SOMETHING BOHUNK THIS WAY COMES

In the 1970s, my parents went through what I called “a Laura Ingalls phase,” buying colonial-style furniture such as a kitchen table set, end tables, a console TV, and a stereo cabinet, which resembled a Conestoga wagon in both its size and weight and sat parked in front of our living-room picture window. Its cavernous interior housed an AM/FM radio, a turntable, an eight-track player, two huge speakers, with plenty of storage space for the few records and tapes my family owned. My mother liked easy-listening—Englebert Humperdinck, Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass, that sort of thing—and while my father didn’t mind the odd Tom Jones tune, he stuck mainly to country-and-western. Like the stereo’s cabinetry, it was more his style, reminding him, I guess, of the riggity-jiggity music he grew up with in Ireland, which he also played, especially during the Christmas holidays and around St. Patrick’s Day. My favorite of these was a song off a compilation album about a mixed-up Irish family with an orange father and a green mother. Having no idea what the lyrics meant, I pictured a Martian married to some other type of space alien until my father explained that orange stood for English Protestants while Irish Catholics were green. “Just like us,” he told me. “Only in our family, I’m green, and your mother is orange.”

OK, I thought. Now things are starting to make sense.

             Every weekend, our parents would march my sister and brother and me off to church, but instead of joining the rest us in the pews of the Catholic parish, my mother would attend the Anglican services one block away. This went on for a number of years, until she eventually tired of going it alone and converted to Catholicism. “It doesn’t matter who’s passing the collection plate,” she’d say whenever someone inquired about her new beliefs. “The word of God is the word of God.”

Not to question my mother’s listening skills, but I sometimes wondered how much of God’s message was actually getting through to her. In catechism class it had been drilled into me to “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” but according to my mother, the Golden Rule applied only to certain neighbors. “Stay away from that Horvath family,” she’d say. “I know you and Peter are friends, but if I were you, I’d avoid those people like the plague. They’re nothing but a bunch of bohunks.”

I was fourteen at the time, and though I’d overheard other people gossiping about the Horvaths, never before had they been referred to in such unflattering terms. I had no idea what a bohunk was but guessed it might have had something to do with them owning a horse and keeping it tied to a tree in their backyard. There wasn’t any logical explanation for owning it—no one ever rode the poor thing, and it just stood there, neglected, day after lonely day. “Knowing those bohunks, they’re probably planning on eating it after it starves to death,” my mother would say. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they chop it up and make it into a big pot of goulash or something.”

        The Horvaths lived in the sooty area of town leading to the coal mines known as “Prospect,” and my mother’s most recent remarks stemmed from a request I’d made to attend a sleepover in Peter’s teepee, which sat atop a wooded bluff and overlooked a creek that ran through the gully behind their property. The teepee slept six and contained a firepit: perfect for entertaining a group of rambunctious kids for the night. Or so I thought. My mother, though, had other ideas. “Like hell you are,” she said, adding that the last thing she needed was for me to come home stinking of smoke after staying up until all hours playing cowboys and Indians. “It’ll throw your sleep all out of whack, and then I won’t be able to get you out of bed for the next few days.”

         When issuing her orders, my mother would always act as if she were doing me the biggest favor in the world. “Oh, keep your shirt on,” she’d say. “Complain all you want, but one of these days you’re going to thank me for this. What about the time Doreen Naylor stuck that sewing needle into the tip of your penis while the two of you were playing Doctor? Who’d you come crying to then, huh? And I’ve never forced you to eat dog food, like those Troichuk kids did, have I? You may not remember these things, buster, but I certainly do.”

“Oh, I remember them, all right,” I’d answer, thinking, How could I not? You’ve never let me forget.

          I might not have known any better as a child, but I was a teenager now, goddammit—fourteen years old!—and when it came to Peter, I was determined to make up my own mind. Nobody was going to tell me what to do, especially my mother, whose own cultural horizons, I was starting to suspect, didn’t extend beyond her collection of Nana Mouskouri records. She and the others could go right ahead and shun the Horvaths, but not me. “A bunch of bohunks, eh?” I said to myself. “Well, I’ll show you.”

