Alabama Ford turned forty on the day a tornado took out Asher Wink’s feed store on Mechanics Street, the main drag of Wimple Springs, Kansas. Alabama Ford was at work at Merry Bounce Puzzles, also on Mechanics Street in Wimple Springs, but a full seven blocks away from Asher Wink’s feed store.

The storm clouds gathered all morning, the sky queering to a murky pea green around noon. As they do across the dusty Kansas flats, the tornado seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Within three minutes, the whirling winds took down Asher Wink’s feed store, blew the roof half off Petunia Gump’s house, lifted up the Brewer family’s glider swing and carried it four blocks to the parking lot of St. Rose’s Church, and sucked Jake Trigg’s mongrel dog sky high never to be seen again.

The crew on duty at the Merry Bounce Puzzles factory took cover from the rough weather when the shop foreman hollered for them all to troop down to the basement. By the time Alabama Ford lumbered down the rickety staircase to the Merry Bounce Puzzles factory cellar the wicked winds ripped up Asher Wink’s establishment seven blocks away.

The puzzle makers spent nearly an hour in the basement until the all clear siren blew. All the while holed up in the cellar, Alabama Ford worried about the storm wrecking her plans to go to the Plaid Rhino Tavern after work ended that day to celebrate her fortieth birthday. She feared the storm would go on and on, keeping them all in the basement so long Alabama would not be able to go celebrate at the Plaid Rhino Tavern.

While in the basement waiting out the storm, Alabama sat on a folding chair that those around her imagined would give way under Alabama’s ample girth. The more Alabama thought about missing her chance to go to the Plaid Rhino Tavern, the wetter her blouse became under each arm, the damper her brow grew.

When the all clear sounded, had Alabama been more agile, she would have been the first of the crew up the stairs and out of the cellar. As it was, as always, Alabama Ford trailed at the rear, huffing slowly behind the rest of the workers.

The last of the crew to reach an assigned work station, Alabama returned to her task of checking puzzles that had been die-cut. Alabama’s task, as quality control inspector #24, was to ensure that all pieces of the puzzle were clearly sliced through.

At her side at her station was a half finished box of banana Moon Pie cakes that she had been eating since the start of her shift that morning.

The inspector working next to Alabama was a lanky twenty year old man named Kip Gateway. Kip worked part time at Merry Bounce Puzzles, selling Columbian Gold to students at Ronald Swankman Memorial High School on his off hours. He regularly engaged an unwitting Alabama Ford in cynical conversations throughout the workday.

“So, Alabama, you’re looking especially alluring today in that outfit,” he began sarcastically soon after the storm subsided.

She flushed crimson, believing Kip truly was flirting with her.

“Oh, you,” she replied.

“Really, Al-a-bama. You really get me with your swanky outfits.”

“Oh, you’re being a silly.”

“So, Al-a-bama, what gives with the swanky outfit today?”

“It’s my birthday.”

“Well I’ll be, Alabama Ford. What are you, twenty?”

“Oh silly, no,” she replied, eating up Kip’s insincere chatter.

“Come on, ain’t we the same age?“ Kip asked.

Alabama replied with an “Oh, you silly pattotie.”

“Come on, Al-a-bama ... Al-a-bama … how old are you?”

“Forty,” Alabama managed with a girlish giggle.

“No.”

Alabama nodded.

“No way.”

Alabama bobbed her head with increased vigor. “But, Al-a-bama, you look so young.”

Alabama blushed at Kip Gateway’s cynical compliment. “Oh, you silly pattotie.”

Kip slid slightly closer to Alabama and touched her on the shoulder with the tip of his finger. “So, Al-a-bama ... What ‘ya doin’ to celebrate your big day?” He let his finger wander down from her shoulder towards her dimpled elbow.

Flustered, Alabama muttered, Kip not making out what she said.

“What’s that?” he asked, a slim smile crossing his face.

“I’m going to the Plaid Rhino Tavern,” she finally managed.

“Hmm ...” Kip rather purred at his corpulent coworker.

“I go there once in a while,” Alabama volunteered, self consciously avoiding direct eye contact with Kip. Eventually she locked her line of sight on the half empty box of banana Moon Pies, smiling at the production line produced confections.

“My, Al-a-bama, you are the party girl.” Alabama giggled. “Party queen.” She continued to twitter. “So, Al-a-bama, who ‘ya goin’ to the Plaid Rhino with?”

