Taking the Plunge by M.A.B. Lee

It wasn’t on my mind to kill him, just shut his mouth for a bit. A body needs peace and quiet sometimes. The plunger was right there handy and I picked it up and stuck it over his mouth. It stuck real good, too, I didn’t expect that. Carlton turned red as a beet and before he could pull it off, he keeled over dead. If people knew how dangerous these things were they wouldn’t sell them just anywhere.

I sat down at the kitchen table and looked at him slumped in the chair, his chair. It was part of the parlor furniture, but when Carlton retired, he moved it right into the kitchen and put it in the corner, ‘So’s I can talk to you while you’re cooking.’ he had explained.

And that’s the way it surely worked out. Talk, talk, talk, that’s all that man did. And he was the boring-est man on the planet, I’m sure. He could talk more about nothing than anyone. Right before he fell down dead, Carlton was talking about the steeple on the church, muddling on about it being the tallest in the county if you measure the height from the ground. Now I ask you, is that something worth the breath it takes to say it? Still and all, I felt bad that he was dead. I shoulda been more careful with that plunger. You never can tell how things will turn out, can you? I figured I’d call the police. Carlton was plenty old so’s no one would be surprised that he fell down dead in the kitchen, and I didn’t plan to engage in the details. But then I got to talking to him.

“You see, Carlton,” I said. “This is what quiet sounds like. If’n you could have squeezed a little quiet in between all your talk, you wouldn’t be dead right now.”

All that silence. It sure gives a body a chance to think, don’t it? I started thinking on the years I had spent in this kitchen, cooking, baking, putting up preserves. I wouldn’t mind one bit spending less time here.

“You know, Carlton, I could just walk right out that door and go someplace else. Someplace I never been before, just to see what’s there.” 

Carlton was never much for travel and once he retired he pretty much grew roots right into his chair. But now, I could get on a bus and just go. It seemed like a wonderful thing, sitting up high in a big ole silver bus, flying along the highway, looking down at the cars and wondering what it would be like wherever I decided to get off. But I’d need some money to do that kind of traveling, and with Carlton gone, his pension would stop and his check from the gov’mint too. I’d be poor as a church mouse. Before I could fret over it though, there was a knock on the front door that startled me so, I nearly joined Carlton in the Great Beyond. It was my nosy-parker neighbor Elinor. She always comes to the front door.

“Just a minute.” I yelled. Now Carlton ain’t some little guy, he’s almost six feet and still got some muscle on him, so it’s testimony to how scared I was that I pulled him right out of his chair and drug him into the pantry. I had to push his legs round the sack of flour so’d the door would close. I stuck the plunger under the sink and went to the front door.

“Well, Sarrie Parrish, what have you been doin’?” Elinor asked.

I guess I did look a fright, with my hair all a’jumble and breathing kinda hard from the work of moving Carlton.

“Spring cleaning. Washing up them woolen blankets. They sure weigh plenty when they’re wet.”

“Little early for that, ain’t it?” Elinor commented as she waltzed into the house and walked back into the kitchen, as if I had given her an invite. “It ain’t even May yet, we could have some cold weather still.”

“If’n we do, I’ll have some clean blankets for it.”

“Well, I can’t stay,” she announced as she sat down. “I just came to borrow some flour. I’m using up the last of my peach preserves for a pie. In a couple months I’ll be back to canning all day.”  She held out a metal measuring cup

The best thing about Elinor was those preserves she put up every summer. I gotta admit I had some envy there. Mine never quite measured up.

“Need ‘bout a cup, please.”

Now this was a problem, Carlton being laid out in the pantry round the flour bag.

“Well, I’m right sorry, but I ain’t got any flour. Used it all up a couple of days ago and I ain’t been to the store yet.”

She narrowed up her eyes at me. “Didn’t I see you toting in a ten pound bag of flour with your groceries just last week?”

Didn’t I say she was nosy?

“That was sugar, Elinor, not flour.”

“Don’t seem to me ten pounds of sugar would be of much use to a body if they don’t have flour.”

She was looking very comfortable in her chair for someone who couldn’t stay. I wondered if the plunger would fit her face too, but then figured I shouldn’t make a habit of that sort of thing.

“Where’s Carlton,” she asked.

My mind froze up like a mackerel in the deep freeze, but right then there was a loud bang from upstairs.

“He’s upstairs fixing the window,” I said. Carlton never had fixed the sash on the bedroom window, and every now and again it just let loose and the window slammed shut.  

“You’re lucky to have a man around to do all those things.”

Elinor never had married, although it weren’t for lack of trying.

“Yup, I reckon Carlton’s bout the luckiest thing in my life.”