***

It was a smell that no amount of ventilation could eliminate, and though I’d become acclimated to it, there was no denying that Peter’s home stunk to high heaven, the foul, dank odor occupying every square foot of the place as if it somehow considered itself to be an integral part of the family. Produced by the potent combination of filthy cat litter, stale smoke, and rancid sweat, with a pungent undertone of garlic and boiled cabbage, the stench was, as my mother liked to point out, “enough to gag a maggot.” This was a house permeated by a sour sense of neglect. Yellowed strips of wallpaper peeled from the cobwebbed walls and pet hair clung to the doilies that covered the furniture and lined the dusty shelves crowded with garish knick-knacks. The carpeting was threadbare, the linoleum flooring cracked and gouged, as were the countertops. “Good Lord,” my mother would groan, her head thrown back in revulsion. “That place is a pigsty.”

           On my visits I’d be greeted by Peter’s mother, Eva, who nodded indifferently at my arrival, waving me in from her spot at the kitchen table. It was there she could be found during most times of the day, sipping cups of instant coffee while petting her cat, Cuddles, who rested in the lap of her sleeveless smock. Both she and the cat had orange hair, though Mrs. Horvath’s was dyed, rolled in curlers, and wrapped in a cotton headscarf. Knee-high stockings rode halfway up the woman’s prickly calves, and matted, banana-colored slippers complemented both her bunions and her mildewed toenails. She loved cigarettes, Mrs. Horvath, their filters stamped with a heavy coating of her lipstick as they dangled precariously from her lips, a string of ashes forever threatening to break free and add another amber scar to the table’s already substantial collection of burn marks and coffee rings.

         On top of everything else—her dismal housekeeping, her disheveled appearance—Mrs. Horvath was prone to volatile mood swings. It wasn’t unusual for her emotions to shift drastically from one moment to the next, and then back again, all in the course of a single conversation. With the exception of remorse and regret, the woman didn’t have a problem accessing any of her feelings, and though her erratic outbursts could be a little unnerving, ranting about the injustices that society hurled her way, I also found them somewhat invigorating. After emptying the mound of cigarette butts from her smoldering ashtray into a coffee can, Mrs. Horvath would shake her fist in anger and point a nicotine-stained finger at her imagined perpetrators, her bare, dimpled arm waggling like a bag of congealed gravy. “I get them back one day, you be see,” she’d say. “I no know how, but I will. Someday, all those sons of bitches gonna die.”

        Maybe invite them over for coffee sometime, Mrs. Horvath, I’d think. The smell in this place alone is enough to kill anyone.

       However entertaining Eva Horvath proved to be, her antics never amounted to anything more than an unexpected bonus, a sideshow, paling in comparison to the household’s main attraction, her husband, Laszlo. If this was my mother’s definition of a one-hundred-percent, Grade A bohunk, then I was afraid she was sadly mistaken. What I saw, rather, was a furious force of nature, a man determined to succeed no matter what the cost. Laszlo had a shaved head that smelled of Hai Karate, his skull lumpy in spots, dented in others, like the surface of a battered shotput, and his massive, bloated body was covered in tattoos. “One day, MeeGrat, maybe you grow up big and strong like me,” he would say, flexing his arms to plant a kiss on each of his bulging biceps. “Strong like bull, not leely skinny runt, like you, with chicken-bone arms. Strong man, real man, like me.” His eyes, which were a dull gray, the color of timeworn dimes, were penetrating, yet never betrayed emotion, and I’d duck my head slightly to soften the blows as he cuffed me around the ears. Here was someone who seemed to have been torn straight from the pages of Something Wicked this Way Comes. He possessed both the fearlessness of a lion tamer and the daring conviction of a fire-eater, and his painted body was not unlike that of the Illustrated Man. He was the real deal, Laszlo, a master showman, a carnival barker and a circus freak all rolled into one, and while visiting the Horvath’s three-ring circus I was forever captivated by his looming presence.

