Hi, Diary. This morning while I was chomping down my second bowl of Rice Krispies with cream and sugar, Mother informed me of the saddest news of my life. At the same time, she poured herself her first cup of coffee. “Did you know that Bill Turbin died last night?”
“He what?”
“His parents called your father. Said Bill wasn’t breathing. Your dad had to call the Coroner.”
“Why did Bill die?”
“Massive heart attack. In his forties, he was much too young to die.”
I suddenly felt cold, chilled to the bone. “Bill couldn’t be. I saw him yesterday. He and Toothless Annie were laughing at a joke she told him, but I didn’t understand it.”
“Didn’t understand what?”
“The joke.”
“Toothless Annie, you say? Are you talking about that wino?”
“The lady with the squeaky wagon.”
“Nevertheless, Bill’s dead, Gordy. You’ll see him alive no more. I suggest you pray for the repose of his soul.”
Just about every day, I’m sent to Turbin’s grocery store in order to buy a pack of Old Gold or Chesterfield cigarettes plus Clove chewing gum for Dad in order to hide the smell of liquor on his breath. Or butter or milk or a loaf of bread for Mother. I don’t mind. I like to go to Turbin’s because it gives me a chance to say “Hi” to Bill. If he’s there.
You might not believe it, but he’s the one who insisted everyone, including kids, call him Bill. I know why. Mister Turbin would fit him the same way it would fit Mister Mead, the owner of our paper mill, if he was wearing bib overalls.
Adults said Bill was, “A man you can trust anytime, anywhere, anyhow.”
Bill’s father, old Ed, is Bill’s opposite. Ed has a nasty disposition. That’s why most everyone calls him, “Mister Turbin.” Ed’s got the reddest and bumpiest nose in town. When he’s staggering drunk, then folks called him “Ed.” And they laugh, but not too loud.
Ed’s wife is one of the finest and nicest women around. She always smiles and says, “Hello” to anyone and everyone she meets.
It’s a known fact Bill was like his mother. Bill didn’t drink. “The reason,” he said, “is my ticker. It can’t take it.” To tell the honest to gosh truth, I think the real reason was that Bill didn’t want to be one bit like his father.
Bill greeted everyone with a ready smile, followed by, “How are you doing this fine day?” He said that each and every day, even on a summer rain-stormy day or a wintry bitter cold snowy kind of day. Didn’t matter at all.
Bill addressed each person by her or his first name. And I mean everyone. Except me. Me, he called “Carrot Top,” not Gordon, or Gordy. Just like Bob Martin did. Do you think those two got together and agreed Carrot Top would be my nickname?
I don’t know who I liked more, Bob or Bill. I guess it all depended on which one I saw last.
Many of Turbin’s Grocery customers go there because Bill’s such a nice guy. Also, others go there because they can charge groceries and cigarettes and cigars and wine and Point beer until Consolidated paper mill’s payday.
The day after payday, it’s Ed Turbin’s “PUP day,” or Pay Up day.
For folks who couldn’t pay, it was a different PUP day. It was Pray Up Plenty day the next time they went to the store. If Ed was there, he wouldn’t listen for one second to any explanation.
As far as I know, he never did. He’d tell them, “No more groceries. Pay up next payday, or else I’ll call the DA.” DA means District Attorney.
If Bill was minding the store, he’d tell those same folks, “No problem. Pay when you can.” Then, he’d offer them a smile and grab cans and boxes and bottles from the shelves as they told him what they needed. He’d stack the groceries in brown paper sacks and pencil in the cost on their charge account. Such a nice man you won’t often meet.
Bill not only put up with Toothless Annie, he actually liked her. He called her “Annie” and treated her like a lady. Which she really isn’t. She tells dirty jokes.
“Howdy Bill,” she says in her gravelly voice and follows that up with her joke of the week. She’d tell the same one, day after day. After that, she cackles like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz movie.
Each weekday plus Saturday, she pulls her rusty and squeaky American Flyer wagon three city blocks one way in order to pick up her daily quantity of Virginia Dare wine bottles, which she and her husband drink all the time. At least, that’s what she says. I’ll bet she outdrinks that husband of hers all the time.
Each time Annie is going to grin, I know what color I’m going to see: Pink. That’s because her gums hold no teeth. Whatsoever.
