I plopped down on the house porch, wishing I had paid more attention to my stepfather’s vocabulary when he mashed his thumb with a hammer, because I could have used some of those colorful expressions at the moment. They had seemed to improve Hank’s mood considerably, and my own mood was in serious need of improvement. As I sat there recuperating for the trek back down the hill, I suddenly noticed a movement in the woods on the far side of the highway. What a stroke of luck! My cousin Buck and his two cronies, Red Higgins and Sid Lasky, soon emerged from the trees and began urgently tromping in my direction, each carrying a shotgun. They’d been out grouse hunting. Surely they had driven a car up to the top of the hill and could give me and my bike a ride home.
“What you doin’ here?” Buck greeted me. He was several years older than I and twice as big. He had a job and a car and all kinds of neat stuff that I could use anytime I wanted, as long as Buck was safely at work. He had recently reached the age where he knew everything worth knowing. He often told me so himself, so I knew it was true. Later, he would turn out to be only slightly smarter than celery, but at this age, he knew just about everything.
I started to explain my predicament. “Well, my bike—”
“Forget the bike. Where’s ole Croaker?”
“He’s not home. My bike—”
“Drat! Wanted to bum a drink of water off him. We’re dying of thirst.”
Red pointed down at the town far below. “Man, I can see Lulu’s Drive-in from here. All those icy drinks just waiting for us, but so far away, so far away. Aiiigh! I can’t stand it!”
“Don’t even talk about it,” Sid rasped. “Otherwise, I’ll have to shoot you.”
“I’ll be dead of thirst by the time we walk all the way to Lulu’s,” Buck croaked, staring down at the drive-in, faint and tiny in the distance.
“You didn’t bring a car?” I said.
“No, stupid, we didn’t bring a car,” Buck said in his mimicky voice. “We hunted up the other side of the mountain, and …” He stopped. He was studying my bike.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “I think I’ll just hop on Patrick’s bike and coast down the hill. Be at Lulu’s in no time! Hot dang!”
“But, Buck, my bike—”
“Don’t get your tail in a knot. I’ll pay you a whole dollar for the use of it.”
“But, Buck, my bike—”
“Oh, all right, you miserable little rat, two dollars! And not a penny more!”
“Deal!”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Red said. “How about me?”
“You can ride on the back-fender carrier,” Buck said. “But it’ll cost you a dollar.”
“Hey, no way, you guys,” Sid whined. “I ain’t walking down the hill by myself!”
“Well, then, get on the handlebars,” Buck said. “It ain’t like I’ll have to pedal. Cost you a dollar, though, Sid.”
Buck was always a shrewd businessman. He wasn’t even out of the yard yet, and he’d already made back his investment. They stashed their guns and game bags in Mr. Croaker’s woodshed, and climbed on the bike. That’s when I had a terrifying thought. Suppose they crashed and had to spend weeks in the hospital and Buck would lose his job and …! It was time for me to speak out.
“Hold up a second, Buck,” I yelled.
Buck twisted around and glared at me. “What now?”
“Pay me my two dollars first!”
Buck dug out the two bills Red and Sid had just given him and graciously threw them on the ground. Then the three of them wobbled out to the highway, hit the down slope, and glided away, gradually picking up speed.
“Lulu’s, here we come!” shouted Red.
“Hoo boy!” yelled Sid from his precarious perch on the handlebars. “Here we—uh, better slow up a bit, Buck! I said, slo—OOOOOOOoooooo … ooo … oo … o … !”
I lost sight of them after they careened around the first curve, but reports from various eyewitnesses drifted about town for months and even years afterward. The reports improved considerably with age.
Wally Hedge said he was thinking of buying a used motorcycle and was out testing it to see what it would do, when three guys shot past him on a bicycle. Disgusted, Wally immediately returned the motorcycle to its owner.
Old Mrs. Wiggens, who was driving up the hill at the time, reported that when the bike went into the last curve before it hit the straightaway into town, Buck and Red were both skidding their feet along the pavement. She said she wasn’t sure if their boots were actually on fire but they were trailing wisps of smoke.
