by Kyp Harness
“No problem, Bob!” Buzz agrees affably. “I just gotta get my huntin’ license renewed and we’ll do ’er up right. Want me to use the twenty-two or would the ol’ shotgun do the trick?” At this Elmer bursts forth in a new wave of hilarity, shaking his head from side to side.
“I’m SERIOUS,” says ol’ Henderson, gazing down the table bitterly. “Get old and fucked up like that ain’t worth the trouble it takes to live, far’s I’m concerned.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Russ offers. “You look at ol’ Clarke out there on the fourth line. He was—what—seventy-six when he had a kid by that Elsie Schroeder, wasn’t he?”
“Yep, yep, seventy-six or thereabouts,” George agrees.
“Shit, that wouldn’t be bad, if ya could pull off somethin’ like that at that age, would it?” Russ remarks, shaking his head and clicking his tongue.
“Well, he musta been able to keep it up there and stiff for a few minutes, anyway, eh?” Buzz says as Elmer chuckles.
“Reminds me of that story of the ninety-seven-year-old guy with the young wife,” Buzz continues, leaning forward. “Every time they went to bed at night the wife’d say, ‘Now look you, you better be sure you don’t get me knocked up! You be careful!’” Buzz relates, his eyes widening, his forefinger pointing emphatically, mimicking the woman’s stern admonishment.
“And he’d say, ‘Christ, woman, I’m ninety-seven years old! How in hell am I ever gonna get you knocked up! A man of my age!’” Buzz shouts, stretching out his hands, his voice rising with scorn and disbelief. “‘There’s no damn bullets in the gun anymore, lady!’”
All the men chuckle, now following Buzz’s story with rapt attention, leaning forward, their mouths half-open.
“So one day she goes to the doctor and has a checkup,” Buzz explains matter-of-factly. “The ol’ doctor looks her over and then takes her aside. ‘Madame,’ he says, ‘I must inform you that according to the tests I’ve performed, you are pregnant.’
“‘Pregnant!’ she says, ‘Doctor, there is no way no possible way I could be pregnant!’
“‘Madame,’ the doctor says, ‘this test is never wrong. I’m TELLING you you’re pregnant.’
“‘That’s… that’s impossible,’” says Buzz, stammering with the woman’s befuddlement. “‘Look, here, do that test again, something must’ve screwed up somewhere.’
“So the doctor comes back and says, ‘Look, you’re pregnant, there’s no goddamned question about it, lady. You are PREGNANT!’”
Buzz pauses, shaking his head, taking a long swig from his beer while all around stare at him, listening, taut…
“So she says, ‘JE-sus!’ and goes over to the phone, phones up her husband and he answers and she says, ‘Well, you old bastard, you went and got me knocked up!’” Buzz shouts accusingly, his eyes blinking angrily.
“And the old guy says,” Buzz relates, squinting his eyes and blinking them perplexedly as he inquires into the phone he makes of his hand with pinky finger and forefinger extended, “‘Excuse me, can I ask who’s CALLING, please?’”
All the men pull back and erupt in a burst of laughter, slapping their knees and stamping their feet on the floor. George, standing by the door, throwing back his head and baring his teeth in a silent laugh, and Buzz grinning around at all of them as he chuckles, his eyes squeezed tight, almost closed in merriment.
“He had a couple others on the line, did he?” Russ remarks, smiling.
“She weren’t the only one!” hoots George, and ol’ Harrison at the end of the table nods his head and says, “Hmph!”
A man with thick black hair, greying at the temples, appears at the kitchen door, looks around, and cries, “What the hell’s goin’ on in here?”
“Hey, Jack, how’re you doin’?” George calls, and the man’s ruddy face lights up with a bright smile as all the rest of the fellows turn to greet him. He enters, followed by his son Harley who lurches expressionlessly into the room and sprawls apathetically across a chair.
“I’m doin’ all right, all right,” Daddy Jack crows, waving in reply to the greetings as he takes a seat beside his son. “Had a devil of a time gettin’ the warden out of the house as usual. By the time I’m all ready to go she ain’t, or the other way around, or else we’re both ready and in the car and halfway down the goddamned road and then she decides of course she’s left somethin’ back at home and we gotta turn around and get it, and by Jesus, she starts a-wailin’ and I’m just glad we got here now anyways,” he sighs, shaking his head.
