CLEAN LOREEN
The county will bury her today. No one could locate any living relatives,
although it was commonly known that she had numerous nieces and nephews. Nor could anyone figure out how she had lived
all these years �" there was five dollars in her bank account, and no evidence
of a trust or other means of support. Now,
after two weeks, the county decided to bear the costs of putting her in a
simple pine box. Holman’s Funeral Home
donated a plot in the southwest corner, where there are no trees and really no
more space. She will be buried, squeezed between Abner Rost and
Julia Menge. I wonder if she knew them--I
hope so--it saddens me to think that she will be among strangers for eternity.
Everyone in this town knew her. She was Clean Loreen. She earned this name because she took several
baths and showers daily. She was also
mad. Mad as a March hare. Polite conversations would use the word “eccentric”,
but we all knew that just meant crazy. My
mother told me once that she had been institutionalized for a short time by
some well-meaning cousins, but she was no real danger, to herself or others,
just strange...and clean. It’s defined
as obsessive disorder now, but in the forties, any behavior that deviated from
the norm, well....it was a small town and the rules of behavior were fairly
rigid--they still are. Guess it’s a good
thing they can’t see behind closed doors.
I could tell tales...but I digress.
There were many stories and theories regarding the origin of
her madness. She was old when I was a
child, and, while no one is quite sure how old she was when she died, the
consensus is that she was between eighty and eighty-five. That’s not really a long time for a small
town to work up a good legend and turn it into fact as small towns do, but we
managed.
The most told and generally accepted version is that it was
finding her father, drowned in mud, that sparked her madness. He was knocked unconscious by a kicking mule,
and fell face forward into a puddle of thick mud. Loreen was the one who found him when sent to
fetch him for supper. They say that
after the funeral, she began each day with a bath, took another around noon,
and a third before retiring to bed. Many
years later, a grown nephew who was visiting on his way to some college back
east, arranged for the installation of a shower, and this practice was added to
her daily routine.
But it wasn’t just the cleanliness, which is, after all,
next to godliness, that branded Loreen as crazy. Even this small town would not shun the
overly fastidious, and even as far back as the forties, that alone would not
have been sufficient to have her committed to the institution. No, it was when mules on surrounding farms
and local stables began to die. While no
one ever produced any hard evidence, all eyes naturally turned to Loreen. Poison was determined to be the cause of
death and, all in all, before she was committed by the concerned cousins, six
mules met their Maker with sparkling clean hooves.
It wasn’t until the third mule, owned by Jack Waller, kicked
his last bucket, so to speak, that someone noticed there was no mud or dirt on
the hooves. Even underneath, which meant
that whoever was fortifying the feedbags with that extra fiber, waited for them
to go down.
Well, that only could mean one person, as anyone in the town
would, and still will, tell you. There
was never any poison found on or around her property, and she, of course,
denied leaving her home after dark. But
failure to produce evidence for a public trial did not mean she wasn’t tried
and convicted. Small towns have this curious
justice system of their own, and every mule, thereafter, found with four up,
you could say, was another Exhibit for this alternate court system. Half-heartedly, the sheriff warned the
loudest accusers that he would have to take action against any who took the
matter into their hands. And, to give
him credit, he even tried to explain that a commonly held belief and nothing
else was just not enough to arrest, arraign and go to trial.
Well, a neighborhood mule-watch was formed and every night
for a week, four or five of the indignant righteous staked out Loreen’s house,
front and back, so that the heinous mule murderess could be caught slipping out
to carry out her kill-and-clean agenda.
On the seventh morning, Bill Temple reported his mule’s demise and shine
and the watch could only report that they never saw anything untoward. They reluctantly disbanded, although they all
swore to each other that she had given them the slip somehow, everybody knows
crazy people are sly.
Unlike today, when children seldom call their parents, in
the forties even twice and three times removed relatives would visit known
kinfolk in the area when passing through.
It happened that when the cousins came through town on their way to a
wedding, someone at the dry-goods store took it upon themselves to inform them
of their kinswoman’s antics. Within a
week, Loreen was in Halstone Institution.
The cousins, having clearly done their duty to their kinswoman, moved
on. But within six months, Loreen was
seen getting off the train with a small suitcase, looking fit and tanned. Within three blocks of her home, there was no
one in town that didn’t know she was back.
Everyone waited anxiously for Loreen to pick up where she
left off, after all, you can’t cure killers, certainly not in six months, but
nothing ever happened. After the first
year, and all mules in the area continued to make roll call, folks relaxed a
little, although they never let go of their suspicions, and for years mule
owners locked up and even hid their mules, horses and donkeys (why take
chances?).
Clean Loreen lived out the rest of her life alone, in a town
where everyone knew her. Her groceries
were ordered by phone and delivered, and she ordered clothing and other
essentials by catalog. She walked the
five miles to Shillers Pond every other day, but never attempted conversation
with her neighbors, and they responded in kind. In fact, it was at Shillers Pond that her
body was found. I shudder to think of
how much time might have elapsed before discovery had she died in her home.
I will most likely be her only mourner. You see, I delivered her groceries for twenty
years, and I kept our friendship a secret, for reasons you can imagine. I am the only person she ever told about the
trap door, hidden by a barrel of silver polish, in the shed out back of her
house And I’m the only one who knows...well,
the truth. But as I said before, I could
tell tales...I’m the Grocer.
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