Here is a preview from My Cousin Vinny by Lawrence Kelter and based on the screenplay of the same title by Dale Launer…
Chapter One
Beechum County, Alabama
Lake Slack Jaw wasn’t much more than a large mud puddle surrounded by acre upon acre of unremarkable countryside, grazed so barren the livestock had plain given up and gone elsewhere.
It was exquisitely still and quiet. Absent were the clucking chickens and snorting pigs that had driven Bill and Stan out of their minds for miles on end while they traversed the state of Alabama on their way west to Los Angeles. As they rolled off the roadway, the peace and tranquility of the lake seemed as welcoming as a fluffy pillow atop a cozy, well-cushioned bed.
While tinkering with the radio, Bill Gambini heard a cow moo off in the distance. The speaker in the old ’64 Buick Skylark convertible was temperamental and the high-pitched twang of country voices seemed to play havoc with the old circuitry causing it to vibrate and crackle. One of the stations seemed to hold some promise although the next song was disappointing beginning with, “If you can’t live without me, then why aren’t you dead?” It was a tired-sounding cowboy lament that held no appeal for the college student from Brooklyn, New York. The speaker made a painful wailing sound that foretold of its coming demise. Bill had researched quality aftermarket replacements for the tired old radio but what with bank balance being so low…it wasn’t destined to happen anytime soon.
He tried once more, spinning the dial repeatedly until he heard the U.S. Farm Report. “…brought to you by the dependable Chevy Silverado. USDA’s reports weren’t as bearish as anticipated…” Becoming more infuriated with the limited choices the local AM stations offered, Billy sighed with exasperation and tried one last time to find something that wasn’t downright terrible.
He looked out and saw his friend standing at the muddy shoreline. “Hey, Stan, hurry up, will ya. We got a lot of ground to cover today.”
Stan Rothstein looked back at Bill and shrugged his characteristic shrug, a quick up and down of his shoulders, a gesture he performed dozens of times each day. “Hold your horses, would you?” Stan wasn’t quick at anything. He was methodical. Deliberate. He lived more within the confines of his own mind than in the outside world.
Bill got out of the car and strolled over to the lake to see what was keeping his friend.
Stan stood unzipped, looking down at the water, occasionally swatting a fly…just waiting. He could wait with the best of them. “I can’t go,” he said as Bill drew near.
“What’s the problem?”
Stan pointed down at the water.
“What?” he asked. “What are you pointing at?”
“Over there.”
The air was fragrant with the smell of water and ozone and warmth and living. As he peered into the depths, buzzing insects and pondweeds drew his attention, but as he stared, the lake revealed more of its mystery, layer by layer. The first few inches were somewhat well lit and he was able to see a few tiny minnows darting back and forth. As he gazed deeper, he was able to see the head of a larger fish swimming in place just above the muddy bottom. He shielded his eyes to get a better look. “What?” he asked incredulously. “The fish?”
“The dumb thing won’t stop staring at me.”
“Stan this is really stupid. You’re standing out here in the middle of nowhere with your junk in your hand and you’re too embarrassed to pee because you think a fish is looking at you?”
“Yeah. I can’t go. I tried and I just can’t do it. I even tried moving around but the thing follows me wherever I go.”
“You need a distraction.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Like…” He thought for a moment. “I got it. Sophia Loren or Penelope Cruz?”
“Sophia Loren now or when she was in her prime?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Bill frowned, scolding his buddy. “Sophia Loren at any age.”
“I just want to know if we’re making an apples to apples comparison.”
“You’re overthinking it, Stan. Just pick one.”
“I’m weighing the pluses and minuses.”
“Stan, there’s nothing to the weigh. It’s an emotional thing. Just put those two gorgeous women in your head and pick one.”
“All right, I pick Penelope Cruz.”
“You what? Seriously?”
“Well she’s younger.”
“But I told you, they could be any age.”
“I don’t know. I just feel guilty about picturing a grandmother in stockings and garters, even if she is Sophia Loren.”
“You’re a real disappointment, Stan. I’ve lost all respect for you.”
“Why? Because I picked Penelope Cruz?”
“No. Because you can’t picture yourself making love with the most sensuous woman who ever lived, but it’s okay for you to use your johnson to troll for striped bass. Come on…that fish has a brain the size of pea. Trust me—there’s no way it’s looking at your package.”
