Excerpt from "The Adventures of the Fattest Crimefighter in the World"
A SYNOPSIS
The gargantuan owner of a vintage bookstore decides to deal with his morbid curiosity about store patrons by hiring a homeless man to follow the folks and covertly record their lives. What begins as curiosity morphs into vigilante justice, as The Fatman and The Homeless Dude uncover the dark side of Hollywood. The Fatman, whose enormous girth is a death sentence, feels he has nothing to lose. And The Homeless Dude, an Academy Award winning director whose coke habit has left him on the streets, figures he has everything to fain: he will end up with a story, nay a saga, that will put him back on top in Hollywood.
On their first Adventures, they discover that a prominent Hollywood actor is beating his wife, so they broadcast footage of it at the Lakers Game, bribing a tech booth worker to replace the planned halftime John Wooden retrospective with the damning video while the famous actor, sitting his the front row seats with his entourage, looks on in horror.
All hell breaks loose.
As the Adventures intensify, our heroes become involved in everything from blackmail to homicide, and their post their footage on the world wide web. It is only a matter of time before the rich and powerful in Hollywood want them silenced—permanently.
And don’t forget to watch for MEXIFORNIA: THE BOARD GAME and THE POLITICALLY CORRECT POP-UP BOOK CONTEST & GIGANTIC BOBBLEHEAD DOLL COMPETITION, coming in the final chapters of The Adventures. .
CHAPTER ONE:
THE MAGIC DEFLECTING SUPERHERO SATIN CAPE
It all started in a stairwell. Around Christmastime. The Fatman was only a boy then, just eight years old, and he found it impossible to choose between the delights of watching his mother prepare the house for the holidays, OR listening to his father during those same late afternoons, sitting in the dark, dank basement with his buddies, planning their next hunting trip, and bragging about what game they’d bagged the weekend before.
His mother’s decorating and baking for the holidays started the very day after Thanksgiving, and continued straight through the holidays, including a swoop to the After Christmas Sales. She would start right in on one of her festive holiday chores every day in the late afternoon, as soon as she came back from her Monday through Friday job of running the library, or from her Saturday-Sunday job of doing volunteer work at the Red Cross.
Eavesdropping on his father’s fishing and hunting trips was something that the Fatman did when he could, but that happened only a couple of nights a week. It was the bustling of the Christmas preparations that captivated him the most: helping his mother unwrap the nativity scene that had been handed down through the generations, festooning the mantle and the stair banister with greenery and red ribbons, decorating the tree, and most wonderful of all, helping his mother with that delectable holiday baking. He would lurk and linger in the kitchen, inhaling all those delicious cooking smells that made you want to die of happiness, they were so reassuringly fragrant.
Oh, by the way—the Fatman was not particularly fat, then. In fact, as a boy, he was a bit on the lanky side. But even as a kid, the Fatman was something of a loner, probably because he had found all the friends he needed living between the covers of the books…those glorious, mystic storybooks that were stacked to the ceiling of his father’s study! And these heroes—these do-gooders, these warriors, these exemplars, these knights in shining armor, these paladins, these devah, these di minores, these Davids, these Samsons, these Davids, these devah, these Chutzpaniks, these conquistadores, these Ubermensches, these Oberons, these Ulysees, these Gamgees—this pantheon of paragons, these creations, these companions, all made the other kids in the neighborhood seem like shabby company by comparison.
Except for Toby W. Smith, who was more impressive than all the other boys because:
1.) He had a name that sounded important, like an adult’s, the “W” with the period after it somehow more impressive than a regular middle name.
2.) He proffered pictures of naked ladies for a nickel or for certain food treats. (The books in the Fatman’s father’s study did not contain any pictures of naked ladies.)
AND
3.) Toby W. Smith had once swallowed a frog whole on a dare. And all the time after that, he would hop about sometimes for no reason, an aberrant bit of behavior that all the kids were sure was a result of the frog which, rumor had it, didn’t die once you ate it, because you were breathing for it and it subsisted off of the food you ate, especially the spiders and gollywhoppers that Toby would also eat on a dare, or for a nickel.
