Jugs

Henry Bivvens was no dummy. Everybody said so. A man doesn't own and run a successful 1000-acre farm, dead-drunk every day by noon, by being stupid. He had seen something moving. At first it was just a dark shadow. But as he got within spitting distance of it, he could distinctly discern substance.

The thing, the shape, seemed to sense a change in the earth's rhythm. It did not see Henry Bivvens, nor did it yet smell him. Running the length of its body was a series of small canals, filled with mucus and dotted with nerve endings, and these nerves detected vibrations and signaled its brain, its small, primitive brain.

The shape stopped. Approached. Its hands began to work, quickly, practiced, at toggles, belts, buttons. Suddenly, it tore open its raincoat, revealing primordial flesh. Henry Bivvens gasped and stared. He had been around the world three times, been to two dogfights and a whorehouse in Steubenville, and he had never seen anything like the enormous pair of white breasts that confronted him now. Awesome in their size and ghostly whiteness, like fate itself, they seemed to beckon to him, inviting him toward their deadly atavistic mysteries. Caught by the siren call, Henry obeyed. Then it had him! Seizing him by the ears, it held tight while his struggling face was pressed into those great white mounds. Presently, his struggles ceased. He was found several days later, in a rain-filled ditch, his nude body already a dismal gray, what remained of his bruised face still wearing that final smile. But the beast had left a clue. Traces of C3H6O3 were found on his lips.

•

Police Chief Charles Parker was in his mid-40s. At 6'1" and 200 pounds, his once muscular body was beginning to show the ravages of age. He was staring dead on into the hazel eyes of Mayor James Coppard, of Coppard and Bowser Grain Wholesalers. In his mid-50s, trim, with distinguished salt-and-pepper hair, Mayor Coppard in his Hush Puppies loafers exhibited the understated chic that had made him the social lion of Ardent, South Dakota. Parker was saying to him, "I'm closing this town down. At least until we find ... stop ... that...." His voice trailed off.

Mayor Coppard flushed. (He was not reminded of Jane, Chief Parker's wife. She looked far younger than her age--nubile, even, despite her nine children. She had grown up among Ardent's socially elite, with a player piano in the living room. She never shared her bedroom with more than two of her ll horny brothers at once, and her brothers shucked all the corn, saving her hands for the delicate quilting work. Although Jane's elegant background had prepared her for the fast cosmopolitan life in Bismarck or Minot, she had by some error of love married the chief, a corn shucker, a plodder, a plowboy, a policeman. Jane longed for what she had lost and she knew by the creamy, dreamy tingling in her lacetrimmed Pillsbury's XXXX undies that Mayor James Coppard still had a crush on her after all these years. He seemed to her deliciously handsome when flushed. It brought out his best points, she thought secretly when alone in the confessional of the privy.) Flushed, but without a thought of Jane Parker, Mayor Coppard replied heatedly, "You're damn tootin' you won't. We've got this Future Farmers convention comin' in come full moon and I ain't fuckin' with the fuckin' Future Farmers. You know what that business means to this town, the pool hall, the gas station, Shorty's Diner, the drugstore. Besides, I got partners." Mayor Coppard's eyes narrowed ominously. (Jane had never seen him with ominously narrowed eyes.)

"I won't be responsible," sobbed Chief Parker. "All those young boys. The Future Farmers at the mercy of ... that thing." (Jane had contempt for his sobs, his red eyes, his corn shucker's hands--or would have had she been there.) "It's already taken three, four ... how many more?"

•

Dr. Mahatma Jeeves, intern at the Ardent Nursing Home, Morgue, Hospice, Gift Shop, Tourist Center and Post Office, was the first to diagnose what we, through the infinite, beneficent wisdom of hindsight, would knowingly refer to as the Dunwich Horror, if the setting of our tale were in Dunwich, but which we for geographical accuracy will refer to as the Ardent Terror, set as it is among the rolling countryside of Ardent, South Dakota, neighbor to Belle Fourche, geographic center of the nation.