“How do you know? Maybe it’s captivated by the sight of my spectacular manhood.”
“Yeah, right! And maybe it thinks you’re jiggling a worm.”
“Yeah? Well maybe that was true before you jammed two sensuous, beautiful women into my head, but now…”
Bill frowned. “That’s sick, Stan. Really sick.”
“No it’s not—tell me you can’t see those two hot Latin women together?”
“Sophia Loren isn’t Latin.”
“Technically she is.”
“Just take a pee, would you? We can discuss Latin civilizations after we get back on the road.”
“Maybe the fish hasn’t ever seen a healthy circumcised guy before. I mean a Jewish man in southern Alabama…What are the chances? It’s a pretty safe bet no son of Israel ever peed in Lake Slack Jaw before.”
“I’ll take care of this. Watch,” Bill said as he opened his fly and took a healthy whiz, targeting Stan’s ill-fated admirer.
“Shit. You scared it away.”
“What’s wrong? Upset because you lost your audience? I’ll bet no one you dated ever looked at it that long.”
Stan frowned. His water finally began to run.
Bill laughed. “Problem solved, Fish Bait?”
Chapter Two
Top down, the faded metallic green Skylark convertible lurched forward. Junk food wrappers lying on the backseat got swept away in the breeze and floated in the air until they landed in the muddy lake. Stan looked back to make sure they hadn’t lost anything of value. “Slow down, Billy, you’re polluting the environment.”
“We didn’t lose any of our textbooks did we?”
“No.”
“That’s all I care about, our textbooks and the UCLA orientation pamphlets. Look around you, Stan. We’re in Bumfuck Alabama, the home of stockyards, dirt, and cow flop. You really worried that we’re littering?”
“Those plastic wrappers will take about three hundred years to break down and decompose.”
“Great. You know what? I’ll worry about it then.”
“You know it wouldn’t hurt you to be a little more concerned about the planet.”
“Whatever.” Billy looked cool behind the wheel, sunglasses in place and his dark brown hair blowing in the breeze. “You know, Stan, we’ve got about two thousand miles to go and barely enough money between us to maybe make it across the great state of Texas. I don’t like to pollute either but you’ll have to cut me a break if I’m too preoccupied with our meager finances to worry that the wrapper from my Drake’s Coffeecake got mixed in with a trillion metric tons of pig fertilizer.”
“Yeah? Well don’t come crawling back to me, hat in hand, when there’s a hole in the ozone layer as big as Angela Venditto’s vagina.”
“Hey. I only went out with her once.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“Okay, twice.” Bill glanced at Stan from the corner of his eye and saw that he wasn’t buying it. “All right, three times. What do you want me to say, Angela really knew how to take care of business.”
“She should. She’s had enough practice.” Satisfied, Stan slipped on his sunglasses and remained quiet while they passed stockyards filled with cattle and fields filled with large bales of tarp-covered cotton.
An approaching log-carrier shot by doing seventy—the wash from the big truck pummeling them with a blast of air, messing their ’dos. Bill smoothed his hair with the palm of his hand. Stan was more methodical—he used a comb and checked his appearance in the vanity mirror. “Hey, Billy, you getting hungry?”
“Yeah, I could eat. You want to split a can of cat food?”
Stan shook his head.
“What do you want from me? We’ve got to conserve every penny we have until we get to campus. Thank God they gave us meal plans with our scholarships.”
“You know, it’s not like I wanted to eat at The Palm.” Stan craned his neck until something other than dirt and cotton plants came into view. “I think there’s a convenience store up ahead with gas pumps. We can fill up the tank and grab some snacks.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Right there,” Stan insisted, “wedged in between the free manure sign and the pecan stand.”
“Oh yeah. Now I see it. Think they’ve got any cold beer?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“How come?”
“Because, knucklehead, the name of the place is the Sac-O-Suds.
Chapter Three
The Sac-O-Suds was even more run down on the inside than it was on the outside. The asbestos floor tiles were chipped and so badly stained they could no longer be gotten clean. The paneled walls were covered with the remnants of tape that hadn’t been cleaned away after removing wall posters.
The shelves in front of the boys were stocked with cans of local specialties. Billy picked up a random can and examined it. “Jesus, Stan, you ever see this before?”
