Huey: The story of a husband who didn’t want to go home

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Considering today is April Fool’s Day, this might seem like a prank, but it’s not. Mary’s husband was a frequent visitor to the town’s post office located on the square about a mile from the State Capitol. It wasn’t to pick up mail though, rather it was his friendship with the postmaster as well as his desire to stay away from home for as long as possible. He would often drop by just as Abner was ending his daily shift and about to close the place when they would engage in a meandering conversation.

Those talks the men took part in carried no real interest with either of them, but they had fun doing it. They could relax and be themselves for a while, unlike what Abner’s friend put up with at home, living within a nightmare.

As he told Abner though, there was that one time he would never forget, when he stayed at the post office longer than usual, and in fact it was almost midnight when Abner finally suggested they go home because there was going to be trouble. The quiet friend grew anxious when he found out what time it actually was.

The nervous pair grew silent and gritted their teeth for a moment, but Abner did NOT ask why the native southerner hated to go home. He knew why. The whole town knew why, because the kindly and easygoing lawyer who was standing before the worried postmaster was what we would call a “battered husband” today, meek to fight back because if he did, HE’S the one who would go to jail.

That’s life in the suburbs. The man was quite a fighter though, having been duly elected into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1992, registering but a single loss in the whole of his career. Fighting her however, would be a no-win situation.

The term “battered” was not a figure of speech though and not a joke, it was a fact of life. Stories from the man’s friends showed a pattern of torment in him, but that night the postmaster discovered someone using the term of “the depths of madness” as a reference to her condition, because she had a mental defect that would not be addressed for decades since nobody even knew what it was. Her mind was a confused rattled swirling vortex of a terrifying emotional turmoil that neither she nor anyone else had any idea about.

It would start out as a seemingly endless episode of verbal abuse directed only at him, her penetrating voice being heard for blocks in the quiet middleclass neighborhood, and when her uncontrollable rages started, nothing else mattered. Mary relished the fact that people knew she was in charge.

Wanting everybody to hear what she was saying, Mary’s voice would grow as loud and grating as the roar of a Marine drill instructor on the first day of boot camp. A time when he’d failed at stoking the fire, she snatched up a split log from the pile and bludgeoned the poor man into unconsciousness.

Mary’s attacks always drew blood, and if not, she hadn’t done her job properly. Often at breakfast she would throw hot coffee in his face just for fun, but his usual response to the incessant abuse was to leave the house for a few days, and that length of time depended on which level of danger he thought he would be in upon returning.

Whenever he could, he would take their son along too when they both needed a break from the insanity. The pair would eat at local restaurants or just wander the streets aimlessly, so they could live in peace if only for a while. Otherwise, the homes of friends served as havens from her turmoil. As the postmaster thought about his friend’s nightmare, Abner begged him to come home with him and at least spend one peaceful evening.

Mary’s husband accepted Abner’s invitation and thus survived until the next verbal onslaught, and even after they moved to Washington his homelife never improved. He even considered hiring someone to remove her but feared he would be found out and even in his new job, he would never be any more than what he’d been in Springfield, trapped in the depths of madness, a cowering and battered husband named Abraham Lincoln.