There But For Fortune

Every state has them, I suppose, those few tiny towns where inbreeding and poverty and stupidity are in charge.  You avoid them at all costs.  Our's are the road to South Louisiana and if you must pass through, you roll up your windows, lock your car doors and don't stop for hell or high water.  The faces that you see are vacant and dazed, a little menacing, a little too close.  If I'd been standing when one such face appeared at the office window, I'd have taken a step back - I had the disconcerting feeling I was looking into the eyes of a serial killer - or at least someone who kept an arsenal of guns in her basement.  She was tall, thickly built and mostly toothless with a mane of salt and pepper hair.  Stringy and unkempt, it fell past her shoulders and into her eyes in a wild tangle of snarls and knots and she smelled like dirt with undertones of snuff and cooking grease.  She had had meaty, man hands balled into white knuckled fists as they gripped the sign in clipboard.  Every self preservation instinct I had kicked in, episodes of "Snapped" flew through my mind, and it was all I could do to find my voice with those mad eyes glaring at me.

Can't read or write, she told me although it came out more like Cain't rid er rawght and was closer to a growl than actual speech.  I willed my hands to stop shaking and took the clipboard, nodded to her to take a seat and told her no problem, we'd help her fill out the form.  Moving stiffly and slowly, she shambled to a chair and lowered her bulk into it with a grunt and a heavy sigh - the patient in the next chair wrinkled her nose and with a discreet cough, moved several seats away - I imagined if Ted Kaczynski and Aileen Wuornos had ever had a child, this would be the result and the stubborn image stuck with me.  

Lord have mercy, one of the nurses muttered from behind me, Jeremiah Jonhson took a wife!

Knowing I was not completely alone in my uncharitable thoughts made me laugh (a little) and feel guilty (a lot), especially when the chatter in the waiting room turned whispery and unkind, but there was still no denying we all breathed a sigh of release with her departure.  It takes all kinds, as my daddy might've said.

There but for fortune, go you or I ~ Phil Ochs