Humonga

 She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but a hammer and nails. And a hammer and nails is just what she needed right now to construct an edifice of heinous proportions from everything that was in her purse and live there.

Humonga opened her bag at sunrise and brought forth a Coleman stove, a tin coffee percolator, a rusted cast iron frying pan, two eggs, a slab of bacon, and a Nestle's white chocolate bar with almonds. She ground some Coffee Plantation house blend beans in her Braun that was hooked up to the mini gas-operated generator in the bag. 

She sat cross-legged on two torn sofa cushions enjoying her breakfast as she watched the sunrise through the arches of the Mill Avenue bridge from her refuge in the brush on the bank of the dry Salt River bed. Her butt and thighs spread out in a pool of flesh on the cushions. As she raised her arm to her cavernous mouth to eat an egg, her tricep dragged on her breasts, which themselves settled comfortably into her lap. A few strands of gray hair fell onto her forehead. Disturbed by this, she took a slice of sizzling bacon from the pan and pushed back the hair onto the top of her head with it and pinned it there with a meaty make-shift barret. 

Ray approached her from behind a huge bougainvillea near the bridge where he lived. "Smelt your coffee all the way over here this mornin Monga," he said as he sat next to her, pouring himself a cup of joe into a dirty paper Circle K cup he pulled from his back pocket and unfolded.   

"Ray you old fool, I need your help today," Humonga replied. "I'm going to build a home from what I got here in my bag. But I need a hammer and nails. Know where I can git some?"

Ray whistled through the slit in his front teeth. "Who boy, that'll be some house, I tell you. Everybody been wondering what all you got in there, anyway. I'll tell the others and be back with what you need in no time atoll."

Ray got up slowly on shaky thin legs and took off back toward the bush. Humonga pulled out the kitchen sink and cleaned up after her breakfast.

Word spread like a summer brush fire and before long everyone that lived on the river within ten miles came sauntering up to Humonga's spot. The group had amassed a collection of 14 hammers and about a thousand different nails in as many kinds of containers, from glass mason jars to cardboard shoe boxes to a brown, smelly jock strap held together with scotch tape that Ray had brought.     

The crowd gathered around Humonga in a circle as she was rooting around in her bag, her head and arms buried inside of it. Ray walked up to her and touched her on the back. This frightened her and she fell over sideways completely into the bag. She was gone! 

Ray looked at the gaping bag with disbelief as the entire crowd gasped. "What are we going ta do now?" he asked no one in particular.

A crotchety old geezer came from the back of the crowd to the front near Ray. "Why, whachever's in ere is ourn now. Les git it, eh?"

"No!" cried Ray. "We havta help her. She woulda helped us, wouldn't she?"

Ray limped as quickly as he could over to the bag. It was still gaping like the open mouth of a predator. As Ray reached out to touch it the top edges snapped shut violently. The flaps began to purse like lips, and a voice came out of it in time to the opening and closing of the orifice.

"Leave me alone, all of you," the bag said with Humonga's voice. "Go on, git outta here youse no goods."

Hair stood up on everyone's neck as they all backed up slowly, turning finally to run. As Ray started to turn away, the bag said: "Ray, please don't go."

Ray looked down at his fingers and started picking at his nails. "Is that you, Humonga?"

"Ray, everything is in here...Everything," the bag said with wonder and amazement.

Ray picked up the decaying jock strap from the dirt and said: "Well, I guess you won't be needin' this no more then."