A Town Full Of Holes

When Judge Myron saw the black BMW swerve into his yard, it was all he could do to shuffle behind the old oak tree, and pray the glass didn’t cut him up too bad. Myron tucked his chin, held his hands over his business, and closed his eyes.

The bang of the beamer side-swiping the tree sounded like a train derailing. The impact stripped the bark and sprayed glass into Myron’s scraggly salt-and-pepper beard. The car rebounded, slid, and rolled down his steep driveway. As it rolled it flattened the neighbor girl’s lemonade stand, left at the end of the sidewalk overnight.

“You missed the house!” Myron shouted.

The driver of the BMW opened his door and leaned out. He was young; pale and fresh-faced and red-cheeked, with a pink popped-collar polo and a sideways cap with the tags still on. He examined his crumpled rear door with beer-dulled shock. His gaze flickered from the door, to the smashed lemonade stand, to the tire tracks and the tree, and finally to Myron. Shards of glass and plastic glittered red in the lawn around him, lit by the BMW tail lights.

“Sh-shit!” The driver straightened up the seat, wobbling. “My bad!”

He hit the gas and the wheels spun, spraying Myron with sod.

Myron watched the tail lights disappear down the highway. He checked himself for holes, walked inside, and called the police. Then Myron stripped off his clothes, crawled into bed, and began planning his revenge.

***

On his drive into work, Judge Myron kept a mental count of how many holes had been put in his town by reckless frat boys.

First, there was the lemonade stand. Little June Stevens saw the wreckage when she wheeled her red wagon out to the stand at 7am. The wagon held a pitcher of ice and sweating cans of frozen concentrate, and a stack of solo cups. She held Myron personally accountable for the loss of her business.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” June whistled when she spoke, on account of her missing front teeth.

“Well, Ms June, the good Lord took my knees. Otherwise I’d have thrown myself in front of your stand.”

June nodded sagely, looking at the shattered planks. Muddy tire tracks bisected her misspelled ‘Lemon-onade’ sign.

Myron picked up the sign and tucked it under his arm before heading toward his truck. “I hope you don’t mind if I borrow this, Ms June?”

“Maybe you could take some lemonade for the road?” She asked.

Myron frowned, uncapped his thermos, and dumped out his coffee. He handed her the thermos and a 10-dollar bill.

Myron passed nine other properties with holes on his way to the courthouse. A tarp had been taped over the shattered glass of the Dairy Queen, where a Hummer full of university kids had taken the corner too hard and found themselves in the dining area; their windshield wipers flicking sticky foam over the booths, from the cracked soda fountain pouring over their windshield.

The old post-office had been bricked up, twice, after cars had swerved across the lot and lodged themselves in the broad sidewall.

Vern, the local taxidermist, lost his insurance when a mustang totalled itself running through the front of his shop, although the moose did most of the totalling.

Hell, even the auto-body store got wrecked when a Jetta smashed through their front window, causing a mass tire-roll when their display rack caved.

Myron knew the cause of the holes. It was a simple matter of location. Brent County served liquor, and Jolie County didn’t. Brent County had a tiny town full of holes named Brenson, and Jolie had a college full of thirsty students. That meant Jolie students had to travel through Brenson, and their curvy stretch of highway, to get a drink.

Myron meditated on this as he parked in front of the courthouse. Which, incidentally, had a hole the size of an Escalade covered in painter’s plastic by the door.

Myron gulped lemonade from his thermos, and he frowned at the hole.

***

At 11-o-clock Myron sat in his black judge’s robe. He watched as a young man with bleary, blood-shot eyes and a pink polo shirt shuffled up to the bench. The lad was Chet Baker, and he had been caught driving recklessly at the county line; swerving into oncoming traffic in his black 4-door BMW. The responding officer had found an open case of Natural Light in the passenger seat, a crushed rear door, and a shoebox full of women’s underwear in the trunk. Used.

Chet tilted his head back and to the side. “So how much?”

“Excuse me?” Myron asked.

“How much is this gonna cost me?”

Judge Myron leafed through his papers. The BMW was registered to his father. As was the insurance.

“Mr Baker, am I to understand this isn’t your first offense?” Myron asked.

“It’s, yah.”

Myron leaned forward. “Yah it is, or yah it aint?”

“It’s not my first, per se.”

