The Brothers Scumbag

    In our fair hamlet of Scumbag, Texas, the story of our city’s founders, the Scumbag brothers, is as well known as the area code (555), or the shape of Elena Thompson’s nipples (starfish). Strolling down the city square, one can see tourists taking in the story of our town’s founding with wonder, as if to say, “Who is this person?” and “Why is he shouting about scumbags?” and, other than the time Mike Thompson beat up one of our citizens (me) for talking about his sister’s starfish-shaped nipples, it’s about the only interesting story we have. And here it is:
     There were three Scumbags in the bunch. The oldest was Jedediah, a crusty man, both in texture and temperament. Next was Jonah, who wasn’t as crusty as his brother. More dusty. It was well known in those days that if you slapped Jonah on the back, a great cloud of dust would explode in the air, then inexplicably settle back on his shoulders. “Why are you doing this to me?” he would plead, as the townspeople gathered to slap his back. The youngest was named Bartholomew, who was always wet and sticky for some reason. Bartholomew could be seen, in those days, walking through the streets with lint and spare change sticking to his person. Whenever someone would see him, they’d point and yell, and everyone would stop hitting Jonah on the back and start throwing coins and rocks at Bartholomew, seeing if they’d stick.
    The Scumbags had been known in the Civil War for their utter lack of mercy, the brutal way they went about their duty, their penchant for inflicting pain. Some have since called them the worst medics of the Civil War. The Scumbags themselves were actually told this by a great many of their patients, but they’d just say, “meh,” and dismiss the notion with a wave of the blood-soaked hatchet, and go on hack-hack-hacking away.
    There’s no evidence to suggest that the Scumbags intended to be particularly cruel, but rather, their ineptitude stemmed from the fact that they weren’t actually doctors, but lied so they didn’t have to do any fighting.
    After the war, the Scumbag brothers returned to their hometown of Rake, Georgia to find that all their favorite brothels had been sacked in the conflict, as well as all of their preferred houses, of grog, burlesque and ill-repute--all of them torn asunder. Dismayed, the Scumbag brothers left Rake for good and headed southwest, to Texas. The Scumbags didn’t so much settle on the plot of land that now bears their name, but rather, decided to stop traveling when Bartholomew got stuck to a mesquite tree.
    Some have compared this scene to the Aztecs’ vision of the eagle clinching a serpent in its talons, atop a prickly pear cactus. Others say that the Scumbags were just lazy, but hey, I don’t see them discovering any towns.
    The Scumbags’ dream was to found, not so much a city, but the seedy underbelly of a city. The only problem, of course, was that there were no hookers, a prerequisite of any underbelly, let alone a seedy one. Not the most ambitious trio of Scumbags ever, the brothers just kind of hung out for a couple years, sticking to things, gathering dust and wishing they had some booze and hookers. “Ugh,” Jedediah once wrote in his diary. “I want some hookers! Now!”
    It was in May of 1870 that the brothers shanghaied a wagon train hauling 500 head of prostitutes from Santa Fe to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The founders put the hookers to work immediately, taxing them as the proprietors of the city. Several of the men in the wagon train remained, as they got stuck to Bartholomew, and the town that would become known as Scumbag was born.
    The brothers served as the town’s proprietors, as well as the town’s only doctors. However, all the money the brothers made from taxes and operating unnecessarily on the townspeople went back into the brothels, so the town remained stagnant, yielding only a few bastard children and several cases of syphilis (which were treated, poorly, sometimes fatally, by the Scumbag brothers).
    The town may never have survived, had Andrew Carnegie not come to what is now Scumbag in 1879. Officially, Carnegie is said to have remarked on the natural beauty of the area, and the clean, disease-free hookers it offered, and immediately signed a check, so as the area might flourish. However, it’s well known that Carnegie actually just got stuck on Bartholomew, and was pick-pocketed by the other Scumbags before he could pry himself loose. “You dastards,” the townspeople heard Carnegie growl, as he used a broomstick to pry himself from the youngest Scumbag’s preternatural stickiness. “Dastards!”
    “We’re not dastards,” Jedediah said, crustily. “We’re Scumbags.”