Goodness! I haven't been here in so long I've forgotten how to go about this.
Welp. I'll just begin.
I recently got in touch with David Hannah's son. Dave is the editor/owner of the magazine I wrote articles for. I should say was. He passed away last year. When I heard, the bottom dropped right out of my stomach. We had been such good friends. David had been nothing but kind and appreciative. A great guy to work for. I can't say how disappointed I was, never to have met the man in the flesh.
His son urged me to continue to write the Mishap Jack stories for them. I wrote two, then never heard anything more about them. I thought maybe Derek didn't really like them anymore. So I wrote to him via his father's email. That apparently wasn't the way to go. I let things lie for a while, thinking he was pretty busy learning how to relaunch the magazine.
Recently I figured I'd given it enough time. I also figured Derek maybe hadn't dug through his father's emails. So I hunted down the son and asked if I was no longer wanted or what.
This is what he sent back:
MishapJackPt17
Jack’s Mom called up from the depths of the basement where she was ironing his boxers. “Oh Jack dear, you got a call from the Better Business Bureau. I bet they want to congratulate you on being one of their better businesses. I bet you are one of the few chimney sweeps in this area.”
“So what did you tell ‘em, Mom? I’m pretty busy building my Minecraft castle.”
“It’s okay. They said they’d call back at dinnertime to be sure and catch you.”
He’d heard his father discussing the upcoming BBB dinner with a friend. Thoughts about what sort of tux he should rent for that dinner began to invade Jack’s castle-building efforts. Maybe red for fire would look good. And maybe a red top hat to go with it. He certainly didn’t want something as mundane as a black tux.
It was interesting that they’d called to invite him. Jack had recently experienced a strange dry spell in word of mouth bookings. Ah well. One couldn’t look good advertising prospects in the gift horse mouth.
The words ‘Pull the lever!’ split the air—his business phone ring tone. He said a word that would have caused his mom to wash his mouth out with soap had she heard, and answered the phone. He had a gig. The people didn’t sound too happy about it, but he’d recently lowered his prices a whole fifty cents, so why not? He had to be the low bid now, even though he wasn’t offering the animal removal services anymore.
“Wednesday at six AM? In the morning? O’ dark six? That one? We couldn’t do it at, say, noon?”
“We all work or go to school. I hear it’s not a good idea to leave you in the house alone, so we’ll do it when someone can still be here.”
Jack’s voice let Mr. Boffinburger know in no uncertain terms how unhappy with the early hour he was. He would have to change his flier to reflect his hard and fast hours. No midnight raves in the chimney for him. No sir. But just for this time, he’d give the guy an exception.
Wednesday at six twenty five Jack thundered up the drive to Castle Buffybarger, spraying gravel when his bug came to a stop. He collected his bucket of brooms and sheets. The man met him at the door with a frown. Clearly the guy had set the appointment too early for both of them, since he obviously wasn’t a morning person.
Jack got right to work. After a cup of cocoa and a breakfast doughnut. Well three. Eaten while he ogled the hot teenage daughter in her private school uniform.
When he finally went in to survey the chimney, it turned out to be massive. And the Bagginburper guy seemed like he was going to be a real stickler on having a clean chimney. He even said he didn’t want any slap dash work, as if Jack would ever slap and dash. In fact, when Jack got out his broom, the man settled down with his newspaper in the same room. It kinda looked like the man was there to stay for the duration. What a royal pain in the behind.
The man looked up with a frown when Jack knocked a little soot off before he set up the Strawberry Shortcake sheets his mom had insisted he use. He was making the guy’s house cleaner. Mr. Bogginflumper shouldn’t be so picky. Jack climbed inside the fireplace and started wielding the broom, the better to get done faster and get out of that guy’s house. Strangely, not much was coming off. Maybe it wasn’t even really dirty. Some crazy people were like that, wanting to nearly be able to eat of the hearth, for crying out loud.
He climbed out, and had just opened his mouth when the Beefinbagger man sent him a glare.
“The chimney is dirty. I can’t imagine why you’re acting like you’re done.”
The nerve. “I was simply adding an attachment to be able to reach higher,” Jack said, getting out a length of clothesline rope, which he used to tie on an extra brush. Mr. Bofferbuggy’s bushy brows lowered over his nose like a pack horse in the Grand Canyon. Jack climbed back into the chimney, trying to get the stinking brush attachment to go up the flute thing. No wonder they called it that. It was narrow and a pain to get things into. Jack pushed and shoved and finagled and scraped and angled and finally got his contraption to go a little further up.
