Chapter 33

April and M.J. left a little later. The boy was bored, so was I. April felt bad about coming over since my father had just died. She promised to call and left.

Mom left a little later to go to church. She asked if I wanted to go, but I wasn’t up to it. All I was up to was sleeping. Mom was a warrior and went to church. I knew it wasn’t for the sympathy, Mom just felt like it was something she needed to do.

As soon as Mom left, I hit the bed and slept. My cell phone rang twice while I was asleep, waking me. I checked out the caller, saw that it was my soon to be former boss, Brewster, and ended the call. I was sure there was some tragedy at the paper and he needed me there pronto. He would have to take a number.

I got up at noon, knowing Mom would be getting home soon. It was another law in Langford that churches had to get out at noon, or people started sneaking out. There weren’t many good eating places in Langford since it was a small town, and the ones that were open on Sunday were small and filled up quick.

Some went to Poteau, of course, and dared to battle the fierce crowds at their restaurants. But for those who chose to eat in Langford, it was a race that Nascar would be proud of.

It was important stuff, I guess, getting to eat first. I heard one former Baptist preacher was ran out of town because he failed to get his congregation out in time three weeks in a row. They were pleased with his preaching, but the final straw was when they had to get in line behind the Pentecostals one Sunday after a long service.

Having to stand behind them was more than the members of that church could take.

My father used to get highly upset when service ran too long. He believed a good church service consisted of a couple of hymns (old ones, not that contemporary crap, as he called it), an offering, a short sermon and then prayers for the sick and the sinners.

There were at least ten churches in and around Langford, trying to redeem the sinners. Of that ten, there were more Baptist churches than any other. At least five of them were within a ten-mile radius.

The big one was the First Baptist Church. They even televised their services on the local channel. Their church was the nicest, taking up almost a full block on the west side of town.

That was my mother’s church. She loved the place. When the church doors were open, she was there. If somebody needed prayer or help, give her a call, she would jump right on it.

Usually, she fought the Sunday lunch crowd with Dad, but since he’s out of action, Mom returned home. I could tell she had been crying and felt bad, knowing that I should have been there with her. She perked up pretty quick after getting home and went straight to the kitchen.

Then, the first visitors came. Another group dropped by soon after that. Within an hour, our house was filled with old people, most of them members of her church, but some friends and neighbors.

Almost everybody brought food. That's another law in Langford. If somebody you know dies, take some food there fast! Lots of food! We can't afford to have the grieving family die from starvation. Put some food in their belly, that'll make them feel better. The food was mostly of the home-cooked variety! These were not the type of people to sneak off and buy something at the store.

The food soon overflowed the kitchen and made its way into the dining room. I had no idea how we could eat that much food. There were meats, salads, veggies and some desserts that looked like they had been prepared by professional chefs.

Some of the people around here aren’t the most sophisticated, but the women can cook.

I recognized many of the people. They were the same faces I had had seen while growing up.

It was amazing how some of them looked like they had not changed a bit. Others were a lot worse for ware.

Several of them acted like I was still a child by the way they talked to me. They all moved a lot slower, which was fine since I was the same way and a lot younger.

I snuck off in the corner, right next to the food on the dining room table, hoping not to be seen. Some of the old people ignored me, which I was grateful for. Others had to tell me how sorry they were. Then there were a few who tried to talk with me.

Most of them gave up after realizing I wasn’t in a talking mood. I was in an eating mood. I started off with a little plate, but quickly advanced to the larger one. I noticed most of the people had good timing. They waited until my mouth was full then asked me an open-ended question.

I wanted to open my mouth and show them that my mouth was full and maybe gross them out, but knew Mom would hear about that and it would bother her. She didn’t raise her children for them to act like Squiggy, after all..

One of Dad’s better friends, an older man named Larry Manard, corralled me, right before I could dive into the strawberry pie somebody had just placed on the table.

He used to be tall, at least my height, but over the years, Larry started leaning over and could never stop. His back was bent in a really strange position. He looked the way your parents always warned their children about if they slouched too much.

Larry shuffled up to me, making sure the cane hit everything between him and me. He took the shuffling footsteps of an old man. I saw him coming and tried to slip away, but was blocked by two large women. Okay, they were technically fat, but I’m trying to be nice. They did bring food and because of that, they were on my good side.

He pressed his cane down on my foot and I almost yelped in pain. Larry looked down and smiled. He kept coming toward me, pressing me back until I was against the wall. I had forgotten this about Larry. The old geezer liked to be about two inches from a person when he talked to somebody.