A sudden frown dashed onto Alabama’s face. “I’m meeting some ... friends,” she muttered.

“Some of your party girl friends?” Alabama gave a hesitant, jerking nod. “Maybe I should drop by the Plaid Rhino myself to celebrate your birthday. What do you think about that, Al-a-bama? How about me coming to your party?”

Alabama did not know how to respond and fidgeted silently in her chair.

“I just may do that Al-a-bama, come see you at the Plaid Rhino tonight.”

Kip ended his dialogue with Alabama, both of them returning to the inspection of the puzzle pieces.

Alabama nervously munched down a couple of her Moon Pie cakes ten minutes after her dialogue with Kip Gateway ended. She stole glances at Kip between boxes of puzzle pieces that passed by her for inspection.

Mid-afternoon rolled around and Alabama paused from her work and left her station for the employee break-room. She plugged a vending machine a few times, drawing down three Mars candy bars. She stepped sideways to the next machine and bought two Pepsi cola drinks for herself.

During her fifteen minute respite, she finished the trio of chocolate and almond bars and the two soda pops. She returned to her work station and gobbled down the last of her banana snack cakes.

Alabama spent the rest of her shift lost in inspecting box after box of puzzles: mountain scenes, daisy fields, calico kittens. At five o’clock, just as she was about to exit the Merry Bounce Puzzle factory, Kip Gateway gave her an overblown wink, like the kind used in a theatrical sketch. “I may be seeing you, Alabama. I may be seeing you at the Plaid Rhino, Al—a—bama.”

“Oh, you silly pattootie.”

Alabama lived in a ramshackle boarding house run by Eleanor Nieberding. As a rule, directly after her shift, Alabama Ford walked straight home to the rooming house where she usually shared a casserole with Eleanor. On the night of her fortieth birthday, Alabama instead plodded over to the Plaid Rhino Tavern where she intended to celebrate her special day.

Although Alabama had worked for Merry Bounce Puzzles for a dozen years and lived in Wimple Springs equally as long, she only had been inside the Plaid Rhino Tavern three or four times, one of those occasions during her first week in town while lost. Over the course of the past couple of months, Alabama Ford promised herself that she would pay a visit to the Plaid Rhino on her fortieth birthday to have a couple of drinks in celebration. She even thought about asking Eleanor Nieberding to join her, but ended up thinking the better of that plan.

The Plaid Rhino Tavern was located a few blocks away from the Merry Bounce Puzzle factory, on the corner of Rosebud and Commercial streets. Reaching the pub, Alabama waited a full five minutes before entering, stewing up her courage to enter the dark joint.

When she finally did enter the tavern, she stood near the doorway, squeezing her eyes shut then open, then shut again trying to adjust to the dimly lit room. Focusing a bit better in the darkness, Alabama first glanced around the bar stand, surrounded by what looked to her to be spindly, unstable stools. Three of the dozen spots around the bar were occupied by men who looked to have been in the pub for hours. Indeed, one of the fellow’s head bobbed from shoulder to shoulder.

Alabama mechanically decided against a place at the bar on a tri-pod stool because of her girth. A number of low-slung tables with more substantial chairs were scattered around the pub, only two of them occupied at the time. Alabama elected to take up a table in a dark corner. In addition to the bartender, a solitary waitress worked the tavern on the night of Alabama Ford’s fortieth birthday. The pub normally filled to capacity nearly every night by seven o’clock. Even when full, the moderate size of the Plaid Rhino made the pub readily serviced by a solitary bartender and one server.

“What’cha want?” the bored waitress asked after ambling to Alabama’s table, the server more intent on picking at a small scab on her elbow than serving the solitary woman.

“I’d like a Vodka Paradise,” Alabama ordered, requesting a Plaid Rhino specialty drink of the Russian staple and raspberry juice.

“Got ‘cha.”

Alabama was served in a matter of minutes, relieved to have the drink so that she had something to do with her hands. Trying to appear casual, nonchalant, collected, Alabama trained her eyes on a television mounted over the bar which broadcasted a rerun of Green Acres.

Alabama celebrated only one of her forty birthdays with a proper party, when she turned ten. Not long before her tenth birthday, Alabama’s father left her and her mother and exited Kansas with Marceleen Triplequick, one of the hairdo stylists at Madge’s Palace of Beauty. At the time, Alabama and her parents lived in Mercy, a small town on the banks of the Kansas River in Doniphan County, a rural rectangle in the northern corner of the state.

