26 Absurdities of Tragic Proportions

by Matthew C Woodruff

  The next week, Ms. Porter invited Susan for dinner and a sleep over, via an excited invite orally repeated by Jennifer. Normally, Mrs. Bowers would not allow Susan to go under any circumstances but having just been notified by the home that Mr. Bower’s mother had a stroke and they were needed at once. As they had no regular sitter and there being no one else able to look after Susan, Mrs. Bowers reluctantly acquiesced, making the best of a worst-case scenario.

  Mrs. Bowers consoled herself with the thought, ‘What could one time possibly hurt?’ But as her mother-in-law needed more and more, Mrs. Bowers was pulled from home more often and had to rely on Ms. Porter’s willingness to look after Susan when there was no other option available. Susan and Jennifer became fast friends. Ms. Porter was thrilled to have Susan’s polite, respectful and well-mannered influence for Jennifer. But as Mrs. Bowers feared, Jennifer also influenced Susan.

  Jennifer was eight, and her mother was often distracted with work. When she wanted her way, she knew exactly how to get it. If pleading and reasoning didn’t work on her mother, throwing a tantrum often did.

  “But only do it as a last resort.” Jennifer wisely advised Susan. “Fall down on the floor and hold your breath. You might want to kick and scream if that doesn’t work. Even your mother will give in. Mine does, but don’t push it too far or you will just end up getting punished.”

  Susan heard all this with disbelief. She couldn’t imagine throwing a tantrum in front of her mother. She couldn’t imagine her mother ever giving in to anything. Even when she witnessed it work on Jennifer’s mother one evening, she couldn’t imagine doing it herself.

  But then one evening Jennifer and her mom invited Susan to go with them to the movies even though it was a school night. Mrs. Bowers had just got back home in time to pick Susan up from school, and Mr. Bower had called to apologize and say he had to work late for his boss. Mrs. Bowers was tired and disheveled. Something that could almost never be said of her.

  “Absolutely not.” Mrs. Bowers said, when Susan carefully broached the subject over supper of heated up leftovers, more evidence of Mrs. Bower’s spiral as she never served leftovers.

  “Why?” Susan demanded with a particular agitated tone. “I want to go.”

  “What you are going to do, young lady, is finish your supper, clean up the table and then go to your room and do your homework.” Mrs. Bowers answered, as close to an angry tone as she ever had. If Susan had picked up on the clues of exactly how close Mrs. Bowers was to losing her temper, she would have saved her fight for another issue. An epic grounding was sure to follow, but as Susan had never seen her mother lose her temper, she didn’t know the warning signs.

  Susan scraped her chair back in a huff, threw herself onto the divan next to the wall and proceeded to throw a tantrum like the Bower house had never seen or imagined. There was arm flailing, there were tears, there was yelling. Mrs. Bowers was momentarily stunned.

  “Susan!” She demanded. “What on Earth? Stop that at once!”

  But poor Susan couldn’t stop. Unknown at the time, Susan had been born with an enlarged heart, something not usually seen without special scans. Poor Susan’s fit had turned real, with the flailing and coughing and gasping for air.

  It was only pure luck, and the quiet and ordinary events of Susan’s home life that had ensured her survival this long. Too much excitement would be the end of poor Susan.

  And this tantrum would be her first and last.

  The End.

  Titus

  The backhanded smack sent her flying onto the frayed couch of the small three-room apartment on the second floor of an aging four story in Dublin’s Finglas neighborhood. Since his earliest years, Titus had witnessed many such scenes between his parents. Titus’ father had a particular taste for Jamesons (or any whiskey he could get, really). When he wasn’t able to drink he was easily enraged. With that kind of father and a mousy terrified mother, Titus’ eleven years have been filled with fear and trepidation. As Titus has been growing older, some of that fear has been coalescing into anger and determination. Any love or respect he once had for his old man has long since dissipated. His mother though he loved even more and longed to be able to protect and support her.

  But what can an eleven-year-old boy do?

  He knew his father would soon storm out of the apartment in a rage and slamming the door behind him mutter curses all the way down the stairs, presumably in search of a drink. Titus had seen it many times. His mother would barricade herself in the small, molding bathroom, crying until she finally settled down enough to come out. Then, it seems she would remember Titus and calling him over to her, she would sit him on her lap on the old couch and try to console his fear.

  “He’s not a bad man,” she would say. Titus never had any reply. Titus was too young to understand the pressures of adults, or why his mother didn’t leave his father.

  He turned and went into the small kitchen to find something for supper, to quell his growing hunger hearing the front door slam just as Titus knew it would, with his father’s departure. Pulling the chair over and reaching up to the top of the refrigerator, he found that the loaf of store bought bread was a little moldy, but usable. There was one tin of sardines in the little cabinet next to the sink. He trimmed the bread and made himself and his mother a sandwich, served on one of the small plates that somehow managed to survive the many fights between his parents. When his father was really, really mad, he took to smashing things in the apartment, one-time smashing plate after plate on the floor. He almost put one of his mother’s eyes out with a shard of flying porcelain and leaving her brow bloody. That time Titus cowered in the corner watching, terrified. His father stayed away for three days after that. Titus had wished he would never come back.

