Her studio gone dim and shadowy, Penitence Biddiford lighted three old-time oil lamps, and placed them on pedestals about the covered walnut statue. The grain caught the soft glow and began slowly to come alive. She moved about light as a fairy, choosing the words, remembering the songs. Time seemed to go all shifty on us. "Bella called Connie a couple days later. Her Grandfather wanted to meet us at the Cyclamate to talk things over. Dewey inisited, so we went."
Penitence Biddiford wore the evening draped about her, all the purple, all the shadows, all the mustering of light, and she took up a corner of the tarp draping her statue. She whispered, “Grandfather,” and pulled it away. We stood before something amazing.
A great mountain of a man came to life there in the light of those lamps. Immense and powerful, he might have stepped out to join us, were he not carved of walnut. What must have been acres of denim went into the wooden coveralls he sported, ‘Sears & Roebuck’ carved plainly onto the suspender buckles. Chore boots as big as barges graced his great feet, and a kindness, a tremendous warmth radiated out from small, close-set eyes, squinting as if he’d misplaced his glasses, or was perhaps just very stoned. He gripped a straw hat in his left hand, and his right was firmly in his coverall pocket, busy. Old Farmer Feent. He’d taken more than three years to carve.
“It’s him,” I said, and she nodded. “He’s as beautiful as I thought he would be.”
At The Cyclamate
The Cyclamate Tavern sits way down at the end of Aburrido Street, just before the park along the river. It’s a dingy place on the brightest of days, run by the three formidable Sweet sisters, Sugar, Honey and Candy. Mountainous women, they’d inherited the place from their no account father, Clarence “Lefty” Sweet, a poor businessman and a drinking partner of Rance Biddiford.
“At least the place smells more like patchouli than anything else, these days,” she said. That wasn’t always the case. “We got down there early, the three of us, and the sisters seemed to know what was up. Somehow they always seem to. Big Candy Sweet grabbed Dewey and whispered in his ear, then left. The place had cleared out except for us. Just like that. So Dewey suggested that, as with the bar left graciously open and at our disposal, we might as well start drinking. Nervous as we were, we did.”
Penitence. Penitence. Penitence. Nets of spells and enchantments she casts about her without thinking. Her voice carried shadow and light entwined, and she moved about in the oil-lamp glow spectral and serpentine, no more than moving whisps of smoke herself, taking form and shape from whatever she happened to be closest to. The looming walnut Farmer filled my consciousness. And I was tremendously stoned.
“Old Farmer Feent showed up two hours later. Connie and I were dancing on the bar to Bob Seger, Dewey was playing bartender and trying to peek up our skirts, when a great blast of cool air rushed in and filled the place with smells of moss and rain and growing things. Great footsteps rang off the floorboards, and a laugh loud as thunder burst out, when Old Farmer Feent rounded the corner and saw us.
‘Whatcha see up there, Dew-Berry?’ he hollered out, a beatific grin splitting his pumpkin-sized face. ‘Nice, is it?’ and Dewey laughed and did a jig step for him. ‘Prettier than daybreak, up there on the Great Divide!’”
Penitence Biddiford solidified before me. “To tell you the truth, there’s a lot I don’t remember about that evening. I do remember Old Farmer Feent telling us a story of a long ago love-triangle. My mother, my father, and Young Farmer Feent. I know. It’s as messed up as it sounds. Mother’s always been a beauty, and a fickle one at that. She led those two on from elementary school, til she finally married my father.” The old man is a sore and complicated subject. “Daddy was always handsome and clever. Good at using people, and not much else. A showoff too, and he enjoyed making other people look bad. Like the poor Young Farmer. I can just imagine what a dick Daddy was to him.” Her eyes well up at the thought.
“That poor man!” she wails into the studio, to Walnut Feent, to me and the world. “He looked at me so sorrowfully, tears cascading from his close-set, squinty little eyes and he began to sob inconsolably, setting great waves to rolling beneath those seven acre coveralls he wore. “‘You know what she told me?’ he blubbered. It took him a moment to spit out the words. ‘She said she’d never go out with a farmer!’ And then she married Daddy. I guess. After that, I don’t remember much. I remember Dewey dancing on the bar to Bob Seger. I remember Connie wiggling around on Old Farmer Feent’s lap. I think I remember Old Farmer Feent taking shots of FeentWater out of my navel. I’m pretty sure Farmer Feent Jr. had to come down and take us home.” She shakes her head.
But things were different after that night. For starters, an army of deadbeats, reprobates and ne’er-do-wells materialized, in brand new coverwalls, and made things right at the Mill. Broken windows were repaired, new whitewash applied, decades of crapped hauled out and scrubbed away. The boiler was replaced, thanks to a loan from her late father’s bank. Loan sharks and bookies went other places. The crazy bastard back in the hills had an unfortunate tractor accident. And people began to come to her, wanting to be part of things. Wanting to be a part of the Owl’s Hill Arts Center.
“And that’s how it started,” she says. “If it weren’t for that sainted man, there’d be none of this. The Prime Mover. Whatever he did, however he did it, he brought people together who dream the same dream. He made us Us. He made us We. And We have made this.” She doesn’t want to talk anymore, and I thank her for her time and leave.
Saint Feent of the Summertimes
The miracles he wrought were small ones, perhaps, but resonant. That army of deadbeats? These days they’re known as the Feent Corps, and they deploy from town to town, cleaning things up and being good role models. Miracles of Amity and Solidarity, Kindness and Regularity, Old Farmer Feent loved ideas, he loved women, and he loved drinking. But most of all, he loved caring, and he cared about everything and everyone. And while Old Farmer Feent’s monstrous boots are a pair we can never hope to fill, we can aspire to and achieve a reasonable measure of Feentliness ourselves, simply by caring about people and things other than ourselves. That’s not asking too much of you, is it? To channel your inner Feent and see what happens? Go on. Try. It’ll make the world a nicer place.
Great and interesting post!
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