"Arizona Smiles"

A short story by Hank Raines

Airwick and I were rounding one of the final climbs up Greenville's Paris Mountain. Hot, filthy-muggy, sticky afternoon and we were already one hour past the point my mind had shut off, dreaming of a cool shower and a long nap. Now that we were closer to the top than not, there was nothing to do but continue our slow painful march of heat stroke death.

Airwick began barking like a terrier possessed by the devil. Arizona woke up from her nap and began barking without really understanding why. I peered through my sweat to see fire trucks, ambulances, and half of Greenville's finest parked on the side of the road at the very apex of the mountain. Our joyous victory of reaching the exhausting top was now going to be shared with too many people making too much noise.

We slowly bicycled past the yellow caution tape. A lovely soccer Mom came to the side of the road so her kids could say hello to the "puppies".

"Man, she has a nice ass, " I thought to myself as her spoiled brats laughed and pointed at Airwick. He lunged hoping to chomp their spoiled little throats. Thank goodness for leashes or I'm sure we would have been arrested for failure to keep my dog from killing two of our future leaders.

"What happened?" I asked the Mom with the nice ass.

"Someone drove their car off the side of the mountain." She said this with a smile which made me oddly horny.

"That's a shame", I said as if I gave a rat's ass and turned my head around to enjoy my final opportunity to enjoy her fine ass as we rounded the last curve. I've lived in Greenville my entire life and this was the first time I could recall someone driving off the mountain and losing their life.

Oh well, that was a nice diversion. The dogs were enjoying the breeze as we headed down our mountain at full speed, rushing to the comfort of home.

"I wonder who was the poor bastard who died," I said to Airwick. More importantly, hopefully we'll see that nice lady with the fine ass again. Arizona looked up at me, smiled, and barked her approval.

"Good Arizona."