A Match Made In Heaven: the Shirley McAlpine and Vinnie Rembaut Story
by Todd M.A. Wandio
Mrs. Shirley McAlpine was beginning to think of herself as something of a curse to men. At fifty-seven, she was just this morning arrived from burying her sixth husband, one Roy McAlpine, a farmer of some thirty years. Roy had been in perfect health and a bachelor up until three years ago, when nature called to him to wed Shirley Hesprey, a woman widowed for six months when her fifth husband, Axel Hesprey slipped whilst cleaning out the loft in the barn. The fall was not nearly so fatal as was the rake buried beneath a thin layer of hay. Ah, well, everyone said at the funereal festivities, accidents do happen.
Roy had not been sick a day in his life, marvelled his friends, though not within hearing of the widow McAlpine, a frail, mousy-faced woman with salt and pepper hair and outdated glasses with which she refused to part. It was clearly a surprise to the town when it was reported that to them that Roy McAlpine had suddenly taken ill with a horrible, phlegmatic cough. Two days later, with a team of physicians shrugging and arguing, poking and prodding, Roy sat up suddenly, coughed horribly violently once, and promptly passed on. Shirley said to her friend Miss Joanne Duff that the one cough lasted perhaps two minutes. Roy hadn't inhaled once in that entire time. His life just seemed to expire through his lungs.
Sitting alone in her small house on the outskirts of town, Shirley sipped her cup of tea alone, and wondered if God had meant her to marry. She seemed to have no luck at all with husbands. They were all good men, nobody could have said any differently, but longevity was not apparently their strong suit.
Her fourth husband, Pete Cranston, was a Red Ram salesman who also operated a small machine shop in town. It should not have been a shock when Pete was rushed to hospital with fatal injuries following a mishap with a tap and die machine. Sgt. Levesque, who had just arrived in town, was reported to have exclaimed that a 3/8ths bolt would have fit perfectly through Pete's skull. The whole town came out to that one, hoping the funeral would be of the open casket variety. Silas Webb, the mortician, considered a number of ways of dressing the fatal wound for show, but in the end and in the interest of propriety opted for the closed casket instead.
The problem was, Shirley thought to herself, she didn't allow herself enough time to mourn. She loved all those men dearly, and even now had a fondness for each that she could not put into words. Their pictures graced the mantle of her old gas fireplace, looking like the hallway of the House of Parliament with all the Prime Ministers set in order from first to latest. Perhaps mourning wasn't the problem, she decided, rising from the kitchen table and putting on her lime green hand knitted sweater, placing her matching sun hat atop her salt and pepper hair, just this morning taken out of curlers. Perhaps she just hadn't found the right man yet.
On the other side of town, in the last house on the street, removed by two vacant lots from the next nearest dwelling, was the odd house of Vinnie Rembaut. The house in question was initially a double wide trailer. Renovations had been undertaken to add two additional floors to the property, each one slightly smaller than the last. The finished effect was that of a sea-going vessel, complete with antenna mast flying the Jolly Roger at its pinnacle.
It was said by folks who knew him that Vinnie Rembaut believed himself to be a pirate laying low on the prairies until the time was right for adventure on the high seas once again. Truth be told, Vinnie was born and raised in Carbon Creek, the son of the gas station owner, and if not for an unfortunate series of mishaps beginning with a fishing excursion and ending with an unforseen mixture of incompatible solvents, Vinnie would be perfectly aware of that fact. But since his long term memory was limited to ten months or so, Vinnie had quite successfully convinced himself of his rougish lineage.
Other matters helped the delusion. As a boy, Vinnie lost his right eye in a fishing accident. His father was said to have caught Old Curmudgeon with that orb, thinking all the while he was battling the fish that his son's squeals were of excitement over the catch of the century. Just prior to the near fatal inhalation of gasoline and ammonia, which wiped the young man's memory clean, Vinnie slipped while crossing the street and was run over by none other than Mrs. Shirley Rogers, the newly widowed thirty-five year old whose third husband Ken, on their fifth anniversary, died while whittling a tree into a colonial chair with a chainsaw, the details of which just aren't pretty.
Vinnie lost his left leg from the knee down. His father, being a traditionalist and somewhat of a woodworker, lathed a wooden leg for his son.
It was not much of a stretch for Vinnie, when recovering in hospital from the freak accident involving a gasoline truck and a vehicle hauling ammonium hydroxide, which collided while Vinnie was crossing the same street which had claimed his left leg, to believe himself a pirate. With a peg leg, hook hand, and a patch over his right eye, Vinnie was the spitting image of Bluebeard or somesuch.
