Janet Evanovich - Finger Lickin’ Fifteen

I lugged the charcoal and wood and fire starter stuff across the field to Lula and Grandma. Lula filled the bottom of the grill with charcoal and piled the wood on top. She poured accelerant on and used the gizmo to light it. WHOOOSH! The accelerant caught, flames shot up, and the canopy caught fire. One of the guys in the kitchen next to us rushed over with a fire extinguisher and put the canopy fire out.

“Thanks,” Grandma said to him. “That was quick thinking. Last time that happened, it burned up Lula’s chef hat and cremated our maple tree.”

“You might want to move the canopy so it’s not over the grill,” the guy said. “Just a suggestion.”

Connie hurried to the table and set two bags on it. “I saw the flames from the parking lot,” she said. “What happened?”

“The usual,” Grandma said. “No biggie.”

Connie, Lula, Grandma, and I each took a pole and moved the canopy back a few feet. There was a large black-rimmed, smoking hole in the top and a smaller one in the front flap where the funeral home name was written. It now said MAYNARD FUN HOME. I thought it was an improvement. God works in mysterious ways.

We all set to work mixing the sauce and getting the ribs into the marinade.

“I was talking to some people in the parking lot,” Connie said. “One of them was on the barbecue committee, and they said Al Roker and his crew were going to be walking around all afternoon. They were waiting for the van to show up.”

“Al Roker is a big star,” Grandma said. “He might be about the most famous person we’ve had in Trenton.”

“There was that singer last year,” Lula said. “Whatsher-name. She was pretty famous. And Cher came through once. I didn’t see her, but I heard she rode a elephant.”

“We’re not as fancy as some of these people,” Grandma said. “I don’t know if Al Roker is gonna want to film us.”

“I got it covered,” Lula said. “You’ll see soon as Larry gets here, we’ll have it locked in.”

Connie looked up at the sign. “It just says Flamin’.”

“One of the committee people got a stick up her butt about cussing,” Grandma said. “We tried to explain Assholes wasn’t being used as a cuss, that it was the part of the body effected by our sauce, but she wasn’t having any of it.”

“Bein’ that we burned a hole in our roof, it turns out Flamin’ isn’t such a bad name for us, anyway,” Lula said.

Weekday or not, there were a lot of people at the cook-off. Swarms of them were milling around in front of the kitchens and strolling the grounds. I could see Larry’s head bobbing above the crowd as they all made their way along the path. He reached us and handed a big box to Lula.

“I can’t stay,” he said. “I have to work today.”

“Thanks,” Lula said. “This is gonna make celebrities out of us. This could get me my big break.”

“I couldn’t get exactly what you wanted,” Larry said. “So I got you the next best thing.”

Larry left, and Lula tore the box open. “I got the idea from Mister Clucky,” she said. “Cluck-in-a-Bucket got Mister Clucky the dancin’ chicken, and we’re going to have the dancing barbecue sparerib.”

No one said anything for a full thirty seconds. I mean, what was there to say? A dancing sparerib. As if the funeral home canopy and the massacred sign wasn’t enough humiliation for one day.

Grandma was the first to find her voice. “Who’s gonna be the sparerib?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Lula said. “I didn’t decide. Probably everyone wants to be. I guess I could do eenie meenie minie mo.”

“There’s no way in hell you’re getting me in a sparerib suit,” Connie said.

“Let’s see what we got,” Lula said, pulling the suit out of the box. “What the heck? This isn’t no sparerib. This isn’t even a pork chop.”

“It looks like a hot dog,” Grandma said. “I guess it was all Larry could get on short notice.”

“This don’t work,” Lula said. “How can someone be the Flamin’ dancing hot dog when we’re cooking ribs?”

“It could be a pork hot dog,” Grandma said.

“That’s true,” Lula said. “A pork hot dog’s pretty close to a rib. It’s sort of like a ground-up rib.”

She held the suit up. It looked to be about six feet from top to bottom. The hot dog was in a padded bun and was enhanced with a stripe of yellow mustard.

“It’s a real colorful costume,” Grandma said. “I wouldn’t mind wearing it, but then no one would know who I was when I was on television.”

That sounded like a good deal to me. “I’ll wear it,” I said.

There were holes in the bottom where my legs could stick out, armholes in the sides of the bun, and part of the hot dog was made of mesh, so I could sort of see. I got the thing on, and Grandma zipped me up.

“This is disappointing,” Lula said. “It’s not as good as Mister Clucky.”

“She’s got a saggy bun,” Grandma said.

Connie squished my bun. “It’s foam. It needs reshaping.”

Everyone worked on the bun while I stood there.

“It’s hot in this thing,” I said. “And I can’t see through the hot dog skin. Everything’s brown. And there’s only a little window to look through.”

“I can’t hardly hear what you’re saying through all that padding,” Grandma said. “But don’t worry, we got you looking pretty good.”

“Yeah,” Lula said. “Dance around. Let’s see what you got.”

“What kind of dance?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Any kind of dance.”

I jumped around a little and fell over.

“This is top-heavy,” I said.

“It don’t look top-heavy,” Lula said. “It’s all one size top to bottom. Imagine if we got a pork chop instead of a hot dog.”

I was on my back, and all I saw was brown sky. I rolled side to side, trying to flip over. No luck. I was stuck in the stupid bun. I flopped around, flailing my arms and kicking my feet. I got some decent momentum going rocking back and forth in my bun, but in the end, it didn’t get me anywhere.

Lula looked down at me. “Stop clownin’ around. You’re scarin’ the kids. You’re even creepin’ out the big people. It’s like someone threw away a giant twitching hot dog.”

“I can’t get up!”

“What?”

“I can’t fucking get up. What part of that don’t you understand?”

“Well, you should have said so instead of just layin’ there thrashin’ around.”

Connie and Lula grabbed my arms and hauled me to my feet.

“This might not be a good idea,” I told them. “This suit is unwieldy.”

“You just gotta get used to it,” Lula said. “I bet Al Roker will be here any minute. Anybody seen Al Roker?”

Some people stopped to look at me.

“What is it?” a man asked.

“It’s a dancing hot dog,” Lula said.

“It’s not dancing,” the man said.

There was a kid with the man. “I want to see the hot dog dance,” the kid said.

I did a couple moves and fell over. “Shit!”

The kid looked up at the man. “The hot dog said shit.”

Everyone hurried away.

“Dancing hot dogs don’t say shit,” Lula said to me, pulling me upright.

“What do they friggin’ say?”

“They say oops.”

“I’ll try to remember.”

“And that’s a cranky tone I’m hearing,” Lula said. “Hot dogs are happy food. If you was a brussels sprout, you could be cranky. Or maybe a lima bean.”

“I don’t feel happy. I’m sweating like a pig in this thing.”

“Hey,” Lula said. “You were the one who wanted to be the hot dog. Nobody made you be the hot dog. And you better learn how to dance before Al gets here, or you’re going to miss your chance at having a national television debut.”