Helena’s pursuit of Buddy gave Momma the vapors. “I raised you to know better!” she moaned from her shuttered bedroom, but her daughter was on a tear.

                She just “dropped by” Two Bucks wearing her brand-new pink camouflage outfit but fled when Buddy came out to greet her covered in blood and toting a fat hindquarter under one arm.

                She sent him an invitation to her next party but he didn’t know what RSVP meant and besides he figured it was a mistake so he threw it in the trash.

                She staked out the Pik N Pay grocery store for a month and finally ambushed him in the soap aisle. “Hi!” she chirped, acting surprised at the chance meeting for which she had so long and relentlessly lurked.

                “Oh, hey,” he said, grabbing a bar of Lava Soap and turning to leave, but she had foreseen his move and placed herself strategically to block his escape.

                “We didn’t get to talk, that day, there in Philip’s office, he’s such an ass, you absolutely must join me for coffee!”

                “Well, I dunno…” Buddy stammered, but Helena Handbasket on a mission was a force not to be denied. She latched on to his arm as soon as he got through the checkout line. Steering him out the automatic doors she force-walked him into the coffee shop next door.

                The sign showed a dachshund holding a coffee cup and the name of the place: Café Weené.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Helena’s lifelong sense of entitlement convinced her that her crush was not only reciprocated, but gave her exclusive ownership of her quarry.

                So the day she saw Buddy talking to Perra outside the Pik N Pay, she exploded into a jealous fit and headed home for her gun.

                “How dare she?” she steamed at Laura Mercy back at the Big House. “Everybody knows he’s mine!”

                Laura blinked. She hadn’t known, herself, until just now. “I’m sorry,” she said.

                “It’s not your fault,” raved Hel. “Don’t apologize! You’re always apologizing!”

                “I’m sorry,” Laura repeated, automatically.

                “That’s not funny!” Hel snapped.

                “Ohhh,” Laura sighed sympathetically but stopped short of another apology. Now there’s progress, she thought, maybe the self-help books are working.

                She followed her pistol-packing cousin as Helena grabbed the keys to Daddy’s Caddy.

TO BE CONTINUED…

As Buddy talked and Philip seethed, Helena in full Southern-lady-gone-to-town drag stormed through the door of her cousin’s office unannounced.  “Philip, you gotta do something about Daddy and his Fucking Floozy!” she announced.

                “Dammit, Hel!” Philip exploded. “This here is private bidness! Ain’t I already explained to you about attorney-client confidentiality?”

                “Piff piff,” Helena said breezily, brushing away his objections with a sweep of her hand, Revlon Tropical Typhoon colored nails flashing. “Who’s your friend?”

                “Client, Hel, he’s a client!” sputtered Philip. The idea that the likes of a Sattva might be friends with a Handbasket grated on his Southern elitist nerves. “Buddy Sattva, please forgive my impetuous cousin Helena Handbasket.” The introduction made no impact on Buddy, he barely glanced at Helena. Noticing only that he had lost Philip’s attention he waited patiently to continue his story.

                After such a grand entrance Helena assumed that the lack of focus detected by her man-radar indicated that Buddy simply wasn’t paying attention, so she moved to intersect his line of sight. Buddy politely turned his gaze to the window with its view of the First Baptist steeple.

                Helena was taken by surprise. No man ever turned his gaze away from her, especially not when she was wearing such a fetching summer frock with such a plunging neckline. She quickly checked her hair in the glass front of Philip’s lawbook cabinet… yep, still perfect, thanks to half a can of Extreme Hold for Humid Days hair spray.  

               She regarded Buddy warily. What was this feeling stealing through her heart? Could it be… love?

TO BE CONTINUED…

Helena Handbasket and Buddy Sattva first met at the law office of her cousin Philip.

                “Philip Handbasket, Philip A. Handbasket” he would specify when introducing himself, emphasizing the A and laughing at his own joke, fixing the other person with his steely gaze in such a way that one could hardly not join in laughing, carefully, just a little, just this once, laughing together over the odd name. After that, Mr. Handbasket was all business and any further jokes about his name would be met only with a dark look.

                Buddy was consulting Philip about his dispute with the county. Rather than press theft charges over the matter of a boxcar they weren’t even sure they owned, county officials chose a more provable charge and slapped him with a fine for Unpermitted Property Improvements.

                Although Philip A. Handbasket, Esq., preferred duck and merlot to deer and beer, the case appealed to his sense of justice. Besides, he’d take any case that offered a chance to screw over local government. He listened to Buddy coolly, but inside he burned with the grudge he held after his own spectacularly unsuccessful run for public office was derailed by rumors of his torrid affair with Perra Cabrona. As Buddy droned on Philip remembered how at the press conference he stood weeping righteous tears, with his arm around his lovely wife and accompanied by their 2.3 children, stiffly withdrawing from the race “to prevent any further scurrilious [sic] attacks on my family’s good name!”

                The cameras snapped, his family returned to their white-columned home, and Philip headed over to Perra’s singlewide for consolation.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Buddy’s lack of interest just fanned Hel’s fire to a frenzied fever of what she was sure must be True Love… why, she could hear the capital letters in her head! It must be True!

                The fact that there was one man so totally immune to her delicate charms drove her batshit crazy. His lack of desire for her made him seem the most desirable man on the planet – or at least, in that county.

