The Ailments of Thomas Pepys

When Mrs. Fredrich Meiner, née Alice Hinkle, shot her husband with a 12-gauge in the fall of 1987, she only got two years’ probation and 180 days’ work release. Because, as Sheriff Habicht explained to the young county prosecutor, if Alice was aiming at Fred, she would have hit the deer. So, she and her three daughters (Casey, Stacey, and Jody) continued to reside in the peeling prefab three miles outside the town of Remington, with little change, except that instead of being harassed periodically by Fred, now Alice was harassed periodically by her probation officer, who never figured out that she really was just that dumb and so made her take a lot of piss tests that never turned up anything. 
About six years after the shooting, the family’s well-being improved somewhat when Arvetta Hinkle, Alice’s mother, left a mysterious packet of money to Alice in a spendthrift trust. Not out of any particular affection for her daughter, but because Arvetta would do anything to make sure her sister Wyetta wouldn’t benefit by Arvetta’s death. It wasn’t enough to live on, but it helped fill the gaps of Alice’s little hourly wage at the Gas-N-Go on Highway 16 on the way out of Remington. 
Alice pretty much constantly got fired from the Gas-N-Go, but she never quite got around to leaving because no one else would work there for more than six weeks. So, even when the district manager, Nancy Shumhower, caught Alice staring into space one morning while the frozen doughnuts burned up in the little kitchen in the back, Alice continued her employment. 
Alice, blinking at Nancy, said dreamily, “Was it dyslexia?” 
To which Nancy screamed, “You don’t have to read to heat up a doughnut, you moron! I want three-dozen glazed out here within the next half hour, or your ass is in the can for good, do you hear me?”
Later, though, Nancy said, “What do you mean dyslexia?”
“Tom Peppies,” said Alice, pronouncing it the way she'd read it.
“Who the hell is Tom Peppies?”
But Alice, at that moment, dropped a roll of quarters, which burst open and rolled all over the ragged linoleum. They spent the rest of the shift digging coins from the grit beneath the display cases.

Next door to the Gas-N-Go sat a tiny cemetery, so small that a stranger driving by probably wouldn’t even notice it. Hidden beneath sloppy cedars, the cemetery housed maybe eighty graves, none recent. None, that is, except for the grave of Bill Schmidt, who died in 1978 in a motorcycle wreck and whose grandparents had insisted that he go into the family plot. 
Night shifts at the Gas-N-Go gave Alice the creeps. Not because of Bill Schmidt, per se. The ghost of Bill Schmidt came in to buy cigarettes on dull nights and kept Alice amused with the town gossip. When he was alive, Bill Schmidt used to give Alice rides home from Ozawki County East (“O.C.E.” to the locals) High School football games, and he’d never forced his attentions upon her, although he would have asked her to prom if she hadn’t already been pregnant with Jody at the time. 
The one who creeped her out was another Schmidt, a Hetta Schmidt (b. 1820, d. 1889), who would appear at the window of the Gas-N-Go on Wednesday nights and shout at Alice in German, something about Schule. 
One Friday evening at the Gas-N-Go, Bill mooned around the beer case while Alice ate the last of the morning’s stale caramel doughnuts (which she pronounced “car-mel”) and wiped down the counter. 
“Bill,” said Alice. Bill looked up from a six-pack of Pabst. 
“You any kin to Hetta Schmidt?” Bill’s face extended, and he flickered in and out like a fainting fluorescent bulb.  
“Is she here?” he asked in a voice that echoed.
“No but she comes around here some nights. Hollers at me. What’s she want?” 

Bill got even more freaky, stretching up to the ceiling, his voice howling something unintelligible. Alice, with a set of goose pimples blooming in her scalp, reached for the telephone, not sure whether to call Sheriff Habicht or Father Joe. 
“Jeezus Christ, Bill,” she said. At which comment Bill appeared to recover, crossed himself, and left the Gas-N-Go by walking through the cold drink case. 
Alice knew that night that she would dream of Thomas Pepys. 

