hen Angie gets in, I tell her I'm going on the Internet for just a short time, seeing as how no one's using it till noon, when Sam Snead, not the real Sam Snead, this one comes in to do research for his book on The Rat Pack.

"You know how to use that thang?" Angie asks me.

"You mean thing. Yes."

I don't like 'surfing', I must admit, I think there's waves coming from the screen and they're zapping my brain either blank or full of ideas like Cheez Whiz is good for you, consumer zapping I call it, except it's the only way I know how to get me a glossy of Donny.

"What's you looking fer?" Angie asks me.

"For. We need decaf made, the Sheriff'll be here in ten minutes, Angie."

I hear her earth shoes scuffling away from me, that girl will never learn how to pick up her feet and I blame her parentage. She's a pretty girl, except for that twang as she thinks she's maybe the next Tanya Tucker.

I find a website just for the family and I find out there's even a littler brother called Jimmy, except his face isn't Donny's. I order an eight by ten of just Donny, wearing an orange and brown shirt with frills and they ask me for a credit card number and I give them Aunt Zelda's, she's okay with that if I pay her back in ten days, I won't put my card number on the Internet because then they send you hardcore porno in the mail.

By the time the Sheriff's arrived for his decaf, I have been told my picture is already on its way at the low price of fifteen ninety five plus two ninety five shipping.

"Why, I don't see Paul," Sheriff says, he isn't the sheriff for not being observant, and Angie looks slowly over her shoulder, spots the blank space on the wall, and looks slowly back at me.

"He die or somethin?"

"Something. Take the Sheriff's money, Angie."

 

hamus comes in ten minutes to closing.

"I come for Angie," he tells me and pops gum in my face.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Miss Isbister," she says to me and she walks out with Shamus, his big long lecherous arm around her shoulders, he thinks I don't see but I do, I see him feel her left breast as they disappear around the corner and she doesn't even flinch.

 

t comes in a brown paper envelope, in the hands of Smart Jackson. He's been the mailman for just a half year since Jed Susann passed on and he'd been delivering mail for going on fifty five years when he just up and died at the wheel of his car, heart attack, gone like that, he smoked two packs a day since he was nineteen, his car was in neutral.

"Why Miss Isbister," Shamus yells over from the magazine rack when he sees the envelope, "if I didn't know any better, I'd say that looks like a dirty magazine."

"You'd know, Shamus Collander," Smart says, and then looks my way sideways.

"Thank you," I say to Smart, ignoring the sidelong glance and taking my envelope to the back room, leaving Angie to pour Smart his large half decaf, half regular. I have to peek and it's in there, all eight by ten inches of it, glossy and big white teeth, the brown and orange shirt as bright as a full moon in October, I hold it to my breast, mmmhmm, and then I shove it in my bag.

 

change my menu plan that night. Seeing how it's Thursday, I usually have fish sticks and creamed corn and skinny fries and a salad with Thousand Island dressing. Except since it's a special occasion, I stop by Dunphy's and pick up two individual meat pies and some Rocky Road ice cream.

"Having company, Violet?"

"You could say so, Mr. Dunphy."

"You hear that, Mrs. Dunphy?" Mr. Dunphy yells into Mrs. Dunphy, "Looks like Violet here has some company tonight."

He smiles up at me.

"She's happy to hear that."

I walk home quickly, thermometer's dipped down into negative teens and Davie Keon didn't show up this morning when I was leaving so I half expect to find him frozen to the screen door, mouth wide open. Instead, he's found a warm spot on my next door neighbour old man Wicket's porch, beneath the blanket that never moves from there summer, winter, spring or fall.

"You don't know where that blanket's been, Davie Keon," I whisper as I unlock the door, realize I don't much know where Davie Keon's been either. He gives me heck till I kibble him, then turn the oven on, change into my track pants and knit slippers, and bring my bag to the couch. The radio is still playing from this morning, some old song about dancing close and I pull the envelope out slowly. I don't open it right away. I search out the frame first and open the back and take Paul out and bring him over to my dresser and place him face down in my underwear drawer.

