Patrick McLean - How To Succeed in Evil

He flies East with all the speed he can manage. What he needs now is the sun. The light of the sun, which will somehow regenerate his powers. He had once joked with Gus that they should test his blood for chlorophyl. A good joke because there is no needle that will pierce his skin.

As he crosses the coast of Africa, he really begins to feel it. This time, he might not make it back to the light. Might have to lay himself out along the plain and wait for sunrise. But just as he gives up hope, he sees the first glimmer of dawn. At the speed he’s going it takes seconds for him to be engulfed in the light. He feels the power roar back into him. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know why. But in the light of a new day, he is somehow made whole again. What does he care of how and why? He stopped the hurricane. It’s a pure win.

“Faster you dolt! Faster!” screams Agnes as if the British Empire was losing India all over again. The deputy doesn’t need much encouragement to pour the gas to his rattley old patrol car. The flashing lights, the blaring sirens and the roar of the wheels against the road are really the only perks his job offers. Sometimes he drives far out into the county at night and pretends to be chasing someone. Just to relieve the boredom of it all.

But this? This is different. This is a real chase. And it is exciting. At first he had resisted the strange woman’s urgings to chase down the truck. She had used all kinds of words he didn’t understand. Words like ‘Miscreant’ and ‘Commonweal’. But when she said ‘Hot Pursuit’ – well hell, wasn’t that his job?

“Tallyho!” Agnes cries. She slaps the Deputy on the shoulder and points through a stand of scrub pines. There, on the far side of a long flat curve, is the Semi with a bulldozer on the back. The patrol car strains to create acceleration.

Inside the truck, Clarence has passed out cradling a bottle of bourbon. The sheriff’s has devoted all his attention to the stripper. Topper doesn’t care. He has The Rielly Estate pulled up on the GPS and is making for it with as much speed as he can muster. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that he can’t put his foot on the floor and is relying on the stripper’s legs. Every few minutes he has to stomp on her knee to get her to return her foot to the pedal. This has been awkward, to say the least, but now the lunacy in the truck cab has settled into an orderly pattern. He kicks the stripper, the stripper moans, the sheriff thinks he’s doing well and the truck goes faster.

But it is an inherently unstable system. If you take away any one of its components this diabolical apparatus will collapse under the weight of its own absurdity. This does not concern Topper. He doesn’t like to think in terms of theory. All theory ever does for Topper is tell him what he can’t do. And Topper doesn’t like being told what to do.

Theory says that the bumblebee can’t fly. But the little bumblebee says, “screw it” and flies anyway. And, if the bumblebee can get away with it, then Topper figures he can too. If this was the way it had to be, then this was the way it had to be. Topper doesn’t care if he has to out drink every redneck and shitkicker from here to the Mason Dixon Line. Edwin is in trouble, and he is going to come through for him.

Topper sees flashing blue lights in the truck’s side mirror. He yells in the Sheriff’s face, “It’s the cops. You told me you were the law!”

The shouting brings Clarence back around. He doesn’t immediately open his eyes, but instead reviews recent events. He remembers losing a bet. He remembers not liking it. He remembers drinking heavily. His sides hurt. Has he been in a fight? There had been laughter. Lots of laughter. Probably before losing the bet. He doesn’t like to lose. Why would he laugh after losing? Something isn’t right here, but everything is so sloshy in his head, Clarence can’t begin to put these facts together. Until he hears the air horn.

And with the horn blast, a key fact drops into place. He’s in a truck. He hears a child yell, “Holy Shit and thar she blows! It’s Liberace’s outhouse!” But what kind of child would yell that?

Clarence opens his eyes. In front of them is a hill. At the bottom is a white planation house covered with blurry – he rubs his eyes – frilly white bits. Focus doesn’t make the place look any better to Clarence.

“Yessir,” says the sheriff, “That’s the Widow Rielly’s place. Most ridiculous goddamned thing in the county.”

Underneath the Sheriff’s smokey, crackling laugh, Clarence hears a woman giggle. What is going on here? He almost has it, but clearly he is missing some key piece of information. He leans forward slowly. Nothing catastrophic happens, so he decides to turn his head. And then he sees a midget in a suit. The midget’s tiny hands rest on the steering wheel and most of his body is cradled between a naked woman’s fake breasts.

Topper pulls on the air horn again and it all falls into place for Clarence. As he opens his mouth to speak, he is slammed backwards into the seat. The truck roars forward as Topper shrieks, “Muwahhhhhhh!” The horizon dips and bucks as the truck tears through the fields. Clearly something must be done. Can’t anyone see that?

“Double Clutch. Double Clutchhhhhh!” cries Topper over the sound of grinding metal.

As the house grows larger and larger in the truck’s front windshield, Clarence’s common sense finally breaks through. It has been surrounded and outnumbered for most of the evening, but it has not given up. Now clear of the haze of alcohol and hormones and stupidity, it has just enough energy left over to send Clarence one clear message – “It’s your truck.”

Clarence dives across the sheriff and grabs the wheel. The wheel spins and it slings Topper into the window. Topper swears and spits and fights for control, but it is too late. This party has gone on too long. And now it is time for physics to step in.

In any high school physics class, they will tell you that inertia is the tendency of an object to remain at rest. This sounds very polite. Very Newtonian. But the fact is inertia is an object’s resistance to change. And resistance is never polite. When the object in question is 80,000 pounds of tractor, trailer and bulldozer, the resistance isn’t just rude, it’s vigorous.

In that same high school physics class they will prove this to you by bludgeoning you with all manner of word problems. And one of these word problems might go something like this: A 5,000 pound Tractor attached to a 75,000 pound trailer is traveling across an immaculately maintained lawn (coefficient of friction .024) at 50 feet per second towards an elaborately decorated manor house. If the tractor trailer is 125 feet away from the house then how many feet will the truck slide before (and after) hitting the house and completely destroying it? You may assume the house’s mass is negligible, because the poor structure doesn’t stand a chance.

Don’t bother to sharpen a pencil or pull out scrap paper, because if you’re ever faced with this problem in real life the only answer that will help you is “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!” And even a 6th grade drop out from the Alabama Public school system can tell you this.

“We all gonna die!” yells the stripper, finding the correct answer even though she is pretty sure higher math was what you did when you used numbers larger than 20.

* * * *

Edwin Windsor and Dr. Loeb have left the pig sty. After a brief (yet pointless) effort to clean himself, Edwin is now in search of transportation. He hears the sound of an air horn in the distance. Dr. Loeb asks, “What is zat?”

“I don’t care,” says Edwin. He strides towards a stand of scrub pine, thinking to conceal himself as he makes his way around to the garage. But when the air horn blows again, this time louder and accompanied by the roar of a diesel engine, he cannot resist turning his head.