When Tinder Ford ran off with Marceleen Triplequick to Topeka, Alabama’s mother could not bear to even set foot out of the house. Alabama was left to do the marketing at Begese Grocery Store and to run any other day to day errands.

In a matter of a couple months, Maude Ford, Alabama’s mother, decided to leave Mercy, Kansas, for good, packing up the rusty Oldsmobile Tinder left behind with clothing and dishes. In the middle of the night, Maude and Alabama drove to Bonner Springs, a placid place outside Kansas City that played home to the Agricultural Hall of Fame.

A few weeks after arriving in Bonner Springs, Maude invited a handful of girls about Alabama’s age that lived in the limestone and cracked plaster apartment house about a dozen families called home to a birthday party for Alabama.

Sitting at the Plaid Rhino on the occasion of the start of her fortieth year, Alabama smiled at the gauzy memory of her nice birthday party thirty years earlier.

Alabama tried to keep her thoughts from running too far from her tenth birthday celebration, refocusing her attention on Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor in their ramshackle, clapboard house somewhere outside Hooterville.

Despite her best efforts, when Green Acres faded out to a commercial break, Alabama’s eleventh birthday flooded her thoughts. She took a stout shot of Vodka Paradise, intent on washing bad memories from her brain. Yet another snort of Vodka Paradise and her eleventh birthday remained still etched in her head.

Alabama Ford did not actually celebrate her eleventh birthday. In fact, no one even remembered it was Alabama’s birthday.

On the occasion of turning eleven, Alabama Ford lived at the Kaw Valley Girls’ Home in Leavenworth, Kansas. Three months earlier, government social workers placed Alabama Ford in the Kaw Valley Girls’ Home after Maude Ford, her mother, gunned down Marceleen Triplequick outside the First Presbyterian Church in Topeka. Maude Ford tried to shoot her estranged husband, who stood next to Marceleen on the steps of the church that Sunday morning, but misfired and blasted a kindly spinster named Latitia Roget in the left kneecap.

“Get’cha another?” the scab picking waitress asked Alabama, pulling Alabama out of her murky reverie. Alabama nodded, mumbling “Please” and “Thank you.”

When the server set a fresh Vodka Paradise in front of Alabama, she asked Alabama if she wanted poppers.

“Huh?” Alabama asked, not understanding.

“Ya know ... poppers.”

“Poppers?”

“Yah, ya know ... poppers,” referring to the fried pepper concoction.

Feeling herself flush, Alabama said yes, having no idea what she would receive as a result of her order.

Alabama quickly took a few slugs from her drink, memories of her eleventh birthday seeming to flush out of her head, thankfully.

By this time, Eva Gabor was back on the T.V. screen making leaden hotcakes in her tattered looking kitchen.

After Green Acres, a rerun of Beverly Hillbillies began broadcasting. She quietly hummed along with the program’s opening credits theme song. Alabama Ford liked the Clampetts. She was well into Granny making a concoction in a tree thicket outside the Beverly Hills manse Jed and his kinfolk called home, nibbling on the poppers and sipping on her Vodka Paradise when Kip Gateway and two other young men about his age entered the town tavern. The trio was in the midst of sharing a boisterous chortle as they walked into the room, each of them seeming to be well lit by domestic brews.

Kip scanned the bar, catching sight of Alabama Ford at the small table clutched off into the corner. Kip rapped each of his cohorts on their upper arms with the backs of his hands. He gestured in Alabama’s direction with a sharp jerk of his head. The chuckling continued as Kip led the other two in the direction of Alabama’s table.

Alabama did not notice the approach of Kip and company, her eyes cast upward to the television set over the bar stand, grinning at the start of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. As a girl, Alabama Ford often imagined herself to be Mary Richards, daydreaming about moving to the big city and taking a job at a television station.

“Al-a-bama,” Kip called out, his words slurring slightly.

Hearing her name spoken in a public place startled Alabama. A popper she’d picked off the plate slipped from her fingers as Alabama’s hand jerked in surprise.

Kip and his cohorts quickly slid into the three open chairs around Alabama’s little table.

“Al-a-bama.”

“Kip?”

“Al-a-bama.”

