Wigford Rememberies

by Kyp Harness

  The hydro lines bob and jiggle at each side, barns, houses, horses, forests, farms and fields, swelling and shrinking, Johnson’s Variety, Pepsi-Cola and sky all up above, the yellow-rimmed clouds and the sun going higher, the white line of the highway and in the back Harley and Bud smoke crouched on the floor watching everything disappear.

  Harley kneels and shoves his face out into the cold wind, sees Happy Henry the Bible Freak up ahead, hobbling along the highway shoulder in his long black overcoat, his long thin legs slicing as he strides like he’s a walking pair of scissors, his tiny head bobbing forth and back as if he’s counting each step he takes in his head, both arms rigid and loaded down with heavy suitcases containing pamphlets and bibles.

  “Bud!” shouts Harley and Bud looks as they come abreast of Happy Henry and Harley horks out a truly incredibly large membrane of green-grey mucous which slides out as if in slow motion, hovers and flaps in the air for a moment till caught by the wind, then is sent splatting and wrapping itself around the head of Happy Henry, whose suitcases go thudding to the earth as his hands fly to his face and Harley and Bud howl with brotherly delight as Henry’s frantic figure goes shrinking into the distance.

  And in the front Momma Simpson still goes on about the bump and the cancer and Daddy Jack just sighs from time to time, squinting into the sun’s bright glare sending a white fuzz shooting into our eyes despite the visor flap, but you get the idea Daddy Jack doesn’t even hear Momma Simpson anymore just by the way he smokes his cigarette, and in a minute he starts talking in the middle of one of her sentences in a quiet, thinking kind of way.

  “Ya see that bird on that sign up there?”—the sign says TRAILERS FOR RENT—“Well my dad coulda not only seen that bird, he coulda tol’ ye what kind of a bird it was, not only from the distance we just were, but from a good half-mile back more ’n that,” he mutters.

  And now Momma Simpson is silent, like he isn’t interrupting what she was saying, like she can’t even remember talking in the first place. She watches the bird as Daddy Jack blows out a big cloud of cigarette smoke and stubs his cigarette in the ashtray.

  “When he was seventy-nine he could see things even more farther away than I ever could, way out to hell and back. ‘Jack,’ he’d say, ‘can you see the colour a that pickup goin’ down the fifth line?’ Well, I’ll be goddamned if I could…” Daddy Jack says, more like he’s talking to himself, or to somebody else who isn’t even here. “Seventy-nine, never wore glasses a day in his life. Now that was a man who really could see.”

  Happy Henry

  And what of Happy Henry, spindly fingers now blindly clawing Harley’s mucous off his face by the highway on this cool April morning? He murmurs and simpers little mmf sounds to himself and now a wrinkled tissue is drawn from his overcoat pocket to dispatch the mess. He shakes his head in puzzlement and bends for the suitcases, his Salvation Army shoes encased in plastic bread bags for protection skiffling in the gravel as he resumes his pilgrimage, this rabbit-faced disciple of the Lord, his little grey teeth overhanging his thin lower lip.

  He trudges and his undersized head glistening with grease slicking back his short black hair—as if his whole head’s been dipped in a vat of oil—resumes its loping pendulum swing. His beady eyes aglow, he stumbles down the lonely morning highway, cars and transport trucks roaring past and whipping him around in their wake and slipstreams of exhaust and dust and ricocheting stones. The tails of his overcoat ruffle, ol’ Happy Henry known for miles around, you might see him on the highway, you might see him crossing a distant field, sailing through a sea of weeds, or ambling down a quiet side street in the town, in the night, his shadow passing beneath the beam of a streetlight, darkness and silence all around.

  He may accost you in the drugstore or in the barbershop, his shy hesitant smiling face, his stuttering lisping voice asking, “Hello? How are you today?”—for everything he says is said like a question. He blinks and before you know it a pamphlet is being passed into your hand.

  ETERNITY IS FOREVER—a picture of the sky: fluffy, white clouds and behind one of them a little piece of the sun peeking around—long lines stretching out from it, reaching to the edge of the paper. HAVE YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE? Inside, WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY? IN HEAVEN OR IN HELL?

