The Saint Magazine. January 1967. Volume 24, No. 5.

Tomboy by Wenzell Brown

Wenzell Brown is best known for his many novels about the young men in our cities who, from the time they are children, know only hate — a blind hate — for the authority which sees them as the raw material for tomorrow’s crime statistics. SM readers know him for sensitive stories such as WITNESS TO MURDER (SMM, July 1958). And stories such as this...

Maw claims as how a woman ain’t never truly happy till she’s had a tragic love affair. Mebbe she’s right. Leastwise that’s the way it seems with Frankie Wilcox.

Course her name ain’t really Frankie, it’s Francine. But she wouldn’t put up with nothin’ that fancy. I’ve known her ever since she I was a little tad, knee-high to a grasshopper. She and her twin brother, Johnny, got into more scrapes than a barrel of monkeys. Then there was Osmund Bilbo who was a year older and always taggin’ along and fussin’ over ’em. Trouble was, more like than not he’d land up neck-deep in their monkeyshines.

Seein’ as how I been sheriff around these parts for the last thirty years, folks was always complainin’ to me about Frankie and Johnny and Oz, claimin’ that they was the meanest little devils as ever hit Cripple’s Bend. But mostly when they calmed down, they’d have to admit there warn’t nothin’ really wicked about the trio. They was just high spirited and full o’ the old nick. Like the time when they snuck up in back o’ the Widder Hawkins when she was singin’ a solo at the Strawberry Festival, and dumped a pair o’ field mice at her feet. The Widder turned in the performance of her life. She hit high C and held it for full five minutes, jumpin’ around all the time and hikin’ up her skirts clean to the hips. Will Mooney, who always had a yen for her, got so interested watchin’, he fell head-first off’n a stool, cuttin’ his forehead so that Doc Crosby had to take ten stitches to sew him back together again.

All summer long, Frankie wouldn’t wear nothin’ but jeans, sneakers and a boy’s shirt. Her hair was cut short and the color o’ corn husks and she had so many freckles there warn’t hardly no room for the skin to grow in between. She was slim and straight as a boy and she loved baseball and runnin’ loose in the woods. She and Johnny was always playin’ hookie to go fishin’ and inveiglin’ Oz to go with ’em. But I’ll say this for Frankie, she took her paddlin’s along with the boys and never let out a whoop or a holler about it neither.

Hugh Wilcox, Frankie’s dad, was right well off. He had one o’ the best dairy farms in the county. Frankie’s ma’s been dead a long time and Hugh had the rearin’ o’ the twins all to himself. He warn’t a man for coddlin’ and as soon as they was old enough, each of ’em had to pitch in with the chores.

I reckon Jessie Bilbo was the nearest to a mother the twins ever had. She was a widder who done the cookin’ and housekeepin’ for Hugh when she was needed. She come in by the day, havin’ a cottage of her own down in Donkey’s Holler. Her son, Oz, had the run of the Wilcox place like he was one o’ the family.

In high school, you couldn’t mistake Frankie for a boy no longer. She was fillin’ out the way a girl should but she still had the name of a tomboy. She let her hair grow long and wore dresses but she didn’t go in for dancin’ and such. She’d a heap rather shoulder a gun and spend a day in the woods huntin’ with Johnny and Oz.

The summer Johnny was eighteen, he and Oz got called up for the draft. They were both right happy to go and seems like the whole o’ the town was down at the bus depot to see ’em off. Johnny never did come back to Cripple’s Bend. He was killed in an accident in trainin’ camp. Oz did his hitch and then reenlisted. In all he was gone nigh on to six years, most of it spent in Europe.

Meanwhile Hugh Wilcox is crippled up with arthritis and it’s Frankie as keeps the farm in apple pie order. You drop by the Wilcox place most any day and you can see Frankie in overalls, pitchin’ hay, milkin’ the cows or scrubbin’ down the barn. She’s still slim and straight and she handles herself like a man. In her shapeless clothes, you’d swear she is one till you get up close. Then there’s something downright appealin’ and feminine in her face.

More’n one of the local boys has come around to pay her court. But they might as well a-stayed at home for all the good it done ’em. Frankie makes it plain she ain’t in no marryin’ mood and mebbe she’s right when she reckons the farm is as much of an attraction as she is, ’cause there ain’t no denyin’ that anyone as marries her is latchin’ on to a fine piece o’ property.

