The Flytrap
                               Copyright 1990
                                by Dave Laird

Everyone at the Reservation Tavern is talking about Carolyn Gillstrap's
accident on the highway north of town this morning, when she ran into the
back of her husband Tom's pickup, thus blowing the lid off a steamy affair
that no one had apparently suspected. 

Thus, because no one knew of the affair, it made the headlines of every
gossip session prior to, during or after the grange meeting.  According to
some, it must have all started with a big male blue bottle fly, who flew in
the window of Carolyn's station wagon. This bombastic bombadier, fresh from
a raucous caucus among the flies that commune in the steamy piles of pig
manure behind Fred LaCoyne's hog barns, had not only just eaten his fill
while embedded in the piles of stinky putrified pig crap that Fred shovels
out of the barn each day, but also met another female blue bottle fly of
independent means and so had recently enjoined with her in mindless, deeply
satisfying sex to boot.
 
Thus, with the essentials of nature attended to, the blue bottle fly was in
no mood for trouble, and when Carolyn took an effectual swipe at him with
one hand, while she tried to steer the car with the other, he naturally went
to the other end of the car to sit a spell and clean his legs of any tidbits
from his recent meal and scratch his privates.

It was raining hard, in long gray sheets of sullen drizzle, and since the
defroster hadn't worked in the car since Carolyn's husband had last worked
on the wiring, she apparently didn't notice through the steamy windshield
she rapidly was creeping up on her husband's pickup truck, plodding along
the lonesome highway immediately in front of her in the rain.

Once the blue bottle fly had scrubbed every malevolent droplet of pig manure
off his legs and feet, smacking his lips with every indelicate bite, and
with a self-satisfied hitch to his privates, he launched himself forth from
behind the empty spare wheel well at the back of the station wagon to see
what, if anything, this strange place might offer. It smelled strangely like
a cross between carb cleaner, calf starter and rabbit food, blended with the
tarnished aroma of Windex Glass cleaner, he mused, as he briefly buzzed the
steamy window, and then moved back to the front of the car, from whence the
currents of fresh air seemed to emanate. 

He no sooner had landed on the windshield and began cautiously edging along
the surface of the dashboard when Carolyn, afraid of being bitten, began
swatting at it with a copy of the Nickle Wants Ads. She was not nearly fast
enough, though, for as soon as he felt the whoosh of the paper smacking the
radio speaker enclosure close by him, he quickly ducked down into the
nearest crevice, and continued moving toward the source of fresh air which
now seemed very, very near. 

Frustrated, albeit a bit frightened by the big imposing fly, Carolyn began
seriously swatting with the rolled up newspaper now, and thus thoroughly
engaged, drove her station wagon into the rear of her husband's pickup truck
with a mighty splat of twisted metal, hissing hoses and uninsured hysteria.

Then, with steam pouring out from beneath her hood, she finally dropped the
newspaper and the murderous quest after the fly altogether. Her husband,
Tom, who only moments before, in an uncharacteristic display of great
attention to detail, had one hand exploring Annabelle Griswold's remarkably
short, short skirt while trying to steer with the other, slammed on his
brakes, which only compounded the chaos, for Carolyn's car promptly smacked
him a second time, thus entirely eliminating her radiator, and jolting he
and Annabelle a second time, nearly as bad as the first. 

After another one last feint at mechanized union, they somehow managed to
halt the two vehicles, still rolling down the road in madcap disharmony,
parking them on the muddy shoulder and separately listened to their wipers
flapping, their hearts accelerating into the ozone layer and the tinkle of
the rain on their respective rooftops. 

Carolyn hadn't recognized that she just hit her husband's truck. In a moment
of extreme clairvoyance, however, as she opened her door to examine the
damage, she was relieved to hear the fly, the cause of it all, zing right by
her ear, none the worse for wear from his ride. 

The minute she realized whose vehicle she just rapped twice, she also knew,
as wives sometimes do, that there was another woman in Tom's truck, sitting
closer than she sat to Tom since back when they were dating in high school.

Suddenly the hissing hoses entwined hopelessly with the radiator fan beneath
her crumpled hood, the selfsame fan that was still happily chewing away on
the remnants of the radiator core and puking antifreeze onto the ground as
the motor idled, no longer mattered. Muttering a stream of curses that made
the welkin ring loud enough to be heard back at the pig farm, Carolyn
marched right up to the side of her husband's truck where he was trying
frantically, in one motion, to move Annabelle over to her own side of the
truck, pull her uncooperative skirt down over her knees and feign a look of
shocked innocense--all at the same remarkable section of time. 

As catfights go, according to Freddy the Logger, who happened along the road
at about the time Carolyn opened the door on her wayward husband, it was
short, sweet and extremely succinct. 

While Tom ruefully examined the damage--the entire radiator, fan and water
pump on his wife's car was thoroughly trashed-- the two women met briefly on
the passenger side of Tom's truck to compare insults, experimentally give a
yank or two on each other's hair and finally end up kicking and scratching
until they both fell down, scrabbling in the muddy water at the bottom of
the ditch.

About that time Freddy eased his ancient Kennworth log truck to
a halt behind the remains of Carolyn's car and sat warm and dry in the cab
of his truck watching the procedings with great interest. By the time he and
Tom managed to extricate the two women from their muddy would-be grave, and
separate them, the catfight was over. 

Tom somehow managed to get Carolyn hissing and swearing into the pickup
truck and turn her car's motor off, while Freddy managed to get a handful of
Annabelle's derriere just long enough to boost her up into the buddy seat in
his log truck. 

After conferring at the front of Carolyn's car to examine the mangled metal,
no doubt discussing what to do next, Tom finally got in his truck and took
Carolyn home. Freddy the Logger, never one to shirk his duty as a gentleman
of means, took Annabelle on into his place in town so she could shower and
change into some dry clothes after her wrestling match in the muddy ditch.
Neither Freddy nor Annabelle have been seen since, although Tom did come
into town this morning briefly for some rabbit food, sporting a shiner big
enough to double-park a ten inch cast iron skillet.

However, before anyone thought to wander down to the feed store and ask
typically embarrassing questions, he, too, quickly fled from town. 

The Mayor woke up from his early afternoon siesta on the bar, and upon
hearing the tale still hilariously rumbling up and down the patronage of the
bar, summed it up best. 

"The only damned winner in this whole affair was the blue-bottle fly. He's
probably been laid more often, eaten better and has less to worry about than
anyone else in this whole damned town." 

He took a deep draft of the cold beer that materialized at his elbow the
minute he awoke. 

"At least so long as he's by the pig farm, he'll have a hard time getting
that shit-eatin' grin off his face." 

With that, the tavern burst into gales of laughter that swept the entire
matter of Tom and Carolyn, Freddy and Annabelle, off into a corner of the
tavern where the history archives often breed, sometimes to be reborn as
something else entirely.