Petunia's Revenge Part 2

Mathias Conway looked out the plate glass window of his convenience store and watched a lonely figure meander his way up the road. 

He squinted his eyes against the sun and took a long hard look. He could tell by the stride the walker had come a long way and wasn’t used to hoofing it. The man’s gait had a half-limp that shuffled from foot to foot as if he had sore feet or was a zombie.

Walking beside the man was small dog. Mathias correctly guessed it was a beagle. Every few feet the beagle’s nose would catch a scent and the dog would stop and take a sniff.

The walker looked familiar but Mathias couldn’t recall his name.

Mathias wasn’t a bright man. He was a good man, a great father, and a wonderful husband, but smart he was not. What  Mathias was though, was a mechanical genius – his skill at repairing automobiles was legendary and very close to being preternatural.

His service station was renowned and business was steady. Mathias prospered and shared his good fortune with his church and community.  

Life was good and Mathias Conway was on top of the world – at least he was until computers became standard in automobiles.

Computers confounded him. He had always been able to  diagnose a problem just by the sound of the engine and how it ran on the open road. Computers changed all that. A car with a computer was suddenly a strange and mysterious artifact that defied divination.

As more and more cars came with integrated computers  his business suffered until the steady stream of work that had blessed his garage dwindled to the occasional oil change.

Luckily he had his daughter Randi. What lumens Mathias lacked in his brain bulb Randi had and multiplied by factors of 1,000. She graduated WVU with honors and went on to the Osteopathic School down in Lewisburg.

Before leaving she convinced her father to add a convenience store to his garage. Randi  had Yancey Stubbs set Mathias up with a state of the art point-of-sale and inventory control system that was almost Mathias proof.

All Mathias had to do was point a scanner at the UPC code and computer would do the rest; it even gave correct change back to cash paying customers.

Mathias was happy. He had his convenience store to keep him feed and enough oil changes to keep him happy. Life was good again.

His newfound happiness lasted only a few years before it was interrupted by the death of his wife Mary and Mathias fell into a deep depression.

Randi again come to her father’s rescue. She recognized her father was depressed and did the only thing she could to bring light back into his life. She bought him a puppy.

Her father had special needs. He needed a dog that demanded attention, would cheer him up, and one that could watch out for him. The dog would have to be wicked smart but eager to please. She reasoned it needed to be a working dog and put her research skills to work identifying the perfect breed.

Randi settled on a  Portuguese Water Dog.

When Randi came home for Christmas she didn’t come alone. She brought with her a small, dark bundle of fur and attitude.

Caesar crossed the Rubicon and marched into Mathias’s life.

The puppy was aptly named. What little Caesar saw he was compelled to conquer. Stuffed animals lost their squeakers to his playful viciousness and no trashcan was safe from his pillaging ways. The puppy was hell on four paws and a delight to everyone who encountered him.

Mathias and Caesar quickly bonded. The dog, stubborn and strong willed as he was, wanted nothing more to please Mathias and make him happy.

The dog was smart and easily trained. He quickly learned proper potty habits and never stopped learning. He learned to open doors, and he learned to open the refrigerator.

Mathias often joked that Caesar was always the smartest person in the room and Randi secretly thought he might be right.

Randi watched in wonder one lazy summer afternoon as  Caesar nudge the refrigerator door open with a paw and quickly inserted his snout into the opening and fliped the door wide open. Randi expected carnage to follow but Caesar paused to appraise the refrigerator’s contents before selecting a smallish block of Wisconsin cheddar cheese and deftly plucking it from the shelf.

The dog turned and trotted back to the living room to eat his booty in leisure glancing at Randi on his way out of the kitchen.

“That dog is proud of himself.” She thought.

Fast forward to the present.  .

 Mathias stared at the man through his plate glass window and set his brain to remembering.  Synapses fired both right and left; chemicals flowed and long-term memory cells were activated.   Straining with the effort  of remembering he came dangerously close to having a stroke

A sharp “look at me” bark from Caesar broke his concentration.

He looked from the window to his dog.

While Mathias was deep in thought Caesar had retrieved an old Sports Illustrated magazine and dropped it at his master’s feet.

On the cover of the magazine were Patrick White and Steve Slaton. Just behind them.  Rich Rodriquez could be seen on the sidelines.

Mathias looked at the magazine and back to the man slowly making his way up the road. His gaze continued to shift from the magazine to the man and back again in disbelief.

Rich Rodriquez was headed straight for his store.

Mathias looked at his dog and said: “It’s Rich Rodriquez, Rich Rodriquez!”

Caesar growled at the mention of the name. 