Folks around say as how she’s savin’ herself for Oz Bilbo when he comes home. But it don’t work out that way. When Oz returns to Cripple’s Bend he ain’t much like the boy who went away. He’s grown up, filled out and become a man. There’s something gruff, hard and independent about him. He settles down with his ma in their cottage in Donkey’s Holler but he don’t as much as set a foot on the Wilcox land.

Oz has been home for quite a spell afore he meets up with Frankie on the main street. They stop and chat like a couple o’ near strangers. Then Frankie walks off, cool as you please, her head high and starin’ straight ahead. Oz looks after her and takes a step or two like he’s goin’ to foller her but then he shrugs and strides off in the other direction.

Frankie don’t show up much in Cripple’s Bend but she sings in the choir of the Community Church every Sunday and usually attends the Tuesday night dinner and player meetin’. Oz goes to church too, but he sits in a back pew and don’t speak to nobody. He even keeps his mouth shut durin’ the hymnsingin’. He just ain’t a musical man.

At first Frankie smiles and speaks a word or two to Oz when they meet. But pretty soon she don’t even do that. She flounces right past him, pretendin’ she don’t know he’s there.

It’s about this time that Reggie Van der Breughe arrives in town. He comes a might ahead o’ the summer crowd and demands the best room in Cripple’s Inn. He’s a character is Reggie. He’s tall and skinny with curly, bright red hair parted in the middle and china blue eyes. He has a funny little paunch, a high-pitched pompous voice and a struttin’ walk that makes you want to laugh. He goes in for silk suits, pale lemon vests, two-toned shoes, bow ties and yeller socks. His trademark though is a bamboo cane with a carved jade head. He’s always swingin’ it when he walks, or twirlin’ or flexin’ it when he’s standin’ still.

Reggie sort o’ takes the town by storm. In no time flat he lets it be known he’s plannin’ to settle in Cripple’s Bend. He says as how he’s done a lot o’ travellin’ in his time but no place has ever taken his fancy so fast.

Before a week is up, he’s joined the Cripple’s Bend Community Church and made a hundred dollar contribution to the Parish Fund. So when he asks Parson Beam if he can join the choir, the parson can’t very well refuse. It turns out Reggie can’t sing for sour apples. No one can say he ain’t tryin’. He bellers out the words but he ain’t only tone deaf, he can’t keep time neither.

Usually Parson Beam ain’t much of a diplomat but he knows he’s got to use kid gloves with a heavy contributor to the Parish Fund. All the same he’s got to muzzle Reggie or pretty soon he’ll be preachin’ to an empty church. He’s half-expectin’ Reggie to blow up and demand his money back, so he asks me to come along in ease o’ trouble. Reggie surprises us by bein’ real meek and docile. He explains it’s been a life-time ambition of his to sing in a church choir. He looks so sad I’m afraid he’ll bust out cryin’.

Then he brightens up. “What about a deal, Parson? Just let me sit in the choir and I promise not to utter a word. I’ll feel I’m a part anyway.”

Parson Beam thinks it over. “It’s a might irregular,” he admits. “But there’s nothing in the Bible as says it’s wrong.”

The way Reggie thanks him, you’d think the Parson had handed him a million dollars.

The Parson’s a bit doubtful of Reggie keepin’ his word but he needn’t a-been. After the first Sunday it’s pretty clear Reggie ain’t payin’ much attention to the sermon or the hymns. All he’s got eyes for is Frankie Wilcox. He sits there a-watchin’ her and every now and then heavin’ a deep sigh. Frankie’s dressed up prettier than I ever seen her before, in a silky dress the color o’ rose petals. She’s wearin’ a frilly little hat with rose-buds on it and a pearl necklace that used to belong to her ma. The flush on her cheeks is right becomin’ too. She tries to make like she don’t notice Reggie oglin’ her but she ain’t foolin’ nobody. Least of all Reggie.

He don’t say nothin’ to her till the Tuesday night church dinner when he maneuvers a seat right beside her. He keeps talkin’ to her in tones so low that nobody else can hear. But the whole room is watchin’ her blush and listenin’ to her laugh which is nearer to a giggle than anyone ever expected to hear from Frankie Wilcox. Afterwards Reggie takes her home in his car, which is one o’ them low-slung foreign jobs where you have to crunch all up to fit in. He makes quite a production of helpin’ her to settle down, while the church women are oh-in’ and ah-in’ on the steps.

