Billy Wilson's Wife

Just after the last hymn but before the benediction, a shotgun blast rattled the stained glass windows and shocked the entire congregation of the Baptist Church awake and upright.

“Lord a'mighty,” my startled grandmother exclaimed, “What the hell was that?”

Several confused seconds passed and then all heads turned toward the sound of the front doors as they jerked open and one of the Albright twins stumbled in.

“She shot him!” the boy yelled, “Billy Wilson's wife done shot his leg off! He needs the doc!”

Doc McDonald, who never as much collected his mail without his medical bag, was already on his feet and making his way past the stunned crowd. Rowena, still in her choir robe and looking uncharacteristically anxious, met him on the church steps and together they hurried across the dirt road to the doc's house. What the congregation had heard was Billy Wilson's wife's second shot, an alert fired harmlessly into the air after she'd blown his kneecap apart with the first and then thoughtfully thrown his wayward carcass into the back of a hay wagon and driven him to the doc's.

“From the looks of the back of that wagon, reckon she didn't break no speed limits,” Uncle Willie observed dryly to my grandmother, “Pretty slick he ain't dead.”

Nana just shrugged. She had no love lost for the likes of Billy Wilson, an unrepentant gambler, hard drinker and public womanizer. Billy's shortcomings and the state of his marriage had been staples of island gossip for years. If you counted the two common law wives who had come before, this was his third attempt but my grandmother was old school and cared about the legal details so she considered it his first.

“Either way, it ain't much of a track record,” she had been heard to say, “But I reckon this time he just mighta met his match.”

Common law or legal, this wife was an entirely different kettle of fish, the village said. She was a sturdy and practical-minded Newfoundlander, a yard wider and a full head taller than her new husband. The bloom was off her rose, so folks said, but she could cook and clean circles around any one of the island women, manage money like a miserly banker and take down a stag at 400 yards. She ran a tight ship, as it were, and the general opinion was that if Billy Wilson could be brought to heel, this was the woman to do it and if she couldn't....well, it was bound to be a good show.

“I don't b'lieve I'd bet a'gin her,” Uncle Willie remarked to Nana the first morning Billy found himself waking up in the wood box with two black eyes and wearing only his longjohns. The story made the rounds with impressive speed and for a time Billy seemed to be convinced to mend his ways but then he got whiskey'd up for the Queen's Birthday and woke in the woodbox again, this time buck naked and broken jaw'd with a garter snake curled around his ankles.

“Boy r'ared up like a streak o' lightning,” Uncle Willie reported, “Cracked his skull so hard on the roof of that woodbox, it took a dozen stitches to close and Doc says it's a wonder he didn't give hisself a concussion.”

“They's folks who cain't help but bein' slow learners,” Nana said with an distinctly uncharitable smile, “Mebbe he oughta be thankin' his lucky stars for bein' hardheaded.”

Doc McDonald managed to save Billy's life and, most likely, his marriage that Sunday morning but not even the specialists in Halifax could save his knee. They wired and patched it back together so's he could walk - after a fashion, at least - but his wandering ways ended once and for all and the village was sorry, but not too sorry. The old Billy wasn't much missed and the new one, the one who walked crookedly and learned to live with pain, turned his life around.

Billy Wilson's wife, a hale and hearty Newfoundlander, believed in hard work, fidelity, abstinence from alcohol and dice halls, and the persuasive power of a 12 gage. And, of course, happy endings.