About the time the bike reached the town limits, Fred Perkins heard a loud noise, or so he claimed in later years, after he’d learned about sonic booms caused by objects passing through the sound barrier.
Ed Cominskey had just ordered another beer at Billy’s Tavern when he glanced out into Main Street. “Better hold that last beer, Billy,” he said. “Either I’m hallucinating or three fellows just buzzed Main Street on a bicycle. Weren’t no more than a foot off the pavement!”
The raucous teenaged crowd at Lulu’s Drive-In fell into stunned silence after the bike streaked past. Then Lulu said, “Wasn’t that Sid Lasky on the handlebars? It looked kinda like Sid.”
“Naw,” one of the kids said. “That guy was at least fifty years old. Couldn’t be Sid.”
“You’d think an old guy like that would know better,” Lulu said. “Riding on handlebars at his age! My word!”
“Well, the guy on the seat wasn’t much younger,” someone else said. “But I’ll say this for him—he can sure pedal a bike!”
The bike finally coasted to a stop on the far side of town. Its occupants escaped unscathed from their ride, except for Sid, who had the imprints of several large flying insects embedded in his forehead, kind of like a human fossil. It was neat. I would have liked to take Sid to school and enter him as my science project. Buck said later that for a while he thought they might have to have Sid surgically removed from the handlebars, but after a while Sid relaxed a little, and Buck and Red were able to peel him off without too much trouble.
Buck, Sid, and Red came over to my house that evening and asked my mother to send me out. They said they just wanted to return my bike and thank me for the loan of it. But I made it over the back fence and into the woods before they had a chance to show their appreciation.
Uncle Flynn’s Hairy Adventure
I have recently been thinking about shaving off my beard. My reason for growing a beard in the first place is a bit obscure to me now, but I’m sure it was a good one. Some of my associates probably think I grew it because the beard makes me almost indistinguishable from Ernest Hemingway, even though they are careful not to mention that striking resemblance. Their silence on the matter clearly arises out of jealousy. My former friend Fenton Quagmire once observed that I reminded him of a famous writer who lived in Paris during the 1920s.
“Ernest Hemingway?” I suggested.
“No, Gertrude Stein! Ha!”
So, there is yet another example of jealousy rearing its ugly head.
Growing a beard is not something to be undertaken lightly. For at least the first three weeks of the process you go about looking as though you haven’t shaved for three weeks, which is, of course, the case. So you feel compelled to explain your unseemly appearance to anyone you meet.
“I’m growing a beard,” you casually explain to each person you encounter. Typical responses:
“Yes sir. Now, did you want the soup or the salad with your dinner?”
“Bully for you, sir. Now, if you’ll show me your driver’s license, perhaps we can discuss why you were doing forty in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone.”
“That’s real nice, guy. Now do as I asked. Hand over your wallet and watch so we can get this robbery completed.”
To counter the impression that you’re a hobo waiting for the next empty boxcar out of town, you are forced into wearing a suit and tie everywhere you go, and even that doesn’t help much when it comes to cashing checks. The
picture on your driver’s license is of a clean-shaven person.
“I’m growing a beard,” you explain to the clerk.
“It certainly can’t hurt,” she replies, staring at the license photo.
Many people hate beards. My own mother was one of those people. During my bohemian days in graduate school, I grew a really nice shaggy beard and then made the mistake of going home during spring break. Mom met me at the door and let out such a shriek I thought someone had sneaked up behind me with an ax.
“You shave that disgusting thing off this instant!” she exclaimed by way of greeting.
Mom loudly expressed her belief that only a man who didn’t have a job and never intended to get one would grow a beard.
“So?” I said.
Every time I came into the house, even though I had been away only five minutes, Mom would greet me with the words, “What! You haven’t shaved off that disgusting thing yet?” Mom was a third-degree black belt in nagging. Bit by bit, she started to wear me down, particularly with the phrase “that disgusting thing.” I started to feel as if I had a huge, hairy spider attached to my face. I fought back, offering up examples of great men who had worn beards.
“Abraham Lincoln wore a beard, Mom.”
