The oppressive weight of the midday sun… the glint and the glare off chrome and glass… shimmering streamers of heat rising from the sunbaked asphalt… the air itself looking as if it were ripped and scattered by the massive steel and iron juggernaut, exploding out and whirling off in waves and eddies in the wake of the hurtling beast… rubber marbles and bits of stone and debris spun up and spit out… and the Roar of Engine… Unrelenting… Unflinching… Unstoppable…

The coal black 1964 Lincoln Continental barreled down the road, sometimes to this side of the faded yellow dividing lines, sometimes to that side, its course described in wavering amplitudes of heart stopping terror.  The latch on the massive car’s oversized trunk struggled to hold true with each core-thumping wallop of the uneven macadam as the overburdened tires screeched in protest at every violently corrective input from the steering column.  Crossing the fickle grease strip, the tires slip almost imperceptibly on the sticky, un-sticky residue, regain purchase and chirp just a little.

The Dicks don’t seem to notice.  The small dramas played out between tire and road are of no concern to most ordinary folk and to these twelve most unordinary the same held true.

Dick is at the wheel with hands at 3 o’clock and 6 o’clock, a style unique to Dick, thought Dick as he waited for his turn at the helm.  Meanwhile, Dick clutched the steering wheel and buried the accelerator pedal hard, pushing it down with a force that had his muscles burning with pain and anger.

Just one more hour, thought Dick, sweat beading on his upper lip, his leg screaming for relief, just one more hour and then Dick can take over with the driving.  Dick always took over driving when Dick was done driving; they preferred it that way and the other Dicks didn’t protest the arrangement.

Inside the vehicle all the Dicks are tight.  Not nervous, but tight – each Dick dealing with the seriousness of the responsibility in his own way, knowing without speaking that all were of one basic mind.  Singular focus was the order of the day as the big car continued to boom on down the highway.

Rocking to and fro with the rhythm of the road, knocking around inside the Linc, bucking and swaying, rising and falling in some oddly synchronized dance; the Dicks were like blades of grass in a field moving in time with the wind.  But no gentle wind to be sure and the business of the Dicks was not the easy business of the rolling field of idyllic pasture.

Dick, the irritable one, the one they sometimes called ‘dick’, knew this well – he knew the nature of the business they were embarked upon and he took his part in the overall operation quite seriously.  He sat at the passenger-side window of the third bench row of the customized Lincoln’s interior.  On his lap was a large canvas satchel stuffed with small business card sized slips of paper.  On the opposite end of the bench seat, just behind Dick, who was driving, sat Dick and he too had a large canvas bag upon his lap.

At irregular intervals, ‘dick’ would reach into his bag, grab up a handful of its contents and toss them out the open car window like so much confetti.  Dick, seeing this, would take his cue and do the same out of his own corresponding window.

During one such action, one of the slips of paper meant for expulsion was caught in an odd swirl of rushing air and blew back into the car through the open window, fluttered into the next row back and landed on Dick’s leg.

Dick picked the paper up, glanced at the writing upon it, which read, ‘Sometimes a Clown is just a Clown,’ and then he leaned forward, extended his arm through Dick’s open window and released the slip to join the others which had not blown back into the Lincoln.

The papers scattered in the wind and hung for a time in the air like low-altitude chaff.

Taut-jawed and hard-eyed, the Dicks drove on in silence and steeled themselves for the grim work ahead.

————————-

Slick Sammy Gagdoodle inspected himself in the mirror, adjusted his fez with a flourish and swept back his forelock.  A brief twist to each waxed end of his pointy mustache and a quick wink to himself later and S.S.G. was ready for the day to begin.

He stepped out into the bright afternoon sun, the rakish angle of his headgear perfectly complementing the smug sneer on his grease-painted face.

There was a bounce to his swagger and a swing to his step as he moved out fast and sure, twirling his cane and whistling a tune.  The sun sparkled and shone off the polished tips of his favorite bedazzled ankle-hugging fancy shoes and his multi-hued leather pants rode high on his waist and high over the tops of his canary yellow socks.

The large caliber bullet hit him fast and hit him hard, punching a ragged hole through his ruffled shirt and into his torso, liquifying his heart and killing him instantly.

Slick Sammy Gagdoodle collapsed into a puddle of his own vital fluids.

————————-

“But there’s only eleven of you…,” came a voice from the assembled throng.

Ten hard gazes gripped the speaker as in a cold visual vise, boring with intensity, the veneer of civility in question.

The eleventh flashed first to the trunk of the Lincoln before quickly engaging the faltering citizen.

————————-

The door locks shut with a vacuum assisted ‘phhwutt’ into the operationally engaged position.  The Engine roared to life and the great beast of a car bucked forward.  The tires spun and minor detritus and debris was thrown high as the acrid smell of rubber and combustion filled the air.

And the townsfolk, and perhaps the ladies most of all, were left to wonder after the Twelve Dick Behemoth.

Somewhere, off in the distance, a kazoo sounded a dirge.