“J.D., did you see that?” quavered Flo.
“See what, honey?” He lowered the rifle, and said, “Johan, I don’t see anything now, it must have run off.”
“But, But, But . . .” Flo stuttered to a halt.
“You all right?” asked her husband.
“I need to get back to bed. Johan, take that creature back to the pen and see that he STAYS there!”
“All right. Come on Brillo, back to your post.” Fortunately, Flo could not see the grin on Johan’s face as he firmly guided Brillo home.
A good deed is it own reward, huh? snorted Brillo . . .
Local Woman Goes Buggy
Paula Goodlett
“Flo, have you seen this one?” J.D. asked, while hiding a smirk. “It seems you’ve made the news again.”
Flo, irritated beyond endurance, read the broadsheet J.D. handed her. The title, under the usual graphic drawing, read:
LOCAL WOMAN GOES BUGGY
An interested observer reports that Mrs. J.D. Richards appears to be having a nervous breakdown. As evidence, we present the following letter, purported to have come from the desk of the person in question:
Dear Mary,
Brillo is NOT my silly ram. Brillo is my business partner Johan’s silly ram. And he’s not silly. If he was silly he wouldn’t be a problem. The problem is he’s SMART, and he’s out to get me. Everybody seems to think he’s just a poor misunderstood dumb animal, but they are WRONG. He is the devil in sheep’s clothing. He takes every opportunity to get at me, and when I try to point out his behavior, he stands there all innocence. But I know what he’s really like. If he wasn’t such a hero to everyone else he’d have been dinner ages ago.
With thanks,
Flo Richards
Flo finished reading, stunned. “J.D., I’ve never said that to anyone. I didn’t write this letter!” she wailed. “What am I going to do? The whole town is going to believe this, just like they believe that stupid sheep killed a wolf.”
“There, there, dear,” J.D. answered. “No one is really going to believe that you’re crazy. I’ve lived with you since 1967. I’d know if you were really crazy.”
“I’m not crazy. Really, I’m not,” Flo began to babble. “I don’t think he’s out to get me. He’s just a sheep. I know a sheep doesn’t have that much brains. He couldn’t have planned this. Someone is out to get me, I just know it. Who is it? Why are they doing this?”
J.D. put his arms around Flo and patted her back. “I know, darling, I know.”
No, No, Brillo!
Virginia DeMarce
“We could do it, Mrs. Nelson,” Trissie Harris coaxed. “I know that you have the booklets for No, No, Nanette!”
“We are not,” Iona Nelson said firmly to the class, “going to enliven the organizational meeting for the League of Women Voters with a Brillo skit. We are going to sing our entry for the national anthem contest, and that is all we are going to do.” She was using her best schoolteacher voice.
“But,” Trissie protested, “some of them are soooo cute. Grandpa made up the one about Charlie.”
Against her better judgment, Iona found herself asking, “What one about Charlie?”
“Charlie was in the original.” Trissie’s grin made it plain that she was going to cherish this day for a long time. She rarely got to solo in the middle school chorus:
"Get Wild Root Cream Oil, Brillo!
It’s full of lanolin.
Get Wild Root Cream Oil, Brillo!
It keeps your wool in trim.
Get Wild Root Cream Oil, Brillo!
Don’t chase the ewes away.
Get Wild Root Cream Oil, Brillo!
It’ll really make your day.
But wait just a minute, Brillo!
Wild Root just isn’t in.
You don’t need Wild Root, Brillo!
Your fleece has lanolin.”
Trissie opened her mouth for another line; then looked around the classroom, said, “I don’t think I’d better sing the last verse right now,” and sat down with a plop. The rest of the class laughed loud enough that Iona suspected that they had already heard it.
She was saved from having to comment by the bell.
* * *
“Okay,” Flo said to J.D. “I can believe that Dex Harris made a bawdy ballad to the tune of the Wild Root Cream Oil Commercial. I really can. I can even believe that he taught it to Trissie. But no way do I believe that he wrote the rest of those. I know the guy, J.D. I’ve known him all my life. There’s no way that he spends his spare time reading collections of American short stories.”
“Look, Flo,” J.D. said. “This could be like the story about the monster. The one that every time the guy chopped one head off, it grew a couple more. If people get the idea that the stories really upset you, they’re likely to do more of them. Just to get your goat. Or your sheep.”
He fled in mock terror. It was definitely mock, because he knew perfectly well that no matter how upset Flo was, she wasn’t upset enough to dump a cup of rare and valuable hot coffee over his head.
Flo stared glumly at the table. No, there was no reason why any of the Harrises would be out to get her. Dex had just written that as a joke. But, “Local Woman Goes Buggy?”
That one had meanness to it.
The kind of meanness that only kids had. On the back of an old envelope, not bothering to sharpen the pencil first, she started making a list of everyone in Grantville who had gone to grade school and high school with her. Annotated.