“See what before?”
“Burgoo.”
“Bur what?” Stan took the can from Billy and studied the picture on the label. “It looks like some kind of stew.”
He pointed at the label. “It says that it’s made with real Kentucky bourbon. Want to try it?”
“No. I don’t want to die from food poisoning before I get my master’s degree.”
Billy continued to scan the labels, his expression one of astonishment. “Look at all this stuff: Hoppin’ John, canned alligator meat, livermush, head cheese, chitterlings…holy crap…beaver-tail stew?”
Stan made a discovery of his own, pretending to gag as he read the label aloud. “Dig rat stew? Gee, Billy, it doesn’t look like there’s anything here for us to eat. Maybe we ought to get back in the car and try somewhere further down the road.”
Billy pulled a can off the shelf and handed it to his friend. “Here. Wrap your lips around this.”
The label read Simpson’s Spotted Dick. Stan flipped him the bird.
“Relax, will ya,” Bill explained. “It’s just sponge cake.”
Stan gave the can a quick once-over and placed it back on the shelf.
Ever the optimist, Billy smiled, his eyes alighting with the prospect of good news. “You see, it doesn’t pay to give up so fast. Look further down—I see something I recognize.” He reached past Stan and picked up a can.
“Spam? You’d actually eat that? Isn’t it made from pork butts?”
“The label says pork shoulder and ham.”
“Of course,” Stan snickered. “Because you believe in truth in labeling. Bet you a buck it’s fifty percent dog meat.”
Bill shook his head. “Look further down. There’s okra, black-eyed peas with bacon, canned whole chicken…”
Always pragmatic, Stan answered in kind. “But we don’t eat any of that peas and okra stuff, and there’s no way I’m gonna eat chicken in a can.”
Bill became exuberant. “Look! SpaghettiOs, Stan. We’re getting closer.” He hurried down the aisle. “Jesus. And look at all the different kinds of baked beans: country style, home style, brown sugar hickory, maple cured with bacon…look, here’s some other stuff we can eat.”
“Here’s a different brand for only thirty-seven cents,” Stan said.
“Here’s some for thirty-two.”
Stan picked up a can and triumphantly announced, “Thirty-one.”
“I’ve never heard of that brand. Maybe we should get the one for thirty-two cents. Maybe it’s worth the extra penny.”
“Nah,” Stan replied dismissively. “You’re paying for advertising.
“Bill began to pick up can after can, stuffing them into the crook of his free arm. Don’t they have generics?” he asked with a look of disappointment.
“I think these are their generics.”
“I think that’s it.” Bill shifted the load he was carrying and was about to walk off when something caught his eye. “Oh wait. Tuna. We should get some tuna.”
“Oh God, please,” Stan complained. “No more tuna.”
“It’s chocked full of protein. We need protein.”
“Beans have protein.”
“Easy on the beans, Stan. I’d like to live long enough to see the Pacific.”
“But what about protein?”
“I don’t care. Beans make you fart.”
“But we’re in a convertible.”
“I thought you were worried about the environment?” Bill said. He waved his hand dismissively. “Nah. I’m getting it for myself.” As he reached for the tuna he almost dropped all the groceries he was carrying. He stuffed the can of tuna into his jacket pocket to avoid losing the entire load.
Jimmy Willis had seen the two young men enter the store and concluded that they seemed out of place—to his eye there was something about them that just wasn’t down home Alabamian. He peered out the window at the faded green Skylark and noticed the New York license plate just as Billy approached the counter to order a slushy. Jimmy slipped a tall plastic cup off the stack and filled it about two-thirds full before setting it on the counter in front of Bill. Jimmy never shortchanged the locals but two slick-looking northerners were a different story. He wasn’t worried about them badmouthing him to his regular customers and they were, after all, Yankees.
He turned to the old cash register and tallied the bill while Stan warmed a burrito in the microwave. “…and a burrito and one large slush.” He punched up the total. “That comes to twenty-one dollars and sixty-seven cents.”
Billy looked at the meager serving of slush disapprovingly. “Can you fill it up?”
Willis did so reluctantly. He didn’t like strangers in his store and couldn’t wait for them to be on their way. After studying the vast number of items they’d purchased he gazed at Bill indifferently. “You want a bag?”