           Laszlo enjoyed parading around shirtless, his rotund stomach stretched taut like a beach ball and hanging over the belt loops of his jeans, unless, of course, the temperature dipped below freezing, in which case he’d slip on a wifebeater. Either way, it afforded him ample opportunities to show off his body art. “Look at tattoos,” he’d boast. “My body is masterpiece.” I had no formal training, but from where I stood the distorted words and images, all of which were etched in indigo ink, didn’t seem like much to me. But who was I to say? He was clearly proud of his canvas, and, for all I knew, the person who did the work might very well have been a genius, the Picasso or Salvador Dali of tattoo artists, so far ahead of their time. The centerpiece of Laszlo’s collection, which spanned the width of his flabby chest, pictured four jagged palm trees surrounding something that I could never quite make out: a one-eyed lion or a hydrangea bush or, who knows, maybe it was Bob Marley. As with the rest of his tattoos, it looked like prison-grade quality, but again, this was just pure speculation on my part.

           There must be more to this man than meets the eye, I’d think, and in an attempt to satisfy my many curiosities, I set off in search of answers, broadening my scope of exploration to all four corners of the Horvath compound. Imagine my delight, then, when I stumbled upon a number of additional pieces of artwork, the first of which I found hanging askew above the hamster cage in the back entryway. It was a black-velvet painting of a nude young woman, and though it was partially obscured by the adjacent coatrack, the portrait emitted a radiance that suggested the alluring seductress was wise beyond her years. The girl had shoulder-length blonde hair and was reclining on an ornate chaise lounge, a silk sheet strategically entwined around her limbs. In the background, flickering flames from a brick fireplace enveloped the scene in a soft orange glow. I bet she knows a thing or two, I thought, her doe eyes gazing longingly at me through her sweeping bangs. The cheap plastic framing aside, it was obvious that Laszlo had an exquisite eye, and I wondered if I might actually be in the presence of greatness. Was Laszlo some sort of eccentric aficionado? A deep thinker masquerading as a simpleton, with an abnormally high regard and appreciation for the human body? I didn’t have to think too long or too hard about the answers: the black-velvet proof was staring me in the face.

        Not long after this startling revelation came the discovery of a cache of European porn magazines. Hidden in a cardboard box beneath Laszlo’s workbench at the back of his garage, the mildewed pages of each dog-eared issue offered further proof that Laszlo was indeed a connoisseur of the flesh. Some of the magazines even had pictorials devoted to interactions with farm animals such as dogs and horses, and, in one particular instance, a donkey. The accompanying captions all followed a similar narrative: while out wandering the countryside, a beautiful young woman comes across an unsuspecting animal and then proceeds to seduce it, either under a stone bridge next to a gurgling stream or in a nearby dwelling—a barn, say, or an abandoned hut.

         Judging from their responses, I got the impression that these animals didn’t seem to consider having sex with a human to be any big deal. They carried on as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening to them, completely ignoring their female companions as every Helga, Lina, Oksana, and Astrid diligently performed their erotic favors. All except for the donkey, that is. Instead, his reaction seemed to be one of extreme puzzlement, like he was genuinely perplexed by all the attention he was receiving. As a buxom brunette named Lisbeth stimulated him, first with her hands and then, on the following page, using her mouth, the camera captured the donkey glancing at the situation unfolding around him, a series of baffled expressions on his face, as if wondering, What the fuck is going on around here?

And in my mind, I asked myself the exact same question.

***

Not surprisingly, Laszlo Horvath’s aesthetics extended into his choice of home decor. Oh sure, his hodgepodge of household furnishings might have seemed a bit eclectic, even gaudy, to some, but Laszlo had a flair for finding the beauty in what others deemed expendable. And while he often drew sideways glances for his habit of rescuing discarded coffee tables, sofas, and, yes, even mattresses from curbs and alleys, there was no denying his taste in electronics. Laszlo always had the latest makes and models and was often in possession of a large quantity of them, especially in the days immediately following a freight-car derailment, which, for whatever reason, happened in the surrounding area with alarming frequency during the mid-to-late seventies.

“Wow, another TV,” I once said, running my hand admiringly over the wood cabinetry of a new thirty-inch console that sat in the Horvath’s living room. The TV it was replacing had been brand new as well, perhaps only a few months old. “Where’d you get this one?”

“I rescue it from train crash in mountains,” Laszlo told me, adding that he had four more stored in his attic. “Three is RCA and one is Zenith. Tell your father if he want, I sell to him cheap. You want guitar? I give you guitar for good price too.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Horvath, I don’t need a guitar.”

