Ponk Home, Virginia

by totallynotabrony

Sunday Freestyle is Better Than Thursday Night Snakes

“Who could have done this?”

Pinkie thought about Whet Stone’s question as she made coffee in her small living area. They’d opened the trailer to check that the insides were okay. While she was at it, politeness dictated that the least she could do for the emergency personnel and truckers standing around was offer them a hot beverage. She was going to have to do something nice for the truckers who’d been first on the scene with their personal fire extinguishers.

“Do you have any enemies?” Whet Stone asked. He held his notepad and pen up expectantly as if he thought she might dictate the exact details of the culprit to him.

To be fair, Pinkie had a pretty good idea.

Whet Stone read his notes. “An eyewitness said a black BMW pulled up and someone threw a bottle from the back seat onto the side of your trailer. It was apparently some kind of firebomb. We can test what accelerant was inside.”

He tilted his head and looked her in the eye, in a pose he probably thought was dramatic. “They said the car had Florida license plates.”

“Huh, so do I.”

He seemed disappointed, as if she had made a rather less interesting connection than he hoped. “Do you think it’s someone you know?”

Pinkie still hadn’t come up with a good answer. Not that she was the bad guy here, but it could be said that there were certain reasons Chinese gangsters were out for her blood. Anything she told Detective Stone might invite further, uncomfortable questions.

This was also bigger than her. Since learning what her family had been up to since she’d left, Pinkie had other people to think about besides herself.

So she poured coffee into her pink, personal mug, leaned back against the interior wall of the trailer, and answered Whet Stone’s question with another question. “How much bullshit are you willing to tolerate, detective?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This is not a simple story. Imagine that the world was a stage and all the men and women were merely players. They each have their exits and entrances, and each plays many parts.”

“So I’m imagining Shakespeare.”

“You wish this was as simple as Shakespeare.”

Whet Stone still hadn’t learned anything he could write in his notebook. He lowered it. “What’s going on?”

Pinkie took a sip of her coffee. “The Kirin are after me.”

Whet Stone’s eyes widened and he asked incredulously, “Chinese organized crime?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“If they catch me, I’ll ask them.”

“That-” He shook his head. “I don’t buy it. You have to know something. Did they threaten you? Do they have some dirt on you?”

Whet Stone might have been a sharper knife than he looked. Pinkie finished her coffee and started to turn away, but he caught her arm. Just as quickly, he released her, but said, “Miss Pie, I know this is a smaller town than you’re used to, but the Dashville Police Department can help you.”

“I’ve been doing pretty well on my own,” said Pinkie. “You see, detective, I have this theory that I actually experience reality differently than most people. I’m not good at consciously altering people’s perceptions of me, but I’ve noticed that I generally get exactly as much attention as I want. I’m a great entertainer because people look at me. But when I’m out of sight, I’m out of mind. You know, most people have a natural tendency to just not see anything they don’t want to, didn’t expect, or can’t explain. They ignore things they think are problems someone else should handle. I don’t know why, but I think I have the ability to amplify that and basically become invisible if I want to. I’m somebody else’s problem.”

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was written before either of us were born, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t read it,” Whet Stone deadpanned. Pinkie wondered if he’d looked up her Wikipedia page to find out when she was born.

“Then let me ask you a question, mister detective. Where did my coffee cup go in the last thirty seconds?”

Whet Stone blinked, and his eyes darted around the inside of the trailer. Pinkie spread her hands, which were empty. She turned them over, showing him both sides. “Nothing up my sleeves.” They were still rolled up above her elbows from her morning at the quarry.

He shook his head. “Regardless of what you think about your personal safety, your slight of hand or supposed ability to go unnoticed isn’t the argument. We’re trying to solve a crime and arrest people who might be guilty of other crimes, too. This is bigger than you.”

He...did have a point there. Pinkie frowned. She didn’t necessarily know what else these gangsters had done or who they had hurt, but did that mean she could turn a blind eye? Or was she only concerned with helping her own family?

Pinkie took a sip from her refilled mug, which seemed to startle Whet Stone. “Okay. I admit, I might have gotten a little dismissive there. And, to preempt the obvious question, if I’m so good, I don’t know how they found me.” She paused. “Wait a second…”

She facepalmed violently. “The selfies! Instagram, you’ve betrayed me again!”

“What are you talking about?”

