The Norphlet Mafia, Chapter 15 & 16, post 20

“Dang, Ears, Richard has come up with a great plan. That guy will be out of town just as soon as he wakes up—from passing out when he sees that goat head on his pillow. He’ll take off like a rocket for Little Rock, and we’ll be home free. And Ears, you are in this mess ’cause all the stuff you have already done is enough to lock you up for life!” Yeah, John Clayton was ready to go, and after he yelled all that at Ears, we were unanimous. “We’re going to the picture shows at the Ritz on Saturday, and Rabbit, my cousin, is always there. I’ll just call him and tell him when Uncle Catfish butchers a goat to bring the head all wrapped up when he comes to the Ritz next Saturday. Until then, let’s just stay out of sight.” Chapter 16 A Goat’s Head for Mr. Paul Well, I made a long-distance telephone call to my cousin Rabbit, who lives down in Huttig near the Ouachita River, and told him what we needed. And then after I told him about all the trouble we were in, Rabbit understood our problem and why we needed a goat’s head. Our Uncle Catfish lives right on the river in a little shack set up on stilts where the river water won’t get in it when it floods. There sure isn’t much to Catfish’s place, and when you visit you had better to be prepared to rough it. You know like sleep on the floor and eat cold, fried catfish every meal. Shoot, the place is just crawling with goats, and Catfish is always butchering one to sell. Well, the next day Rabbit called me back saying his Uncle Catfish had killed a goat last Friday, and the head was still lying there where he had butchered the goat. Did I want him to bring that goat’s head with him when he came to the Ritz on Saturday, or wait until Catfish butchered another goat? Well, we were getting desperate so I told him to bring it. Big mistake. That next Saturday, Daddy took me to downtown El Dorado, and as I walked up to the theater, I spotted Rabbit standing there by the ticket booth carrying a tow sack. “Hey, Richard, I got your goat head,” said Rabbit. Yeah, I was real surprised and happy, that is until Rabbit handed me the bag. It smelled. It smelled really bad. “Dang, Rabbit! This goat head smells to high heaven! How long has that goat been dead?” “Oh, just about a week, I think. Maybe longer.” “Well, I can’t go home with Daddy driving and a stinking goat head in the backseat.” “Yes, you can. I ain’t about to drag that stinking head back to Huttig. Some of the newspaper has come off is why it stinks. All you hafta do is pack some more paper around the head, and you won’t smell a thing.” And with that, Rabbit handed me the sack with the goat’s head in it and walked into the theater. Well, have you ever stood in front of a theater with folks coming up to buy tickets and when they walked by you they stuck up their noses, gave a good whiff, and then detoured around you in a big circle? You bet I was in a panic, but about that time John Clayton walked up and you might know the first thing he said was, “What’s that smell?” “It’s the goat head! The stupid goat has been dead for over a week and this is August. That’s why it smells. Listen, John Clayton, go find me some newspaper where we can pack it around this goat head. Rabbit said that’ll keep it from smelling.” “Okay, I’ll be right back.” Well, John Clayton finally made it back with an armload of old papers, and we spent the next 30 minutes packing newspapers around the smelly goat’s head. It helped, but not very much. “Dang, Richard, we can’t take this stinking sack into the theater.” “Naw, we can’t. Let’s hide it out back, and when Daddy comes to pick us up I’ll tell him we have a sack of old, musty funny books that’ll smell up the car and that we can’t put the sack in the backseat; we need to put it in the trunk.” So that was the plan, and even though Daddy caught a whiff of the stinking goat’s head, he just nodded when I asked him to put the sack in the trunk. We made it back to Norphlet, and I jumped out and grabbed the sack and took off before Daddy could check it out. Now we had our Mafia goat’s head and we were read to plant it. We met down at the breadbox that afternoon, and of course all the talk was about when to plant the goat’s head, and who was gonna do the planting. Well, you might know, since I had come up with the plan, I had to put the goat’s head on Mr. Paul’s pillow. Then as we talked and John Clayton mentioned how that goat head stunk, I thought of something. “Hey, when Mr. Paul was down at the City Café and Bubba served him the smelly possum for lunch, he nearly lost it, and I heard him tell Marshal Wing that he couldn’t stand to smell bad stuff, so the stinking goat’s head will be doing double duty. Grossing him out and smelling so bad like nothing you have smelled.” “Yeah, Richard,” said John Clayton. “Say why don’t we add some other smelly stuff, and really tick him off?” “Wait a minute, y’all. Don’t you think the goat’s head is enough?” said Ears. Well, my brain was just clicking when John Clayton said that, and I shook my head at Ears. Naw, Ears, that ain’t enough, not if we can really move this little trick up to a new level. I want to do enough to run him clear out of Arkansas. Say, John Clayton, what’s the worst- smelling thing you can think of?” “Humm… well I guess manure.” “Yeah, and what’s the worst-smelling manure?” “Chicken.” “Okay, now let’s think how we can put chicken manure and Mr. Paul together.” Well, I don’t know how it came up, but after I mentioned that our chicken house has plenty of manure, and when it’s fresh, it’s almost like liquid, that’s when John Clayton had a really good idea. “I’ve got it!” he yelled. “We’ll get a jar full of the softest, freshest chicken manure we can come up with and then we’ll add water until it’s mushy enough to squirt from a water pistol.” “That’s stupid, John Clayton,” said Ears. “A water pistol will only squirt about six feet, and he’ll see you.” “We’re not gonna squirt Mr. Paul, Ears. But we are gonna squirt everything he touches. You know just a little chicken manure will smell really bad, and when we squirt his car door handle, the door knob of his room, the gate he open to leave the house, and maybe pack some in the fresh air flow of his car, he’ll go crazy.” “John Clayton, you are a genius! The water pistol with soft chicken manure is perfect. That sorry private eye is as good as being back in Little Rock. Let’s go get everything ready.”