A Tourist in Mayberry

3/4) Villain: Mayor Humble Booker

Teenager disappearances are more common than you would think. Teenagers are by nature defiant and rebellious and sometimes there are circumstances where they are old enough, and they have had enough, and they run.

A mayor disappearance is not so common. There is almost always foul play involved when an elected official vanishes, no matter if he is elected by citizens, the board, or the labor union (ex. Jimmy Hoffa), and no matter if the foul play is his own doing. Could be he is escaping his own foul play? Or, is the foul play chasing him away.

Mayor Humble Booker was not. He was named for a great uncle who was, but this Humble was boastful with a brash, preacher-like quality that made you lean in and listen. He got a $100 haircut every two weeks in a town where most men either went to the barber shop or the Great Clips or let their wives trim their hair. The mayor wore a this-season suit that, while in style, was so perfect as to make him appear as if someone who thought style was his thing was trying a little too hard. He wore a bow tie with his suits and was channeling Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, but he could not pull off either wise or trustworthy. His rakish, lopsided grin belied trust. He was a grown man who spent way too much time on his appearance. If there was a mirror in the room, no matter if others were present or not, Mayor Booker was glancing at it to check out his appearance.

When Humble Booker spoke in front of a crowd, you got the impression he thought he was being filmed or he was rehearsing for a "Ted" talk. You could tell he practiced the speech in front of the mirror or his wife. It seemed too sincere, too dramatic, with gestures orchestrated to emphasize key points of the speech.

He was so thinly veiled as to be transparent. Mayor Booker would ask you your opinion on a question and then ten minutes later turn what you said into the reason he was going to do what he already planned on doing before he asked you the question. He made you feel like you too were a mover and a shaker, while you were instead a puppet in his play. That is, if he needed you for something. Otherwise, he would snub you to your face, not bothering to waste his time with your kind. In another life he was a conniving, wolf-grinning salesman who talked about you behind your back when you left without buying the dream he was selling. In this life, he was the mayor of Mount Airy.

How Mayor Booker got elected was no mystery. He was the the richest man on paper in two counties, and handsome to women who appreciated money does buy happiness and a family pedigree does ensure a seat in the same pew on Sunday. He also was a man's man whose requirements included a round of golf at the club twice a week, running in the 5k each spring, and sponsoring young sweet things whose talents were so valuable as to deserve community college scholarships for their not so discrete services.

Those sweet young things were becoming a problem. They used to put out for a few bottles of wine and a ride in his boat on the lake on Sunday, but they were becoming more difficult to trick or charm, as the mayor put it. Today's sweet, young thing while in some ways more loosely moraled than the last generation, was in some ways more discerning. The Humble Bookers of the world were creepy and "duh, gross" even when they had something you wanted. Humble changed his tactics.

He relied on drugs. His drug of choice was roofies for the ladies which was moderately successful, except today's sweet young thing was also opinionated and loud and more than one threatened him with blackmail when they woke up groggy with their panties missing. If not for the fact they were not known for their discretions and knew how this would look in court, the mayor would have already found himself in a scandal. The thousand dollar payoffs to these young ladies took a toll on the mayor's bank accounts. He found he was becoming more bold with the taxpayers' money. He was taking more risks. God forbid his wife found out.

And then, an answer arrived in his office one day looking for "some extra work she could do on weekends." She was attractive for an older gal. There was something about her that caught his eye. It was a proudness about her. A defiance. He could tell she would not be an easy target. He did love a challenge. It made him feel young again. He liked her name. He told his friends later at the country club that when she said her name he got hard. Candi. That was her name. Candi. He would like to just eat her right up.

Two weeks after the mayor hired my mama, Candi, the headlines of The Mount Airy News read:

Mayor Humble Booker Missing: Foul Play Suspected

Author's Note: Though a writer must say that a character is not based on a real person, don't we all know someone who acts like they are giving a "Ted Talk" when they speak in front of others? They give a performance, just like an actor on stage, sometimes even when there is no stage.