Fannie and the Back Fence Gang 3
Weird Things Happen at the Back Fence.
Here is the third of five episodes of “Fannie and the Back Fence Gang,” the first story in my Short Reads collection. It’s public, so if you enjoy it, please share it with friends. And if you’d like to customize the newsletters you receive from me, you can do that here.
In previous episodes, radio talk show host Fannie Couch (Fannie’s Back Fence) is interviewing Pecan Springs mayor, Pauline Perkins. The mayor wants to encourage support for a planned development on Sycamore Creek. But Fannie’s first call—from a driver on his car phone who claims to have some kind of inside information about the project—is interrupted by an ear-splitting crash. Station master Henry notifies the sheriff’s office and learns that Sheriff Blackwell, a regular listener, believes that another vehicle sideswiped the caller and knocked him off the road. A deputy is on the way. Subsequent callers speculate on the vehicle that caused the crash is damaged and share stories about the gravel pit at the head of Sycamore Creek. Reading time for Episode 3: about 10 minutes.
As Henry cued the commercial, Pauline stood up. “Are we through for today. Fannie? The Lions Club asked me to drop in at their luncheon and tell them how we’re coming along with the termite treatment at City Hall.”
This story had become front page news in the Enterprise when it was learned that termites were eating the floor in the city council chambers. The Lions had volunteered to raise the money for the exterminator so that the council wouldn’t have to put the bite on the taxpayers. Pauline owed them a big one.
“I can handle it from here on out,” Fannie said. “Thanks for coming.” She reached under the counter and pulled out the gift she had gotten Pauline as a present for being on the show: a basket of lavender soap, lotion, and bath things from China Bayles’s Thyme & Seasons herb shop. Fannie was of the opinion that it was always good to give special guests a little something. You never know when you might want them to come back. Pauline sniffed the lavender, thanked her, and left.
Through the window, Fannie saw that Henry was at the mike in the control room, reading the news. Wondering if there was anything on the accident, she sat back down and put on her headset. Henry’s rich voice filled her ears.
“At the top of the news today, the Adams County Sheriff’s Office confirms a fatality in a one-car accident on Half-Mile Road, just below Lookout Corner. A man was killed when his late model sports car apparently missed a curve and plunged more than eighty feet down a steep embankment into Sycamore Creek. At the time of the accident, the driver of the car was on the telephone with Fannie Couch, KPST talk-show personality. Evidence in the conversation suggests the possible involvement of another vehicle. Sheriff’s deputies continue to investigate. The victim’s name is being withheld until his family can be notified. In other news, a White House spokesperson said that First Lady Hillary Clinton would convene another meeting of the Health Care Task Force to . . .”
Fannie sat back and waited for Henry to finish. It was chilling to think about the man who went over the cliff in his car at the very moment he was talking to her. But it wasn’t the first time something weird had happened on her show. A woman named Effie had once driven over from Dime Box (pop. 313) to introduce Fannie’s listeners to her dog Maxwell. Maxwell was brown with floppy ears and one blue and one brown eye. He could count. You’d hold up two fingers, and he’d bark twice. Three fingers and he’d bark three times, and so on. Maxwell could read, too, as Effie demonstrated by unrolling some paper on which she had printed the alphabet in large letters. When she said the word dog, Maxwell would put his paw on the letters D-O-G. When she said cat, he’d spell out C-A-T. He was learning more words, too, like beer and taco, although Effie said she wasn’t sure she wanted him to graduate to four-letter words.
And then there was the time a thirteen-year-old girl called in, half-hysterical, claiming that her friend had been kidnapped from the Dairy Queen parking lot by an armed man driving a black SUV. Fannie had fielded an hour’s worth of frantic questions from listeners until the police announced that the call had been a prank and they were going to have a serious discussion with the girl’s parents.
Or when that love-struck young man was wooing a waitress at Beans and phoned in a marriage proposal, and the waitress called back to say no. She was about to say a lot more than that—and not very complimentary, either—when Fannie toggled her off the air.
But what had happened this morning took the prize for weird, Fannie thought. She shivered as she remembered the ear-splitting crash and the caller’s words, ominous in retrospect: “I figure it’s high time we got all this out in public. I’m ready to tell you right here and now. People need to hear—”
Fannie shook her head. It was horrifying to think that she and her listeners had heard his very last words, and she wished fervently that he had lived to finish his sentence. She’d give a lot to hear what he was trying to say as his car went sailing over that cliff.
Henry signed off with the weather report—more hot and dry, no rain in the forecast except (of course) over in East Texas where they were still mopping up after Hurricane Hortense—and punched up the commercial. Fannie began her second hour the way she always did, with current goings-on in Pecan Springs, starting with the garden club’s bake sale and ending with a marimba recital at the First Evangelical Church. Then she announced that the sell-and-swap part of the program was now open, and the phone lines began to light up.
