Everyone in Everywhere

           We live in a small town called Everywhere.  Our mayor was a woman who definitely didn’t look like a mayor.  Didn’t dress like a mayor.  Didn’t act like one. She really didn’t look much like a woman either.  She had the look of a person that slept on park benches.  Weighing no more than 80 pounds, she stood about five feet even, and had a voice like a three hundred pound, chain-smoking truck driver.  She wore a different faded old muumuu every day of her life no matter how cold it was.  She had piercing blue eyes that looked huge on her face because of the thickness of her horned-rim eyeglasses that were easily fifty years out of date.  She rode a three-wheeler bicycle all over Everywhere even in the rain, and she only had one leg.  Did I mention that?  One leg.  The other was cut off at the knee in some kind of hunting accident she never talked about.  She rode her bike and pedaled with her hands, and never said a simple hello to anyone.  The mayor wasn’t very nice and didn’t want to be, and she wasn’t very pretty, and didn’t try to be, and I’m not absolutely positive she was even human.  .
         
                  Her real name, I know from a fact sheet I read, was Gladys J. McElroy.  A mick like Murph.  Born right here like the rest of us.  Back when we were growing up we called her “Gladdy the Witch” She hated that name, and she hated us.  Even when we stopped calling her “Gladdy the Witch” she didn’t like us any better.  If we were standing outside of The Boot say, and we said, “Hey Gladdy!” or  anything at all to her, she would stop her bike in the middle of the street and sit there with her one leg and her long, skinny arms holding onto the gears above her head like she was riding a chopper.  She could say things that would set you on your ass.  They were mean things and they were said loud.  She didn’t call us by name, but we’d all know who she was talking to. “You still seein” that big feller’s wife?” she’d scream.  Or, “You still feeding your boogers to your little brother when nobody’s lookin’?” And off she’d ride leaving us dumbfounded and staring after her.  She wore a wig she never washed of jet- black, matted hair thick with hairspray and as stiff as a cardboard box.  You could smell the hairspray wafting along with her like a bad cologne  She’s retired now and nobody’s seen her for a while.  I heard she was sick and going to die soon, but I don’t believe it.  I bet she still looks sixty.  Gladdy has always looked sixty.  They say she looked sixty as a baby.  Scary old broad.  I can’t speak for everyone in Everywhere, but most of us wonder how she ever got to be mayor.



(500 words)