Thomas Pepys was the brother of the diarist Samuel Pepys. Alice had come into this knowledge before she dropped out of high school, having once accidentally wandered into the school library and there been attracted by a cover depicting a hunky seventeenth-century roustabout in the company of a woman with cascading hair and heaving bosoms. She took the book to a study carrel tucked next to a concrete block wall painted a violent, industrial orange, the school’s color. A fluorescent light flickered in and out above her, making it tricky to concentrate, so she just flipped through to find the sex scenes. She slipped off her sandals, curling one leg beneath her, the other tracing circles with her toes around the nubby school carpet. 
This book turned out to be an annotated diary of Samuel Pepys. Just before she realized that most of the book was about the British navy and the plague, and that old Samuel’s dalliances were moronically adolescent, even by her standards, Alice’s eyes happened upon a footnote to the effect that Samuel Pepys’ brother Thomas suffered from what is now recognizable as a common neurological ailment, such as perhaps ADHD or dyspraxia. The diagnosis did not make an impression at the time because just then, the librarian discovered her in the study carrel.
“Alice Hinkle?” His voice reflected that of all the students he expected to find skipping class in the library with a copy of Samuel Pepys’ diary, she was low on the list. Alice dropped the book and skittered out to Home Ec. She never bothered with the library again.

But a few nights after Alice’s unsuccessful foray into literature, after a more than usually unpleasant Hinkle family supper, Alice found herself staring into the greasy sink, trying with all of her concentration to remember. Was it Multiple Sclerosis? Fetal Alcohol Syndrome? Lou Gehrig’s disease? When her mother Arvetta came shouting into the kitchen for another bourbon, Alice’s fingers had wrinkled, and the dishwater gone cold. 
Likewise, on the night of her wedding, after Fred passed out, Alice retreated to the hotel bathroom to retch. The fiberoptic mood lighting reflected in the mirrors surrounding the heart-shaped hot tub, drawing her into a reverie during which she considered to herself whether it was fibromyalgia. Alice was not really sure what fibromyalgia was or if it had been discovered in the seventeenth century in time for Thomas Pepys to have it, but it seemed to fit with the type of condition the book said he might have had. A blob of toothpaste plopped from her toothbrush onto her hand, and she turned off the faucet. She crept out of the bathroom, slid onto the satin sheets on the side of the bed farthest from her groom, and again, the question of Thomas Pepys’ malady faded. 
But five months later, at the birth of Jody, Alice got enough morphine and scopolamine that she became convinced that Thomas Pepys had had meningitis as a child, which Samuel Pepys had accidently cured by feeding Thomas moldy bread. But too late, for it had invaded Thomas’ brain. In her hallucination, the ailments of Thomas Pepys became entangled with an old movie, and she thought she was riding in a Ferris Wheel while Thomas babbled about cuckoo clocks and ants.
So, it was not surprising to Alice that, on the night of Bill Schmidt’s ghost’s freak-out, Alice dreamed that Thomas Pepys shared her irrational fear of birds, and that they were both trapped in an egg-laying operation, surrounded by the stench of a thousand angry hens who fixed their red eyes upon the two unfortunates. 
This took place around Easter time, and during Alice’s shift at the Gas-N-Go the next day, Nancy Shumhower showed up with a lot of seasonal decorations for the store. Decorations that included Styrofoam balls pierced with pastel-colored feathers to resemble chicks. Alice opened the box of these objects and screamed. 
Nancy dropped a pink and green streamer and sped over to quash any possibility of a workers’ comp claim. She found Alice unwounded, and Nancy’s face relapsed into its habitual form, that looked like she more or less constantly smelled poop. 
“What the hell is your problem?” Nancy asked.
“Let me do the streamers, Nance.”
“You kidding? You’ll get them all crooked. You do the chicks.”
“I can’t do the chicks, Nance.”
“You can damn well do them if you want to see your next paycheck.”
“I can’t do the chicks, Nance . . .” Alice’s voice warbled into a register that should have put Nancy on notice, but did not. Nancy grabbed two handfuls of chicks and shoved them at Alice. Some pink and blue and yellow feathers detached themselves and floated into Alice’s face. 
Alice made a sound not unlike Bill Schmidt’s otherworldly howl and backed into an end display of motor oil. Kept backing. Tripped over the scattered quart jugs. Her fall was broken by a display tree of beef jerky, which careened in its plastic wrappings across the linoleum tiles. Alice kept scooching away from Nancy, who continued to advance with the dreaded objects until Alice washed up against the check-out counter, huddling there in a fetal position. 
At the Ozawki County General Hospital, Dr. Austin prescribed valium, which suited Alice down to her toes because when she wasn’t afflicted by bird-terror, she could sell it to the OCE High School kids. 
Alice always knew which kids were likely customers, not only because of Bill Schmidt’s gossipy ghostly visits but also through her occasional forays to Michelle’s Silver Scissors. Any month in which she received a third paycheck, she would go to Michelle’s to get her hair frizzed. It was at Michelle’s that Alice learned one spring that a kid in ninth grade had Tourette’s and would burst out in History or Algebra class with the most astonishing statements.
“If you ask me, he’s faking,” said Michelle around a mouthful of pink plastic rollers. 
“Why?”
“To get out of class. The kids call him ‘Jerkmeister Schwartz.’”
“He one of them Schwartzes over on Palmer Street?” Palmer Street was the trailer park. 
“Yeah.” 
Alice couldn’t for the life of her figure out why a poor, unpopular kid would pretend to have Tourette’s, but she didn’t say this to Michelle. 

