arron Gillette could remember the precise day, hour,
and minute that he lost his laugh. He would have
known the second, but the digital clock on his bedroom
dresser did not display seconds. It was five thirty-two a.m. on Saturday, October 18. It was at that
fateful moment when his wife, Claire, waked him from a
deep but fretful sleep. After that, he had no reason
to laugh. Nothing was funny about the elbow she
planted in his side.
"You're snoring," Claire said.
"Huh?" At first, he thought it was a joke. He might have laughed if it had been a joke.
"I can't sleep. Would you turn over on your side?"
"I'm sorry," he said, and did as she bid. He was too groggy to argue.
A few minutes later, the elbow was back, jabbing harder this time. "Farron, you're snoring again."
"Really?"
"This isn't funny, you know." She was pissed. He could hear the vinegar in her voice.
"What time is it?" He didn't need to ask. The clock on the dresser across from his wife did not lie.
"Time for you to let me get some sleep, okay?"
"I'm real sorry, sweetpots," he said.
She moaned and pulled the covers over her ears.
He snuggled against her, feeling her warm buttocks pressed against his crotch. Only there was no joy in touching her ample bottom, not this time. Instead, there was her whine, high pitched and bitchy, "I'm hot, Farron."
"Sorry," he said. He did not sleep the rest of that night.
The following evening, there were two pillows on his side of the bed where before there had been one. "What's this?" he asked.
"I read if you sleep with your head elevated, you won't snore."
"Where did you read this?"
"People Magazine."
"Oh," he said and crawled into bed beside his wife. The extra pillow gave him a crick in his neck. So when he was certain Claire was asleep, he dropped it to the floor.
The clock read four eighteen when the jabbing elbow arrived.
"What!" he barked.
"Can't sleep," his wife said.
"I was dead to the world."
"Me," she said. "I can't sleep."
"Why not?"
"You know why not." She slipped from the bed.
"Where're you going?"
"To the sofa."
"No, you're not."
"Yes, I am."
"No! I'll go."
"I have to get some sleep, Bumpkins." She had an edge to her voice. Her endearment was one he detested. He knew there was no endearment in it at all.
"I said I'll go to the couch. I'll go to the couch." There was more than an edge to his voice. He was pissed royally now. He, too, needed sleep. What was wrong with his wife anyway?
The sofa was hard and covered with cat fur. He sneezed himself to sleep.
The next morning at breakfast, he asked, "Is it really that bad?"
"What?" she asked.
"My snoring."
"I said I'd go to the sofa."
"I mean, describe it to me."
"How could I?"
"Does it sound like this?" And he tested a sound on her.
"No. Leave me alone."
"How about this?" He gave his best shot at what he imagined his snoring to sound like.
"I said, leave me alone!" In a moment, she said, trying to find some sweetness in her voice, "It's not that bad anyway."
"Not that bad? Sweetpots, you can't sleep. That means I can't sleep. I don't know what to do."
"Stick with the second pillow." She thought a moment, then said, "And don't sleep on your back."
He took both suggestions. Problem solved.
A week later, Farron did not wake as Claire slipped from bed. He was not aware that she had left until four fifty that morning when he turned over to find her side of the bed empty. "Claire?" he whispered.
No answer.
He looked for her in the bathroom. Empty. In the office. Also, empty. Down stairs in the kitchen. No Claire. The den: Claire was asleep on the sofa with all three cats curled up beside her.
"Sweetpots?" he said as he touched her shoulder.
"Huh?"
"You okay?"
"I just got to sleep."
"Sorry. Is something wrong?"
"I can't sleep, Farron."
"I'm using the two pillows."
"Well, it's not working."
"Go back to bed."
"I just got comfortable here."
"Will you please-" He jerked the covers off her and waited for her to get up.
"It's cold!"
"Then go back to bed."
She did, reluctantly. The cats glared at Farron as they trailed behind her. They had been disturbed as well and did not like it. They recognized the enemy.
"Try these," Claire said, placing a small package on the dinner table.
"Band-Aids?"
"Sort of. 'Breathe Right.' They cross the bridge of your nose. Supposed to correct snoring."
"So does dying."
"Will you just give them a try? There's another product, a nose drop-"
"No!" When he was a kid, he had almost drowned when his mother had poured nose drops down his nose. "I'll try the Band-Aids." He would try anything short of nose drops. He missed sleeping with his wife. The sofa was not any softer.
At three thirteen a.m., Farron was jarred awake. "What!"
"The 'Breathe Right' isn't working."
"I took it off."
"What for? You know I can't sleep."
"And I couldn't breathe."
"I'll go downstairs."
"No, you won't. I'm the one with the damn problem."
He was too groggy. He missed the third step and crashed to the landing below. The fall woke him up.
"Farron, you okay, Bumpkins?"
"Hell no!" he shouted.
"Do you need anything?"
"Hell no!"
An hour later (he guessed at the time since there was no digital clock in the den), he was awakened by somebody snoring. Now he was disturbing himself! Be damned. He turned his face to the back of the sofa and covered his ears with the pillow. He was too tired to argue even with himself.
"It's really a simple operation," Claire said.
"What is?"
"To have your nose fixed."
"I'm not having my nose fixed. It's fine."
"That's a matter of perspective. You won't go?"
"No. Thank you."