Pinkie briefly explained about the college party. She didn’t mention that her sisters had been there, or what she’d seen Limestone doing.

Whet Stone listened, frowning, through the story. “What are you going to do now that the Kirin know you’re in Dashville? You can’t stay in your trailer.”

Pinkie almost said that she would go to a hotel. But if they’d found her bright pink trailer, they could find her bright pink truck. She almost asked if Whet Stone would give her a place to stay, because she was sure he would want to help her out, but didn’t think he could white knight his way past a conflict of interest in the case.

So she said, “I’ll stay with my family.”

“Your parents own the quarry north of town?” said Whet Stone. “That them?”

“Right,” said Pinkie. She shouldn’t have introduced herself to him the other day. He’d obviously been doing some research since then.

He nodded. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? Maybe you’ll remember something helpful if you have some time to calm down and think.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday. Church.”

“Alright, Monday. In the meantime, if you’re in trouble, call 911. But if you want to talk, you have my card.”

He cast a glance at the pink mug in her hand and then stepped out of the trailer.

Pinkie stood there for a while longer, finishing her second cup of coffee. The event in Miami had started out just like any other. At the time, she didn’t know who had organized it. She’d wandered into a room where she wasn’t welcome. She’d seen a few things she shouldn’t have. She’d never been able to resist shiny red buttons.

Boom - she was on the run from an international crime syndicate.

Pinkie washed her cup and the coffee maker, turned off the generator, and locked the door. She walked away from the trailer. In the distance, a black BMW pulled away from the side of the truckstop building and out onto the highway.

Pinkie got into her truck and made a phone call.

“Silversmith Custom Motors.” It sounded like Flash Sentry answering the phone.

“Hi, I came by the other day. Pink truck.”

“Oh yeah.”

“I find myself not needing it at the moment. Can I leave it with you and you can get to it when you get to it?”

“I guess we could do that.”

“If you have the space, I hope you could keep it indoors.”

He paused. “Well...that’ll cost a little extra.”

Pinkie agreed to that and headed for the shop. As she drove, after much deliberation and a couple of false starts, she pushed the phone button on the steering wheel. “Call Limestone.”

The voice recognition actually worked for once and dialed the number. Pinkie paused, thumb hovering over the hangup button.

The ringing suddenly ended. “Who is this?”

“Uh...hi, Limestone.”

“Why are you calling me?”

Good question. Pinkie swallowed. “I’m in trouble.”

There was a moment of silence on the line. Limestone said, “Where are you?”

Pinkie let out the breath she had been holding, hoping the microphone didn’t pick it up.

Limestone didn’t say much, just listened as Pinkie talked. That was encouraging in itself. Limestone ended the call with a simple, “I’ll be there.”

At the shop, Pinkie handed her keys to Flash Sentry. She might have caught him at a bad time; most of the shop doors were already closed and he gave the impression he was doing her a favor by staying late. He was dressed in leather and a low, chrome motorcycle was parked with its front tire aimed out of the parking lot.

Still, he paused long enough to ask, “Do you have a ride out of here?”

“Yes,” Pinkie said. “My sister’s coming.”

Limestone turned into the parking lot just then. Flash stared at her, and then looked back at Pinkie. “Wait, Pie? You’re related?” He shook his head and got on the motorcycle.

“You said something about a fire,” Limestone said as Pinkie got in the car.

“Yeah, um…someone tried to burn my trailer. Almost did, too.”

“How did that happen?”

“Long story, but...it’s kind of related to the crystal molly.”

Limestone looked at her, surprised, but just as quickly turned back to the road to pretend she wasn’t. Pinkie didn’t expect a response from her, nor desired one. She kept talking. “A couple of days ago, I pissed off the Kirin, the big Chinese gang. You may or may not know that they import a lot of precursor chemicals.”

If Whet Stone had been doing research, so had Pinkie. She’d known next to nothing about them, but finding out about their involvement with crystal molly had been easy enough.

Limestone glanced at Pinkie again, concerned but wary. “Only you, Pinkie. Only you could do that.”

“I don’t know if they would kill me if they found me, but whatever they did would still be unpleasant.”

“And they followed you here.”

Pinkie stared at her lap. “I’m sorry for bringing this to Dashville. I should leave again.”

“No you fucking don’t.” Limestone grabbed Pinkie’s shoulder. “Not again.”

“I don’t want to bring you any trouble.”