The first caller was from the Merchant’s Association secretary, predictably in favor of the new development and lobbying for annexation. The second was old Mrs. Caraway, who called in at least once a week and was staunchly anti-everything, especially growth. “Pecan Springs is perfect just the way it is,” she said. “Don’t change a thing.” The third caller had an antique hay rake to sell and two dozen laying hens that he’d like to trade for a good milk goat. The fourth, a regular on the show, had a racing go-kart for sale and was looking for a used electric stove.
The fifth was a new caller Fannie didn’t recognize, a woman with such a shrill soprano that she had to grab for the VU dial to turn her down before Henry had a heart attack.
“Fannie, my name is May Humphrey. I live on Alamo, next to the alley a half-block down from Fourth.”
“Glad to hear from you, May,” Fannie said, watching the needle and giving the dial one more twist. “What’s happening on Alamo these days? Did the city ever take the limb off that big cottonwood tree at the corner?” Struck by lightning one stormy night a few weeks before, the cottonwood had posed an impending peril to vehicles stopped for the light at Alamo and Fourth.
“Yes, the limb is gone, but they ought to take that whole tree out, if you ask me. Cottonwoods are bad about dropping a big branch or two every time the wind blows.” She took a breath. “But there’s something else happening right now. I was listening to your show and watering my lemon geranium here in the window and heard Charlie say that maybe if there was another car involved in that accident up on Half-Mile Road, it could be driving around with a lot of damage.” May paused, becoming confidential. “Well, I’m looking at a big white car with the front right fender all bashed in that’s pulled up in the alley not fifteen feet from my dining room window.”
“Hold on a sec, May,” Fannie said. “The sheriff didn’t say anything about what kind of car they’re looking for, or what color. They just said––”
May’s soprano became coloratura, decorated with trills and chirps of excitement. “I know that, Fannie, but what I’m telling you is that there’s a car out there and this man, the driver, is bending over the steering wheel and looking right through my window. At me, like on purpose. What is he— Oh, my goodness! Ooh!”
There was a loud thump and a long silence.
“May?” Fannie leaned toward the mike. “May,” she asked urgently. “Are you okay? What’s going on? May? May?” She caught her breath. May hadn’t fainted from excitement, had she? Should she tell Henry to call 9-l-l and have them send the EMS truck over to—
But no, nothing like that. May was back on the line. “Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I dropped the phone. I’m at the front window now, with the cord stretched out as far as it will go so I can see what that white car is doing.”
“What kind of car is it? Can you still see it?“
“Yes, I can,” May replied. “I don’t know anything about cars. It’s a big one, though. He got held up by traffic, so he’s just turning out of the alley onto Alamo. And now he’s— Watch that bicycle! Watch—! Oh, my stars!” May gasped.
“What?” Fannie asked breathlessly. “What’s happened?”
“He just missed little Bertie by a whisker! And he ran that red light!”
“Bertie?”
“Bertie Bracewell. On that new red bicycle his uncle got him for his eighth birthday last week. I told his mother it was too big for him, but she’s letting him ride it and look what almost happened.” She pulled in her breath. “I tell you, Fannie, it was eerie, watching that man! It was just like he heard what I was saying to you and decided he had to get away!”
“Which way did he go after he missed Bertie Bracewell?”
“The wisteria was in the way so I couldn’t see very well. But I think maybe he turned the corner and headed east on Fourth. Really, he ought to be arrested for running that red light.”
“So there is a damaged white car, driving east on Fourth,” Fannie said. She glanced through the window at Henry, who was pointing to the telephone receiver he held to his ear. “Henry is alerting the Pecan Springs police right now, May. If nothing else, maybe they can pull it over for running that red light. And thanks for calling. We need more people like you, keeping their eyes open to what’s happening around them.”
Thinking that maybe somebody on East Fourth would catch a glimpse of the car’s license plate, she toggled the phone switch eagerly. “Good afternoon, caller, you’re on the Back Fence. What’ve you got for us today?”
But it was only Olivia Blinken, over on Pecan Drive, looking for Mopsy, her Peke, who had wandered off (again) right after breakfast and hadn’t come home yet. Fannie had barely put out the word when Mrs. Mortimer (four blocks over on Walnut) called to say that Mopsy was on her back porch having a bite of lunch and Ms. Blinken could come and get him any time.
But he needed a bath in the worst way, Mrs. Mortimer added, and Ms. Blinken might want to stop at the grocery and buy a big box of baking soda and a couple of quarts of hydrogen peroxide. Somewhere in his travels, Mopsy had had a close encounter of the stinky kind.
With a skunk.
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