“You’re here.” Alabama felt her face flush red, instantly humiliated by sitting in the Plaid Rhino Tavern alone on her birthday after she’d told Kip Gateway she was to spend the evening at the tavern celebrating with friends.

“Party over yet?” Kip asked as his friends exchanged a fast glance.

Flustered, Alabama nevertheless managed to bob her head and weakly mutter “Uh-huh.”

”Well damn,” Kip rejoined and then asked Alabama what she was drinking.

“This?” She pointed at her glass.

“Yep.”

“Vodka Paradise.”

“Mmm,” Kip replied, reaching over to her glass after which he ran his forefinger around the rim a couple of times. “Sounds tasty, Alabama. Very tasty.”

”It’s good.”

“What say you guys,” Kip said to his friends. “What say we all order a round of Vodka Paradises and have a drink with Alabama here?”

Both of the young men agreed and Kip flagged over the waitress. The trio of men were soon served as Kip carried forth his chatter to Alabama. Listening to Kip, Alabama nervously looked from the television to Kip, wondering all the while what Mary Richards would do in the situation at hand.

“So, Al-a-bama, what more’s on your agenda for tonight?” Kip asked as the two other fellows muttered between themselves, glancing across to Alabama at regular turns.

“My what?”

“Your agenda. Hell, a party girl like you must only be starting the night, huh, Al-a-bama?”

“Oh, you’re being a silly.”

“Come on now, Al-a-bama. What’s a girl like you got planned?”

Alabama shrugged and giggled. Not knowing what to say, she asked Kip if he liked Mary Richards.

“Who?”

Alabama fidgeted in her chair, the legs creaking miserably as her weight shifted. At barely above a slim whisper Alabama said, “Mary Richards.”

“Who the hell is Mary Richards?”

Alabama pointed towards the television right as Mary Tyler Moore plaintively cooed “Oh Lou!” to Ed Asner.

“What?” Kip looked over towards the bar stand. “Who?”

Alabama kept pointing at the television; Kip continued to scan the bar, seeing no women save for the waitress who he knew was not named Mary Richards.

“Never mind,” Alabama mumbled. Kip shrugged and slapped both his friends between their shoulder blades.

“So, boys, want another round?”

“Sure, Kipper,” one of the two replied.

Once again, Kip ordered another batch of Vodka Paradises, including a fresh one for Alabama who had barely touched the first drink Kip procured.

Alabama began fidgeting on her apparently rickety perch, the dry wood creaking crisply with each shift. Beads of sweat broke out across the wisps of coal colored hair that lined her upper lip.

“Drink up Al-a-bama,” Kip prodded when a fresh round of Vodka Paradises reached the table. “You party queen.”

Alabama wiped her lip and mumbled, “Oh you silly pattootie.”

“What’d she say?” one of the young men at Kip’s side asked. “What’d she just say?”

“Tell ‘em, Al-a-bama,” Kip said.

Alabama glanced from side to side and then behind, looking as if she sought relief, a bar branded cavalry to let her escape being teased, made fun of, by Kip’s friends in front of her co-worker.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she mumbled, gaze cast down at the tabletop. “Nothing.”

Kip waved Alabama off with his liquor glass. “She called me a silly pattootie. Ain’t that right, Al-a-bama? She calls me that all the time. Am I your silly pattootie, Al-a-bama?”

Hesitating for a moment, still shifting awkwardly and uneasily on her chair, Alabama managed a weak sounding “It’s just something I say sometimes.”

The three men at the table, laughing uproariously, began calling each other silly pattooties.

Alabama looked behind her again, wanting to get up from the table and leave. But, she feared Kip’s friends would holler after her, drawing attention to her as she tried to walk out of the Plaid Rhino. She grabbed a hold of her glass with both hands, the glass filled with Vodka Paradise nearly completely covered by her plumper pork wiener-like fingers. The jocular, uninhibited chortling between Kip and his fellows carried on for a few minutes, Alabama frozen on her chair, eyes fixed directly onto her drink.

“Gosh, Alabama, we’re just ... we’re just ... we’re just joshin’ with you, girl,” Kip said, patting Alabama a couple of times on her shoulder. “Come on, Al-a-bama ... we’ze just joshin’ with you.”

Alabama cautiously peeked up and across the table at Kip. He tapped her shoulder a couple more times. “Come on, Al-a-bama. Let me see that party queen smile.”