“Pinkie, you aren’t trouble.”

“I’d feel better about that if you hadn’t punched me the first time you saw me in ten years.”

Limestone opened her mouth, fumbled, and then blurted, “Look, I’m sorry, okay? You know I have control issues.”

“You feel helpless to control your own life and your impulsiveness, so you feel compelled to exert dominance over others?” Pinkie paused, but while she was laying out how she felt, she might as well add, “And also drugs?”

Limestone struggled for several seconds, growing visibly redder in the face, before glancing out the window and suddenly jerking the car into a parking lot. “Mom wanted me to get groceries while I was out.”

Pinkie acknowledged the change in subject but didn’t call her on it. She looked through the windshield to the grocery store sign. “Neat, I was hoping they might have gotten a Piggly Wiggly in town since I left.”

“Before this place opened, it used to be Food City or nothing,” Limestone replied. “They still sponsor the NASCAR races over in Bristol.”

“I once hosted a private party during the race at Homestead,” Pinkie said. “Jeff Goaton crashed it.”

“You met him?” Limestone asked, before quickly turning her head away and adding, “Whatever.”

The two of them got out of the car and walked through the grocery store’s automatic front doors. Limestone said, “You get the milk and eggs: 2%, and large. I’ll get the bread and meat.” The two of them parted ways.

The nice thing about big-box stores was standardization. It wasn’t too difficult to find the coolers, even if Pinkie wasn’t familiar with this particular store. She compared prices, checked for broken eggs, and headed back towards the cash registers.

A woman in a black suit was standing in the aisle behind the registers. She had attentive eyes and a lot of ginger hair which almost concealed the cigarette tucked behind her ear. A gold chain around her neck disappeared under her shirt. It matched a couple of rings on her fingers. Her shoes were polished and appeared to be made of alligator or some other kind of scaly leather.

Pinkie thought it was a little strange that she didn’t seem to be looking for anything, like most people in grocery stores were. Probably because she was looking for Pinkie. As soon as their eyes met, she smiled and started forward. “Ponk PK, I presume?”

“Hi, yeah,” said Pinkie, trying to shuffle the milk and eggs around her hands enough to get one or the other free.

The woman didn’t go for a handshake, though. She put her hands on her hips and looked Pinkie up and down. “You know, finally meeting you - I’ve been thinking about it for a while - and it’s just...wow. Here you are. Your website says you’re ‘the premier party person.’” Her head tilted, still smiling. “Has anyone ever told you that your greatness is just an accident arising from the inferiority of others?”

“...no?” Pinkie replied, caught off guard.

Limestone pushed past just then, bumping the woman with her shoulder. “Quit talking to my sister.” She grabbed Pinkie by the elbow and pulled her along, behind the line of checkout counters.

“That was weird,” said Pinkie, brows wrinkling as they walked away.

“What, random people walking up to you in the grocery store because you’re famous?”

“Ironically, no; happens all the time.” Pinkie shrugged.

The two of them went home. Well, to the Pie Family house. It was technically home, Pinkie supposed. Her home. She’d been on the road for the last ten years and a trailer was a place to sleep but not really a place to settle. So the house up in the hills above Dashville was home. In name, at least. Even if she hadn’t been there. Even if it didn’t feel like it.

Even sleeping in a bunk bed with Marble felt impersonal. It was exactly where Pinkie had slept every night before departing for California. That was more than half her life so far. Yet lying awake Saturday night and listening to Marble’s soft breathing from the mattress below, Pinkie definitely felt the separation in the years.

Pinkie recognized that she’d been the one to change while she was gone, not her family. Coming back and suddenly popping into their lives as if a completely different person...well, Limestone still had no right to punch her, but Pinkie had almost appeared as a stranger. There was also the lingering guilt about whether Pinkie’s unconscious command of attention had played a part. Her absence had been enough without throwing that into the mix. Don’t look at me...Don’t look at me...Okay, I’m back, look at me!

Pinkie was still restless on Sunday morning, but too busy to dwell much on it. Everyone in the house was up and around, getting dressed. Sunday church was a little different than mid-week. It was more formal, for one. Pinkie had to borrow a skirt from Marble.

After a quick breakfast, they set out as a family. Seated in the back seat of her parents’ car on the way to church, Pinkie whispered to Marble, “Do we still do the yodeling?”

Marble gave her a curious look. Pinkie mimed noise coming out of her mouth.

