Martha May Wilson was miffed.

She had spent all evening getting dolled up in the chocolate lace dress and shawl she had made out of Granny Wilson’s New Year’s Day tablecloth. This had been done, as a part of her annual desert ritual, a rite she promised herself would be performed every year of her life until she landed that special guy and had a man to cuddle up with, a reason to stay home at 4 a.m. on a summer morning.

Martha May was a Southern Girl, so to her, a doughnut just had to be Krispy Kreme. And the best Krispy Kreme doughnut was fresh from the baker’s window and had a drizzle of chocolate. Unfortunately, for the last few years there had been no Krispy Kreme shops in the area. One had to get her doughnuts at a farm store where they were sold half-stale or at some godforsaken Yankee establishment.

Now, here she stood, at the doughnut rack at the front of the farm store, squeeze bottle of chocolate syrup in hand incase only the regular kind were in stock, looking at an empty rack. She was dressed up and all, just in case she spilled any, and there were none to eat, nothing to temporarily fill the yawning chasm of loneliness that was the black hole at the center of her shrinking soul.

She took the syrup to the counter, but just could not let it go. It was the end of spring and the beginning of summer and she was still lonely, still headed to spinsterhood, still lacking the hard arms and hot breath of a man in the night; not even comforted by the fatherly peck on the forehead by her long dead father, and utterly barren of pleasure outside of eating and driving.

As the lady took her $5 and made change Martha asked, “So, when do the doughnuts come in? Are they late?”

The older black lady, beat down by the years and in some pain, but probably once good looking enough to have had a half decent man, sighed, as if she missed the doughnuts as well.

“You know girl, I stocked them up at one, and thought, ‘I’ll get one before I leave. They’ll be fine right there.’

“Then these two young-ass weed heads, not even sixteen, come in here all smoked up, and clean out the rack don’t you know! Can you believe that shit? I even asked the black boy, ‘You ain’t even gonna leave one fo a sista yo?’ en he’s like ‘Na bitch, I got yo chocolate doughnut in my pants,’ and walks off like he own the joint! Not ten minute ago girl. Ooo, dem boys was lucky Chyrl da Girl was on the clock!”

The lady was now leaning all the way out over the counter bugging her eyes, bobbing her head side to side, and pointing her finger down at two imaginary teens leaving with all of the Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Chyrl the Girl seemed to notice Martha May’s fear and patted her on the back of her hand and smiled as she handed her change over. “That’s alright Girlfriend, just pour that chocolate syrup on your man when you get home. As pretty as you is you got to have a man. Us big girls are back in demand don’t you know. A real man’s got to have him some luv cushion!”

“Have a nice day Chyrl—I have to go—goodbye.”

“Lata girlfriend—keep smilin’ that pearly smile!”

She was now in tears, as she slid into her dream car as gracefully as a fat girl could, and looked in the mirror at the dimly lit face of the pale girl who Chyrl seemed to think was so pretty.

As Martha May put it in reverse she was crying full out. She lowered the windows and pulled out onto Middle Burrow Lane instead of out Browning Parkway, which was the sensible direct route. Perhaps the rushing air would dry her tears. Martha May thrilled to the rumble of Daddy’s '79 Dodge Charger; candy apple red, fast, sexy, powerful—all of the things that she was not—as she eased down the darkened starlit road like a four-legged spider of menace, glowing eyes illuminating the looming vine-covered trees that swayed in the deep morning breeze.

She cruised at a mind-soothing 45 MPH—a good tear-drying speed—down the country road as she forgot the World of Men, and also the Realm of Loneliness, those cruel places banished by the rumble of her ancestral engine.

A few miles down the road, as Middle Burrow Lane crossed the train tracks and then arched up over Middle Burrow Creek, she had to slow Daddy’s Girl down as she came up on two teenagers strolling along without a care in the world. She eased up behind them at 10 MPH and beeped slightly. In response they looked over their narrow shoulders—a skinny white boy and a lanky black boy—as they munched from two boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts!

The boys separated on either side of the car. As she eased through them on the two-lane stonewalled bridge with wrought iron fencing crowning the brickwork in classic gaudy Yankee style, the boys looked in at her appraisingly.

