Delmer Beard's 1991 Plymouth Sundance was swerving left like a shopping cart on an episode of Jackass. He veered to avoid some people in the crosswalk, as he crammed another handful of cash out the cracked driver's-side window.
Delmer was stressed. Five minutes ago, he successfully finished changing his first flat tire. Even though he was covered in grease and dust from tip to tail (as he's never been properly introduced to changing a tire, let alone on a Plymouth Sundance before) he took a particular satisfaction in knowing that he did it, and he did a good job.
Sadly, that was five minutes ago.
In that five minutes, Delmer was spotted by a federal agent posing as a kindly state trooper ready to help with the tire that Delmer had already so successfully changed. You see, Delmer was in trouble with the law. He had a lot of money that, well, technically wasn't his. It was, in a way, because possession is nine-tenths of the law. But "obtained through fraud" makes that nine tenths into about — oh — zero tenths.
Delmer sold, produced and marketed direct email advertising. Spam to you and me. He had a particular flair for drugs of a personal nature, and took delight in crafting delicate and — at times — overwhelming names for the sources of these unsolicited messages. People had even written software to automate this task. But Delmer felt that the world of spam needed a little hand-crafted touch sometimes — not unlike a custom pair of shoes.
Delmer made a great deal of money at his "little adventure," a term he used for the first time at a cocktail party in 1999. It was little, and hardly adventurous when he started. His business, though, was in full swing by that point. He had 75 million addresses in his database, and nearly 90 percent of them were active. He mentored under the guy that invented the "unsubscribe" link, and spent a summer teaching a workshop on how to intentionally misspell words, but still convey meaning.
Delmer was, for all intents and purposes, the Hormel of the spam industry.
Now, however, he was in a crippled Plymouth Sundance containing
* * *
The agent behind him was gaining about five feet per second. Delmer specialized in "pulled it out of my butt" style calculations. Unbeknownst to him, and defying all logic, Delmer was indeed exactly right every time. He would find out in 23 years when he would wake up one morning having done his state taxes entirely in his head overnight. Delmer was also averaging about $9,900 a minute in airborne cash flying from his car.
Delmer felt the spare tire developing a wicked shimmy, and fought for control of the car. Before he could round a corner, the Sundance careened off the road, and into a tidy little hardware store's front window. A sculpture, completed an hour earlier, made of 2,700 socket wrenches, burst into 1,922 pieces; 877 of which were metric.
Delmer unbuckled himself and exited the car as quickly as he could, but his first step outside his car door landed his left foot squarely in a tin bucket. He tried to shake the bucket off, which made it look like he was simultaneously caught in a spider web and trying to do the Charleston. He wrenched off the pail, grabbed it by the handle, and flew with it out the broken storefront window. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the friendly federal agent pull up to the hardware store and bolt after him.
Meanwhile, a crowd gathered at the storefront. A mob of people was racing after the trail of Benjamins that led them right to Hank's Hardware. Hank, of course, was happy enough about the sudden interest in his business, but was perhaps more concerned with the Plymouth Sundance occupying the space where his socket wrench masterpiece stood. Hank cried a little inside for what would be his magnum opus — a gleaming tribute to any bolt or fastener that dared feature a hexagonal top.
Delmer saw the shop recede into the distance and smiled. He had found his way behind the store, and clambered into a boxcar connected to a passing train. He casually waved goodbye to the crowd and the agent, who had fallen into a storm drain. The agent tried to shake his fist at Delmer, but instead remained unconscious.
* * *
Delmer held the last $100 bill in his hand and smiled. He knew he could at least make it to Rockville, and maybe as far as Caruthers. He leaned back against a hay bale, and fell gently asleep.
When he woke in the morning, the train had stopped. But, to his greater alarm, his hundred dollars was missing. He got up and felt his shirt and pants, even though he knew he couldn't really feel a hundred-dollar bill if it was in his pocket, but resigned himself that it was just one of those strange things that human beings do. When he didn't find it, he ran around the other hay bales in the boxcar. As he looked around the side of the bale behind him, he yelled "HOW!" in surprise. Although "how" really isn't a word one would associate with expressing surprise, it was the sound that escaped his mouth.
"How what?" said the girl, who was, at this point, on her feet.
"How ... did you ... get ... here?" Delmer asked stupidly.
"I climbed on. You were asleep, or dead, or something, so I figured you were harmless. But now you're running around, screaming how! at people, and so I'm inclined to believe you're not all that harmless anymore." She gave him a hard look.
"Listen, I know you picked my pocket, so why don't you just my hundred bucks back."
"Give what back?"
