It was a pretty Tuesday, and Dwayne Jr., stoned as usual, was wearing his “Wasting Away in Margaritaville” T-shirt and taking a break from home. His wife was at work, and the kids were at school. He had walked up to the cemetery with a cold six-pack. He flopped down on his mother’s grave, lit a joint, and popped open a cold beer. He looked down across the town and sighed. Now that his mother was dead, the place was such a drag. Tot had always been fun. Mean as hell, but fun. Why did she have to go and die on him? Man, if he hadn’t married all those women and had all these kids, he would just take off, head to Key West, and join the other Parrot Heads down in old Margaritaville. He nodded to himself. Yeah, things would be great if he could just get to Key West. Sitting around on the beach, drinking all day. No wife, no ex-wives, no kids to bug him. Man…he might even get to meet Jimmy Buffett. How cool would that be? One day, he would do it, too. If he ever got his driver’s license back. Oh, hell, he might even hitchhike, if he had to. One day, he just might take off and never come back. Man, how cool would that be? He popped open another beer. “Yeah, just how damn cool would that be?”
After he left, Tot sighed and said to James, “Booze, the gift that just keeps on giving.”
“Yep,” sighed James.
—
IT WAS LATER MORNING when everybody up at Still Meadows heard the shrill sounds of ambulances and police sirens come screaming through town, then screeching to a halt. “What had happened?” they wondered. They could tell the ambulance had stopped somewhere in town, but where? Who was hurt? Who was sick?
Tot Whooten piped up. “I hope whoever is getting picked up and taken to the hospital knows how much it’s gonna cost them. When I got that needle-nose houndfish stuck in my leg down in Florida, they charged me over five thousand dollars for a six-block ride. I said, ‘Hell, I could have called a taxi and saved myself a fortune.’ After that, I told everybody, I said, ‘If you can get up and walk, do it, but whatever you do, don’t let them put you in a damn ambulance.’?”
—
SADLY, THE PERSON FOR WHOM the ambulance had been called, out at the Swensen house, had been unable to walk.
In any town, there are always some people who receive a lot of attention, and then there are those who live a quiet life without anyone even noticing.
Norvaleen Whittle had always been a little chubby, just enough to keep the boys away and keep her from being a majorette or a cheerleader.
Now thirty-seven, Norvaleen was a bookkeeper for several businesses in town and, thanks to the Internet, she was able to work at home. Her parents had left her a nice little two-bedroom, one-bath house that she seldom left anymore, except to shop for food or go to the drugstore. Which was fine with her. She had a Yorkshire terrier mix named Mitzi, who was good company and paper-trained.
Then one day, while she was shopping at Walmart, she suddenly noticed that when she walked, she was swaying from side to side like a great big ocean liner. It was the first time Norvaleen realized that she was a big, fat person. It had slowly crept up on her. Her feet were now too fat for her shoes, and she had not been able to wear her rings or watch for a long time. She should have noticed sooner.
The problem was that Norvaleen had been in denial and also in McDonald’s, eating the cheeseburger special with fries. Evidently, the Diet Coke had not evened out the calories. What a shock. She had hit the muumuu and flip-flop stage and hadn’t seen it coming. Oh, she knew she was a little chubby, but today at her checkup, Dr. Halling had informed her that she had gone way past chubby. According to the fat vs. muscle machine in his office, she had shot straight into obese and was teetering on morbid obesity. He made her an appointment with a diet clinic before she left.
As she drove home, she wondered what she had been thinking. What made her think she could eat like a teenager? That was the trouble. She hadn’t been thinking. She had been sitting in front of the television set for the past twenty-two years, eating snacks, and her life had become just one long snack from morning to night. And now she had to keep this appointment because if she didn’t, they would tell Dr. Halling.
—
THE DIET CLINIC WOMAN was extremely cheerful and encouraging. She told Norvaleen that there was a thin person inside her just waiting to jump out. But Norvaleen knew better. Inside her was a fat woman who didn’t have the energy to jump anywhere. Besides, what was the point? Nobody loved her. The one boy she’d loved had married someone else. Why do it? “Do it for yourself,” she’d said, but all Norvaleen had to look forward to was something good to eat, playing with Mitzi, and her television shows.
The diet clinic woman said, “Miss Whittle, you don’t have a problem with willpower; you are a food addict. You are as addicted to sugar and carbohydrates as a heroin addict is addicted to heroin. The only way to permanently lose the weight is to cut out both sugar and wheat completely.”
Okay. Suppose she did sign up for all the appointments, waste all that time and money, go through all that misery to lose weight, then what? She’d just be an unhappy skinny person with probably a lot of loose skin. The doctor had said that if she lost all that fat, she would add another good ten years onto her life.
Norvaleen thought about it, but if she couldn’t eat bread and ice cream, she wasn’t sure she wanted another ten years. She decided she would rather have dessert, and never went back to the clinic.
—
IT WAS A FRIDAY morning a few years later when, with great effort, Norvaleen hauled herself out of her car one leg at a time, caught her breath, and headed across the parking lot to the CVS Pharmacy. When she got close to the mall, she heard a lot of commotion coming from inside; people were screaming and falling down on the ground. Someone yelled, “Stop! Stop him!” She looked up just in time to see a man with a gun running out the glass door with the security guard right behind him. Norvaleen didn’t have much time to think. She just crossed her arms and stepped in front of him, blocking his path. He ran into her so hard that the gun popped out of his hand, and he fell. She quickly sat down on him and stayed there until the police came. And a good thing, too. As it turned out, the man had just robbed a Kay Jewelers.
People who witnessed it said that no matter how hard that man squirmed and wriggled underneath her, he couldn’t get up. The criminal would later claim the woman who had captured him weighed more than six hundred pounds, which wasn’t true, but it had taken three firemen and a bystander to pull Norvaleen up to her feet.
After all the excitement was over and the thief had been handcuffed and driven away, the policeman taking down her information suddenly looked up at her in surprise. “Norvaleen? Are you Norvaleen Whittle? We went to school together. Do you remember me? I’m Billy…Billy McMichael?”
She turned a strange color of pink. She remembered him. He was the boy she had been in love with.
—
THAT AFTERNOON, CATHY CALVERT interviewed her for the paper and wrote an article that appeared on the front page with the headline:
* * *
LOCAL WOMAN RESTRAINS THIEF AT MALL
* * *
Norvaleen didn’t tell Cathy, but she hadn’t restrained him on purpose. She just couldn’t get up. Someone with a phone had shot a video of her sitting on the man and posted it on YouTube. And of course, there were the usual jokes made by mean-spirited individuals, mostly teenage boys, but most people were impressed by her bravery. People said, “Maybe Norvaleen couldn’t give chase…but she sure as hell could stop one!”