But then he couldn’t get the brush to go anywhere else. It was stuck. Try though he might, he couldn’t make the thing move at all. The yanking and thrusting and twisting was accompanied by more caustic words that would have caused him to know what Irish Spring soap tasted like, had his mom heard him.
At last, with a huge yank, the broom came free, the tip of the broom hitting and cracking the brick he was standing on.
“Hey! You’re making a terrible mess. And I don’t like your tone, young man,” the Beefinblogger man whined.
Jack looked down to see the Bufferbuggy man’s face glaring up at him. The guy had come out of his seat and was now scowling up at him like he’d smelled a skunk. His voice rang through the confined space, giving Jack a towering headache. “Well, chimney sweeping is a dirty business. Thus the sheet.” Jack hauled the broom out, but it came free without the hand broom. That one was still stuck up the chimney. Jack went back in. He stared up into the darkness that looked like the inside of a cast iron skillet. He could just make out the form of the brush. He would have to go get the thing.
Jack was not the poster boy for starving third world children. His mom was a fairly decent cook and his customary thirds and fourths showed. But he was fairly certain that if he didn’t get that stupid brush out of the Barginbanger’s chimney, the guy would produce a litter of cougars.
What Jack also knew, was that if he tried to go up that chimney with his jeans on, he was going to get as stuck as that brush up there. So he sank down and took them off, along with his size 15 boots.
The paper rattled and there was a shout. “What are you doing, young man? I say. This is rather untoward.”
“Untoward what? I’m just making sure I don’t get stuck in your chimney.”
The man leaped up and ran to the door. “Eunice, are you sure Melva got off to school?”
The wife said something Jack couldn’t hear.
“Don’t you come in here. I’ll take care of it,” her husband yelled back. What a noisy family.
By that time Jack was snickering to himself in nervous relief that the teenager girl wouldn’t see him in his Christmas dumpster fire boxers and socks. He dove back into the chimney and started to edge his way up. Now he remembered why he preferred to wear pants for this part. You would think a chimney would be all smooth, but it wasn’t. There were all kinds of sharp bits and crumbly bits and scrapey bits that scraped on his—well never mind. He crawled and edged and tried his darnedest to reach the brush, but couldn’t. In fact, he was beginning to regret eating that third doughnut.
At least he seemed to be knocking a goodly amount of soot out of the chimney and onto the Strawberry Shortcake sheets. He reached up and up but still couldn’t even touch the brush, let alone grab it. To top it off, he was swelling up like a large toad. The more he thought about how tight it was getting, the further he swelled, until he was starting to have a rough time grabbing a breath. If he could just seize that brush and leave.
Four things happened at once. His fingers touched something that felt furry, not smooth like the brush handle. He squinted up into darkness as deep as the Marianas Trench, to see two round, glowing orbs. And third, just as he realized he was stuck, fourth, his boxers started to slip down.
Whatever that was up there staring at Jack reached closer and bit him on the middle finger! He screeched and tried to get the heck out of Dodge, but it wouldn’t work. And because of his screaming, the thing up there shrieked as well.
Jack kicked his legs wildly, trying to un-wedge himself, to no avail. In fact, his frantic kicking led to a bellow from Mr. Bobbinbaffer, who had come to see what the hullabaloo was about.
“What is all this? I come to help you and you kick me in the face?” the man yelled, the rage evident in his voice even from way up the chimney.
“Sorry sir, but you need to get an animal control person out here, as some kind of critter just bit me. Also I may be just a little bit stuck. This sort of thing has never happened before. I’m usually in and out in around an hour.”
Jack’s explanation didn’t seem to appease the Boggybanger man at all, perhaps because Jack was mooning the poor man something fierce. Jack could barely bring himself to care. Was he going to suffocate to death in that chimney? Was that animal thing up there going to eat off his face? Would Jack still be stuck up there by the time the hot chick came home from cheerleader practice? What if he suddenly had to go to the bathroom? Surely emptying his bladder would help get him out of the chimney faster. Maybe he’d better hold off on that last thing, though, just in case the cheerleader came home early.
“I’ll tell you what, instead. How about I sue you for destroying my home and exposing yourself in front of my family? Hmm? How about that?”