Be that as it may, Vinnie would harangue passersby with a nasty string of expletives, threatening to board them and the like. He rarely left his aformentioned house, but on the odd occasions when he did, would swagger along the main street, jostling other pedestrians, tipping his moth eaten tricorne (the favoured headgear of many a 16th Century pirate), which he had ordered some years ago from a second hand costumiere, at the gentle ladies of the town. He would end those brief sojourns in the hotel tavern, quaffing all the ale his disability cheque would purchase, or until he would pass out, face down in the bowl of beef stew he would order. Some kind townsperson would volunteer to drag his sorry carcass home, and Vinnie would awaken the next morning feeling as rough as he looked, imagining that he had just survived a battle at sea with Sir Francis Drake himself.
On the day in question, one Mrs. Shirley McAlpine, having just that morning buried her sixth husband, decided to drive into town to look for the right man, the man who wouldn't, as her second husband, Svenard Olafsson had, find himself threshed, combined and baled by his own tractor when a faulty clutch mechanism gave way while he was standing in his own field relieving himself. Shirley had no way of knowing who the lucky man was to be, she simply followed her instincts in matters of the heart. She was confident she would know him when she saw him.
Summarily, on that same day, one Vinnie Rembaut, believing himself to be a pirate of no small renown, awoke with an urge to put into port for a flagon of grog and a bowl of hearty beef stew. He polished his peg leg with care, cleaned his black eye patch and adjusted it over the empty orifice it covered, donned a clean pair of breeches and a striped crew neck shirt, finishing off the ensemble with the obligatory tricorne, set to a slant atop his balding head. Some wax applied liberally to his pencil thin moustache, a twist at each end for that debonaire flair, and Vinnie was hobbling out the door, haranguing the first passerby, who had crossed the street just prior to the pirate-ship house and was hurrying away, with a string of cuss-words and blasphemes which could peel paint.
It was a day for high adventure. Vinnie could feel it in his bones. He paused in the street, wondering if he shouldn't have gone back and strapped on his sabre, in case things got ugly at the tavern. Then, scratching his nose with his nasty hook hand, Vinnie carried on. There wasn't a rogue alive who could best him, he thought, believeing this to be true. His lack of long term memory prohibited him from recalling the day he was beaten up by Agnes Krause in second grade, because he laughed when she said she wanted to be a potato farmer's wife when she grew up. He was unable to recall similar whoppings by Fiona Farquahart, Daisy Millner and the diminutive Corky Robash, who said he was going to be a linebacker on a professional football team. No matter, in Vinnie's mind, he had never been bested, and that was true, as far as he could remember.
People gave Vinnie a wide berth. This was due mostly to the ominous hook hand, polished to a sharp gleam. The hand Vinnie acquired in his teens. As a work experience student in high school, he came to epiphany regarding the dangers inherent in paper shredders after diving in to retrieve his wallet, which had somehow dropped from the front vest pocket of his shirt to the orifice of the nasty bladed shredder. Needless to say, Vinnie never kept his wallet in that pocket following the mishap.
His father decided to splurge on a model 67b Stainless Steel Appendiclaw for his son. It seemed the least he could do for the one-eyed, single handed lad who was battling depression for obvious reasons, and who, the day he received the gift of the gleaming metal appendage, was admiring the prosthesis while crossing the street, slipped on loose gravel while stepping off the curb, fell down and was driven over by the mourning Mrs. Shirley Rogers, just returning from her late husband's funeral. She stopped after the front tires thumped heavily over something, she had just pulled from the curbside after all. Getting out of the car, the same battleship blue Pontiac Parisienne she drives to this day, she quickly reaized the back tires were resting atop the leg of a local boy she did not recognize. She quickly moved the car off the lad, and some bystanders called an ambulance, which had to come all the way from Strathmore.
More's the pity.
Though Mrs. Rogers felt terribly guilty for the loss of a leg suffered by young Vinnie Rembaut, the boy's father accepted an apology and shrugged his shoulders, locked himself in his workshop for two days and crafted the most magnificent peg leg ever carved. Even Vinnie, still of course battling depression, admired the creation as a work of art. He wore it proudly, still does, and had his breeches cut to provide the best display of the artificial, if antiquated limb.
Despite all that, Vinnie was happy to be alive, sincerely believing he was the last living pirate setting out on a day of high adventure in the shanty town of Carbon Creek.
Similarly, Mrs. Shirley McAlpine was cruising along in her big blue boat at near flank speed, there being no speed trap in Carbon Creek, feeling that today would be the day she would meet the right man. The right man, she had decided, would be of an indomitable constitution, would be somewhat lucky, would have a devil-may-care attitude of the swashbuckler about him.