Finally she stood up. “Well I can’t spend the morning sitting around here.”

As I walked her out, she yelled up the stairs, “Bye, Carlton.” He didn’t answer.

Once Elinor left, I commenced to thinking on my situation. If no one knew that Carlton was gone, then his checks would just keep coming. And people might not actually miss Carlton, at least not right off. He spent most of his time in the kitchen talking to me, and maybe went outside some, to fuss with the okra and tomatoes, but he didn’t get out much. It could be a long time afore anyone actually came looking for him. Acourse I couldn’t keep him in the pantry. But we had a big deep freeze in the garage, and that would be a perfect place for him.  I reckoned I could collect them checks for a couple months. Then I could defrost him, put him on the kitchen floor and call the police like it all just happened, and once I got him in the ground, I’d be on that big silver bus.

I was going out to measure the freezer and figure out how Carlton would have to be folded up to fit inside, when there was another knock on the door. I peeked out and saw the Reverend Mr. Boyle. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t home, not with nosy Elinor next door, so’s I opened the door to him, and we sat down in the parlor.

He was a big man with a flop of hair hanging in his eyes, and a voice that shook the church on Sundays when he exhorted us sinners. Me and Carlton didn’t go to church regular, but the Reverend came and visited with us just the same, hoping we’d mend our ways, I guess.

“I ain’t got nothing to offer you this morning, Reverend.” I said right off. Everyone knew he was partial to a bit of this or that when he came visiting, and I hoped he’d shorten up his visit some if I didn’t feed him.

“Don’t bother yourself. Mrs. Crowley baked an apple pie this morning. That woman sure does have a way in the kitchen. Like the Good Book says, ‘It is a righteous woman who works in her kitchen to feed the hungry’.

’Course I knew any pie in Maud Crowley’s kitchen was store-bought, but I didn’t know no Bible verse what would address that, so I kept quiet.

“Now it looks like the Good Lord will favor us with some rain,” he went on.

I took that as an opening to commence talking about my vegetable garden, describing each and every plant like it was my own kin. I figured I could bore him right out of the house. But he sat there smiling and nodding. I guess he had built up a mighty toleration of boredom, what with all the visiting he did. I admired him for it.

When I ran out of steam, he started in with preaching about working in the vineyards. He went on for quite a piece too, moving on to winnowing the wheat from the chaff and whatnot. The Bible has a heap to say about gardening, and I was worried he might want to touch on all of it, but he stopped after a time and asked,

“Where’s Carlton this morning?”

There was that question again. I’d never be on that big silver bus ifn’ I couldn’t develop a talent for lying right quick.

“He’s upstairs on the pot. Trouble with his digestinals again. Breakfast went through him like grease through a goose.”

That just come to me all of a sudden like an inspiration. I probably shoulda felt bad ‘bout lying to the Reverend, but what happened to Carlton was near to an accident as could be, and I didn’t figure the Good Lord would be riled about the rest of it.

“I hope I’ll see you two in church next Sunday.” He got up readying to go.

“Good Lord willing,” I replied. “But when you get old like me and Carlton, things just naturally start going wrong. First my rheumatics, then Carlton with his digestinals. It’s hard just to get out of bed sometimes.” I didn’t want the Reverend to have expectations Carlton wasn’t up for.

After he left, I got to thinkin’.  I hadn’t figured on people being so all-fire curious as to Carlton’s whereabouts, I needed to have answers afore people asked the question, so’s I’d be ready. I was wonderin’ on this when I heard a thump in the kitchen. It must be that good-for-nothing dog Henry, I thought, slipped in through the hole in the screen door. He’d start a god-awful racket if he sniffed out Carlton dead in the pantry. Not that he was particular partial to Carlton, but he was just that kind of dog. I rushed in to head him off, and there was Carlton sitting up in his chair, looking alive as he ever did.

“Sarrie,  I think I had a spell or something. Don’t rightly remember. I was sitting in the kitchen talking and don’t remember nothin’ after that.”

“That’s exactly what it was, Carlton, a spell. Why you fell over liken you were dead, I was just gonna call for the ambulance. But I see you’re better now.”

“Feel fine now. Don’t need no ambulance. But how’d I come to be in the pantry all twisted round that sack of flour? Don’t figure that at all. Musta been sleep walking. Lot’sa people sleep walk you know. Why I heard of a guy down in Musgrove County what walked in his sleep clear to Porter Junction and then he ..”

I opened the cupboard under the sink and took out the plunger.

M.A.B. Lee

Image by Beverly Buckley from Pixabay – A rather battered sink plunger with a wooden handle and a red rubber plunger end