Please Enjoy These Guest Submissions from Aaron Waite...
The Misadventures of Walt and Clancy
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“I don't see what's so great about Cedar Springs. Just seems like some Podunk Nowheresville to me.” Clancy Willoughby sat in the passenger's seat of her father's sedan and scowled at the screen of her phone as her fingers deftly swiped from one disappointing image to another. Like most fifteen year olds Clancy wasn't too keen on uprooting her life and moving to a strange new town right in the middle of her high school career, and as she virtually navigated her soon-to-be-hometown via Google Maps, she was finding herself even less enthused.
“It's Cedar Falls, not Springs.” Clancy's father, Walt Willoughby, said, unfazed by his daughter's negativity. “By the way, you think you might put that thing down for a minute or two of our six-hour drive?”
Clancy huffed and set her jaw askew and made her most hassled-looking face. Rather than talk to her father, she simply stared resentfully out the car window and watched as acres upon acres of green, low-lying, shrubby-looking crops--which Clancy assumed were potatoes--whizzed by the window. On the shallow horizon she could see the silhouettes of a couple hundred wind turbines set against the amateurish backdrop that passed for a sunset. As she stared at the windfarm the clockwise-spinning blades moved like the many arms of a menacing horde of giants, all of them warning her to go back from whence she'd come.
Clancy was plain, but could be quite pretty had she any inclination to be; her goal was rather the opposite though. Clancy hoped to go utterly unnoticed. She wore glasses, but not the geek-chic style that were so popular, nor were they so out of fashion as to be notable, rather they were oval-shaped, silver wireframe spectacles. Her clothes often featured a color palette heavy in grays, beige, and muted earthtones, never a graphic tee or fancy belt and certainly never a skirt or dress. She had perfect features, but not exceptional or interesting ones. She had a smattering of dark brown freckles across her nose which complimented her chocolate irises. She did her best to make her large sharp eyes appear dull and average by never opening them more than halfway. Clancy never, ever wore makeup and even resented the natural rouge of her lips. She was pale, like her father, but wore it better than he. Clancy never sought attention; she felt secure in her identity and required no reputation to define it. Rather, she was defined by her thoughts and her actions, which required no audience.
“Would it kill you to talk to me?” Walt implored after a few more minutes of awkward silence.
Clancy finally took her eyes off of the farms and looked at her father. “What should we discuss? My being shuttled off, against my will, to some wine-sipping soap opera town in the middle of who-the-fuck-cares?”
“Hey, language.” Her father admonished weakly.
Clancy continued as if he hadn't interjected. “Or should we discuss the fascinated world of potato farming-- Oh I know, let's take a tour.” She reveled in her sarcasm. “Let's take a farm tour. A potato-fucking-farm tour.”
“Clancy Willoughby, I mean it, you watch your mouth.” He was more stern now and very much like the fathers he'd seen on TV as a boy, and after he spoke there was a brief quiet. He chose his next words with a deep inhalation through his teeth and an exhaled sigh through his nose. “Now listen, I get it, you don't want to move, but you know exactly why we have to.”
“We wouldn't have to if you hadn't started dating that slut Haley, or whatever her name was.” Clancy--once again staring absently out the window--retorted.
“Hannah,” he corrected her, “was a fine lady, and what you did to her was uncalled for.”
“What I did?” she snapped, affronted. “I told you not to date her.”
“Clancy, you're going to have to learn to take responsibility for your own actions.” Walt said in his most fatherly tone. “Now it has been seven years since your mother died and I know that I haven't exactly provided you with a 'normal' life since then, but I am allowed to date women and be happy.”
“Oh, and I don't make you happy?” She let out a heavy, deliberate sigh.
“Of course you do, Love, but you know full well that that is different.” He thought for a moment, searching for the right thing to say, trying to be the parent that his wife had so easily been. Finally he said, “Listen, I saw a sign for a motel a few miles down the road. It's likely to be pretty secluded; let's stop in and have some fun, huh? Whad'ya say?” He took his eyes off the road briefly to cast a pleading smile at his daughter.
“Yeah all right, but this doesn't make up for anything.” Clancy responded reluctantly. Then she once again picked up her phone and immediately began to dance her fingers across the screen.
Despite the reluctance in his daughter's concession, ever the optimist, Walt took the outcome as a victory. He took his right hand from the steering wheel and patted it firmly on Clancy's left thigh, just above the knee, and squeezed lovingly. “You know,” he said with a barely audible but ever-growing note of nostalgia, “You're more like her everyday.” Then he replaced his hand on the wheel.
“Who, Mom?” Clancy said with jaded malaise.
“Yeah.” He said, and then was silent for a handful of heartbeats. “I mean,” he continued, “even when you're angsty—I mean remember, we weren't much older than you when we met. So I knew her, and I remember her like it was yesterday, in her petulant days.”