If these aren't convincing enough reasons for you to want to hang out with Toby W. Smith, and for bestowing upon him the coveted title of “best friend,” well then I just don’t know what.
Toby and the Fatman’s favorite sport was to do things they weren't supposed to do, for they had discussed it many times and it was clear to them that this was precisely what all the heroes they worshiped started off doing: right before they were offered the chance to do something heroic, they did something forbidden. For Toby and the Fatman, both of whom just knew they were going to be heroes, this seemed like the time-honored and time-tested way to start. So you can see that right off, when they did that which was not allowed, it wasn’t, for them, just a matter of kids will be kids. Rather, it was all part of a much grander scheme to be knighted or crowned or honored or granted immortality or to die tragically young or something like that, such being the various fates of various heroes that Toby and that Fatman had studied assiduously.
It was this philosophy—one born of “Fire in their Bellies”, that gave Toby W. Smith and the Fatman the courage to do something that they both knew would get them about a thousand
lashes each with the Cat-O-Nine Tails while lashed to the mast of their pirate ship. (Or, more specifically, get them a dozen lashes with their dads’ belts in the woodshed. But somehow the thought of the punishment seemed less terrifying if the setting were more, well, heroic. Hence they imagined the ship, and not the shed.)
Toby and the Fatman would look at each other and give each other the secret signal and ultra-secret handshake, which they were to share with no other living soul. Unless one of them were to die in battle, in which case the survivor could share it with one other living soul. That living soul was to be a close personal soul mate of the deceased—and to be chosen by the deceased—but to be chosen, of course, before he was deceased.
Toby’s choice was his older brother Walter, who was studying to be a magician. Toby’s father, who was a doctor, disapproved—of Toby’s brother being a magician that is, not of Toby’s choice to pass the handshake on to him in the event of Toby’s death. Oh, and the Fatman’s choice for whom to pass the handshake on to, in the event of the Fatman’s untimely demise, was Luke SkyWalker, whom the Fatman believed to be an actual living breathing person.
So after giving each other the secret signal and ultra-secret handshake, Toby and the Fatman first made absolutely sure that the Fatman’s dad was at work and his mom at the library. The Fatman and Toby would even call both of the Fatman’s parents, with some contrived question, to make sure both grown-ups were safely enmeshed in their adult responsibilities of earning a living…
…Then, they would sneak down to the Fatman’s basement and open the trunk, for it was in this trunk that the Superhero raiments were stored.
And under the shredding wedding dress and crumbling bridal bouquet and photo albums from his mom’s youth, and from his dad’s youth, and old political buttons all living together in the same box (no small accomplishment, as the Fatman’s father’s folks had been Republicans, and the Fatman’s mom’s people Democrats), and under an ancient teddy bear and more clothes—dresses that his mother had worn before the addition of “Mrs.” to her name: fancy prom dresses cotillion frocks and theatrical costumes and old Halloween get-ups—amidst all these treasures were hidden the Superhero uniforms.
Oh, to be sure, they were not originally intended to outfit superheroes, but these shiny satins, which were spectacular when caught by the sunlight—these satins of good-guy white and Knights-of-the-Roundtable purple, Superman blues and reds, and able-to-swim-under-water-without-ever-even-coming-up-for-air aquas and greens, these fly-into-the-sun-which-is-this-Superhero’s-powersource oranges and golds…all these secret lengths of satin which you could drape and cape and swath around your body and over your face like a mask to hide your mortal, dreary, daytime identity…these hidden treasures made the best Superhero costumes in the world. Toby and the Fatman would play for hours, imagining that they were slaying all kinds of enemies and vanquishing all kinds of evil, until a half hour before the folks came home, when they would put everything back in the trunk, just the way they’d found it, even the dust, and then return to their drab existences of liver and Brussels sprouts, homework, and one hour of TV before lights out.
(Oh—important point: the Fatman was not only not fat as a boy, he was also not unhappy as a boy, for he was given everything and hardly felt at all deprived. Which is odd, if you think about it, because most kids mostly want everything in the world.
But no, he hardly felt deprived at all in life.