“Oh! Mm-hmm,” Marble replied, smiling.

If Thursday night was about showing one’s devotion through not getting bitten by snakes through the safety of faith, then Sunday was about joyful noise.

Of course, there was also brimstone to be had, beginning with a heated sermon. The leader stood before them and spat fire for an unbroken half hour. Damning of evil, guidance on the way, political commentary. Pinkie did her best to pay attention, without thinking too hard about the words. Everyone around her seemed to be into it, though, and audience participation was encouraged. Occasionally someone from a pew would hoot encouragement, pound a fist, or do something else to add more energy into the room.

All of that charged up the congregation to raise their voices together. Now this, Pinkie could do. Sing whatever came to mind. A capella, meandering free-range hymns, maybe a rebel yell, any sound that felt right.

Pinkie and her sisters had once gotten in trouble for planning and practicing together with smuggled phrasebooks in Romanian and Malaysian, in four part harmony.

Their father, as he’d paddled them, explained the true meaning. “Dagnabit, girls, it's supposed to be our inner harmonics modulated by the eternal wave! It just comes to you! You can't cheat and just teach yourself foreign as a crutch!”

Pinkie had picked up some Spanish from a couple of years basing her operation out of Miami. Amid the din of the congregation, she probably could have gotten away with Cuban rap, but after the weekend she’d had so far, didn’t feel like putting the energy into being subversive.

At least Sunday Freestyle didn’t leave her as drained as Thursday Night Snakes.

Back home afterwards, the family prepared for lunch, changing into casual clothes. Pinkie stuck her head into the kitchen to see if her mother needed any help with the roast, but she’d gotten so used to not having Pinkie around, that she didn’t even seem to miss the extra hands.

That hit her harder than it should have. So much so that Pinkie switched back to thinking about her other problem, that of the revenge from the south. Or was it technically east since China, even though the shortest flight to get there would go west. Well, at least it wasn’t the north. The Yankees mostly behaved themselves these days.

They’d better, or Pinkie wasn’t going to come back to their stadium in New York.

The police were working on the case, since Pinkie had told them about the Kirin. Still, she would have felt a little better about a larger police force or even the FBI, DEA, or some other alphabet soup agency.

Darn it, she was back to thinking about food. Pinkie shook her head and returned to the other topic. Even if the police were on the case, what should she do?

She knew what her father would say. Probably her granny and Limestone, too. And at the moment, personal protection did sound like a good idea.

Pinkie was no stranger to weapons, of course. She knew exactly where the guns were kept around the house. Granny’s war trophy Walther was usually in her purse. Her father used the bedroom closet to store his armory. Though Pinkie didn’t know what her sisters might have acquired since she left, she knew them well enough to know where to look.

She hadn’t ever owned a gun of her own. She did have dozens of tazers in the trailer, which were a less extreme option for party circumstances, not to mention how popular tazer-parties were in Florida.

After considering her options, Pinkie decided to at least have the conversation. “Hey dad, can I borrow a gun?”

Igneous Pie was not a man to get outwardly excited. Still, there was a noticeable spring in his step as he showed her to the collection.

It was no gallery, but Pinkie did find it remarkable what could fit and be neatly displayed in the space of half a closet. The other half was taken up by her mother’s Sunday best.

“You thinking about the varmints who burned your trailer?” he said.

“That’s right.”

He put a revolver in her hand. The barrel was shorter than her index finger and had .44 Magnum stamped into it.

“Thanks Dad, but I like my wrists unsprained. It wouldn't make my day at all.”

He scratched his head. “Well, I don’t have anything smaller.”

“Do you have something smaller caliber?”

“Uh…” He checked. After rooting around a little, he found an old semiautomatic. “Forty-five, but still kicks less. Got a holster, too.”

“Thanks.” Pinkie tried it on. Two pounds of iron on her hip.

“You got one of them Florida permits that’s good in thirty-some states?”

Pinkie didn’t. Also, there was a good chance that she would be up close and personal with a police officer the next day. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.” He patted her shoulder, but his hand slowed to a stop. “But...take care of yourself. I just want you to be okay.”

That, they could agree on.

Comments

[Reese]

Well, some interesting developments. :)

[Dorath]

“Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.”

That's an interesting saying ... I thought the Apples were the ones who did the Countryisims.

[PearlyDoesStuff]

10183815
They be related.