My friend, Bo, stopped by last night. He just wanted to bum a can of Coke off me.
Also he was hiding out from his mom, Pauletta Dean Ray and Bunny, his sister because of the wedding coming up and all.
He said, “Yeah, Bunny is finally gonna tie the knot.”
That’s one way of looking at it. To my mind she just finally ran poor old Windy Wilson to ground. Windy’s name was really Clifford Winston Wilson but I never knew him to be called anything but Windy. Windy wasn’t much of a talker so you’ll just have to figure out for yourself how he came by his callin’ name.
Bunny had almost made it to be married twice before, both times to the slippery Windy. But like Bo said “Bunny ain’t nothin’ if she ain’t persistent.”
The first time she had a run-a-way gig all planned, with her and Windy lined up to catch the Greyhound at the convenience store. The bus was due to pull in at 7:12 a.m. but as luck would have it at about ten after seven Windy’s stomach took to gripin’ and he had to run for the restroom in the gas station and they missed the bus. There wasn’t much sense in Bunny going without him so she just kept setting on the bench there by the gas pumps until he came out.
Bo said she forgave him, (Bunny has a foregivin’ nature) thinkin’ that he had most likely been lookin' at the pictures on the mechanical dispensary on the bathroom wall. Everyone in town knows about the dispensary at the gas station because it’s a uni-sex bathroom (that means everyone goes in there..old ladies, little kids, truckdrivers..) and the only public one in town.
Mabel Baxter who runs the store says that, other than its most obvious and most practical intent, the dispensary is a “monument of education to the young and an encouragement to the more mature.”
“Besides,” says Mabel, “It goes to show there is more to life than waitin’ on the Greyhound and fillin’ the ice machine every morning.”
The second time Bunny almost got married she had a big do planned at the Elk’s Lodge. Jimmy and Odetta Barnett was gonna play their guitar and base fiddle and Pete Gifford was practicin’ his mime act. Beulah Marshall was going to be there twistin’ balloons into freaky lookin’ animals for little kids while her daughter, Jeanine plastered washable tattoos all over their poor little hands and faces.
Everyone was lookin’ forward to it but then word went around town that the intended groom had got a letter from the state requirin’ him to make an appearance at the unemployment office that very day so they could evaluate him to see what kind of work might suit him. He had to go as he had missed two appointments and they were threatening to cut off his unemployment.
He did have good reasons for the missed appointments.
The first time his hound was in a bad way. He had to take it to the vet and come to find out it had a pop tab stuck in its windpipe. That hound chewed on the weirdest stuff. The second time he just forgot. It was the first of a whole string of the prettiest days you would ever want to see in this part of the country and he had forgot about the unemployment thing and gone off to the river with Bo to do some noodling.
Anyway, Bo said he didn’t think the state wanted to hear a third excuse and he thought Windy, havin’ a choice between getting’ married and lookin’ at possible job opportunities, most likely felt the time spent lookin’ for job opportunities was less stressful. Windy never holds up good under stress.
Bo left about nine. I hope he remembers to bring back the pop can.
