The New Mexico postcard made Darren and Riley both sneeze so hard their teeth itched. Darren resolved the problem of reading the poscard by propping it up on his table and reading it through binoculars.
FIRE!
FIRE!
I sure lucked out that night, yessiree, cause you see, this wasn’t no formal event, what with these fancy papers that look like big tickets with the day and time put up all over. In fact, if I hadn’t got bit by Herbie’s dog, I wouldn’t have been nowhere near the Purple Cactus, that’s where this here duel happened.
The Purple Cactus wasn’t really my kinda place, you understand. Too many little paper umbrellas in boot-shaped glasses, you get what I mean? Touristy place, but it was close to the hospital where I hadda go for these stitches on my thumb. Herbie’s dog wasn’t all that big, but damn, it could bite.
So I just needed a lil whiskey to kill the burn a bit, take my mind off how I couldn’t wiggle my thumb none. Figgered a coupla jiggers would do the trick, take some of the edge off, just enough for me to get meself home for the game on TV, then a good night’s snooze.
But soon as I sit down at the bar and ask the barkeep, who’s got blond hair big as one of Merle’s cats on his head, for a nice shot of Jim, in strolls this guy. He’s got a burn scar runnin’ down his face, and he’s holdin’ a cage big enough for an armadillo. There’s something red and shiny inside, and it’s making some fierce noise. It keeps spittin’ out little white things, which when I look back on it, I now figger were pepper seeds. This guy smooths back his hair, which he doesn’t have to even try, cuz it’s already slicked back plenty, but I see he’s wearin’ gloves and it’s all of a hundred and change outside.
So you can see why I might figger the guy was some kind of kook, yeah? So that’s how it happened I was watchin’ when the guy reaches down to open the cage.
Right away I could smell trouble, see, so I let out a holler, and I holler the first thing I could think of that’d be sure to get everybody all around to pay attention.
I points at the guy and holler, “Fire!”
He just laughs, right from his belly, and nods with a big grin. “The gentlemen over there,” (I actually looked over my back ‘fore I figgered he meant me) “has guessed my intent correctly! I will be releasing my Peruvian Death Pepper in just a moment!” He waited, while we all took a while to figger out what his fancy talk actually meant. I gulped and then I grabbed my whiskey glass and swallered all the Jim in one go.
Peruvian Death Peppers are as bad as they get. They’re just mean little sonuvabitches. I still remember that summer, I think mebbe it was ’93, where a whole crate of them got loose over at the Kramer mart. Took the fire department four days to put that blaze out. We all freeze up, eyes on that bundle o’ trouble in the cage. Then the guy holds up a finger.
“Unless,” he says, grinnin’ even bigger, “you’d all be kind enough to take out your wallets and purses and money clips and make a donation to my favorite charity.” He does a little bow, like the Japs do. “Me,” he explains.
“This some kind of holdup?” calls out a Mack truck of a man near the back of the room. The Mack truck stands up, and brother, is he big. I think I know him from back in grade school. His name is Les Somethin’.
Les saunters a few steps towards the guy, squeezin’ hands big as my head, and his knuckles go off like gunshots. The guy’s grin never even lets up.
“Yes!” the guy shouts, and shakes the cage, lifting it up so that the pepper can see Les. The pepper growls, then all of a sudden it just gulps real loud, like it swallowed a bug. Les sneers, thinkin’ the pepper’s a-skeered of him. Hell, we all thought that. I’m pretty sure I even heard a chuckle.
Then the pepper lets out this huge roar of fire, like ten, fifteen feet of fire just like the flamethrower in that movie with the space monsters. And the only thing left of Les are two smokin’ feet inside size 22 boots. A chick further down the bar screams and faints. No one catches her. Her head thunks on the floor like a dropped melon. We all jump at the sound, includin’ the pepper. It spits out a three-footer flame. The bartender squeaks. If this was a real bar, he’d have a shotgun or bat out already. Stupid tourist place.
The guy laughs. “As I was saying, if you all would be so kind as to take out your-” Most of us are already digging into our pockets, more worried about keepin’ alive than goin’ broke.
But then we hear a voice from the dark corner of the joint, where the light over the table’s busted.
“Don’t do it, folks.” We all freeze again. The guy frowns and then sneers at the person in the shadows.