“Don’t suspect you’d say no to one of these here, then, would ye?” George asks, setting a beer before him.
“Nope, sure as hell wouldn’t!” Daddy Jack smiles, picking up the beer and drinking deeply. “Course,” Jack continues, smacking his lips, “don’t take me too long to get ready anyway.”
“Sure,” Russ notes jocularly. “Just shit, shower and shave, right Jack?”
“That’s right, Russ,” Jack notes. “But the warden, well, she’s like any woman and she’s gotta fuss about fer a while, sure, but after that it’s the other waitin’ that gets me, and then her comin’ out after she’s dressed herself and wantin’ me to change MY clothes!”
“She’s gotta dress you too, does she?” Russ laughs.
“Oh, Christ, yes!” Daddy Jack yells. “And then with this, that, and the other thing, and what she’s remembered or forgot, and of course you can’t say a word to ’er ’cause she gets in such a state.”
“She gets a bit testy, does she, Jack?” Buzz asks, grinning.
“Oh, Christ!” Jack replies, shaking his head and wincing as if in physical pain. “Christ, yes!”
“How you doin’, there, Elmer?” Jack calls out above the general laughter.
“I’m doin’ all right, all right, Jack,” Elmer replies, nodding and slowly blinking his heavy-lidded eyes.
“I don’t believe I saw ya since that trouble you had last month,” Jack continues, his voice several decibels louder than necessary. “Stroke, wasn’t it?”
“Yep, yep, a little one,” Elmer nods, looking down at his hands. “Took a little bit outta me, though.”
“Suspect it would! I suppose they got ya on more pills than ya could count!” Jack observes.
“Yeah, somethin’ like that,” Elmer says, smiling slightly as he brings his beer to his lips.
“Just like when I had that kidney trouble there three years ago,” Jack exclaims. “They give ya pills to take in the morning, at night, pills after you shit, before you shit. Christ—it’s enough to drive ya crazy!”
“That’s right, Jack,” Elmer chuckles.
“And then they want ya to keep comin’ in till—HEY!” Jack shouts, turning to his son. “Put that down!”
Harley lifts Jack’s beer to his mouth and drinks defiantly.
“I said put it down!” Jack shouts.
“Ah, keep your shirt on,” Harley mutters, disdainfully placing the beer on the table.
“I tol’ you before to leave that alone!” Jack says angrily.
“You said before I could have ONE,” Harley insists.
“I didn’t say anything like it!” Jack cries. “Don’t you get goddamn lippy with me or you can walk your ass outta here and right on home!”
Harley settles back in his chair and looks scornfully off at the distant wall. “Bull-SHIT!” he sneers.
“I’ll bullshit you!” Jack shouts, infuriated. “You shouldn’t even be here anyhow—you should be at home helpin’ Bud with the chores!” Jack turns to the other men. “This little beggar can get outta more work than anyone I ever knew!”
“Doesn’t like to work, eh, Jack?” Buzz asks.
“Shit! He gets outta more work than anybody I ever saw!” Jack fumes, glaring resentfully at his son, who stares sullenly off into the distance. “Anytime any chores to be done or work goin’ on
at all and this guy disappears into thin air!”
“Yeah right!” Harley snorts, his arms folded across his chest, his foot tapping the floor impatiently.
“Well, the answer to that, Jack, I would say, is maybe a bit more discipline on the way up,” George observes, tipping his head back to swallow a long draught of beer.
“I tried, George, I tried!” Jack insists, “but it’s his mother that’s the problem, she gets this guy off the hook and coddles ’im like he was still a little baby time after time! Anytime I try to lay down the law, why, his mother steps in and wrecks it all!”
“Well, all’s I know,” George offers laconically, “is that if I ever tried any of that kind of business when I was that age, my old man would’ve cuffed me upside the head into the middle of next week quicker ’n shit through a goose.”
“Same as mine, same as mine!” Jack agrees passionately, nodding his head with vigour. “Mine would’ve too!” he cries, as the other men likewise voice their agreement and Harley surveys the wall and with an aristocratic air of disdain snorts, “Pah!”
