The Mayor’s Mustache

“Give him hell, Tom,” Ms. Custer called out.

Sheriff Kramer looked over at Ms. Custer, eyes pleading with her to keep quiet.

However much Sheriff Kramer hoped Ms. Custer would hold her tongue, others in the room began shouting similar sentiments. I saw the sheriff press the button on the walkie-talkie pinned to his shirt and ask his deputies to swing by the courthouse. I don’t think he cared about the adults getting rowdy, but he wanted to make sure the school children wouldn’t be subjected to crude language or listen to a discussion about the sanity of one of the town’s elderly. To this end, he wandered over to the adults supervising the kids and suggested they go back to school. Moments later, the students were corralled and led out.

As the kids left, the room quieted down to the point where there was a distinctly uncomfortable silence. The reason for the meeting had gone beyond the idea of eminent domain to the question of my sanity and it was being done in a public forum.

I figured now was the time to put our plan into effect. Bud agreed.

“Mort,” I said, not bothering to afford him his title, “I have proof that you can’t do what you say you can do. I have this proof right here.” I pulled out my papers, feeling a surge of excitement I hadn’t felt since I met Gwen many years ago.

Several people stood up and shouted “Let Tom have his say,” with the loudest voice, of course, being Ms. Custer’s.

The Mayor’s face was now redder than his hair since the meeting was turning into something of a free-for-all. He held up his hands, asking for quiet and for people to sit down as he was now doing.

“Mr. Culhaven, if you have proof of what you’re saying, please bring it up here that we may have a look.” His cronies nodded in agreement.

My surge of excitement was turning to nervousness. The moment was near at hand and I only had one crack at it. I looked at Bud and he gave me a “paws up” for encouragement.

I moved slowly toward the table with papers in hand listening to my heart thump like someone banging on a hollow pumpkin. Then I placed the papers on the table directly in front of Mayor Mort.

“Page five clearly states my right to keep my property. Read it for yourself.”

The Mayor went to page five and read the document. His cronies followed his eyes as they went down the page. When finished, he looked up at me and said, “Mr. Culhaven, unless I’m missing something, this is a written contract for your father, William, to purchase a dozen cows and have them shipped to his farm from Chicago. This is not proof of anything,” he added with irritation. His cronies gave me looks of accusation.

“Oh, my error,” I said. “It’s on page nine.”

Mort went to page nine, read but a few lines down, and glared at me angrily. “What are you trying to do, Mr. Culhaven? This is a copy of the document I just read!”

Well, it was now or never.

“If you would look here, Mort, it’s different than the other document.” I pointed my finger toward the bottom of the page. As he lowered his head to read, I quickly withdrew the scissors from my jacket pocket and cut off the left side of his mustache—five and a half inches of the six on that side. For an old man, I was quick as a snake bite. One hand grabbed the glistening hair while the other did the deed. Now I stood in front of the Mayor with half his mustache in my left hand like a fisherman holding up a prize catch.

Events, after that, are something of a blur. There was a collective gasp from the folks in the room, then some laughing and whistling and stomping of feet. The place went crazy. So did the Mayor who, when he realized what had happened, let out a high pitched scream that likely was heard all the way to Cooper. He kept feeling for the severed hair, his green eyes bulging until I thought they’d pop out of his head and roll on the floor. I remember a few of the council members staring at me with their mouths open in disbelief. There were flashes of light which I first thought were bolts of lightning from heaven come to strike me dead for what I’d just done, but then I realized it was a series of flashes from the newspaper guy. He must have gotten some beauties of the Mayor and the chaos in the room.

Mort was so stunned and in shock that he stood up and stumbled backward over his chair, landing himself on the floor with a thud. By this time, Sheriff Kramer’s deputies had arrived and tried to get the situation under control which was difficult, what with the snipped Mayor on the floor and the place in a state of chaos.

Several of the Mayor’s pals helped him up and brushed the dust off his clothes. I stood there, not knowing what to do with the severed mustache so I held it out to the Mayor. He stared at it incredulously, then stared at me with the kind of anger I’d only seen in an enraged bull.

“I want this maniac arrested!” he screamed. “I want him arrested now!”

Then I felt Sheriff Kramer tap me on the arm.

“Tom, I’ll need that scissors and that, uh, piece of mustache. I’m going to have to take you in.”

“I wonder if he’ll cuff you,” Bud chided. “You do have that criminal look about you.”

“We did it, Bud. We pulled it off just as we planned,” I replied. Bud just smiled.

“Tom? Did you hear me? I’ll need to take the scissors and hair from you,” Sheriff Kramer said.

Still amazed at what I had done, I handed the items to the sheriff and held out my hands thinking I’d be handcuffed but he shook his head and told me he didn’t think I was a flight risk. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to lock you up, Tom, pending charges by the Mayor.”

Having recovered his dignity somewhat, Mort shouted a few things he wanted me arrested for: assault with a deadly weapon and a number of other offenses I can’t even remember.

Sheriff Kramer led me out of the room while Ms. Custer and others shouted encouragement.

“Why’d you do it, Tom?” Kramer asked me as we walked down the steps of the courthouse, and then headed toward the jail some two blocks away. “Surely you knew what the end result would be.”

“Sure did.” I answered, the sun feeling warm on my face, “Bud and I figured it was the only way we had to draw attention to the Mayor taking my property for no good reason beyond his own selfish ends.”

“Ah, your dog. I noticed you talking to him before the meeting started. Name’s Bud?”

I suddenly noticed Bud not having said anything for awhile, which by all accounts is borderline astonishing. Glancing around me, I noticed him taking advantage of a fire hydrant half a block away. He’d be back.

“I know what you and everyone else in town thinks…that I’m an old man out of touch with reality. But that just isn’t so. My dog is as real as can be and in fact, he came up with the scheme to cut off the Mayor’s mustache.”

Kramer shrugged. “You don’t seem crazy to me, Tom, although what you just did could be construed as such. But if you say your dog is real, it’s real. Just ‘cause I can’t see or hear him doesn’t make it any less so.”

“Well, thank you, Sheriff Kramer, that’s kind of you to say.”

“Call me Roy…we’ll be seeing a fair amount of one another in the next week or so and it’s easier talking if we’re on a first name basis.”

By this time, Bud had returned from his dealings with the fire hydrant and was trotting alongside me as we approached the jail.

“So,” Bud said, “we’re going to the Big House, eh?”

I nodded.

“What kind of food do they have in the place, Tom?” he asked.

“Darned if I know, Bud, I’ve never been in jail before.”