Flannery O'Connor Prose: Southern Hell and Southern Fried Syntax, Dialogue and Absurdity

Down on Stanjay's Farm, all's so fine and dandy that the oil isn't even slick any more.

Things are so good there that the oil on the roof, the rutted lane and even in the tractor's carburetors is not of this world. When it doesn't seem otherworldly and strange, it's gritty, nasty and putrid.

You can say that we're in some state of Blakean disarray here. Take a trip and leave the farm isn't a phrase to buzzed cigarettes cut from the sharp leafed herbs, but it takes on a new vitality now - like seeing a 95 year old woman flap something ugly and cumbersome on her back then jut up in the air 5,000 feet.

See, there was this fellow who came to the door last year who was filled with spirits, preaching some good news about a vacuum cleaner that could do tricks like dolphins, manatees, killer whales and the Great Whites at Sea World in Florida. Well Ol' Miss Stanjay, the big matriarch of this farming conglomerate, told the guy that all she wanted was a sweeper that could clean, not jump through hoops and throw beach balls around to other vacuum cleaners.

The vacuum cleaner sales representative was visibly hurt. He left without a word. He just picked up his hat and pranced on out'a the old farmhouse like a barn mongrel getting ready to fight. some other low breed mutt.

We never thought much of it. We always knew the old girl was off her rocker and was liable to say anything, at any time, to anyone. But we never dreamed she could take the wind out of a real talking machine. No, she decimated the id, ego and even the superego of that vacuum cleaner salesman (I really should use the more politically correct term "sales representative" here, but to do so would be linguistically, semantically and particularly - through connotation - very thin and base. At the time of the Ole’ Miss Dynasty, situations were captured in a different kind of empty beer bottle).

This salesman was cut out not of the sales representatives of our New Millennium, but like a Willy Loman character. He wore polyester and nylon clothing. His suit jacket, believe it or not, looked to be made of Spandex and possibly even Spam. He had a sock or maybe even a medium-sized ball in his drawers that jutted out like the great Vinson Massif! It was quite obvious that everything about this man was fake - everything - from his faked penis to his horrid, horror-show sidecar of a fabric outfit. So how were we to blame our Ol' Miss for crapping on him the way she did!

No, we never thought anything of it when we watched the old boy cart his handled, movable suitcase down our oily, rutted lane. And the Ol' Miss just stood around the old farmhouse, looking to be every bit The Great Inquisitor of deep, dark Appalachian dairy farm lore.

But things started happening right after that whole incident. Some of the things were good, others were bad. But all of us knew these things were all very, very weird. They seemed to be made of the same weirdness as the good, countryside door-to-door sweeper salesman. On the first night of this figure's departure, for instance, it was reported that a gigantic flying elephant was spotted up the road, right outside the High Ho Roadhouse. At first people just wrote it off as some weird air constellation that some inebriated fools saw. But after a while, folks started to see this winged, pink, flying pachyderm at high school baseball games, community hoedowns, tent revival meetings and yes, even at our occasional bingo jam.

And that ain't all. Sometimes when the moon is full people hear these hideous beasts growling in the woods. I've always been interested in things like vampires, werewolves and yetis, but I don't want to have one of these horrid creatures hanging around the old homestead here. I certainly don't want my daughter, my niece or even the neighbor girl dating one of these monsters either!

Somehow, someway, we knew it was all part of that vacuum cleaner guy's sales pitch. Something, somehow, got left behind by that very mysterious, egregious figure that day. All that talk about this vacuum cleaner dog and pony show be damned - he was an agent from some other world). Yes. Some of us think the salesman was a visitor from Beyond somewhere (and where Beyond is in this instance is really an enigma. It could be anywhere in the cosmos or high above in heaven or far below in hell).

And what's the funniest part of it all, our Ol' Miss is now growing wings. Not an angel's wings or a parrot's wings, mind you, all nice, fluffy and colorful. No. Ol' Miss is growing wings that look like they was torn off a bat, a cicada or a flying frog! The wings aren't becoming to her, but rather, repulsive. We all think she's gone to the hyenas or something. But the wings work now - last suppertime, Ol' Miss jumped up and out - about 2,000 feet up and out. She looked to be a lemur with a human's persona. Now if Ol' Miss starts extracting the poisons from large centipedes with her needle-like teeth, we'll know that Stanjay's Farm and all that is immediately surrounding it went to blazes with a burning bra attitude.

