Chapter 16

The Last Day

11:44:22 p.m.

The wind-loosened awning took that moment to develop a hole big enough to emit a long, low howl that sounded surprisingly like a woman's cry. The slightly guttural and thoroughly disquieting sound didn't travel very far due to the hammering winds and the blizzard, though it did go far enough to get the undivided attention of one very strange person slowly trudging up the deserted street.

He was a living, breathing paradox, one of those human anomalies capable of providing conversational fodder long after normal topics have been exhausted. When he spoke, he either entertained or frightened people.

"It takes a licking and still keeps ticking!"

"Boy what a chip off the old block."

"I think I've got it!"

"Who knew?"

"Do you have a cough due to cold?"

"Did your get up and go, get up and leave?"

"NBC? Must see TV!"

All these clichés came tumbling out in an incoherent stream, with no order whatsoever. Beauregard simply spouted words without context.

Named by a mother enamored of the south, he lived forever with an anachronistic name that had doomed him to a childhood of torment by his peers. While she was pregnant, his doting mother had read a book about the dashing Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard and his gallantry in the Mexican-American and Civil Wars.

Unwilling to even try spelling Pierre, Gustave, or Toutant, she had settled on Beauregard as the name for her only son. Anxious that he have a thoroughly uncommon name and that he be brought up in a refined and protected environment, she had given detailed instructions to her hen-pecked husband. She had then written out those same dictates in a long missive that she had left in her attorney's care.

This would not have mattered except that Beauregard's mother had succumbed to childbirth complications just days after their healthy, supposedly happy son had entered the world. The details of Beauregard's naming and upbringing would have remained shrouded in mystery were not for the late Mother Marshall. She had held title to the home, lands, business interests, and all family money. Since father Marshall had been no more than a well-provided-for pauper, he had found the steely-eyed old fossil of a family lawyer to be a far stronger opponent than he could defeat.

Raised behind tall, iron gates and let out only to attend private school, church, and occasional approved forays into the world with his rather inattentive father, Beauregard had been a whipping boy for schoolmates. Those kids that preyed upon the weakness of others had detected the insecurities of this child with a single, uninterested parent.

Young Beau, as the household staff took to calling him, found a soul mate in the television. TV at that time had provided an array of pabulum for the soul rather than stimulation for the mind. Clichés and slogans were the order of the day in both programming and commercial interruption. Before he could walk, Young Beau had become well versed in "TV talk," as his late mother would have put it. Had she survived, he would have had a succession of the brightest tutors, most talented musicians, and best-turned-out ladies to teach him the finer points of polite society. Instead his days had been filled with terror at school and the monotonous influence of sixties television during the rest of his waking hours.

Just as adolescence might have begun to draw Young Beau from his shell, his father had managed to gamble away as much of the entire family fortune as he could wager. Due to a series of bad investments, the accessible resources were gone, proving once and for all that Mother Marshall had known what she was about when she had tied up the estate. All that had remained was the trust that was impossible to break, shielded against the day Young Beau would take his place in the world.

Fate had dealt roughly with Beauregard, in the matter of naming and of growing up motherless. Fate had also conspired in the selection and treatment of his father. Never too stable even in the best of times, and subject to periods of depression at the worst, Beau's father had been hired by his future father-in-law specifically so that his only daughter would marry and produce an heir. Father had found penury one insult too many and after a final three-day binge, had thrown himself off a high building, managing to crash land in an almost reclining position behind the wheel of a perfectly restored 1968 Plymouth Road Runner.

Fairly well off and recently orphaned, Beau had found that he was lost and lonely. There had no longer been a household staff to cater to his needs. Even the house had been lost in the cacophony of actions, suits, challenges, and writs following his father's suicide.

The attorney had continued to care for certain of Beau's affairs as dictated by the terms of the trust, but there was no affection once the bill was paid. Beau was alone in the world.

For the past three decades, Beauregard had lived in a modest home among other modest homes near downtown Bethlehem. He took many if not most meals at the Last Chance Diner, and he saw no reason to change his routine just because a little snow blew up. His one concession to the weather was walking, trudging really, to avoid potential car problems and undisciplined snow banks.

Whoever had passed him in the blizzard would been equally fascinated and repelled by the non-stop chatter that Beauregard emitted as he made his way toward dinner.

"You dirty rat!"

"Let me at 'em. I'll tear 'em limb from limb!"

"Who you gonna call? Ghost busters!"

Because he was unloved, he had never been diagnosed or treated. His retreat from things that scared him (almost everything) had seemed to cause the whole world to crash down around him following his father's demise. He had sought comfort in the world behind the TV screen. His social circle had included the Clampetts, the Cleavers, and the Hee Haw Honeys. His exposure to society had been under the aegis of Lovey Howell and her husband, Thurston; Zsa Zsa Gabor in Green Acres; and Alice from Mel's Diner. For reasons wholly unknown, Beauregard identified with the characters that frequented Mel's and unconsciously sought the same raucous companionship at Last Chance.

The steady stream of clichés and slogans that Beauregard used to communicate were charmingly annoying. For a time, people thought he was a bit like Robin Williams, always tossing out funny lines and comical comebacks. That impression wore off quickly, however, replaced by the realization that there was a lot wrong inside that man's mind.

Mister Trouble never hangs around.

When he hears this Mighty sound.

Here I come to save the day.

That means that Mighty Mouse is on his way.

Yes sir, when there is a wrong to right,

Mighty Mouse will join the fight.