Purgatory: A Good Way to Die (Butterworth)

By Dave Malone

College adjunct instructor Charles D. Butterworth lives a pleasant, though not terribly exciting, life in the rural Ozarks. A cuddly, bookish man, Butterworth seeks meaning through the Eastern philosophers and Mother Nature. Feeling his life has peaked, Mr. Butterworth plans his suicide. Bad weather and an unexpected infatuation slow his demise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave Malone
• Release date: Feb 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310199523

Dave Malone

Dave Malone is the author of seven books of poetry, including You Know the Ones. He has also authored two novelet series and coauthored the stageplay, The Hearts of Blue Whales. His poem, "Spring Dress," was featured on Michel Martin's NPR program Tell Me More. Dave lives in West Plains, Missouri, and hosts the weekly Friday Poems series at his website, davemalone.net.

Book preview

Purgatory: A Good Way to Die

(Butterworth)

Dave Malone

Smashwords Edition

First Edition

Trask Road Press

Copyright © 2014 by Dave Malone

Cover photo in the public domain.

Cover design by Jenni Wichern.

Purgatory: A Good Way to Die (Butterworth) is an Ozark novelet and book one in the four-part series, Divine Eschatology.

Part of this work originally appeared as the short story, A Good Way to Die, in Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozark Studies, Vol. 2, 2010.

Except for fair use in reviews and/or scholarly considerations, no part

of this book may be reproduced, performed, recorded, or otherwise

transmitted without the written consent of the author and the

permission of the publisher.

Discover other titles by Dave Malone:

Not Forgiven, Not Forgotten

View from the North Ten: Poems after Mark Rothko’s No. 15

Seasons in Love

Under the Sycamore

Poems to Love and the Body

23 Sonnets

CONTENTS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

About the Author

1

In a month I will be dead.

But it’s not that things haven’t been going well.

A year ago, life was much worse. Just before Christmas, my mother finally passed away in our old farmhouse. My three-hundred-pound sister couldn’t walk anymore, lost her job, and at the age of forty-five years was admitted to assisted living. Ubiquitous Phoenix University snipped off two online English courses I teach, and a windstorm that misplaced half the iron basketball hoops on southern Missouri barns also ripped out the west wall of my bedroom. Mother’s antebellum china decorated the linoleum floor of the kitchen in cream and rose until I swept it up, but little slivers remained and crunched like Cheerios underfoot. Every crackly step reminded me of her passing.

Farm and funeral expenses mounted as high as Hawksbill Crag.

If you have a PhD in psychology or serve as a crime scene investigator, you might wonder why kill myself now after I survived the previous year’s trauma. You may think, we must look below the surface to understand Mr. Charles D. Butterworth because it appears he has overcome great personal losses without chemical dependency, without therapy even, and appears altogether capable of continuing his life well assimilated in our American culture. That is, until he decides to off himself.

You may postulate that the reminder of his mother’s death is too much for Mr. Charles D. Butterworth, and this is why he chooses autumn for his suicidal demise. After all, surely he has plumbed the emotional depths and must be depressed. Yet, this simple explanation, his mother’s passing, leaves you supremely unsatisfied. Perhaps you poke into library records for what you conceive as his downfall. You discover scads of checkouts. Further investigation highlights that pimpish Phoenix University gives back two online composition courses for the fall term. Thus, Mr. Butterworth only leaves home on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to juggle three adjunct courses at the local technical college in Twin Bluffs, the county seat. Weekends on the farm, Mr. Butterworth spends in a bathrobe reading about Zen, the Buddha, and the Samurai. In