Petunia's Revenge Part 1

There are vast stretches of West Virginia that are uninhabited with lonely country roads that wind lazily through the hills with no particular place to go and no hurry to get there.  You can drive miles before encountering another vehicle, especially at night.

Cell phone service is spotty at best. The signal fades in and out with the rise and fall of the blacktop  leaving the driver as isolated as the countryside.

Scattered throughout the vast loneliness like oases are small towns with wonderfully intriguing names like “Big Ugly”, “Left Hand”, and “Copperville Corners”. 

It was on one of these lonely country roads that Rich Rodriguez, the former head football coach of the West Virginia Mountaineers, drove on his way  to his parent’s home in Grant Town.

Picture this scene: Rich Rodriguez speeding along in his midlife crisis car, a blue Porsche Boxster, with his Mother’s beloved beagle Petunia snoozing in his lap after gorging herself on Slim Jim’s.

Rich had feed Petunia Slim Jim after Slim Jim until  she had  been  lulled to sleep by the comfortable fullness of her belly.

Now the beagle, who was small for her breed, was curled happily on his lap and snoring softly.

He had his share of Slim Jims too. He loved their spicy chewiness and how his teeth felt tearing through the tough outer skin he never bothered to peel off.

He loved Slim Jims so much he kept his glove box stuffed to capacity with them.  His wife believed he  picked up the Slim Jim habit when he gave up smoking as a substitute for cigarettes. The truth was he had always had a Slim Jim addiction. He missed smoking for sure, but what he really missed was smoking a cigarette and having a Slim Jim.

Another Slim Jim down the hatch, another wrapper out the window.

His midlife-crisis car was as neat as his office, as clean as a whistle on New Year’s Day, as he liked to tell his team and there was no way he would clutter his car with Slim Jim wrappers.

Rich used to feel guilty about littering, but once he decided there wasn’t anything so damn special about West Virginia he felt no compunction at all about using the countryside as his wastebasket.

He was late and needed to make up some time. Rich deftly reached over to the GPS device mounted on his console and instructed it  to find the shortest route available from his current location to Grant Town.

The GPS whirled and churned, seemed to pause and hesitate before telling him, in a proper British accent, to make left turn onto Old Coondog Road in 2.5 miles.

Rich obeyed the instructions coming from the device and turned onto the road.  Immediately the it narrowed down to one lane and began to climb.  His speed dropped steadily as the navigated the twisting road until it just as suddenly dropped him into a valley.

Coondog Road merged into Whitaker’s Road and widened to accommodate two vehicles.  Rich gunned the car and gained speed.

A quick check of his GPS device told him Grant Town was only 40 miles away.

Worried about time, Rich accelerated and drove like a mad man trying to outrun his sanity. He began to enjoy himself as he piloted his car through the steep “kiss your ass” curves – it was fun.

The Porsche, tires squealing, slewed through a hard right-hand turn, crossed the centerline and  speed into the next curve.

Just as he passed a sign that said “Copperville Corners 1 Mile” Petunia let out a loud, wet-sounding fart.

The fart wafted up from the sleeping beagle and broke upon Rich’s nose like a wave breaking against rocks.  He recoiled from the smell,  rolled down the window  and frantically waved the feted air out the window.

A deep rumbling came from Petunia’s belly. The chubby little beagle struggled to her feet and lifted her tail.

“Oh no, no, no girl don’t!” Rich pleaded.

Petunia raised her head and looked Rich in the eyes, her big brown orbs saying what she could not: “I’m very sorry for what I’m about to do.” She let out a little moan and her bowels ejected a liquid stream of diarrhea that filled the car's cockpit with excrement.

The coach let out a high-pitched scream more benefiting a pre-pubescent girl than a hardened college football coach and, overcome with the smell of Petunia’s exhaust, vomited his half-digested Slim Jims straight onto the console of his car.

Rodriquez fought to keep the Boxster on the road and wrestled the steering wheel as his eyes clouded with tears and hit the brakes. The little car did its best to stay on the road but it was too light and skidded sideways before finally coming to a stop in a ditch.

Rich wasted no time getting out of the car.

Petunia waddled to open door and barked but the man, as she thought of him, was busy vomiting and  would be no help to her. The little beagle summoned up her courage and leaped from the car’s seat to the ground. She wagged her tail in pride. The man was to busy being sick to notice.

After a few minutes the dry heaves subsided and Rich composed himself. He spent a few more minutes standing in the road trying to use his cell phone and  looking confused before he reached a decision.

Rich picked Petunia up and headed off towards Copperville Corners.