So you may well ask, what lack was it then that led him to compensate by stuffing his face until he reached his adult weight of—of—well, the Fatman made me promise never to actually divulge his actual weight. Anyway, stay tuned, and you will understand what led him to stuffing himself with the frantic and maniacal energy of a taxidermist on cocaine.)
Oh, wait. There was one thing that made the Fatman, as a slim boy, feel a bit deprived. Left out, if you will. And that was the fact that his father, his dear old dad, whom the Fatman admired inestimably (closest thing to a real hero that the Fatman had ever known in real life), never took his son along on his hunting trips. Oh, they went fishing together, and to baseball games and to the city for supplies and on assorted errands, but his father would never take him hunting. The Fatman could not help but feel left out. He was sure, just sure, that there were all kinds of Superhero skills he could learn, if only he would be allowed to go along on the stalking hunt…if only to be quiet and watch… .and just take it all in.
But the Fatman’s ninth birthday came and went, and still he was not taken along on his father’s hunting trips. Which really did start to rankle him, because by the age of nine, most of his other friends were allowed to go hunting with their dads. Perfect example: his best buddy Toby W. Smith, who was kind enough to finesse an invitation for his pal, the Fatman.
Still, hunting with Toby and his dad, for squirrels and crow, rabbit and possum, well it just wasn’t the same. The fact that the Fatman’s father wouldn’t take his own son along, who was nine now and practically a man, reminded the Fatman that in the eyes of the world, he was still a child. The Fatman didn’t like being reminded of that. He had never read about a single Superhero who was a child. In fact, he hardly knew much at all about the childhood of any of his favorite Superheroes. They were all pretty much shrouded in mystery.
All of this sense of mystery and deprivation and feeling left out and too small and generally being underestimated was what led the Fatman to cook up the most audacious of all his schemes to date, and needless to say, Toby W. Smith was to be in on it.
Alright, fine. If the adults didn’t think that the Fatman was old enough to go hunting and receive the ritual of blood on the face from the first kill, and do his part in stocking the basement freezer for the winter, well the Fatman would just secretly follow his father on one of his hunting trips, unbidden and uninvited. Toby thought it a marvelous idea, and announced that in honor of the audacity involved, they should wear the Superhero satins on their big adventure.
It would be painfully easy to pull off, too. All they’d have to do was hide under the clutter and canvas in the truck bed. Then, when the hunters got into the deep woods and stopped to do whatever it was hunters did to prepare for hunting, Toby W. Smith and the Fatman would leap out of the truck bed quiet as ninja warriors, hightail it into the woods, and follow the hunters at a safe distance.
Just to be sure that they had the time and opportunity to do all of this, Toby took along his slingshot, with plans to create a distraction when the truck stopped.
(Oh oh oh, Toby W. Smith was aces on a slingshot. He could take out a person’s eye at five hundred feet. No, he’d never actually taken someone’s eye out at five hundred feet. But once, Reginald Joiner and Newt Dabit and Rusty Winkler had stolen a mannequin from Miss Marzipan’s Dress Shop when Miss M., whose real name was Bertha, was in the back with a lady’s hat salesman with the door locked. A bunch of the guys took the mannequin, still dressed in its Jackie O. pink Chanel suit, {which is what the cursive sign called it,} and they toted the mannequin, still wearing its matching pink pillbox hat, out to a field on Handlebar Road, where they’d set it up in Beau Tittle’s rusted out Rambler, and let Toby have at it with his slingshot. There was some milk money on these games, let me tell you. Newt had even taken a little plastic pouch, with some pig blood in it, and taped it right over Jackie O’s left eyeball, so that if Toby could make his boast, about hitting the pupil from five hundred feet, well, it would be even that much cooler to watch.)
And let me tell you something, it was spectacular. True to his boast, Toby hit poor Jackie first: right in the eyeball! But it was the right eyeball, so no splattering of pig blood yet. Then, Toby took aim at Jackie O’s finger, which broke off and it turned into a tiny airborne missile when Toby’s rock hit it just right. Then another rock hit her ear, then one bull’s-eyed her tittie, saving the little packet of pig’s blood right under her left eye for the very last, creating a dazzling splatter of real blood all over Jackie’s pink Chanel suit, when Toby hit it amidst the cheers and admiring shrieks of his compadres. Jackie’s frozen smile never left her face the entire time.