Pretty soon the whole town is buzzin’ about Frankie and Reggie. Seems like he’s spendin’ most of his evenings up at the Wilcox farm. Maudie Jenkins, who lives nearby and ain’t above a bit o’ snoopin’, tells as how she’s seen him a-kissin’ Frankie’s hand. And all during choir practice, Reggie keeps passin’ Frankie folded sheets o’ paper. One day Frankie drops one o’ them notes and Maudie scoops it up quick as lightnin’ and stows it in her bag. ’Tain’t no time at all afore the word goes ’round that Reggie’s writin’ poetry. People say it ain’t bad neither, even though Miss Lettie Cushman, who teaches English at the high school, claims as how he cribbed it from some feller named Browning.

All summer the affair grows more and more torrid. You never seen a woman change faster’n Frankie. There’s a bloom to her, a sort o’ radiance you have to see to believe. Everyone has taken it for granted she’s sort o’ plain but now most of ’em are willin’ to admit she comes close to bein’ a beauty.

The town’s divided about Reggie Van der Breughe. His struttin’ walk, his flute-like voice and exaggerated manners put the back up of a lot o’ men folk. On the other hand there’s some, ’specially among the women, who say we can do with a lot more good manners in Cripple’s Bend. Even Maw vows she wouldn’t mind havin’ someone kiss her hand and recite poetry to her.

Oz Bilbo ain’t a-sayin’ nothin’. He’s grown more and more sullen ’til he ain’t hardly speakin’ to a soul. Sometimes he drops around to church a-Sundays and sits a-glowerin’ first at Reggie than at Frankie, but neither of ’em pay him any mind.

One day Oz surprises me by stampin’ into my office. I tilt back my chair and light my pipe, waitin’ for him to speak his piece. Finally he blurts out, “I want you to investigate Reggie Van der Breughe.”

“Well, son,” I says, “I can’t do that. He ain’t broke no laws as far as I know.”

“He’s crazy as a june-bug.”

“What makes you say that, Oz?”

“If I tell you, you won’t believe it.”

“Try me out and see.”

“All right. I was up there to the Wilcox place last Friday. I mean I was passin’ by and turned in at the gate, thinkin’ I’d have a word with Frankie.”

“You weren’t a-spyin’ on her, was you, Oz?” *

He goes brick red. “Mebbe I was a little. I don’t trust that Reggie. Anyway, believe it or not, Frankie’s leanin’ on the balcony o’ the second floor and Reggie’s standin’ on the lawn below, strummin’ a guitar and croonin’ like a calf who can’t find his maw. It was real Romeo and Juliet stuff. I tell you, Sheriff, they’ve both gone around the bend.”

I says, “I don’t remember as how Romeo and Juliet was crazy.”

“Mebbe not. But you can’t deny they came to a sticky end. Can’t you do something, Sheriff?”

“What would you suggest?”

“Mebbe a little checkin’ back on this Van der Breughe. If you ask me he’s phony as a three dollar bill. All he spells is trouble for Frankie.”

I ain’t got no real reason but I decide it won’t do no harm to find out a bit more about Reggie. But wherever I check, I come to a deadend. His car’s rented and the only address he gives when he registers at Cripple’s Inn is New York. Even when I tackle him personally, it’s a waste o’ time. He’s polite but his answers add up to nothin’. He’s been livin’ around here and there. He don’t work but lives off a trust fund. Where’s his home? Well, he reckons it’s right here in Cripple’s Bend.

Meanwhile he lets it drop he’s asked Frankie to marry him. She ain’t exactly accepted but she ain’t said no neither. I don’t like it much. A feller like Reggie with his lemon vests and his guitar-strummin’ ain’t the kind to make a good husband for Frankie. I like it even less when Frankie comes to church wearin’ an engagement ring with a diamond that looks as big as a ping-pong ball. But I still ain’t got no excuse to stick my oar in.

