The Incredible Story of Martin Wignall
by Mark R. Wilkins
Martin Wignall, normally a man of great inner strength, known among
his neighborhood and his town as one of those people whose mere presence
brings peace to those struggling with conflict and whose insights were
universally regarded as a blessing to those given the gift of hearing them,
known as a man always well-dressed and forever in perfect form, nails manicured,
hair just so, conservative wire-rimmed eyeglasses always exactly in place
and never prone to slip down his nose, known as the father of eight perfect
little girls all ten years old and themselves always precisely poised,
known as a man whose only ignominious moment had been at the age of twenty-three
when, seized by a terrible impure fit of jealousy completely unlike him,
he had struck with a tremendous 1948 Ford pickup truck and repeatedly backed
over again and again his best friend Phil Kardass who in a moment of passion
had defiled the fidelity of Martin's one true love, a strange, quiet young
lady named June, June for whom the flowers would sing and whose tears over
the premature death of Phil would stain the hitherto perfect pattern of
Martin's soul for all eternity, Martin, known as a man who managed to fight
off with remarkable persistence the unfortunately periodic urge to fondle
his daughters, only slipping his hands where they didn't belong on the
unusual day when his inner strength was not exactly so great as perhaps
it should have been had his steeled resistance to temptation been godlike
rather than merely human, though occasionally, just between you and me,
those few unusual days on which he would touch his daughters would sometimes
feature in Martin's behavior the extremes of human perversity to an extent
that the general knowledge of his behavior would perhaps not have been
quite so flattering had the story gotten out among his peers, a group of
people whose tolerance of fathers fondling their little girls was, shall
we say, low, lower in fact than in many small towns which already share
a much higher ethical and moral standard than, say, Los Angeles, in which
I dare say you could find a neighborhood in which it probably is considered,
heaven forbid, almost normal to cop a feel with one's daughter once in
a while, not that I'm suggesting that you move there or anything should
you be inclined to such things, and certainly not that I'm suggesting that
such neighborhoods should not be burned to the ground as decent men would
were they marked clearly in flaming red letters on the street maps, was
much surprised to find himself called upon by society as he had been, as
a man of such character would have to be, especially growing up in such
a town as he did in which children, except his own young girls, of course,
who did not experience the benefit of their parents assiduously protecting
their innocence by declining to fondle them every single time the temptation
arose rather than only the vast majority of the time, were sheltered from
the knowledge of the big, wide adult world out there, the world which many
adults would love to forget and be children again if only they did not
know that they would be assaulted by that adult world in their nightmares
even if spared the day-to-day exposure to horror and perversity which marks
adulthood, fearing even the walk to the parking lot, as sadly many adults
of today do, fearing the occasional black man who walks down the street,
although God knows there are a few black men who are alright and it is
the responsibility of every Christian to give the odd black man the benefit
of the doubt, even if it is most likely that the black man is unemployed,
living on the handouts provided by those damned bleeding- heart liberals
whose high-minded ideals are bleeding our own hearts dry, or worse, that
the black man is a murderer who has yet to be caught, or perhaps a murderer
at heart who has yet to murder, and perhaps should be dispatched immediately
to spare his victim the pain of acting out the performance which will make
the black man fulfill his destiny, even though the liberal courts could
not support such a thing, even if Martin Wignall, in the midst of fondling
his daughters, would, yes, Martin was surprised enough that it took him
uncomfortable minutes to find his bags, minutes which would have been much
more difficult to spare, had he known of the surveillance, the call on
the radio of the police car, the plump, balding man setting aside his jelly
doughnut carefully so as not to stain his bright blue uniform shirt, his
shiny badge which he loved so much, his stylish yet classic hat which sat
on the seat beside him, or his beautiful, yet more classic, Beretta 9mm
pistol which would come unusually handy in a very short while, to the plump
man's great surprise, or had Martin even known of the call his wife had
made a week before, crying in the dark, hoping that her husband would not