“Yes, and look what happened to him!”
So much for the logical approach. Finally, I could stand it no longer. Nothing is worth causing a mother such anguish. She probably was lying awake nights fretting about my beard. Maybe she was afraid her friends would see me and offer their condolences over the way her son had turned out. Maybe she thought people would point to her on the street. “There goes the woman whose son wears a beard,” they’d say. Banks would refuse to approve loans for anyone in the family. Bankruptcy would result. We’d all be destitute. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions would follow, soon to be joined by the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. I went into the bathroom and shaved off my beard.
Thinking Mom’s joyous cries at the sight of my clean-shaven face would be reward enough for the loss of my beloved beard, I walked into the kitchen. “Look, Mom. Notice anything different about me?”
She studied me closely for a moment. “Well, you could certainly use a haircut.”
Is it any wonder the field of psychotherapy flourishes?
Nearly all male writers wear beards. We have many uses for them, most of which escape me at the moment. They do come in handy for fly tying, of course, and also for collecting insect samples on trout streams. At one time, the beards of us writers served to express our rugged individualism and helped to distinguish us from people who had actual jobs. That is no longer the case. Nowadays, corporate presidents are showing up at the office wearing their vacation-grown beards. I even have a banker friend who wears a full beard but is still regarded among his business associates as a highly respected and responsible leader in the world of finance. My mother, of course, wouldn’t deposit so much as a dime in his bank until he shaved off that disgusting thing.
My wife, Bun, theorizes that the primary purpose of a beard is concealment of a weak chin, multiple chins, or even multiple weak chins. I don’t know how she comes up with such nonsense. Bun did comment awhile back that she thought I looked good in a beard. “You kind of remind me of one of those famous writers who lived in Paris back in the twenties.”
“I’m not falling for that one again,” I said.
It might be thought that a beard brings a degree of efficiency to personal hygiene in that it saves all the time otherwise devoted to shaving. Nothing could be further from the truth. Wearing a beard is not too much different from wearing a small garden on your face. Without hours of devoted care, it soon gets away from its owner, becomes overgrown, and spreads out over the surrounding landscape. That is what happened to my Uncle Flynn and ultimately led to the unfortunate event that is still recalled with glee among the more malicious members of our family.
My mother used to refer to this particular period of family history as the time her brother Flynn was so much sought after. “Oh, Flynn is much sought after,” she’d say. She allowed it to be assumed that it was employers who sought after Flynn, but that was not really the case. The persons seeking after him were usually some of his gambling associates, and probably also the law, although I’m not sure about the law.
Uncle Flynn holed up in a mountain cabin for most of one winter, apparently for the purpose of lowering the risk of unexpected encounters with some of his fellow gamblers. It was during this sabbatical from his chosen profession that he grew a beard. Also about this time, Uncle Flynn developed a back problem, a malady of great puzzlement to all of us, because the heaviest thing Flynn ever lifted was a pool cue or a deck of cards. If he reached down to pick up something off the floor, his back would get a catch in it. Bent over and with arms hanging akimbo, a posture not unlike that of an ape, he would howl with pain. Mom, rather unsympathetically it seemed to me, said she thought Flynn’s bad back must have resulted from his accidentally getting too close to a job and dislocating a vertebra when he leaped back in fear and loathing.
Uncle Flynn started the beard, as I understood at the time, more or less as a hobby, there being little else in the way of entertainment at the cabin. He tried various styles, trimming and shaping this way and that, until at last he tired of the hobby and simply let the beard grow as it saw fit. Black, curly foliage quickly engulfed both sides and the lower half of his face and then descended in wild abandon down his chest. Flynn found some amusement from time to time in measuring the length of his beard, but not enough. After studying in a mirror the transformation he had undergone from a dapper man-about-town to something resembling the Wild Man of Borneo, he suddenly realized that he might very well escape recognition if he were to slip into town after dark and take in a movie at the Pandora Theater. And that is what he did, augmenting his disguise with an old pair of bib overalls, a tattered flannel shirt, and a grungy mackinaw that had served to plug up a hole in the cabin wall.