It had been a magnificent afternoon, as guys’ afternoons go. So no, Toby W. Smith had never actually shot out a person’s eye, but now the whole gang knew that he sure could do it if he wanted to, so this made kids respect him even more.
In fact the whole business with the Jackie mannequin and the splattering blood gave Newt Dabit, the wildest one in the gang, a diabolically wonderful idea: he made sure that his folks could hear him coming home, the whole gang making lots of noise, whooping and hollering as they made their way home at sunset on the dusty side streets. Then, Toby raised his slingshot and Newt pretended to be hit; he grabbed at his eyeball and splattered another baglet of the pig’s blood all over his face and clothes, and his mother screamed and had spasms all over the front porch and then she and his dad ran to him.
Newt, he just bust out laughing and laughing, and it didn’t even hurt, he informed Toby and the Fatman later, when his dad took him into the woodshed and let him have it good. Even as he was being swatted, it was all Newt could do to not bust out, howling with laughter again. See, kids took it in the woodshed a lot more back then, and if you were any kind of tough kid, it didn’t get to you nearly as much as you might think nowadays. I mean, at least a kid knew that his dad cared enough to take a whack at him.
But anyway, so now you know about how everybody knew that Toby was a crack shot. His plan was, (to return to the Audacious Scheme concocted between Toby W. Smith and the Fatman), Toby’s plan was that they should sneak along in the truck bed and keep hidden under the tarp all the way from the house into the deep woods. Then, when the truck stopped in the middle of the forest, Toby would shoot a rock into some distant tree, and there would be the usual ruckus of birds taking flight and wild things commenting on the disruption, and then the hunters in the truck would check that out, or be distracted or whatever. Sounds like a plan… .
So on the Friday that the Fatman’s dad and his cronies were going out to hunt, Toby met the Fatman after dinner, just when the sun was setting. They hastily dressed in their Superhero satins, and then they hid in the truck bed. The Fatman’s mom thought that he was spending the night at a friend’s house, so he wouldn’t be missed.
Sure enough, Toby and the Fatman made not a sound as they hid under the tarp. They grinned at each other as the truck started up, and only winced and giggled a few times as they jostled along on a road that got increasingly bumpy as they headed from their tiny town into the rolling countryside.
By the time they got to where they were going, the night was black as tar, and, well, all Toby and the Fatman knew for sure was that they were in the belly of the forest, alrightie. The woods were very dark, and very deep. Though neither of the two superheroes-in-training would admit it to each other, it was all pretty scary.
It was even more frightening still when their perfect plan—to pull out the slingshot, create a distraction, leap from the truck, follow the hunters, etcetera—didn’t even have a chance to get started. What happened when the truck stopped, and Toby and the Fatman popped their heads up from under the tarp, was that there was a distraction alright. But not one created by Toby’s slingshot.
What happened was another truck, this one a battered up red rusty truck, screeched up next to the Fatman’s dad’s truck. But the Fatman’s father and his cronies were obviously expecting this red truck, and showed no surprise when it came screeching up, rather THEN began the enthusiasm of the hunt, the zeal for the kill. It was already well underway, and the men, who, to the Fatman’s astonishment were wearing his Superhero satins (for the Fatman had come to think of them as his own), these men wasted no time in dragging Toby W. Smith’s brother and father out of the back of the red truck, where they had been bound and gagged, and the hunters all proceeded to string them up from a high tree, but not before calling them all kinds of names, mostly variations on “nigger,” and also not before castrating both of them.
All of this as Toby W. Smith looked on, mute, still clutching the little slingshot in his hand—but, it appeared to the Fatman, quite paralyzed, unable to fire or fight back.
Toby W. Smith never spoke another word after that night. And three years later, on Christmas Eve, Toby went into the outhouse in his backyard, and blew his brains out.
