Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing (21 page)

“I'm growing a beard,” you explain to the clerk.

“It certainly can't hurt,” she replies, staring at the license photo.

Many people hate beards. My own mother was one of those people. During my bohemian days in graduate school, I grew a really nice shaggy beard and then made the mistake of going home during spring break. Mom met me at the door and let out such a shriek I thought someone had sneaked up behind me with an ax.

“You shave that disgusting thing off this instant!” she exclaimed by way of greeting.

Mom loudly expressed her belief that only a man who didn't have a job and never intended to get one would grow a beard.

“So?” I said.

Every time I came into the house, even though I had been away only five minutes, Mom would greet me with the words, “What! You haven't shaved off that disgusting thing yet?” Mom was a third-degree black belt in nagging. Bit by bit, she started to wear me down, particularly with the phrase “that disgusting thing.” I started to feel as if I had a huge, hairy spider attached to my face. I fought back, offering up examples of great men who had worn beards.

“Abraham Lincoln wore a beard, Mom.”

“Yes, and look what happened to him!”

So much for the logical approach. Finally, I could stand it no longer. Nothing is worth causing a mother such anguish. She probably was lying awake nights fretting about my beard. Maybe she was afraid her friends would see me and offer their condolences over the way her son had turned out. Maybe she thought people would point to her on the street. “There goes the woman whose son wears a beard,” they'd say. Banks would refuse to approve loans for anyone in the family. Bankruptcy would result. We'd all be destitute. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions would follow, soon to be joined by the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. I went into the bathroom and shaved off my beard.

Thinking Mom's joyous cries at the sight of my clean-shaven face would be reward enough for the loss of my beloved beard, I walked into the kitchen. “Look, Mom. Notice anything different about me?”

She studied me closely for a moment. “Well, you could certainly use a haircut.”

Is it any wonder the field of psychotherapy flourishes?

Nearly all male writers wear beards. We have many uses for them, most of which escape me at the moment. They do come in handy for fly tying, of course, and also
for collecting insect samples on trout streams. At one time, the beards of us writers served to express our rugged individualism and helped to distinguish us from people who had actual jobs. That is no longer the case. Nowadays, corporate presidents are showing up at the office wearing their vacation-grown beards. I even have a banker friend who wears a full beard but is still regarded among his business associates as a highly respected and responsible leader in the world of finance. My mother, of course, wouldn't deposit so much as a dime in his bank until he shaved off that disgusting thing.

My wife, Bun, theorizes that the primary purpose of a beard is concealment of a weak chin, multiple chins, or even multiple weak chins. I don't know how she comes up with such nonsense. Bun did comment awhile back that she thought I looked good in a beard. “You kind of remind me of one of those famous writers who lived in Paris back in the twenties.”

“I'm not falling for that one again,” I said.

It might be thought that a beard brings a degree of efficiency to personal hygiene in that it saves all the time otherwise devoted to shaving. Nothing could be further from the truth. Wearing a beard is not too much different from wearing a small garden on your face. Without hours of devoted care, it soon gets away from its owner, becomes overgrown, and spreads out over the surrounding landscape. That is what happened to my Uncle Flynn and ultimately led to the unfortunate event that is still recalled with glee among the more malicious members of our family.

My mother used to refer to this particular period of family history as the time her brother Flynn was so much sought after. “Oh, Flynn is much sought after,” she'd say. She allowed it to be assumed that it was employers who sought after Flynn, but that was not really the case. The
persons seeking after him were usually some of his gambling associates, and probably also the law, although I'm not sure about the law.

Uncle Flynn holed up in a mountain cabin for most of one winter, apparently for the purpose of lowering the risk of unexpected encounters with some of his fellow gamblers. It was during this sabbatical from his chosen profession that he grew a beard. Also about this time, Uncle Flynn developed a back problem, a malady of great puzzlement to all of us, because the heaviest thing Flynn ever lifted was a pool cue or a deck of cards. If he reached down to pick up something off the floor, his back would get a catch in it. Bent over and with arms hanging akimbo, a posture not unlike that of an ape, he would howl with pain. Mom, rather unsympathetically it seemed to me, said she thought Flynn's bad back must have resulted from his accidentally getting too close to a job and dislocating a vertebra when he leaped back in fear and loathing.