“What? You no like music? What kind of teenager no like music?”

“No, I like music. “I like it a lot.” I knew from experience that Laszlo didn’t talk shop to just anybody, so I tried my best not to sound ungrateful. “It’s just that—"

“Then how about I get for you nice record player or eight-tracks machine?”

I shook my head no.

“Maybe you like new LP-record album? I sell you Peter Frampton. Peter Frampton! And he come alive! Come on, man, don’t be pussy. Is red-hot, no? Number one, with bullet. Bang! Bang!” When Laszlo finished shooting his finger in the air like a gun, he began playing air guitar, and in a synthetic voice, he sang, “Do you feel like me doooo?”

“Thanks for asking, Mr. Horvath, but the thing is—”

“What? Is no problem for me. I have plenty cassette tape and eight-track, too—Boston, Stevie Miller, ELO, Dreamboat Annie. Good condition—some still even in box.”

        Again I told him thanks, but no thanks. “Like I’ve been trying to tell you, I wouldn’t be able to keep any of your things anyway. My dad says that they’ve all been stolen.”

        “Stolen? Is not stolen.” Laszlo narrowed his eyes and leaned close, his soupy kielbasa breath engulfing me in a foggy sea of garlic as he jabbed his finger into my chest. “Is finders, keepers. You understand, no?”

The menacing tone attached to his words, which spilled from the wry smile he had plastered across his face, helped guide me into making the correct response. “No...no, I mean, yes...yes, of course, I understand. I get it. You’re right, Mr. Horvath. Anything you say.”

“Good. You and me, we have secret now. You no tell nobody. Yes?”

             Pleased with how far our relationship had progressed but fearful of betraying such an enormous confidence, I nodded my head hesitantly, saying, “Yes. I no tell nobody.”

“You good boy,” Laszlo told me. “Now go, little bird. Fly away. Bye-bye.” Then he raised a fist to my face, causing me to flinch. “HA!” he bellowed, before pulling back his hand. “I just playing. I no hit you, MeeGrat. Is joke. Why you no laugh?”

Funny guy, that Laszlo. What a cut-up.

***

According to Laszlo, possession was nine-tenths of the law. The final tenth didn’t matter, even if another man’s initials were carved into the handle of one of the dozen or so tools he had strewn across his property. “I borrow them,” he told me, shrugging in response to his stockpile. “They no ask for them back, so I no give back.”

Not that he ever had any use for them. As it turned out, Laszlo was a minimalist when it came to home repairs. He attacked each project armed only with a skill-saw and a hammer, piecing together building materials salvaged from the town dump. Laszlo shunned basic implements such as tape measures, levels, and chalk lines, regarding them as cumbersome time-wasters. “Measure twice, cut once” was not in his vocabulary, but “I eyeball it” and “Is good enough for girls I go out with” were, though this often resulted in gaping holes where electrical switch plates were erroneously cut, and installing off-kilter doorways and window frames. “My father, he teach me,” he’d say, his voice dripping with pride as he peered at his outstretched thumb, which he used as a plumb bob. “Best gypsy-builder in all of old country.”

             I suppose, then, it came as no surprise when some people, my mother included, claimed that Laszlo wouldn’t know a right angle if a T-square fell from the sky and hit him on the head.

            Oh, those poor fools. Like they knew.

            Laszlo’s renovations took years, but upon completion, his work stood as a true testament of one man’s triumph over basic engineering principles. The house featured obtuse angles and cubist planes throughout, as if the blueprints might have been designed by an acid-dropping architect whose imagination was trapped inside a funhouse mirror. By erecting such a unique structure in which to house his family, and not have it topple disastrously in a twisted, mangled heap, this man of such incomprehensible, and inexhaustible, talents had laughed in the face of convention and transcended society’s rules and expectations. He’d ripped the book of building codes to shreds and thrown the pages scattering to the wind, cementing his status, in my mind at least, as one of the great pioneers of the construction industry.

