Wigford Rememberies

by Kyp Harness

  The men nod and chuckle. “So anyways, one day they’re drivin’ down the highway and they see this big, beautiful, beautiful lakefront house for sale. Three storeys… a balcony over the lake, a fireplace. Just beautiful…”

  He pauses a moment to savour the beauty of the house, shaking his head from side to side reverently and taking a long drag off his cigarette. He sets the cigarette down, blowing out a gust of smoke as he speaks.

  “And so she says, ‘You got lots a money, a million dollars, for Christ’s sake. You bastard, why don’t you buy that house? The one we got now is fallin’ to pieces.’

  “And he turns and says, ‘Piss off, I ain’t buyin’ you no new damn house. The one we got now’s just fine.’

  “Well, she grumbles and complains and bitches, and they drive along and all of a sudden the car starts breakin’ down a bit, makin’ all these goddamn noises and actin’ up. Practically stalls right there on the highway, so she turns to him and says, ‘You old cheapskate, when the hell are you gonna buy a new car?’

  “And he says, “Look—you can shut your trap right now ’cause one thing I can tell ya, I… ain’t… buyin’… YOU… no… new… damn… car!’ And, Jesus, the car’s fallin’ apart! It’s a wreck! But he won’t buy a car! God—DAMN!” Buzz exclaims, looking around in disbelief.

  “So they’re drivin’ on and on, and they pass this fur store, this store for furs down the road, with, you know, mink and rabbit and whatever the hell. So she says, ‘You know what I want? I want a brand new, damn mink coat!’

  “He says, ‘I’m NOT gonna buy you no fuckin’ mink coat.’

  “She says, ‘Well, why the hell not?’

  “And he says, ‘I am NOT gonna buy you no mink coat so you can just forget about it. Piss off!’ Now, imagine that! Guy’s got all this money and he won’t buy her nothin’! He was a mean, cheap, rotten bastard!”

  Buzz pauses to shake his head with deep disapproval.

  “So finally… they’re drivin’ along and all of a sudden she turns to him and says, ‘You mean, cheap, old bastard, take off your pants—I wanna give you a blow job!’

  “He looks at her and says, ‘Screw that! You ain’t gonna give me no blow job! You ain’t gonna ’cause I ain’t gonna let ya! So forget about it! Screw that!’

  “He’s so cheap now,” Buzz cries, pounding the table with his fist and looking around at everyone with an expression of pained exasperation, “…he’s so goddamned cheap he won’t even give his own wife the pleasure of givin’ him a blow job!”

  Buzz nonchalantly takes a swig of his beer as he gives his grinning audience a moment to digest this information.

  “So one day,” he says, smacking his lips, “not long after that, the guy dies. He just takes a big bastard of a heart attack one day, keels over and dies just like that. So first thing the wife does, naturally, is gets ahold of all his money, all the so many millions of dollars he’s got. She takes his money and the first thing she does is have him cremated and has him put in this little cardboard box, neat as can be.

  “She takes the box and she goes out to a car lot and she says, ‘All right you bastard, watch this: you wouldn’t buy me a new car when I asked ya, but now I’m gonna buy the most expensive fuckin’ thing I can find, and with your money! And there’s nothin’ you can do about it!’ She buys the most expensive car on the lot! The most expensive one! A giant car with six doors and all the accessories you can imagine.

  “She puts the cardboard box on the seat beside her and roars on down the highway, just givin’ ’er, one hundred miles an hour, and she screeches up in fronta the mink store, and she says, ‘All right, take a look at this, cheapskate, I’m goin’ in there and I’m gonna get that fur coat I wanted and there’s nothin’ you can do about it!’ She waltzes in, buys the biggest damn mink coat you ever saw, puts it on and comes traipsin’ right on back out again.

  Jumps in the car and says, ‘How do you like THAT, cheapskate?’ And burns it right on down to that beautiful house— it so happens there’s a real estate agent standin’ right out in front. She looks down at the cardboard box and says, ‘Oh you bastard, I hope you’re watching this!’ She strolls up and buys that house just like that—cash!” Buzz says, snapping his fingers. “She takes the box, goes into the house, walks up the stairs and goes out to the balcony. She opens up the box and dumps all the ashes over this big table there.

