26 Absurdities of Tragic Proportions

by Matthew C Woodruff

  Well not this time. I marched into the old Mr’s study, I didn’t even knock now mind you, and when he looked up at me from his tying his infernal fishing flys, (what a crazy thing for a growd man to do). He was first surprised then mad.

  “What is the meaning of this”? he bellowed.

  It was then I noticed the half-filled whiskey decanter and empty glass by his elbow. I have to say I was momentarily taken back with wondering if this shouldn’t wait till morning. But No, I thought, Christmas is in two days’ time and our poor little Ernest deserved better.

  “There aint be one gif under that tree for our poor little Ernest.” I said.

  That stopped the old coot for a second. Not what he was expecting I’m guessing.

  “What?” he asked with a dangerous glint in his eyes. I clutched my cross a little tighter and I says clear as I could, “Ernest deserves gifts on Christmastime Morn too just like your others.”

  He wasn’t no stupid man, he got right to understanding what I was saying.

  “Ernest isn’t mine,” he stammered. “He is in my foster care that is all. His poor mother was a distant friend of the family, that’s all.”

  Sounded rehearsed to me, and that ratty look tells me different, but I didn’t say so. “That’s as it is, but what about Christmastime morning then? What about Ernest’s gifts?” I insisted

  He was clearly flummoxed. “I didn’t even think…” something on my face must have told him I wasn’t a believer. “I’m sorry I didn’t think of it.” He just sat there looking a little dejected. Maybe there was a glimmer of hope for this man. “I give him a warm bed, and good food, and, well…you don’t cook my favorites I noticed.”

  “That boy need someone to love him,” I said.

  “Bah, it’s too late now, no one is going into town before Christmas” and with that he turned back to his flies.

  It wasn’t too late, I saw plenty of things up in that attic our poor little Ernest would love. I wasn’t askin no permission either, the good Lord forgive me. I myself had already knitted him a sweater, the poor thing always looked so cold, but I had nothing nice to wrap it in. It was jus then I knew nothing would ever be better for our poor, little Ernest, but in my heart, I knew there was one thing our poor little Ernest needed.

  When Christmastime Morning came, Ernest was straight down the stairs and into the parlor and even the other two didn’t harass him too much on this day. They was all laughing and jolly. The other two tore through the gifts, but our poor little Ernest just sat on the edge of the sofa, with his legs swinging with hope and dejection battling across his face. The old Mr. was down there too, and when one or the other started to be nasty to Ernest, a quick look from him put an end to it, for that I blessed him.

  Finally, they tossed his presents back to him and our poor little Ernest looked on with what I could only say was disbelief. He had a pile of presents like he had never, ever seen or expected. They wasn’t all wrapped up fancy like the others, but they was his. I’d never seen our poor little Ernest so happy either ‘fore or after. If I had been worried about the Old Mr.’s reaction when he saw where our poor little Ernest’s gifts had come from, I needn’t had bothered. As he left the Parlor for the breakfast room, he looked back at me and gave me a little nod of his head. But I knew the time had come.

  A couple of weeks later, when they all were back to their usual mean and nasty selves, it happened. As our poor little Ernest sat alone at the big table, I brung him his dessert fore that night, A big fresh juicy peach, I had saved out specially for him. Ernest loved peaches, and they could be hard to come by in the winter, fresh ones anyways.

  Our poor little Ernest left us that night. But they never did say how it happened, ‘cept he choked on his peach. I assume the old Mr. thought one of his offspring had done it and wanted it kept shushed up. It was never spoke about again.

  Father come closer to my bed. It’s time I confessed and sought God’s forgiveness, afore I leave this world for my judgment. I poisoned our poor little Ernest’s peach that night. A soul as pure and as good as his has no place on this cruel mean earth. Things were never gonna be better for that poor boy, so I sent him back to God.

  The End.

  Fanny

  Fanny dreaded what was about to happen. It had been promised, or threatened depending on your perspective, that Fanny was to be sent to the country for the summer. New Orleans was just fine to Fanny, she loved the hustle and bustle, loved her house and her room, loved her pet cat, Mabel, who she rescued from the gutter two years ago. She loved her best friends, Sally-Ann and Jacob, who lived down the street. Loved the parks and the water, and well, everything.

  “Why?” she screamed at her Mama and Papa, tears threatening to overwhelm her quivering face, when they told her with smiles on their faces. It was about the worse thing Fanny could imagine. Why did her parents hate her so? Life was so unfair!

  Her parents imagined many different types of reactions from Fanny, most of them included happiness and joy, maybe indifference, but not these tears and shouting. Momentarily they doubted their decision. Fanny’s parents were having, a few marital difficulties this year, things a young girl Fanny’s age didn’t need to worry about. They had felt it would be best if Fanny went to visit her cousins for the summer while they rekindled their love, if they could. They loved Fanny with all their hearts, as parents usually do, so this tantrum was not sitting well with the guilt they were already feeling.

