Orville said, “Oh! Can not!”
Owen said, “Can too. And have.”
Carlo told Pierre in an aside, “Gets mighty lonely out here on the prairie.”
With great strain Orville weighed the gamble and said, “Can not,” as if for the first time.
“Can too,” Owen said. “Period; full-stop; damn it.”
Pierre was dumbfounded as he pointed to the brass ball, which seemed as big as a grapefruit. “That?” And he pointed to Owen’s mouth. “In there?”
Owen said, “Absolutely.”
“Ce n’est pas possible.” (It isn’t possible.)
“If you don’t think it’s so poss-ee-blah, put some money on it.”
Looking in his wallet, Pierre found it empty.
“Was that a moth that flew out?” the Reverend asked.
Pierre told Owen, “I have no moneys.”
Owen smirked. “Oh, that’s a real shame.”
Trying it out, Pierre widened his mouth but couldn’t get close to wrapping it around the bedstead ball. He straightened. “If the mouth does what you are saying, I will put the great name of Smith et Fils on the Château du Husker.”
The whole party reverently hushed. The two kids with scuba tanks on walked in and the silence was torn by their raspy breathing through the regulators.
Wide-eyed, Owen considered him. “Don’t toy with me, Pete.”
“We will see I have risk-ed nothing.”
Owen said, “Clear back, boys; don’t want any fingers or ears lost here.”
Pierre watched skeptically as Owen prowled a little and then attacked the brass ball like a python, his mouth gaping hugely. Wagers of many kinds were made, and the party crowd was shouting their discouragement or support. Pierre peered closer, fingering his lower teeth in empathy as Owen’s lower jaw seemed to unhinge.
And then Owen did it. Hooked to the thing like a sea bass, he gestured wildly for Pierre to get closer and verify his feat. Pierre cautiously approached, took off his feed cap, and peered underneath, seeing Owen’s mouth pursed around the bedpost stem. Carlo got on his hands and knees below Owen and pounded the floor three times like a wrestling referee acknowledging a pin.
The party crowd erupted into a huge roar. Seismographs in Lincoln jiggled and geologists scratched their heads.
Wagers were being paid off as Pierre fell back against a wall and sank to the floor, where he sat in defeat, shaking his head.
Owen sagged, his knees on the mattress, as the Reverend hovered near him like a cut-man in a boxer’s corner. The Reverend turned. “Uh, guys? I think he’s stuck.” Then the Reverend withdrew a little and viewed it from another angle before kvetching his shoulders and saying, “But on him it looks good.”
Soon, Pierre, Orville, Dick, and others were hauling the headboard through the clutter of the gas station’s office while Owen dragged along behind them, grunting with each shift. Such waltzing was not easy. Angling the head-board around a corner, they laboriously moved into the garage. Owen was whimpering with a persistence that no one could countermand.
Carlo neared with a hacksaw. Owen’s eyes widened and the volume of his whimpers picked up. Carlo said, “There’s no other way,” and laid the blade against Owen’s neck as if he were about to saw.
Owen produced a high, keening noise.
Carlo smirked as he laid the hacksaw blade to the brass ball’s stem and separated Owen from the headboard.
But the ball was still widely swelling Owen’s mouth. The Reverend considered him and asked the others, “Ever see Dizzy Gillespie play the trumpet?”
Soon five of them were in Dick’s Ram pick-up truck and speeding along late-night roads to the hospital. Dick was driving. Orville rode shotgun. He’d called it. Carlo and Pierre were with Owen in the truck’s load bed, Owen still pursing the grapefruit of the brass ball inside his swollen mouth. Carlo put a beret on the winemaker’s head while over and over again Owen smugly made one humming noise, which may have been “I’m rich!”
(Biggy had stayed behind at the party’s food table in order to “clean up.”)