Seems every town had a bully and Delbert, Alabama was no different.  Jasper McKeever could have been considered a bully by many of the people who had had the misfortune to cross his path.  He was a big man, standing well over six foot-five and tipping the scales at just over three hundred-fifty pounds.  He usually wore his faded blue bib overalls with one strap hanging down.  Beneath the overalls, his red and black plaid shirt looked as if it had never gone through the washing machine.  A baseball hat emblazoned with Murphy’s Feed Mill across the front usually covered Jasper’s thinning brown hair.  Ben Murphy wasn’t exactly thrilled with this walking billboard for his feed store but he wasn’t about to try to take the hat away from Jasper.

Since his childhood in the late 60s, Jasper seemed to take delight in the misery and suffering he caused others.  Whether it was tripping kids in the school cafeteria just to see them spill their trays of food, or causing undue suffering to stray animals, Jasper enjoyed his mischief.

The summer he turned nine he caught a frog in Miller’s Pond and immediately proceeded to rip its legs from their sockets.  Although the frog couldn’t exactly scream, you can imagine the pain it suffered during the last thirty seconds of its life.

For his fourteenth birthday Jasper got a .22 rifle and a box of shells.  Before the day had ended, Jasper had used all one hundred shells, some for target practice on tin cans, and some on whatever wildlife lived in the woods behind his house.  Nothing was safe.  If it moved, he shot it.  Sparrows, squirrels, rabbits and even a neighbor’s hound dog fell to Jasper’s rifle.  He had a complete lack of respect for life—any life.

Jasper’s father had an old pickup truck that he used to haul his farm supplies to and from town.  When he was eighteen, Jasper got his driver’s license.  Most of the other kids in Delbert had passed the required tests and had been driving around for almost two years before Jasper.  Seems he couldn’t quite grasp the idea behind the written test.  He might still be walking around Alabama if he had not taken the driver’s examiner aside and personally threatened to beat him to a pulp if he failed again.

No one was safe on the road once Jasper slid behind the wheel.  You either avoided him altogether or he ran you off the road.  Stray animals fared even worse.  Jasper’s first victim was a slow moving possum that happened to waddle out into the road in front of Jasper’s truck.  It was purely by accident that Jasper had run over the critter, but once he saw the dead animal on the road, Jasper smiled his broad, toothy grin and threw the carcass in the back of his truck and took it home with him.  That possum was the first of what was to become a large collection of road kill.

After that first possum, Jasper would delight in seeking out animals on the road and aiming his truck to try to run them down.  On several occasions, he’d even driven into the ditch to go after an occasional raccoon or skunk.  Billy Bob Finch’s beagle once strayed near the roadside and Jasper steered his truck toward the dog.  When it ran back toward the house, Jasper followed it up into the yard before running it down.  Billy Bob never found his beagle but most folks around town knew what had happened to it.  No one had enough nerve to tell Billy Bob, let along confront Jasper with the dog’s demise.

A few years ago Jasper got in a fight with another man about his size.  Lester Goedtke, it seems, had accused Jasper of shooting three of his chickens and Jasper deemed it proper etiquette to defend his good name.  Although he managed to knock Lester unconscious, Lester got in a few lucky punches himself and knocked three of Jasper’s front teeth clean out.  After that incident, Jasper’s toothy smile took on a new look.  Jasper almost wore that gap like a badge of honor and as a reminder to whomever else got it into their head to try to fight him.  No one did.

The novelty of Jasper’s .22 rifle soon wore thin.  Jasper needed bigger and better thrills to satisfy the sadistic urge within himself.  He learned that Ned Campbell had a Remington 10-guage over-under shotgun and Jasper wanted it.  Now, the details of this specific trade are still a little hazy to the residents of Delbert, but let’s just say that Ned still has all his teeth as well as Jasper’s old .22 rifle, while Jasper now does his hunting with a Remington 10-guage over-under.

Jasper’s critter-search game took on a new meaning with the Remington.  It wasn’t just a matter of killing animals now.  No, the purpose of Jasper’s new game was to see if he could completely disintegrate whatever little creature he could line up in his sights.  Sparrows and Blue Jays splattered into nothing more than a puff of feathers and claws.  Squirrels became a red mass of fur against the tree branches.  One of Lester’s chicken’s managed to side-step Jasper’s shot, preventing a bull’s eye splatter, but Jasper’s shot did manager to blow the chicken’s head clean off.  The rest of the chicken proceeded to flap wildly and run around the yard bleeding from the neck until it ran out of steam and collapsed.

