Bob was unusually tall with a face that was a cross between bat and a sparsely shaven man. He had small round eyes that rocked back and forth steadily in their sockets, keeping time with his frame that swayed rhythmically as he spoke. He cast an odd contour in a pair of boot-cut Wranglers that seemed a couple of sizes too small and his thin legs split away from a rear end that bubbled out aggressively. He wore a faded pearl-snapped western shirt tucked in with difficulty and a pair of beat up logger’s cork boots that accented the deficiency in the length of his jeans. He always had a ‘Warm Springs’ baseball cap on, turned backwards that appeared to be spitting out his straight tobacco-brown hair.
It was hard not to stare at Candy’s cotton-soft face nestled in the damaged bleached waves of her curls. She applied a blusher very liberally to her overripe cheeks that might have been called ‘candy apple evening’. She brushed an abundant indigo mascara around her melancholy eyes. They always looked to be on the outskirts of tears and seemed to be paddling above her uneven lips that never quite covered teeth that pushed against them so violently that they gave her a childlike lisp.
They were the couple who shared the uppermost rooms in an older brick building remanisant of a flophouse. It was let out by the week in the ‘historic’ section of the inland Northwestern town I had ended up in most recently. I met them both one evening, shortly after I arrived and ventured away from my no-frills rental which included a twin bed and hot plate, to get some air. I was perched on the cast- iron fire escape landing across from their door and was looking through the maze of tangled power lines into the tavern backdoors and alleyways below. Candy told me how they had met each other while staying in the State hospital. “I was there because sometimes I get sooo depressed and Bob was there because something real bad happened to him.” That was all that was said about their pasts and Bob proudly mentioned that Candy liked to give him hot baths late at night.
I began to explore the town and noticed an older man dressed in a black suit, clutching a bible. Everyday he would be pacing below a free standing, ornate four faced clock on Main Street. He would step away from the curb, almost into on- coming traffic, waving his arms in swooping gestures as though he were leading an orchestra. He chanted in a sing-song voice that ascended from baritone to high crescendo. “Hellfire and damnation to the sinner and the heathen!” He was in the same location most afternoons with his passionate brimstone messages. Drivers swerved and pedestrians ignored and avoided the ‘precher’ or some would laugh, elbowing one another while they made a wide parabola shaped detour around him.
It was always amazing to me when I would enter the ‘hotel’ foyer where I was staying after a night out. A clock repair shop was located on the ground floor below the rooms and it seemed as though chimes, bells and birds were always assaulting the hour. I also began to notice an odd noise filtering through my door, sometimes after midnight. It seemed to be the singular, unintelligible pathetic cry of a man’s voice followed by eerie masculine grumblings and ending in imploring desperate mumbles. They seemed to emanate from the room across the hall.
Late one afternoon when I was having a cigarette on the fire escape, I questioned Bob and Candy about the noises I heard at night. “I know who that is, he used to stay at Warm Springs too!” Bob blurted out a bit too loudly, then seemed embarrassed and was quiet. “Oh, that’s the preacher talking to himself” Candy said softly. “You mean the one I see on Main Street?” I asked. There was a longer than average silence. Candy was looking down and didn’t raise her head and when she answered me, it was in a low and reverent tone. “Yes, he lives downstairs and its sooo sad, so very sad.” She paused again, then continued haltingly with heartbroken inflections. “When he was younger, he used to drink… he ran over his own little boy in the driveway.” When she finally looked up at me, her blue-fringed eyes were magnified and moist.
cabinetwriter 