  Titus quick survey of the kitchen showed little else to eat, and he knew he needed to go out. Titus had taken to scouring the neighborhood for things to take and bring home. Vegetables and fruit from vendors or from the market on the corner, loaves of bread cooling on window sills or from the baker’s display. One time even he scored a whole ham when the butcher’s assistant left the back door open to the alley that he quickly ran home with. They ate for many days on that. Neither his mother nor his father asked where these things came from.

  Occasionally his father found work on the docks or loading and unloading trucks and would come home drunk from the pub with money in his pocket. Titus would sneak into his parent’s room and rummage through his inebriated father’s pockets, taking the coin he could find and then purchase much needed things for him and his mother. But that had not happened for a while.

  Titus gobbled down his sandwich, left the other on the table covered with a cloth, and slipped out of the apartment while his mother was still in the bathroom. Recently, he had been having some trouble with a group of older boys in the area and was being particularly cautious. Titus was good at being cautious. The fact that he hadn’t been caught pilfering yet was a testament to his ability. He was patient, he could wait for just the right moment to grab and run. Had he been from a higher class, with more refined tastes, he might have made an excellent cat burglar.

  Dublin in the early seventies was not a particularly pleasant place. The Blacks and Browns patrolling the streets with guns out in the open, the IRA blowing things up seemingly at random, the unemployment, the poverty and hunger. A boy with Titus’s disadvantages seemingly had no hope for a bright future.

  Titus carefully made his way out of his neighborhood, ever watchful for trouble and scampered into a more prosperous part of the city. He had overheard a show on the telly about a row of shops he wanted to check out that weren’t too far away, hoping for better pickings. As he made his way past the cleaner, better kept row houses and small parks, he also noticed several ‘An Post’ trucks making deliveries of small packages to people’s homes. Titus imagined all sorts of things in those brown, paper wrapped boxes. He imagined people sending other people puddings, and boxes of fruit or new clothes and shoes, thing
s Titus deserved but had no one to provide.

  Titus was ever careful to avoid attention while scouting out the new row of shops he found, though people noticed an unkempt boy in ratty looking, ill-fitting clothes milling about, particularly shopkeepers who always kept a keen eye out for such things. Titus saw several discouraging looks made his way while he tried to project a look of innocent wonder. These shops and these people were the most prosperous Titus had encountered so far, but he had no use for jewelry or fancy imported candles and the shops that did look promising had one or more keen eyed watchers meant to discourage such activities as was in Titus’ mind.

  He decided to check out the alley behind the shops to see of any of these fancy places threw needful things out or if anyone had left a door open. But Titus wasn’t the first or only one with the same thought, and this alley already had a gleaner who looked threateningly at Titus. Discouraged, Titus turned for his own neighborhood and his usual haunts.

  On the way back he saw an interesting thing happen. He noticed the group of older boys he had been accosted by earlier in the week skulking through the yards down the street. Titus quickly hid behind some cans hoping they hadn’t seen him, in order to watch. While several of the boys had positioned themselves apparently as look outs, one boy ran up onto a porch and snatched a medium sized brown package from in front of the door and skedaddled off down the road with his friends following. Titus was awed by the audacity and watched intently to see if chase was to be given by an enraged homeowner, or if a mean dog was to be released to do its fearsome savagery. None was forthcoming. Not a peep was heard from the house that was just pilfered or for that matter from any of the neighbors.

  A whole new world of larceny opened up before Titus.

  Titus became very good at the porch snatch and grab, as he thought of it. He went out early in the morning before his mother was up to watch a series selected porches. When he saw both man and woman leave, he’d keep a mental note of a possibly daytime empty home. If he later encountered one of the many ‘An Post’ trucks crisscrossing the city making deliveries he would know if a porch was safe to run up to and make the snatch.

  The trick was finding a safe place to open the pilfered package, away from the prying eyes of suspicious coppers or other adults. He became well acquainted with the back alleyways and hidden drives of Belfast, where he’d open his ill-gotten gifts. He was also very wary of the group of older boys and stayed under their radar as much as possible. Though he never got much in the way of food, except for the occasional baked good, Titus acquired many useful things for himself and his mother, sweaters and coats, slippers and shoes, some mostly fit, some did not. What he couldn’t use he left in the alleys for others to find. One time in a particularly heavy box he found a complete set of Mark Twain books.

  Come mid-July of 1972 Titus was on school break, so he had ample time to do his hunting and things at home were looking well provisioned. Titus father hadn’t been home in several weeks, and Titus’ mother seemed almost content.

  On that July 21st, Titus rose early, pulled on a relatively new suit of clothes he ‘found’ last week, complete with tie and set out into his Belfast neighborhood. Titus learned that the better he dressed, the less suspicious he seemed to people. He had even revisited that row of upscale shops and was able to pilfer several great things without notice.

