Chain of Fools

The poor thing was so very dead.

She was Ms. Abigail Lawless, her real name. When she was alive, just recently, as it turns out, she used to always emphasize the trailing /z/ in "Ms." to fiercely emphasize that she wasn't married or, as she would point out, was no longer married.

She was the mayor's thorn in his side, serving as Chairwoman of the city council. She had her own office in City Hall, and it was common knowledge that the two didn't get along. Their screaming matches along the hardwood City Hall corridors were famous. They were once married. In fact, Ms. Lawless had left a string of men in her wake. Angry men. Bitter men. And she and the mayor now opposed each other politically, too, to make angry angrier and bitter bitterer. You can only imagine.

The forensics people called it, as a "tragic accident," but was it really? The brick that had smashed into her head had been pulverized to the point that you couldn't tell the brains from the clay. How does that even happen by accident?

As the paramedics hovered over her body, the mayor came off as particularly heartless. "Hrmmph," he exhaled in disgust. Won't miss her, he thought.

"No love lost here, eh, Mr. Mayor?" quipped one of the firemen.

"That was uncalled for," complained another.

"Whatever," huffed the mayor. "Anyone hungry?"

***

On a small Southern farm, a pimply, postpubescent, thin 16-year-old boy, Josiah, stared down at the anthill. Fire ants. No good for anyone. He thought he might run over the mound with his tractor, but that would just distribute them into a far-flung formic archepelago and more of his cows would be eaten alive.

He went back to his tractor to fetch the insecticide his dad had given him. Returning to the ant hill, he stepped deftly and quickly, able to withdraw his boot before any of the unsuspecting creatures even knew what had happened. His footprint was cast perfectly into the granulated series of tunnels and brood nurseries.

So, they all went crazy, on their seek-and-destroy for the bastard who stepped on their world. The boy laughed and fired the poison directly on the madding crowd of them. Then he simply walked away, oblivious to the one small venomous creature hanging on the cloth of his overall jeans.

He got back into his tractor and resumed his inspection of the pasture grounds. Vengeance on six-legs was able to run up one leg, both biting and stinging him, as they can do, provoking his frenzy of swatting and gyrations that saw him plow right into the barbed-wire fence. The wheels of the tractor continued spinning, rolling up the barbed wire until the tires went flat.

Meanwhile, Josiah had his overalls off and searched frantically for his attacker. He was too late, for all of the whirling and spinning had obviously crushed the little pecker. Justice served, Josiah thought. That's when he noticed a string of cows galavanting away through the downed fence.

They were headed to town like they had an appointment.

With his pants off, his tractor flat, and the cows following each other without any restraint, he was helpless to save the situation. He called his dad for help, and two of his brothers were sent into town to retrieve the escapees.

Ms. Lawless, very much alive at this point, sat in the Main Street Cafe sipping her tea, when she saw a herd of cows walking past. "My word," she exclaimed. "Those idiots have lost their cows again! Someone must stop them or they will trample the beds in front of City Hall! I worked so hard on those beds, not that anyone cares."

She ran out, oblivious to a bill unpaid, and hoped she could arrest the migration by simply stopping the lead cow. Herding cows was not unknown to her, as she had been raised a farm girl herself. They were moving slow enough, and she had no trouble stopping the leader with just a hand under the cow's chest (on what a butcher would one day call her brisket) and cooing to her.

Mission accomplished, she concluded, as the rest of the cows gathered into a tighter group of inert bovine assembly.

Mr. Dankworth, part owner and chef at the Main Street Cafe, looked up when he heard all of the mooing commotion just outside his front door. This is when he noticed his cafe was empty, especially of a particular tea-drinker, Ms. Lawless. It wasn't the first time.

"Dang!" he blurted. "She done hopped the ticket again!" Again, Ms. Lawless had sauntered out of the cafe without paying. He burst through the door and spotted her, all innocent-looking, too busy to pay, and soothing the beast she was with. She saw Mr. Dankworth coming and shushed him, lest he set the herd into a slow stampede. For she knew right where'd they be going — her prized beds.

"Hey, come back and pay for!" he shouted, whereupon the whole bunch of cows spooked and began following several new leaders on a new, somewhat far-flung migration. One section got pushed by themselves against a brick fence and, confused, tried to force themselves through it. It wobbled, for it had seen better days — before the rats, that is. More on that, later. Nevertheless, as the wall tipped and fell, several bricks tumbled onto Main Street.

Meanwhile, Jeb, Josiah's older brother, came hauling up the street in a trailor truck that could accommodate two cows at a time and, as was the conventional wisdom, you had to start somewhere.

