THE OKOLONA INTERNATIONAL GOOSE RACE

THE OKOLONA INTERNATIONAL GOOSE RACE

H. Richard “Rick” Clark

I pulled into a highway rest stop because the engine was running hotter than it should, and so was I. The place was nothing special—two vending machines, a picnic table that had seen better decades, and a bathroom that looked like it had given up on itself. I sat there a minute, letting the car tick and cool, letting myself do the same.

Funny thing about rest stops: they’re never the destination. They’re the pause before something else. Standing there in the heat, staring at the road stretching out like it didn’t care where I went, but I did. I was on the run with a broken water pump. It was run stop let pump cool, run stop let it cool, repeat if necessary...and it was.

I wasn’t running from the law—just from the sheriff who enforced it. He’d caught me doing a little quid‑pro‑quoing in the back seat of my car with his daughter and “invited” me to leave Achin, South Carolina. I figured arguing with a man who was both my boss and the sheriff wasn’t the smartest move, so I pointed my car toward “someplace else.”

Someplace else turned out to be Okolona, Mississippi.

Luck must’ve been bored, because it found me a job at the Okolona Daily Investigator as their ace reporter. Might’ve been two jobs, really—they also put me in charge of the Porcelain Department. I was perfect for it. Took me less than an hour to get the toilet clean.

Then came my first assignment: The Okolona International Goose Race had been fixed.

The Daily Weekly put their finest ace reporter on the case. Which meant me. My first investigative report.

My editor told me that nexto the goose race, the mule was the most important thing in Okolona. So naturally, that’s where I started.

The farmer met me out by the barn and introduced me to the mule—his pride, his joy, and apparently his bilingual informant. He said the mule talked, claimed he spoke English but preferred Spanish.

Now, I may not know the difference between gray and grey, but I do know the difference between a goose and geese. One’ll bite you and the other’ll bite you worse. The mule took offense, which is something mules do even when you’re right. I could’ve slugged that durn mule, but he softened up after that and asked me how the investigation was going.

I wondered why a mule would want to know that. Could that be a clue? Maybe. Maybe not. Hard to say with mules.

Still, I’ll admit this much: for all his cantankerousness, he gave me the first real lead. He pointed me toward the sprawling International Goose Racing Track and Field.

My friends, I can tell you this—it was sprawling. Over a hundred feet long, with bleachers four rows high on each side and plenty of standing room besides. A bunch of kids were out playin’ kick‑the‑can at one end of the track. For my readers unfamiliar with kick‑the‑can, it’s a game played by Southern kids just about year‑round. The rules ain’t difficult, but they are a trifle tricky. I never did get ’em totally right myself.

Now, what I’d pretty much figured out about the scandal was that one goose ran a whole lot faster than the others. Just knowin’ that much told me how the race was impeded. Somebody had given some goose some kind of “kick‑it” juice. You could be from Arkansas and still figure that out.

What I didn’t know was what had been administered to the poor creature.

Dear reader, sometimes a reporter gets lucky.

Right in front of me—the kids kickin’ the can? They were kickin’ a Red Bull can.

I froze.

Folks, I don’t know much about modern science, but I’d seen enough advertisements to know Red Bull was in the business of makin’ things go faster than they had any business goin’.

I tried to grab the can, but one of the kids booted it clean across the track before I could reach it.

There went my evidence.

Still, I almost had the whole crime solved. All I had to do was find out where they’d found the can and who was livin’ next to it. I started figurin’ they must’ve pulled it out of somebody’s trash.

I hated to interrupt the game, but it was necessary to solve maybe the worst crime Okolona had ever seen.

Red Bull’s famous for makin’ people do wild sports like jumpin’, divin’, and climbin’, but I didn’t know a lick about it myself. But somebody did.

Part of the mystery was how they gave a can of Red Bull to the goose. On the other hand, maybe they gave NyQuil not to the goose but to the geese. But the kids weren’t kicking a NyQuil can around, so I think it’s plain to see it was the Red Bull.

I needed some expert advice on Red Bull, so I raced back to the office and asked my boss. I knew he was an expert because behind his mound of papers sat a trash can full of empty Red Bull cans.

He told me, “Red Bull’s got enough sugar and caffeine to make a goose think it’s late for church.”

