Frank Hayful
You cannot miss crossing paths with society’s marginalized in a metropolis, but out here in the country where Curtis Bright lives on his family’s farm, homeless people are scarce. Curtis knows of one person who, it is said, lives in the woods. This is the legendary local ghoul Frank Hayful. The older children on Curtis’s school bus, Diddleburger Number Three, tell stories about Frank Hayful stealing chickens from local farmers and eating them alive. They demonstrate a wild language of gestures and grunts that they claim is how he ‘talks.’ They tell ghoulish Twilight Zonesque stories of teens they know who’ve been haunted by Frank Hayful in one form or another. Zombie. Peeping Tom. Stalker. Burglar. Ghost. Curtis is spellbound by these stories. Frank Hayful plays a starring role in the fertile, creature-infested bottom land of his imagination.
Last month, Curtis walked right into Frank Hayful stealing a garden rake from their barn. At first it didn’t register with Curtis who it was, because this guy didn’t look any different than any other gimpy, semi-dirty middle-aged farmer in overalls. And then he realizes that this is the figure he’s seen caught in the headlights of the family Electra walking the backroads at night. The one they caught living in the church belfry. And in Bachman’s turkey house. The old man walking down the road with a dead chicken that the older boys on the bus had pointed out. Frank Friggin’ Hayful! Curtis runs for his life as Frank Hayful chases him with an ax. When Curtis reaches his house he turns to confront his attacker, ready to dodge a death chop from the — sees the mangy old boy still down at the barn, going about his business of stealing the rake and whatever he can fit into his burlap sack. Curtis runs inside tand gets his mother, Fern, who sprints halfway to the barn with a rolling pin in one hand and a butcher knife in the other and yells at Frank Hayful to Put back that rake! until Frank Hayful drops the rake and walks away after scooping up a handful of porcelain fence insulators as his consolation booty.
And then — this happened just last night — with his father in town at a K of C meeting, and Curtis and his three younger siblings at home alone with Fern, it is getting close to bedtime. It’s quiet like only the country can be quiet. The TV hasn’t been on for days. Fern has just finished reading to the younger children from a book of fairy tales. She is enjoying her first peaceful minute of the entire day. When —
Curtis feels electricity shoot through the room like a bolt of invisible lightning. Fern sucks in her breath and stifles a scream. The picture window! Frank Hayful’s face pressed to the glass! Peering in, eyes like a wild animal!
It’s all hisses and whispers as Fern herds them into the back bedroom and pushes a chair against the door. It is the quiet that makes their waiting so awful. Every instant is the instant right before Frank Hayful will throw himself at them like a rabid dog and kill them all. The two younger ones are crying without knowing why. Curtis puts his hand on his mother’s shoulder and feels her trembling. He squeezes her shoulder and keeps squeezing for long minutes, until he can feel her trembling stop, and her breathing ease.
Curtis lies awake in bed that night until he hears his father, Bob, come home from his meeting, and his mother’s muffled voice in the kitchen, most likely describing Frank Hayful’s face in the window, and how they hid in the back bedroom. Then he hears her crying. No mistaking that sound. He stays awake until her crying stops, and falls asleep to the reassuring murmur of his father’s voice coming from the kitchen.
Later that week, he’s riding with his father in the pick-up. They’re taking a load of corn to Harker’s Feed Mill to have it ground for cattle feed. Coming back from Harker’s with their feed, what do you know, here’s Frank Hayful walking up the road with his burlap sack slung over his shoulder. Get in back, says Curtis’s father as he stops the truck alongside Hayful. Get in, he says to Hayful.
Curtis sits on a feed bag in the bed of the pickup and watches through the back window as his father reams outFrank Hayful for snooping around on their farm the way he’d done. He’s never seen his father this angry. It’s fascinating. The pantomime is vicious. His father is yelling and shaking a fist at Frank Hayful like he might stop the truck and toss the old coot into a field full of hogs at any instant. Frank Hayful cowers in the passenger seat until Bob stops the pick-up, lets him out, and spins off without letting Curtis get back in the front seat.
For the rest of his life, Curtis will associate the notion of justice with the smell of cattle feed, and the feeling he had watching his father lay down the law with Frank Hayful. Curtis can’t wait to tell the older boys on Diddleburger Number Three about this. He’s not afraid of any Frank Friggin’ Hayful. He feels as if he would know exactly what to do if Frank Hayful ever shows his face around their place again. Which he never does.