“Mom was petulant?” Clancy remarked with absent-minded incredulity; she looked briefly up from her phone and then quickly back down.
“Quite a bit sometimes, and, I mean, who isn't at least a little petulant as a teenager?” Walt's eye's glossed over with images seen only by him, and memories played back in the foreground while driving became an absent-minded chore. “Your mother,” he began to wax nostalgic, “was graceful and petulant, beautiful and terrible, she was harmony, cacophony, and sweet lyrics. She was better than me. In every way. Including being a parent.”
Clancy looked up at her father with something like thoughtfulness, “You're not awful.” she conceded.
“But for her it was effortless. She just always knew the right thing to do, even when it came to my...” He paused long as if to chose his next word carefully, though he had used the same word a hundred times to describe the same thing. The pause might have once been a conscious effort to choose the most appropriate and delicate euphemism, but now it hung in the space between only as a force of habit, a tradition, a platitude. He knew the word he would inevitably insert, but found it so embarrassingly inadequate that the pause served only as obligatory penitence. “Interests.” he said finally.
“Dad, we can't fight what we are.” Clancy parroted, repeating the words of comfort that Walt had so many times soothed her with.
“I know that, Love, but I always wonder if I'm doing this right. She never would have.” He noticed a dark blur on the horizon and suddenly broke free from his wistful trance. “Gah, enough of this weepy bullshit, this is supposed to be a fun trip.”
“Hey Dad, language.” She admonished facetiously.
“Look.” He gestured with his left index finger, without taking his hand off of the wheel. “I think that's the place up there.”
At the sight of the sleepy little motel on the horizon Clancy was also freed from any sort of second hand trance with which her father's pining had enraptured her. As she stared toward the dusty horizon she felt the backs of her teeth begin to itch and her stomach tightened. Each breath she drew became more excited than the last, more erratic. Now she was overcome by a more familiar trance than that of nostalgia.
“Nice.” Clancy practically salivated. “Do you want top or bottom?” She asked, her wide eyes betraying their usual low-lidded guise.
“I think I'll let you decide about that, Dear.” In that moment Walt could have been Ward Cleaver, excepting of course that Ward had no exuberant daughters, but only two eager boys.
“Top,” she bit hard on her bottom lip with her left canine until she tasted a dash of coppery warmth on the tip of her tongue. “Always top.”
Walt, amused by his daughter's rapaciousness, simply smiled wide and chuckled like proud “Father of the Year”.
Walt was tall and thin and older than his years. His skin was light, but hard, rugged, and reddish in places. His face had a classic, friendly, and trustworthy look about it. He almost always had a shadow of close, dark, stubble that accentuated his straight jaw. His brunette, almost burgundy, hair was grayish at the temples. Though short and usually parted at the side, his hair was often mussed, not from untidiness, but rather from the unruly nature of Scottish blood.
Walt was a fan of conservative clothes similar to those seen in black and white television shows; he could often be caught wearing a plaid shirt neatly tucked into a high waisted pair of slacks; he even sported the occasional sweater vest.
Perhaps his strangest feature though, stranger even then his 1950's demeanor and dress, was his hands. Walt's hands were spotted with an unusual number of scars; some of them cuts, others gashes or gouges, some burns from both fire and chemicals. You wouldn't notice right away, but on closer examination there was hardly an inch of his slender hands that wasn't marred by some scar or pock. A less obvious feature was the many complimentary scars he kept hidden under his Mayberry attire.
Walt was a fan of conservative clothes similar to those seen in black and white television shows; he could often be caught wearing a plaid shirt neatly tucked into a high waisted pair of slacks; he even sported the occasional sweater vest.
Perhaps his strangest feature though, stranger even then his 1950's demeanor and dress, was his hands. Walt's hands were spotted with an unusual number of scars; some of them cuts, others gashes or gouges, some burns from both fire and chemicals. You wouldn't notice right away, but on closer examination there was hardly an inch of his slender hands that wasn't marred by some scar or pock. A less obvious feature was the many complimentary scars he kept hidden under his Mayberry attire.
After a moment they were pulling into the dusty dirt parking lot of a vintage, one-story, Bates-esque motel—however in broad daylight and without the rain. There was only one other car in the parking lot and, considering it's proximity to the check-in office, Walt made the reasonable assumption that it belonged to the clerk.
A cloud of sickly-beige soot filled the lot as if the dusty, sallow earth had not be disturbed in decades. The dust hung in the air, swirling in queasy pendulations, weightless for its lack of moisture. Then, like a chalky spirit through the fog, a man appeared. He was oldish, about sixty, Clancy supposed (fifty, her father). As the sandy fog dissipated Clancy could make out the man's features a bit more clearly. His face was craggy and drawn hard by time and tribulation; his skin, a leathery gamboge, as if tainted by the fruitless soil he breathed. His hands were deformed by arthritis, or toil, or both. His hair was a sporadic gray-green moss, fuzzy with age and neglect.