Chapter Four
Once outside, Bill got back behind the wheel and pulled slowly away from the gasoline pump, sucking on the slushy while he took in the local color: small box-shaped houses with peeling paint and rotted wood porches, steel-roof shanties, tractors, weed-infested front lawns, and mutts that yapped at them as they drove by. “So after all that you got a frozen burrito.”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?” Stan asked.
“Why didn’t you get something authentic?”
“A burrito’s southern.”
“No, Stan, it’s southwestern, not southern and I bet it gives you the runs before we hit the county line.” He scanned the ramshackle hovels as they passed by. “Look at these places. I wonder if they have running water or if they still use outhouses.”
“You’re kidding, right? I’m sure they have wells.”
“I don’t know. Look around. It’s not exactly Park Avenue.” He slowed down as a long-legged young girl in Daisy Dukes walked out onto her front porch ogling the slick looking city boys in their fancy convertible. “I wonder if what they say about country girls is true.”
“You mean about them being easy?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t want to stick around long enough to find out and have her pappy and kinfolk come after us, shotguns blazing,” Stan said.
“You worry too much. You only live once you know.” As he turned back to take a fleeting glance at the southern beauty, a can of tuna fell out of his jacket pocket. “Look…I forgot to pay for it.
Stan paused mid-bite. “You know, you could’ve gotten caught. What if someone saw?”
“Geez.” He shook his head at the thought. “I admit that it was a boneheaded thing to do, but—”
“You know the laws down here are practically barbaric. You know what the minimum age is for execution in the state of Alabama?”
Bill shrugged. “I don’t know. Sixteen?”
“Ten.”
“That’s impossible. How could that be?”
“They do everything early down here. That hot blonde you were gawking at probably has three kids already…and probably from three different guys—all cousins.”
“When did you become such a bigot?”
Stan saw that Bill was watching something in the rearview mirror. “Something wrong?”
“Yeah. There’s a cop behind us.”
“A cop?”
“Yeah. But there’s nothing to worry about.”
“There might be.”
“Stan, don’t go off the deep end like you always do. There’s nothing to worry about until there’s something to worry about.”
A few moments passed uneventfully. “What’s he doing now? Stan asked.
Bill’s eyes had been darting back and forth between the road and the rearview mirror. He glanced at the mirror again. “Nothing.”
“How can you say ‘nothing’? He’s still following us, isn’t he?”
“Stan,” Bill said insistently. “He’s not following us…he’s just behind us.”
A vein stood out on Stan’s forehead. “Is he still there?”
Bill checked the mirror again. “Yeah.”
“Damn it.”
“Calm down. There’s a cop behind us. That’s all.”
“Yeah. Right,” he grumbled.
“Nothing’s wrong. There’s no problem.” Bill glanced in the mirror yet again. His grin dropped. “Uh-oh.”
“What’s ‘uh-oh?’” he asked, his voice filled with worry. “What? What?”
“Shit! His lights are on.”
Stan slammed the dashboard with his fist. “Goddamn it! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! What are we going to do?”
“It’s probably nothing,” Bill said reassuring his friend in a less than convincing tone as he pulled slowly off the road. “A taillight or something. Don’t worry.”
“We don’t even have money for bail.”
“Would you calm down,” Bill said seemingly amused by the intensity of Stan’s worry. “We don’t need money for bail. Nothing’s happened.”
“Nothing?” Stan sounded as if the full weight of the world had just come plummeting down upon him. “You’re getting pulled over, aren’t you? You stole something, didn’t you?” He shook his head nervously. “We’re fucked.”
Bill watched in the mirror as the door of the sheriff’s car opened. “Shit!”
“Oh, now you’re saying ‘shit’? What happened to ‘don’t worry’?”
“Shit!”
“What the hell is—” Stan was overwhelmed with curiosity. He didn’t want to show the cop that he was alarmed but couldn’t help himself. He turned to look back just as the deputy crouched behind his open door, the barrel of his shotgun aimed at them through the open window.
“Show me your hands!” the deputy shouted.
They turned to one another, their expressions an amalgam of confusion and panic as they slowly raised their hands.
The deputy’s demanding shout once again exploded in their ears, “Get out of the car with your damn hands on your head!”
Click here to learn more about My Cousin Vinny by Lawrence Kelter.