“Is that right? Are you perhaps fireproof then?” He squints, trying to make out who he’s talkin’ to. Then we hear a chair being scraped back, and footsteps. Into the light steps-
We all groan when we see it’s the Duke. Everybody knows the Duke, but no one likes the Duke. He’s just one of those people that you suddenly get itchy teeth whenever they get close. The Duke’s about as tall as my barstool, but skinnier than a straw. Ears the size of baseballs, I tell ya, and glasses thick as my thumbs- well the good thumb anyway. He’s got to roll up his pants and shirt sleeves, nothin’ will fit him.
The Duke looks at the guy, cool as a cat made of cucumber. He actually drawls out his answer.
“No, I ain’t fireproof. But I got something hotter than your little toy pepper.”
The guy let’s out another laugh, but this laugh is different. The guy’s annoyed. I bet his teeth were itchin’. I start thinkin’ about maybe easin’ off my seat, then tacklin’ the Duke, getting’ him to shut up. Mebbe that makes me chicken, but I got no interest in findin’ out what it feels like to be extra crispy.
“That so, little man?’ the guy says, raisin’ the cage again. The pepper hisses, and we all jump back, but not the Duke. He’s still cool as an ice cube in January.
“Yeah, that’s so,” the Duke says, reachin’ into his pants pocket. He pulls out a box. A small box. A tiny box. Like a ring box. The guy chuckles.
“In that? “Fraid you’re a bit outgunned there,” the guy says. The Duke smiles. He opens up the box, and takes out . . . a whistle.
“You see, my friend,” the Duke says, “there just isn’t a cage that can hold my Mongolian Seven Fiery Hells Megawatt Pepper!” And then he blows the whistle.
Damn if the back wall doesn’t erupt into burnin’ cinders as a flamin’ yellow pepper, the size of- well- the size of Herbie’s dog, just burns it way right through the wall, and comes screechin’ to a halt at Duke’s side.
If that chick’s head sounded like a melon, I guess all of our chins droppin’ at the same time was like a box of apples. No one ever figgered Duke for a pepper wrangler, ‘specially a pepper as wild as his Mongo-whatever the hell it was.
The guy’s grin finally goes bye-bye. He gnashes his teeth, and then he shakes that cage like it’s a martini cocktail. I mebbe would of ducked, but there just wasn’t time. The red pepper roars and lets out another giant jet of flame right at Duke. For a second no one can see the Duke at all, and we’re all thinkin’ no more itchy teeth. But then we see the Mongo landin’ back on the floor. It belches out some smoke and I realize it jumped up and just swallered all that fire like it was air. The Duke just stands there, cool as an icicle up at the North Pole.
Then the Mongo starts walkin’ forward, towards the guy and his Peruvian pepper. Every step it takes there’s a scorch mark on the floor like a giant ciggy burn. The guy yelps and shakes the pepper. It’s getting mighty sick of all the shakin’ though and it growls at the guy. The guy pokes at it with his gloved hand, growlin’ right back. The pepper lets loose another jet, but this time we know what to watch for.
You haven’t seen nothin’, kid, ‘til you’ve seen a Mongo just jump up and swaller 15 feet of fire. It’s somethin’ to see, alright. Better than the monster truck derby, even. Some of us, meself included, actually cheered at that.
The Mongo keeps on walkin’ closer to the guy. The guy starts to back up, but then the Mongo just sort of jumps forward, and licks the guy’s shoe. That’s all it did. Lick the guy’s shoe.
But I tell ya, it was like the guy was dipped in kerosene. Whoosh went all his clothes, and out the door the guy runs screamin’. Right into the thoroughfare.
Later, at the police station, the truck driver admitted he’d smoked a tote or two, but the police kinda let it slide. It’s not as if the guy would have survived even if he hadn’t been run over.
The guy dropped his cage, though so I remember we all jumped again as the Peruvian pepper rolled free of the broken frame. But damn again if it doesn’t start nippin’ playful-like at the Mongo and the two of them start runnin’ around like lovesick puppies. And The Duke standing there cool as a salted caramel mocha frappe shake.
So, kid, that was the duel. And that’s why you had better stop complainin’ about Mr. Cooper makin’ your teeth itch when we go to the market on Sundays to get these peppers your ma loves so much. That’s right, he was the Duke, before he turned pepper farmer. And he saved a whole bunch of us from a whole heap of trouble that night at the Purple Cactus.
You sleep tight, kid.
When Darren picked up the poscard to put it back into the envloped, he was peeved to find there were scorch marks on his tabletop.
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