“Hi.” Clancy said loudly and sweetly to the man. Despite her tone, he started, not having seen her open the door; Clancy was unintentionally stealthy in her excitement and had exited the car with a fluidity akin to osmosis. In addition to her newfound stealth she was otherwise transformed. From inside the car to out she'd gone from lackadaisical and mild-mannered to a caricature of youthful ebullience. If Walt was Ward Cleaver, then Clancy had just become the Beav.
“Well, my oh my, you startled me.” the clerk said while waving beige soot away from his eyes.
“I'm sorry Mister, I'm just real excited!” Clancy exclaimed with old fashioned exuberance.
“What's got you so excited?” he asked mirroring the innocence in her voice.
“I just really like your motel.” Clancy's normally small mouth was stretched into an enormous, charming smile. “It's swell!” she added.
Walt lowered his window and said, “Don't mind her, she gets like this whenever we stay at a place.”
“So then y'all are plannin' on stayin' then, huh?” the man asked eagerly in a dialect that conjured the word “hick” in Clancy's brain.
“We sure are!” Clancy declared.
“Ha,” her father laughed, “We sure are.”
Walt popped the trunk as he opened the driver's-side door. Though the motel clerk's appearance may have been a bit worse for the wear, his pep was hindered neither by antiquity nor by arduous existence; before Walt could tell him not to, he was reaching into the open trunk in a fevered attack of hospitality.
“K'ai gitcher bags?”
“That won't be necess--” Walt's tongue evacuated the words with emergency as he moved quickly toward the rear of the car.
“Don't be silly,” the craggy clerk cut him off, “It's m'job to make you—Ow!” He leaped away from the sedan's trunk as if stung by an unseen enemy. The leathery attendant looked at his right index finger and then sucked at the crimson slit. He removed his finger from his mouth to say, “Whutchy'all got in there?” He peered into the trunk.
Walt nervously slipped between the old man and the trunk of the sedan and pulled a shovel from beneath some ambiguous fabric and tarpaulin, an edging shovel. The shovel was visibly silver at the tip of it's square edge, deliberately sharpened butcher's-knife sharp. Walt held it nonchalantly with the glistening edge inches from his casual expression. “We like to garden,” Walt explained with obligatory good humor, “hard soil.” he qualified, all the while a Ward Cleaver attitude.
As the clerk regained his composure, Clancy slunk toward the car's posterior. She reached into the mysterious trunk and extricated, with some effort, a thing that resembled a pointy kind of sledge hammer. “I'm Clancy, what's your name?” Clancy spoke saccharin, though her eyes belied the confection in her voice.
“I'm Walter.” The clerk said amiably and perhaps with a twinge of apprehension. “Y'all got any suitcases or bags or anything? Or just gardening tools?”
“Really, it's just the tools.” Walt smiled winningly, and his brow furrowed upward in embarrassed admission.
“Now y'all must be serious, cuz I never seen a gardener with one of them.” Walter gestured to the implement held confidently in Clancy's petite, but able hands. “'at some kinda pickax?”
“No sir,” Clancy responded. “It's a spike maul.” she enthused, doe-eyed.
“Now what on earth do you use that for?” Walter seemed perplexed, jovial, and genuinely curious.
“Why, let me show you.” The syrup in Clancy's tone was venom in her stare. Walter looked to Walt who nodded back with a reassuring prideful smile.
Before Walter could return his eyes to Clancy, she'd raised the maul over her shoulder with adroit form. Without hesitation, and with an expression of unadulterated glee, Clancy arched the hammer diagonally downward. Walter caught on much to late to the trajectory of the rail hammer and before he could register terror the unforgiving steel was rending the cap from his knee. With one fell swoop Clancy tore into Walter's leg joint with expert precision, and with the point of the maul she sent his arthritic patella rocketing away in a spray of crimson mist. The bone-disc landed distantly with a gritty thud, followed shortly by the nearby, dull crump of Walter's limp body. Only now did Walt look disapprovingly at his daughter.
“I thought you said top?” Walt scolded.
“Sorry,” Clancy wriggled with excitement. “I just—ooh, I just had to do it.”
“Well, Love, you need to learn to live with the decisions you make and honor your agreements.” he lectured.
“Come on, we're outside in broad daylight I couldn't risk him running.” she retorted with teen attitude. “I had to knock him out, so it was either the kneecap or the head, and a headshot might've killed him.” She shrugged her shoulders and upturned her palms to emphasize the obviousness of her point. “I went for the knee and it worked, he passed out in like a second.”
Walt pursed his lips and shook his head, but then, after a moment, nodded. “You're right, you're always right,” he marveled. “You really are your mother's daughter.” Then, feeling a familiar tepid itch Walt ran his hand along his stubbly jawline and examined the blood on his fingers. After a moment of quiet deliberation and revelry he said, “But fair is fair, help me move him inside, and when he wakes up, I get an arm.”