         The critics, though, weren’t so effusive in their praise. Instead of recognizing Laszlo’s brilliance, they taunted him, calling his custom-built home an eyesore, a monstrosity. He was a hack, they said, a loose cannon. Nothing more than an egomaniacal charlatan. Unlike so many others, I did not fall into the trap of mistakenly construing this man’s bravery and courage for madness and blind arrogance. Madness and arrogance indeed. Only a master craftsman could construct an edifice that spoke directly to the soul. Laszlo’s monumental tour de force opened my eyes to the stunning creativity and resourcefulness of this “maestro of remodeling,” as I came to refer to him, allowing me the freedom to bask in the reflected glory of his grandiose designs. This was not ineptitude at work—no, not at all—but, rather, the abstract magnificence of a prodigious, once-in-a-lifetime artisan operating at the height of his skills.

          Had his detractors taken the time to get to know the man, as I had, they might have realized that hidden beneath Laszlo’s boorish exterior lay the wounded heart of a misunderstood renaissance man. As it was, he suffered through the same persecutions, injustices, and emotional anguishes that all great artists must endure, and when the pain became too much to bear, he sought solace in the arms of alcohol. Laszlo preferred to drink straight from the bottle, particularly when pouring it into a glass proved far too tiresome of a task. Canadian Club and Smirnoff’s were his favorites, but he wasn’t overly fussy. Were not enough whisky or vodka readily available, he’d gladly substitute in anything eighty-proof or higher, and failing that, he’d even settle for a case of beer or a jug of homemade wine. Short of drinking antifreeze, Laszlo would stop at nothing to silence the dissenting voices that tormented him and clouded his genius.

        Things continued to go downhill for Laszlo when mounting debt, brought on by a combination of his compulsive gambling and his loutish inability to hold on to a job, forced the Horvaths to sell their house and suffer the indignity of moving into the town’s trailer park. A six-month drunk-driving conviction soon followed, during which time Laszlo was arrested again, this time for operating a vehicle without a license. Then, to add insult to injury, disturbing rumors began to circulate, linking Laszlo to possible incidences of domestic abuse.

          These damning allegations, which might have brought a lesser man to his knees, had seemingly no effect on Laszlo, and, amazingly, he carried on as if it were business as usual. “Lies!” he’d shout, dismissing the purported misdeeds with a wave of his hand. “Is bullshit. I do nothing.” The cops, he claimed, those “no-good, cock-suck, son-of-a-bitch-cunt bastards,” were obviously just out to get him. Not to worry, though, because he had a plan, one that promised to clear his name, shut everyone up, and show his enemies who was still boss. “You be see,” he’d say, “I fix them good. I gonna shove my fist all the way up their puny weakling fucking asses.”

            And there you have it. Who knew that sticking a clenched appendage up your perceived enemy’s rectum was a highly effective method for dealing with problems relating to the law? But in Laszlo’s mind, it was just that simple. Then too, imagine all the money he’d save on lawyers’ fees—those “good-for-nothing, scumbag crooks.”

***

My father, who lived to be eighty-eight years old, was around the same age as Laszlo Horvath, and while I might be wrong, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that, by now, Laszlo is also dead, especially given the life he led. I can’t say for certain, though, as I lost track of him not long after I graduated high school and went away to university. The separation eventually enabled me to realize what a certifiable nutjob the man was, but nothing stopped the flood of haunting memories, which lasted for years and were freighted with shame and a sense of cowardly failure. How could have I been so blind? I often wondered. The narcissism, the depravity, the kleptomania. The crazy-bohunk lies. The constant bullying that had me spooked and intimidated. So weak, so gullible. So...stupid. Sometimes, when the lingering questions and nagging doubts became unbearable, I used to tell myself that if I had the chance, I’d go back and do things differently. Now, decades later, after having finally forgiven myself, I realize how foolish that sounds, for even if I could travel back in time, I doubt if it would be worth the trip. I mean, there’s really no point in beating a dead horse, now is there? Even if it’s a Shetland pony, and you plan on making a pot of goulash out of it.

Michael McGrath is originally from Canmore, Alberta, Canada, back when it was just a grubby little coal-mining town in the Canadian Rockies and not the posh mountain resort it is today. Until his retirement he was a high school PE teacher in Calgary, and, having since married an American, McGrath now splits his time between Calgary and Chicago. In addition to holding a Green Card, he's a dual citizen of Canada and Ireland. His essays have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Blank Spaces, The Bookends Review, The Penmen Review, and. Rocky Mountain Outlook.