Here ends the Sneak Preview for “The Adventures of The Fattest Crimefighter in the World.”
The gargantuan owner of a vintage bookstore decides to deal with his morbid curiosity about store patrons by hiring a homeless man to follow the folks and covertly record their lives. What begins as curiosity morphs into vigilante justice, as The Fatman and The Homeless Dude uncover the dark side of Hollywood. The Fatman, whose enormous girth is a death sentence, feels he has nothing to lose. And The Homeless Dude, an Academy Award winning director whose coke habit has left him on the streets, figures he has everything to fain: he will end up with a story, nay a saga, that will put him back on top in Hollywood.
On their first Adventures, they discover that a prominent Hollywood actor is beating his wife, so they broadcast footage of it at the Lakers Game, bribing a tech booth worker to replace the planned halftime John Wooden retrospective with the damning video while the famous actor, sitting his the front row seats with his entourage, looks on in horror.
All hell breaks loose.
As the Adventures intensify, our heroes become involved in everything from blackmail to homicide, and their post their footage on the world wide web. It is only a matter of time before the rich and powerful in Hollywood want them silenced—permanently.
And don’t forget to watch for MEXIFORNIA: THE BOARD GAME and THE POLITICALLY CORRECT POP-UP BOOK CONTEST & GIGANTIC BOBBLEHEAD DOLL COMPETITION, coming in the final chapters of The Adventures. .
CHAPTER ONE:
THE MAGIC DEFLECTING SUPERHERO SATIN CAPE
It all started in a stairwell. Around Christmastime. The Fatman was only a boy then, just eight years old, and he found it impossible to choose between the delights of watching his mother prepare the house for the holidays, OR listening to his father during those same late afternoons, sitting in the dark, dank basement with his buddies, planning their next hunting trip, and bragging about what game they’d bagged the weekend before.
His mother’s decorating and baking for the holidays started the very day after Thanksgiving, and continued straight through the holidays, including a swoop to the After Christmas Sales. She would start right in on one of her festive holiday chores every day in the late afternoon, as soon as she came back from her Monday through Friday job of running the library, or from her Saturday-Sunday job of doing volunteer work at the Red Cross.
Eavesdropping on his father’s fishing and hunting trips was something that the Fatman did when he could, but that happened only a couple of nights a week. It was the bustling of the Christmas preparations that captivated him the most: helping his mother unwrap the nativity scene that had been handed down through the generations, festooning the mantle and the stair banister with greenery and red ribbons, decorating the tree, and most wonderful of all, helping his mother with that delectable holiday baking. He would lurk and linger in the kitchen, inhaling all those delicious cooking smells that made you want to die of happiness, they were so reassuringly fragrant.
Oh, by the way—the Fatman was not particularly fat, then. In fact, as a boy, he was a bit on the lanky side. But even as a kid, the Fatman was something of a loner, probably because he had found all the friends he needed living between the covers of the books…those glorious, mystic storybooks that were stacked to the ceiling of his father’s study! And these heroes—these do-gooders, these warriors, these exemplars, these knights in shining armor, these paladins, these devah, these di minores, these Davids, these Samsons, these Davids, these devah, these Chutzpaniks, these conquistadores, these Ubermensches, these Oberons, these Ulysees, these Gamgees—this pantheon of paragons, these creations, these companions, all made the other kids in the neighborhood seem like shabby company by comparison.
Except for Toby W. Smith, who was more impressive than all the other boys because:
1.) He had a name that sounded important, like an adult’s, the “W” with the period after it somehow more impressive than a regular middle name.
2.) He proffered pictures of naked ladies for a nickel or for certain food treats. (The books in the Fatman’s father’s study did not contain any pictures of naked ladies.)
AND
3.) Toby W. Smith had once swallowed a frog whole on a dare. And all the time after that, he would hop about sometimes for no reason, an aberrant bit of behavior that all the kids were sure was a result of the frog which, rumor had it, didn’t die once you ate it, because you were breathing for it and it subsisted off of the food you ate, especially the spiders and gollywhoppers that Toby would also eat on a dare, or for a nickel.