As with any of Jasper’s other thrill-seeking endeavors, this one lost its thrill after a few months and once again he found himself searching for a new outlet for his lunacy.  Last summer on one of his trips to town, Jasper passed a fireworks stand and slammed on the brakes and backed his pickup truck up.  He jumped out of the truck and lumbered over to the stand.  The guy under the red-and-white striped tent got up out of his chair and took his place behind the counter.

“Howdy, stranger,” he said, spreading his hands across the counter.  “We got all kinds of goodies for the Forth of July.”  He pronounced the name of the month with a heavy accent on the first syllable.  We got sparklers, firecrackers, spinners, black snakes and several different colored rockets.”  He smiled and waited for Jasper’s reaction.

Jasper looked over the wares and then back up at the man.  He picked up a string of firecrackers and examined them.  “These pretty powerful?”  He asked, looking at the man directly and smiling his gap-tooth smile.

A serious look played on the man’s face.  “Sir, these are so powerful that if you’re gonna light ‘em, I suggest you don’t hold them between your teeth, otherwise you might…”  He laughed and looked at Japer’s mouth.  “I guess I don’t have to tell you, now do I?”

Jasper’s smile quickly disappeared as he grabbed the man by the front of his shirt and lifted.  He’d pulled the man out from behind the counter and pulled his face close to his own.  The two men were nose to nose and Jasper grunted, “you makin’ fun of me?”

The man swallowed hard and quickly apologized.  “N..n..no sir,” he said.

Jasper released his grip and the man fell backwards, knocking over one folding table with a display of sparklers on it.  “You better not,” he warned, “or I’ll bust you in half.”

The man got up, brushed himself off and edged up to the counter again.  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said timidly.  I didn’t mean…”

Jasper cocked his fist and held it up to the man’s face.  “Just watch it,” he said.

The man swallowed hard again and reached under the counter.  He brought a small box up with him and placed it in front of Jasper.  He opened the flaps on the box and Jasper looked in.  The man withdrew a red marble-sized object with a one-inch fuse sticking out of it.  He handed it to Jasper.

Jasper examined it the way he’d examined that frog just before he tore its legs off.  “What is it?”

The man straightened up and went into his rehearsed spiel.  “No doubt you’ve heard of an M-80?”

Jasper nodded, like he knew what the man meant, but hadn’t a clue.

“That, my good man, is an M-160, twice as powerful as an M-80.  That,” he said, “is the most powerful of all the fireworks.  Why, the sound from that blast could be heard for three-quarters of a mile.  This is one baby you don’t wanna fool with.  You light it and you throw it and you better damn well duck your head and cover your eyes.  This fuse is good for exactly four seconds, then look out.”

“Jasper turned the object around in his hands and looked closer.  “Okay,” he said, “so it’s loud.  But is it powerful?”

“Powerful, you ask?”  The man launched into the second half of his canned speech.  “Why if you were to hold this baby too long it would blow your hand right off at the wrist.  These aren’t even legal in thirty-seven states.  If you wanted anything more powerful, you’d have to buy dynamite.  That’s why I’m down here in Alabama peddling what I have left of them.  I can’t even give ‘em away over in Georgia.”

“How much?”  Jasper demanded.

“These aren’t available just anywhere,” the man started to say.

Jasper grabbed the man’s shirt again and repeated.  “How much?”

“They’re ten dollars each.”

Jasper lifted the man a few inches higher.  “How much?”

“I meant two for ten dollars.”  

The man’s feet dangled several inches above the ground.  Jasper eased him down and loosened his grip.  “How much to me?”

The man looked back and forth to see if anyone else was within earshot.  He almost whispered.  “Tell you what, friend.  This is my last box.  If you promise not to tell anyone where you got ‘em I’ll let you have ‘em for nothin’.”

The big gap in Jasper’s mouth widened.  “Sold,” he said, folding the flaps of the box shut again and tucking the box under his arm.  Jasper laughed loud and deep and he headed back to his truck.  He pulled the shifter down and spun his tires in the dirt as he left.  He wasn’t a hundred yards away before the man began packing up his wares and tearing down his tent.  He wasn’t taking any chances that Jasper would return.

Jasper’s smile stayed on his face for most of the trip home.  He parked his pickup behind the shed and carried his box of M-160s into the barn.  He set the box on his workbench, opened it, pulled one of the huge firecrackers out and held it in his hand.  It felt good in his hand knowing the kind of power it held.

