MARVIN'S GARDEN

By JOSEPH BRISBEN

When she was growing up, all Madge Duckworth wanted was to marry a man who was going places. She found that in her husband, Marvin, a farmer, but then she discovered she had married a sadist, a glutton, and man so greedy that he cheats his brother out of his family’s estate and disowns his own son. Madge’s life runs on terror-filled

• Language: English
• Publisher: TOPLINK PUBLISHING, LLC
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781949804713

JOSEPH BRISBEN

Joseph Brisben has been writing fiction for more than four decades, mostly short studies. He has wanted to be an author since he was in the third grade in Adams Grade School in his hometown, Enid, Oklahoma. He studied English and American literature first at the University of Chicago and then at Drake University. In recent years, he has studied during the Summer Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Most of his stories take place in Enid and his mother's hometown, Pond Creek, OK. Now retired, Brisben worked as a reporter and copyreader for the Chicago Tribune, in college public relations, and as an investment counselor. He also plays jazz, folk, and blues guitar and a number of other instruments. He has four children and four grandchildren and lives in Iowa City, IA.

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Praise for Marvin’s Garden

"[Marvin’s Garden] is a refreshing take on a story that is all-too familiar with quite a surprise ending and a good beginning, reminiscent of All About Eve. I loved the wonderful mixture of tones. Much of it is sad and horrifying, but there are places that made me laugh out loud, as when Madge tries to kill her abusive husband by over-feeding him. I love the animal revenge at the end, and the note of hope."

—Richard Dyer, Music Editor Emeritus, The Boston Globe

"Sad and funny by starts, often compelling, and never uninteresting,  Marvin’s Gardens focuses vividly on its central character’s vulnerability and ultimate indomitability of spirit. Clearly Brisben knows and cares about her and about the community in which she struggles to find what she needs and wants."

—Bruce K. Martin, Professor Emeritus of English, Drake University

It’s not Old McDonald’s Farm Brisben writes about but one of greed, cruelty and ultimately, about justice – with entertaining detail of life down on the farm.

--Todd Garber, Editor Emeritus of the Enid, Oklahoma, News & Eagle

Marvin’s Garden

Joseph Brisben

Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Brisben.

Hardback: 978-1-949804-70-6

Paperback: 978-1-949804-69-0

eBook: 978-1-949804-71-3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Printed in the United States of America

To my children, Erin, Amy, Graham, and Adam

Contents

Madge Questions Marvin’s Motives

Jason

Madge Looks for a Job

The Vacation

Madge Makes a Decision

The Barn

Betty Arrives

Argus

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Madge Questions Marvin’s Motives

There he is, my late husband. The red card wired to his big toe tells you something about him: Name: Marvin Duckworth . Age: 64. Sex: Male . Marital status: Widower. (I’m Madge, his late wife.) Address: R.R. 1, Pond Creek, Oklahoma . Where body found: Betty Buckley’s barnyard . I like the sound of all those B’s. Reason for transfer to medical examiner: Questionable death . Next of kin: Jason Duckworth, son. Agency delivering remains: Grant County Sheriff . And it goes on. I hovered over the coroner as he wrote his report. He got the facts right: Crushed chest, broken ribs, collapsed lungs, and I can’t remember the term he used for the flattened heart. Marvin died in a barnyard. I can’t imagine that he would have wanted to die anywhere else — unless it was a construction site. Of course, he would have chosen a different way to die. But it suited him.

I always thought Marvin turned mean long after we were married, but I spoke to some guys he grew up with. Buster Brauniger once told me: He’d catch live flies with one hand and pull their wings off. He’d do it time after time and get this look of pleasure on his face. I’d do it with him. After a while I’d get bored, but Marvin would just stay at it.

Caleb Dryer told me: Marvin must have been about ten or twelve years old when his dad gave him a real man’s hunting bow. Marvin was supposed to use it to hunt deer, but he and some of us guys would catch cats and hang them from clotheslines. Then Marvin would practice his archery.

So I guess Marvin was always that way, but in the beginning he sure kept it from me. His folks, Irv and Viola, were simple people, just plain country folk. They were rather old when they started having children. Marvin was the youngest, and they didn’t seem to care what he did as long as he did his chores and helped Irv with the farm. The farm was only 80 acres, and it wasn’t good ground — very sandy. I don’t know how Marvin’s parents managed to raise four kids on it, but they did. Marvin had a brother, Harold, and two sisters, Vernetta and Lola Viola. When World War II broke out, Harold joined the Army Air Corps. He was a member of a reconnaissance crew that flew in Southeast Asia. Harold once told me: Guys would hold onto my legs while I leaned out of the bomb bay of a B-17 with a 16-millimeter movie camera and took films of where our bombs had landed.

To me Harold was a real hero. Shortly after the war, the girls got married and then Harold married and settled in Enid. After that, Marvin was alone with his folks.