That was all the scientific evidence I needed. I was congratulated and told to write it up — but to be careful how I said “Red Bull,” on account of corporate sensitivities.

It was getting kinda late, so I headed out to my car for a well‑earned sleep. Tomorrow was going to be an important day. I was going to write up the solution to the biggest crime in Mississippi since records were kept.

Dear reader, I must tell you that Okolona has some of the finest weather in the world. Low humidity, moderate temperatures—the Garden of Eden of the South. This holds true right up until about 10 A.M. After that, it's the devil's own. I woke up a few minutes after 10, so I missed heaven by about five minutes.

I’d practiced half the night on what I was gonna write for The Investigator. Had it pretty well worked out, so I high‑tailed it to a typewriter as fast as I could. I ran back to the office and ran straight into a scandal almost as big as the goose‑race fixin’.

There, sittin' in what I thought was gonna be my chair, was a man in a bright red jacket with RED BULL splashed across the back in letters big enough to be read from another county.

Folks, I'd already been assigned the goose-race scandal. Bringing in another investigator before I'd even filed my report struck me as downright unlawful.

The editor was committing some besmirchingism of journalism as bad as the big corporations do.

I knew my editor felt guilty, because he introduced me right away. In my mind, that was no apology. It was quickly explained that the man was a rep from Red Bull. He must’ve thought I was from Mississippi, because he acted like I couldn’t read the back of his jacket.

There were no pleasantries, no handshake — just a race out the door to my car, and off we went to the racetrack. I explained to the rep that I’d already been there, so there was no need. He said he wanted a look for himself and wanted to interview the kids.

Right away I realized he was gonna ruin my investigation, because you can’t interview kids with any certainty. Kids’ll tell you the truth, a lie, a dream they had, and what they ate for breakfast — all in the same sentence.

The rep was sure lucky, though. There was the racetrack, the barn where they kept the geese before the race, the door wide open, and there were the kids playing kick‑the‑can. Shoot‑fire, he was even able to get the can without anybody kicking it away.

Seeing the geese‑barn door open, I figured that’d be the place to start today’s investigation. As we drove into Geese Park, the rep suggested we go into the barn first. We hadn’t known each other long, but already he was borrowin’ my ideas before I even had time to think ’em. He’ll probably want credit for solving the unsolvable — the very thing I had already solved.

He just didn’t want Red Bull to be the villain in the drugging of the goose.

What I discovered — with no help from the rep, I might add — was that each goose had its name and sponsor written right there on the stall door. Now this was the kind of evidence that could prove who and how the Red Bull had been forced down the goose’s neck… or gullet, as we call it in South Carolina.

We walked down the row of stalls for the geese. As we looked, I pointed out that they sure got to eat good before the race. There was food spread all over the stalls. I hadn’t had breakfast, and I was almost jealous.

Then I figured it out. The rep likes to think he figured it out, just because he saw a stall with no food in it. Somebody had fed all the geese but one.

That’s when I realized how it was done: They fed all the geese — save one — so he’d be hungry enough to welcome the Red Bull.

I have to give the rep some credit. He noticed the sign over the empty‑stomach goose: OKOLONA KID — Sponsored by Okolona Elementary/Middle School. I would’ve found it as soon as I passed it again.

But dear reader, the mystery was already solved, so finding out that kids had a goose wasn’t exactly earth‑shaking evidence.

We agreed almost simultaneously that we should talk to the kids.

Dear friends, at this point the Red Bull rep and I were interviewing the kids. Because of privacy restrictions and security reasons — which I know you will understand — neither I nor The Okolona Investigator Weekly can reveal the names of the innocent or the guilty. You can be sure, however, that this ace reporter will tell the truth and nothing but the truth whenever possible.

Some of the kids lied to this ace reporter. Others claimed that a group of sixth graders had broken into the barn, fed all the geese their fill and then a trifle more, and starved their own goose.

After interviewing a confidential witness, this ace reporter discovered that Red Bull was not part of the scandal at all. The Red Bull can the kids were kicking had been their go‑to can for more than two weeks. With that bit of detective work behind us, the rep could stop sweating through his jacket.

Here’s what your ace reporter learned after an intensive investigation.

It all started because the kids didn’t have any trophies in their trophy case. When you mixed that with the fact that race officials were planning to starve the geese for twenty‑four hours before the race, it didn’t seem fair to the geese. As one young man explained, he got a snack after school, and he figured the geese deserved at least that much.