Uncle Flynn started the beard, as I understood at the time, more or less as a hobby, there being little else in the way of entertainment at the cabin. He tried various styles, trimming and shaping this way and that, until at last he tired of the hobby and simply let the beard grow as it saw fit. Black, curly foliage quickly engulfed both sides and the lower half of his face and then descended in wild abandon down his chest. Flynn found some amusement from time to time in measuring the length of his beard, but not enough. After studying in a mirror the transformation he had undergone from a dapper man-about-town to something resembling the Wild Man of Borneo, he suddenly realized that he might very well escape recognition if he were to slip into town after dark and take in a movie at the Pandora Theater. And that is what he did, augmenting his disguise with an old pair of bib overalls, a tattered flannel
shirt, and a grungy mackinaw that had served to plug up a hole in the cabin wall.

Uncle Flynn waited until the theater lights had gone down and the newsreel had begun before buying his ticket and popcorn and finding a seat in the darkened theater. By great good fortune, or so Flynn thought at the time, the seat he selected turned out to be right next to that of Miss Sarah Jane Trillabee, the town librarian and a woman of somewhat stern personality, but otherwise not unattractive.

Flynn's attention soon drifted from the movie,
Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman,
to Miss Trillabee. Forgetting that he was no longer his usual dapper self, Flynn offered the librarian some of his popcorn. She refused with a curt shake of her head, obviously being of the impression that ill fate had seated a tramp right next to her. Unaccustomed to rebuffs from women, Flynn now felt challenged. As the movie progressed, he'd lean over from time to time and whisper some witty comment about activities on the screen. The librarian grew increasingly incensed by the provocations of the hairy creature next to her. Finally, she'd had enough. She thrust her arms into her coat sleeves, arose in a huff, and began to squeeze her way past Flynn. Then it happened. For a brief instant, Miss Trillabee momentarily lost her balance and fell against the source of her ire. Startled by Miss Trillabee's sudden effort to flee his attentions, Flynn tried to rise and draw his legs out of her way but was momentarily pinned in his seat as she fell against him.

Except for one of those unlucky coincidences that always seemed to overtake Flynn, it is likely the situation would have been resolved simply by Miss Trillabee's complaining to the manager and the manager asking Flynn to stop annoying the other patrons, or, in the extreme, refunding the price of his ticket and ordering him from the
theater. What happened instead, however, serves as an excellent example of the dangers inherent in beards.

Even as Miss Trillabee thrust against Uncle Flynn, she was angrily pulling her coat belt tight around her and snapping shut its clasp. The belt, as Uncle Flynn explained years later, consisted of a web of decorative metal links rather than a simple cloth affair, which could not possibly have become entangled with a curly beard. Alas, as the clasp of the belt snapped shut, Uncle Flynn found his face painfully and hopelessly attached to the back of the town librarian.

Miss Trillabee, of course, had not so much as an inkling that she had snagged Uncle Flynn by the beard. Thus, when Flynn grabbed her around the hips with both hands and pulled her back into his face, trying desperately to get some slack in his beard, she could not help but misinterpret his actions or his intent.

“Stop that, you crazy fool!” she hissed over her shoulder at the hunched form of her assailant. She twisted sharply around trying to get a shot at Flynn with her purse, a tactic that flung Uncle Flynn out into the aisle but still not free of her belt. It was at this moment that the audience heard, as later reported in the Blight
Bugle,
a sound very much like the anguished howl of a wolf. The catch in Flynn's back had caught! For a second or two, the audience supposed the howl had come from the movie, but this supposition was soon erased by a piercing scream from Miss Trillabee, the result of Flynn's clawing frantically at her backside in an effort to undo his beard. Instantly, the house lights went up.