  “Some reading material—for free,” says Happy Henry, smiling and bowing slightly, nodding his head towards the pamphlet as you stand there, and as you stuff it into your pocket and thank him, planning to discreetly dispose of it later.

  As you turn and depart from him, he stands still behind you, nodding his head and regarding you with glowing eyes—joyful, envying the happiness you will know when you later privately read the pamphlet and its true meaning washes over you, when the glory of the Lord’s love rains down over your heart and the truth of your redemption paid for with the price of God’s only begotten son detonates across your consciousness and you are truly cleansed in the blood of the lamb.

  Yes, Henry knows and anticipates the bounteous future awakening, which will take place, and most of all your incredible surprise at discovering that you are the personal receiver of the greatest gift that has ever been given—Henry’s benevolent head nodding, ushering you into that most beautiful and incomprehensible sanctuary, the universe a compassionate womb in love with you forever—If only you don’t drink or smoke or use curse words, Henry thinks with a stern frown, his brow furrowing.

  He strides down the highway up to Barker’s Corner, to the gas station with the all-night coffee shop attached, loping up across the parking lot with an energetic spring quickening in his long bony legs. In the front window of the coffee shop three men sit huddled around a table, their coffee cups half-filled before them, their elbows resting on the table and their large boots on the floor resting in gloppy puddles of mud. They wear thick, grey, mud-spattered jackets and hats emblazoned with the logos of various tractor and farm implement manufacturers.

  One of the men sits sucking on a pipe that periodically goes out, necessitating that he continually relight it—the ashtray before him filled with blackened matches. The man sitting across from him looks out the window and sees Henry limping his way across the lot.

  “Well here comes ol’ Henry,” he chuckles, his eyes darting across to the other two men.

  “That’s right. There he is, Roy,” drawls the pipe-smoker, “on his way to make another new convert, I suspect.”

  “Heh, heh,” chuckles Roy. “Don’t suspect there’s any likelihood on ’im makin’ a fresh one outta you, eh Gus?”

  “Oh, Henry knows me all right,” says the other fellow laconically. “I ’magine by this time he knows he’d be barkin’ up the wrong tree tryin’ to get somewhere with me.”

  Roy laughs, and the other fellow, an older man with weary, watery eyes chuckles as well as Henry throws open the door of the coffee shop and stumbles in, having a bit of trouble with his sizable suitcases. The middle-aged woman behind the cash register looks up with a bemused smile and the men sitting at the table all turn to him, nod, “How y’doin’, Henry?” winking at each other, then return to their conversation.

  A newspaper lies on the table in the midst of them, The Wigford Gazette, with its tale on the front page of how a discarded refrigerator had been found in a ditch by a sideroad twenty miles out of town the night before, and in the refrigerator was discovered a partially decomposed human body.

  “Jesus Christ!” cries Roy. “How d’ya like that? Jesus, somethin’ like that ain’t happened round here since… well Christ, since ol’ Ferguson on the first line did ’is wife in. I ’member that from when I was a kid—musta been forty years ago.”

  “Yeah, yep, that’s right, Roy, I ’member that, sure. Ol’ Ferguson he’d been married, what, twenty years to the same woman, came home one night and put an axe right through her head,” nods the fellow with wet, weary eyes, his voice soft and untroubled. “Didn’t seem to be no rhyme nor reason to it, never
a hint there was anything wrong. Just got off work at the gravel pit, came home and put an ax right through ’er head.”

  “Jesus, yeah!” says Roy, “and I remember my old man sayin’ he never could understand it, ol’ Ferguson. Christ the guy was one of the funniest devils around, always had a kind word and a prank, never even hardly saw him when he wasn’t smilin’ or laughin’, and one of the main guys at the Presbyterian Church there in town, always at the picnics and such, playin’ with the kids, arrangin’ the games, y’ know, the egg and spoon races.”

  “Yep,” says the other fellow. “Just got off work one night, got in the car, drove home, and put an axe right through his wife’s head.”

  “Christ!” cries Roy, shaking his head.

  “Well, they put HIM away for life,” says the man dispassionately. “Likely he’s still in there if he ain’t dead by now. When they came he was still standin’ there, holdin’ the axe—he jes’ went away with them quietly. Yep, they didn’t waste no time puttin’ him away.”

