The Life of Merlene Flounder

A SIX-MINUTE tale from Bartle Clunes

From the story of Bartle Clunes. If you are interested, an introduction, his archive is - here

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Oklahoma - 1940

“Merlene Flounder you git your lazy butt out here into this kitchen and warsh up these dishes like I told you! Cain’t you do nothin’ right?”

“Yes, sir, I'm coming right now.” She jumped up from her bed and smoothed out the quilt. She’d been daydreaming through a Sears Roebuck catalog, circling all the pretty clothes she’d order some day. She carefully dog-eared the corner so as to not lose her place and tucked the catalog under her pillow. She’d never actually sent for anything, but it always felt hopeful to fill in the order form. She wrote down “# 624-37 Pink Sun Dress With Sweetheart Neckline”.

“And don't you be leavin’ no soap on them neither! You rench them good, you hear me?” he growled, stumbling out the screen door. “You know that soap’ll give us all the runs, if you don’t rench it off.”

“I will, papa. I'll do them up right. I know how.” Merlene spoke politely to her step-father, but she scowled at his back as he walked out of the yard. He could get really mean at the slightest provocation. Actually he needed no provocation. She was only eight and had learned early on not to rile him. The way she saw it, she had to either be really, really good or stay out of his way. She stayed out of his way as much as she could.

Merlene never knew what to expect from one day to the next. She had never in her whole life invited any friend over to her house, because of her step-father's drinking and the shame of it. She knew her family was different from her friends’ families.

Whenever she came home from school, she’d reach up to the door knob, hesitate, take a deep breath and walk in. Her step-father might be in a rage about nothing, violently stomping from room to room, using language no child should hear, and, as her mother was always at work at the pear cannery, Merlene would be the only one around to listen to him rave. Or he might be sitting calmly in the armchair in his underwear and socks, hair in a mess, eating with his fingers a bowl of lettuce sprinkled with vinegar. She often found him sprawled out on the kitchen floor where he'd stumbled and fallen, passed out in his drunkenness, a Hank Williams record still revolving lazily on the turntable.

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Mr. Flounder returned from the corner market with a bottle twisted up in a brown paper bag tucked under his arm. He unscrewed the top, felt a little better. “Here,” he said, handing Merlene twenty-five cents, “I clean forgot to get the tuna fish.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. She went out and jumped on her rusty old bicycle to go back to the store for him, the pedals screek, screek, screeking with every revolution. Under her breath she mumbled ... piss ant son of a bitch … no good bastard ... fuck … fuck, and a few other words she’d learned from him.

Merlene 's step-father kept their home in an uproar. All around her was chaos, instability, anger. She lived with her parent's loud fights every night. That's just the way it was in the Flounder house. Merlene stayed in her room with the door shut when she could, trying to ignore it, pretending she was someone else, somewhere else.

She kept her little room in order. In her dresser, the socks were neatly folded next to the underwear. The pajamas neatly folded next to her sweater. Her books were orderly in her orange-crate bookcase. Her bed was made, her shoes underneath. There was no dust on the window sill. She had no control over the world on the other side of the bedroom door, but this was her side and she coped in the only ways she could.

“You go in there and mix me up some tuna fish, daughter. I'm hungry,” he said, staggering out of the bedroom. “Make me a sandwich on that brown bread. Cain’t you do nothing right?” Mr. Flounder had no authority anywhere in the world except over little Merlene. He never touched her or hit her, but he yelled a lot, bossed her around. It made him feel powerful.

By the time she was 14, she'd had to call the fire department two times because the man had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette and set the mattress to smoldering. She called the police a few times, too, when she feared that in his drunken rages he would hurt her mom. But he never hit his wife either – he just bellowed and used foul, mean language and was satisfied only when he had brought her to tears. Merlene hated his guts. She hated his friends, his Okie music, his foul language, his ignorance, his laziness — everything about him.

Weary of the clamor, Merlene Flounder left home when she was seventeen hoping to find a little peace. It was 1940. She hadn't yet finished high school, but she'd had all she could take of her family. I’m never going to be like them, she promised herself. She walked out with her suitcase in the middle of the day.

At the bus station she asked, “How far can I go for $21?'

“North, south, east or west?”

“West, please.

“Well, $21 will get you as far as Bakersfield, California.”

Merlene bought a one-way ticket west with no final destination in mind. She didn't care where she woke up as long as she woke up somewhere that wasn’t called Oklahoma

Merlene 's promises to herself faded like an old dish rag left hanging out in the sun too long. She was attracted to weakness in her friends and lovers. The people she surrounded herself with were like her — lost and out of luck.

The man she chose, Jimmy Ray, was more like her step-father than she would ever admit. Maybe he is all I deserve, she thought. Maybe he’s the only kind of man I can get. She worked and took care of Jimmy Ray for a while, which somehow made her feel stronger. He never did much, certainly never married her, and when he found out she was expecting a baby, he disappeared, as they say, like a bat out of hell.

to be continued…