999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [50]
To which Dampy had replied, “I’m not so sure that that would be altogether a bad thing. Some parents you might not want to relate to any more than absolutely necessary.”
“You mean … Mr. Fairfield?”
Dampy nodded. “And not just him. She was just as bad, the first Mrs. Fairfield. Our life here is actually an improvement over what it used to be, with her.”
“You’ve never said that much about her before. Was it she who …” Hooter touched the stub of his wing to the end of his beak to indicate the same area on Dampy’s face.
“Who pulled off my nose? No, that happened at the Day Care. There was a boy there, Ray McNulty, who kept pulling at my nose, and pulling and pulling. Miss Washington told him not to, but he wouldn’t listen. Then one day when everyone was supposed to be napping he just ripped it right off. But that wasn’t enough for Ray McNulty! Then he took a pair of scissors and opened the seam at my neck.”
“And no one’s ever tried to sew it up again?”
Dampy went up to the mirror mounted beside the front door and looked at himself morosely. His neck was slit open from the front to just under his left ear, which gave a sad, sideways tilt to his head and meant that you had to listen very intently when he spoke. “Once, yes. Once, Mrs. Fairfield tried to mend my neck—the new Mrs. Fairfield. She means well, but she’s hopeless with a needle and thread. I’m used to it now. I don’t mind how it looks.”
Hooter went up to him and tried to push the stuffing back inside the wound in his neck. “It’s such a shame. You’d look so handsome with just a bit of needlework.”
Dampy turned away from the mirror. “That’s nice of you to say. Anyhow, I was telling you about the first Mrs. Fairfield.”
“Was she like him?” Hooter asked. “I mean, did she drink?”
“Yes, and when she drank, she became violent. They quarreled all the time, and she liked to break things. She broke dishes. She threw an electric skillet through the kitchen window. She poured a whole bottle of red wine over him when he was lying drunk on the rug, and when the ants got to that, oh boy! And then, if he reacted, she called the police. She had him sent to jail twice.”
“So what finally happened? Did they get a divorce?”
Dampy’s reply was almost inaudible. Hooter had to ask him to repeat what he said. “She died,” he said in a hoarse whisper. This time he added, “And it was no accident either.”
He was reluctant to supply any further details, and Hooter knew better than to pester him with lots of questions. In any case, there was a more important question pending:
Dampy had asked Hooter if he would marry him!
Hooter had objected that they were the same sex, but Dampy pointed out that same-sex marriages were discussed all the time on the news, and while they weren’t allowed among Southern Baptists and Catholics and Orthodox Jews, the two of them were Dutch Reformed if they were anything. Besides which, according to Mr. Fairfield, Dampy was a girl, not a boy, so it wouldn’t be same-sex. The important thing was did they love each other and would they go on loving each other to the end of time or death did them part. At last, Hooter had answered, in the words of the song, “O let us be married! too long we have tarried: but what shall we do for a ring?”
In the poem the owl and the pussycat sail off to a wooded island where a pig sells them, for a shilling, the ring that’s in his nose, but in real life finding a ring was a lot easier, for Mrs. Fairfield had a jewel case containing as great a variety of rings as you might find in a jewelry store.