The Brilliantly Rainbowed Adventure

        A butler stood inside the massive double doors and announced the mixed bag of loafers as they arrived. He was dressed like a throwback to another era, so we all felt right at home. The butler looked proud and embarrassed at the same time as he announced the names of the legendary 'Spieling Be' (a.k.a. our pal Billy) and our unsightly crew to the thrilled throng.
        "Mr. William Trembling-Lance, and his guests, Mr. Zeb Hendrix and the Hootenannies," he boldly quavered to the gathered multitude. To our surprise a mysterious wailing cry arose from the midst of the crowd. The people began to jabber, asking one another what was happening.
        "Give her room!" shouted some fellow, and I watched them shift around in the middle of the room to make space for her, whoever she was. I hurried over to help, elbowing my way through the gawkers to the center of the heap.
        Guess who was there? You guessed it! Well sir, it was none other than our close personal friend, Ms. Irma Smoothaven-Fitzpatrick! She was lying on the floor, out like a light.
        "Give her air!" I hollered, as if I knew what I was doing, but sure enough, they did it anyway. By and by she came to and looked me in the face and passed out again. I reckon that the thrill was too much for her.
        I could see that this-here fainting act was wearing a little thin, so I leaped up and hollered, "Free Fizzies for the house! The last one to the bar is a rotten egg!"
        Well sirree bobtail, the crowd let loose with a war-whoop and swarmed in a pack for that big fancy Fizzies bar, shoving and fighting for a place so they wouldn't be the rotten egg. It just goes to show you that people are the same the whole world over; Irma was plumb forgotten about, and it was just as well, because she needed her rest.
        I bought the whole crowd a round of Fizzies, the carbonated soft drink that comes in a convenient brightly colored tablet, and you should have seen those big king-and-queen-pins tossing in the Fizzies pill and guzzling the stuff before it dissolved… that's how much they couldn't wait!
        It was fun, and I was there.
        A few minutes later I saw Irma stagger up to the bar, looking as if she had seen better days. She didn't know it, but the gent to her left with his back turned to her was our own Slug Simpkins, the Slumbering Gourmet.
        I watched as they both turned slowly to face one another there at the bar. Irma's face was stamped with dread, and took a downward plunge into abject horror when her eyes lit upon Slug. His face was stuffed with an incredible load of caviar, a load that boated his cheeks and oozed out of his grinning mouth.
        "Here's the fish eggs," he blurted, unfortunately demonstrating their location by spewing them all over Irma's expensive dress. She stared down dully at the mess, like a person deep in shock.
        A movement caught my attention, and my eyeballs plopped over onto the moving object. It was Stink.
        A passle of warning bells jangled my brain off of the hook, but I was unable to catch Stink's eye, even though I was waving my hand at him frantically. He was walking up behind Irma, totally unaware of his impending doom. The crowd peeled away on either side of him as he came up, and I could smell the fact that his shower had not dented his natural aroma as much as we had hoped. Irma was still staring down at Slug's fish eggs (that were now hers) when old Stinker bellied up to the bar and ordered a double fizzies on the rocks.
        Now, as I beheld Ms. Fitzpatrick, her countenance changed. Staring vacantly into space, her nostrils testily progued the air, searching as if to identify a suspicious scent. Then her vacant stare was sharply redefined by a shock of recognition. Her smoldering eyes burst into flame; she focused her fury and began to slowly turn to face the object of her wrath.
        When their eyes met, poor old Stinky turned as white as a Frigidaire. His eyes rolled upwards like a slot machine about to hit, and his jaw almost dropped down to the hardwood floor. He looked like a pitiful little bunny pinned to the asphalt by the lights of an oncoming semi truck.
        When Irma laughed, my blood froze solid and my skin began to crawl like a pot full of worms. She sounded mad, she looked mad, and the conversation around the bar suddenly stopped.
        The roar came out of the blue. No, it came out of Ms. Fitzpatrick. It sounded as if a ravenous lioness was bellowing her anger through the valleys and glens of her native terrain; it shook the crystal chandeliers; it silenced the patrons of the gaudy ball.
        She cut loose with that yell, and then she went and ripped a giant chunk of wood right off of that bar! I don't know how she did it, and I can't say that I would have believed it if I hadn't been right there when I saw her do it. But tear it off she did: a big ugly chunk of hickory wood with big old nails splaying out of the business end of it going this way and that.
        Poor old Stink looked as if he was going to fold in the clutch, so I hollered out, "Run, Stink!" and run he did. But first he had to slip and fall on his face while Irma just gave him that million-dollar grin. She swung at Stink when he scrambled up from the floor and he ducked just in time; her Gutchinville Slugger swept several glasses of Fizzies into the mirror behind the bar, spraying us all with foam and with magnificently shimmering slivers of glass that danced in the air as if they never wanted the moment to end and then rained on us like a cold and brittle dew. The next instant old Stink lit out for his life, and they were off!
        Well, folks, you have all heard about their first footrace, but I'm here to tell you that that was nothing. This here was racing; there wasn't any quarter asked nor given; they went hard at it, and I hope to never see another footrace like it ever again. Why, the interstellar lights of track and field had nothing on Stink that night, and our pal Irma made those famous Amazon warriors from the golden days of ore seem like limp-wristed mavens of the tea and crumpet circuit. They were just a blur; Irma was roaring the whole while and they must have traversed that hall at least 15 times.
        Some of the people scatted of their way and plastered themselves to the walls in dread. Other folks were covering their ears to protect them from the clamor that Irma was making, and the ones that didn't glue themselves to the wall gathered together into protective clusters on the main floor. As for me, I borrowed the bartender's camera and got the whole thing on tape, standing up there on top of the bar.
        Well, pretty soon the same security guards that grabbed Irma at the Snobthistle Country Club gig showed up and latched hold of her as she ran by. Now she slammed them both into the big double doors in the entranceway, and she hove hard after old Stink again, but by and by some more guards joined in, and pretty soon they managed to subdue her, and she was, as they say, history. They hauled old Irma off for some more rest, and the doors slammed behind them.
        The crowd started jabbering now all at once, and everybody had an opinion about what had happened. Some people said that she almost caught him at least one time and others cried out that it wasn't so, that he was just toying with her, and that he was smiling as he ran. Some other people said that Stink was chasing Irma, but nobody paid them much mind.
        By and by somebody let on that I had a videotape of the race and a big hue and cry arose that they should all see it; there was at least 1,000 of them, but they had several giant screens around the hall, so we watched it, with some people gasping and others moaning, but they were all fighting for the best seats.
        Pretty soon they had watched it enough, and poor old Stink had been shown in enough freeze frames to convince them all that he hadn't been smiling at all, and we couldn't even find anybody who would admit that they'd said that he was smiling in the first place. All in all it was a powerful good night of it.
        We all left this shindig in a pretty good mood and went to the cabins that had been donated by a fan of Billy's work. We were set to enjoy a good night's sleep. Of course, we left our good buddy Stinker hiding from Irma somewhere out in the woods, where he wouldn't gas us.
        Our sides had just about split with all the laughing, and we didn't need Old Stinky around to stench the wounds.