The daughters left. Stacy went to the convent in Atchison, and Casey disappeared with a carney. Jody bagged a job as a medical secretary in an obstetrician’s office and then bagged the obstetrician, and they lived in beige opulence in a federal/contemporary/colonial mishmash on the west side of Topeka. She had one child, a beige creature named Mackenzie, for the sake of whose stage career Jody sufficiently overcame her distaste for the grubbiness of her childhood to insist that Alice attend dance recitals, school musicals, and Christmas programs. 
At first, Alice escaped this grandmotherly duty by claiming she couldn’t get the time off, which was technically true, as a request for time off was the best guarantee that Nancy Shumhower would schedule her for a double shift. But Jody almost immediately detected this subterfuge, called Nancy Shumhower herself, and threatened to buy out the Gas-N-Go and turn it into a sandwich shop. Nancy Shumhower granted the time off.
Then there was the problem of Alice actually getting into a car and driving in the correct direction long enough to arrive on time at any given venue. If Alice set out for Topeka, she was sure to end up in St. Joseph, or Falls City, but not in Topeka. So Jody took it upon herself to drive all the way out to Ozawki County in her Lexus, pick Alice up, drag her to Mackenzie’s plays, and schlep her home afterwards. 
When Mackenzie graduated from high school, Alice hoped that her presence at these odious performances would no longer be required, but no such luck. Mackenzie decided to go for a theater major.
Alice was not a particularly good claque. First, she found Mackenzie’s plays uniformly distasteful, almost always involving rich people who slept with other rich people and then felt bad about it (unlike her soaps, wherein the rich people just got revenge when they felt bad). Second, Alice usually fell asleep by the third scene and only woke to clap when Jody jabbed her. Once, during Uncle Vanya, Alice actually got up to use the restroom during the second act and didn’t come back for the rest of the play.
Jody found her wandering around the practice rooms of Murphy Hall muttering to herself, “Was it Tourette’s?”
“Was what Tourette’s mom?” Jody asked on the way back to the coat check.
“Tom Peppies.”
“You and your Tom Peppies. I’ve been looking for you for an hour! The janitor’s about to kick us out! Don’t you dare tell Mackenzie you flaked out on her big night!”
After that, Jody made Alice use the restroom prior to the beginning of the play, denied her all beverages, and made her go again at intermission to prevent a repeat of what she termed “pulling an Uncle Vanya.”

Mackenzie’s senior year was particularly trying, with performances of A Doll’s House, Rhinoceros, and As You Like It all in one semester. Just after Christmas, Jody began bugging Alice about yet another play. 
“It’s an adaptation of the Diaries of Samuel Peeps,” said Jody. “Mackenzie has the part of Deb, the housemaid.”
Alice watched a mouse run along the moldy baseboard beneath the picture window. The picture window gave an admirable vista of the dust patch between the prefab and the gravel road. Alice was having popcorn and Mountain Dew for supper that night. She tossed a kernel to the rodent. 
“I can’t get the day off.”
“You don’t even know which day it is. Just try and remember to take a shower this time.”
“When?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just take a damn shower.”