  “She looks down at the ashes and says, ‘Okay, bastard, I asked you time after time for a new car but you were too goddamn cheap to buy one. I got the car now, the biggest, most expensive one I could find. You were too damn cheap to ever buy me a new mink coat—I got one now, and there’s nothin’ you can do about it! For thirty years we lived in a broken-down shack you wouldn’t even spend money on to fix up and you wouldn’t even think about buyin’ a new house—well, here I am now sittin’ in this mansion that I bought with your money and I hope it’s drivin’ you nuts! All your life you were so damned cheap and mean you wouldn’t even give me the pleasure of givin’ you a blow job!’” Buzz says, growing almost breathless with the telling of his tale.

  “‘And now, by God, so help me, I’m gonna give it to ya!’ So she leans over the pile of ashes there and she goes…” Buzz leans forth and blows a brisk stream of air through his puckered lips over the table, “Ppptttwwwhhh!”

  All the men burst into riotous laughter: Jack throwing his head back and closing his eyes; George standing by the counter and grinning broadly, shaking his head slowly from side to side; Elmer looking up at the ceiling, his shoulders shaking.

  “Heh, heh, she finally got to do it, eh?” Russ chuckles as the laughter reaches its peak.

  “Never heard that one before, eh?” Buzz is asking the still-shaking Elmer as a slight, meek, little woman appears cautiously at the doorway of the kitchen.

  “George,” Aunt Martha calls, her knitting in her hand. “George! When you gonna come out and open the presents all these nice people gave us?”

  George’s wild laughter ceases and an expression of irritated distaste comes slashing across his features. “Why don’t you hold your goddamned horses?” he shouts. “We got plenty of time! I’ll be out there when I’m ready!” In the quick silence of the room all the men stare uncomfortably at the floor as Aunt Martha shifts the knitting in her hand and blinks her small tired eyes.

  “Well… I just wanted to know!” she pronounces with a sharp nod of her grey head as she turns and leaves.

  “Jesus!” George mutters, turning to the fridge to replace his beer, and several of the men chuckle.

  “Still likes to keep a good tab on ya, does she George?” Russ grins, and George grunts sullenly as he pops open his new beer.

  “Well, that’s somethin’ anyhow,” Buzz observes. “Good to see she’s still carin’ where you’re at anyhow after twenty-five years, eh?”

  As the men voice their amusement at this latest observation, Webb smiles, raising his beer to his lips. As he does so, he suddenly notices Ol’ Harrison at the far end of the table, staring intently at him and frowning, squinting his eyes in apparent puzzlement. Webb turns away for a moment then looks uneasily over at him again, meeting the same absorbed, dissatisfied gaze.

  “And what is it that you do?” the slow, gravelly drawl inquires from the end of the table. A sudden sting of cold sweat breaks out at Webb’s hairline.

  “Pardon?” he asks, his grin frozen on his face.

  “What is it you do,” Ol’ Harrison rasps, nodding toward him, “for a living?”

  “Oh, he’s a phot-aww-grapher!” a mocking voice pipes up—Harley, grinning sardonically up at Webb from his chair.

  “Yes,” Webb explains nervously to Ol’ Harrison. “I’m a photographer.”

  “A photographer! Hm!” Ol’ Harrison notes, and whistles in mock surprise. He leans forward and folds his hands before him on the table. “A photographer! Now… and yo
u do that for a living?” he asks seriously, cocking his head to one side and regarding Webb with stern eyes.

  “Yes, yes I do,” Webb says, feeling the silence in the room around him, all of the men now following the exchange.

  “And you make your living by that, you go around taking pictures for a living?” Ol’ Harrison says argumentatively, squinting his eyes incredulously as if the idea is so fantastic he can’t conceive of it.

  “Yes,” Webb answers almost apologetically, feeling all eyes upon him.

  Ol’ Harrison closes his eyes, picks up his beer, and bends his head back to take a long sucking swallow. He pulls the bottle from his mouth with a smacking noise and peers at Webb again, still dissatisfied.

  “SO,” he grunts, “what is it that you take pictures of?”

  “Oh,” Webb stutters, “weddings and babies…”

  Harley starts snickering loudly at his side.

  Ol’ Harrison glares at Webb for a long moment as if trying torturously to come to some conclusion in his mind. Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, he starts to smile, showing his teeth in an amused grin. He looks around the room, chuckling. “Weddings and babies,” he mutters, raising his open palm in Webb’s direction. “Shit!” he groans, shaking his head from side to side and staring down at the floor. “Weddings and babies!” he mutters.

