecrat bigots shitting their panties! Why not General Curtis " Bomb'em into the Stone Age!" LeMay?

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Mrs. Jones got a hold of a couple of books in Nahuatl, probably from one of the Universities or the Bible Translation Institute. Tutoring Aztec in his native language, so now he's trilingual. Come to think of it, I guess she'd of had to learn it also?

I'd thought Deutsch or Cymric had some jawcracker words but when Aztec gets going in his native tongue? Listening to him leaves me feeling like I was trying to paddle a cardboard kayak up the Falling River!

Through High School, Aztec was straw boss on his adopted mothers' ranch. After graduation, while taking night business courses from the County College, he branched out to gain experience working in and then managing their other properties and investments.

By the time he'd inherited my Aunts' holdings, Aztec was a well-trained, shrewd and respected business man. The prosperity you see along Main and Forrest is to his credit and initiative.

He has worked tirelessly to prevent the deterioration and loss of small businesses and jobs common to too damn many small towns. Lacking in leadership courageous enough to stand up against the Big Boxes and the Wall Street carpetbaggers.

When our Savings & Loan was seized and forced to merge with a MultiBank. That (Not Who! Despite the malignant reactionaries subverting the Supreme Court.) immediately turned around and sold off all the value at firesale prices, heavily discounted to insiders.

It was Aztec who got the Non-Profit Credit Union started to replace it. Now we don't gotta go all the way to County Seat or the Capitol for our financial needs.

He be such a feature in our township, most everybody ignores that he has whitebread Janey for a girlfriend and that they'd been talking about marriage.

I know both party organizations have seriously been wooing him to run for some office or another. Those fucking wardheelers think they could use Aztec as their token colored puppet. I think they'd be in for a world of disappointment cause he don't take orders real well.

That's why Aztec didn't join up with me when I enlisted in the army. He don't suffer fools and God knows I ran into a plethora of them during my six years. Those bungling assholes kept trying to get me killed is why I didn't reenlist.

Yeah? Say what? I spent 2004 into 5 trapped in the asshole end of the Bohica as the result of institutionalized stupidity. When you'd'ave been there, then you can come back and criticize my choices in life.

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Aztec's admitted to me, more then once, he's had a hell of a lot more influence as a non-partisan independent. He enjoys keeping 'em guessing. Playing all the factions against one another to get the best deals for our community out of the crooks at County Seat and the State Capitol.

Six months ago, our County Chamber of Commerce launched a voter's initiative demanding that the obsolete and deteriorating Governor Hallister Memorial Bridge be replaced. Aztec enthusiastically threw his support behind the resolution.

All this public fervor was crucial in getting the State Legislators off their collective sorry lazy butts to pass a bill for a State Bond. Funding the surveying and planning needed to gain Federal Emergency Infrastructure Reconstruction funding.

Before that rusting eyesore right outside our town, comes crashing down into the Falling River. Ruining the whitewater rafting tourist season. Hey! The money those tourists spend here is a big chunk of change for our local economy.

Oh yeah, the minor detail of forcing a twenty-eight mile detour off'a State Highway 15 between the Turnpike and Railroad Junction. Which ever direction you were traveling. That's if acceptable substitutes are the one 'n half lane wide gravel/dirt rutted washboards the County laughingly refers to as roads.

Losing the bridge would pretty well kill our town and probably every other community along this section of the Fifteen.

That Bill for preliminary funding is actually what triggered the latest fracas between us and Worster.

Sooner or later, someone is going to publicly ask why this Bridge wasn't replaced ten or fifteen years ago? Then they will start looking for the special funding from the Capital Reserves that had been set aside specifically for that purpose eighteen years ago.

An honest investigation would uncover that the original seed money had been siphoned off by a non-partisan coalition of legislators and bureaucrats. All up and down the State and County food chain. With a good chunk of those moneys being diverted to the pockets of Big Joe and his cronies.

Little Joe must have some knowledge of how that went down. Probably remembers his father and buddies bragging about their own damn cleverness into their bourbon. So Little Joe tried to sabot the machinery of funding before his Daddy's 'Good' name is besmirched in memoriam.

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Junior's 'big' problem is that Big Joe and his network of 'Good Ol'Boys' are all dead or dying. And their influence peddling getting buried with them. Their State-wide machine sunk into senility as time remorselessly marches on.

Turns out the junior Worster never had the smarts to build a political power base of his own. His entourage of goons are the same useless gang of juveniles he had gathered around him in school. None of these fucktard's ever amounted to a hill of beans or accomplished anything more profound then helping Little Joe waste his inheritance.

Frustrated by his inability to influence events in the Capitol or County Seat, was when the asshole started a vicious whispering campaign against Aztec and Janey.

When all else fails, stir up the racist creepers to threaten violence. Hey, it works for Fox News and the Koch Brothers! Why not Little Joe?

