Oldfangled

Chapter One

Chapter One

Grisly. Horrific. Baffling.

Those were the grave adjectives the nightly news anchors sprinkled throughout the top story of the eleven o’clock broadcast. The hype was appropriate for a change. Another victim had fallen prey in the ongoing series of bizarre murders taking place in New York City. For lack of anything so exciting locally to report—and thanks largely to the media sensationalists down in Portland—the Big Apple’s recent killing spree had been all the talk of Minnowauk, Maine for past few weeks. Carl Petnoy was oblivious to the late-breaking report, however, as he napped through the entire segment from the comfort of his Barcalounger.

“Be safe,” the bottle-blonde live on the scene in Chinatown cautioned before throwing it back to the studio.

“Good advice,” her hair-plugged male cohort seated behind the Portland news desk agreed.

Twenty-odd minutes later and the telecast was wrapping-up. The Channel Seven bobble heads briefly revisited the night’s top story in closing, once more promising new details as the story developed. Then, like flipping a switch, they tossed aside their overly-rehearsed gravitas in exchange for a final bit of chirpy banter before they were played off with a blaring orchestral score.

As was all too often the case, Carl startled awake to the consequences of having left the television’s volume up while he dozed. The musical crescendo threatened to trigger his tinnitus. If that happened, the result would be a warbling screech in his ears that would leave him dizzy and imagining a drunken and tortured electronic song bird caged in his skull. Thankfully, however, this time he was spared.

He clapped violently to turn off the television. Too many claps. The living room lights blinked out instead. A pain shot through his forearm. He was elderly. Pain was usually shooting somewhere. He ignored it.

Carl tried clapping again to restore the lights only this time to kill the television as he’d originally intended. Unfortunately, the soft glow of the antiquated cathode ray tube—which, as the sole source of illumination, had painted the room in pastel blues—suddenly popped off, leaving Carl abandoned to the dark. He mumbled. A curse first for Thomas Alva Edison and then another for electricity in general before finishing off with a little something for “the clever monkey” who’d unleashed the clapper upon the masses.

An angry, sputtering round of applause from Carl’s thick hands intermittently flicked the television and lights off, on and then off again. He clapped again and kept at it until he had things in order. Yes. Television off. Lights on. Bushy eyebrows arching in a moment of satisfaction, it was time for Carl to rouse himself and finish getting ready for work.

Carl grasped the threadbare plaid arms of his Barcalounger with both hands and began rocking with it back and forth. Things moved slowly at first, but Carl quickly built up momentum, like a child pumping a swing. Then, in a single, Herculean, wind-producing dismount, the old gent grunted free and teetered upright on his stocking feet.

“Oops. Sorry, dears,” he apologized, waving a palm at the baggy seat of his burgundy polyester trousers. “Lima beans.”

He stood for a long pause—spine as curled as a question mark—and then puttered off towards the kitchen. Two more soft poots of gas propelled Carl Petnoy on his way and he muttered more apologies following each outburst all while continuing to fan the mildly polluted air in his wake. It was of no consequence; there was no one present to suffer the ill wind or accept the old man’s mea culpa.

The bathroom routine was practiced if not swift. Dentures were retrieved from their soak, shaken partially dry and gummed into place. A comb was run seven times through Carl’s bristle of porcelain white hair, which proved seven times more than needed. For the past twenty-odd years, his appearance had presented more scalp than hair. He was already showered and clean-shaven and his adult diaper still snug and dry. “A thanks for small miracles,” he said after sticking his hand down below to confirm as much. A quick pass with the nose hair trimmer—first to the nostrils and then to the ears—and he was finished. He paused briefly to consider his reflection in the mirror. This elicited a grunt connoting something between dissatisfaction and approval.