“What mighty problems of the world are you all tryin’ to solve now?” a middle-aged, grey-haired woman inquires as she sashays in through the door.
“Oh, we haven’t even got to the heavy stuff yet!” Russ observes jovially.
“Just warmin’ up, are yous?” Maxine asks as she moves to the sink, pouring a glass of water.
“You know us,” George remarks. “What can I get for ya, here?”
“Oh, nothing at all,” Maxine says, turning with the glass. “I’m just doin’ my nursing duties,” she explains with a smile, laying three tablets on the table before Elmer. “If I don’t administer ’em to him, he’ll never remember to take ’em,” she explains, gazing fondly down at her husband.
Elmer picks up the pills and grudgingly places them in his mouth, his thin lips prissily opening and closing over them, his long face dull with tired resignation as he takes the glass of water.
“Goin’ down all right, Elmer?” Buzz asks with a tenuous jocularity as he watches Elmer pour the water down his throat, his head cocked back and his Adam’s apple bobbing. Maxine places her hand on her husband’s shoulder as he sets the glass down and looks up at her expressionlessly.
“Needs a shot of some good scotch to do it up right, eh, Elmer?” Buzz grins, and Elmer manages a slight wry smile.
“He doesn’t need anything of the kind!” Maxine says as she breezes back to the sink. “He hates those pills like the devil, though—wish there was something we could do to make ’em easier to take.”
“Goddamn things,” Elmer mutters, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table, looking down grimly.
“Well you’re just going to have to take those ‘goddamned things’ till you’re better and the doctor says you don’t have to take them anymore!” Maxine remonstrates, nodding her head sharply with each word, standing by the counter with her hands on her hips.
Elmer raises his head slightly and looks sideways at Buzz, a look of grim misery and plaintive resignation so unguarded in his eyes that Buzz gulps, shakes his head and clicks his tongue, saying in effect, “Bugger, ain’t it?”
“I’ll be back in another three-quarters of an hour,” Maxine says as she walks past Jack and Harley bickering heatedly in low voices and out through the kitchen door into the living room where Momma Simpson sits with Mona. George’s wife Martha sits on the couch silently knitting as Bess Armstrong from down the road tells them all about the McMurphys’ divorce, how for three years Flo McMurphy had been telling Bob she was going clog dancing but really going out and meeting Bert Hardy at Pendleton, twenty miles away so’s nobody’d see ’em.
Old Bob sitting at home watching television didn’t suspect a thing till one day at the bank Bob met Elma Norton and they got to talking and he asked her how the clogging was going, so of course Elma said they hadn’t been having classes for a year by that time.
Well, that got Bob to thinking, so that Wednesday night Bob was lyin’ there watching television and when Flo came in Bob asked, “So how was the clogging tonight?”
And Flo said it was just fine, had a real good time and what have you, and Bob looked up from the television and asked her who was there, and Flo says, oh, Bernice Finley and Elma and Jeanette and the rest, kind of wondering now since this was the first time he’d ever really asked about her clog dancing—even when she really did go to clog dancing—but he just turned back to the television anyway and just said “Mm-hm,” and then nothing else was said.
She just forgot about it, and the next Wednesday she went off as usual, sayin’ goodbye as she went out and leavin’ him there watchin’ television. But what she didn’t know was that about one half-minute after she shut the door he was off that couch and on his feet, walking out through the kitchen to the back where he’d parked Jimmy McPherson’s car which he’d borrowed from work that day, and he got in that car and followed her right down Main Street and down the highway to Pendleton—her not knowing or even suspecting ’cause after all it’d been three years—right into the parking lot of the diner off the highway on the outskirts of Pendleton where they’d meet, and he watched her get out of the car and walk in and greet Bert Hardy.
Bob sat in his car and watched through the window as she held hands with Bert Hardy and had coffee for twenty minutes, and watched them as they got up and left for wherever they went off to, and he just said to himself, “Mm-hm,” then turned around and drove home.
So that night when she comes home he just lays there in front of the TV, doesn’t even bother asking her how the clogging was, and she just goes off and gets ready for bed as usual. And then a week goes by and the next Wednesday she goes off again as usual, leavin’ him there on the couch. She drives to Pendleton and walks into the diner, her pace pickin’ up as she walks up to the table to see Bert, and there sittin’ in their special booth right across from Bert is Bob!