"Riiiight." Delmer knew that his cash was lost and gone forever. He noticed that the girl, under other circumstances, might not be entirely detestable after all. As a matter of fact, she might be pretty hot if she had a shower and a fresh set of clothes on. Her 1996 Republican National Convention T-shirt wasn't exactly the most flattering thing she could have been wearing, but exchange that for a Democratic National Convention shirt, and suddenly the stakes were high.
"Listen," she said, perhaps arriving at a similar conclusion about Delmer, "let me buy you lunch. There's a McDonald's just over the fence there."
Delmer suddenly realized he was indeed hungry, and could certainly settle for one of those McGriddle sandwiches. He didn't know exactly how they made the muffin taste like maple syrup, but there are times when it's probably best you just don't ask questions like that. Instead, he just decided he was lovin' it.
"So what's your name?" Delmer asked. "Unless you want me to call you 'Bob Dole' from now on."
Her posture improved as she drew herself up to her full height, and said with a regal undertone, "my name is Pizzeria G. Yardage. I come from a long, long line of Yardages. We are the fabric of America."
Delmer furrowed his brow.
"But friends call me P." P snapped her head back as if to clear hair from her face, but her short cut just made it look like she had voluntarily inflicted whiplash on herself.
They jumped from the boxcar door, and scaled the fence of the train yard. Once on the other side, Delmer and P strode purposefully into the McDonalds, where each went straight to the bathroom. After an inordinate amount of time, they eventually ordered a meal befitting perhaps Kim Jung Il. P ordered a McFlurry-brand iced blended beverage, and Delmer savored his McGriddle sandwich.
On their way to a table, P slipped on a burst ketchup packet and spilled her McFlurry (-brand iced blended beverage) on herself. This normally wouldn't be anything to write home about, unless your parents were profoundly boring, and had a particular interest in anything related to blended beverages or slapstick humor. However, for reasons too complex and in fact involving a truck driver, twelve bottles of gin, and a pit stop gone terribly, terribly wrong, the lowliest of McDonalds peons used dry ice instead of water ice when making P's shake. This cog blended a beverage that was boiling away at 109 degrees below zero, and now was finding a home in direct contact with P's skin.
P yelled in pain as Delmer eyed the now empty McFlurry-brand cup on the floor. He inspected the cup, only to find that nowhere was there a warning that the contents of the cup were extremely cold.
"You need a lawyer," he said to no one in particular, as P picked herself up off the floor, wondering why Delmer was staring at the McFlurry-brand cup and generally not helping.
"What for?" P asked.
"Look at you! You're frostbitten from head to toe."
"It's not that bad —" P started, but stopped awkwardly as she noticed a man in a pinstripe suit presenting her with a business card.
"I'm Stenography O. Stinkings, Esq., from Stinkings, Corpse, Hargreaves and Stinkings. I saw what happened, and I'd be interested in representing you."
P still didn't understand what the hubbub was about, and continued protesting until Mr. Stinkings wrote down a very large number on a napkin and handed it to her. The dollar sign in front of it was a dead giveaway that he was talking money.
"You're hired," she said, and went to the counter for another McFlurry-brand iced blended beverage.
* * *
The trial was short and sweet; not at all unlike the beverage that P was supposed to have ordered. The jury, won over by her hobo charm and delicate fashion sense, ruled unanimously in her favor. All that was left now was to learn how much she had won in judgment.
Mr. Stinkings drove Delmer and P to the courthouse. As they arrived, they were all greeted with a cavalcade of media with cameras and microphones, all pointed at them. P's burn was barely visible, but she was assured that this could be color-corrected before the report aired.
After a stop at the courthouse restroom, which had those fancy motion-activated sinks, they took their seats as the judge arrived. He took no time in announcing the jury's recommendation in P's favor. Perhaps it was either the heat or the leaking gas pipe in the courtroom, but when the jury forewoman read the judgment for $10 million, P fainted in her chair.
Delmer carried her unconscious body from the courtroom. In the weeks since Delmer's little spare tire escapade, he and P had grown rather close. So close, that P insisted that they share the judgment, and use it to have the fanciest wedding money could buy.
* * *
Unfortunately, all did not live happily ever after. As he was leaving with P in his arms, Delmer was stopped by a bevy of police and detectives, and arrested under the stipulations of the CAN-SPAM act. He was found guilty of sending out hundreds of thousands of unsolicited email messages, and was forced to pay exactly $10 million to his victims.
Their plans in shambles, Delmer and P boarded the train again. To their surprise, they boarded exactly the same boxcar as when they had met. Delmer started to nap against the same (now reasonably rank) hay bale, whilst P looked around for something.
"What are you looking for?" Delmer asked.
P kept foraging, and eventually signaled that she found something.
Delmer noticed she was down behind the hay bale, peeing into the tin bucket he had escaped Hank's Hardware with.
Delmer smiled. "You know, I know a drug that can help you with that frequent urination thing. Fast, discreet shipping, too."