  “You’ll have to excuse Ol’ Harrison, Webb,” Buzz notes with a grin. “The only photography he’s been acquainted with are the pictures on the top of the hardware store calendar. Ain’t that right, Bob?”

  But Ol’ Harrison stares bitterly at the table before him, his face fixed in a resentful scowl.

  “I saw some of his pictures—Martha showed me ’em!” Harley volunteers, looking about the room.

  Webb turns, surprised. “You did?” he asks quietly.

  “Yeah!” Harley says looking up at him, his eyes flashing maliciously, lips pressed together in a smirk. “And I thought they stank like shit!” he announces.

  Webb stands mortified, a cold wave of embarrassment washing over him.

  “Harley, you shut up!” Daddy Jack explodes. “You ain’t so smart! You don’t know nothin’ about photography!”

  “Yeah, like you do!” Harley retorts with a laughing sneer.

  “You shut up! You ain’t so smart!” Jack shouts, his face reddening with his anger. “Damn smartass is what he is!” he says, looking around the room at all the other men.

  “Yep, that’s right, Jack, that’s what he is,” George observes, frowning down at the insolent, disdainful teenager with grim disapproval. “He’s a goddamned smartass is what he is.” He studies Harley decisively as he raises his beer to his lips. “Needs a week out here on my farm. We’d shape ’im up perty good, I bet,” he says, taking a short drink, then turning suddenly to Webb. “Hey Webb, I don’t think you ever met Ol’ Uncle Zeb yet, did ya?”

  Webb stares at George for a moment, stunned. “Oh no, no I haven’t,” he stutters, attempting a polite smile.

  “Well, come on then,” George commands, leading him over to a corner of the room. “Gotta meet Uncle Zeb, Nia’s great-uncle,” he says, bending to the sleeping elderly man in the chair behind Buzz.

  “Gonna have to wake ’im up!” Russ cries.

  “Sure we’ll wake ’im up,” George chuckles as Webb stands behind him, looking dumbly down at the old man sitting hunched over, still clutching the cane aslant across his lap, his shrunken head bowed and bobbing in his slumber, his mouth hanging open, every so often emitting a strangled sigh from deep in his chest.

  “Hey! Zeb!” George cries, reaching to shake the old man’s shoulder. “ZEB!” he shouts, then looks back at Webb. “He’s a bit hard of hearing—eighty-six this June,” he explains.

  “Eighty-six!” Webb notes with a lame smile.

  “Hope I look that good when I’m eighty-six!” Buzz says, turning around in his chair to observe the awakening of Zeb.

  “Zeb! Hey! Zeb!” George shouts into the old man’s ear, shaking him so that his head lurches and bounces from side to side. His eyelids flutter and he compresses his lips, his jaw working actively as if he’s chewing on something.

  “What… what’s that?” the old man whispers sleepily, blinking down at his feet with a disoriented gaze.

  “I got somebody here for ya to meet,” George shouts, carefully articulating each word. “The young fella who’s gonna marry Nia!”

  Zeb’s gaze floats slowly up to encounter George, observing him skeptically, his head cocked to the side. “Nia?” he inquires faintly.

  “No, no,” George shouts. “The fella who’s gonna marry Nia—Nia’s boyfriend!”

  “Oh,” Zeb murmurs, his trembling hand reaching up to stroke his chin absent-mindedly. His jaw starts working again, causing the prominent network of veins at each side of his head to jump in and out at the temples. “Oh,” he rasps, “Ed!”

  “Mm-hm, yeah, that’s fine!” George laughs, smiling over at Webb. “Webb, meet Nia’s great-uncle Zeb!” he pronounces, raising his hand. “Eighty-six!”

  Webb bends uneasily down to peer into the old man’s face. “Hello!” he shouts self-consciously.

  The old man’s eyes squint determinedly behind his thick, yellow-tinged glasses. As his head cranes over on his thin, wrinkled neck, Webb notes that tiny flakes of what appear to be dried egg yolk are caked around the corners of his mouth and on his withered lips.

  “Hello there!” Zeb whispers, his voice gaining strength as he speaks. “How’re y’doin’, Eddie?”

  Webb glances over puzzledly at George, who nods and smiles at him, shrugging his shoulders.