  Had Fanny known they were already feeling uncomfortably guilty about sending her away, she may have been able to win the day with some judicious pleading, crying and recriminations, i.e. “You hate me or you wouldn’t make me go!” kinds of things, and maybe a couple of “please, please’s”. Alas, after the initial outburst, Fanny could only sniffle and look dejected, with her head down and her hands being wrung.

  “Oh honey”, this was her father kneeling down and lifting her chin up with one finger, “you love your cousins. Remember how much fun you had with them last year when they came for Christmas?”

  Sniffle, “yes” in that little Fanny voice. Mostly that was because here, Fanny was queen of the house and got to show them all her great things and her great city. Who can say what it’ll be like there, she thought.

  “And don’t you love Aunt Mable too? You named the cat after her, after all,” her mother reasoned. Actually at the time, Fanny had momentarily forgot her Aunt’s name was also Mable, plus she was trying to name the cat Marble after the swirl of colors, but it didn’t come out right. Fanny did love Aunt Mable, but thought she smelled funny.

  “She smells funny,” Fanny sniffed.

  Her mother smiled, holding back a laugh. “Now you know it’s just the ointment she uses for her arthritis. Don’t you want to go to see your cousins and aunt and uncle and you’ll do all sorts of fun things, we promise.”

  Fanny was still unconvinced but was at least peering up at her parent’s faces now from under her golden curls, just a twinkle of a lone tear caught in her lashes.

  “I’ll tell you what,” her father said to her with a wink, his mustachioed lips turning up in a smile, “we will talk on the phone every day and if you really don’t like it, you can come home immediately. How about that eh?”

  So finally, Fanny concurred and that is how she ended up at her uncle’s in the country for the summer, with her cousins.

  And then tragedy struck.

  Just a week after Fanny’s arrival at the farm, Fanny’s cousin Jimmy fell down and broke his leg. The three cousins, Fanny, Melissa and the aforementioned Jimmy were running through a nearby field when Fanny slipped and fell, stirring up a swarm of…

  “Bees!” Fanny screamed, hopping up and running willy-nilly back toward the house, the peaked roof of which they could just see over the hill. Jimmy hated bees, being stung two summers ago multiple times, so he was particularly panicked. When Jimmy turned to escape the field and what was sure to be a huge swarm of nasty bees, he twisted his ankle, fell on a rock and broke
his leg.

  Turns out it wasn’t bees Fanny had stirred up, but crickets, which in her defense, could hop pretty high when disturbed. They didn’t sting or do much of anything else except make noise. How was a city girl to know?

  Aunt Mable came a-running at all the commotion, rubbing her hands on her substantial apron, stray locks of hair streaming behind her after escaping her bun, tsk, tsking the whole way.

  After the doctor fixed Jimmy up in a cast, which Fanny thought was cool looking, mostly because they were able to write on it, the three cousins were flummoxed about what to do. Jimmy couldn’t go outside, being ensconced on the living room sofa for at least for a week the doc said. And Jimmy had promised, promised Fanny to show her the swamp with the gators and the sasquash. Now it’ll be forever before she could go! This summer, which was gonna be so great, now is ruined! Life is so unfair, Fanny desperately felt. Forgetting that just a little more than a week gone by she would have done anything other than come here in the first place.

  Aunt Mable came to the rescue. She came into the living room where all three kids dejectedly sat, bemoaning the unfairness of life, though for different reasons, with a big, enormous pile of brightly colored boxes in her large arms.

  “Here you go sweeties, this will keep you having fun,” She said.

  “What is it” Fanny asked, with her eyes big and round looking at the pile now sitting on the coffee table. (Now here’s a strange thing for a young girl, just as a side point, Fanny had never seen a puzzle before, but I don’t know why.)

  “Why they’re puzzles, girl,” Aunt Mable said, the same time Melissa said, “puzzles, silly!”

  “Here, clear the rest of this stuff off the table”, She told the kids, with her big arm sweeping clear the usual things coffee tables collect, magazines and what not, onto the floor. All three kids squealed with the unusualness of it all. “You three do them right here” and upon smelling something maybe just getting a tad overcooked in the kitchen, said to her own two as she turned to go, “Show your little cousin how to do ‘em”.

  Turns out, Fanny loved the puzzles. The kids put together puzzles day and night, hardly wanting to stop to eat or sleep. “I gotta pee, don’t do anymore till I get back” one or the other of them would be heard to exclaim now and again while running or hobbling out of the livingroom.

  Here was a large ship on the ocean, here was a red barn in a field with wild flowers, and here was a range of snowcapped mountains, probably from somewhere far away, Fanny imagined. In fact, the kid’s imaginations ran away that week of summer, with all the exotic places and things pictured on those puzzles.

  However, no matter how much you like puzzles and no matter your age it is hard to stay interested after about a week. Fortunately, when the doc came back, he declared Jimmy could be up and about if he used the crutches, and was careful.

