Chapter 15

Beauregard Marshall

12/24/2012
11:51:15 PM

The wind loosened awning took that moment to develop enough of a hole to emit a low, long howl that sounded surprisingly like woman crying. The slightly guttural and thoroughly disquieting sound didn’t travel very far due to the hammering winds of the blizzard, though far enough to get the undivided attention of one, very strange person as he arrived.

Slowly trudging up the deserted street came a living, breathing paradox. He was one of those human anomalies capable of providing conversational fodder long after normal topics have been extinguished. When he spoke, he either entertained, or frightened people.

“It takes a licking and still keeps ticking! Boy what a chip off the old block. I think I’ve got it! Who knew? Do you have a cough due to cold? Does your get up and go, get up and leave? NBC? Must see TV!

Born in the south, he lived forever with an anachronistic name that, had he been even remotely normal, would still have doomed him to a life of torment from all others and not just children. His doting mother read a book, while she was pregnant, about a dashing, Confederate General named Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard and his gallantry in both the Mexican American and Civil Wars.

Unwilling to even try spelling Pierre, Gustave, or Toutant, she settled on the surname, Beauregard, for her only son. Anxious that he have a thoroughly uncommon name and that he be brought up in a refined and protected environment, she gave detailed instructions to her hen-pecked husband and wrote out those same dictates in a long missive left in her attorney’s care.

This would not have mattered except that Beauregard’s mother succumbed to childbirth complications just days after their healthy, supposedly happy son entered the world. The details of Beauregard’s naming and upbringing would still be shrouded in mystery from the young child, except that the late Mother Marshall held title to the home, lands, business interests and all family money. Since father Marshall was more, or less a well provided for pauper, he found in the steely eyed, old fossil of a family lawyer a far greater opponent than he could defeat.

Raised behind tall, iron gates and let out only to attend private school, church and those occasional forays into the world with his rather inattentive father, Beauregard was at once a whipping post for those school mates that preyed upon weakness and fear and victim to the insecurities that accompany children of disinterested, single parents.

Young Beau, as the household staff took to calling him, found a soul mate in the television. TV at the time provided an array of pabulum for the soul, instead of fascinating titillation for the mind. Clichés and slogans were the order of the day, in both programming and commercial interruption. Before he could walk, Young Beau was well versed in “TV talk,” as his late mother would have put it. Had she survived, he would have had a succession of the brightest tutors, most talented musicians and finest turned out ladies to teach him the finer points of polite society. Instead, his days were filled with terror at school and the monotonous influence of sixties television during the rest of his waking hours.

Just as adolescence began to draw Young Beau from his shell, his father managed to gamble away much of the entire family fortune, proving, once and for all, that Mother Marshall knew what she was about when she tied up the estate. All that remained was the trust that was impossibly unbreakable and shielded against the day Young Beau would take his place in the world.

As fate had dealt roughly with Beauregard, in the matter of naming and growing up motherless, so too, did fate conspire with regard to his father. Never too stable in the best of times and subject to periods of depression, even before being hired by his future wife’s Father, specifically to marry his only child and produce an heir, Father found penury one insult too many and after a three day drunk, threw himself off a high building, managing to crash land through the roof, in an almost reclined position, behind the wheel of a perfectly restored, 1968 Plymouth Road Runner, ending his life and forever ruining any chance that the owner of said car would realize his dream of winning “Best of Show,” at the annual Classic Car Convention, in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Such are the vagaries of life in the not-so-big city.

Fairly well off and recently orphaned, Beau found himself lost and lonely. There was no longer a household staff to cater to his needs, as there was neither house, nor staff. Those were lost in the cacophony of actions, suits, challenges and writs following the suicide.
The attorney still cared for certain of Beau’s affairs as dictated by the terms of the trust but there was no affection after the bill was paid. Beau was alone in the world.

For the past three decades, Beauregard lived in a modest home, among other modest homes, near downtown Bethlehem. He took many, if not most meals at the Last Chance Diner and saw no reason to change his routine just because it blew up a little snow. His one concession to the weather was in walking, trudging really, to avoid potential car problems with undisciplined snow banks.

Pedestrians, had anyone been unfortunate enough have walked by in the blizzard, would been equal parts fascinated and repelled by the non-stop chatter that Beauregard emitted as he made his way toward dinner.

“You dirty rat! Let me at ‘em. I’ll tear ‘em limb from limb! Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!”

Because he was unloved, he was never diagnosed with a condition that resembled autism. His retreat from things that scared him, as the whole world seemed to crash down, following his father’s demise, was to seek comfort in the world behind the TV screen. His social circle included the Clampets, the Cleavers and the Hee Haw Honeys. His exposure to society was at the hands of Alice the waitress at Mel’s Diner. For reasons wholly unknown, Beauregard identified with the characters that peopled Mel’s and unconsciously sought the same raucous closeness at Last Chance.