After she laughs, she swipes the back of her hand against one cheek. Then the palm of the same hand slides against the other cheek. That way, she gets rid of the drool. She thinks no one is looking when she wipes that hand on the side and back of her dress. I catch her doing that all the time. Next, that wide pink tongue with thick blue veins underneath slips across the upper lip. Just before she cackles.
But Annie’s not what I want to write about, Diary.
I want to write about Bill. He’s not moving, not speaking, not breathing, not smiling, not greeting anyone. Instead, he’s lying in a white casket in the parlor of his folks’ home.
How do I know it’s white? I walked on the path between the rock piles adjacent to our property. I stopped and saw that white casket’s lid through the rear window of the Turbin house, next to the grocery store.
Besides that, Mother told me the coffin was all white. She knew because she had “visited” his casket. Bill’s mother told Mother it was white because “Bill was a saint and without sin.”
Bobby Kell told me they laid that white coffin in a zinc tub that held ice. “That way, he won’t stink.”
“Why would he stink?”
“Cause he’s dead. He’d become putrid, like a roadkill deer lying in a ditch along Highway Fifty-Four. Flies would be all over him, sucking his blood.”
“Yuck. That happens to humans, too?”
“That’s what Al said.” Al is Albert Kell, Bobby’s dad.
As I stood there on that pathway, I made the sign of the cross and asked God to make Bill his special angel. “You already know that Bill was a saint here on earth. And as for me, Gordon Bartholomew Hoffman, I can assure you he’d be a better angel than Michael, your archangel. Amen.”
Next, I thought I could even see Bill above the clouds, smiling. I also heard him, saying, “How are you doing this fine day, Carrot Top?”
“Not so good, Bill.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I miss you. I’d rather have you here on earth than up there in heaven.”
Bill laughed only the way he could and then he said, “I want to thank you for mentioning me to the boss. Most of all, I’ll always remember you and that carrot top hair.”
“Thanks, Bill, but a carrot’s top is green. How many times do I have to tell you and Bob Martin?”
That was the end of our conversation. I made another sign of the cross because that’s what Catholics do when they’re finished praying.
And I can tell you this, Diary: Even though Bill’s in heaven, I sorely miss him, plain and simple. I don’t like death. Because it’s forever. And it’s scary. Bill’s never coming back. Until Judgment Day, that is. When that is, nobody knows.
“He what?”
“His parents called your father. Said Bill wasn’t breathing. Your dad had to call the Coroner.”
“Why did Bill die?”
“Massive heart attack. In his forties, he was much too young to die.”
I suddenly felt cold, chilled to the bone. “Bill couldn’t be. I saw him yesterday. He and Toothless Annie were laughing at a joke she told him, but I didn’t understand it.”
“Didn’t understand what?”
“The joke.”
“Toothless Annie, you say? Are you talking about that wino?”
“The lady with the squeaky wagon.”
“Nevertheless, Bill’s dead, Gordy. You’ll see him alive no more. I suggest you pray for the repose of his soul.”
Just about every day, I’m sent to Turbin’s grocery store in order to buy a pack of Old Gold or Chesterfield cigarettes plus Clove chewing gum for Dad in order to hide the smell of liquor on his breath. Or butter or milk or a loaf of bread for Mother. I don’t mind. I like to go to Turbin’s because it gives me a chance to say “Hi” to Bill. If he’s there.
You might not believe it, but he’s the one who insisted everyone, including kids, call him Bill. I know why. Mister Turbin would fit him the same way it would fit Mister Mead, the owner of our paper mill, if he was wearing bib overalls.
Adults said Bill was, “A man you can trust anytime, anywhere, anyhow.”
Bill’s father, old Ed, is Bill’s opposite. Ed has a nasty disposition. That’s why most everyone calls him, “Mister Turbin.” Ed’s got the reddest and bumpiest nose in town. When he’s staggering drunk, then folks called him “Ed.” And they laugh, but not too loud.
Ed’s wife is one of the finest and nicest women around. She always smiles and says, “Hello” to anyone and everyone she meets.
It’s a known fact Bill was like his mother. Bill didn’t drink. “The reason,” he said, “is my ticker. It can’t take it.” To tell the honest to gosh truth, I think the real reason was that Bill didn’t want to be one bit like his father.
Bill greeted everyone with a ready smile, followed by, “How are you doing this fine day?” He said that each and every day, even on a summer rain-stormy day or a wintry bitter cold snowy kind of day. Didn’t matter at all.
