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Today’s post is a character study that I did many years ago. It really is a short story. There is only one character, and he is talking to someone who’s unidentified. I wanted to write a character study that revealed the true nature of a person and a town all in one. I hope you will feel about Stanley P. Roach as I do. If you get a chance, drop me a note about him.

Stanley P. Roach

You’re new here to Poplar, so there’s someone I should warn you about. See her over there at the end of the counter? She’s the one in the dark green coat, kinda skinny, brown hair cut short on the sides. You wouldn’t think to look at her, but she brought down one of the biggest school educated men in this town. She’s a true daughter of Eve or my name ain’t Stanley P. Roach. It all started four. . .no it must be five years ago because it was the year the Helmsley barn burned and that was right after old lady Griswold died. Bad fire. Lost fifty good head of Holsteins. Not just heifers either, but good solid milkers. Some of the best  stock ever seen in this part of the country. Anyway, that’s when they say she started doin’ it, but you never know.

I didn’t listen much when the first stories started goin’ round. I have to see things with my own brown eyes. You know I don’t tell stories, but like I said you’re new here so you should know. A man gotta know about the evil around him. Don’t ya agree? You bein’ single and all and she not bein’ bad looker. Jessie — that’s her name — is just evil. The man she ruined was the superintendent of schools. We use to pay him big money to sit in his office and look at papers all day. Now she’s Max Neil’s half sister, and you’ll learn the Neils were never no good. Always scratchin’ and scrapin’ around making buck wherever way they can. She’s just as bad as the rest of them. She thought she could be better and went off down to the big city and got herself an education, paid her own way through bein’ a waitress. All the education she ever needed for what she did she inherited from her mother and her mother before that right back to Eve. Blood will always tell as it says in the Bible.

It was winter when she got back to town. She took a job over at Effie’s cafe. That was before the flood got the place and Effie put that plastic bag over her head. I never saw anything like of it. Effie was as purple as could be when we found her. Cold as stone and purple as a lilac bloom. You know, she still looked kinda purple in her coffin too. Darnest thing I’ve ever seen. I always thought that the undertakers could fix up most anything, but not poor Effie. Anyway that little thing over there didn’t do a half bad job bringin’ coffee, but she never was as friendly as Celia. You could slap Jessie’s butt, but you could tell she was headed for trouble by just the way she looked at you then. Like a bitch in heat she was. You could just smell trouble a comin’. I remember tellin’ Ed that one day. You know Ed Larsen? He and his brother own the auto junkyard out on there west of town on county thirty-six. Gettin’ back to the Neils girl, she worked there all that winter and through part of that summer.

Then old lady Coleman died. She’d been the superintendent of school’s secretary ever since I was a kid or that’s the way it seemed. She must of been well into her eighties or nineties when she died. She was a mean old bitty, scared the you know what out of everybody. Anyway Bill, that’s the guy the Neils girl got in trouble, needed himself a new secretary. The board hired her. It should have gone to Emma who had worked in the superintendent’s office for years, but there were some kinda new state law that it had to go to whoever did best on some test or somethin’. It don’t make no sense the way the government keeps pokin’ its nose in other people’s business. It’s like I always say, ‘Live and let live.’ They ought to do like the rest of us and keep their big noses out of everybody else’s business. You know, if they’d just let Emma have that job, none of this would ever have happened. Bill would never have climbed into her bed, not even with a snoot full. No man is that crazy.  Emma’s too ugly.

Anyway, since you’re new around here I’d better tell you about Bill too. You wouldn’t want to go gettin’ friendly with him either now. He’s a big man over six feet tall, but skinny. It’s too bad. You know I always wanted to be six feet tall when I was growin’ up. I never made it. Got to five eight and stopped growin’. At least I out weigh Bill. I bet I got sixty pounds on him if I’ve got an ounce. There’s some justice in the world. Well, Bill he was born and brought up over Maple Township way. You know where that is? It’s just past the state garage out on highway forty. It runs all the way over there to Mud Lake then. Good family Bill’s . . . I guess. At least I never heard nothin’ about them. Went to the big state university and then got a job working in a city for a school out west some place. Pretty ambitious man ’cause he went back to school in the evenings and during the summer until he got all they had to give him.

Seems funny callin’ somebody a doctor who can’t fix nobody up. Oh, did you know the clinic got a new woman doctor, and she ain’t just there to work on the women folk? Charlie White was showin’ me where she’d sewed him up the other week after he got cut hayin’. I don’t think she’s as good a sewer as old Doc Thorson and that ain’t real strange since it’s women’s work a sewin’ things. The world gets stranger everyday. We gotta go back to good old fashion Christian values where everyone knows their place and stays there. Clean out the jails with the good solid old eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth laws. Somethin’ with real teeth in ’em.

