The Varmint County Chronicles
Varmint County’s New Mayor Gabby is Invited to Become “One of the Boys”
“Boomer” Winfrey
Varmint County Correspondent
Doc Clyde Filstrup was just putting the finishing touches to a fast cut and sew job on Toby Haig’s scalp, knotting the last of a dozen stitches in the wound from Toby’s latest frolic down at the Dead Rat Tavern.
“Toby, did I understand that you got this cut from brawling with Stony Hockmeyer? You know your grandpa Elijah doesn’t allow no unsanctioned feuding between your families.”
“Twern’t like that, Doc. Stony and me was jest havin’ a friendly little wrastlin’ match when these two jerks decided to break us up. Nobody interferes in a Haig-Hockmeyer feud except Haigs and Hockmeyers, you know that.”
“Well, those two jerks were constable Pete McQue and off-duty deputy Barney Rutman. They thought they were preserving the peace.”
“Pete split my haid with his slapjack, but Stony took him out with a barstool. That’ll teach them not to interfere in family business.”
“Well, Stony will have time to consider his family business. He’s down at Sheriff Potts’ jail cooling his heels for assaulting an officer,” Doc noted, just as the conversation was interrupted by his nurse, Gertrude McBean.
“Doc, there’s someone wants a word with you,” Nurse Gertie announced.
“Gertie, I’m busy with a patient right now. If it’s another one of those drug salesmen, tell ’em to just leave any free samples on the desk and I’ll get back to them. If it’s a life insurance salesmen, throw him out, and if it’s a bill collector, fetch me my pistol.”
“It’s Gabby Aslinger. Says she wants to discuss politics and poker.”
“Oh. Well, tell Gabby I’ll just be a minute. Toby, your cut is all sewn up. Just put some salve on those bruises and get yourself a pint of your Grandpa Elijah’s moonshine for the pain and you’ll be right as rain.”
A couple of minutes later, Toby was on his way out and the newly elected County Mayor, Gabrielle Aslinger, was seating herself in the overstuffed chair in front of Doc’s desk.
“I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you yet, Gabby. You won an impressive victory over my son Clyde Junior. About time we had some new blood down at the courthouse.”
“Cut the bull, Doc. We both know you worked your tail off trying to beat me, along with the other women who were elected to county commission.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that. See, I’ve still got my tail,” Doc chuckled. “But you know, us good ol’ boys have to stick together, so I admit I didn’t exactly endorse you. Besides, you do such a good job coaching the Lady Vipers, where we going to find another basketball coach?”
“Penny Haig is taking over as coach and she will do just fine. Might even have more success handling her kid sister Chloe than I did.”
“Yeah, that younger Haig girl never has learned to hold her temper.”
“When you’re such a sharpshooter that the only way to defend you is by fouling, it gets pretty frustrating. Chloe just grows tired of it after awhile and starts punching.”
“Yeah, she holds at least two state records I can think of. Both are pretty impressive in their own way.”
“Yeah, Chloe holds the state record for points in a game by a single player, seventy-four. She also holds the state record for most times thrown out of games by officials. She was tossed out of sixteen of the Lady Vipers’ twenty-eight regular season games and all three district tournament games.”
“Yet she averaged what – over twenty points a game, despite spending half her time on the bench for fouling out?”
“Actually, Chloe averaged thirty-one points a game, fifty-five in the ones where she managed to avoid being ejected. But I didn’t come here to talk basketball, Doc. I want your help.”
“You know you have it, Gabby, if for no other reason than your daddy is one of my oldest and dearest friends. What do you need from me?”
“Doc, the new ladies on county commission, Camilla Clotfelter, Julie Ann McSwine and Mary Ann Botts, are full of enthusiasm but short on political experience, and so am I. We want to change the way some things have been done around here for decades, but we can’t do it alone, especially if the men on the commission and in the courthouse offices decide to dig in their heels and resist any changes.”
“Folks tend to be afraid of anything they don’t understand. And you dern well know most men in Varmint County don’t understand women.”
“Well, they’re going to have to learn. We’re not going away and if we can’t learn how to cooperate, we will just have to recruit more ladies to run for office and sweep the courthouse clean next time.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No, it’s a promise. But I don’t want that any more than you do, Doc. We need to all work together, not get bogged down in a battle of the sexes,” Gabby insisted.
“You’re going to have to learn the art of compromise to get anything done around here. Take that nepotism thing you kept bringing up during your campaign,” Doc replied.
“You know we need a policy to stop all the hiring of family members for county jobs. It’s not fair to all those qualified people who don’t have relatives in office, and there are some real losers working for the county,” Gabby replied.
“True enough, but remember this is Varmint County. Everybody is related to everybody else. I challenge you to find anyone out there who isn’t a cousin to Sheriff Potts, Commissioner Pennywell or Bucky Haig, chairman of the school board.”
“Cousins are one thing, but what about the County Clerk, Horace McSwine? He has six assistant clerks: his wife, his mother-in-law, his son, two daughters and a daughter-in-law.”
“Good point, but don’t think for a minute that Horace wanted to hire his mother-in-law to work in his office.”
“No, I’d say his wife Bernice had something to do with that,” Gabby chuckled.
“I understand Horace sat down to dinner and she plopped a can of dog food in front of him. Told him that’s all he would get until he relented and hired Flossie,” Doc laughed.
“Well, that’s my point, Doc. I want to see some limits to this hiring of family, but it will be hard to get the votes, and I need advice on just how far I can push without running into a stone wall.”
“You need the sage advice of people like former County Judge Hugh Ray Jass, former Sheriff Smoky and Judge Hard Time Harwell, and you need their support,” Doc proclaimed. “Do you know anything about playing poker?”
“My daddy taught me how to play when I was a child. Archie used to make me play him for my allowance. Said I needed to learn how to bluff and how to read people if I was going to succeed in life.”
“Gabby, my dear, allow me to extend to you an invitation to join a little social gathering at my clinic on Thursday night.”
“I don’t know, Doc. Your son Clyde might be there and things could be a little tense between us since I beat him, especially since his own wife was my campaign manager.”
“Oh, Clyde Junior won’t be around for several weeks. Matilda called me this morning to see if I would keep the grandkids at my place. Seems she and Clyde are taking a flight to Paris tomorrow morning and booking a two-week cruise out of Barcelona. She said that now Clyde is out of a job, he has no more excuses for putting off that European vacation he promised her.
“Bring enough money to buy into the game, dear. You’re about to become one of the boys,” Doc added.
“Oh, I’ll be there, Doc. But you are about to become one of the girls, you and all your poker buddies.”