Last night some little neighbor kid said he saw a goat grow wings, fly and then wrestle a chicken hawk in mid-air. Normally I would just laugh and brush it off but I started asking the kid for the particulars of what he saw. Yesterday, it was getting hot all morning and the temperature was climbing, climbing and climbing. Do you know what happened at 1 p.m.? The mercury jumped over a hundred and it started snowing like a Courier and Ives painting was in our country landscape at Stanjay farm.

I don't know.

It's scary.

I think even if we would've bought one of that man's vacuum cleaners after Ol' Miss insulted him things may be different. And I've been looking high and low for this man, hoping that somehow, some way I'll be able to find him, cut him some kind of deal and then ask him to turn things around - the way they used to be in the good ol' days.

"Things are never what they seem," Ol' Miss said the other day, flapping her wings like a bat.

"That's easy for you to say. Now you've grown wings and after you insult someone terribly, you can fly away."

"Good fences make good neighbors," she said.

"Yeah, and so do goats that can fly, chickens that have fangs and bite and cows that have claws and saber toothed utters. The end is near and so are you."

"You better show some respect for your elders, sonny. How many times did your mother tell you that?"

"Well, Mrs. Stanjay, since you're my mother I guess it's been a few laps more than a zillion times now."

"Exactly."

Just then, a windowpane came crashing down and a large crow with tusks growing out of its head started chasing our big dogs around the living room."

"Git that wild boar out'a here," Ol' Miss said.

"That ain't no wild boar. That's a crow," I answered.

"Well git it on out'a here 'fore he kills one of the dogs."

I picked up a mop and started smacking the thing around, aiming for the big black bird but somehow, I fell short each and every time. Finally, I connected. The crow fell to the floor with a dull thud. Then, all hints that there was a bird there vanished. The crow miraculously turned into a little mouse and scurried away.

"Well Mary Oxymoron is my date for the prom!" I screamed.

Ol' Miss just stared at me. Feathers were all over the floor. Mouse droppings littered a trail from the kitchen to the living room.

I stared at Ol' Miss. It was clear she pissed herself.

"It would sure be nice to have one of that nice man's vacuum cleaners now," Ol' Miss said, shook her head, then fell over and died.

Or was she just playin’ ‘possum?

Sam Vargo worked most of his adult life as a newspaper reporter and editor. Vargo taught English Comp. at Youngstown State University, West Virginia State University, Univ. of North Florida, Florida Metropolitan Univ., Hinds Community College (Jackson, Miss.), and Jefferson Community College (Steubenville, Ohio). He was awarded an MA in English (from Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio, USA)j. He received a BA in Political Science from YSU, too. He was fiction editor of Pig Iron Press, Youngstown, Ohio, for 12 years. Vargo’s creative writing has appeared in Ascent Aspirations, Bent Spoon, Blue Fifth, Centrifugal Eye, The Circle, Clark Street Review, Connecticut Review, The Cynic Online Magazine, Dandelion, Edifice WRECKED, Electric Acorn, Glass: A Poetry Journal, Gypsy Blood Review, Higgensville Reader, Late Knocking, Licking River Review, Lynx Eye, National Lampoon Humor Network (College Stories, The Frown, Points in Case), The Nocturnal Lyric, nthposition, Ohio Teachers Write, Poetry Motel, Projected Letters, Red Dancefloor, Reed, Small Press Review, Verve, undergroundwindow.com, Why Vandalism?, White Leaf Review U.K., Yasse, and numerous other presses and literary journals. A literary press – Literary Road from Seattle, Wash., will be publishing Vargo’s first collection of short stories sometime during the first half of 2008. It will be published under the title, Electric Onion Head and the Rotating Cyclops of the Month. Vargo is also marketing a book-length collection of poetry.

Email: Sam Vargo

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