I have to give the kids credit — they knew their goose racing.

They explained that after starving the geese for twenty‑four hours, officials lined them up at the starting gate, opened the gate, and hurried them along by placing food at the end of the track.

No one would confess it, but right there in the starting gate is where the greatest scandal in Okolona history began.

To further tilt the race, the kids dropped a little corn in front of every goose except Okolona Kid.

Dear reader, that was not a race. It was a dining festival.

The other geese stopped to eat. Okolona Kid kept right on running.

I wasted no time getting back to The Investigator. I was raring to get started on my investigative report. I had a news breaker — the kind I figured every major newspaper and news outlet in America would be running. A bunch of kids committing a major crime. By my figuring, it might even be a RICO kind of thing.

I explained to my editor how the kids had conspired to fix the race. How they stuffed all the geese except their own. And to further complicate the crime — and make it harder to solve — they sprinkled food in front of the starting gate, just in case the geese wanted a snack before the race.

Their goose, meanwhile, had been left hungry. So when the gate opened, he took off down the track while the others stopped to enjoy refreshments.

Friends, I might’ve gotten a little ahead of myself.

With a breaking story like that, I figured I was about to get offers. I even considered going back to South Carolina and taking up with my girlfriend again. On second thought, I might be better off at a major paper in Mississippi. I’d be famous here, and back in Aiken they may not have remembered me all that fondly.

I wasn’t the fastest typist in the world, but eventually I got my investigative report written up and handed it to my editor.

He read it. Then he read it again. Finally, he set it down and looked at me.

“The kids did it?”

Before I could get my “yes sir” out, the Red Bull rep said, “No.”

My tongue was still traveling toward “yes” when that “no” reached my brain.

“The children?” asked my editor.

“The children,” I confirmed.

The rep shook his head.

"There is no way those innocent little darlins would commit a crime like that."

"It was a diabolical crime," I said. "Heinous. Cooked up by minds that should've been doing homework instead of trying to destroy the good name and tourist trade of Okolona."

The rep smiled so calmly he could've been collecting donations at a church picnic.

"We are not going to blame innocent children," he said. "Not the children of a nice town like Okolona."

My editor turned back to me.

"You are planning to publish this?"

"Absolutely."

"In my newspaper?"

"Well yes sir. It is your newspaper."

He smiled.

I didn't know anybody could hold a smile that long.

After a while he asked, "And where exactly do you plan to run this story?"

I'll be honest, dear reader, I was confused.

Fortunately, the Red Bull rep stepped in.

He informed my editor that Red Bull was entirely responsible for the unfortunate misunderstanding and hoped the good citizens of Okolona would forgive them. Then, without missing a beat, he added, "If the whole town believes Red Bull can put enough energy into a goose to win the World Championship Goose Race, we're prepared to admit it. After all, Red Bull gives energy to anything."

To demonstrate their sincerity, the company would be donating a dozen cases of Red Bull to the town, along with a case of empty cans for the children to use in future kick-the-can competitions.

My editor immediately got on the phone.

He called the chief of police, the mayor, and the entire city council—both of whom showed up.

Everybody was exceedingly friendly.

My editor shook my hand.

The mayor shook my hand.

The chief of police shook my hand.

The city council shook my hand.

By the time everybody finished being pleasant, I somehow found myself standing outside.

The editor assured me he'd mail my pay for two days' work just as soon as things settled down.

I reckon that's when I realized my future in investigative journalism might be taking a different direction.

Fortunately, I already had a backup plan.

I could go home.

Or I could check out a paper I'd heard about down in Satartia, Mississippi. They have a thriving monthly down there.

I was still weighing my options when I noticed the crowd.

The folks of Okolona, Mississippi, are the finest people in the world.

I don't know how they knew I was debating whether to continue my career in Mississippi or return to South Carolina and home, but they had turned out in force to offer advice.

There must've been a hundred signs.

Every color of the rainbow.

Every one of them reading:

GO HOME

Dear Reader, I am heading for Satartia, Mississippi. They may not have a mule that helps with investigations or international goose races, but every town has a nexto. That’s where my work begins. I’ll see you in the Satartia Monthly. I’ll be doin’ investigations of import and reportin’ whatever news Satartia sees fit to have.