On the workbench, next to his skinning knife and other tools of destruction, Jasper had laid the carcass of his latest road kill victim.  It was a small rabbit that was already stiff.  He plucked the rabbit from the bench and took it outside where he laid it on the stump that he used to chop firewood.  He stuck the M-160 into the rabbit’s mouth and let the fuse stick out.  Jasper retrieved a wooden kitchen match from his bib overall pocket and struck it on the edge of the stump.  The flame came alive and Jasper held it to the end of the fuse.  When it began to sizzle, Jasper ran for cover back in the barn and watched through the window as the sparks followed the fuse into the rabbit’s mouth.  When it reached the end, the huge firecracker exploded, sending chunks of rabbit into the sky.

Jasper giggled like a schoolgirl and ran back out to the stump.  The rabbit had been completely blown to bits with just a charred area left on the stump to show where the explosion had been centered.  “Whoa, neat,” Jasper said aloud.  “Neat!”  He slammed his right fist into his open left palm.  The possibilities were endless, he thought, and ran back into the barn.

He emptied the contents of the box onto his workbench and separated the remaining firecrackers with his fingers and counted—seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.  He had nineteen left and he was going to enjoy each and every one of them.  As he scooped them back into the box, he heard a familiar fluttering sound and looked up.  It was a gray and black pigeon.  The pigeon had landed in the loft and was strutting around on the beam.

“Yeah,” Jasper almost whispered as the idea came to him.  He silently began climbing the ladder to the loft but as he poked his head above the loft floor, the pigeon became startled and flew off through the hole in the roof.

Jasper climbed back down the ladder and thought for a moment.  He knew he’d never be quick enough to catch the occasional barn pigeon that happened to land here.  He thought for a moment before snapping his fingers and running for his truck.

Wally Biggins lived a couple of miles down the road and he had a whole coop full of pigeons.  Surely he wouldn’t miss one—or two or three.  Besides, Jasper knew that Wally wouldn’t be home this time of day.  He drove most of the way to Wally’s house and parked his truck behind a grove of thick bushes.  He light-footed to Wally’s pigeon coop, his burlap sack in his hand.

Jasper eased the door open and slid inside.  He was surprised to see no gray pigeons.  All of Wally’s pigeons were pure white.  There must have been fifty birds in there.  He thought of how much better this color would be once the M-160 went off.  A flutter of red and white against the blue sky, he thought.  How much more patriotic could you get?  He’d expected more noise from the white birds, but they just calmly sat there while Jasper plucked one then another and still another and placed them in his bag.  The other birds cooed and gurgled but none of them made any attempt to dodge Jasper.

“Man, that was too easy,” he said as he made his way back to the truck.  He set the sack of birds on the seat beside him and drove back to his farm, giddy with anticipation.  A few minutes later he found himself back in his yard.  He carried his bird sack back to the barn and set it on the workbench.  He opened the sack just enough to get one hand inside and scooped up one of the birds.  He quickly set a hammer on the open end of the sack so the other two birds wouldn’t get away.

Jasper took the bird in one hand and reached up onto a shelf with the other and retrieved a small roll of gray duct tape.  The bird remained virtually motionless while Jasper tore a small strip of tape off the roll and wrapped it once around the bird’s left leg.  Next he selected one of the M-160s from the box and finished the tape wrap around the firecracker and around the pigeon’s leg.  He pinched the end to secure the whole thing and held the bird out in front of him.

“I think I’ll call you Orville,” Jasper said to the bird.  “You’re gonna have the honor of taking the first flight.”  Jasper laughed out loud and the two remaining pigeons squirmed in the bag for the first time since their ride to Jasper’s home.

Jasper took Orville out to the stump and reached into his pocket for another kitchen match.  “Have a good flight,” Jasper said as he lit the fuse and flung the bird into the air.

The bird fluttered momentarily and flew a small circle overhead before landing directly on top of Jasper’s head.  It sat there for less than a second before the fuse ran out.

The resulting explosion shattered the windows in the barn.  It shook the workbench and the hammer fell to the floor.  The sack opened and the remaining two birds flapped out and flew out the bard door.  They immediately headed north, back toward the Biggins’ farm.  Fifty feet below, Jasper’s headless body lay smoking.

BIO:

Bill Bernico is the author of more than 150 short stories and one novel.  For four years he wrote a weekly humor column for his hometown newspaper, The Sheboygan Press.  Bill's advice columns for computer enthusiasts have appeared in various magazines around the world.  These days Bill writes an online advice column for musicians.  Bill is a songwriter and has won several songwriting contests.  He is also a working musician and has been playing live shows since 1966.