Merle Drown
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Previously published stories from a work-in-progress Shrunken Heads, Miniature Portraits of the Famous Among Us

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Throwing Merton in the Woods

4/26/2015

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"Throwing Merton in the Woods" originally appeared in 971 Menu

Susie threw Merton into the back woods. Last week Susie’s daughter Mary asked her to set aside a right away to Merton’s oak if Susie sold the property.  We knew Susie was going to sell it because she didn’t keep it secret.  Susie brags she’s got no time for secrets. Course with Merton gone, she can’t maintain the property, not by herself.

All the time Merton lived with her, Susie never claimed him for a husband or lied about him being just a companion, like some will say.  She called him a souse and said she’d outlive him because liquor was licking his liver.  Never made her too proud to take advantage of poor Merton, though, have him drive her from one end of the state to the other looking for those fancy little dogs she likes.  Or make him paint every ceiling in the downstairs, even though it was never going to be Merton’s name on the deed.  Only favor she ever did for Merton was at the end when she set him by that oak he liked to look at.

Daughter Mary was putting flowers by the oak right over Merton couple times a week.  She says, souse or not, he treated her better than her own father.  I go for a plant myself.  Dig it in in May and tend it until frost.  Didn’t I tend to Merton through his last sickness?  Listened to Susie all the time on him to get behind the wheel and drive to some kennel clear over in Vermont when he couldn’t even put on his slippers.  “Least you’re sober,” Susi told him, “but that won’t save you.”

Daughter Mary tried to sneak him some whisky, but Susie wouldn’t have it.  “I’ve got him where I want him,” she said.

I gave him a taste now and then, a little whisky with his medicine.  Susie never suspected because she thinks I’m just a sober version of Merton.  She treats those fancy dogs better than she treated Merton.  After Daughter Mary asked about the right away, Susie dug him up and threw him in the woods.  Said, “I’m not having people traipsing through the backyard at all hours to stick flowers on Merton.  I don’t know if he even liked flowers.  I never heard him say he did.”

Course he liked flowers, everybody does, but that’s Susie’s way of talking like she’s straight and keeping secrets at the same time.  She didn’t even rebury Merton.  Just spread him out there like old manure in the lady’s slippers and fiddlehead ferns and jack in the pulpits.  I guess God’ll have to tend him now.

But she’ll find out I’m a different customer than Merton. And it ain’t just because I’m female.  I don’t pull into no take-out when I’m driving her from breeder to breeder.  I pull into a place will make Susie yank out the plastic to pay.  And I got her where she’ll keep the place ‘till it’s my name on the deed.

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Until Today 

4/7/2015

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Until Today (originally appeared in Night Train)

My old man taught me when you give something up, give it up. I always thought that about myself.  Until today.  Me and Ritchie are outside on break talking, like we do, How are the Sox going to do this year.  Why ain’t there nothing on TV no more. If you had to pick your last meal—well, that was an ironic one.  He’s smoking, smoking for both of us, really, because I give it up over a year ago.  You’d think it’d bother me to sit with Richie puffing away, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth, and him smoking the same brand I used to, but once I gave it up, I gave it up.  I’m like that.  Until today.

When me and Lisa split, I walked in the house after my shift, and she goes, “I’m thinking we need to talk about where this marriage is going.”  And I go, “No, we don’t.  We need to talk about who gets the house—you or me.”  And that was the end of it.  I got the house because it turned out she didn’t want nothing reminded her of me.  That’s the way she put it.  Course she could have just been covering up her feelings. That’s what Richie said.

Lisa moved over to Northfield and hooked up with a guy there has a little flooring business.  She does books for him. “More suited,” she says to me when I run into her at the grocery yesterday.  I hadn’t seen her in a year.  No, two years ago, because I was still driving that Chevy half-ton.  I didn’t know if she meant the guy or the job suited her better.

I told her I sold my truck because it didn’t suit me anymore.  Just like that, she walked away.  I guess she thought I was putting her down.

“No,” Richie goes.  “She was still covering up her feelings.”

Richie, he’s always saying that, and sometimes I argue with him, but it won’t be today, because right after he says she was still covering up, the supervisor comes out and tells me about Lisa’s accident, and that she didn’t make it.  Richie goes, “Jesus.”  Me, I don’t say nothing, just reach over and suck a big drag off Richie’s cigarette.  But I think maybe my old man was full of shit, and definitely I’ve got to get out of here.

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    A  native of Northern New England, Merle Drown is the author of Lighting the World, Plowing Up a Snake, and The Suburbs of Heaven. _

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