  Finally, the whole world of exploration was back open before the three of them.

  “Now can we go see the gators and the sasquash?” Fanny whispered to Jimmy one evening after supper, while they were alone in the living room. For this is all Fanny was thinking about, in her secret places. Imagine the story she will have to tell Sally-Ann and Jacob about the gator and the sasquash. They will be so jealous!

  “I don’t know” Jimmy said with uncertainty lining his face. It might be hard on crutches he was thinking and the doc said not to get the leg wet, even though the swamp wasn’t more than two feet deep in most places, and to be honest he never had seen a gator, never mind a sasquatch, frogs and leeches mostly. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Every child in history that ever was or ever will be knows the meaning of the words “We’ll have to wait and see,” it means no. Again, the unfairness of life struck Fanny to the core. Her lips quivered and she fought back tears. She wanted more than anything ever to see the gators and the sasquash, especially the sasquash.

  “Maybe Missy, (that’s what Fanny called her cousin Melissa) could take me?” A little hope creeping into her voice. But Jimmy remained incredulous.

  “She don’t know where it is” he said, “plus she’s scared of it, all girls are,” he threw in as an extra deterrent.

  “I am not,” Melissa, who had been eavesdropping demanded with hands on hips, little chin jutting out, coming from around the door. “And I do know where it is!”

  “Where then? Missy know it all,” Jimmy demanded, tauntingly.

  Now up to this point, it should be noted that the kids got along remarkably well. But a week cooped up inside had apparently taken its toll. Melissa stuck her tongue out at her brother. “It’s behind the barn, over that way,” she waved uncertainly in some direction.

  “Ha, ha,” Jimmy laughed, making Melissa angry “You’ll never find it.”

  If only he had been right. Strangely, Fanny’s death by leech brought her parents closer together than ever, so that part worked out anyway.

  The End.

  George

  Barbara herself was small, barely reaching a respectable five feet tall, and that with heels on! She was often being mistaken for a young girl even into her twenties. She longed for the day when she might have a little grey in her hair, so people would stop calling her ‘missy’ and ‘young miss’.

  After college, on job interviews she was often first met with silence as people attempted to size her up as it were, no pun intended. In line at the pharmacy or hardware store, she was often overlooked. Those clerks that noticed her at all assumed she was somebody’s daughter. She would often joke with friends, “at the end of the world, if God spares only the children, he may overlook me.” And don’t think getting into a bar or nightclub wasn’t just hysterical.

  Once she became pregnant though, people didn’t know what to think of Barbara’s age. She certainly didn’t look old enough to have a child, but these days, who knows?

  When George was born he was tiny, barely four pounds. Being three weeks early hadn’t helped out any either. Why, he was barely knee-high to a grasshopper, as the saying goes. But he had full sized lungs, and did they work! George was a terribly loud baby, constantly wailing and snotting. The poor thing barely slept, at least that’s how it felt to Barbara and likewise Barbara felt as if she barely slept. She picked him up, he cried. She put him down, he cried. She fed him, he cried. She didn’t feed him, he cried. She bathed him, well you get it, he cried and cried and cried. If any new mother had thoughts of infanticide, it couldn’t have been for a more compelling reason.

  Barbara was ecstatic to flee back to work, like some daily migratory bird.

  There was only one issue. George still cried. He cried when around his father. He cried when around his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. George cried for years, no matter what you did for him, to him or fed him or gave him to play with or to cuddle. Even the cat ran away and the faithful hound was seriously considering its options.

  Finally, when George turned four, it was decided professional help was called for. If ever a family needed a Mary Poppins or a Nanny McPhee, this was it.

  What, or should I say whom, they got instead was Cindy.

  Cindy was a non-descript, marginally intelligent, kind of dull young lady who had just happened to be stood up at the altar. With her hopes of marriage dashed and her parents anxious to have her move on (and out), Cindy became George’s live-in nanny. They call them Au Pair’s today though because, well, the term ‘nanny’ is so old-fashioned. Cindy didn’t actually like children but sensing some last chance of a life away from her parent’s disappointed eyes, she managed to convey at least an interest in the little things. It helped that Barbara was desperate.

  At first, George didn’t take to this newcomer, so he… you guessed it, cried. Morning, noon and night. He cried when Cindy looked at him. He cried when she didn’t. He cried when Cindy dressed him, fed him, took him outside, or laid him down for a nap. Now thankfully Cindy wasn’t too imaginative, or she may have seen a few ways to end this infernal crying and wouldn’t have been the first Au Pair t
o do it.

  After about a year of this, what did happen though, is that Cindy stumbled onto a solution. In a pure move of desperation (it took a lot to get one of Cindy’s limits to feel something as strong as desperation), she invented a game for George.

  Hide and Seek.

  Now you and I both know, Hide and Seek was invented when the first Cavemom forced her Cavekids under the old animal skins in the back of the cave when their Cavedad had that special gleam in his eyes.