Introducing Charlie Rhett Baylor
Bruce Dennis is getting so far up that the girls wail out to her, pleading for her to get back down to safety. The poor cat sits unbothered, still attached to ten red heart-shaped balloons, drifting by a will not of her own. They stomp their feet and cry out with impatience. Kinley Chris shouts downstairs to their grandmother—screaming for her help—begging her with plump tears in her eyes for her to do something.
“Grandma! Bruce Dennis is flyin’ up more and more. We need to get her down! Grandma, please!”
But their grandmother was in the very place she was before all the commotion began. The girls have no idea she is the one who hitched Bruce Dennis to the balloons—swatting the cat away for breaking her favorite vase. She had said so many times before her art room was off limits. She is going to show them better than she can tell them. But before she would wiggle her overgrown self from the vintage loveseat perfectly placed next to the only window in the art room, their young ginger-haired neighbor, Charlie Rhett Baylor, raps at their door.
“Kinley and Wayne!!! I see Brucie up in the sky. What is goin’ on, y’all?!” In between his yelling, there were frantic knocks at the door. Charlie is also thinking of a way to get the fat cat down while he continues to knock and yell. His father, Hank Baylor, is the Deputy Sheriff in town, so Charlie has a few tricks up his sleeve that will surely secure the fat cat soundly.
Wayne Donald shoots down the stairs quicker than an incoming evening tide and swings the door open. She notices Charlie’s Sunday Best attire, then waves for him to enter their home. Kinley Chris strips the bedding off the guest room’s twin mattress and tosses it out the window. She is thinking they can shoot the balloons one by one with her slingshot or BB gun, and get Bruce Dennis to land on the mattress, but they have to be quick. When Charlie meets her in the guest room, she rattles off her plan to him, and he throws his suit jacket on the box spring, kicks off his loafers, and races back downstairs so he can place the mattress in the spot where Bruce Dennis would land.
Kinley Chris loads the BB gun with .177 caliber pellets, flings the gun over her shoulder, and sets up shop right in front of the old window. Like a focused sniper, the eldest sibling tilts her head to find the subject, braces her legs for shifting, and kneels down in an experienced shooter’s position. She yells down to Charlie, who is in a frenzied state, trying to track Bruce Dennis’ landing position.
“Charlie Rhett Baylor, you gotta good eye on Brucie? I ain’t aimin’ to kill my cat when she falls, so you besta be movin’ that mattress in the right direction!”
“Yeah, I’m watchin’! I’m watichin’ ya, Kinley. You just let those bbs rip, and my eyes will be on the fat cat prize.”
Kinley Chris launches the first three pellets with vigor and swift calculation. Two more pellets follow, and Charlie is monitoring every hit and is maneuvering the mattress as if his life depends on it. Kinley Chris launches two more pellets, and Wayne Donald wails in exclamation—deathly afraid of a negative outcome.
Just before Kinley lets the last three pellets fly, Bruce Dennis is falling down at a pace none of them expects, and Charlie has his eyes on her—keenly assessing the situation as every second passes.
“I’m lettin’ these last three rip, Charlie! Make sure that mattress is placed right. Looks like Bruce Dennis is comin’ right at ya!” Each pellet hits its respective target, and the fat cat meows loud enough for the whole block to hear. She lands with a pounding thud on the mattress on her eight-lives-left paws and quickly runs toward the shed behind the house.
“Wayne Donald!” Kinley Chris turns to her sister to give the final instructions. “You go on to that shed and make sure she ain’t got no bruises or nothin’ like that, and take her a fresh bowl of milk and open a can of that good tuna for her, too.”
Charlie waits until he sees Wayne Donald, then hurries up the stairs to grab his suit jacket and loafers. His day of helping the neighbors is over, and now he has a story to tell his highly decorated Deputy Sheriff of a father.
Bruce Dennis won’t even look in the art room’s direction. She will never trust the girls’ grandmother again.
This piece is my offering for this week’s Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge, #348. We had to save Bruce Dennis; we simply had to.
Part I and Part II
A Cornered Gurl 
You must be logged in to post a comment.