The Laundry Daze

“You didn't call me over a minute too soon," the kid announced. "This old girl, she's hurting.”

“You talking about me?” whispered the older woman, standing behind Text begins him, in the cramped kitchen of the farmhouse. There was no malice in her words, even in her tone of voice, but to a stranger, like the young technician, this would have not been apparent — “I’m feeling as right as one can feel. If anyone’s in bad shape, it’s him. He creaks when he walks, he’s so ancient. You ever hear yourself creaking, Jud?”

Lon Cotterill missed her subtext — or chose to ignore it. His hand caressed the top of the washing machine. “She tells me things, did you know? Folks saying all the time, ‘I know how to talk to folks’, like that’s a skill? Well, so’s listening, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m listening to your sick girl here, and she tells me, ‘It hurts when I spin, doctor.’”

Correction: the youth was no stranger, merely… distant. Not in physical terms — he lived maybe a mile away — but owing, in part, to his youth. Lon was only a bit younger than his former schoolmate: their son, Wyn, who was twenty-seven. He had been, many times during his adolescence, a guest in the farmhouse she shared with a man whom she had likened to an ancient contraption. She colored the gray out of her hair and somehow managed to keep her figure, but she would have liked a fraction of the casual energy the repairman burned, with ease. Her forties were fast waning — despite that, her jibe was nothing more than an exercise in irony.

“I’m hardly ancient, missus,” muttered the remaining inhabitant of the kitchen. Jud Fylan was, for purposes of records-keeping, fifty-three. He looked to be ten years older, the result of an extended life of hard work — and harder vices. Let it never be said that he, being a true son of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, had not obliged himself to grow familiar with the local bourbon. His wife had given up the sauce, years earlier.

The ‘creaky old antique’ had turned to face her, earlier that day, confessing, “I think we need to fix this blasted thing, Carl.” Carlyne was her full given name; only her husband thought it appropriate to shorten it to something masculine. There was nothing masculine about her shape or her face, which made such a nickname seem quirky to others; she liked it in secret, but continued to frown, whenever he employed it.

“You think it can be fixed?” Something funny had found her; it bestowed a cold smile on her weary face. “How long we had that thing, anyhow? Did they make that particular model any more? Wait. Jud? You said ‘we’ — can’t you —”

“I know about machines that go places,” he said. “Does this thing look like an automobile, to you? We should put in a call to Dryson’s, see if they can come look at it.”

His chestnut hair had become a snowy crown. He recognized the creased face in his shaving mirror less each day, though it was his own. His joints throbbed with each movement — worse, when the air turned cold.

Autumn had returned, to the Pennyroyal Plateau, so the air would be a painful cool, by and by.

Lon had come over on a Saturday morning, which to Carlyne’s way of thinking had earned him a star right from the git. The young repairman walked around to the side of the washer, trying to push the machine with both hands. “Mister Fylan, if you wouldn’t mind, sir, please, wanna give me a hand with her?”

^ ^ ^ ^

The kid probably deserved a better answer than Jud’s flippant, “No, I want to be fishing up at Lake Cumberland, but, since I can’t, I don’t mind. I’ll give you a hand, sure thing.” In a moment, he and Lon were scratch-sliding the gadget across the linoleum floor.

The washer, a Dryson front-loader, was one of the few improvements Jud had made to the farmhouse. It was loud, unreliable at times, and it leaked water — but it served Jud’s other primary purpose: to keep Carlyne happy enough to keep her on the premises, year after aching year. With their son and daughter-in-law up in Louisville, they had the place to themselves. It was not the blissful island of marital bliss advertised in the brochure, after all, which is why Jud spent most of his Saturday and Sunday afternoons at his favorite bar in town, reminiscing about his Marine Corps service in southeast Asia, watching games over a few beers with his pals — at least, until decorum and hunger sent him packing, home to his wife.

Because it was a Saturday, because it was his wish to spirit himself away to his bar of choice and he knew Carlyne could handle the dull matter of supervising the repair effort without him, Jud made his escape. Dusk was beginning to put its signature on the landscape, burnishing everything it touched, when at long last Jud pulled the pickup truck into the driveway. He wafted into the kitchen, a nice alcoholic glow on his face.

Lon was sitting on the floor, leaning against the washer. He was mumbling at, if not to, the device.

Jud glanced up at Carlyne, who stood framed in the kitchen doorway. With an impatient crook of her finger, she summoned him into the living room.

“You have to call him back for something?” Jud remembered to ask his wife.

Carlyne smiled darkly. “Actually, he’s been here the whole time. Since you left.”

Jud did not care for this development. He returned to the kitchen. “Lon? Son, I sure do thank you for your diligence. Think maybe you ought to be getting to a stopping place? It’s supper time, for me and Mrs. Fylan. You, too, probably.”

Lon’s reaction was a sheepish, “Shoot, you’re right,” although he chose a word a bit stronger than Shoot. He made his apologies, and departed. That evening, Jud and Carlyne avoided talking about what had happened as if they were not confident of where the topic would take them.

