Pokeville was preparing for their annual red neck circus event. However, it was more of a competition than a circus because the object was for volunteer citizens to perform the most extraordinary act possible using the ingenuity and skills at hand. The act that received the greatest round of applause would win a new Ginsu knife set and a pair of homemade oven mittens that the Mayor, Mrs. Carlyle, had donated.
The first act was Albert Jackson and his dog missy doing tricks. Everyone got a kick out of watching Albert trying to show missy how to jump through wagon wheel hoops again. She did great in the backyard, Albert mumbled as they left the arena.
Next came little Jessica Petters riding a big sow pig painted grey and wearing a bicycle helmet with two big ears glued on each side and a two-foot piece of water hose screwed onto its front. Everyone hooted when Jessica stood on the back of her make-believe elephant and waved at the crowd as they made another pass.
After several more small acts, Slim Stone and Buck Johnson wheeled out their giant homemade cannon while their drinking buddy Jake lined up a wagon full of hay in the field next door. This was to be the Grand Finale for this year's circus, and the boys had been working on it all week. The cannon barrel was made up of six 55 gallon drums welded together and then reinforced up and down with over one hundred rolls of duck tape. The charge consisted of a yellow bouncy balloon with a red stripe painted around the middle filled with oxygen and acetylene, and it went into the barrel first. They lined the balloon up so the red line could be seen through the small igniter hole they had drilled into the first barrel. Then came the wadding, an old empty discarded wooden line spool that was just the right size.
While the other boys were setting up the cannon, Slim was coating the outside of his coveralls with wheel-bearing grease. He then donned the bicycle helmet that had obviously been repurposed from Jessica's elephant riding act. They had removed the water hose on the front of the helmet and hastily taped the Hero 10 Go Pro camera they had recently fished out from under Lysteria Falls while out frog gigging. The idea of their act was to fire Slim out of the cannon and into the wagon of hay. The trick was to get just the right mixture of oxygen and acetylene into the balloon, if they got it wrong, then Slim might not even make it out of the barrel, or if it was too strong, he might go over the top of the wagon. Since they only had enough gas for one attempt, they had decided against practice runs.
Slim slid into the cannon barrel while Buck lined it up perfectly toward the wagon full of hay. Mr. and Mrs. James Byrd watched the show from their barn loft on the other side of Pokeville Memorial Cemetary, and they were very excited to get the chance to see Slim fly through the air.
READY, hollered Buck? READY came the echoing reply from Slim inside the barrel. Bawoom!!!! Fire shot from the barrel of the cannon, and the concussion of the blast knocked Buck flat on his back. Everyone could see the wooden reel, now on fire, as it arched over into the Cemetary and knocked over several headstones. But no one saw what happened to Slim.
An hour later, Slim was found by a sheriff's deputy, arms spread wide, laying on top of James and Thelma Byrd in the middle of the loft of their barn. When the Coroner arrived from Flatrock and asked what happened, they told him the story and showed him the last photo the go pro took before impact. It showed a Shocked middle-aged couple wide-eyed with mouths agape. That's a good shot, replied the Coroner as he pronounced the three now officially deceased.
The next day, the Headlines of the Pokeville Register blared, "Buck kills two Byrds with one Stone"
This blog is for the Sunday edition of the 5 minute Freewrite
Note: I take massive liberty with the whole idea of a five-minute freewrite and just use the prompt as the basis for a story. It takes me way longer than five minutes, I just try to have fun writing.
If you enjoyed this blog maybe you should consider joining the Freewrite community and giving it a try yourself. 😉