"Gone but not forgotten."

There is no need to apologize, Paul is wise to the sometimes fickle ways of the heart, though I don't call going on thirty-five years fickle.

I stick both meat pies in and race back to the couch. I pull Donny from his bubble encased prison and lay him on the coffee table, after I swipe away the free tv guide and a year old copy of Woman's Own with Kathie Lee Gifford on the cover, she should've told that Mr. Frank Gifford to hit the road.

He smiles up at me, Donny not Frank Gifford, and I find I can't help but smile back. His is a genuine smile, much like Paul's but Donny's is bigger, Donny's is Everyone come love me and I promise I'll love you back, Donny's is the size of Utah.

 

e fits perfect in the frame, the frame now tucked in my bag beside my thermos of chicken noodle soup, as I make my way through the newly fallen blanket of snow the next morning. The sky is grey as if there is more snow to come, it hangs low like another blanket, a grey blanket on top a white blanket, I breathe in deeply and the air isn't crisp, I kind of feel suffocated, like someone's carrying me in a small box. I pat my satchel for comfort. Severn waves to me from the stoop, follows me to the coffee machine but instead of pushing the button right away, I pull over the utility stool. I rest my satchel on the stool and pull the frame out. I drop my satchel to the side, clutch the picture to me and climb up. Severn offers to spot me.

"I'll be okay, Severn."

"You can be comforted knowing I'll catch you if you fall, Violet."

I hang Donny. He rocks to and fro ever so slightly before coming to rest. He smiles, I am home. I climb back down, sit on the stool and swipe away a strand of hair. Severn gnaws at his bottom lip, gawks upwards. Squints up at Donny, he's needed glasses, Severn not Donny, for going on fifteen years now and he says he can't afford them but I put it down to just plain vanity.

"So who's the fella?" he wants to know.

"What, you live in a cave?"

I reach over and turn the coffee machine on. Severn scratches his greasy birthmarked head through his filthy baseball cap.

"This here looks like that young fella, name something like..."

"Donny Osmond."

"Yeah, something like that."

I stick the Styrofoam cup beneath the stream of strong coffee and pass it his way. Say nothing about price. He scratches his head again

"So how much'll that be, Violet?"

 

look up at Donny through the day, feeling a rush of adrenaline, coffee or waves of ocean water in my veins every time and I don't drink coffee (ironic, I know) and I never been near the ocean. I go on the Internet again and order, on Aunt Zelda's card, The Greatest Hits of Donny Osmond. There are other pictures, of an older version of Donny, dressed in a colourfully-striped coat, a suit, singing with a female version of himself, maybe this is a brother, or maybe it's one of those projected pictures of what Donny's going to look like come twenty years from now. All I know is I got that face from The Andy Williams Show etched in my brain and no Internet's going to make me see him any other way.

When the teenage kids show, Shamus Collander dumps his what you call a ghetto blaster, except when I was growing up we called them tape players, he slides it more like on a table and pushes play and a loud rock and roll song comes on and he moves his hips all slither like for Angie, who blushes red. Then he saunters over to the counter and he says,

"Angie honey," all sweet like he's made of honey, "can I have an eclair?"

Now I know why he wants an eclair and it's not because they're fresh (which they are), it's because Angie has to lean over so she can retrieve it from under the glass and Shamus gets a free look down her top, which I can't imagine he's not getting enough of on his free time.

"Shamus," I yell from across the room where I am sweeping up muffin crumbs leftover from Mary Burns' one and a half year old.

His head springs up, I can make my voice like nails on a chalkboard when I want to, and his head stops dead and there is silence and then a loud guffaw.

"Look who Miss Justpissedherpants has up on the wall."

Angie has hit her head on the roof of the counter fridge on account of my high-pitched scream and now she's rubbing it slowly, her face all hard and wincing, her other hand squeezing the eclair, she turns to look up, reveals a flat white belly beneath her rotten green t-shirt.