If these aren't convincing enough reasons for you to want to hang out with Toby W. Smith, and for bestowing upon him the coveted title of “best friend,” well then I just don’t know what.
Toby and the Fatman’s favorite sport was to do things they weren't supposed to do, for they had discussed it many times and it was clear to them that this was precisely what all the heroes they worshiped started off doing: right before they were offered the chance to do something heroic, they did something forbidden. For Toby and the Fatman, both of whom just knew they were going to be heroes, this seemed like the time-honored and time-tested way to start. So you can see that right off, when they did that which was not allowed, it wasn’t, for them, just a matter of kids will be kids. Rather, it was all part of a much grander scheme to be knighted or crowned or honored or granted immortality or to die tragically young or something like that, such being the various fates of various heroes that Toby and that Fatman had studied assiduously.
It was this philosophy—one born of “Fire in their Bellies”, that gave Toby W. Smith and the Fatman the courage to do something that they both knew would get them about a thousand
lashes each with the Cat-O-Nine Tails while lashed to the mast of their pirate ship. (Or, more specifically, get them a dozen lashes with their dads’ belts in the woodshed. But somehow the thought of the punishment seemed less terrifying if the setting were more, well, heroic. Hence they imagined the ship, and not the shed.)
Toby and the Fatman would look at each other and give each other the secret signal and ultra-secret handshake, which they were to share with no other living soul. Unless one of them were to die in battle, in which case the survivor could share it with one other living soul. That living soul was to be a close personal soul mate of the deceased—and to be chosen by the deceased—but to be chosen, of course, before he was deceased.
Toby’s choice was his older brother Walter, who was studying to be a magician. Toby’s father, who was a doctor, disapproved—of Toby’s brother being a magician that is, not of Toby’s choice to pass the handshake on to him in the event of Toby’s death. Oh, and the Fatman’s choice for whom to pass the handshake on to, in the event of the Fatman’s untimely demise, was Luke SkyWalker, whom the Fatman believed to be an actual living breathing person.
So after giving each other the secret signal and ultra-secret handshake, Toby and the Fatman first made absolutely sure that the Fatman’s dad was at work and his mom at the library. The Fatman and Toby would even call both of the Fatman’s parents, with some contrived question, to make sure both grown-ups were safely enmeshed in their adult responsibilities of earning a living…
…Then, they would sneak down to the Fatman’s basement and open the trunk, for it was in this trunk that the Superhero raiments were stored.
And under the shredding wedding dress and crumbling bridal bouquet and photo albums from his mom’s youth, and from his dad’s youth, and old political buttons all living together in the same box (no small accomplishment, as the Fatman’s father’s folks had been Republicans, and the Fatman’s mom’s people Democrats), and under an ancient teddy bear and more clothes—dresses that his mother had worn before the addition of “Mrs.” to her name: fancy prom dresses cotillion frocks and theatrical costumes and old Halloween get-ups—amidst all these treasures were hidden the Superhero uniforms.
Oh, to be sure, they were not originally intended to outfit superheroes, but these shiny satins, which were spectacular when caught by the sunlight—these satins of good-guy white and Knights-of-the-Roundtable purple, Superman blues and reds, and able-to-swim-under-water-without-ever-even-coming-up-for-air aquas and greens, these fly-into-the-sun-which-is-this-Superhero’s-powersource oranges and golds…all these secret lengths of satin which you could drape and cape and swath around your body and over your face like a mask to hide your mortal, dreary, daytime identity…these hidden treasures made the best Superhero costumes in the world. Toby and the Fatman would play for hours, imagining that they were slaying all kinds of enemies and vanquishing all kinds of evil, until a half hour before the folks came home, when they would put everything back in the trunk, just the way they’d found it, even the dust, and then return to their drab existences of liver and Brussels sprouts, homework, and one hour of TV before lights out.
(Oh—important point: the Fatman was not only not fat as a boy, he was also not unhappy as a boy, for he was given everything and hardly felt at all deprived. Which is odd, if you think about it, because most kids mostly want everything in the world.
But no, he hardly felt deprived at all in life.