Uncle Flynn waited until the theater lights had gone down and the newsreel had begun before buying his ticket and popcorn and finding a seat in the darkened theater. By great good fortune, or so Flynn thought at the time, the seat he selected turned out to be right next to that of Miss Sarah Jane Trillabee, the town librarian and a woman of somewhat stern personality, but otherwise not unattractive.
Flynn’s attention soon drifted from the movie, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, to Miss Trillabee. Forgetting that he was no longer his usual dapper self, Flynn offered the librarian some of his popcorn. She refused with a curt shake of her head, obviously being of the impression that ill fate had seated a tramp right next to her. Unaccustomed to rebuffs from women, Flynn now felt challenged. As the movie progressed, he’d lean over from time to time and whisper some witty comment about activities on the screen. The librarian grew increasingly incensed by the provocations of the hairy creature next to her. Finally, she’d had enough. She thrust her arms into her coat sleeves, arose in a huff, and began to squeeze her way past Flynn. Then it happened. For a brief instant, Miss Trillabee momentarily lost her balance and fell against the source of her ire. Startled by Miss Trillabee’s sudden effort to flee his attentions, Flynn tried to rise and draw his legs out of her way but was momentarily pinned in his seat as she fell against him.
Except for one of those unlucky coincidences that always seemed to overtake Flynn, it is likely the situation would have been resolved simply by Miss Trillabee’s complaining to the manager and the manager asking Flynn to stop annoying the other patrons, or, in the extreme, refunding the price of his ticket and ordering him from the theater. What happened instead, however, serves as an excellent example of the dangers inherent in beards.
Even as Miss Trillabee thrust against Uncle Flynn, she was angrily pulling her coat belt tight around her and snapping shut its clasp. The belt, as Uncle Flynn explained years later, consisted of a web of decorative metal links rather than a simple cloth affair, which could not possibly have become entangled
with a curly beard. Alas, as the clasp of the belt snapped shut, Uncle Flynn found his face painfully and hopelessly attached to the back of the town librarian.
Miss Trillabee, of course, had not so much as an inkling that she had snagged Uncle Flynn by the beard. Thus, when Flynn grabbed her around the hips with both hands and pulled her back into his face, trying desperately to get some slack in his beard, she could not help but misinterpret his actions or his intent.
“Stop that, you crazy fool!” she hissed over her shoulder at the hunched form of her assailant. She twisted sharply around trying to get a shot at Flynn with her purse, a tactic that flung Uncle Flynn out into the aisle but still not free of her belt. It was at this moment that the audience heard, as later reported in the Blight Bugle, a sound very much like the anguished howl of a wolf. The catch in Flynn’s back had caught! For a second or two, the audience supposed the howl had come from the movie, but this supposition was soon erased by a piercing scream from Miss Trillabee, the result of Flynn’s clawing frantically at her backside in an effort to undo his beard. Instantly, the house lights went up.
What the nearest members of the audience then observed, even as they blinked in the sudden luminosity, was Uncle Flynn crouched in the aisle with his face pressed against the rear of the librarian.
“Here, you!” a man shouted. “Stop that, you fiend!”
Several men arose from their seats, ready to charge to the aid of a lady in distress. But even as he had been flung howling into the aisle, Uncle Flynn had hit upon a desperate solution to the predicament—he would cut his beard loose from the belt with his pocket knife. He released his hold on Miss Trillabee just long enough to extract and open his knife.
“Watch out!” someone shouted. “The tramp’s got a knife!”
As might be expected, this mention of a knife had less than a calming effect on the librarian’s would-be rescuers, and much less so on Miss Trillabee herself. She immediately ceased her flailing with purse and bolted up the aisle, through the lobby, and out of the theater, all the while closely pursued by Flynn. Realizing at this point that she still hadn’t shaken off the crazed and lecherous tramp, Miss Trillabee suddenly stopped and concentrated her efforts on purse flailing and language most inappropriate for a librarian. It was then Flynn managed to cut loose his beard from the belt. He fled up the street and disappeared into the darkness behind Grogan’s War Surplus.
Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing Page 16