Larry was a little lacking in the hair on his head, but made up for it in other places. His eyebrows were long and bushy. There were a few stray hairs poking out of his nostrils, almost reaching his top lip. Those were mild compared to the bush that each ear sported. He was wearing slacks and a dress shirt, complete with suspenders to hold up his pants.

He tried to look at me in the face, but his back and or neck would not permit it. Larry was stuck staring at my chest.

“Sorry about your daddy, boy,” Larry stated. He turned around slowly to see if anybody was near. Since his neck appeared to not be working, his whole body had to turn. His feet made the small choppy steps to allow that.

It took him a good thirty seconds to turn around and then shuffle back around. He was satisfied that nobody was near. Larry had me cornered for a good fifteen minutes, telling me what a great person my father was and how the town would miss him. Every time somebody got close, he waited until they moved on before talking.

Larry stepped back once and looked up at me. His eyes looked rather glassy and bloodshot. I had always heard Larry liked to take a shot every now and then and he looked like at least one was needed, after escaping the insane asylum that was my mother’s house.

“I’ll be,” Larry stated. “There’s my banker!”

He waved and started walking away. I looked to see who he was talking about. There was a man in the middle of the room, looking like he would rather be a million miles away. He was a little shorter than me with an enormous belly. His shirt was a little small and I could see that his belly button was an outie, apparently a rather large one. It looked like a nose or something growing out of there.

Larry’s banker had all his hair combed from the very back to the front, trying to cover up the fact that a good portion of his huge head was bald. It almost looked like he was wearing a helmet. He was the man at the Bank of Langford, from what I understood.

As people approached him, he nodded and tried to smile, failing badly. He didn’t want to be here, but either his wife made him come or it was for public show. I wondered how helpful he would be. I didn’t think he looked like a pleasant person, but knew appearances were sometimes wrong.

I slipped through the crowd and approached him.

“Hello, I’m Michael Hunt,” I said and held out my hand. His hair was really bad. It looked like he used at least one can of hair spray to keep it in place. He looked at me, then my hand, and back at me. He avoided eye contact, looking over my shoulder.

Finally, he tentatively held out his hand. I met his and tried to shake it. It was the dreaded fish handshake. His hand was soft, almost like a woman’s. I am not a strong person, but knew I could have put him on his knees if I’d squeezed hard.

“Allen Woodard,” he finally answered. “Nice to meet you.”

He walked away, leaving me feeling like an idiot.

I’m not much for crowds. I don’t start having panic attacks or anything, just feel uncomfortable. Especially when the crowd consists of a bunch of old people who want to tell me what a fine person my father was and tell me stories about him I have heard many times before.

I waited until nobody is looking and slip off down the hall. There is a line at least six deep of old people waiting for the bathroom. One old woman is obviously in pain, shuffling from one foot to another. The first person in line is an old barber who used to cut my hair when I was a kid. I used to always tell him to cut just a little off the top. His idea of a little off the top was a lot different from mine.

He was tired of waiting. The man started hitting the door with his cane.

“Hurry up in there!” he shouted. “I gotta go!”

I had no desire to know where he needed to go.

“Hold your dang horses,” the restroom user replied. It took a second for me to recognize the voice. It was his wife holding up traffic.

“Geez, Louise!” he added, even though that wasn’t her name, then turned to face the others in line. “It takes the women longer to have a bowel movement than it did for man to walk on the moon!”

All the others in line act like they don’t hear him, or know him. I’m sure his wife appreciated her husband telling everybody that she was making a deposit in the toilet bank.

An old woman spots me. She lives two blocks away and is one of Mom’s best friends. The woman is a frail little lady, one who couldn’t weigh more than seventy pounds. Her name is Margaret Fine. It is impossible for a person to have so many wrinkles. She looks worse than one of those Shar-Pei dogs. You could lose a crumb in one of those babies and never find it again. Her glasses have slipped down to the end of her long nose, about to drop off.

Margaret has a hold on her big purse with both hands, like she expects somebody to try and grab it. Not these people, they’re more concerned with relieving themselves.

“Excuse me, Manny,” she says, then pushes the glasses back up her nose. I’ve been called this my whole life, just like my brother has been called “Michael”. She leans forward to whisper in my ear. “I really need to use the restroom!”

Oh, so that’s why you are standing in line here. Glad you told me. I nod, which is not what she wants to see.