The way things turn out there ain’t no need to. The quarrel between Frankie and Reggie breaks out in Gimpy’s Diner on Wednesday night after the moving picture show. It starts off real low-toned but ’tain’t long afore everyone in the diner knows there’s something wrong. Then Frankie jumps up, pulls off her ring and flings it at Reggie’s feet. She walks out o’ Gimpy’s, head high, heels a-clickin’. Reggie don’t even pick up the ring afore he heads out after her.

He catches up with her on the sidewalk outside and grabs her wrist.

He says, “You’ve got to listen to me, darling.”

Frankie draws herself up straight. “Keep your hands off me,” she says, real coldlike.

But Reggie clings to her, babblin’ away. Then Oz Bilbo looms out of the shadders. He seizes Reggie by the shoulder and spins him around.

“You heard what the lady said. Leave her alone.”

Reggie’s voice goes shrill. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” he screams. He reaches for Frankie again. This time Oz gives him a hard push.

Reggie ain’t the kind you’d expect to put up a fight. But he comes in with a clumsy crouch and takes a poke at Oz. Oz back-pedals but Reggie keeps on cornin’. Then Oz lets go with a good hard punch. Reggie swings part way around and the blow lands on his shoulder. It couldn’t have hurt him much, but he’s off balance and he goes down, sprawlin’ on the sidewalk. Oz stands over him, his fists clenched but Frankie steps in between.

She says, “Stop it. Both of you. You ought to be ashamed.”

Oz and Reggie start talkin’ at the same time. But she don’t listen to neither of ’em. She says, “You’re a couple of fools and I don’t want to see either of you again as long as I live.” Then she walks away, so fast she’s almost runnin’.

The next couple o’ weeks is bad ones for Reggie. He keeps tryin’ to patch things up but it ain’t no go. Frankie won’t as much as give him the time o’ day. He hangs around the Wilcox place ’til Frankie calls me and asks me to take him away.

Reggie ain’t never struck me as a very strong character but I warn’t expectin’ him to go to pieces the way he done. He was blubberin’ and moanin’ and claimin’ that life ain’t worth livin’ without Frankie. After that night, he takes to his cups in his grief but that don’t do him no good. All the time he’s talkin’ wilder and wilder.

Then one night I get another phone call from Frankie. She says. Reggie has just left her place in a terrible state. He’s swearin’ he’ll do away with himself, if she won’t marry him.

“I think he meant it,” Frankie explains. “And even if he didn’t, he shouldn’t be driving in the condition he’s in.”

The truth of the matter is I don’t take Reggie and his suicide threats too seriously. But the next momin’ I change my tune. Sam Berdine who lives out near Maxwell’s Cove comes rushin’ into my office. He says there’s a little red bug of a car abandoned on a deserted strip of beach out where he lives.

I drive out to check and, sure enough, it’s Reggie’s Volkswagen. There’s a rotting jetty nearby that’s posted as dangerous. I work my way along it and see where the wood’s been freshly splintered. When I get out to the end, I spy a roll of clothing wedged up between two uprights. There’s no mistakin’ the Italian silk jacket and lemon vest o’ Reggie’s. Inside a pocket o’ the jacket is a suicide note. It’s addressed to Frankie in Reggie’s spindly writin’.

I read it and it’s flowery as all get-out but there ain’t nothin’ to do but deliver it.

Frankie takes the news a lot harder’n I expect. She starts cryin’ and sayin’ it’s all her fault and she really loved Reggie all the time. While she’s wailin’, who should drive up to the house but Oz Bilbo. Frankie don’t even look at him. She keeps carryin’ on fit to kill, insistin’ I take her out to the jetty.

I drive her out there but there ain’t much to see. It’s a foggy sort o’ day and the beach is gray and forlorn. Frankie paces up and down like she’s demented and then she gives a scream and falls to her knees on the sand. I come a-rushin’. There beside her is Reggie’s bamboo walkin’ stick that he was always a-twistin’ and a-twirlin’.

Frankie’s still a-crouchin’ over it when Oz Bilbo’s battered-up jalopy comes skiddin’ along the beach. Oz jumps out of it and comes runnin’ across the sand to Frankie. I reckon there ain’t nothin’ for me to do but clear out for awhile, so I walk down the beach quite a piece.

When I turn and look back, Frankie’s on her feet and Oz has got his arm around her. Her forehead is restin’ against his shoulder and he’s pattin’ her sort o’ rough and awkward. Somehow I don’t feel as bad as I should. I reckon Oz will take a lot better care o’ Frankie and the Wilcox farm than Reggie Van der Breughe would ever have done.