Sunday morning: the Fylans returned home from church services, finding Lon waiting for them on their porch. “Just in the neighborhood,” he said. “Wonder if she’s… if the unit is… okay?”

Carlyne smiled, tightly, at him. “You’ve always been in the neighborhood, Lon. And ‘she’ is doing just fine. Step on inside, if you want. We still got some pecan pie left.”

Lon did not make an appearance on their street Monday, but he was there late Tuesday afternoon. “Hope your unit is doing okay,” he said. Carlyne packed an excellent slice of pie for him and sent him on his way home.

Lon showed up again the next day.

And the next.

And the next.

Each time: conversation, a glass of lemonade (or milk), and whispering at the washing machine. Or was it, to the washing machine?

“Carl, I’ve just about had it with that kid,” Jud erupted over dinner Friday night — at a diner in town; the Fylans wished to spend one evening not babysitting Lon at their home. “Can’t you talk with his mother, what’s her name?”

“Keep your voice down,” Carlyne hissed, as softly as she could in the diner. “We have neighbors and friends, eating in here.”

A week had elapsed since the first repair visit. Even Jud had to admit, Lon had done his job well; the old machine seemed refurbished, if not reborn. He came home from doing his morning business in town, and spent the rest of Saturday at home, enjoying Carlyne’s company. He was not at all keeping an eye on her, or on the washer.

Folks? He didn’t care for many of them. Machines? They were tools, serving a specific purpose — they did not rate sentimental attachments. He made major exceptions to both rules in this case. He had to secure repairs to their washing machine, to please the one woman who stood out, in his view, from the rest of the world’s population. If he were living alone, he wouldn’t even own damned washers or microwave ovens — each devised for a woman’s convenience, as far as he was concerned. Even to himself, he was reluctant to admit, her presence in this house, in his life, was his own, greatest “convenience” — no; she was his life buoy.

That night, after he had managed to drift off to sleep (no mean feat, without a push from an afternoon of drinking at his bar), Jud heard a literal bump in the night. Carlyne reached over his to hit the light switch; he clutched her wrist by instinct. “Wait ten seconds, then back me up,” he said. He crept out of the bed, reaching under the box springs for the baseball bat, and headed to the kitchen —

A noise, almost a sob, from the porch stopped him, halfway across the kitchen.

Jud waited where he stood for Carlyne to creep up behind him, holding a deer rifle he had taught her to use for home defense; she had no interest in hunting deer, or anything else. Jud took a deep breath, and said with as much menace as he could muster, “Who’s out there? Because we are armed in here — ”

“It’s me,” a familiar voice cried out. Jud snapped out of his vigilance, flipping a porch light on. It was Lon, of course. “I need to see her, Mister Fylan. She’s got a lot of hurt. Please, Mister Fylan. You know me, I’m not a bad…” Lon couldn’t finish his thought aloud, in words.

Jud walked to the wooden front door, and unlatched the metallic screen door. Behind him, he could hear his wife dialing their rotary phone and whispering, “Hello, Phyllis? Yes, it’s Carlyne Fylan. I’m so sorry to bother you at this hour.” He knew she had already set the rifle down.

^ ^ ^ ^

No charges would be filed, of course. The Fylans had no desire to prosecute an obviously disturbed person for showing up at their home, in distress; even late at night, the Lord was watching over them, and evaluating their willingness to be good Christians, they believed. Phyllis Cotterill assured them that her son’s behavior was the result of romantic heartache, and overwork; he would check into a hospital, for extended therapy.

Thanksgiving Day rolled around again, prompting Wyn and his wife Norma to drive down, from Louisville. Wyn was as fair-haired as his Welsh name said he would be. Norma had the swelling belly and rosy cheeks of a young woman entering the fourth month of her first pregnancy.

Jud waited for opening ceremonies to conclude, before confiding in his son about what Lon had said and done. Wyn, always the first to defend people from accusations, had difficulty accepting an outlandish tale casting the amiable kid he knew back in high school as an obsessive weirdo. “I mean, anyone can snap, Dad, but I never would have expected him, of all people, to go all ‘Boo Radley’ like — ”

“Wait a second now, Wyn,” Carlyne interjected. “Boo saved those children — his problem was just that he was misunderstood.” He knew his mother loved both the book and the movie of To Kill A Mockingbird, and nodded with a smile. She turned to look in on his wife, who had wandered out of the living room; it was Norma’s habit to leave the room, whenever her husband was catching up with his parents about local lore — she had missed the entire story about Lon.

Carlyne checked the kitchen first, as she was sure that a woman in Norma’s condition would be anxious to eat. She caught sight of her daughter-in-law, and went all stiff as a board. “Are you all right, sugar?” Carlyne gasped. Her expression shifted from festive to grim. She threw a look over her shoulder at Jud; his face was shadowed by apprehension, too.

Leaning to her left, Norma pressed an ear and cheek against the Fylans’ refrigerator, and made shushing noises. The frown she wore was jarring — and… familiar. She placed her hands, palms-flat, against the refrigerator. “This poor thing,” Norma moaned. “He’s just so lonely.”

© 2021 Eric Wolf.