And it appeared, Shirley realized as she hurtled two tons of polished blue battleship down main street, that just such a man was crossing the street in front of her, lost in a daydream.
As he heard the brakes squeal, Vinnie Rembaut spun on the point of his peg leg and hurtled himself with his remaining flesh and bone pedal appendage towards the safety of the sidewalk. The big blue Parisienne stopped a half block further down the road, and began backing up. Vinnie watched calmly, then with slight agitation as the huge sedan angled in towards him.
"Avast!" he croaked, hobbling towards the nearest store front, narrowly avoiding the second rush.
"Oh my..." Mrs. Shirley McAlpine breathed, first glimpsing the figure crossing the street, then again, "Oh my..." as she stopped, backed up to apologize and nearly ran the man down a second time.
When the dust from the skidding car had settled, it was Vinnie Rembaut who spoke first, hobbling rapidly towards the Parisienne, wielding his stainless steel hook hand like a sword, cursing in two or even three languages, one of which he had not previously realized he knew. The content of the discourse was highly colourful, and Vinnie's face was a high crimson as he continued his tirade for quite some time.
"Oh my..." was all Shirley McAlpine could utter as she stood, having gotten out of the car to check on the man's condition. At each pause in the apparent pirate's verbal battery, she would repeat, "Oh my..." and nothing else. It appeared she was unable to form the apology she had returned to give. Neigh, so utterly stricken was she that no concrete thought could form.
The tirade continued for five or six minutes. By that time, a small crowd had gathered, which, in Carbon Creek consisted of a tired old golden retriever with three legs, Emil Grundel and Miss Joanne Duff, the latter of whom recognized Mrs. McAlpine's Parisienne and had stopped to offer assistance. Any sign of a crowd eventually brought the police. And soon arrived Sgt. Levesque, his lunch napkin still tucked into the waistband of his uniform in a tradition the people of Carbon Creek were kindly discreet enough not to inquire about. Butting into the proceedings at an appropriate pause, Sgt. Levesque made his presence known clearly enough for Vinnie to stop for breath.
"Perhaps, mehbe, we could discuss 'dis matter, privately," Sgt. Levesque suggested, motioning towards the Golden Dragon Restaurant, beside which the brouhaha had taken place. Vinnie moved towards the door, but Mrs. Shirley McAlpine did not budge.
"Oh, my..." she said, breathlessly. "Oh, my..." again, as she realized something from deep within her soul was squelching to the surface.
Shirley McAlpine was in love. And seven was her lucky number.
Sgt. Levesque had little difficulty sorting the whole mess out. Mrs. McAlpine was obviously in the wrong, though, really, no one could blame her, having just that morning buried her sixth husband. Sgt. Levesque was surprised when the fifth died, and he couldn't imagine how the woman could be out on the town with the sixth now in the ground. But then, Sgt. Levesque had come to expect the unexpected from the unique people of the singular prairie town.
The odd man before him was still muttering obscenities beneath his breath, things along the line of "rapscallion" and "keel haul". It was common knowledge throughout town that Vinnie Rembaut thought himself a pirate, despite the fact that he was born centuries too late. A few bricks short as well, Sgt. Levesque thought to himself.
"So, well then, it seems, ahh, that we have a problem. Not one, however, zat we can not deal wit. After all, you see, there was no harm done to either party," Levesque explained, jotting notes into his black scribbler. He would throw the notes away later, he wasn't even going to file this one. Too much paperwork for something so easily solved.
"No harm?! No harm?! You call gettin' near runned over twice no harm? Why you yellow yard ape, I oughta have you drawn and quartered and left in the sun to bake..." And on and on growled Vinnie Rembaut, who believed that the uniformed officer was in league with the driver of the corsair; that both were really after his hoarded treasure.
Mrs. McAlpine, meanwhile, was so taken by Vinnie Rembaut, his flash and his daring, that she found she could scarcely breath. He is the one, she concluded. Just imagine all that he must have been through in his life, yet he still lived.
She didn't realize he was the same man whose leg she had severed in a mishap years before. Nor even did she realize, for nobody really knew it, that it was she, as a secretary at the high school had accidentally bumped Vinnie Rembaut, causing his wallet to be jolted from his breast pocket into the shredding machine, leading to the unfortunate reach which would spell the end of Vinnie's hand. How could she know she was the object of Carlos Rembaut's affections, that on a certain day she was sunning herself on the banks of Carbon Creek, while a love-struck Carlos absently cast his line out, Vinnie's eye firmly attached, to catch the biggest fish in the creek, Old Curmudgeon.
