Toby took a seat at the counter. Although it was late morning, he didn't have an appetite. He ordered an orange juice, coffee and a sinker. After the waitress took his order he reached over for today's edition of The Garrisonville Gazette. What little appetite he had vanished when he read the big bold headline: SAVAGE ATTACK! Beneath it was a photo of the duffer he'd clobbered the night before, it about 30 years old. Richard Wrung, Toby read, was in the hospital, fighting for his life.
Toby learned that his victim was much beloved in this community: a veteran, a member of the American Legion, a White Knight, a Rotarian. He lived on Parchman Road with his granddaughter, Isabel.
Toby thought, "So, her name is Isabel. And she lives there."
"Can you believe it," rasped Molly, his waitress. Usually her voice was cadential. Today it was vinegar and rust.
She continued, spitting furious, "I hope the cops don't nab him! No, sir! Then the bastard gets his day in court with some fast-talking shyster and a sob sister jury to let him off because society was mean to him when he was in diapers! No, sir! I want the White Knights to track this ess oh bee down and string him up!" On a brown Bakelite radio near the register a defiant country ballad spun its web, singing about Old Glory flying at the court house.
Toby offered, "What if... what if the, um, attacker didn't mean it? What if it was all some sort of crazy and horrible error..."
Molly held a tight scrawny fist to Toby's nose and sputtered, "Save me the soft soap, stranger! Let the bastard hang and let him choke on his vomit!" Her pretty face was twisted up in hate. And love. Love for her town and its citizens, for Richard Wrung.
Toby stammered, "I d-didn't mean to, I mean... I'm just an idiot, I guess." His face was red and he stared down at his donut as he mustered a mea culpa of sorts, "I hope they catch the bastard! And soon! Hanging is too good for him! They oughta set him on fire is what they ought to do!" Molly nodded and patted him on the hand.
Toby forced himself to eat his donut and polish off the beverages. He was going to need strength today.
Upon rising at dawn, he'd taken the rifle out of the closet and washed the blood off it in the bathtub. His clothes, pants and shirt, even socks, had splatters of Richard Wrung. He bundled them in a paper bag, took that around back to an incinerator, squirted lighter fluid and set the bag ablaze.
Back in his room, he washed his shoes. And dissembled the rifle. The stock he covered in lighter fluid and tossed it into the smoldering ashes of his clothes. It roared in flame as he looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching. If they did, and if they questioned him, he'd say it was nothing, just some garbage.
The metal parts he handled with gloves. After washing the pieces of all possible prints, he tossed them in a tote bag and popped that in his trunk. Then a long drive north to a hiking trail. With all his might he flung the remaining parts, one by one, over this and that cliff. He listened as metal bounced on boulder, each ting a mallet to a xylophone.
It was Friday afternoon. Toby had the weekend ahead of him. Monday he was to report to his first day of work, 8:00. He groaned at the prospect.
He drove into town, parked, hoofed a half-block to the bank, Garrisonville National, opened an account. Then to Garrisonville Realty. As long as he was going to live here, a house was in order.
One factor working in his favor was the simple fact that the police had no clear description of him. Isabel did see a figure running down the driveway and up the road. Yet, despite the brilliant moonlight, she didn't catch a good glimpse of him. All the police had to work with was "a man."
Walking to the realty office, Toby passed men along the way, in groups of three or four, all declaring what they'd like to do to Richard Wrung's attacker. Sweat beaded Toby's brow. He felt as if he were neon orange, walking about town in his BVDs. A mere day ago, Toby viewed himself as a vital and bold young man, an adult in an adult world, a good citizen. Now? "I'm a common Peeping Tom! A pervert! And an assailant! A sick, tiny, twisted individual! On society's fringes! A stunted and strangled psycho! A fiend." Nauseated, he scurried down the street, the sunlight blinding, beating, merciless. He ducked into a pharmacy shop, sat at the counter and ordered a cherry Coke, an exotic elixir that a proper pharmacy can concoct by adding a few drops of cherry extract to a glass of Coca-Cola. The icy soda soothed his stomach.
Toby reasoned that this old guy would, surely, survive, probably thrive, and have a great yarn he can tell over and over. Suddenly, he had an appetite.
Buoyed, Toby ordered a cheeseburger deluxe and was halfway through it when he was inspired to write a poem. He grabbed some napkins from a dispenser, borrowed a pen from the waitress. He jotted down:
Queen Anne's lace!
A sighed embrace!
A side of slaw.
Tasty, Miss Cavanaugh!
Atlas Bombay barbecue: ensue!
Caspar burned good wood;
A sickly hue of ghostly blue.
A view, pearly.
A crew, surly!
Richmond? Rich men? A stew
Askew, Richie Rich!
Rigid me. And exemplary you!
In writing these words, Toby found a strength, a serenity, a wisdom: a perspective.
Everything will work out. Richard Wrung will be fine. I'll buy a house, commence work, and I'll meet Isabel Wrung, court her. And while doing so, find ways to somehow make things right with her gramps. "Ah, the magic of a cherry Coke," mused our hero, holding the glinting glass up, marveling at it. His stomach was a tempest becalmed; his mind was mildly air-conditioned and slightly fizzy.
"The nectar of the gods!" He drained the last of the soda, placed the glass down and, palms on Formica, Toby shook his head and suppressed a burp. (That burp sizzled his nostrils and scented said nostrils with a cherry aroma, further dazzling Toby's frazzled psyche.)
He began to daydream about Isabel. What he wouldn't give to go swimming with her in a solitary mountain lake! The water so cold it burned, it tantalized! Scandalized! All alone, just the two of them and the majesty of Mother Nature! Maybe he could even cajole her to...
As his mind rambled, it skipped ahead many years: he and Isabel married, kids running around their cabin on a snowy December night, a fireplace roaring, Toby with an iron in hand, shifting the burning logs, embers bursting. Clearing his throat, he ventures, "Remember way back when, that night when there was some sort of prowler outside of Richard's bungalow?" He'd explain the entire mess to her, walk her through it step by step, beginning with spotting her wood-paneled Ford station wagon, exactly like the one the Maynard's had owned, and as a lark deciding to follow it. A lark! A strange meadowlark! Ha ha! It all began innocently enough. "Consider what I'm about to tell you to be a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, boxed in a conundrum, gift-wrapped in paradox and then quietly placed on the upper shelf in a closet on the second floor of a house in another neighborhood. Listen and you will understand that I've done nothing bad, even the so-called attack was just my military training kicking in, an instinct, almost..." Doe-eyed, Isabel listened, occasionally nodded, considered, weighed to the ounce and said, "Yes, I think I..."
Toby's idyll was shattered when a man popped his head in the pharmacy's door and hollered, "Hey! Zeke!"
A man who seemed to be the manager (bow tie, white shirt, potbelly, mustache) looked up and said, "Yay-iss?"
"Didja hear? Richard Wrung died in the hospital! He's dead! Despite all their efforts, he's dead! Dead!" In unison, everyone in the drugstore gasped, everyone including Toby Mailman.
The sound of 18 human beings of various ages, all sharply inhaling at the same moment, produced a distinct ethereal chord, never heard before or since.