Anyway, Bill worked for that school system for a few years and then Ralph who was superintendent here retired. Darn good man Ralph. Really number one in everything and got himself a Purple Heart in the big one. I missed that. I was Korea. Ralph commanded the VFW post here for years too. Could he drink! To make a long story short, Bill got Ralph’s old job.

Now Bill was married. She was a real pretty little girl. I don’t remember her name and there weren’t no kids ’cause just after they got married she came down with one of them diseases that causes your muscles to go all crazy. If that weren’t enough, she was goin’ down town one day in her wheelchair when old man Henderson hits her with his car. He never was able to see all that well over the steering wheel being he’s so short. He never was much over five feet and then the arthritis bent him over even more. He never saw her. Didn’t even stop. He sure felt bad though . . . got drunk and stayed that way for awhile afterwards. I never could figure out why he didn’t stop ’cause when he hit that wheelchair it must of made an awful noise. If Helen Swanson, she’s one of the Griffith girls, hadn’t seen it watchin’ out her window I don’t know how long that pretty young thing would have laid there in the road. It’s good Helen keeps an eye on things, don’t you think? That accident turned Bill’s wife into a real veggie. Her head turned into a pumpkin, really pretty on the outside but mush inside. Bill had to put her in the nursing home.

Everyday he’d go visit her, and he’d push her all around in her wheelchair. Of course, she didn’t talk or nothin’ after the accident. Bill had enough sense never to take her out where she could bother people. It kinda ruins a man’s supper when you see something like that. You know there’s enough bad things in the world without carting somethin’ like that around out in the open for everybody to see. It’s a good thing they got the nursin’ home. You know what I mean? You could have felt sorry for Bill, but you knew it’s God’s way. We all suffer. We did good by him. We showed him good Christian charity and prayed for him real regular in church. There got to be pain in the world to make you strong. You know that’s what the Bible says. Bill didn’t need stick to with her. He could of divorced her and nobody would have faulted him for that. Hey, she was just a veggie. She’d never know.

Just look at that daughter of Eve over there all contented and munchin’ away on that sandwich. She’s called Jessie, but you know what that name really stands for Jezebel. If ever there was a Jezebel, she’s it. Old lady Neils named at least one of her kids right. Now she’s a different story. Like I said, she went and got herself an education. She was married too. Some guy she met down there at school. Some say he died and others say he run off, but when she got here he weren’t with her. She worked her wiles on Bill real quick. Just look at her. She’s good lookin’ enough, but she ain’t got much of a figure. Makes you wonder what she did to get him. She started working for him in the fall and by early the next summer you could see she had a basketball under her belt. Big and bold as day she was about it. Like she was proud of it or somethin’. I saw it. There ain’t no shame in that woman.

Darnest thing, but Bill spoke right up and said it was his. It didn’t make any difference though. It still had to be punished. It might even be worse since he was kinda in charge of teachin’ our kids. Can’t have someone that soiled teaching kids. Anyway, some of us got together and we cut up a couple of old garden hoses. One came from my neighbor Ben Wilson. You know he must have got ten years use out of that hose. I wonder how he does it? My hoses always rot out after a couple of years.

One night we went and got Bill. He didn’t put up no fuss. We stripped him right down to his shorts and got to work. There’s a soul-cleaning sound, the thwack of hose hitting bare flesh. That thwack, thwack, thwack gives you goose bumps all over and gets you feelin’ good. Don’t get me wrong, it ain’t a job I enjoy, but I always do feel a lot better afterward. He never made a sound until he passed out and then it was just a little groan. You know we’re real careful, real professional like every time we do it. No hitting above the shoulders or on the shorts. You know we don’t get no real pleasure out of doin’ it. It sorta like I used to tell the kids before I beat them. There ain’t no fun in beatin’ ’em. It’s like the Lord said. Somebody gotta throw the first stone.

Well, there’s the story that goes with her. You know, Bill ain’t turned out half bad. He lost his job of course. Works like the Neils now. Still goes sees his wife and he supports Jessie’s kid.

You know he’s a darn fool. He could of kept his mouth shut. No body would have believed Jessie. Oh, they would have believed her, but she is trash. What’s trash for, if not to have little fun with every now and then? Bill was just too darn honest.

Now you know all about her. Take care. We wouldn’t want to visit you.