Reedy Blackman, we now know, was the first victim. First-string center on the Ardent High School and Trust Company basketball team, he had been in the hay with his pet lamb. He had gone not 100 yards into the alfalfa when it struck. All his pimples had gone white. His own father puked when he saw him. But he usually did.

Less than a week later, Willie Occam, owner of Slipper Sal's, a barbershop and one-girl bordello, was brought into the combination coalbin and emergency ward at the Ardent Catchall--as the natives humorously and self-deprecatingly referred to the nursing home, morgue, hospice, gift shop, tourist center and post office--in deep shock. Dr. Jeeves, familiar with Occam's sexual preferences, immediately administered anthrax vaccine. But he also noticed two identical deep marks burned into the points of Occam's shoulders. "Ship not do thaat," he muttered.

Recovering somewhat following the injection, Occam began to mutter darkly, "Big white ... those things ... never ... seen ... anything ... like ... those ... monstrous...." Even in the final extremity, his sentence structure was faultless, albeit somewhat staggered. And then a scream. Nurse Catherine Barkley, famous throughout all of Ardent County for her marvelous, near miraculous boobs, had entered the room.

Occam lapsed back into shock, but not before throwing his head back and screaming a guttural cry of terror. By pressing his ear to the dying man's lips, Dr. Jeeves heard his last word. Or rather the last part of the last syllable of his last word.

"It sounding, sahib, please, veddy mouch like, sahib, please, like 'zzzts.' Sahib pleased?" Dr. Jeeves asked Chief Parker and patrolman John Fanning, a biophysicist who much preferred what he called the human element to chasing molecular missing links.

Leaving Fanning in the office they shared with Uncle Mao, the town's Chinese laundryman, and playing a hunch, Chief Parker drove over to Belle Fourche to visit Edmund Wilson. Wilson had majored in English for two years at the state vocational school and had devoted the last 47 to compiling a dictionary of word endings.

"So you think it could be anything," said Parker, getting ready to leave, "bits, hits, wits, lits, mits, sits, fits, gits, its, but that most likely it's 'zzzts.' Hummmmm," he said, scratching his deerstalker.

•

"How long do you think you can keep this quiet?" demanded Darrell Feldmeyer, editor of the monthly Ardent Tidbits, wiping the remains of a Sacher Torte pizza from his vest. Feldmeyer was an editor of the old school, a hard drinker and chain gumchewer. Never without his gum, his "ole chomp," as he called it, and even when devouring one of his hard-boiled-egg-and-oyster or rhubarb-and-anchovy pizzas, he always kept ole chomp securely fastened to his surgically corrected harelip, or as surgically corrected as Dr. Jeeves could make it. He now spoke with a stuttering, whistling lisp. He was devoted to the town and had proved it by hushing up the story of the girl he had reason to believe was on drugs supplied by the son of an Iranian onion farmer.

"You have a mad ... thing ... on your hands ... the lives of everyone in this town, this county ... and you're telling me to ..." he stutter-whistle-lisped. "Why, I'm going to blow the lid off this thing ... I'm ... you're dealing with freedom of the press! Friendship aside.... The press is a flaming sword! I'll be damn----"

"Think for a moment," said Mayor Coppard, chicly understated in his Oshkosh B'Gosh pinstripe bibs, "what this will mean to the businessmen in this town, the druggist, the pool hall, Shorty's Diner and the gas station come full moon, when the Future Farmers get here.... Besides, I got partners."

"Oh," stutter-whistle-lisped Feldmeyer, "a matter of public safety! Why didn't you say so? Why should the free press be used to cater to the prurient interests of a few gossips and busybodies? You're right, Mr. Mayor, and if Parker here tries anything funny, we'll fire him!"

