Hardware

Here's an excerpt from a short story I wrote for the anthology,
Necessary Noise: stories about our families as they really are.

They tried to drag Aunt Phil from the street.

It shouldn't have been that hard.

To begin with she isn't too big.

She isn't that young either.

Fifty-three as of last Tuesday.

But she was angry and she had a hammer.

The brand she'd just put on sale for $9.99. And she was raising that tool, spitting fury at a huge hole in the ground one block long; shrieking at a four-story gargantuan plastic Waldo head that was being erected right before her eyes.

Cali tried gently but firmly to get her inside, but there's just so much a teenager can do against an aunt with a hammer.

Lewis, Cali's half cousin, tried to help, but he always made things worse. "Everyone's looking at you, Phil. You want them to think you're crazy?"

Aunt Phil turned to him with half-crazy eyes. "The world's gone mad, Mr. Insight. Not me." She looked at Cali. "Am I right?"

Cali half squirmed. "Sort of, Aunt Phil. You're sort of right."

Aunt Phil had always been a fighter.

When the mayor had proposed a zoning tax on small businesses, Aunt Phil took to the streets, screaming that small business owners were going to fight back and defend their stores "with our bare feet if necessary."

"That's bare hands, Aunt Phil," Cali had whispered.

"Whatever." Phil stood tough.

When two shoplifters tried to rob her store blind Phil cornered them with her turbocharged staple gun.

"Drop the merchandise, scumbags, or I'll staple your nostrils together."

Big Mel, Cali's partial uncle, called the police, who hauled those terrified thieves off to jail.

"You plot against the innocent, you pay!" Phil screamed, waving her staple gun.

"You're not innocent, lady!" one of the robbers shouted back.

Necessary Noise was published by Joanna Cotler Books, Harper Collins, and edited by Michael Cart, who wrote: "Joan Bauer's funny and heartfelt story 'Hardware' examines the struggle of Cali's factionalized and fractionalized family to save its hardware store when a megadiscout emporium moves in across the street. In the process, Cali discovers that in shared adversity a community can become a kind of family, too."

"Joan Bauer is a very funny writer." Los Angeles Times

"There are certainly lessons being imparted in Bauer's novels: messages about valuing honesty, integrity, pride and dedication in your work, service to your community. The low-key miracle of her books is that those lessons come with the light, sure touch of a born entertainer." The New York Times