That night at the Gas-N-Go, Bill goofed around with the plastic roses in tubes next to the cash register, turning them from pink to black and then to orange with green stripes. 
He looked up and said, “Alice.”
She nearly dropped the plastic bucket of “car-mel” icing she was carrying into the kitchen in preparation for making the next morning’s doughnuts.
“Yeah, Bill?” The only time Bill’s ghost had really creeped her out was the night she killed Fred. After hours of investigatory questioning, she was released on her own recognizance (Where, reasoned Sheriff Habicht, would she go?) and she returned to the silent prefab three miles out of Remington (Arvetta having whisked the children out from under Fred’s mother’s nose). Alice fell into a deep and peaceful sleep, the principal disturber of her slumbers having at last been removed. 
In her dream, Bill came to the house, young as he had been when he tried to kiss her after a football game. In her dream, Bill stood before her in his motorcycle jacket, holding out a pink carnation. She was frozen there for hours, contemplating the carnation, which kept turning into faces of infernal disappointment and censure.
Alice had jerked awake as usual at daybreak, leapt out of bed to fix Fred’s breakfast, and then began laughing. She did not know where the girls were, and she did not know if she was going to jail. So much the better. The house was empty, and all the devils were elsewhere. Alice lit a fruity-scented candle on top of the TV in honor of Bill Schmidt, whom she did not love, and said out loud into the empty air, “Bill, I’m glad I spared you.” 
The ghost of Bill didn’t freak Alice out tonight. The reason she nearly dropped the bucket was that he sounded final. Like it might be the last thing he ever said to her.  
“That play of Mackenzie’s.”
“What about it, Bill?”
“Might do you good,” he said. He floated a plastic rose toward her, made it change to purple, her favorite color, and faded into a neon sign advertising Schlitz to no one. 

The boy who played Thomas Pepys had only three lines, and his death took place off stage. He spoke in a thick southern Kansas accent with a lisp. Difficult to say whether the young actor was putting on the accent, or the lisp, or both, in order to imitate the speech impediment of Thomas Pepys.
Because that was what it was. Not lumbago or rheumatoid arthritis or a club foot or even tinnitus. The ailment of Thomas Peppies, which everyone around Alice insisted on pronouncing “Peeps,” was just a speech impediment, and it didn’t even kill him; he died of unrelated causes. Alice bawled through the end of the play, but because, as usual, she forgot to applaud, Jody didn’t notice. 
During the drive back to Ozawki County, Jody did notice Alice snorting a lot, figured she had a cold, and resented her mother for exposing her to contagion. 
“Wasn’t Mackenzie beautiful, Mom?”
“Yeah. I liked that Thomas Pepys.” She pronounced it “Peeps” so Jody would understand.
“You what?”
“He had a speech impediment. It wasn’t Tourette’s.” 
“Jeezus, are we going there again Mom? I ought to have you put in a home. You spent that whole play thinking about your damn Thomas Peppies didn’t you. My mom, the mental case. You didn’t even watch Mackenzie’s part . . .” Jody hadn’t finished bitching by the time she dropped Alice off at the old house three miles out of Remington, but she wanted to get back to Topeka before 2 a.m., so she saved the rest of her harangue for later and drove off. 
Alice went into the house. She ate some Oreos and drank some caffeine-free Cherry Coke. She watched a little TV. She got into bed. 
Then, she got back out of bed and went to the window. The full moon shone on the fields of stubble and into the hills beyond. Alice pulled on her coat. She went out the back door and crossed the pastures in the moonlight. She crawled under one fence, then another, three miles into Remington, over furrows and under irrigators gleaming in the bone-white moon. When she got to Remington, she kept walking. On the way past the Gas-N-Go, she waved to the ghost of Bill Schmidt, who raised a cigarette in benediction. She kept walking.  

ξ

Sarah E. Ruhlen’s fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Waccamaw, Boiler Journal, Slipstream, and Rhino. Her short story, “Open Water,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Ruhlen's creative nonfiction recently appeared in Hobart and was anthologized in Essay Daily’s June 21, 2018 project. She lives and writes in Camillus, NY.