                So of course she pursued him relentlessly, scandalous behavior which would have forced her Momma to take to her bed if Momma hadn’t already taken to her bed over her daughter’s most recently scandalous behavior – a matter involving Momma’s baby blue Thunderbird, two goats, and a stolen policeman’s cap.

                “But I’ve matured since then, Momma!” Hel stomped her foot. “I love him, really I do! And I know he loves me!” And if he doesn’t now he will, she thought slyly with the unquestioned self-confidence that can be built only by years of pampering and plenty of hair spray.

TO BE CONTINUED…

As men of good sense as well as good taste, most of the adult males in the county had both feared and desired Helena Handbasket ever since she “developed,” as her Mama so delicately put it. Men might ogle and drool, like hungry dogs watching the master grill a juicy steak, but to a man they feared Hel more than they feared Hell itself.

                Buddy Sattva was different.

                His alcoholic, abusive parents had raised him with a remarkable lack of self-esteem. Buddy never believed any girl would be interested in him, so pre-emptively he never developed any interest in females

                Helena’s sudden unsolicited interest in him not only astonished but bewildered him. As other men envied his womanly windfall, Buddy found himself reluctant to commit and holed up at Two Bucks.

                “I need my space,” he complained to a pal as they cut up a carcass, “and she don’t care much for deer processing.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

The very first hunter to haul in a freshly-shot deer to the Two Bucks Deer Cooler and Smokehouse argued that because of the name on the sign he should only have to pay $2, “two bucks”.

                Buddy laughed, then thoughtfully proposed “Okay, but you gottta gimme one of those back legs too, my choice.” That became his standard fee, $2 and a prime hind quarter.

                Those choice cuts were smoked into jerky which hunters bought to chew on while waiting for their deer to be butchered. Then Buddy got a license to sell beer and business really took off. He boasted that the deer processing always was a loss leader “just to bring the boys in so’s I kin sell’em beer and jerky.” The outdoor pool table showed up on its own, another midnight miracle., and it fit right in too.

                Two Bucks solved Buddy’s problems:

1. He had all the venison he could eat.
2. He had to stagger only a few yards to get to his own bed in his own doublewide.
3. Company came to him.

Hence, nirvana.

His old Ford Ranger rusted quietly beside the trailer, cranked up only on the odd occasion when Buddy made a run to the store for some luxury like soap.

                He wanted to let his hair and beard grow out but as he said, “Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned but Hel does.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Locals called Buddy’s place “The Temple” because, as one prominent church lady sniffed disapprovingly, “The name of Our Dear Brother Jesus is spoken there more often than at the First Baptist, even though it is always in vain!”

Buddy Sattva had attained nirvana as far as his personal cosmology was concerned.

                After his folks died and he dropped out of high school, he was left with only three problems:

1. He loved deer meat but was too lazy to hunt.
2. He loved beer but got too drunk to drive home.
3. He loved socializing or “shooting the shit” as he called it, but see #2.

So he started his own home-based business.

                First, he and his buddies moved an abandoned boxcar from the derelict railroad depot downtown to the property his parents had left him. This was not easy and required vast amounts of beer, nobody could remember how much, and as a result nobody could remember exactly how they’d accomplished it especially since it was done in the middle of the night.

                The boxcar fit right in next to Buddy’s doublewide. He equipped it with a walk-in cooler and a cutting table and hung up a sign with the silhouettes of two deer heads complete with six-point antlers over the name of his business: Two Bucks Deer Cooler and Smokehouse.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Helena Handbasket gritted her perfect teeth. That Soybean Queen dig hit home.

                Thick glossy black hair was all that Perra’s papa left her before he moved further north to pick apples. That crowning glory, along with the low-cut spangly red dress stitched by her mother, joined forces to unseat Helena from the annual Cotton Queen throne where she had ruled for a decade. Soybean Queen was like taking Second Place, or as Laura Mercy had so cruelly pointed out, First Loser.

                “Where’s Buddy? Is he in there?” Now that Perra had zinged her she prayed that Buddy really was in there so that she could shoot Perra with a clear conscience. Her fine sense of Southern morality allowed blood vengeance against a man-stealer, but did not allow her to shoot Perra in cold blood just because she hated the bitch’s guts.                

“Buddy Sattva has never been here,” Perra stated flatly. “Why don’t you check at the Temple?”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Still sporting that wicked smile, Helena jerked the wheel abruptly to make a hard left into the Squalor Holler Trailer Park. Perra Cabrona’s singlewide was all the way in the back. Daddy’s Caddy flung gravel as it screeched to a stop under the Spanish moss hanging from a lightning-blasted old oak.

                Helena leaped out, shrieking “Come outta there right now!” She brandished the pistol and fired a shot in the air. A clump of Spanish moss fluttered helplessly to the ground and lay like one dead. Laura Mercy allowed as how she believed she’d wait in the car.

                Perra opened the door of the trailer while pulling a brightly colored K-Mart kimono around herself and walked outside barefooted, blinking sleepily. She barely glanced at the pistol. “Wassup?” she yawned.

                “Where’s Buddy?” demanded Helena.

                Now Perra perked up and looked interested. “Why, I wouldn’t know, Missy,” she smiled slyly, “I wouldn’t have thought the Soybean Queen of Twenty-Eighteen would have any trouble finding a man.”

TO BE CONTINUED…