Surreal, When Evening Comes

B. Diederich
Flint Hills Writing Project
July 18, 2006


Leonard.

Leonard is scary. You have to say his name slow, like he does. Lin-errrd. Linn-eerd Wec-grrrr.

He walks slow too; kind of a stiff-leg/bow-leg drag. It gives me the creeps.

At sunrise I saw him hunch across the gas station parking lot through my back window curtain. Something glinted in his hand, but it was a coffee cup, not a knife. Leonard makes me shiver.

His face is round and thick (didn't 'Pumpkinhead' kill people with an axe?), more moon-like and rounder than Hannibal Lector's—although his eyes are blue and stare the same way.

I've talked with Leonard once and hid my panic. I recalled that line to Agent Starling: “People will say we're In Love."

I remember Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade and visualize Leonard swinging his arm above my body and the blood spatter and no change in his expression at all…

Leonard says he got his limp in Vietnam. But Leonard is a Liar.


I have great fear since I talked to Leonard. I couldn’t get away. I have ‘good listener’ and ‘insecure’ and ‘easy prey’ tattooed on my forehead. I sat and listened and was polite and said all the right things. Leonard is quiet. He’s country with a horrifying mixture of black leather. His mumbled speech shuffles like feet and I could hear the dueling banjos twang in my mind as he drawled forth his pathetic story. He spent a great deal of time rambling 'bout his sad return from the war and how people treated him like shit then and treat him like shit now. I sensed his need for sympathetic response, but something was a little off. I clenched my fists under the coffee booth to calm rising hysteria. He radiated underlying hatred and fierce analytical judgment, and by God deliver me, if I can’t come up with the correct thing to say…well, the hairs were rising on the back of my neck…


He just makes me afraid. My stomach flops. Who is he really? Leonard looks special-ed and weirdo and bad dresser. I can’t use the word ‘psycho’ just yet. He’s the most morose, wretchedly dejected man you’ve ever seen, but that’s not quite right. He’s a freak. Other people say, “Leonard’s alright. Just a little odd.” But I’ve glimpsed the hidden rage that boils beneath the skin. I’ve seen it because I watch--carefully.

I go for coffee at 6:15; sit with the locals and chat. I watch the windows and try to ‘leave by Leonard’— that means when he pulls up, I head out. Sometimes I can’t escape. Leonard came in for coffee and sat one booth away; I was relieved ours’ had no room. He sits with ‘Newt’, a mentally challenged man who resembles the dwarf Dopey, but gangly with wildly thrashing arms and a scratchy voice that gets louder and foul. He’s a lawn man and ‘pointed in the right direction, he makes a helluva worker, a helluva worker’. Leonard aids Newt in his more difficult lawn endeavors. Leonard helps him out when he offers ‘cause they ‘get along’.


I avoid eye contact but am aware that Leonard attracts a lot of attention. He sports a bright plaid shirt too hot for summer and a ridiculously wide dull tie that have no business being worn together, or separate, or anywhere else for that matter.

I noticed his black Harley boots and his brown leather belt that’s hitched around with a big twist in the back and my shoulder blades crawl because I want to giggle but don’t and pray no one points out that belt because they’re already goin’ for the tie…

Shut up, I think. Haven’t you folk seen Full Metal Jacket? You need to just shut the fuck up. Leonard has a red flush at the base of his neck and out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse a muscle pull tight in his jaw. No, they don’t see that. He has already mumbled something about 'going to a funeral', but one more customer comes in and makes a tie comment and Leonard’s cup hits the table a little too hard.
He sits for a few more seconds and heads for the door—the fastest I’ve seen him move and then someone wonders aloud why he didn’t say goodbye…

I leave fast, ashamed of them and ashamed of me, dreading he has a gun named Charlene in that car. Sweet sweet Charlene.

2.