Jeb's truck was heavy-duty, with two double pairs of tires on the back end to accommodate the one-ton-plus of a full load. With the help of Ms. Lawless and some other kindly folks, Jeb was able to corral the first two of them into his trailer. He drove off while his other brother, Jeremy, fastened loose, looped rope around the rest of their heads.

Ms. Lawless slapped a fiver into the hand of Mr. Dankworth. "Keep the change," she said with a scowl.

"Hrmmph," he said back, portending — spookily — a future sentiment of her very own death that soon would be forthcoming. In fact, Dankworth himself had many times wondered if she would one day piss off someone enough to do her in. Wouldn't miss her, he thought cruelly. And as he walked back up the steps to his cafe, the most evil fantasies crept into his head.

He, also, had once been married to her, and daily he had to suffer the indignity of serving her, since he now owned only 49% of the cafe, part of their settlement. He was by no means any type of philosopher, but he knew the only difference between a murderer and a murderer's mind was just a trigger-finger away. And, of course, ya gotta get caught.

Jeb was making his first return, his old trailer huffing, missing, and backfiring up Main Street. As would figure prominently in this cautionary tale, the space between one pair of the heavy rear tires rolled perfectly enough over one of the bricks from the cow-damaged brick wall. The brick lodged between them as perfectly as they had rolled over it to do it. As the tire continued to purchase circumference along Main Street, the brick became lodged deeper into the pair of tires' crevasse.

And so it went that Jeb went back and forth, two cows at a time, to complete the task of returning all of them home by the time his dad had repaired the barbed wire fence. (Barbed wire was much more dangerous to work with than it was complicated.)

When Jeremy had only two cows left, leaving Jeb with only one trip remaining, Ms. Lawless figured she could abdicate her duty. "Looks like I'm all done here." She turned to walk back to City Hall.

"Aren't ya gonna say 'bye?'" Jeremy asked.

"Said 'bye' to the lot of ya, a long time ago," she barked back without even turning.

"Hrmmph," said Jeb, himself having been married to her. "Wouldn't mind if I never saw her again," he whispered to his brother.

"Ain't that the truth," agreed Jeremy. "Glad she picked you instead of me, even after I won the coin flip an' ev'rything." Jeremy spied the back tires of the truck. "Say, you gotta brick wedged in 'tween those back tires. Want I should poke it out?" he asked.

"Nah," answered Jeb.

"Lemme try," Jeremy insisted. "It might be unbalancin' things and will wear the tires all wrong. They's expensive."

"Have at it," Jeb offered. Jeremy tried with his hands but knew immediately that wouldn't work. He fetched a stick to try to pry it out, but that failed after several tries.

"I know what'll work. Let's unflate one of them and the brick'll loosen up f'sure."

***

Tragic news travels fast in a town like this. The police chief sat across from the mayor at his large desk. "I may have been a fool to marry that horrible woman," the mayor said, "but I ain't no killer."

"Whoa, boy!" the chief said, "who's accusin'? It was an accident. My boys already determined that."

"Fuckin' A," said the mayor.

"Still, will you be missin' her?" the chief said, and they both laughed. "Look, it's just a formality, but you know I have to talk to everyone on the list."

"List? What list?"

"You know, the list. The list of suspects."

"Suspects! You said 'accidentally' was determined."

"Yea, but it's not official yet, not till I talk to everyone. And I have to ask the question exactly. Protocol."

"Go 'head, ask away."

"Did you brain Ms. Lawless?"

"Like I said, I may have been a fool to marry the bitch—"

"Hell, you're preaching to the choir, boy. I was fool enough to marry her, too. And mine lasted a month longer than yours."

"So, who's gonna ask you the question?"

"Don't be a wise-ass."

***

The police chief drove his patrol car along Main Street and then took the turn that retraced the very route Jeb and Jeremy had taken with their trailertruck. It wasn't long before he was at the very repair spot of the fence breach that had sent that bunch of cows into town.

"No, I didn't kill her," Jeb said sarcastically to the chief. "Wanted to, but didn't. I was fool enough to marry her, but I would never go murder no one."

"Not even her?"

"That's a trick question," Jeremy pointed out snarkily.

"What if you could get away with it?" the chief asked Jeb. "Y'know, just a little mental exercise there for ya."

"Exercise ain't supposed to be fun," Jeb said back.

"Lemme save you the trouble, Chief," their dad offered. "I didn't kill 'er, either."

The chief regarded the older man. "You weren't fool enough to marry her, too, was ya?" All four laughed out loud. "Oh, c'mon, really?"

***

Whodunit?

Who was really resposible for Ms. Lawless' head getting smashed in, killing her and stirring not-the-unhappiest of sensibilities in a string of men who were fool enough to marry her?