It turns out I’m right too. We never did find hair nor hide o’ Reggie, His body never washed ashore and sure as shootin’ we couldn’t dredge the whole Atlantic. I put out a flock o’ tracers to try to find some relatives but no one ever came forward. It’s like he come out o’ nowhere and plain disappeared.

Frankie mourned him for awhile but Oz was always around to comfort her and ’twarn’t long afore she seemed to forget Reggie Van der Breughe. Six months later she and Oz got married in the Cripple’s Bend Community Church with Parson Beam performin’ the ceremony.

That must a-been nigh on to five years ago ’cause their oldest son, Johnny, is goin’ on four now.

I guess that’s where the story ought to end and it would have if Maw hadn’t got it into her head to visit her sister down to Ogunquit last summer. Course, she had to drag me along too. Now Maw’s a great hand for amateur theatricals and when she learns there’s a road company playin’ in the town, nothin’ will do but that we go and see ’em.

The play warn’t much and I’ll have to admit I dozed through the better part of it. Then, when everyone else is filin’ out, Maw lags behind.

She says, “Paw, I’m goin’ back stage and you’re a-comin’ with me.”

I don’t argue. There ain’t no use with Maw. When we get back, she insists on seein’ some actor named Bruce. His dressin’ room is pointed out and Maw ploughs right in, with me at her heels tryin’ to stop her.

There’s two young fellers in the room that ain’t no more than a cubby-hole. They look up startled; then one of ’em turns away quick.

Maw walks straight up to him and says, “Hello, Reggie.”

He glances at her, his face blank. “You must be making some mistake, ma’am.”

“No, I ain’t. Sure as God made green apples, you’re Reggie Van der Breughe.”

I look this feller over. He’s got short medium brown hair in a crew cut and light gray eyes. I remember seein’ him on the stage. He ain’t got no paunch nor no struttin’ walk. I don’t see no resemblance betwixt him and Reggie. I reckon Maw’s gone plum daft. Then he gets up. There’s a strength about his face I ain’t never seen in Reggie but his tight, mockin’ smile is familiar.

He says in a heavy voice, “Supposing I am, what are you going to do about it?”

Maw don’t seem to hear him. She’s musin’, “Dye that hair red and give it a marcel. Wear contact lenses and a pad around your middle. Walk in the jerky way and talk in a squeakin’ voice. You were good, Reggie. You really were.”

He laughs. “I thought so too. If you don’t mind my askin, how’d you spot me, ma’am?”

“A man can’t change his features. His ears, the shape of his forehead and the like. But I’ll tell you what set me to thinkin’. All through the show you was twirlin’ and flexin’ that cane you was carryin’. It was a dead giveaway. It’s a habit you ought to break.”

He grins at her. “I’ll try, Ma’am. I really will.”

There ain’t no one else back stage now. Maw says, “Frankie Wilcox hired you to make Oz Bilbo jealous, didn’t she?”

He shrugs. “I guess there’s no reason to deny it any longer. You’ll have to admit I did a good job, even if I did ham it up now and then. I hear she’s married to the stupid jerk she was angling for. So she got her money’s worth, didn’t she?”

I’m workin’ up to a boil, gettin’ madder every minute. I stammer out, “I ought to put you under arrest. Frankie too.”

Maw lays her hand on my arm. “Now calm down, Paw. What laws did he break?”

She’s got me stumped. I says, “I can’t think of any right off. But give me time and I guess I can dig up one or two.”

Maw says, “You ain’t doin’ nothin’ o’ the kind. Frankie and Oz have got a right to happiness and you ain’t spoilin’ it just because she made a fool of you.”

I’m still fumin’ but there ain’t much I can say. I reckon if the truth ever comes out, I’ll be the laughin’ stock o’ the whole o’ Pisquaticook County. But I’m not confessin’ that to Maw. I reckon it’s better to convince her that I knew Reggie was a fraud all the time and I was playin’ along so that Frankie Wilcox could have her tragic love affair and Oz could spend the rest of his life comfortin’ her. Come to think of it, mebbe it’s true. There was a lot o’ times when I didn’t quite believe in Reggie Van der Breughe.