The Great Gretna Pie-Eat

The Great Gretna Pie-Eat is the centerpiece of Gordon Lachance's story "The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan," a fictional narrative he tells his friends Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio while they rest during their journey to find the body of Ray Brower. The contest is the final event of Gretna's Pioneer Days, held on a bunting-draped platform on Main Street under looped 100-watt bulbs, with a long trestle table stacked high with blueberry pies. The reigning champion is Bill Travis, a lanky mechanic from the local Amoco station whose yearly victory brings his garage extra business and who has bet substantial money on himself at one-for-five odds. The other contestants are Calvin Spier, the town's fattest man who runs the jewelry store; Bob Cormier, a disc jockey from WLAM in Lewiston; John Wiggins, the principal of Gretna Elementary School; and young David "Lard Ass" Hogan, a seven-to-one underdog because of his age and inexperience. Mayor Charbonneau introduces each contestant, ties a white bib around his neck, and Sylvia Dodge, president of the Gretna Ladies' Auxiliary, oversees the baking and weighs each pie on Mr. Bancichek's butcher's scales to ensure uniformity. The contest has a strict ten-minute time limit, and the eaters must keep their hands tied behind their backs.

Lard Ass's Secret Weapon and the Contest's Course

Before the contest, Lard Ass Hogan empties a bottle of castor oil that had been three-quarters full in his family's medicine cabinet, drinking every last drop and licking the rim, his mouth twisting and his belly gagging sourly, his brain filled with thoughts of sweet revenge. When the contest begins, Lard Ass eats with possessed speed: he finishes his first regulation-size pie in just forty-two seconds, a contest record, before Bill Travis has even finished half of his first. He goes at his second pie even more furiously, blueberries flying from the dish and staining the tablecloth around him like a Jackson Pollock painting, with blueberries in his hair, on his bib, and standing out on his forehead as if he were sweating them. He finishes his second pie before Travis has consumed the crust on his new one. As he rapidly works his way through his third pie, Lard Ass deliberately tortures himself with grisly fantasies—imagining he is eating cowflops, greasy grimy gopher-guts, and diced-up woodchuck intestines with rancid blueberry sauce. He finishes his third pie and calls for his fourth, now one full pie ahead of the legendary Travis. The fickle crowd, sensing a new champion, begins to cheer him on lustily. But Lard Ass has no hope or intention of winning; revenge is the only blue ribbon he seeks. His belly groaning with castor oil, his throat opening and closing sickly, he finishes his fourth pie and calls for his fifth, the Ultimate Pie.

The Vomit Cascade

As Lard Ass drops his head into the fifth pie-dish, breaking the crust and snuffling blueberries up his nose, his stomach, loaded beyond endurance, revolts. It clenches like a strong hand encased in a slick rubber glove, his throat opens, and he raises his head, grinning at Bill Travis with blue teeth. Puke rumbles up his throat like a six-ton Peterbilt shooting through a tunnel and roars out of his mouth in huge blue-and-yellow glurt, warm and gaily steaming, covering Bill Travis, who only has time to utter one nonsense syllable—"Goog!" Women in the audience scream. Calvin Spier, watching with a numb and surprised expression, leans conversationally over the table as if to explain to the gaping audience what is happening, and pukes on the head of Marguerite Charbonneau, the Mayor's wife. She screams and backs away, pawing at her hair, now covered with a mixture of crushed berries, baked beans, and partially digested frankfurters, and turns to her friend Maria Lavin and throws up on the front of Maria's buckskin jacket. In rapid succession, Bill Travis blows a great, seemingly supercharged jet of vomit out over the first two rows of spectators; Chuck Day, who received a generous portion of Travis's surprise gift, throws up on his Hush Puppies; John Wiggins opens his bluelined mouth and says reprovingly "Really, this has… YURRK!" and does it in his own pie-plate; Mayor Charbonneau, finding himself presiding over what seems like a stomach-flu hospital ward, opens his mouth to call the whole thing off and upchucks all over the microphone. Sylvia Dodge moans "Jesus save us!" and then her outraged supper—fried clams, cole slaw, butter-and-sugar corn, and a generous helping of Muriel Harrington's Bosco chocolate cake—bolts out the emergency exit and lands with a large wet splash on the back of the Mayor's Robert Hall suitcoat. People stagger around in drunken circles, holding their throats and making weak cawing noises. A man in jeans and a Western-style silk shirt throws up on a pet Pekingese, nearly drowning it. Mrs. Brockway, the Methodist minister's wife, makes a long, basso belching noise followed by a gusher of degenerated roast beef, mashed potatoes, and apple cobbler. Jerry Maling, who came to see his pet mechanic win again, trips over a kid's little red wagon and lands in a puddle of warm bile, tossing his cookies in his own lap. Miss Norman, who teaches Latin and English Fundamentals at the Gretna Consolidated High School, vomits into her own purse in an agony of propriety.

Aftermath and Significance

Lard Ass Hogan, now at the absolute apogee of his young life, beams happily out over the audience. He stands up, takes the slightly tacky microphone from the trembling hand of Mayor Charbonneau, and declares the contest a draw. He then puts the mike down, walks off the back of the platform, and goes straight home. His mother, unable to get a babysitter for his two-year-old sister, is there, and as soon as he comes in, all covered with puke and pie-drool, still wearing his bib, she asks, "Davie, did you win?" But he says nothing, goes upstairs to his room, locks the door, and lies down on his bed. Gordon Lachance, reflecting on the story years later, acknowledges its derivative and sophomoric qualities—style by Hemingway, theme by Faulkner—but recognizes it as the first story he ever wrote that felt like his own, the first one that felt whole after five years of trying. It was the first time he had really used the place he knew and the things he felt in a piece of fiction, and there was a kind of dreadful exhilaration in seeing things that had troubled him for years come out in a new form over which he had imposed control. The story, published in Cavalier magazine in March 1975, remains for him ugly but alive, and its ending—Lard Ass's silent retreat to his room—is a deliberate refusal of the conventional triumph his friends expected, a choice that Chris Chambers alone seems to understand when he says, "Life's a gyp, you know it?"