Bill addressed each person by her or his first name. And I mean everyone. Except me. Me, he called “Carrot Top,” not Gordon, or Gordy. Just like Bob Martin did. Do you think those two got together and agreed Carrot Top would be my nickname?
I don’t know who I liked more, Bob or Bill. I guess it all depended on which one I saw last.
Many of Turbin’s Grocery customers go there because Bill’s such a nice guy. Also, others go there because they can charge groceries and cigarettes and cigars and wine and Point beer until Consolidated paper mill’s payday.
The day after payday, it’s Ed Turbin’s “PUP day,” or Pay Up day.
For folks who couldn’t pay, it was a different PUP day. It was Pray Up Plenty day the next time they went to the store. If Ed was there, he wouldn’t listen for one second to any explanation.
As far as I know, he never did. He’d tell them, “No more groceries. Pay up next payday, or else I’ll call the DA.” DA means District Attorney.
If Bill was minding the store, he’d tell those same folks, “No problem. Pay when you can.” Then, he’d offer them a smile and grab cans and boxes and bottles from the shelves as they told him what they needed. He’d stack the groceries in brown paper sacks and pencil in the cost on their charge account. Such a nice man you won’t often meet.
Bill not only put up with Toothless Annie, he actually liked her. He called her “Annie” and treated her like a lady. Which she really isn’t. She tells dirty jokes.
“Howdy Bill,” she says in her gravelly voice and follows that up with her joke of the week. She’d tell the same one, day after day. After that, she cackles like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz movie.
Each weekday plus Saturday, she pulls her rusty and squeaky American Flyer wagon three city blocks one way in order to pick up her daily quantity of Virginia Dare wine bottles, which she and her husband drink all the time. At least, that’s what she says. I’ll bet she outdrinks that husband of hers all the time.
Each time Annie is going to grin, I know what color I’m going to see: Pink. That’s because her gums hold no teeth. Whatsoever.
After she laughs, she swipes the back of her hand against one cheek. Then the palm of the same hand slides against the other cheek. That way, she gets rid of the drool. She thinks no one is looking when she wipes that hand on the side and back of her dress. I catch her doing that all the time. Next, that wide pink tongue with thick blue veins underneath slips across the upper lip. Just before she cackles.
But Annie’s not what I want to write about, Diary.
I want to write about Bill. He’s not moving, not speaking, not breathing, not smiling, not greeting anyone. Instead, he’s lying in a white casket in the parlor of his folks’ home.
How do I know it’s white? I walked on the path between the rock piles adjacent to our property. I stopped and saw that white casket’s lid through the rear window of the Turbin house, next to the grocery store.
Besides that, Mother told me the coffin was all white. She knew because she had “visited” his casket. Bill’s mother told Mother it was white because “Bill was a saint and without sin.”
Bobby Kell told me they laid that white coffin in a zinc tub that held ice. “That way, he won’t stink.”
“Why would he stink?”
“Cause he’s dead. He’d become putrid, like a roadkill deer lying in a ditch along Highway Fifty-Four. Flies would be all over him, sucking his blood.”
“Yuck. That happens to humans, too?”
“That’s what Al said.” Al is Albert Kell, Bobby’s dad.
As I stood there on that pathway, I made the sign of the cross and asked God to make Bill his special angel. “You already know that Bill was a saint here on earth. And as for me, Gordon Bartholomew Hoffman, I can assure you he’d be a better angel than Michael, your archangel. Amen.”
Next, I thought I could even see Bill above the clouds, smiling. I also heard him, saying, “How are you doing this fine day, Carrot Top?”
“Not so good, Bill.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I miss you. I’d rather have you here on earth than up there in heaven.”
Bill laughed only the way he could and then he said, “I want to thank you for mentioning me to the boss. Most of all, I’ll always remember you and that carrot top hair.”
“Thanks, Bill, but a carrot’s top is green. How many times do I have to tell you and Bob Martin?”
That was the end of our conversation. I made another sign of the cross because that’s what Catholics do when they’re finished praying.
And I can tell you this, Diary: Even though Bill’s in heaven, I sorely miss him, plain and simple. I don’t like death. Because it’s forever. And it’s scary. Bill’s never coming back. Until Judgment Day, that is. When that is, nobody knows.
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