They were not sleeping together any more. Farron missed his soft comfortable bed and he learned to despise the God forsaken sofa. They had picked out the bed together. Queen size, extra soft to accommodate his lower back. Sleeping on the sofa was bringing his lower backache back. He walked with a slight stoop. It hurt too much to stand up straight.
"Why don't you visit your mother this Christmas without me," Claire announced over Thanksgiving dinner.
"How come? We always go together."
"I have work to do."
"What sort of work?"
"Things have been busy at the office and I'm behind."
"What about Christmas together?"
"Bumpkins, at your mother's, we have to sleep together. It's expected. . ."
He left the dinner table. He left the house. He left the yard. He left the town. He did not know where he was going until he got there. Once there, he did not know where he was. He slept in a motel that night and did not call home. The next day, the day after Thanksgiving, he did not have anything to be thankful for. He became aware that he had lost his laugh. Not that he had laughed a great deal before. But at least he had had a laugh which was available to him. He had not been aware of having a laugh until it had left him.
When he returned home the following morning, Claire was not there. She left no note. He did not know where she might be. He did not care. He kicked the cats off his bed and slept the best sleep he had had in over a month.
The next morning, Claire showed up, looking brighter and chipper than he could remember.
"Where have you been?" he asked.
"Where have you been?"
"I asked first."
"I was afraid of staying in this big old house by myself," Claire said, "so I went to a friend's."
"Which friend."
"You're supposed to answer my question first."
"I drove to Monroe and took in a movie."
"Why didn't you call?"
"There wasn't a phone at the movie house."
"What did you see?"
"My turn. Which friend?"
"Somebody from the office. Has a guest room. You don't know them."
"Them?"
"Okay, him. We're going to be married."
"But you're already-"
"That's being taken care of."
"-married, to me."
"You'll receive the papers sometime today."
"Papers?"
"For the divorce."
". . . why?"
"Bumpkins, I've got to sleep."
That's how Farron Gillette found his tears. He wept as he packed his things into his Volkswagen bug.
Then he got angry.
Then he got drunk.
Then he got divorced.
Then he got laid.
Then he got angry again.
Then he decided to get even. After all, he needed sleep as well.
His name was Harvey Lee. He wondered if Claire called him "Bumpkins." Secretly he hoped so. A just punishment.
Harvey was a lawyer, specializing in divorce proceedings. He had three ex-wives and three neutered female cats. That made six cats altogether, all neutered, all female. The thought of six cats following Claire from room to room in what had once-upon-a-time been his house made him long to laugh. All he could manage was a smirk.
At first, Farron parked his car in the vacant lot across the street from his former home. He had been amazed at how easily he had lost not only his wife but his house, his den, his bedroom, his bed. The judge had said that snoring could be considered when broadly defined as cruel and unusual punishment, and that since he, Farron, refused to have a nose job, he lost his house. No appeal.
Later, he ventured into the front yard. How many times had he cut that grass or trimmed that hedge or picked up empty beer cans left over from the raunchy parties next door?
Still later, he worked his way over the back fence and stood on the wet grass outside the window to the den. The fence had been easy to scale, even for someone like him: overweight, out of shape, aging, sleepless. He could hear someone inside the house, snoring. Did Harvey Lee have the same problem? Was he asleep on the sofa? Had he already been banished from the sanctity of the bedroom?
He raised his nerve. Or: he overcame his hesitations. Or: his desire for revenge overwhelmed his sense of restraint. Or: he wanted to discover if his snoring problem had merely been an excuse. Whatever. He still had a key to the back door. They had not changed the locks. Stupid people.
It was three thirty-one a.m. on Friday, August 19 when Farron rediscovered his laugh. He found it without willing it. It was suddenly back, in full force. And it was such a pleasure to laugh again. It felt wonderful, too over-poweringly wonderful to hold it back.
The snoring was coming from the dark bedroom. It was louder than a chain saw taking out a fallen tree. It was so loud it made the flooring throughout the house vibrate. This new guy, this lawyer named Harvey Lee, had a major problem!
Then he stood there, a shadow in the dark bedroom with only the red glow from the digital clock giving light. He realized: the snore did not belong to Harvey Lee at all. Not at all!
So that was how he got his laugh back. He laughed all the way to the county jail where he spent a month for breaking and entering. He did not care. He had his laugh back and it felt too good to quibble over where he lay his head.
Copyright © 2002 by Kenneth Robbins
Kenneth Robbins, originally from Douglasville, Georgia, spent several years in South Dakota as a professor in the University of South Dakota Department of Theatre. His first novel, Buttermilk Bottoms, received the 1986 Toni Morrison Prize and the Associated Writing Programs Novel Award. It was published by the University of Iowa Press in 1987. His short fiction has appeared in the North Dakota Quarterly, the St. Andrews Review, the Briar Cliff Review, and A Carolina Literary Companion. Also a noted playwright, his works for the stage have been produced by the New Works Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, Nashville Academy Theatre, Theatre Atlanta Off Peachtree, and the Project Art Center, Dublin, Ireland. His radio play, "Dynamite Hill," was aired over National Public Radio and the BBC Radio 3. He now makes his home in Louisiana where he is Director of the School of the Performing Arts at Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA 71272.
For more about The Baptism of Howie Cobb, by Ken Robbins, see Fiction on
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