Nobody Knows Your Secret

14

Hadley had known Beanie since grade school. An injury in a pulp mill as had disfigured one of his hands and part of his forearm, but Beanie, whose real name was Vesper Wendell Fugate, had moved back home to the mountains and got a job at one of the local cemeteries. 

The accident at the pulp mill changed Beanie. Reflections for Beanie were seen through a prism as opposed to a looking glass. Many folks laughed at him. He was the butt of jokes. But there was nothing to joke about when Hadley thought of her friend.

When Hadley looked at Beanie, she saw a kind heart and a good man. A good pal. Slightly damaged, but who didn't get a few dings and dents on his chassis if he lived long enough? 

The accident had left Beanie with periods of foggy thought, but even with the fog, Beanie Fugate was tops in her book.

She tried to help Beanie out whenever she could. 

Her brother-in-law, Bill Whittaker, had gotten Hadley the job of cleaning out Eustian Singlepenny's house. Eustian was a world-class hoarder, but Beanie was one of the hardest workers Hadley knew.

She drove down Main Street, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Beanie liked to mingle with the town's people and keep abreast the local happenings in his own simple way. 

He didn't give a dried apple about local politics, ignoring the latest gossip about what the mayor was up to or who was going to run for the school board. The countless court battles down at the courthouse did not interest him.

Beanie focused on more important issues – like what the Blue Plate Special was at the Greasy Spoon. He rarely ate at the Spoon, preferring to feast on a cold can of chili or a peanut butter sandwich.

 But as he ate, he liked to imagine he was eating from the handwritten menu on the chalkboard outside the diner: meatloaf and mashed potatoes, chicken fried steak and gravy, or turkey casserole with cornbread topping. 

It passed the time.

Today, the talk was about Pearl Andrew's ninety-seventh birthday party and a hundred other really vital things.

"Don't you know them grandkids from Ohio turned up for the weekend?" somebody said.

"Cecil Phillips got home from squirrel huntin' Sad-day. Cleanin' his shotgun like always. Dern thang went off. Sent a spray a buckshot through his livin' room ceiling. Leola was settin' on the throne in the upstairs john. Heard she got a mess a pellets in her bottom."

"Heh. Heh," someone said. "Bet it's a three-dawg night at Cecil's."

"You said it. Leola's backside was burnt, but I heard the toilet took most of the shot."

"Do say?"

"Lucky for her."

"You said it! Her bottom was spared most of the buckshot."

"Guess Leola's fin'ly got that new bathroom she's been pining for."

"Yep. And Cecil's got the outhouse! Heh. Heh. It goes with the dawg house, ya know. Kinda like a set!"

From their conversations, Beanie learned that Reece Melborn's beagle pups would soon be ready for adoption, three girls and four boys. 

Lucky seven, and more beautiful beagles had never been born on the mountain according to Reece.

Beanie gleaned information like steel in a magnetic field. The reason was simple. In HopeRockCounty, Beanie was invisible. Not in the real physical sense of the word but in the practical sense.

It was the same whether he was positioned at the edge of the woods waiting for a funeral to be over so he could finish covering the grave or if he was sitting on a bench outside of Brinkley's Garage. Most people just did not see him.