•

"Tits," said Norman Maylorder, "boobs, gazooms, you call 'em what you (continued on page 269) Jugs (continued from page 158) want; but if they're as huge as you're telling me they are, even half that big, they can be only one thing. Them's Jugs. And, man, I mean Jugs!"

"Who's he?" demanded Mayor Coppard.

"Ha, ha, why, he's a pimp, a sure-enough citified pimp," replied Fanning, whom everyone referred to as Long John, a carry-over from their carefree youthful days at the town's combination cattle trough and swimming hole. "Chief Parker thought we ought to have an expert on women out here, ha, ha, to see if we can't predict the next move. A real expert on women. Ha, ha. Jugs! Tee-hee."

"Yes, sir, JUGS, with a capital UGS." Maylorder continued. "Let's see, the biggest set I can recall was on a broad in Aberdeen. They was so monstrous two of us couldn't get four hands around one of them. Man," he said, shaking his head, "if these is anywhere near the size you boys say they is, man, I'd sure like to get that working for me."

"She's a murderer," shot out Chief Parker. "She's taken human lives, men's and boys'. She must be destroyed. Once they've tasted human----"

"Now, Chief," said Maylorder, patting a cute little girl's bottom with one hand and taking Mayor Coppard's $20 bill in the other, "you can't go off half-cocked looking for vengeance against a set of jugs. This broad isn't evil. Those jugs aren't murderers. They're just obeying their own instincts. Trying to get retribution against a pair of tits is crazy. Why, those things, those jugs, are nothing more or less than protuberant milk-producing glandular organs, and also, by the way, secondary sweat glands. I'm an expert. Broads aren't too bright. They exist on instinct and impulse. The impulse to nurse is powerful. This broad could be sick. The patterns of its life are so beyond its control that damage to one small mechanism could cause it to disorient and behave strangely," he said, helping Jane Parker into the back of his truck and fingering another 20 from Mayor Coppard.

"When something tips too far one way or the other, peculiar things happen. Why, I remember a case I studied at Pandarus Seminary where one broad--one--took on a regiment of Cossacks in one night. But that was in the Caucasus, and they get the northern lights.

"Women have everything a scientist dreams of. They're beautiful--God, how beautiful they are! They're like an impossible piece of perfect machinery," said Maylorder, waxing ecstatic and taking a 20 from Feldmeyer and pushing him into the back of the truck. "They're as graceful as any bird. They're as mysterious as any animal on earth. No one knows for sure how long they live or what impulses--except for hunger--they respond to. There are more than two hundred and fifty species of broads, and every one is different from every other one. Scientists spend their lives trying to find answers about broads, and as soon as they come up with a nice pat generalization, something shoots it down. People have been trying to find an effective broad repellent for two thousand years. They've never found one that really works."

"But why here?" stutter-whistle-lisped Feldmeyer, stepping out of the truck and removing the gum from his shoe. "Why here in Ardent? Why not in the tourist towns like Lead and Deadwood?"

"We don't know," said Maylorder, speaking for all of science. "The line between the natural and the preternatural is very cloudy. Natural things occur, and for the most part, there's a logical explanation. But for a whole lot of things, there are no good or sensible answers. Say two men are out walking, one in front of the other, and a broad comes up from behind, passes right by the guy in the rear and goes after the guy in front. Why? Maybe they smelled different. Maybe the one in front was walking in a more provocative way. Say the guy in back, the one who wasn't attacked, goes to help the one who was attacked. The broad may not attack him--while she keeps banging away at the guy she did hit. Broads with big tits are supposed to prefer cool climates, but yet we have reports, authenticated cases, of broads with monstrous tits living in the tropics." He threw up his hands in scientific resignation.

"Who knows why it's here? It certainly doesn't have much of a male population to feed on. Why not some bigger city? I don't know. There must be some reason. That's why I'm here. To learn that reason and put those jugs to work for me."

"Hee, hee," giggled Fanning. "Calamity Havisham says it's here because of divine retribution."

