Deborah Halverson - Big Mouth

It didn’t take long to see that Arthur wasn’t just blowing smoke. Except for a few lulls, Scoops really was hopping. I guess Grampy didn’t know today was a half day, either. I was on my own as every elementary, junior, and high school student in the Mid-Cal area came in for ice cream. Scoops was always their first stop in the mall, especially now, with our California October being as warm and sunny as any June. As customers stepped into my hallowed realm, they took deep, sugary breaths, they dipped their fingers into the leaky water fountain to slick down their own frizzed hair, and then they turned to me for salvation. Wide-eyed and reverent, they pressed their noses against the glass display case and invoked the sacred words: Bing Cherry…Cookie Dough…Fudge Ripple… Picking out flavors to sample before committing to a scoop was a very serious ritual. Once they made their selections, they lifted their faces up to me, where I stood in front of the smiling sun mural with my scooper at the ready, sunrays shooting outward behind me. It was a total power trip. I could live with being worshipped.

My right forearm ached from gouging, gouging, gouging the hard-packed ice cream. But being busy kept my mind off the afternoon I’d just spent praying to the porcelain god, so it wasn’t until Grampy finally arrived to break me that I noticed my stomach felt fine. Empty and normal. Hungry, even. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, after all, if you took into account that I puked up lunch.

The instant Grampy plodded through the doorway, he froze in his tracks and gawked at all the kids in the shop. Then he crunkled up his nose and squinted his black-olive eyes nearly closed, making his face look all cheeks.

“Oh, jeez,” I muttered. I’m on to you, Grampy. That same expression washed over all us Thuffs when we were plotting something. I braced myself even before he flashed his fake grin and let fly with the family motto.

“Sherman T. Thuff,” he declared, now striding across the shop, “this crowd looks tough, and you know what that means.” He waved a knuckly fist in the air. “When the going gets tough, the Thuffs get Thuffer! C’mon, young Thuff, man your post. Make your family proud. All for one and one for all!”

I would have acted like I didn’t hear him, but he knew darn well I could hear a gnat sneeze in the next county. “Can’t, Grampy. It’s five-twenty-seven. I’ll be late.”

“Late? For what? Wait…no…Shermie…”

Wrestling his arm from behind his back, I pried open his stubborn fingers and forced the scoop and my latest work permit into his palm. Not only had Mr. Smooth Talker convinced my folks that child labor was character building, he’d also charmed my counselor at Del Heiny Junior High #13 into making it legal. Now she got her ice cream here for free.

Grampy eyed the kids who were jockeying for position around the display case. “Shermie, wait, listen to me…”

I paused, vaguely curious which compliment he’d try this time.

He saw the hesitation and pounced. “You can’t go, Sherminator, your fans need you. Just look at them, you’re their star. Scoops is nothing without you. Nothing. You’re the backbone of this entire operation.”

Ah, the backbone… I made a move toward the counter hatch, but he blocked me.

“Wait! Wait. You’re the muscle, too, haven’t I told you that? Look at that gun of yours—” He tried to squeeze my biceps but I dodged around him. “C’mon, Shermie, give your old Grampy a break.”

“Can’t, Grampy. Lucy’s waiting.” I ditched the ice cream — smudged size M under the counter.

“But Shermie—”

“You’re the one who says never make a girl wait.” I lifted the counter and squeezed through quickly.

“But…but…oh, fine!” His pouty voice chased me as I stepped into the busy promenade. “But don’t be late coming back!”

“I won’t!”

It took more fancy footwork to dodge the shopping masses, but I managed to reach the center table of the food court right on time. Part of the deal in “agreeing” to slave for Grampy was that I could time my breaks to match Lucy’s. She worked one level down for her own slave-driving relative at the Chocolat du Monde cart, where she sold gourmet chocolate to stuck-up ladies at several bucks a chunk.

When I dropped into the seat across from Lucy, she flipped open a brand-new yellow binder. It had to be an inch thick with graph paper, all tabbed and labeled in cotton candy colors.

She poised her pen over the paper. “How many did you eat?”

“What, no hi?”

“Hi. Now how many did you eat?”

I held up ten fingers. “I ate ten — count ’em, ten —whole hot dogs and buns in twelve minutes flat.” Hey, she didn’t ask if they stayed down.

“Ten, huh? Not bad…” She gnawed the tip of her pen. “You know, your horoscope did say that betting on a long shot today would change your life. Hot dogs are long. And ten is the number of rebirth.” She gnawed the pen a little more, then nodded her head. “Yep. I’m sure of it. Ten is a sign.”

Whipping the pen from her mouth, she attacked the graph paper. “Okay, our base number is ten. Now that we know where we’re starting and where we’re going, we just need to strategize the best way to close the gap. Let’s see, that’s 0.83 dogs per minute…and you’ve got forty-seven months to match Tsunami’s record of fifty-three and three-quarters dogs in twelve minutes, which means increasing your intake by.08 wieners per month…”

And we’re off! I leaned back in my chair and relaxed. It was a stroke of brilliance to recruit my oldest friend as my eating coach. She’d lead me to victory on the competitive eating circuit for sure.

I’d called Lucy with my plan to become an eater two nights ago, right after watching an old TV special called The Glutton Bowl. What I saw on the screen amazed and inspired me: men and women eating hamburger after hamburger (bun and all!), oyster after oyster, sushi roll after sushi roll, egg after egg. They were incredible! Racing the clock and each other, they chowed down insane amounts of food…and got paid for it! There was one guy named Gaseous Maximus who wore a gladiator suit and ate gobs of mayo. And this other guy, Big Rig, ate a mondo pile of butter sticks. The coolest guy, though, had to be this skinny little Japanese dude they called Tsunami, who wolfed down thirty-two hot dogs in twelve minutes flat. I’d never seen anything like it. As it turned out, that record was only the beginning. Tsunami’s most recent record was fifty-three and three-quarters hot dogs in twelve minutes. Fifty-three and three-quarters! And as for prize money — wow. For the Glutton Bowl win alone he scored twenty-five thousand bucks. Now, I loved to eat — and, frankly, I was good at it — but who would’ve guessed that could make you rich? By the time the Glutton Bowl was over, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life: I was going to be the fastest, richest, most famous competitive eater in the world.

“You’re a natural,” Lucy had said when I announced my new purpose in life. “Leos are born showmen, and your sun is in the tenth house. Plus you ate four hamburgers at lunch today, so I know you’ve got the appetite.”

Actually it was only three hamburgers. But we weren’t keeping track then, so it didn’t matter.

Lucy had done some research and found out that I couldn’t compete until I turn eighteen. But when I could, I’d hit the scene with a bang. The entire world would tremble when Sherman Thuff bellied up to the table. All I had to do was follow Lucy’s master plan exactly as she’d laid it out in her graphs. “Just leave the details to me,” she’d told me. “I may be a Cancer, but I’ve got Virgo rising hard.” Whatever that meant. I wasn’t going to argue with her; I certainly didn’t want to handle the details. Besides, she once told me that as a Leo, I wasn’t allowed to argue with her, and it had worked for us so far.