I publicly confronted the little turd outside his office and got right into his face.

"If'n yahall too fuckin' chickenshit to tell Aztec to his face he's not wanted. How about tellin' meh! Instead yah're threatenin'a woman? How 'Big' of yahall!" I sneered.

His face went white with fear that he'd been caught out. As scared as he was of me, he was terrified of Aztec. Damned if I know why? As far as I know Aztec ain't even been in a fight since sixth grade when he and I had a knock-down with the Carson brothers.

We went on to become good friends with them through High School. Solidarity through sports!

Fucking shame the older brother, Chase died in Iraq. Morgan now is a State Police Captain working out of the County Seat Station.

Whatever. Must be why Worster went after what he saw as the easiest target. The safest and most divisive.

Maybe I should have allowed Aztec to thump the creep but I was mad as hell. That the little turd would be threatenin' any of my family's women. Even exes. Cause every time we all allow the creeps to slide, they just get bolder and more vicious.

Afterwards that original confrontation, a couple of different sympathizers anonymously phoned me. Kindly warning me that they'd been hearing trash talk at the bars the goons hang out at.

The next time Worster could catch me in private, he was bringing his posse to teach me 'respect'. All too typical ignorance, confusing 'fear' with 'respect'.

Once an idiot always an immature jerk. 'Respect' has to be earned to be deserved. None of us are born with it. You just gotta make the effort so that 'Respect' is your legacy when you die.

It ain't inherited. Five years after his death, people still respect Big Joe. For his accomplishments and yeah, I'll admit he had his. Anyone with a lick o'sense feared the muscle he brought to bear on those who crossed him. And yeah, I'm not too proud to admit that I was careful to never get on the big guy's shitlist.

Though that fear seems to be evaporating with time. The fourth generation of Worsters is just a pale shadow of the paternal line.

From what I hear, about the way he treats his sisters and his wife and girlfriends? I suspect Little Joe seems to have the attitude that him being born with a Worster penis is an automatic mastery of all he surveys.

Waking up in a hospital bed. In traction. Worster Junior will be discovering the rude reality that his Daddy's coattails are getting a tad bit frayed!

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I had noticed I was being clumsily tailed. By a guy I vaguely recognized as one of the drivers for Worster Propane Deliveries.

That's when I called my army buddy Richmond Porter. Between us, arranging the time and place for my version of teaching Worster and company a lesson from me and mine. A snap quiz on respecting their betters.

'Fraid this class of dullards has done flunked out!

Last Saturday morning, carelessly giving my shadow a chance to sidle up on me. I'd let him overhear my side of a fake phone conversation. With me loudly detailing that I'd be staying late at the truck posting shack for my family's lumberyard. Covering for the usual Closing Supervisor who would be out celebrating his parent's Pearl wedding anniversary.

I made sure everybody else had left early that Saturday. A coupla hours before the scheduled overnight security guards come on duty.

Giving Little Joe and his posse more then an hour when I'd definitely be all alone. Well, as alone as one can be with half a baseball team skulking in the dark. Eagerly awaiting their turn to come up to bat.

Man! That expression on Joe's face, when he'd realized he'd stuck his own neck into my trap...Funny as all hell! Just 'fore the lights be put out for Little Joe and his boy bunglers.

I think I was laughing maniacally as I got up and joined back into the festivities. Richmond dragged me off until I could catch my breath 'n calm down enough to stop kicking the comatose with my steel toed boots.

Finally, I limped over to my pickup and slumped onto the driver's side footstep while Richmond and his team ran back to where they'd hidden their cars and hightailed it out of the county and state.

If'n for any reason they get stopped along the way. Hey, they'red be colored men in big cars. Suspicious behavior right there. More'n enough due cause for a bit of police harassment.

Richmond and his boys had put back on their amateur league shirts and caps. As they were heading home from playing an extramural game at Capitol City University.

If questioned why they were taking the long way home. The drivers would say they'd made a wrong turn back at the cloverleaf where the 2 and the 106 crisscross and had gotten lost. To get back in the right direction they'd swung down to the 15 as that would run into the 111, which would take them straight home.

I waited a half 'n hour to give Richmond and buddies a decent chance to get away. Taking advantage of the dark to open my pants and pull out the protective cup out of the sleeve of my jockstrap and the web belt under my shirt with padding over the kidneys. As I buttoned back up, the timer switch I'd set for the lot lights, lite'em back on.

Made it easier for me to see that none of the goon squad was getting up without a lot of assistance. And that, sure as fuck, wasn't going to be me!

I stuck the armoured cup and web belt under the driver's side seat, retrieving the phone I had left there to keep it safe.

After the phone alarm app chimed, I went back to the fallen and gave 'em all some fresh bleeding. While running around the pile of injured to to get my breathing all riled up. Slapping my nose and a few cuts on my face 'n hands into bleeding some more.