THAT'S LIFE
By
Liam Mac Givern
Howdy Neighbor! Come on in. New to this neck of the woods aren't cha?
Well if it's hardware your looking for I can tell you, you come to right place.
We've got everything from a- to -z as they say.
If it's advice or chit chat you want we've got some of that too.
Course lots of folks here about like to chat. and that's ok as long as you don't tell em to much.
But then ya can carry that to far too. How you ask well a good example would be
my dear friend and lifetime mentor, Wastrel M.Squanderal. He used to say:
"Never tell the yokels your real name." Now that is a bit much. However
I understood why he felt this way. I used to call him Wes, myself.
At least I thought that was the obvious was the reason for his admonition until after he
had departed this world for that great con game
in the sky. This how I learned different.
While going through his things, my eye fell upon a small tattered notebook.
It lay there staring glassily up at me. I quickly picked it up and taking
my clean handkerchief carefully flicked the dust off of it.
After satisfying myself it was clean, I put the darn thing back in my
jacket pocket and sealed the velcro. Can't be too careful, after all no one
wants to lose an eye. Why do I have an artificial eye you ask?
That my friend is another story. Anyway
back to the notebook.
The first page of notes consisted of one word "HOMINYVILLE." That
was the name of a small town to the west of the one I grew up in. The next
page wasted no time getting down to the nitty gritty.
I began reading his notes, with a vague premonition of disaster sitting on
my shoulder. I continued, despite the little rascal's penchant for swinging
his feet and hitting my collar bone on the back swing.
The notebook said: "Her hair dark and glossy like a raven's wing.
Brown eyes that looked as deep as man's soul."
That and other disgusting stuff. Meanderings common to a man whose
brain has been turned to mush by that neuroses called love. I couldn't
believe that this milk toast of the mind had been written by the Wes I
knew. Worse still, that he had carried it around with him for years.
But who knows, maybe it was just to remind himself to guard against that
sort of thing in the future. Surely it held no power of sentiment over my
hard bitten and practical idol. Anyway I digress. Wes was as far as I am
concerned, a man among men. He had come to Bartonville shortly after my
mother's death. I was a young man of seventeen years.
I had just finished high school. My mother's death had left me footloose
and fancy free as the saying goes. Where was my father you ask?
Well join the party. I've been asking that same question all my life.
Mother used to say he was a traveling man.
That's a small town back country way of saying salesman.
She would mumble something about an accident and let it go at that.
I accepted that as an explanation for most of my life, believed it, and
started thinking of him as dead. Killed in an accident.
I tried to find out more but mom's lips were sealed.
She kind of acted like it hurt her to think of it.
So naturally I tried not to bring it up.
"But curiosity is a like a nagging woman." As Wes would say,
"It drives a man to do things he normally wouldn't do."
Suppose it was kinda natural of a boy to wonder about his paw
though. Anyhow, every once in a while the subject would rise to the top of
my mind like a gas bubble in a swamp or something.
I would worry it like a dog with an old dug up bone.
After a bit I would come to the conclusion that it had a poor taste and no
nourishment. So I would bury it again. Until the next time.
Well one of those times it popped up I was a little older.
Oh I guess maybe fourteen or fifteen. I must have been listening to some of
those jokes that went around for a while about the farmer's daughter and
the traveling salesman. Suddenly, it rises up and slaps me inside my head,
that maybe, just maybe, mom and.... Naw I tell myself. My maw wouldn't do
that. Really quick like, I buried that thought pretty deep.
Mom was so straight laced, I mean church every Sunday. Sometimes even
during the week. Still, she used to say "Church is for sinners" when I
asked why we had to go there so much. I told her I didn't sin that much.
She told me that scripture about "All have fallen short etc.".
Then she said something about sins of the fathers being handed down.
Well I never did like to accept hand me downs, specially from someone
I had never even seen.
Anyway about that time Sally Sue Jenkins had come into focus in my life.
I reckon I was too busy plannin my own hand me downs, to worry about
someone else's I didn't want. That's another story though.
Then came the day my life changed forever. It was a Sunday morning
I woke up early feeling pretty good.
Saturday night had been great. While I still hadn't created
any real hand me downs with Sally Sue I had at least managed to lay the
foundation for greater things to come, at least I thought so.
But anyway I was feelin good so I fixed maw some breakfast.
