Rusty Pails #38: The Ruby Bee Caper (Part 1)

by Rocky Macy

I hate being in jail, especially when I didn’t have control of the events that brought me here. As per usual, I am the victim of my friends and their harebrained schemes.

It began last night when I had Heck and Truman over to my place for beanie weenies – and root beer – lots of root beer! I was busy doing the dishes, Truman was on his third or fourth trip to the bathroom, and Heck was asleep in front of some shoot-em-up on television when Baker set to howling. She’s my doorbell. I made it through the front room and pulled the door open just as Judge Rufus T. Redbone was preparing to knock.

“Rusty, I’ve come to show you what the Missus got me for my birthday!” He said as he pushed his way past me and followed his nose through the front room and into the kitchen.

I made my way back to the sink, resisting the urge to ask the scalawag “Whose Missus?” As I concentrated on the dishes I heard the Judge dishing up some beanie weenies. “So,” I finally asked, “What did she get you for your birthday.”

“Look at me,” he ordered. I turned and found the political fool pointing a small, black gadget in my direction. “Smile, and say something profound.”

“So which is it,” I asked. “A tape recorder or a camera?”

“Both,” he shouted almost gleefully. “It’s a video recorder. A movie camera!”

Fat chance. It was smaller than my Brownie Hawkeye! “Put that toy up and eat your beanie weenies so I can finish the dishes. There’s root beer in the ice chest.”

Heck was beginning to stir by the time we finished up in the kitchen. The Judge plopped his behind down in my recliner before I could get to it, so I dragged a kitchen chair in for my behind. The Judge was in the middle of a long dissertation on what his amazing movie camera could do when Truman came walking back from the john. (Truman can’t handle beanies or weenies, and the root beer just aggravated his brewing dyspepsia beyond human tolerance! We all knew to keep him away from open flames when he was in this state!)

Truman parked his skinny behind down in my only other comfortable chair (besides the sofa and the recliner) and the television channel immediately changed. As Truman reached down in under himself to fish out the remote, we were all treated to some toothy, slicked-up announcer telling us that we too could win $10,000 and a trip to Hollywood, California, for a family of four just for making a wacky home movie. This week’s theme, he grinned, had to be small-time crime.

The plug had hit the water and four suckers were fixing to bite!