“May I use your mother’s?”

Yeah, you can stink that baby up just as soon as a monkey flies out of my butt. Nobody uses Mom’s bathroom except her. She didn’t even like Dad in there since he was a little wild with his aim and cleaning urine off the walls was not something Mom enjoyed. Mom would rather live with Squiggy than let anybody into her bathroom.

“You’ll have to ask her,” I said. Margaret looks back toward the family room and all the people. Then, she looks at the line and knows her place will be gone.

I slip away, in search of peace and quiet. My mother had her private space in her bathroom. She used to spend way too many hours in there, making sure every thing was perfect. For my dad, his office was his private space.

Nobody was allowed in here, even Mom. My father only whipped me with a stick twice when I was a kid, both times because he caught me in his office without his knowledge. That didn’t stop me, of course, it just made me get more creative. He kept a key under the throw rug in the hall. I kneeled down and discovered it was in the same place, under the same rug.

I looked around to make sure the coast was clear, then grabbed the key, stood up and opened the door. The office had not changed in all these years. Some dust particles were floating in the air, highlighted by the sunlight coming in. His desk was back next to the window, with two chairs in front of them. I always had to sit in the one on the left, Manny got the right one.

This was where he delivered his stern lectures and admonished discipline. We hated to be called into his office, but liked to investigate it. That was a kid thing. Tell them they can’t do something, they are determined to do it. If the old man ever let us prowl around, we would never have wanted to sneak in and find out what secrets were hidden.

There never were any, or he hid them better than we could search. I used to love to sit in his chair. It was a leather one, a swivel chair that was fun to sit and spin in until you got dizzy and almost lost your last meal. It used to seem so big, like it was built for a giant.

The office has panel walls, making it darker and drearier than any other room in the house. That was appropriate, I decide, since it was my father’s lair. There is a bookshelf along one wall, covering the entire wall. My father liked to read and seldom got rid of a book, unless it was one he didn’t like. I recognized some of the titles, but they were literary books, the kind that just didn’t interest me.

There was a couch on the other wall, also leather, that Dad loved to take naps on. There was enough light coming in from the window that I didn’t bother turning any lights on. There was an overhead light, of course, and a desk lamp that was appropriately enough on his desk

I crossed over behind the desk and pulled the chair back. There was a cut in the chair, one that should have been fixed. It would be like a crack in the window now, always getting bigger and bigger. I sat down in the chair. It didn’t seem nearly as big as I remembered. Once I reached my teen years, I gave up sneaking into this room.

The only things on his desk were the lamp and a desk pad, the large kind where you can write down reminders and appointments. I looked at his calendar. It was still set in August. Dad had not written anything for the last two weeks, probably since he had been so sick.

The room smelled like my father, dark and dirty. I don’t know if I started looking through things because I hoped to find some clues for his behavior or from being snoopy. His desk was locked. It never used to be locked, and that intrigued me. Why would he need to lock something that nobody ever wanted to get into?

It used to always have pens and a writing pad. Now, I had to get in his desk and find out why it was locked. I examined the lock and tried to figure out how to pick it, like I knew how to pick a lock. My career as a criminal was short. I egged a teacher’s house one night. That’s it. I felt bad enough the next day to go over and help clean it up. I never told her I was part of the group that did the egging, but I think she knew.

So I had no knowledge on how to pick a lock or do anything like that. I rummaged through the other drawers, finding nothing of interest or a key. I leaned back in the chair and wondered how hard it would be to force the drawer open with a crowbar or something. That was when I saw something shining, just underneath the desk calendar. I raised it and viola!, there was a small key.

The fact that it was that easy never bothered me, then. I got the key, opened the desk and saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were a few pens, scissors, just the typical drawer contents. I was about to shut the drawer and call my snooping a day when I decided to look in his legal pad. The front page was covered with his bad writing, as were many of the other pages.

I started looking through the pages, finding nothing of interest. There were plenty of items about exciting community activities that had come and gone, but no deep, dark secrets. I was frustrated and threw the pad on the desk. When I did, something came out. It was white against the yellow paper. I looked closer and saw that it was the corner of an envelope.

After pulling the envelope out of the pad, I held it up in the light and saw some writing on the front. It was almost too light, something written in pencil. I turned my father’s desk lamp on and placed the envelope under it.

Now, I could read it easily. In my father’s bad handwriting was a name I knew well. Michael was the name on the envelope, just like I feared.

Chapter 34