Just as Jack might have answered the man, some of the clinker he’d kicked off the chimney fell into Mr. Buggybumper’s mouth and he gagged and spat all over Jack’s mom’s Strawberry Shortcake sheet. At least that was what it sounded like to the guy stuck in the chimney. Also, the dumpster fire boxers slipped a little further down his legs.
No further noises came to Jack in the chimney for quite some time. At least not from the room. The creature above was definitely unhappy about sharing the chimney with Jack and chattered and bit him again on his birdie finger.
At Jack’s yell, a new voice raised itself in a squawk. “Young man! Pull up your underpants at once.” Mrs. Baggybuffer. If only he could. Suddenly he felt ice cold fingers yank up his chonies and snap the band for good measure. “I don’t know what you did to my husband, but you come down here right this instant and face me like a man.”
He was going to insist that the firetruck with its jaws-of-life come to help him get out, when something seemed to give. In one huge WHOMP and a cloud of soot and bits of masonry, Jack fell out of the chimney and into the arms of the amazing Mrs. Bittlewhimper. She dropped him giant hot potato-style.
“Well at least that cleaned most of your chimney really nicely,” he said with a chuckle.
The black-faced Mrs. Biggieblunder was not quite as cheerful. “You’d better have gotten that raccoon out of there. He’s the neighbor’s pet and they’ve been missing him for days now. Hopefully you didn’t hurt him, poking at him like that.”
“Hurt him? I’ll probably have to have rabies shots. You should stop keeping pets in your chimney.”
The Bundlemonkey woman handed Jack his pants and threw his boots at him, clipping him on the chin. “You’ll need those when you go up on the roof to finish the job. I want that coon out of there, along with anything else you might have left in my chimney. And take your sheet with you. She said that last with a snicker. Jack, however, wasn’t going to take the sheet until the raccoon was out of the way. No one could say he hadn’t learned his lesson from before.
Boots on and put back together, Jack took his scraped-up self up on the roof, using the little step ladder he’d borrowed from his dad. When he got up to the chimney, he found that it was taller than he was. He would have to use the step ladder to get the rest of the way up to the opening. But what should he lean it on? Luckily there were two sides to the ladder. Maybe the legs could straddle the roof line. He would still have to lean over to get to the chimney from there, so he’d have to stand on the topmost step—the one that says ‘Don’t stand on here.’
He finally got that all set up and even tied a rope around one of the ladder legs and around his waist. Up he climbed to the tippy top and leaned over, barely able to catch the edge of the chimney. He gazed down the hole and was just able to see two beady little eyes, at first round, and then slitted, as the coon made a sound distinctly reminding Jack of an angry cheetah. Did coons normally make such a sound? It almost looked like the animal was going to squeeze further into the chimney.
Jack couldn’t have that. If he didn’t get the coon out, he was pretty sure Mrs. Buggybumper would chew off his right hind leg. A black brush of a tail flaunted itself just barely within Jack’s reach. He gulped and grabbed it, yanking the critter as hard as he could. With a sound roughly like the mix of a champagne cork popping and the scream of a puma, the raccoon, along with Jack’s brush gripped in a little black hand, came free and sailed into the air. The action pulled Jack with it in an arcing trajectory off the roof. All of which left him swinging upside down from the rope he’d tied to the ladder leg. The ladder had disappeared down the back side of the house somewhere.
Jack narrowly missed a tree in his mad swing, which luckily calmed quickly to a mere jiggle. Jack yelled his head off, and pounded on the window he could just reach, but could get nobody out to release him from his rope. Where were all the nosy neighbors who had watched him carrying his brushes and sheet into the house? Somehow they all had stuff to do? Where were the Buddieflumpers? They’d watched him like a mama hawk all afternoon and now they couldn’t bother to even come release him? Didn’t they have other stuff to do?
The blood had all rushed to Jack’s head as he hung there, his leg aching like a freak. The thought suddenly occurred to Jack that he wasn’t quite so enamored with his job anymore. The learning curve seemed quite steep. Plus he wasn’t making enough money to keep him in Jalapeno chili Cheetos and computer hours, according to his mom.
His friend had mentioned wanting to join the Navy so he could scrape barnacles off ships for a living. That might be a thing. Probably wasn’t quite as exciting as chimney sweeping, but he might have fewer women chucking boots at his face. Maybe he could switch with his friend—bequeath the Strawberry Shortcake sheet and brooms to the guy in exchange for going into the Navy. Yeah. That might work. There were still people who wanted a chimney sweep. It just wasn’t going to be Jack.
If only he could get his leg out of that noose.
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