What happened is that Bob scooted off that couch right after she left and drove hell bent for election down the backroads to Pendleton and got there before she did! And there’s Bert lookin’ at her all in a panic and Bob’s just smilin’ at her like nothin’ would melt in his mouth, with a coffee in front of him, and sayin’ all calm, “Have a seat, Flo.”
Well I don’t know if you could’ve written too big a book about what was goin’ on in her mind then! So not knowing what to do, she kinda stumbles over and sits down, looking at Bob in a daze, her heart pounding, wondering what on earth he’s gonna do.
And of course Bert Hardy’s probably wondering that too, knowing Bob won that middleweight wrestling badge back in high school and Bert himself just a little thin slip of a guy. But Bob just sits there smiling at them, his mouth smiling a calm smile but his eyes not smiling at all, just bright and sparkling and still and fixed on them, and not saying anything, which scared Flo even more till she just wished to God he would begin shouting and turning over the table.
And it seemed like three hours till Bob finally said in a calm, friendly voice, “Well, it’s gonna be Christmas soon, and Christmas is a time for beautiful things to happen.” He pauses and looks at them for about a minute with that same awful smile. “Now, Bert, I’ve looked after Flo here for seventeen years, so I suppose it’s your turn to take over.” He reaches down into his pocket and pulls out a set of car keys and puts them on the table. “These are Jimmy McPherson’s car keys—I borrowed his car to come out here. Now if you can have it back in his driveway by seven in the morning, and I can get the keys back to my car so I can drive home, we can just call ourselves even,” he says, looking at Flo, his eyes boring into her.
Flo fumbles in her purse and takes out the keys and puts them on the table.
Bob picks them up and puts them in his pocket, saying “Thanks a lot,” then gets out of the booth. “Have a good Christmas,” he says as he starts walking away.
All of a
sudden in a weak voice Flo says, “Bob…” and Bob turns around just as quick, raising his hand.
“Christmas is a time for beautiful things to happen,” he says. Then he goes to the cash register, pays for his coffee, wishin’ a Merry Christmas to the waitress, then walks on out, gets into his car and pulls out of the driveway of the diner.
“Hm!” says Maxine after a moment. “Well, one thing anyway, that Flo McMurphy never had any problem gettin’ what she wanted anyhow, once she decided what it was.”
“That’s true enough,” says Bess Armstrong, taking a swig from her screwdriver. “I remember hearin’ stories about her out on the backroads with her pants around her ankles when I was a teenager and I never did believe ’em, but I can’t say I don’t believe ’em now!”
“Oh, pssshhh,” Mona laughs in a light mocking manner. “If all Bob McMurphy ever did was sit in front of that TV night after night, why you can’t blame Flo getting a bit bored. And besides, that Bert Hardy was probably getting lonely himself. His mother died last year, didn’t she?” She squints her eyes, looking around at the others inquisitively.
“She did,” Momma Grace Simpson attests. “Cancer. She had a long, hard time of it—and ol’ Bert, he’d be in there every day, always bringin’ in something for her.” She looks off into the distance, shaking her head as she leans forward, resting her plump elbows on her knees. “Two of ’em were close as close could be. Near the end he had ’em put a cot in her room so he could sleep there, just so he could bring her some comfort. And of course he could hardly bring himself to be apart from her, that’s how close they were.”
“Well, that’s the most surprising thing about it, if you ask me,” offers Bess Armstrong. “That it would be Bert Hardy. Can’t say he’d be my first choice if I was out on the loose.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Maxine interjects. “He must have some money hidden away, what with old Ma Hardy’s way of holding onto a dollar.” She looks slyly around at all the women and they chuckle.
“That’s true,” agrees Bess Armstrong, laughing—then looking down solemnly at her screwdriver. “But nobody’d ever think, would they, that Bert Hardy, or PeeWee as they used to call him, would be the kind to break up a home, him workin’ there in the library and livin’ all those years with his mother; kinda fella would soon as run away as talk to ya, it seemed,” she says, shaking her head. “Just a spindly little guy.”