How could she know she was responsible for a tanker truck collision, following the burial of her first husband, Reinhold Teske, who, while shaving one morning following a weekend bender, stupidly grabbed the Caustic Lye, thinking it was shaving lotion. He splashed the flesh eating concoction liberally across his face, and soon was stumbling out of the upstairs bathroom in mind numbing pain, blinded by tears. Thus was it that he was incapable of seeing the bud vase which had fallen at the top of the stairs, which had broken beneath his heavy labourer's step, cutting into his right foot. Hopping along, he caught at least three of the stairs on the way down, just barely managing to smash his skull into the telephone table, rolling away and impaling himself on the coat hook, which by the way, Shirley had been at him for months to raise out of harm's way. That was an open casket funeral cast in very poor taste; which subsequently led to the drawing up of a bylaw prohibiting open caskets following graphic deaths. Shirley was so benumbed by the sight of her deceased husband that she did not pause to look safely both ways crossing the street that afternoon on her way to the Golden Dragon, where the luncheon was being served. this neglect caused a Ford Pinto to veer to avoid her. That same Pinto, forced to change course, took an alternate route to its destination, in the process allowing itself to be tailgated by a chemical bearing semi-trailer unit. Applying the brakes to avoid squishing a rodent sunning itself on the highway, the Pinto caused the tailgating semi to lock up the brakes, the driver losing control and veering into the oncoming traffic, which just happened to be another chemical bearing semi-trailer unit driven by the son of the regular driver, who was taking a joy ride. A collision ensued, just outside of town, by the last house on the street, where an unsuspecting young Vinnie Rembaut, complete with eye patch, hook hand and peg leg was hobbling across the street, witnessed the collision and took a snoot full of caustic fumes which wiped his memory as clean as the sand blasted behind of an elephant, leading to his mistaken belief that he was a pirate. Considering all this, considering the consequences of years of tragedy, considering all of that, how could Shirley Teske-Olafsson-Rogers-Cranston-Hesprey-McAlpine, perhaps the most unfortunate widow in Carbon Creek's lengthy and strange history, how could she not love this man, equally as unfortunate, yet still alive, still full of life, still gripping the world by the throat with his one capable hand and forcing it to say "Uncle"?
Upon hearing his name, Shirley came quickly to her senses. She remembered. She introduced herself. He looked at her with a stunned expression, his memory not kicking in. But look at her he did, and in that look saw the challenge of a pirate's lifetime. To weather the storms this woman would bring into his life was a challenge befitting a man prone to high adventure. By Henry, he would take her.
How pleased he was to find that she was equally challenged by him.
The wedding was conducted outside the church, within sight of the graveyard where lay buried Shirley's past six husbands, by the only justice of the peace who would perform the ceremony. The whole town was invited and all attended. Sgt. Levesque, the J.P. in question gathered the guests around the hapless, happy couple and performed a ceremony the likes of which had never been seen in Carbon Creek. Horseshoes ringed the churchyard, rabbits' feet graced the fences and were hanging from the antennae of the wedding cars. The plants of choice were clovers, all of them painstakingly sought out from nearby fields for their four leaves. People came prepared with their fingers crossed behind their backs, wearing their luckiest shirts, socks, pants and undergarments.
The service itself was unremarkable. The trading of vows were traditional. Shirley cried, as did her maid of honor, Miss Joanne Duff, alas still a maiden after all these years. Silas Webb, ironically enough stood up for Vinnie. He cried too.
The reception was a total disaster. Iris Philipchuk choked on a Swedish meatball and was sent to the emergency at Strathmore General Hospital following a successful though unfortunate attempt at the Heimlich manoeuvre by Doug Feldspar, the town wrist wrestling champion for five years running who applied a little too much pressure and sent Iris into cardiac arrest. Heimie Kupsch slipped on the dislodged meatball and split his head on Gail Webb's upraised elbow, cracking Gail's elbow, who, as she fell, knocked the hot hors d'ourvres table over onto the caterer, Gary Holding, all of his brothers and sisters and their families (it was quite a large table), causing a variety of injuries ranging from nasty burns all the way to broken bones in rather near deadly tumbles. The outside tent which had been set up caught fire and a dozen more people were obviously damaged, not to mention the psychological trauma caused by the cancellation of the reception shortly after.
Mrs. Shirley Rembaut and her new husband, Vinnie, the Fates forever bless their souls, departed from the hubbub unscathed, her fingers entwined in his hook hand, his one eye meeting her two, his peg leg finely adorned for the momentous occassion.
It was a match, everyone said from the very start of it, made in heaven.
The End