Was it the mayor? The police chief? Jeb or his dad? What about chrotcety ol' Dankworth at the cafe. To really know, one must reverse the reel, all the way back from the instant that brick beamed the old bat in her noggin, spilling her brains out on the hardwood floors of the second storey of City Hall.

In reverse:

10. The brick smashed into, squashed, and splattered Ms. Lawless' head.

9. The brick had flown through the window in a way that couldn't have been aimed more perfectly to hit her squarely in her forehead and with enough force to exact a ballistic and deadly effect.

8. "No way," Jeb had said to Jeremy when he offered to deflate a tire, allowing the brick to go round-and-round over and over until loosened enough to lose its vise-like embrace of, and between, the two heavy-duty spinning truck tires, reaching escape velocity into an ejection route that followed an arc of gravity that determined its path through the air.

7. The cows got loose, which is never a good thing for a farm.

6. Josiah had failed to maintain control of his tractor while trying to drop his overalls to stop the ruthless attack on his flesh.

5. The damned ants had suffered insult and injury to being disturbed by anyone or anything in their little rapacious toxic lives.

4. Again, it was Josiah in this labyrinthine sequence of events, who thought it would be so cool to step on the little bastards and watch them go frickin' nuts.

3. Josiah's dad had bitched about the ant piles in the pasture.

2. Two cows had gotten sepsis and died from countless bites and stings on their hides after laying down atop one of the red ant piles.

What was the original cause? The sine qua non of Ms. Lawless' brutal slaying?

True, if anything — anything at all — had been the slightest bit different, even in the smallest difference of time, place, or severity, Ms. Lawless would be alive today, as the bain of the string of men who were fool enough to marry her. She still would be having her daily tea without paying; still would be doing the council minutes in revisionist history that made her ex, the mayor, look stupid.

So, really, whodunit?

***

Solenopsis invicta?

Solenopsis invicta, the red, or "fire" ant, was most likely in the soil used as ballast in some cargo ships that docked in Mobile, Alabama, throughout the 193os.

It is rumored that this soil came from a farm in South America, belonging to one Pepe Suarez, who lost his legs to repeated episodes of fire ant bites since he suffered from diabetic neuropathy which desensitized his skin to pain. He was probably doomed to lose his legs anyway from the diabetes, since he weighed over 300 pounds and ate whatever he wanted, which was usually high in carbs and fat. And he smoked.

The ants merely had sped up his amputation timeline.

He was paid well for his dirt. And once the ships sailed, that was that. From Mobile, Alabama, with no natural enemies, Solenopsis invicta easily spread to Mississipi and then Arkansas, where they set up shop in Josiah's pasture.

***

Now lets spin the reel forward again:

From the farm of one Pepe Suarez, the ants migrated over the decades to Arkansas. Then t0 the farm belonging to Josiah, Jeb, Jeremy, and their dad, two of whom were fools to marry Ms. Lawless. The ants bit the cows. Two cows died. Josiah's dad sent Josiah out with poison to kill the ants. Josiah overreached by mucking with the ants by sinking a boot into their pile, resulting in at least one of the little shitheads crawling up his leg and biting and stinging the hell out of him. He squirmed and gyrated in his pain and agony while driving a tractor, lost control, and wrecked the fence, allowing the cows to run into town because Josiah's, Jeb's, and Jeremy's dad was too cheap to install cow grates on the perimeter of his property. The cows broke down the brick fence because all the mortar had been clawed out by rats who were sustained by a Ms. Porter (another "Ms!") who overfed the birds which attracted pigeons, whose droppings helped nourish those very rats. The brick fence was four feet high, the top, toppled bricks delivering just the right amount of ergs to cause one to tumble and land in the exact spot corresponding to a space between two back tires of a heavy-duty truck where the brick could lodge perfectly, and with continued rotation, torque out that sizeable brick into the air, through a window that a Ms. Lawless had just opened and looked out of, to see a large, rectangular clay-fired object fly right into her head. She fell and struggled to crawl out of her office into the hardwood hallway of City Hall.

1.

The prime suspect, #1 in the rogue's gallery of suspects in this tragic death, albeit designated an "accident," was Pepe Suarez, guilty of initiating the chain of events that passed from fool to fool and led to the untimely demise of one late Ms. Lawless, shrew and multiple-failed bride.

Or closer to home, ol' man Dankworth could have been a better sport about the free tea for Ms. Lawless and just let it go.

Yet, serendipity provides for a rock-solid statute of limitations, and Pepe never served a day of his entire life for his crime. And besides Ms. Lawless' murder (of sorts), you can also blame him every time you are fool enough to step into a fire ant pile.