With that said, Alabama broke a grin and let loose her grip on her glass of Vodka Paradise, raising her hands to her flushing cheeks.

“Oh, you …“ she said.

Another hour passed when Alabama looked at her watch and decided she needed to leave the tavern and begin the walk home to Eleanor Nieberding’s boarding house. She needed to get to bed soon so that she would be bright and alert in the morning to be on time for work at Merry Bounce Puzzles. When she told Kip she needed to be leaving, Kip quickly engaged her in a stilted round of seemingly idle chatter. During the conversation, Kip’s friends exused themselves from the table and walked out of the Plaid Rhino, without Alabama particularly noticing their quick exit.

“I really need to go,” she said.

“Awe come on, Al-a-bama. Can’t you stay a little longer?”

She shook her head, wiping drops of sweat off her upper lip with her right forefinger.

“Well, all right then. But, at least let me drive you home.”

She did not respond at once, eventually saying, “I guess that would be okay.”

A few minutes later, Alabama and Kip walked out of the Plaid Rhino together. Outside the pub, Kip pointed to an alleyway that ran along the side of the tavern. “My car’s back there,” he said, meaning in the parking lot at the rear. Alabama shrugged.

Rounding the corner of the tavern and walking into the alley, Alabama and Kip immediately came face to face with Kip’s two friends, standing in the dark, sharing a cigarette between them. Before Alabama had a few seconds to focus on who was standing in front of her in the gloom of the alley, Kip shoved her into his two friends, one of whom sucker-punched the woman in the jaw.

After slamming Alabama in the face with his fist, the man who hit her cupped his hand tightly over her mouth. The other friend of Kip’s snatched at Alabama’s pants, swiftly ripping the buttons undone. All the while, Kip opened his own britches and paused not a moment before driving himself into the shaking, gasping Alabama Ford.

In short speed, the men reversed roles and then shifted again until each of them took a turn ripping at raping Alabama in the dark and dank alleyway beside the Plaid Rhino tavern.

After about a quarter of an hour, the trio walked away, laughing, leaving Alabama with her pants around her ankles and a torn blouse barely hanging on her hefty frame.

Blood dripped down Alabama’s chin, the aftereffects of being slugged by one of Kip’s friends. She did not bother to wipe the blood away nor did she swipe away the tears that pooled in her eyes. She managed to hoist up her pants, but found she needed to hold them in place with one of her hands because the buttons busted during the cold, carnal pillage. With her other hand, Alabama clutched at the cloth of her blouse to keep herself covered as best as possible.

She staggered from the alleyway, nearly losing her balance twice, almost tumbling into the graveled pavement. In her mind, Alabama thought of Mary Richards, the character she saw a couple of hours earlier on the flickering television set hooked to the wall inside the Plaid Rhino Tavern. She thought of Mary’s cozy apartment. She thought of the studio with the couch that neatly folded out into a bed, the warm room with the letter M smartly tacked to the wall, letting the world know it was Mary’s place. The picture faded, replaced by a gray-tone image of her room at Eleanor Nieberding’s boarding house.

Choking back tears and with blood drying on her chin, Alabama Ford walked alone to the boarding house.

Within half an hour, she reached her room and ran a hot bath to clean herself off. After the bath, she fixed herself a weak cup of tea using a teabag she’d steeped four times before. Finishing the tepid brew, Alabama Ford went to bed.

Alabama awoke just after dawn when her bedside clock-radio clicked on with a static laden broadcast from WYYL Radio in Counter Bluffs, the county seat. She heard the announcer at WYYL reporting the tornado that ripped apart Asher Wink’s feed store the day before.

“Even though the Wink Feed Store was blown apart, the owner reported no injuries,” the announcer advised. “One house was also reported as damaged in Wimple Springs, which is, as you all know, the home of Merry Bounce Puzzles.”

Alabama hoisted herself out of bed, made herself a bowl of instant creamed wheat and a cup of tea with the same overused bag. Finished with her breakfast, she dressed, left the boarding house and walked to Mechanics Street and the Merry Bounce Puzzles factory. On the way to work, she stopped in the drug store and bought a box of Moon Pie cakes, banana flavored.

At eight o’clock sharp, Alabama Ford went to her station amongst the puzzle makers and took her post as quality control inspector. She mentioned not a word of what happened to her the night before to anyone.

The End

Mike Broemmel © 2004