Then I put her plate on a tray and carried it up to her room.
Well I tell you, that is one breakfast that didn't get ate,
not hers or mine. I knocked on the door and when she didn't answer.
I got worried and opened it anyway and went on
in.
There was my mother, still in the bed, with covers up under her chin. I
looked at her and I knew something was wrong.
Nobody is all pale like that. Well I tell you.
I sat that tray down and ran all the two blocks to Doc Johnson's house.
Why I didn't use the phone, I'll never know. But I ran. Doc came
back with me a mite slower. He kept sayin he was going as fast as he could.
I reckon he was. We had to walk, as his women folk had his car at church.
They went early and took some things. "Getting ready for the bake sale", he
said. "Told em I'd need that car", he mumbled.
Well anyway the long and the short of it was that Maw "had gone to glory"
as the saying goes. Sometime during the night, the Doc said.
Well, I was one shook up young man. I mean to tell you.
There lay the remains of my family. It had always been me and maw, there
weren't no others. I already told you about my paw, all I had ever known
or figured out. If my maw had a family, it was her secret.
Now it would always be.
Maw had a small notebook too.
Hers was full of writing but I hadn't yet been able to bring myself to read
it. Well what with reading some of Wes's book and missing maw something
terrible. (I reckon Wes's traveling on made the old ache come back
strong.) When I got back to my room, finally after all these years, I
opened her book and began to read. At first I was amused.
It seemed that women folk get just as addelpated when the love sickness
strikes as men do. But just like women, they have to be a little different
about it. Then after I read it for awhile my amusement turned to shock and
surprise. As I read maw's description of the man who I soon realized must
be my father. Indeed she had been the farmers daughter. He had been a
traveling man. I was, I am, the result of one of those indiscretions that
people don't like to mention. Seems she had dearly loved him.
It also seemed that he cared for her. But by the time
she found out about me, he had moved on.
Well a few years later he had come back,
but then maw just like a woman, had run him off.
But before he left she made him promise never to let me know he was even
alive. Don't understand how she could make that go with the stuff she
always talked about tellin the truth. But I guess Wes knew what he was
saying when he said: "Boy there's truth and there's truth. Everybody has
their own. "Yep that twern't far off the mark, especially for him.
But I am getting to that.
First off let me say that it took several hours of reading first maw's
little book and then Wes's to figure it all out.
But it seems that he was my paw. It says he was in jail over in
the next state for a while that's why he didn't come back right away.
Something about product fraud, I know that part ain't true. Wes never
sold a product. He just sort of talked people out of what he wanted.
Then it seems he loved maw so much that when she ran him off he stayed
away. From time to time he would send a little money.
She never used it and just kept it that old tin box she had.
No one even knew about it till after she was gone.
He also kept tabs on us an that is why he showed up a few weeks
after her death. I'd stayed with him for several years and true to his
word, he never told me he was my paw. In fact he never even told me his
real name. I figured that made me a local yokel. So I thought if ya are one, be one.
That is why I am here.
Took the money from that tin box and made a down payment on this hardware store.
Screws have fewer turns in em than most folks and they don't wander
off, if you know what I mean.
Sure I wish things had been different, but I got to know both my maw
and paw on their own so to speak.
Even if I don't know his real name. A name is only a label, a
brand kind of. I knew both of them, and I loved them.
They cared for me, each according to their own lights.
Could ask for more, but wouldn't get it.
Them hand me downs I was aiming to make with Sally Sue turned into a little
more than I bargained for. We are to be married soon.
Still don't quite know how she talked me into
askin her. But now it seems like a good idea.
Reckon I'll run this store, and them hand me downs I wanted will
be coming around, saying: "Daddy pick me up."
Looking back there are a lot of things I don't quite how they happened.
Probably never will know, but I guess that's life.
Anyway it seems to be the way things went for me. At least so far.
But who knows for sure about tomorrow?
Oh next time you come in remind me and I'll tell you about that glass eye.
Like I said that's another story. If you want to hear it that is.
You have a good day too.
Don't forget your hammer an nails. You need a tool belt, so you can keep em
with you. That way you'll always be able to make a place to hang your hat.
Hurry back soon. Coffee's always on.
I guess I'll dust the shelves.
At any rate thanks for reading it, stop back soon never know what you'll find. It could be fun.
