The Notorious Jim Smiley (2015)
In compliance with the request of my teacher, Mr. Kissingford, I visited my good-natured, garrulous old grandpa, and inquired after the famous Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my teacher never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked my old grandpa about him, it would remind him of the infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.
I found my grandpa dozing comfortably by the fireplace in his living room, and I noticed that he was wearing his classic corduroy sweater with khaki pants and suspenders. His bifocals hung from a string around his neck. He looked pale, almost unto the death. He roused up and gave me good-day. I told him my teacher had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley. I added that, if he could tell me anything about this Reverend Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.
Grandpa backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:
There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, who worked in the accounting business with me about 50 years ago (Henry and Mackenzie). As you probably well know, accounting is boring as all get out. It’s awful. Everyone hates it. So that’s what we did together. And until September 31, 1954, I never knew him out of that context. But one day, passing each other in the break room, he invited me over to his house for dinner. Little did I know that he had other intentions. I went over to his house that night and knocked on the door. He answered wearing only a shiny gold morph suit. “Come on, Bruce! We’re going to the circus!” He took me by the arm and dragged me to the backyard. There stood our ride: a giant fire breathing horse. “I don’t own a car but old Bessie always does the trick.” And with that, we were off to the circus. Old Bessie was NOT doing the trick. The fire that she (or he?) was breathing was burning me severely. And the worst part was my best dinner party suit was ruined. When we got to our destination, I was surprised to find that there was no circus at all.
Jim and I used to commit arson all the time. (Keegan and Courtney) Oh the good ole days, burning down school houses and churches, littering the towns that we razed in our blaze of glory. One day ole Jim disappeared, I looked for him high and low but he was nowhere to be found. Years later I was at my local taxidermy office and found him lying on a stuffed raccoon. He had massive buck teeth that never fit completely in his mouth. By the look of his dull buck teeth, it was obvious he had been living with the beavers for a few years. He had made himself a nice home on genuine riverfront property. It was made of mostly gnawed trees and mud. He was very disturbed man, but oh was he beautiful.
As a result, that Jim Smiley was the most confident man I ever knew (Aaron and Reysa). He was also very sexy! He could out-climb a mountain goat and had legs like a elegant flamingo. He really liked watching Animal Planet, and I didn’t think there was a man alive who could beat him at a game of hopscotch. I remember this one day we were sitting outside and a man challenged old Jimmy to a hop off on the old scotch out back. Jimmy being the swagger boi that he was, accepted the challenge with a firm handshake. So myself and a few of the lads went out back to spectate. We invited some of the girls to watch old Jimmy and Bobert… it didn’t end well…. but it wasn’t nearly as surprising as the alligator eating contest (Cooper and Owen).
We had always wondered how to eat alligators, but Jim always knew how to make good alligator. He always used an obscene amount of barbeque sauce, A-1 sauce, and just sauces in general. Jim Smiley made one mean alligator pie. Served with ice cream and covered in catsup, it was the best d*** thing you’ll ever have. Jim Smiley also had a beard. He had shaved the bat signal into it, but back then Batman wasn’t even cool. It always got in his alligator pie when he ate. It was pretty disgusting. Not the pie, but the beard. A tooth usually got caught in it, but occasionally a claw did instead. Jim and I always had a solid relationship. Sometimes he would just show up at my house, and one day he even tried to kiss me. On my fortieth birthday, Jim said that we should have an alligator eating contest at the family reunion. We were family because he married my mother. She was long gone now; she got the electric chair for animal abuse. Anyways, I agreed to his contest, so we ate a s*** ton of pie that day. Jim won; he ate 43 to my 41. Those weren’t just regular sized pies - THEY WERE MASSIVE! Jim got rushed to the hospital as he polished off the last one, and I didn’t see him for years after that. On my 41st birthday, as I was eating breakfast, someone slammed an alligator pie down in front of me. It was that old son-of-a-b****, Jim Smiley.
By that time, Jim was a very creepy old man (Sam and Charlie). He lived in a hole in the ground that was by the school. He had built a series of tunnels below the school. Each tunnel was connected to each classroom. He would dress in a dragon costume and pop out of a hole and take one child each year. When the school was investigating the missing children they found the tunnels. Inside each tunnel there was thousands of copies of the movies Birdemic. It turns out then he was not wearing a dragon costume: it was a crow. When we got the kids down from the spider web, they all wept to have to leave their “Uncle Jimmy.”
I remember meeting Jim’s girlfriend for the first time (Evan and Beth). Just like him, she was beautiful. She had beautiful billowing ears and eyebrows that were wild, thick, and dancing on his face, just how Jim liked his women. On one particular occurrence, we went on a double date to the local abandoned International House of Pancakes, which had a 2.7 on Trip Advisor before being closed down for housing enemies of the state, probably some ragheads. However, because the IHOP had been closed down years ago, we all sat in silence, combing his gal pal’s eyebrows. It was the best goddamn pancakes I ever had, and we left the empty building starving. My date didn’t quite have as good a time as I did, and she never called back.
Here Grandpa heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what was wanted. And turning to me as he moved away, he said: "Just set where you are, and rest easy. I ain't going to be gone a second."
But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away.At the door I met my sociable Grandpa returning, and he button- holed me and wanted to recommence, but I told my grandpa I’d heard enough, thanked him, and went home to do my English homework. It was midnight, and I only had three hours left before I put my books away.
--Aaron, Reysa, Courtney, Evan,
Mackenzie, Henry, Elizabeth,
Charlie, Cooper, Keegan,
Owen, Sam, and Mr. K.