So you may well ask, what lack was it then that led him to compensate by stuffing his face until he reached his adult weight of—of—well, the Fatman made me promise never to actually divulge his actual weight. Anyway, stay tuned, and you will understand what led him to stuffing himself with the frantic and maniacal energy of a taxidermist on cocaine.)
Oh, wait. There was one thing that made the Fatman, as a slim boy, feel a bit deprived. Left out, if you will. And that was the fact that his father, his dear old dad, whom the Fatman admired inestimably (closest thing to a real hero that the Fatman had ever known in real life), never took his son along on his hunting trips. Oh, they went fishing together, and to baseball games and to the city for supplies and on assorted errands, but his father would never take him hunting. The Fatman could not help but feel left out. He was sure, just sure, that there were all kinds of Superhero skills he could learn, if only he would be allowed to go along on the stalking hunt…if only to be quiet and watch… .and just take it all in.
But the Fatman’s ninth birthday came and went, and still he was not taken along on his father’s hunting trips. Which really did start to rankle him, because by the age of nine, most of his other friends were allowed to go hunting with their dads. Perfect example: his best buddy Toby W. Smith, who was kind enough to finesse an invitation for his pal, the Fatman.
Still, hunting with Toby and his dad, for squirrels and crow, rabbit and possum, well it just wasn’t the same. The fact that the Fatman’s father wouldn’t take his own son along, who was nine now and practically a man, reminded the Fatman that in the eyes of the world, he was still a child. The Fatman didn’t like being reminded of that. He had never read about a single Superhero who was a child. In fact, he hardly knew much at all about the childhood of any of his favorite Superheroes. They were all pretty much shrouded in mystery.
All of this sense of mystery and deprivation and feeling left out and too small and generally being underestimated was what led the Fatman to cook up the most audacious of all his schemes to date, and needless to say, Toby W. Smith was to be in on it.
Alright, fine. If the adults didn’t think that the Fatman was old enough to go hunting and receive the ritual of blood on the face from the first kill, and do his part in stocking the basement freezer for the winter, well the Fatman would just secretly follow his father on one of his hunting trips, unbidden and uninvited. Toby thought it a marvelous idea, and announced that in honor of the audacity involved, they should wear the Superhero satins on their big adventure.
It would be painfully easy to pull off, too. All they’d have to do was hide under the clutter and canvas in the truck bed. Then, when the hunters got into the deep woods and stopped to do whatever it was hunters did to prepare for hunting, Toby W. Smith and the Fatman would leap out of the truck bed quiet as ninja warriors, hightail it into the woods, and follow the hunters at a safe distance.
Just to be sure that they had the time and opportunity to do all of this, Toby took along his slingshot, with plans to create a distraction when the truck stopped.
(Oh oh oh, Toby W. Smith was aces on a slingshot. He could take out a person’s eye at five hundred feet. No, he’d never actually taken someone’s eye out at five hundred feet. But once, Reginald Joiner and Newt Dabit and Rusty Winkler had stolen a mannequin from Miss Marzipan’s Dress Shop when Miss M., whose real name was Bertha, was in the back with a lady’s hat salesman with the door locked. A bunch of the guys took the mannequin, still dressed in its Jackie O. pink Chanel suit, {which is what the cursive sign called it,} and they toted the mannequin, still wearing its matching pink pillbox hat, out to a field on Handlebar Road, where they’d set it up in Beau Tittle’s rusted out Rambler, and let Toby have at it with his slingshot. There was some milk money on these games, let me tell you. Newt had even taken a little plastic pouch, with some pig blood in it, and taped it right over Jackie O’s left eyeball, so that if Toby could make his boast, about hitting the pupil from five hundred feet, well, it would be even that much cooler to watch.)
And let me tell you something, it was spectacular. True to his boast, Toby hit poor Jackie first: right in the eyeball! But it was the right eyeball, so no splattering of pig blood yet. Then, Toby took aim at Jackie O’s finger, which broke off and it turned into a tiny airborne missile when Toby’s rock hit it just right. Then another rock hit her ear, then one bull’s-eyed her tittie, saving the little packet of pig’s blood right under her left eye for the very last, creating a dazzling splatter of real blood all over Jackie’s pink Chanel suit, when Toby hit it amidst the cheers and admiring shrieks of his compadres. Jackie’s frozen smile never left her face the entire time.
