This is an entertaining look at the behavior disorders of perfection and rage.
Copright 2005, Jerry W. Engler
Stumping Stump
Lola stood 6-foot-2, with arms and shoulders befitting a weight lifter, and hips as broad-a-beam as the Lusitania.
On the other hand, her husband, Louis, was nearly tiny, slender, wiry muscled and short at 5-feet-5. He was nicknamed “Stump” because his grandfather had said when Louis was a boy that the child would never be taller than a stump.
The nickname “Stump” was retained with the satisfying knowledge that his grandfather had only been 5-feet-4.
Once, when his grandfather saw Louis in one of his terrible angers because his mother had laid out a green shirt for him on a Wednesday instead of a blue shirt, the old man remarked that he should have called him the burning stump.
Stump made up for lack of height with the fury of his focus. In a nearly predictable nightly fit of rage, he arrived home with the cords sticking out on the sides of his thin neck because the world had failed to bend entirely to his will.
“Lola,” he would shout, ”What time’s supper? I swear things better go better tonight than they did during the day. Why can’t these people get it right? I show them what to do………”
But before he could go on, she would gently point toward the backyard. “Go out back, Louis. Take some of that out, and then we’ll talk.”
She could hear him picking up the sledgehammer to bang away on the old Plymouth wreck they kept out back for that purpose. All of the glass had been knocked out of it long ago, and its green body was a mass of dents and cave-ins. Stump Lapitteo was beating a car to pieces in his rage.
The neighbors didn’t mind the car or the noise. Ignoring it was far better than asking Stump what he was doing.
“I swear,” Lola said to relatives who listened, “Stump is like a railroad engine when the rest of us are like automobiles. We travel roads that twist here and there with unexpected turns. Stump is focused down a one-way track.”
It was true that Stump Lapitteo worked wonders in a factory fabrication welding shop. He ran a tighter, smoother bead than any other man there. That’s how he became a foreman by perfection and persistence—it wasn’t just because he insisted on perfection from everyone else there.
Stump seldom took breaks, but stayed in the mask hour in and hour out with the burning blue-white torch applied to glowing red metal. Sometimes the other men under him dreaded the supervisory moments when he came out from under the mask with his deadpan, finely chiseled dark face.
Stump only spoke to give criticisms because perfect work needed no comment—it was expected. Workers with 20 years experience, like Mike and Horace, still shuddered when Stump examined their work, pushing his tongue against his teeth as though it somehow didn’t measure up.
They tried to show with a nonchalant attitude that they were accustomed to the routine.
“Better check the angle of that joint there with the printout, Jones,” he would say to a man who had seemingly performed a flawless piece of work.
“Looks a little off to me. You may have to grind that bead down a little. Try to do your best,” he would add as though everyone listening knew Jones hadn’t done his best.
At the end of a day, Stump was tired and grimy with glowing ghost of a white oval, like the shape of the window on his mask, always in his vision. He never waited more than five minutes outside the factory door, going from simmer to boil as he thought about how things should have been.
After all, he not only found a speck of metal out of place on Jones’ work that had to be polished away in 30 seconds at the wheel, but Jones had walked up the left side of the work floor speaking to people as he departed work. Anyone should know to walk out the right side, and stay quiet.
It was Lola who bought the Plymouth and the hammer. It was Lola who was able to bring Stump’s fits to a standstill by the force of her voice and reason. Sump didn’t back off to Lola because she was so much larger than him, but because he dreaded the force of her return anger and the way she could pick apart his reasoning.
Only once in the last two years had Stump failed to go bang the car instead of spending a half-hour tirade hollering at Lola. After he had covered work, he had talked about the stupidity of other drivers on the way home. Then on the domestic front, he brought up the alignment of the white socks with the black socks in his top drawer.
“Plus that, Lola,” he said, ”supper was five minutes late yesterday. I checked. Then I noticed your shoes weren’t lined up. When I go outside, old Jasper Willingsworth next door didn’t trim the grass straight next to us. What’s wrong with people? Why can’t……”
But Lola had quit listening. She was pointing out back at the Plymouth, and gently pushing him out the door. That was the day he busted the taillights out, and he’d never felt so low when she wouldn’t speak to him at bedtime.