awaken to find her out of bed, but since he knew none of these things Martin
remained willing to look for the bags despite his surprise at the Lieutenant's
phone call, and though the car pulled up as he started to throw his clothing,
half of it dirty, into the bags, since the plump man did not run the siren
Martin did not see the car and continued at a measured, methodical pace,
to pack, the kind of pace at which you see paramedics work to rescue a
victim, a kind of controlled rush which allows them to calmly take all
the necessary steps without going so fast that they will skip the essential,
for the manner in which society had expressed its needs to Martin was in
the form of the Lieutenant's phone call, which stated that he was to give
himself up peacefully and that a car would be dispatched to fetch him some
thirty minutes hence, when in fact the car was dispatched much sooner with
instructions to wait outside Martin's door to prevent his attempt to flee,
as is sometimes done when kind police lieutenants wish to spare their apprehendee
the embarrassment of having to prepare their personal effects with an officer
watching, but usually only of course when the police lieutenant does not
know about such ignominious moments as Martin's backing over Phil again
and again and again to drive the image in his head of Phil and June pursuing
their own ignominious moment of human joy away, as the police lieutenant
presiding in Martin's town on the day of his attempted apprehension did
not, "attempted," I say, because as Martin heard the crack of a twig outside
and peered out the window he realized the trap which had been set for him
and searched for his own beloved 9mm Beretta, a tool which for moments
of desperation many of those who fondle their eight daughters all the same
age might very well be advised to hide away, as did Martin, posessed of
the gift of foresight, but when he found the pistol he discovered it to
be bereft of cartridges, a sad comment on the state of Martin's preparation
considering how truly inexpensive a box of the things can be if you look
in the right place, so Martin was left with no other option than to attempt
to sneak out the back, an attempt in which Martin was thwarted by the simple
and depressing fact that he had welded the back door shut to keep unwanted
visitors away, especially during private trysts with his daughters, and
having had his one option taken from him he searched his head for the option
which really was no option at all, to seize his wife and hold the pistol
to her head as he walked down the front steps, comically trying to carry
his bags over his shoulders, a course of action which left his emotionally
destroyed wife in a foggy state of psychological disrepair, as the frozen
image of the bag over Martin's shoulder swinging beneath her eyes recalled
to her the romantic trip, taken in younger, more carefree days, the trip
on which she and Martin had fallen in love all over again for the first
time since her true love Phil had been run over again and again and again
by Martin's 1948 Ford pickup, and on which six of the eight daughters had
been conceived, the other two daughters having been the product of two
minor infidelities which were such small trifles as not to have formed
a real mark on Martin's record, for even good Christians enjoy a little
trifle with someone on the side, if you know what I mean, and even so June
had forgiven Martin because on the trip she'd fallen so much in love again,
and besides, it's hard to run out on the man whose virile tendencies have
just been the cause of sextuplets growing within you, especially when you
yourself have no real means by which to support yourself, let alone six
children, but the warm memory of the trip floating through June's mind
was not enough to blot out the harsh sound of a gunshot which echoed through
the air or the warm feeling of blood on her shoulder from the awful gaping
wound in Martin's head, for as all good Christians know an unloaded Beretta
with no clip has a big hole in the handle and it can be very hard, in the
haste of a difficult emotional situation, to remember to protect such a
detail from an attentive police officer such as the plump man was, especially
if the sugar with which the jelly doughnut was laced had heightened the
officer's otherwise adrenaline-pumped senses of awareness to the point
at which he would see that there were no danger to killing Martin even
if there were in fact such danger, but fortunately there was not, and before
Martin had even dropped to the ground unconscious the officer had shaken
off his panic with the ease of the righteous killer and had reached for
the jelly doughnut, which yielded up to him with just the right amount
of resistance another chewy, sweet, succulent bite, ripe with the flavor
of cherry, a flavor so perfect as to even overwhelm the plump man's flush
of success.