"No-Face Charlie" was a man in his forties who, when he was a teenager, according to the local legend, flew his kite into some high-tension wires.  He climbed the pole, reached for the kite, and slipped.  He was badly burned but somehow survived.  His face took the brunt of the damage, leaving him without a recognizable nose, lips, or eyebrows.   The accident happened back in the 1930's and those who were around then said that the state of the art in plastic surgery wasn't up to the task of giving back to Charlie a face that he could live with comfortably.   He lived alone in a small house way out in the sticks, about 10 - 12 miles outside of town.  His baby sister looked in on him twice a week to bring groceries and books and to serve as his conduit to the world.   He stopped attending school after the accident.  From the age of fifteen Charlie had educated himself.  He read voraciously.  He read anything his sister could get for him.  By his twenty-first birthday he had run through just about every book in the Beaver Falls Public Library.   Charlie supported himself and lived in relative comfort on royalties from his small, but impressive, list of inventions.  Charlie held patents on close to two full pages of the Lillian Vernon catalogue.   Charlie was the inventor of the "Reusable 'Beauty-Gel' Facial Pack".  Charlie was the inventor of the "Danish Wrap Electric Hot Towel".  Charlie was the inventor of the "Gentlemen's Rotary Nose Hair Clipper".   His first invention, the "Hollywood Contour Bath Pillow", patented on his seventeenth birthday, sold several hundred thousand units and continued to generate enough income to pay the mortgage on the seventeen acres of land around his house that served as a buffer zone between himself and his neighbors.   Very few people in Beaver Falls knew any of this.  The rumors said that Charlie got by on a small pension from the government.  The rumors also said that most of the missing dogs and cats in the area were his doing and that they were just delicious, Thank you.   One of the few things that people knew for sure about Charlie was that he liked to take long walks at night along the quiet country roads near his home.   It had become an ongoing rite of passage for local boys to go out "Charlie Spotting" with their favorite girl friends.  The idea being that, if you spotted Charlie, your date would be frightened by his looks and cling tightly to you for comfort.   Charlie always carried a large walking stick and if you slowed down and gave him a bad time he'd take a swing at you.  Whenever you saw a car in Beaver Falls with broken headlights or a crease across the roof you knew that someone had gotten too close.   Once, in the steamy summer of 1963, three of the local football hero types got closer to Charlie than anyone ever had before and a lot closer than they had planned on.   It was the kind of humid summer night when, if anyone had any ideas at all, they were bound to involve trapping things in glass jars and watching them die.   It was just about sunset, 8:30 - 8:45, when the three boys headed out to look for Charlie, well armed with beer and a mean streak.  They spotted him walking slowly down a lonely stretch of county road, dressed all in black and leaning heavily on his walking stick.  "No-Face Charlie" was drunk early.  Easy.   That Charlie had a drinking problem was not altogether surprising given the circumstances. When the headlight beam hit him, Charlie jumped off the blacktop into the scraggly brush that lined the road on both sides.  The car rolled closer, slowing as it neared the spot where Charlie had disappeared.   "Charlie.  Hey, Charlie."   Silence.   "Hey, Charlie, come on, man.  We just wanna talk."   Silence and then a soft rustle in the brush.  Charlie was slowly moving further away from the approaching car.   "Hey, Charlie, you seen my cat"?   "Yeah, and what about my dog?  His name's 'Lunchtime'."   All the boys laughed and Charlie froze as the car passed right by him, not three feet from his dark and shining eyes.   When it became obvious to them that they had missed him, the ringleader called out,   "Hey, Charlie, come on man, I'm sorry about that dog and cat shit.  We were just kidding.  It's my birthday and we wanna celebrate.  I got some cold ones here, Rolling Rock and Iron City."   Charlie turned softly toward the car.   "It's in bottles, man, long necks, just the way you like 'em.  I know you have trouble with cans, no lips and shit."   Charlie silently broke cover and stepped out onto the road right next to the car.   "Gimme one."   The boys jumped in surprise.  They got out of the car with the beer and all of them sat down on the pavement in front of the car, bathed in the gold glow of the headlights.   Charlie listened as the teenager verbally strutted and preened, drinking more beer than he was used to and bragging about how glorious his High School career had been and how he saw no reason why the future shouldn't be even better.  Charlie sat cross-legged, making a neat row of his empties and saying nothing.   "When's your birthday, Charlie?" asked the boy with the bottle opener.   "My birthday?  Oh, ...it's today, just like yours.  Gimme a beer."   "Jesus Christ, Charlie!  Happy Birthday, man.  Come on, we really gotta celebrate now.  I'm starving.  Let's go get something to eat.  Let's go down to 'Hank's', man."   "No, that's alright boys.  I don't want to go.  I can't go there."

Sluggo, Peeto and No-Face Charlie

Savagery And Love In A Small Town