What the nearest members of the audience then observed, even as they blinked in the sudden luminosity, was Uncle Flynn crouched in the aisle with his face pressed against the rear of the librarian.

“Here, you!” a man shouted. “Stop that, you fiend!”

Several men arose from their seats, ready to charge to the aid of a lady in distress. But even as he had been flung howling into the aisle, Uncle Flynn had hit upon a desperate solution to the predicament—he would cut his beard loose from the belt with his pocket knife. He released his hold on Miss Trillabee just long enough to extract and open his knife.

“Watch out!” someone shouted. “The tramp's got a knife!”

As might be expected, this mention of a knife had less than a calming effect on the librarian's would-be rescuers, and much less so on Miss Trillabee herself. She immediately ceased her flailing with purse and bolted up the aisle, through the lobby, and out of the theater, all the while closely pursued by Flynn. Realizing at this point that she still hadn't shaken off the crazed and lecherous tramp, Miss Trillabee suddenly stopped and concentrated her efforts on purse flailing and language most inappropriate for a librarian. It was then Flynn managed to cut loose his beard from the belt. He fled up the street and disappeared into the darkness behind Grogan's War Surplus.

According to the Blight
Bugle,
some men from the audience had rather tentatively followed Miss Trillabee and her knife-wielding assailant from the theater, where they observed that the tramp had scurried off very much like an ape, all hunched over and with arms hanging akimbo. Several witnesses expressed concern over whether Miss Trillabee's assailant had been human at all, because minutes after he—or it—had vanished into the night, they heard from off in the distance a howl so eerie and haunting that one man said it was enough to make your flesh crawl.

When the Blight
Bugle
came out and we read about the horrible incident at the Pandora Theater, we were naturally
shocked, but never for a moment did we make any connection with Flynn. A few days later, Mom took some food and clean clothes up to the cabin where Uncle Flynn had holed up. She reported upon her return that Flynn had become terribly irritable when she started to tell him about the Pandora thing, and had even shouted out, “Stop! Stop! I don't want to hear!” Mom said she thought his lack of excitement in recent months was starting to get on his nerves. “And he simply will not stop complaining about his silly back! My goodness, you'd think he actually used it.”

“Maybe Uncle Flynn should go into town and see a chiropractor,” I suggested.

“That's rather unwise, if you ask me. You know, Flynn is much sought after.”

“I know,” I said. “But I don't think anyone will recognize him with his beard.”

“Oh, Flynn shaved off that disgusting thing,” she said. “He could certainly use a haircut, though.”

No greater bond exists between two male friends than shared ignorance. It's wonderful. Shared knowledge is fine as far as it goes, but one friend invariably knows more about a given topic than the other, thereby creating an intellectual imbalance. Shared ignorance, on the other hand, provides for perfect equilibrium. It is limitless. There is no end of topics for conversation based on mutual ignorance.

I have several really good pals with whom I share ignorance. We converse for hours about subjects we know nothing about. With most of my friends, actual knowledge about a topic would lead to either very short conversations or even arguments that might grow bitter and ultimately destroy a friendship.

“Why, that's not true.”

“Who says?”

“I say.”

“Let's look it up in the
Guinness Book of World Records
. There, see, I'm right, you moron! Ha ha ha ha!”

Arguments like that never arise when two friends enjoy shared ignorance of a topic.

“You know what's causin' all these earthquakes? It's that hole in the ozone.”

“You're right about that. It's lettin' in too much gravity.”

“Gravity, yeah, way too much of it. Gravity keeps buildin' up and buildin' up, and pretty soon you got your earthquakes.”

“You're right about that, ol' buddy.”

If either friend knew anything at all about holes in ozone, gravity, or earthquakes, he would be under an unrestrained compulsion to reveal this bit of knowledge, and the conversation would abruptly end. Furthermore, an element of distrust would enter the relationship, because one of the friends would feel insecure in happily discoursing away on a topic he knows absolutely nothing about. He would be in constant fear of exposing his ignorance to assault by an actual thought or fact.