The black boy said to his friend, spewing soggy crumbs all over the passenger seat, “Oh, dats all you boy!”

The white boy guffawed and slapped the hood of Daddy’s Girl and proclaimed, “Naw son, this bitch is your snow bunny. I don’ wanna get crushed in my sleep yo, when she roll ova fo one a dese Krispy Kremes!”

Martha May’s ears were burning, her chest flashing hot under the chocolate lace, tears of anger streaking her puffy cheeks.

The black boy then noticed the chocolate syrup on the passenger side seat, grabbed his groin with one hand as he held the box of doughnuts with his other, and snarked, “Hey Shorty, I got yo chocolate doughnut right here. Why don’t you pull ova en glaze dis bitch!”

The boys were now laughing so uproariously that they were in stitches, barely able to stand.

Martha May Wilson was all of a sudden possessed by the spirit of Big Daddy Wilson as she let the clutch go, pressed the throttle to the floor, and pulled the handbrake to loosen traction.

Still the fools laughed at her!

Then her voice came loud and shrill as Daddy’s Girl shouted mechanically at the Devil, “Here’s your chocolate doughnut!”

She felt the car slide as she rocked the steering wheel left and right and then took the throttle to three quarters and let her rip!

The ass end of Daddy’s Girl slammed into the black boy launching him onto the spiked top of the wrought iron fencing where he twitched and squirmed with a spike protruding up through his thigh, his belly, and his throat.

As the spurting form of the impaled gangster wannabe left her field of vision as her spinning, smoking screaming rear wheels [$1600 a piece rear wheels] the stunned bug-eyed expression of the white boy greeted her like a Ken doll who had just noticed the duct tape in her purse under the tree on Christmas morning.

As the punk attempted to dodge Daddy’s Girl hit him in the hips with the back fender and launched him back the way they had come. She noticed him skidding down the asphalt road as the less life-like form of the black boy—his life blood draining onto the brickwork as he gurgled and twitched his last—came back into her field of vision and then passed again as smoke rose from the road surface.

As the form of the white boy scampering to his feet came to fill her line of sight again she stopped Her hard with an angry screech of rubber on asphalt.

He looked, terror stricken with anticipation, back over his shoulder as he pushed up off the ground on all fours.

“Please Lady, please!”

Daddy’s Girl now had a mind of her own, as the powerful 400 CC four barrel rumbled like the angry beast she was.

The boy now stood straight, tears rolling down his face—tears like a fat girl might have shed when tall skinny Joey Phillips stood her up for the senior prom!

“No Lady, no!”

Daddy’s Girl roared, “Yes boy, yes!” as rubber burned, smoke curled like mist up to the spectral stars, and the baddest goddamned '79 Dodge Charger to ever sacrifice a bleating near man to the Goddess of Wrath thundered down on the fleeing creature that looked pleadingly over its narrow shoulders even as its narrow ass failed to maintain its doomed lead.

She managed to take it to 50 MPH in as many feet, which she thought was pretty goddamned good!

She had not expected it to fly so high up over her as she passed underneath. Her response time was on the mark though, as she turned on a dime just like Big Daddy had taught her on the back of the Walgreen’s parking lot.

She was now looking at a smoke-shrouded scene of primal beauty. The alpha male was now lifelessly adorning the spiked wall of her Queendom. The smoke of battle cleared slowly in the thick moist summer air over the smoking sneakers of the Beta Male, whose oddly twisted body lay in a crooked heap fifteen paces beyond the sneakers that had adorned feet that had not been nearly fleet enough.

On the road surface, just about where ‘I Got Yo Chocolate Doughnut’ had been standing when he got what he deserved, was an intact Krispy Kreme box.

Martha May did the cone weave between the shoes, and the body, and the box of doughnuts, laying there as if it were the offering to a goddess from some cult of pastry makers, did a 180, opened the door while she revved it, grabbed the box, which still had three tender morsels in it, set them on the passenger seat that should have been occupied by some admiring hunk, and roared off down Middle Burrow Lane, faster, ever faster, pushing the needle to the right.

Martha May patted Daddy’s Girl on the dash and cooed, “Good girl. You can enjoy your visit to the car wash while I enjoy my doughnuts.”

This wet summer night felt oh so right.