Sean “Cudgel” Murphy

The kind of writing I do requires a special class of character that I refer to as a clown. I revealed one already that I used in my novel Snow Babies, that character is the unsuccessful businessman Harker Dawes. He is a pratfall clown, the kind used in Three Stooges movies. He is the subject of numerous physical abuses from other characters and from his own incompetent hand. He is funny because he always seems to survive these terrible episodes, and we are really, really glad that we are not him.
The second clown from Snow Babies, and also used in the novel I am now writing, The Bicycle Wheel Genius, is a dirty old man named Cudgel Murphy. He is a Mrs. Malaprop sort of character who says things that are wickedly mistaken, but not totally unintentional. He loves to drink (drinks other than water, coffee, or sodapop), and what he drinks makes him less than sociable. His is Irish by ancestry and by temperament. He is quick to fight, and slow to forgive, but able to laugh at himself when he discovers he is in the wrong. He loves to fight verbally with his daughter-in-law, Mary Murphy, and adores her children, his grandchildren, particularly Danny Murphy and little sister Dilsey.
The great love of his life was not his wife, who apparently died fairly young as a way of escaping the evil old man. It was instead a car, a 1955 Austin Hereford, an English-made car that Cudgel routinely says is, “the finest car made anywhere in the world in 1955.” She is his baby, and he keeps her running for more than thirty years despite driving her far too fast, too far, and with all sorts of evil brews in her gas tank in place of normal gasoline.
The Paffooney shows the evil old man posing with his wonder-car in front of the Congregational Church in Norwall, Iowa. His face, though unnaturally red by both liquid and temperamental fire looks far more innocent and harmless that it really is. One never knows for sure what is on his scrappy old mind, but you can be sure it will turn out to be funny in one way or another.
Clowns are essential to the kind of fiction I like to write. Sean “Cudgel” Murphy is a good one of those. So good, in fact, I may have to kill him off in the current book. He has a tendency to take over the story and make himself a hero.