The result was that to show his care, he bought two big gray side-by-side reclining chairs with no arm between them, the ultimate in romantic togetherness for evenings watching television.
Louis even succumbed to Lola’s desire for a house cat, giving her a kitten named Carrie that since had grown into a fat, soft hulk of neutered purring contentment.
In the evenings after supper, Louis and Lola would settle into the recliners to watch television, Louis on his fourth of the chairs—Lola on her three-fourths with Carrie enjoying the expanse of her lap. The cat didn’t appreciate Stump’s bony little lap, especially since he snuck opportunities to twist ears, hair and tail if she drifted too far onto his side.
Stump controlled the remote, obligingly turning to Lola’s favorite sit-coms until she slept. Then he switched to his own favorite reality and violent programs, occasionally reaching over to give Carrie’s tail a pull until she left.
Lola sometimes noted to herself that the home routine never seemed to get better. But it wasn’t getting worse either, so she and Stump had a comfortable routine.
But one day Stump went to work with a scratchy throat. He had a buildup of fluid, and had to take breaks more frequently for drinks. By noon the throat was red and sore. He could only croak when he tried to speak. His head was burning.
By 2 p.m., Stump Lapitteo couldn’t speak at all. For the first time in 25 years, he was so sick he had to go home early. Mike and Horace called an impromptu break on the floor at 2:30, and bought everybody a soda pop. Nobody talked about what they were celebrating, but they all knew.
Stump couldn’t stand the bed, so he sat on his side of the recliners, chilling under a blanket while Lola brought him soup. He hadn’t even gone out to beat the car, just plopped right down pointing “uh, uhh” at his throat.
Lola left. She came back home while he was watching the evening news, Carrie glaring at him from the side of the television.
“Look what I got for you, Sweet Baby Stump,” Lola said with a smile across her big broad face. “It’s a whole quart of brandy. It’s the best thing for any kind of cold or congestion. It will keep you from coughing tonight, too.”
The brandy and Coke was good stuff. By his third serving, Stump was drinking it nearly half and half, and he was glowing a hotter red than he ever had using a welding torch. He suspected Lola might be drinking at about a rate of five servings to his three. Stump had never seen her more lovely, occasionally grinning at him from her big black-hair surrounded face when somebody on the TV said something funny. His throat was soothed, but he didn’t have the energy to sneak a pinch at Carrie.
After a few more drinks, Lola began to snore. Stump switched programs, but his eyes seemed to be drifting in a curly pattern to the ceiling. Just before he drifted into deep sleep, he beganto glow inside with the added heat of anger. Yes, he was sure of it. One of the ceiling tiles was a quarter-inch out of line.
Somewhere in the dark depths of his alcohol-and-illness-induced dreams, Louis “Stump” Lapitteo realized he was trapped in an unlighted garage with the engines of trucks of cars running around him. Then they weren’t just around him, but on him, squeezing him down, down so he began to smother. He had to get out. As he tried to wake up, there was a sensation of hair and weight on his eyes.
Stump sputtered, and tried to shake his face until Carrie finally quit purring, and got up, pushing off with one paw next to his nose to climb out on Lola’s bulk. Only Stump couldn’t get himself up. Lola had rolled. She laid there belting out loud, sonorous snores against his ear, the larger of the two-dream engines.
Her hip was turned into his pelvis and upper legs crushing them downward into the seat. His arms and shoulders were pinned by the weight of her body above the hip. His head and neck were clamped sideways and up at the ceiling. Yes, that tile was a quarter-inch off.
Stump tried to holler, but it only came out a soft “aagh, aagh.” He still had laryngitis. He struggled. She didn’t move. He tried to bounce the side of his head on her back. The snoring continued unabated. Stump was trapped.
Why hadn’t the guy he had hired for the remodeling put that ceiling tile in line with the others? What if the ceiling was warped, and the whole house was out of line? What if he tried to bounce his body? Maybe Lola would wake up then.