“It looks like the others were also in Brenson.” Myron plucked at the files. “Four fender-benders, three parking violations, and one charge of wildlife harassment?”

Chet Baker smiled at the last one. “We were just following a deer.”

“Through Mrs Stevens’s field?”

Chet snorted a laugh. “Well, there wasn’t a sign. But I paid the fine. And the other tickets, too. So, like, how much is this one?”

Myron looked across the room at his exhausted staff. He saw Mrs Brown, the case manager, hauling a banker’s box through the hallway. He remembered when her dog got hit; not in the road, but in its doghouse, sleeping in the yard.

Myron saw bailiff Taylor pinching his nose, trying to stay awake. He had installed three new mailboxes this month. The latest, a concrete-and-steel post, had torn the cosmetic underglow strip from the bottom of an SUV. It was still blinking neon red when Taylor found it, and his mailbox post, twisted in the road.

Myron picked up his thermos, started to take a sip of lemonade, then set it back down. Myron stood and straightened his robes.

“I’ll be right back.” He told the bailiff. Taylor nodded, and Myron left a confused, hung-over Chet standing at the bench.

Myron went to his pickup and recovered the ‘Lemon-onade’ sign. When he re-entered the courtroom he went through the fluttering plastic hole. Then he leaned the sign against the bench, and Chet’s eyes went wide in recognition.

“I’ve decided to waive your fine, Mr Baker, on one condition.”

“Sure! Yah, anything your honor.” Chet Baker said.

“I need to know your car is in working order before you leave town. And I’d like you to use the parts I have provided here.”

Chet stared at Myron, confused, before he looked at the sign. “Uh, this?”

“You got it.”

“But, uh...that’s not a door.”

“I know.” Myron said. “Our local mechanic will help with that. Free of charge.”

“But, I...I don’t,” Chet sputtered, looking from the sign, to Myron, and then to the bailiff, who was as baffled as Chet. “Can’t I just get a new door?”

“You may,” Myron said. “After six months. Replace it before then, and you’ll receive your fine in the mail.”

***

Chet Baker was the first visitor to drive away with a piece of the town welded to his car, but he wouldn’t be the last.

Old Bill Fletch at the auto-body was happy to fit the sign onto a set of hinges, after he’d stopped laughing. He even put a frame behind it and sealed it with foam so it was crumple-safe and insulated. For half a year Chet would drive around Jolie, and the college, advertising lemonade in an 8-year-old’s scrawl.

The local papers reported on the incident, calling it a just reprisal for Brenson. The headline read; Drunk Driver Leaves With Sour Taste. And folks at the Brenson elk club toasted Myron, who accepted the praise with humility.

Then a national tabloid contacted Myron’s office to complain. The tabloid’s sports columnist was Chet Baker’s father, and he called it a foolish farce, and demanded Myron rescind the punishment. When Myron refused, the article they ran accused Judge Myron of being a tyrant of the county. It called him a moral zealot, and it drew comparisons between Myron and the southern judges who made teenagers wear signs to shame them.

Myron had a copy of the tabloid framed on his office wall.

***

The next Nissan that crashed into Vern’s taxidermy shop was fitted with a bear-skin hood and a pair of antlers. For a full year it could be seen slowly rolling through the county, lurking between the trees along the highway, like some shy creature come out of hibernation.

The VW Bug that plowed through the fence outside Donna’s Daycare had its bumpers fitted with an extra layer of protection; the inflatable sidewalls of Donna’s kiddie pool.

Two vans, on two separate occasions, struck the hair salon. For six months they could be seen cruising down the highway, wind blowing through their hair, which had been epoxied to the rooftops like calico carpeting.

The Benz that broke into the laundromat drove back to Jolie with two new rear windows; glass portholes from the dryers. That way anyone on the road could see when the rear passengers were done.

And God help those who struck the lonesome porno shop on the way out of town. There was more than one sedan on the highway with silicon phalluses helicoptering in the wind. Or stuck straight up, waiting at red lights, like spiked road warrior rejects in a Mad Max parody.

So it was that Judge Myron and the town of Brenson had their revenge on the reckless students who came in from Jolie, looking for a shortcut to their favorite watering hole. Eventually, word spread, and the kids who drove through took care not to swerve into the buildings. Unless, of course, they were looking to have their ride pimped by the backwater folk of Brenson.