The Hayneville Tool and Die plant closed for a half day on Friday to give workers a jump start on Labor Day festivities. Shop foreman Coy Collander locked up, washed his hands and face at the outdoor spigot, then drove to Biloxi to enjoy three days of free casino drinks and the company of a widow woman from Hattiesburg.

Bootsy Sykes had to stop his overheating pickup truck twice on the way home and suddenly the idea hit him…

The Grim Reaper blew into Hayneville,  thinking to get a quick shampoo-and-set at  Charlene Shiner's beauty shop, but he found her red, white and blue "Closed for the Fourth" sign instead. Grimmy was taken aback, having lost track of calendar days, what with crossing international datelines so frequently to collect persons of all creeds and ethnicities, but he smiled at the thought of millions of Americans eating fatty meats and setting off incendiary devices.…

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The Grim Reaper lay back on Charlene Shiner's massage table in a cozy room with piped-in, repetitive New Age music while Charlene peered through her lighted 20x magnifying lens at Grimmy's blackheads and catcher's mitt-like skin.

"Your forehead looks like those tar sands in Alberta," Char said, applying a deep-cleansing masque with light fingertip…

"I heard where some folks is predicting the world gonna end on May 21," Stump Shiner told Charlene over scrambled eggs and morning coffee. "They say they gonna be swooped up in a rapture and the rest of folks gonna be left down here to deal with an earthquake, and such."

Charlene turned to the Lifestyle page and found the Sudoku puzzle, a mysterious smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "I have it on good authority from one of my beauty parlor clients that there won't be a surge…

Charlene ran a finger down the list of Shiners, penciling a check here and a question mark there.

When she came to Stump’s oldest sister, Luanne, she sat back in her chair and calculated the relative damage done by inviting her versus not inviting.…