The two dozen old ladies said the Bleaker County Senior Center was a disgusting porno circus. They labeled the eight or nine old men as rutting goats in their heads and deadwood in their pants. The thirty odd seniors were there most days, though, especially in the Georgia July heat. There was dime-a-cup lemonade and whatever the do-gooders brought for the snack table and bingo. There were the seedy old men for the ladies to downgrade and each other to gossip with. They kept up a running commentary on why the old men came. The biggest reason was that Morden gal's bubble butt. Of course they liked the way that damnyankee bitch Woolsey swiveled around in her snug business suits, even if the snooty old thing was damn near a senior herself. Fifty if she was a day, but still loaded to fire off whelps. And every day, at least once, the sheriff's little condom prissed through. That little wood's colt Tommi Sanson, in her silly little deputy suit that must have given the sheriff a boner. Shorty shorts and a vest, fer pity sake, and cowboy boots and a pistol bigger than she was.

Granted, when this little farce and lardass Aleta Morden went to that old piano them snotty bastards at the First Baptist Church gave the Senior Center and sang "I will Arise" or "He is Here" they sounded like angels--even if the junk piano needed tuning and they didn't have an octave of range between them and their butts were showing.

There was something a little off about the way them two stayed in each other's personal space anyhow.

The old girls noticed that skinny little Tommi poking a toothpick into the candle a day or two after Woolsey brought it in and set it on the long fireboard over the big chimney with the gas log in it. The mantle was a memorial thing. Pictures of dead people, ceramic figurines, military medals, all that kind of shit. Even an urn of ashes or two. The candle was in a clear glass jar shaped like Pooh bear sitting on his ass. It was sold with a quart of honey in it, and a tin lid screwed on that was slotted to receive coins. The lid had rusted away or got lost. The jar was nearly full of hard, yellow wax or beef tallow, with a wick sticking out top center. It was kinda moldy.

Woolsey told those of the group who watched her set it on the mantle, "It's the only thing I reclaimed from the rotted ruins of my parents old home. The house had fallen in under the winter snows, up there in Ontario's north woods. I don't remember but I like to think my mom fed me the honey that came in this jar. I went to stay at Grandmother's home in Sudbury through the dead of winter, so I could attend school, my eighth year. Mom disappeared that winter, a bad one, and no trace of her was ever found. She was a big woman and restless. Daddy could sit in a hole for months, as long as he had his endless books and a candle to read them. When the snows melted, neighbors found him reading, with one little chunk of smoked meat and a pound or two of dried beans left in his larder. I have a memory fragment...I think mom called this thing Luther Bearbank."


Old Luther sat on the mantle for weeks. It was a long hotass summer. Woolsey sweated really cute, and megabutt Morden and Deputy Doodirty wore less and less, and the old men sat and drooled.

One day, just past noon, as the shuttle bus parked out front, and ancients from all three of the little government assisted projects around the town of Lachey trooped slowly in, the eye candy was lined up in front of the mantle. The stacked Woolsey in her liberated woman business suit, cheeky Morden in her sunsuit and white apron, and Tommi with her cannon hanging down. Butts galore! They talked for a minute and Woolsey greeted everybody and went into her office. The deputy left to fight crime or something. Aleta put out--um, nice thought--some cookies from one of the churches and the first big cooler of lemonade and carried on a running wordfight with the lecherous old goats as always.

Sister Lila Jolson was curious. When Aleta went to the kitchen, she hobbled over to the mantle and picked up Luther and looked him over. He smelled of superglue. On his bottom was a brass disk, new, shiny, and engraved real pretty.

Mary Elizabeth Woolsey
1938--1979.

Lila put Luther down carefully and scuttled back to her usual chair, beckoning and hissing to the other old bats.