It had been a magnificent afternoon, as guys’ afternoons go. So no, Toby W. Smith had never actually shot out a person’s eye, but now the whole gang knew that he sure could do it if he wanted to, so this made kids respect him even more.
In fact the whole business with the Jackie mannequin and the splattering blood gave Newt Dabit, the wildest one in the gang, a diabolically wonderful idea: he made sure that his folks could hear him coming home, the whole gang making lots of noise, whooping and hollering as they made their way home at sunset on the dusty side streets. Then, Toby raised his slingshot and Newt pretended to be hit; he grabbed at his eyeball and splattered another baglet of the pig’s blood all over his face and clothes, and his mother screamed and had spasms all over the front porch and then she and his dad ran to him.
Newt, he just bust out laughing and laughing, and it didn’t even hurt, he informed Toby and the Fatman later, when his dad took him into the woodshed and let him have it good. Even as he was being swatted, it was all Newt could do to not bust out, howling with laughter again. See, kids took it in the woodshed a lot more back then, and if you were any kind of tough kid, it didn’t get to you nearly as much as you might think nowadays. I mean, at least a kid knew that his dad cared enough to take a whack at him.
But anyway, so now you know about how everybody knew that Toby was a crack shot. His plan was, (to return to the Audacious Scheme concocted between Toby W. Smith and the Fatman), Toby’s plan was that they should sneak along in the truck bed and keep hidden under the tarp all the way from the house into the deep woods. Then, when the truck stopped in the middle of the forest, Toby would shoot a rock into some distant tree, and there would be the usual ruckus of birds taking flight and wild things commenting on the disruption, and then the hunters in the truck would check that out, or be distracted or whatever. Sounds like a plan… .
So on the Friday that the Fatman’s dad and his cronies were going out to hunt, Toby met the Fatman after dinner, just when the sun was setting. They hastily dressed in their Superhero satins, and then they hid in the truck bed. The Fatman’s mom thought that he was spending the night at a friend’s house, so he wouldn’t be missed.
Sure enough, Toby and the Fatman made not a sound as they hid under the tarp. They grinned at each other as the truck started up, and only winced and giggled a few times as they jostled along on a road that got increasingly bumpy as they headed from their tiny town into the rolling countryside.
By the time they got to where they were going, the night was black as tar, and, well, all Toby and the Fatman knew for sure was that they were in the belly of the forest, alrightie. The woods were very dark, and very deep. Though neither of the two superheroes-in-training would admit it to each other, it was all pretty scary.
It was even more frightening still when their perfect plan—to pull out the slingshot, create a distraction, leap from the truck, follow the hunters, etcetera—didn’t even have a chance to get started. What happened when the truck stopped, and Toby and the Fatman popped their heads up from under the tarp, was that there was a distraction alright. But not one created by Toby’s slingshot.
What happened was another truck, this one a battered up red rusty truck, screeched up next to the Fatman’s dad’s truck. But the Fatman’s father and his cronies were obviously expecting this red truck, and showed no surprise when it came screeching up, rather THEN began the enthusiasm of the hunt, the zeal for the kill. It was already well underway, and the men, who, to the Fatman’s astonishment were wearing his Superhero satins (for the Fatman had come to think of them as his own), these men wasted no time in dragging Toby W. Smith’s brother and father out of the back of the red truck, where they had been bound and gagged, and the hunters all proceeded to string them up from a high tree, but not before calling them all kinds of names, mostly variations on “nigger,” and also not before castrating both of them.
All of this as Toby W. Smith looked on, mute, still clutching the little slingshot in his hand—but, it appeared to the Fatman, quite paralyzed, unable to fire or fight back.
Toby W. Smith never spoke another word after that night. And three years later, on Christmas Eve, Toby went into the outhouse in his backyard, and blew his brains out.
Here ends the Sneak Preview for “The Adventures of The Fattest Crimefighter in the World.”