Weird Harold, Episode 5 of 5, Tragedy

As with all things, both good and bad, our time with Weird Harold is coming to a close.  It's not that there isn't anything left to say about him, I could tell the anecdote about how Harper came over with a copy of Tchaikovsky and blew out the safety circuits on both of Harold's home speakers. We could explore the time when he hosted the Halloween Party, but that's really Pam's story, not Harold's, so we'll see Harold in a cameo sometime down the road.

You know what I really remember most about Harold?  It was his hands.  He was an average-sized guy with average-sized hands for the most part, but his fingers were abnormally bulky, so when he made a fist, the hand closed and became a mallet.  Sausage digits with a gold band around his left ring finger that looked embedded in the flesh as if it were put on before he'd grown up and now was fused below his first joint.  That's what I remember, more than his curly black hair or vacant brown-eyed stare, or his ever-present K-SHE St. Louis Rock Station t-shirts with the logo of a pig.  So, where were we?

Caged in a small town, transportation by shuttle bus, there was no trouble to get into for the next two weeks.  Up till now, you'd think that the two of us were alone in Great Falls, Montana, but we weren't.  An entire squadron of jets and mechanics and pilots accompanied us on our grand adventure and they were rapt with interest regarding the car wreck.  Questions and answers went like this:

How'd we survive?  Seatbelts.  (not the dumb luck of drunks and fools)

How fast were we going?  Maybe five or ten over the speed limit.  (telling the guys we knew that Harold wasn't speeding would have been a sure-fire rip through the thin web of lies)

Not a scratch on you, and the car is almost totaled?  “Not true,” I denied.  “Look, right here, there's still a bump on my forehead and this that looks like a fishing hook puncture through my hand had to have been caused by glass.”  (okay, humor me.  They did.)

Brodie found the only nightclub worth going to in all of Great Falls.  I don't remember the name of the place, but it was a claustrophic's nightmare, full of twisting cave-like dance floors paralleling sectioned off seating, all in darkness penetrated only by these strange little green lights.  The music was loud, the drinks were strong, and the place had a decent ratio of women.  So, we started clubbing at night.

Brodie was a hero in every way but action.  He had the looks, tall, blonde, blue-eyed, with a rugged tanned face, and strong back with broad farm-boy shoulders.  When he smiled you just wanted to loan the guy money and help him start his future.  At the club, Brodie was in love with a local girl.  I say at the club because back at Minot he was in love with some dispatcher over on the bomber side of base, and at school where we both took night classes he was in love with a brunette sophomore, and back home he was in love with his high school sweetheart, a girl from one town over, and with his sister's best friend.  Brodie was full of love.

His newest love was Jenny, a brown-haired girl with these captivating blue eyes so active that nothing escaped her attention.  When I met her, I thought everything I said was suddenly interesting and cool.  Then I found out Jenny was deaf and was lip-reading.  There was school for the deaf in the town and most of the students came to the club because they could have fun and dance to the foundation-rocking bass. 

There we were with Brodie and some of the other guys, Jenny and her fellow students, and Jenny's older sister.  Jenny's older sister was beautiful and worldly, being twenty-five and married, but separated.  I was only twenty and none of the guys were married except Harold and his wife was more beautiful than Jenny, her older sister, and the rest of the club girls combined. 

So, why Harold and Jenny's older sister started flirting and dancing confused me.  There was Harold glommed all over this woman who barely came up to his chest when he had Cindy at home.  Strange things never just stay strange, do they?  They turn wild or they turn tragic.

Jenny's husband came in, mad as hell. There was his wife with a group of people he didn't know, dancing close with some nitwit whose name starts with Weird.  And he wanted to fight, so fight he did.  Brodie carried him right out of the club and fought him in the parking lot.  The guy was a local fireman and promised he'd be back with buddies. So, we went back to clubbing until the place closed down, then we all straggled away in groups and clumps, finding all-night breakfast or just heading back to the hotel.  No rescue squad of firemen ever came for Jenny's sister.

The next day, on the shuttle Harold looked like hell.  He didn't even talk to anyone till well after noon.  By quitting time, he came over and told me I had to come to his hotel room, cause he had something to show me.

When I got there, the sight was truly different.  He had a room with two single beds and had stacked the box springs together and then the mattresses on top so the new configuration meant sleeping four-feet off the floor.  Then the lamps had been rearranged all surrounding the bed and the whole thing pulled over to next to the dresser.  Puzzled is a good word describing me at that moment.

Of the things that Harold had spent his reenlistment bonus on, other than the car and car stereo were some home electronics.  He had a new home stereo, VCR, television, and video camera.  It was the video camera he pulled out and it was that VHS tape he ejected from the side of it that he wanted me to see. 

So what?  There wasn't a VCR, so I couldn't watch a video. 

“I'll show you back home,” he promised. 

What Harold had done was to make a homemade porn with Jenny's sister.  He'd put the beds together and pulled them over to give the right lighting and angle for the little tripod he'd brought along.  Then, like a director with an actress, they'd spent all night doing porn-sex for the camera, until he thought they'd gotten it right. 

“What about Cindy?” I asked, mortified.

“She'll never know.”

- - - - - - - -

One day, six or eight months later, when Cindy was labeling all the unmarked VHS tapes on the shelf in their living room, she found it.  But Cindy was smarter than Harold by three digits, and she didn't leave him until she was ready. 

He came home from work and the house was empty, a moving van had packed everything up and taken it away. The stereo, the furniture, the fishing equipment, even the pellet gun, all gone.  The moving van was on it's way to Florida and the girls and Cindy were on their way as well, road-tripping across the country in a Pearlescent-Blue Grand Am with a new ground effects package.

Harold moved into the barracks with a duffel full of uniforms held in shaky hands.  He had a white crease on his meaty finger where the ring used be.

- rick, the trouble years.

First Episode - Weird Harold

Previous Episode - The Grand Am

Comments

[Cherise]

Nooooo! Say it aint so! The end of weird Harold? *makes girly keening noises*

[Mark]

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER put on tape or pictures (whatever the format) things that will:

a) land you in jail
or
b) get you in trouble with the wife/girlfriend

[CV Rick]

Well, one of the reasons I have to quit writing about Harold is that the hits to my blog actually went DOWN during the episodes.

That's a sure indication that the feature wasn't popular.

[Mark]

you have GOT to be kidding me....those stories are what stories are made of! I guess you'll just have to regale us with them at the BWCA....

[CV Rick]

Not kidding. Almost nobody's reading them

[John]

Well, we all knew that the luck of drunks and fools runs out about the time they realize they've been lucky.

Good series Rick. Different from your normal writing, but as with most non-fiction, these stories have that particular edge to them that make for good story telling.

[CV Rick]

Well, I'm glad you liked them John.

[graeme]

I loved the stories dude. You are a very talented writer.

[Lyda Morehouse]

Such a sad end for Weird Harold.

Great story writing, though.

[a rose is a rose]

why were those your 'troubled years'. they sound like wicked fun to me

c'mon rick, imagine if you were in san francisco or nyc instead of minot? now THAT would have been scary

i loved the harold and i stories. bert and i have nothin' on you

p.s. if this comment appears more than once, i most sincerely apologize

[CV Rick]

I'm glad y'all liked Weird Harold. I enjoyed remembering about him and writing about it. Be sure to share the links with anyone who may be interested.