Marvin found an outlet for his meanness playing high school football, Buster Brauniger said, but he was only 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighed only 150 pounds. He was a terror on the field. He loved to hit people — like a sledgehammer. He would start running at a ball carrier and aim his helmet right at the guy’s chest and then, BLAM! It’s a wonder Marvin never hurt himself doing it.

Marvin wanted to continue playing at the junior college in Tonkawa, but he was so small the coach there wouldn’t even talk to him. So he went to the Army. The Korean War was on, but all Marvin did in the service was drill and keep his rifle clean. If General MacArthur had put him in action, I swear to God, we would have won that war hands down. After his tour of duty, Marvin came home and got a job in the Boeing plant in Wichita building airplanes.

That’s where I met him. We were both on the assembly line, screwing nuts on bolts. Pretty soon, he was screwing me. God, he was good looking back in those days: wavy black hair, blue eyes, a huge chest and arms for a guy his size. And was he fun! We ate in all the fancy restaurants in Wichita, and then we went dancing or to the movies. He seemed to be just what I was looking for, a guy who was fun and going places.

Madge, he told me one night at dinner, I want to farm right there in Grant County, but I want to do it big — lots of acres, lots of cattle, big machinery, and men working for me.

Hell, I was just a simple girl from Ponca City. My dad worked the night shift at the Conoco refinery, and my mom was a housewife. I had me a high school education. What else did a girl back then need? And I had stars in my eyes.

The day we got married, Mrs. Duggan told me, I’m glad Marvin found a good woman to settle him down.

She said not to settle down with, but to settle him down. I didn’t know what she was talking about. Marvin was certainly energetic, and he had some ambitious ideas, but I was willing to go along. What trouble was I supposed to have?

I was so in love. What girl in her right mind wouldn’t want to go on a romantic picnic on the sandy banks of the Salt Fork River with such a good-looking guy? Overhead was a clear blue sky. The air was warm. We’d go fishing or skinny-dipping and eat fried chicken, potato chips, and coleslaw and drink beer.

In bed, that’s where I most loved being with Marvin. I loved his hairy chest and back, and I loved feeling the muscles in his butt as he pounded away at me. He would pump in and out, and it got so the walls of my vagina would clench around his penis. Then they would give way, and all this fluid would squirt out.

The first time it happened, Marvin cried, I’ve hurt you. Maybe we should take you to the hospital.

Sweetie, I think that’s the way sex is supposed to be. Just keep at it.

I would clench and squirt, clench and squirt. Each time I would get this feeling down in my lower abdomen. Then it would move into my stomach and chest, then to my arms and legs, and I would shake all over. I would look at my arms, and they would be covered with goose pimples. When we got through, the sheets would be so wet that I’d have to change them.

In those days, I loved my body: dark brown hair, brown eyes, narrow waist, round hips — and my breasts. I loved my breasts. I liked to stare at them in the mirror. I liked wearing a soft sweater or a jersey dress that showed them off to advantage. I might be out someplace, and I would catch a guy staring at me, and I would twist around and train my breasts on him like a pair of searchlights. Then I would give him a look that would make him blush and stare at his shoes. I guess — as things turned out — I was lucky Marvin never saw me do that.

When we were first married, especially on Saturday or Sunday mornings even after Jason was born, Marvin would get up, dress, and go do his chores. I would take a bath and fix myself up. Then I’d cook breakfast, and we would eat. Lots of times, I would be sitting across the table from Marvin just wearing my bathrobe. I would let it fall open so that he could see I was naked underneath. He would get up from his chair, walk over, pick me up, throw me over his shoulder like I was a sack of grain, and carry me to the bedroom where it seemed like we would make love for hours.

Marvin and I were still working at the Boeing plant when he got the idea that he wanted to buy a bunch of cattle in the early fall, fatten them up, and then sell them for a profit in the spring. Although Marvin had saved a lot of money, he didn’t have enough to buy as many cattle as he wanted, so he borrowed $5,000 from his dad. Irv was glad to loan it to him.

Pa loaned money to Vernetta and Lola Viola’s husbands, Marvin told me one night at dinner. When Harold came back after the war, he used the GI Bill to get his fancy degree in engineering at the University of Oklahoma. Still, Pa loaned him some money, so he can just loan some to me.

And it wasn’t easy for Harold and his wife Jo. She worked, but she got pregnant. They wouldn’t let women in the family way work back then, so she had to quit. They needed money. That’s when Irv loaned it to them. As far as I know, all of them — Harold and Vernetta and Lola Viola’s husbands — paid Irv back.

With the money he borrowed from Irv, Marvin bought his cattle, put some on Irv’s farm, and rented some pasture. He fed the cows mostly on grass and alfalfa, but that wasn’t enough so he had to buy some oats