"That someone I should know?" she asks.

I swear this whole town is in the Dark Ages, literally. Am I the only one who watches tv? Except Shamus turns to his friends, who have gathered around him, most staring up at the eight by ten, a couple at Angie's tummy.

"It's Donny," Shamus yells. "It's Donny Osmond."

Of course, I figured Shamus to know. Next he grabs the eclair from Angie and starts singing something about going away little girl into it, the same words over and over again, and his friends push and pull at him, giggling and the eclair squirts cream down Shamus' leather jacket and onto the floor, real rude-like.

"That'll be a dollar twenty five," Angie tells him.

He tosses the eclair back onto the counter and Angie looks at it as if it may have something to say on the matter.

"I don't want no stinking eclair," Shamus says.

I'm still holding the broom and dustpan as Shamus grabs a napkin from one of the dispensers and wipes his fingers clean.

"I'll see you later?" Angie asks, picking up the dead eclair between thumb and pointer finger.

"Donut shop," Shamus says, except it's not an invite to Angie, it's a command to his entourage, who follow him out, the last one grabbing the tape player, leaving Angie, me and the twisted corpse of the eclair in alarming silence.

 

ome closing time, Shamus doesn't come pick Angie up and though she waits patiently, I finally tell her I have to go, Davie Keon's waiting for his dinner, so she gathers her coat and purse and takes one last glance across the way at the donut shop and then, head down, passes me.

"Night, Miss Isbister." So I'm so concerned about Davie Keon, why I don't know, he knows how to take care of himself just fine, I get halfway home and remember I'm out of hot chocolate and have to turn back toward Dunphy's. The night is dark.

There's a real stillness to the store when I walk in and there's no Mr. Dunphy at the cash, which is just mighty strange. As I pass by the counter, I peer over the top, thinking maybe he's searching out new Malted Milks or maybe he dropped his favourite pen except there's no one. I've never come here and not had Mr. Dunphy's face peering at me.

"Mr. Dunphy?" I call.

I stand there, not moving for two full muzac songs (Muskrat Love and Taking It To The Streets). No answer, so seeing as the hot chocolate is at the start of the second aisle, I take it from the shelf and then walk back so I can peer into the back room, where boxes are stacked upon boxes. Still no one.

I know how much the hot chocolate is and I count out the correct change while I listen for a phone conversation somewhere to explain things, maybe a low tv rumble, a toilet flush. Nothing. I leave my change at the counter. That's when I notice that Mrs. Dunphy isn't at the cash either.

There's a crash of glass all of a sudden and there I am lying flat on the floor in just seconds and glass keeps falling from the now-broken window, falling like icicles from the sky. Next there's that rolling noise, sounds like metal, I'll hear that sound forever, and I peek through the chip shelves and watch it spool around and around, on a journey of futility. Searching for a way out but only orbiting glass debris.

A cold gust of wind bursts through the hole in the window and it blows Mrs. Dunphy's vase, pushes it this way and that and the vase surrenders every time.

 

he funeral is two days later, a real sad sombre event, all the townsfolk come and even some from the outside of town, some not even smart enough to wear black cause someone's died. Mr. Dunphy's sister is the family representative, she's pretty much a replica of Mr. Dunphy himself but with a grey bun screwed up real tight on top her head and the granny glasses at the end of her nose. When I first see her, I breathe in real fast and my eyes shoot to the open coffin where Mr. Dunphy is lying (in state) with Mrs. Dunphy's vase wrapped in his arms even though the vase doesn't have Mrs. Dunphy in there any longer. Speculation is someone made off with her and Mr. Dunphy gave chase but too late to stop whoever it was from spilling her across the snowbank and Mr. Dunphy just stopped short and died. Heart broke in two. I heard the firemen tried to put some of the snow with the ashes on them back in the vase but the sheriff stepped in and said maybe they had better things to do, she was dead anyway, not so sure I agree, it's the principle of the thing, right? And there's Mr. Dunphy just died for the cause, the least the firemen could do is retrieve her some.