  “Good goddamn thing, too,” says Roy. “Jesus, imagine somethin’ like that…”

  “Well, seems to me you guys are fergettin’ the case of the Dobbins out Starkway way,” says Frank suddenly, leaning into the conversation.

  “The Dobbins? Hey, that rings a bell somewhere—the Dobbins…” Roy muses.

  “Yeah, well that was likely before yous guys’s time,” says Frank. “Mighta been forty-five years ago now, they had the farm the Trombleys are at now.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Yeah, well young Lou Dobbins out there, he’s the guy that blew the heads off his grandparents.”

  “Jesus Christ, yeah! I do recall hearin’ tell of somethin’ like that, Frank, yeah!” Roy exclaims, snapping his fingers.

  “That’s right, that’s right,” agrees Frank. “Yeah, well, it was like this: this Lou Dobbins guy, both his parents were gone. Didn’t know what happened to ’em—mighta been dead, killed in a car accident or just took off, I don’t know, I couldn’t tell ya. So he’d been mostly raised by his grandparents on his father’s side. In fact, you ’member that old scrap-metal yard out on Highway Six?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Yep,” says Gus.

  “Well they useta own that. Anyways, this young Lou Dobbins fella, he grew up and the old folks looked after ’im and he was a queer bird, worked in the garage in town from the time he was fifteen, you never seen him or heard a peep out of ’im otherwise, and he lived out on the farm with the old folks up till he was about thirty years old. Never broke away, if ya know what I mean, kinda strange—seemed timid, wouldn’t say boo to a ghost, and you never saw ’im in town at the dances or what have you at all, or with anybody. So no one never thought nothin’ of it, people just generally felt that was his way, I guess.

  “So he was still livin’ with the old folks when he was thirty years old and then of course naturally by that time he couldn’t move out ’cause the old folks by this time were OLD, I mean they couldn’t’ve looked after themselves at all—so young Lou was kinda tied to them if ya know what I mean. They’d looked after him so now I guess he was kinda duty-bound and obligated to look after them.

  “’Parently for the last couple a years the old folks were so goddamned old and sick they couldn’t even get outta bed—they’d just lay there day and night in their pyjamas, and I guess he had to feed ’em and change ’em and turn them over and I don’t know what all. People said they were so old and had laid there for so long that the two of ’em even came to look like each other, couldn’t tell ’em apart almost—jes’ these two wrinkled-up white shrunk-up little things layin’ in bed there, never sayin’ a word.

  “So one day Lou comes in,” says Frank, throwing up his hands, “pulls out a twenty-two-gauge shotgun, and blows their heads off.”

  “Je—sus CHRIST!” cries Roy, wincing. Gus sits looking at Frank out of the corner of his eye, puffing at his pipe, his head cocked.

  “Yep, well you know the power of them twenty-two-gauge shotguns,” says Frank.

  “Jesus, yes,” says Roy. “I got one I take up north for the deers—the POWER of them things.”

  “Yeah, well you can imagine at point-blank range—blew their heads clean off—and then, the weirdest thing, the guy didn’t just stop there. ’Parently he reloaded and cocked the thing again and again—and you know how long it takes to reload one a them things—blastin’ away at ’em over and over, I mean, after he must’ve known they MUST’ve been dead already. I mean, I say he blew their heads off but there weren’t hardly enough to bury, really.”

  “Good Christ!” cries Roy. “You wonder what in hell would possess a man.”

  “Well, after that he went down into the cellar where he knew they had a bunch of cash stashed in an old fruit jar, I mean somethin’ like twenty thousand dollars,” says Frank.

  “Ah, so that’s it,” muses Roy, nodding his head grimly.

  “Sure. Lou goes down, takes out the loot and nobody sees him no more. Police had a devil of a time trackin’ him down—till finally musta been a week later, up in Birkston, they hear the guy’s a regular at some tavern and he’s the life of the party, dressed in a brand new, sharp suit with a brand spankin’ new car outside stayin’ at some fancy hotel up there. Been up there all week I guess, buyin’ everybody drinks and bein’ everybody’s pal. I mean, after all a those years walkin’ ’round here like a ghost, ya wouldn’t hardly believe it.

