It looked like a Volkswagen with a busted gas tank. A light breeze collected the scent of the brown stream squirting from beneath its looping tail and sent it her way. She slapped a hand over her nose but not quick enough to keep the putrid odor from drilling into her sinuses. It was like snorting a cocktail of warm rotted meat, vomit, and something metallic. She gagged, eyes watering. The woman who’d introduced herself only moments earlier as Lervette Patin let out a hearty laugh, revealing pale pink gums with no teeth and a nicotine-stained tongue. Not a pretty sight on any woman, but paste it on four hundred pounds of blubber dressed in a faded green housedress and tattered sneakers and you were looking at down right gross. Lervette clapped her hands twice, and the rolls of fat on her body jiggled in every direction at once. When her guffaws finally calmed to mild snorts, she said, “Ol’ Maudwan’s been havin’ de drizzles for a coupla days. Don’t know how long dey gonna last, so you bes’ learn to breathe out you mout’ when you come ‘round to feed.”