  “I’m doing just fine, Uncle Zeb!” Webb shouts, grinning desperately.

  “I’m eighty-six,” Zeb announces huskily after a brief pause, his fingers moving busily along his cane.

  “So I hear!” Webb notes.

  “You’re damn right I can hear!” the old man grumbles indignantly, frowning with a hurt expression.

  “No,” Webb explains quickly. “I said, ‘So I hear,’ Uncle Zeb!” he says, pointing to himself. The old man looks down at his feet briefly, as if in contemplation. He brings his head up slowly to encounter Webb again.

  “How old are you, neighbour?” Zeb asks falteringly.

  “I’m thirty-four,” Webb replies.

  Zeb sucks his lips in for a moment, then licks them. “Shake my hand, neighbour,” he says faintly, offering him his hand tremblingly with a hint of a smile. “I’m eighty-six!”

  “Sure!” Webb smiles good-naturedly, shifting his beer and reaching out to clasp the bony hand, noting its frailty and strange clamminess.

  “I’m almost three times older ’n you, neighbour,” Zeb observes, steadily increasing the pressure of his grip.

  “Almost!” Webb replies cheerfully, attempting to pull his hand away, finding it welded in the old man’s grasp.

  “Not bad, eh?” Zeb mumbles, studying Webb’s face intently as his fingers tighten around Webb’s hand. A sharp, searing pain shoots up to Webb’s elbow, and he restrains himself from shouting aloud.

  “Not a bad grip, huh?” Zeb asks, staring deep into Webb’s eyes. “For an eighty-six-year-old man?”

  With a sudden jerk Webb pulls his hand from the hard and dry grasp. He shakes his fingers frantically in the air, the pain in them tingling and vibrating hotly. Tears begin to start in his eyes as he steps back from the old man, laughter erupting in the room around him.

  “Ol’ Zeb’s did it again!” cries one of the voices. The old man’s head slowly sinks down as he drifts back into slumber with a faint smile on his lips, opening and closing his prize thumb and forefinger positioned on his lap for display.

  Come All Ye Young Lovers (III)

  “So he says, ‘Are you comin’ into town with me or not?’ And I said, ‘No sir, I am NOT comin’ into town with you,’ and he says, �
��Well, why not?’ and I said, ‘Just because you all of a sudden wanna go into town don’t mean that I suddenly wanna go into town with you, and another thing, if you’re gonna spend that much time with Lloyd Brickley drinkin’ after work you can just as well go marry Lloyd Brickley as pretendin’ to have some kind of marriage with me. ‘Whyn’t you go get married to Lloyd Brickley?’ That’s what I said to him,” says Bess Armstrong, leaning forth from her seat, addressing the other women emphatically.

  As Mona sits amidst Bess’s rather dubious audience, she looks at Bess Armstrong and sees superimposed over the grown mature body of Bess Armstrong the young, seven-year-old body of Bess Armstrong from the one-room schoolhouse they had both gone to out on the fifth line; sees her wiping her nose with the handkerchief as she sat in torn and patched and slightly dirty clothes, her fat, squat little body perched at the old-fashioned school desk with the seat attached to the desk itself and with the little hole at the upper right-hand corner for the ink bottle.

  She sees Bess in the schoolyard at recess in the springtime, as she cuddled her little doll with one eye and with half the hair on her head missing, as she stood with Gayle Warner, another little girl even fatter and squatter. Mona sees the other kids in a semi-circle around Bess Armstrong and Gayle Warner at the morning recess when the trunks of the trees and the uncountable multitudes of blades of green grass still shone with the morning dew—the two pudgy girls solicitously taking care of the baby doll with one eye and half a head of hair, and the other children mocking them.

  Mona herself always somehow existed between the group of children who mocked the tiny minority of untouchables in the schoolyard and the ones who were mocked by them. At times Mona walked to school with Gayle, offering companionship to the slow girl, who was seemingly unable to speak much. Yet a sweetness in Mona, a tenderness in her gloried in simple kindness even though they seldom exchanged words. When they did, she was never entirely sure that Gayle understood the words she was saying, and Mona for her part could only guess at the frightened murmurs that escaped the lips of Gayle as she shuffled down the gravel sideroad, by the black wire fences confining the orderly soybean fields. Mona’s solicitousness to Gayle was like the care and solicitousness both Gayle and Bess showed to the tattered and oddly ghoulish doll.