  After a particularly sparse day of hunting, Titus found himself near the middle of Belfast at around 2 in the afternoon. The day seemed unusually busy and Titus was giving up hope of any good things today. Just as he turned a corner, he witnessed a couple of men in a plain looking car drop a brown paper wrapped package off in front of a small, busy pub, before it sped away down the street. Titus quickly ran over and snatching up the package, ran around the corner and into the alley. The little package was really quite heavy, so Titus was hopeful for good things.

  That day in Belfast more than 130 people were seriously injured in a series of IRA bombings that would later be known as ‘Bloody Friday.’ Though unaccredited, Titus had saved the many people in the pub and other passerbys from serious injury or death.

  Titus had opened the package deep in the back of an alley, away from pedestrians and crowded shops.

  When that particular bomb blew up that day, only one small boy was killed by it and not all of his bits and pieces were never recovered or identified.

  The End.

  Una

  It was about three in the afternoon when my door flew open and the dame walked in. I was dozin’ off at my desk after having maybe one too many at lunch. Cases had been kinda sparse lately, see what I mean? She was a nice lookin’ one in her way but was obviously very upset.

  “Mr. Nolan,” she inquired.

  “Yeahs,” I said, tryin’ to straighten my tie, and find out where my cigar had fallen to. “Whose askin?”

  “I need to hire you. What do you charge?” At least it was right down to business. Now usually with the pretty ones I like to take my time. Maybe see where it can go, see what I mean? I let her stand there, wringing her hands while I looked her up and down. Nice hat, nice shoes, but not the best. In my line of work you get an eye for these things. Not too bad off I figures, but not really flush either.

  “Depends,” I says. “Am I gonna get shot at,” I asks, spotting my cigar under the desk. It must have rolled off onto the floor when I was snoozing.

  “Shot at? Do people usually shoot at you, Mr. Nolan, Mr. Nolan?” She said as I had disappeared under my desk to retrieve my cigar.

  “No, not usually, “I answered around my recovered cigar, straightening up. I don’t smoke, ‘em, just like to chew on the end. “But it has happened. I don’t like it.” I added.

  The dame paused for a second. “My Una is missing,” she said quietly. “May I sit?”

  I motioned to the only other chair in the office, a none too sturdy uncomfortable wooden job I picked up off the sidewalk. I don’t want anyone too comfortable. She took off her raincoat and laid it over the back of the chair. It was still wet from the rain we’ve been having for the last week and then sat precariously on the edge of the chair.

  “Your what is missing,” I asked with raised eyebrows, not sure I heard her all the way.

  “My daughter, her name is Una? I haven’t seen her in three days.” She stopped to wipe a tear from one eye.

  A simple missing person then, I thought. Probably ran off with a lover or boyfriend. Not too bad a gig, all in all. Better than, say a cheating spouse I figures, see what I mean?

  “How old is your daughter, Mrs….?” I asked.

  “I’m Natalie Hayle, Mr. Nolan, and my daughter will be eight years old next week.”

  “Eight?” I verified, thinking and chewing, furiously now. This is gonna be harder than I thought. I don’t wanna get involved with any child snatching gangs, if there was one operating here. I hadn’t heard a peep. That too was worrying, see what I mean?

  “Have you been to the police?” I asked. “I have a buddy downtown, helps me out once in a while, let me find his card.” I said rummaging through all the crap on my desk. I found it near the bottom of a pile, with some kind of stain on it, ketchup maybe. “Detective John Mallory at the 7th. A mick… er an Irishman, but pretty solid for all of that.” I finished proffering the card to her.

  She looked at the card in my outreached hand but didn’t take it.

  “At the 7th?” she inquired.

  “The 7th precinct, it’s down on, well 7th Ave,” I said with a wave of my hand toward the window.

  “The police can’t help me,” she paused, “or won’t help me,” she finished sadly. “Do you know how many children go missing in this city every year, Mr. Nolan?”

  Unfortunately, I did. Kids were snatched for a variety of reasons, few of them pleasant to think about.

  “No ransom demands?” I asked knowing the answer already from experience. Few are ever kidnapped for something as simple as money.

  “No, nothing, why, do you think she was
kidnapped?” she asked breathlessly, putting one hand to her mouth.

  “Probably not, Mrs. Nolan. Not if you haven’t heard anything already.” I hate missing kid cases. They hardly ever end well. I did some more searching of my desk and came up with a pen and paper to take notes. Guess I was gonna take the case after all, see what I mean?

  “Tell me the story from the beginning, where you live, where, Una is it? goes to school and what happened out of the ordinary in the days leading up to her disappearance. Today is Thursday, so say from last weekend.”

  She started hesitantly, but with a few small probing questions, I got to hear the whole story. Una was almost eight, but was exceptionally talented and bright, apparently. She was very slight in build, even for an eight-year-old Mrs. Hayle told me, even often being mistaken for a boy of four or five. There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary in their lives in the past week.

  “Could she have run away?” I asked, “or is there a Mr. Hayle who might have taken her?”