  “Well, they surrounded the place, tryin’ to get him to give himself up peaceful-like. Everybody else came runnin’ outta that place as if all the devils in hell was chasin’ ’em. All the Birkston cops was standin’ outside armed to the teeth—I mean, for all they knew he was armed and dangerous.”

  “Sure, sure,” says Roy, blinking with deep interest, his mouth slightly open.

  “Yep,” agrees the other man. “So like I say, he’s in the bar all alone, everybody, even the waiters and what all hauled their asses outta there pronto—if he was everybody’s best buddy just a few minutes ago, he sure as hell wasn’t now. And the place is surrounded by cops with their guns out and aimed at the doors and they’re callin’ out askin’ him to come out and surrender peacefully when all of a sudden he comes runnin’ outta there crazy.

  “He ain’t armed, no gun, he jes’ comes runnin’ out as if he actually believes he’s got a chance to get past all those cops standin’ in a circle round the entire building. Well of course they don’t know he wasn’t armed, what the hell, so they shot ’im. Funny thing though, after they shoot ’im he falls down, and while he’s dyin’ his legs are still movin’ around on the ground like he’s still runnin’.”

  “Hmph,” says Roy.

  For a moment the three men sit in silence, considering the table.

  “Jesus! Hell of a thing!” remarks Roy with a sigh, shaking his head.

  “Well, you can bet one thing,” says Gus, stabbing his finger at the newspaper. “When they catch THIS guy it ain’t gonna be no pretty sight either.”

  “Damn right,” says Roy. “Some no-good lowdown sonofabitch that’d do somethin’ like that.”

  “Well I was talkin’ to Hank down at the station, and he says they don’t have much of a lead yet,” says Frank. “Best they can say now is they think it musta been someone outta the area—least they’re hopin’ that—who just came round here to stash the body.”

  “Jesus, let’s hope so. Some rotten bastard like that who’d cut up someone’s body like that—hangin’ ain’t fit for ’im,” remonstrates Roy.

  “I don’t suspect it would be,” drawls Gus. “Not unless ye hung him up by one ball and waited for the rest of ’im to come fallin’ down.”

  “Huh! Some asshole like that oughta be shot with a ball of his own shit!” says Roy scornfully, baring his teeth in anger.

  “Well, what I’d do with some no-good sonofabitch like that…” volunteer
s Gus, taking time to relight his pipe afresh and drawing on it, “…is take ’im out into the bush behind my property, sit ’im down on a log, nail ’is balls to it, then push ’im over backwards and leave ’im there.”

  “Fuckin’ right, fuckin’ right, Gus!” Roy exclaims as Frank, with his watery, weary eyes, nods his agreement.

  Happy Henry at this time has settled himself on a stool at the counter with a cup of tea. From the pocket of his overcoat he has taken a bible and laid it before him on the counter, resting his hands on either side of it, and his head at the end of his long thin neck dances back and forth towards and away from the bible as he studies it, every so often pausing in his concentration to gaze hurriedly about the coffee shop then returning again to the bible, the fingers of his hands clenching and unclenching, the upper area of his body swaying from side to side on the stool.

  At this point a massive transport truck pulls off the highway and comes to a slow lumbering whissshhing steaming stop in the parking lot outside the window—the cab opens and a compact little man clambers out, the bottom of his boots slapping the pavement as he slams the door and trudges up to the coffee shop, his arms at each side held at a considerable distance from his torso with elbows bent as he walks briskly in through the door, an angry frown fixed on his granite face as he steps up to the counter.

  “Coffee! Regular!” he commands, and stands shaking his leg impatiently as he waits for it. He’s wearing grease-stained blue jeans and a T-shirt with a jacket over it, the zipper half down. He strides with his coffee past the group of men who glance up at him as he passes. He rewards them with an angry glare and drops with a thud into a nearby chair, his hands clasped around the coffee cup, staring stoically before him with a sort of abstract, floating, all-encompassing hostility—the lower half of his face covered with a rash of black prickly whiskers. He perspires heavily from beneath the cap clamped tightly down on his head, the visor of it shadowing his eyes and the bridge of his nose.