Anyway, when I see Mr. Dunphy in his coffin all laid out, it strikes me that he must've really loved Mrs. Dunphy after all.

 

as it sad?" Angie asks me later that day as we open for just the afternoon, out of respect for a respected town member.

"It was a funeral, Angie."

"Yeah but," she scratches at her nose and then sticks one finger in her belly button, "he was old."

"You're right," I tell her, "it wasn't sad at all because he was old. Now go fetch some more cream."

I feel Donny's smile, not so much as look at it, and I get a shiver. I consider taking him down, sort of like when the Jews die they cover mirrors, maybe we shouldn't be looking at someone smiling when someone's passed on, except Shamus comes in just before I get a chance to do anything.

"What's wrong in here," he says loudly, "cause it's like someone died."

He slams his tape player on a table and is just about to press play. He is alone.

"No loud music today, Shamus," I tell him. "Not today."

His finger stops midair and he makes a slow turn.

"I'm sorry, Miss JustfistHer," he says, really lacking in sincerity and I pull my cardigan close, "did you just tell me not to do something?"

"I tell you not to do something quite a bit, Shamus Collander."

"And it's getting on my friggin nerves."

"And I'll have no swearing, especially on a funeral day."

"Crazy old man Dunphy," he says, big smile crawling across his face. Most girls think Shamus is a living doll, but I am reminded of that Christmas special and the green man with the small heart. "Out for a walk one night and just like that, his heart stopped."

"Mr. Dunphy was chasing someone."

Shamus has moved closer to me, he is tall, he smells like cigarette smoke and immorality.

"Somebody stole Mrs. Dunphy," I tell him.

"You mean," Shamus says, reaching into his leather jacket pocket, inside, left side, I hear crinkling as he pulls out a baggy of grey dust, "this Mrs. Dunphy?"

He dangles the baggy inches from my face.

"They said Mrs. Dunphy was scattered across a snow bank."

"I kept most of her," he tells me. "Some of her spilled out. Angie," and he looks over his shoulder, no Angie in sight, "brought the baggy. From here." He shakes the bag and ashes tumble gently over ashes. "I think I got the good parts."

Angie shows herself then, I make her out of the corner of my eye. Her eyes are locked on the baggy.

"You should have seen Dunphy run," Shamus continues, as Angie steps up on the utility stool and reaches high for Donny. I keep staring into the deep pits of Shamus' pupils. "He ran like a..." Angie steps back down. "...like a fifty year old."

Comes quietly behind him. Shamus sees only Shamus, he clutches the baggy so tight while he tells his tale I wonder, maybe Mrs. Dunphy will burst from her Glad Wrap, but then the picture comes down across the side of Shamus' face and he lets go of the baggy and I catch her. Glass flies out from the frame, Shamus falls with a cartoon thud. His eyes flutter and close.

"I didn't know that's what the baggy was for, Miss Isbister," Angie explains to me.

See maybe she'd like to think that's how I see this happening, all for the better of mankind, how dare Shamus kill an old man. Except I know why she clocked Shamus Collander and it's got about as much to do with Mr. Dunphy as it does with my Aunt Zelda's pink bloomers. Shamus did to her what he did to the eclair, squeezed everything right out of her and then left her on the counter, right in front of everybody else.

 

mart Jackson shows up with my three LP collection the next day, The Greatest Hits of Donny Osmond, and I send it right back to where it came from, somewhere in Internet NeverNever Land, cause I'm over him plus his frame's broken. Now what's hanging from the empty nail on the light-coloured square above the sunflower clock is Mrs. Dunphy, out of respect for her memory and that of her husband's.

What it is, is enough is enough, that's why I put Donny with Paul, upside down in my underwear drawer.

[END]

© Sarah Eddenden 2001

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