That didn’t work, and neither did twisting his bare feet from side to side. It only attracted Carrie down on his legs where she began to lick his one small toe. His panic and rage were growing in a black cloud of confusion. The throat thickened more. Forget the Plymouth, Stump tried to holler. I’ll take that cat out to the hammer.
But what if Carrie clamped down on his toe with her teeth. What if she tried to eat it like she would a mouse? Got to keep the feet twisting. No, more motion might attract her more. There, twist the feet apart, and down, away from her. Come on, Carrie, go gor it, go for it. Get your head between my feet. Haah, got ya. Nope, she got away, but at least she’s off me.
But what to do now, Sump asked himself. Couldn’t panic, couldn’t afford to get worked up any more now. It was getting difficult to breath with an already swollen throat. Lola’s stead nore promised no relief or movement. There’s another pressure, too. It’s the bladder. Yes, it would be the bladder after downing so many drinks of Coke and brandy.
Let’s see, thought Stump. The telephone is on the nightstand next to my chair. The cord to the floor jack runs close enough that if I could get a foot down between the cushions on my leg rest, maybe I could pull the phone in with my toes. Oh no, there’s another one. That’s two ceiling tiles out of line.
He twisted his leg, he gasped, and mentally tried to contort his hip to help the ankle turn. He had to stretch the Achilles tendon the other way briefly to take the cramp out that developed in the left foot he was twisting.
Finally he got the little toe Carrie had licked winched against the side of a cushion. The knee socket felt like it could pop out of joint as he twisted and pulled with the toes and foot.
But finally the whole foot sipped through, and with it the ankle up to the knee which was then clamped harder into the chair by Lola’s weight along with the other leg. The same little toe was the one first to feel the edge of the telephone cord. Thank God Carrie hadn’t eaten it.
He grasped the cord with one toe, then with three, pulling it an inch to three inches at a time until the phone fell off the stand. He could hear the dial tone followed by the “beep, beep, beep” of a receiver off the hook, but Lola didn’t budge. Carrie jumped back up on the cushion of foot rest, and then on to Lola to lay there staring into his face. He tried to spit at her, but he didn’t have the moisture or breath left.
Finally, he felt the phone with its comforting touch-tone keys under his toes. But he still had to pull in the coiled receiver cord for the main phone body to push the hang-up, so he could dial. Thank God the phone company knew how to line up the phone keys the same way every time. Save the rage for the tile guy now, he told himself, must be controlled.
The 9 had to be in the third row of keys down on the right just above the “#” sign. One big toe punch, and it was entered. The 1 had to be at the upper left, and he felt a sense of satisfaction as he gave it two toe punches.
Stump tried his best to croak a loud ”aaagh” when he heard the 911 operator on the line. It’s fortunate that emergency personnel can trace addresses from silent calls for help because just then Lola rolled a little more, leaving only Stump’s nose out for air while he sputtered helplessly against her back.
Lola was surprised when the police officers and firefighters woke her to pull her to her feet. But Stump had a hard time not flying into a fit at them when he could breath without the oxygen mask more easily again. Why did they have to kick the front door in? He had supposed they carried skeleton keys.
Stump’s voice was coming back just as Lola lost hers. All the brandy hadn’t stopped the virus from running its course with a new victim.
Apparently it couldn’t bring newly learned control back again either. “Look what you almost did to me,” Stump was saying. “That stupid Carrie almost smothered me, too. My knee feels like it’s been dislocated. The ceiling tiles are out of line. Now we have to get the front door fixed.”
He sputtered, and began to turn red. Lola gently shoved him to the back door, and pointed at the hammer and the Pontiac out back. That was the day the hammer went through the ceiling of the passenger compartment.
It was also the last day they had a soda pop break down at the fabrication factory.
Hmmm, I didn't think of obsessive compulsive behaviour and all that -- I just enjoyed reading this smart story about peculiar people...in fact, I loved it.
Another great story, Jerry. Your "Mr. Stump" is a classic portrait of one who suffers greatly from OCD. Beating up on the car was a nice touch. Enjoyed.
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