Calamity Havisham was postmistress of Ardent. No one knew how old she was. She seemed to have been there before the town was founded, part Mandan and part Yankton Sioux. She was a Biblical, Talmudic and Koranic scholar. Calamity Havisham took no chances. Jane Parker hated her. Calamity Havisham read all of Jane's mail including the love letters Jane sent to herself. Calamity Havisham recited them to all her visitors. With young boys, Calamity Havisham took on such an avuncular air that they called her Uncle Calamity.

"I just want that broad--Jugs, you call her--killed." said Chief Parker, turning his head as Jane climbed out of the truck and accepted two fives from Maylorder. "If you can't do it, I'll get someone who can."

•

Long John Fanning was no dummy, either. He was well read. Guinness Book of World Records. That very night, he addressed a letter to Wragby Hall, Hope Under Dinmore, Shropshire.

•

"Ah'm Mellors," said the man in the tweed jacket, cap, cord breeches and gaiters. "Ah know'd yu'd send for ma."

"That's Mellors," said Fanning, dancing around Uncle Mao's wet wash. "I told you I sent for him, Chief. He's the world's champion milker. I think he's our man to get Jugs."

"Ay," said Mellors, holding up his horn-hard hands and long, strong brown fingers, "eighteen ponds, fur ounces otta ole Pat, mah 'olstein, in a min'na ha'. Tits is tits and dugs is dugs. If ah gets ma 'ands on 'em.... Women and cows is alla same wi me. If they pisses from a cunt and shits from a hole, they's alla same wi me. Ah'm na afrid o' no tits in the world.

"Ah fell asleep once in ma field. When ah woke, ah sah this girt tit a'ba ma head. It startled ma, but dinna fright ma. Ah gave it a goo thump and the best let how a strem o' piss and a gr't glob o' shit rut in ma fas. Now, ah know a Frenchman'll pay plenty o' good money fer tha ba ah dinna lik it a bi'. But ah wern afrid. If ah kin jus git ma hand on them jugs, ah'll milk 'er dry, until those jugs is nothin' ba flappin' shets."

"Mellors, eh?" said Chief Parker. "What's the rest of your name, Mellors?"

"Tha's all, Mellors," said he of the horn-hard hands.

"Chief," interjected Fanning, "Mellors did not name himself. 'Twas a foolish, ignorant, whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old."

"Look, Chief," Fanning continued, unrolling a map of Ardent, "I've been doing some figuring. Every strike that Jugs has made has been in this area," he said, drawing his finger in a semicircle from the Forest Lawn cemetery to Rapuccini's barn. "I've also been figuring that this crazy cunt only strikes on dark rainy nights, and, since pi squared is equal to the cosine of the hypotenuse," he said, giving Mellors a fast display of his biophysicist's education, "Jugs is going to strike here next," he proclaimed, putting his finger into the center of the town parallelogram, "and it's going to strike between the octave of Michaelmas and Saint Crispin's at eleven fifteen and a half P.M. exactly, eleven and a half minutes after the third flash of lightning has lit up the western sky."

"Oh, boy," said Maylorder. "That's terrific. I'm going to be in my truck, making movies. No one has ever seen anything like this before. An actual kill by Jugs. Then if I can get her in my truck, we can make a killing. I got to get something for bait.

"I know; we can use the boys, the Future Farmers. I'll have one right outside the truck and reel him in and she'll follow. We can go on tour, coast to coast. The world!"

Chief Parker looked astounded. "I don't think I can let you do that," he said quietly but firmly.

"You can't stop me," shouted Maylorder. "It's my truck and the town parallelogram is public property." The chief dropped his head in acknowledgment that he was beaten by Maylorder's logic.

Mellors, meanwhile, leaned on Uncle Mao's ironing board, listening but not joining in the plan, cracking the knuckles on his horn-hard hands, an amused sneer playing in the corners of his mouth.