I’ve become morbidly fascinated—too curious and a bit obsessed. I should know better and I do know better... Many years ago I met a man. We talked a lot and he really seemed ok, just like Francis Dolarhyde did, but I was driven to a lake and asked if I would miss my daughter if she disappeared. She was only two and he wanted to see me panic, but I could read that, so I acted tired and bored instead. Nights later we hid in her closet while he ripped the window screens. And, after that, when he pulled a .9mm in the dark of the Kmart parking lot, towering, menacing, I reached out with both hands saying ‘Wow! My brother has one just like this!’ and feigned interest and made the right comments before casually tossing that black gun into the back seat of his car, clear to the opposite side. ‘Nice to see you; take care’. He growled that he was going to be famous someday and I drove fast, shaking, to the police station and stayed there crying forever and ever. You can’t ever tell about people. You can’t ever tell.

A man knocked on my door years ago when I first got my divorce. He started grabbing at me, slurring that I ‘must be so lonely’. I pushed him backward down the steps and clicked the lock.


I received bizarre letters once, signed Jake-the-Snake, Jake-the-Ultimate One. They were written by a patient from Pawnee Mental Health.


Out for a walk once, a man said hello from his front porch. I said hello too, and he bluntly blurted ‘I am dressed as a human today.’


I walked faster. Why do I meet all the weird ones?



My experience as a psycho-magnet makes me edgy. I have an excellent outward calm and a caring smile; never mind my guts twisting in knots. I manage to maintain at most times but am deplorably labeled ‘too nice’.

As a child, I begged my mom for her story about the man cooking a human heart. She told that and others; things that probably horrified her as a girl, and if I pleaded hard enough I got to stay up and watch about the Clutter family in nowheresville Holcomb, KS.

I’ve voraciously read most serial killer books but not since my daughter left for college. It sickened me: it could happen to her.



But I hear little tidbits about Leonard and it’s started to draw me in:

‘Leonard has a brother, you know…; he’s not all there. He tried to work as a greeter at Wal-Mart, but it didn’t work out….’


I can feel the lure:

‘Leonard has a daughter, but she hasn’t spoken to him in years and years.’ Leonard has a daughter? Newt has a child too and even a girlfriend. I am aghast--for some reason it appalls me. How did they get women?


My ears perk when I hear his name now:

‘Leonard goes to Wal-Mart and wanders around and ‘round. He stops in the aisle and just stands. Some of the workers say it scares the customers…’ Very creepy. I can see him quietly prowling about like he’s hunting elusive game. He has a way of sneaking up on people. What is he looking for? A friend? A victim? Conversation? Sex?


God. What the hell is wrong with me?



In the nighttime I lie awake and recall that Leonard lives on a farm, remote and quite obscure. I’m not sure where, but I’d like to find out. I think of the farmhouse in Plainfield, WI and the grainy crime scene photos; black and white viscera of Ed Gein's home furnishings.

Later, I jerk wide awake and clutch my covers. Gein had a retarded man that helped him dig graves. No, Newt is too smart....I drift off...



And later.

He saw me today. He stares. I nodded a weak hello and got no response. My spine is nervously taut. His face remains blank and heavy and yet he stares. I find my throat has frozen.

I think of Pinhead on Hellraiser with that mute maniacal presence. "Welcome to Oblivion," it finally speaks, but I know Leonard wouldn't use that word or utter it before he killed anyone. Just anger. He would just have the anger.

If I could trash that black vest with 'MIA' and 'POW' and the American flag and throw a black robe at him; then would he replace his hunting hat with a grid of pins? He just keeps staring and doesn't speak at all. The stillness is worse than any mumbling. Have I done something wrong?
He glowers like we're bugs on a pin and I wait for his cloud of gloom and doom to erupt in a hailstorm of bullets, or a machete, anything... but truthfully his hands appear as empty and numb as his mind...


Now I'm the Liar.
He does have a mind and it works very well. He's tricky, that Leonard. But he doesn't know that I know...
that he lied to me.
(to be continued-- or does anyone really want me to finish this at all?)