•

Since arriving in Ardent, Mellors had kept those horn-hard hands in constant practice. Jane Parker now walked with her arms folded across her chest. Farmer Rapuccini's cows tripped over their dugs on the way to the milking barn and lowed mournfully whenever they saw Mellors. His heart that beat in time with nature's own rhythms told him that he had a rendezvous with those great white jugs. He sang softly to himself.

"Ha, ha, ha! Tis ya und ma.Grt Whit Jugs, don' ah luv thee?Ha, ha, ha! Tis ya und ma.Grt whit Jugs, don't ah luv thee?"

•

"What do we do now? What in the name of God can we do now? There's nothing left," moaned Chief Parker, surveying the ruins of Maylorder's truck.

The thing--Jugs--had come as Fanning predicted. But it swept through the boy bait, Fanning, and it then smothered Maylorder in its great white boobs. Emerging from the truck, it had stopped, raincoat akimbo, exhibiting its womanhood. As if in contempt and triumph, the great Jugs hung suspended for an instant, challenging mortal vengeance.

"Those jugs are too much for us," gasped Parker. "She's not real, not natural. I'm beaten. All we can do is wait until God or nature, whatever the hell is doing this to us, decides we've had enough. It's out of man's hands."

"Na, min," said Mellors, holding up his horn-hards. "Ah'm ginna kill 'at thin'. Ah'm ginna mil 'em jugs. Cum ef ya wan'. Sta' 'ome ef ya wan'. Smoke ef ya gottem. Ba ah'm ginna kill 'em jugs."

As Mellors spoke, Chief Parker looked into his eyes. They seemed as dark and bottomless as the nipples on Jugs. "I'll come," said Parker. "I guess I have no choice."

"Na," said Mellors, "wa 'ave na choice." He removed his gloves.

"She's waiting for us!" screamed Parker.

"Ah know," said Mellors.

"How did she----"

"Et don' matter," said Mellors. "Ah've got 'er na."

Parker saw fever in Mellors' face--a heat that lit up his dark eyes, an intensity that drew His lips back from his teeth in a crooked smile, an anticipation that strummed the sinews in his neck and whitened the brown knuckles on his horn-hard hands.

Mellors approached, horn-hard hands first, singing softly, "Ha, ha, ha! Tis ya und ma."

Jugs seemed to smile. The raincoat slid from her shoulders. The light form Shorty's Diner struck at an angle of 32 degrees across her body.

"Those jugs are beauty," Parker thought. "It's the kind of thing that makes you believe in God. It shows what nature can do when she sets her mind to it."

Mellors could see now that those jugs measured a good four feet from shoulder to the point of the nipples. The nipples alone, where he would fasten those horn-hard hands, were the size of a B cup.

They were alive now, erect, throbbing, tumescent. Waiting for Mellors. He approached. Reached. He had them! He had them in his horn-hard hands! Thoughts of technique flashed across his mind.

"Sha' ah give 'er a 'olstein 'ack, a brown Swiss twis'--ah, a Ayrshire jerk!"

He had her, locked in the Ayrshire jerk. Precious seconds were all he needed.

Jugs reached out her incredibly long arms. Her talonlike fingers locked on Mellors' jug-handle ears.

Parker could feel the warm milk rising above his ankles. "White as Uncle Mao's laundry," he thought. When he looked up, Jugs was standing over him, trailing behind her the body of Mellors--arms out to the sides, horn-hard hands dangling, head thrown back, mouth open in mute protest.

Parker's last thought was of Jane. He had always hated her little tits.

Jugs stepped nimbly over the bodies, picked up her raincoat and slipped it on, practiced hands working the toggles, belts and buttons. She yawned, a great, deep, primal yawn. "Time to get this show on the road," she thought. "Ready now for the big time--New York, Hollywood." She slid easily into the driver's seat of Maylorder's truck. The adjustable steering wheel was standard. "Hello to Hollywood," she said, turning the key.