Part 8 (2/2)
We took coffee together. I got a cup from the kitchen then sat drinking the s.k.a.n.ky brew on Uncle Orbuckle's porch. It made me sweat even more. My skull felt like a bubbling percolator full of hot glue. I ate another sinus tablet. After a little while I realized the coffee or the tablets or something had gotten me h.o.r.n.y. h.o.r.n.y for Ruby Ann.
”Jest fixin to go fetch them melons,” Uncle O. said.
”Whose melons?” I was thinking about Ruby Ann's. And D'Wyla's.
”What's that?” Uncle O. did not hear so good since Korea.
”After melons you say?”
”Yaller-meated melons. Tilden Critchwald's got some sweet'ns this year. We'll need em fer this mess this weekend.”
I pictured all our kinfolk converging on that empty homestead around the bend, before afternoon was out. Welcome to my nightmare.
”You ready fer all them kids and cranky in-laws?”
”They'll come and they'll go.”
Uncle Orbuckle tossed the last of his cup at the chickens before setting it through the open window into the sink. He didn't seem too concerned about my predicament and I didn't expect him to be. This was what I required of my favorite uncle; acceptance and indifference. It was comforting somehow. Those who said he kept to himself since Aunt Nenn died didn't know him too well before. His house and yard were just more clogged, that's all.
Most folk wouldn't believe it, but my Uncle Orbuckle is a retired science teacher. He had been a good teacher, too, who found time for agriculture and schooling kids when he wasn't doctoring stock and dingoes. It was grown-ups what didn't set too well with him. All the dingoes were gone now--for the first time in my life--Uncle O. was without dingo. He said the wolves got some, the others got so elderly he had to shoot them. There was only one beast left out in the back pasture; a biological mistake, a hinny-a.s.s named Archimedes, who was born on my fourteenth birthday when Aunt Nenn fried me some birthday donuts, dipped them in chocolate then told me that little hinny had more on the ball than I did. Thinking back on it, she was woefully correct and would be until the day Uncle shot either me or Archimedes for cause. To begin with, a hinny ain't got no h.o.r.n.y to it.
Uncle O. was shoving junk out the back of his pickup by now, making room for reunion melons. When he got inside, cranking the engine without word one, I realized he wasn't waiting for daylight, muchless a lovesick drake like me. I drained hot scorching sludge down my chin and belly then ran for his pickup.
”Jist kick a s.p.a.ce, kick a s.p.a.ce,” he was quick to say inside his gizmo-cluttered cab.
We were miles into the backcountry, on a hard clay road before he spake again.
”Who ya say got yer gal?”
”Jesus Christ and D'Wyla.”
Soft beads cl.u.s.tered around a steep widow's peak, thick as his hide which never seemed to quite break sweat.
”Good as anybody I guess.” Those black eyes stung, unsmiling as we bucked up a rockribbed incline. ”Now don't let them emu scare you.”
”You say emu?”
”See ole roundboy over there by that maintainer?”
We pa.s.sed a short, pink dirt farmer pouring oil into a roadgrading monster with steroid tires. He waved. Uncle O. raised two fingers from the wheel.
”One of Mitt Lufken's boys,” he drawled, ”used to own this parcel here. Senator Ginricky and his eminent domain come in and give that feller two bits on the dollar fer this parcel, give him that job with Smoky Iron and Chem to boot and kid let me tell ya, mineral rights never even come into the conversation. It went overnight from his hands to Park Service to Smoky Inc. with no stops in betwixt. They say he's a-drankin more and glad to have the job.”
”You say emu?” I repeated.
”Sure, Shad, ole Tilden Critchwald's runnin hisself a herd of emu and they're mighty fierce when summer takes hold.”
”Big ostrick-lookin things ain't they?”
”Man, emus are the future, don't you know that? Seein more and more of em around here. Just ask Tilden. Cheaper than cattle and they got em on the best menus in Houston and Atlanta.”
”I don't believe it.”
”Believe it. Year or so back, Tilden'd spend all mornin in that store a-tellin ya about emu-dollars, before folks up and glutted the market.” Uncle O. chuckled. ”He don't mention them emu much now. Unless, o'course, you insist.”
We rumbled over a cattle guard a few minutes later, into the Critchwald's yard. The first thing I saw was the run of cages off beside their white crackerbox house. The cages were a makes.h.i.+ft telephone pole encampment, strung together with chicken wire, concertina wire, and dock pallets under a spread of valiant maples. I saw the long shaded craws and beaks of strange birds. Big birds with heads that bobbed fretfully, like their fates were sealed and they knew it and knew enough to be real nervous about it. There were about eight pens of them altogether with a feed shed in the big middle lot.
”There's s.h.i.+rley,” Uncle Orbuckle said. We got out and moved toward the birds.
Yes, indeed, there was a woman in their midst. I finally made out her squatty shape as she sorted through the flock. And I heard drumming. That weird drumming like an overlapping echo out of Congo Records.
”Perty bird, perty bird,” she was mewing to one punk-headed wonder in particular. ”Perty bird's a perty mama...”
Uncle Orbuckle crossed his arms over the fence.
”s.h.i.+rley, you nursin that bird er is she a-nursin you?”
”We all fend fer ourselves, O.W., and don't you fergit it. See here, I gotta git this ole mama bird back in her pen so's I kin go to town.” s.h.i.+rley gave me a quick wary glance then returned to the bird she was stalking. Where was that drumming coming from, I wondered? She stepped from a gangly cl.u.s.ter of emus; they were long-legged, long-beaked and taller than she was with gullets shorter than an ostrich. They were ugly. As s.h.i.+rley parted salt and pepper feathers and emerged, I noticed the feed bucket in her hand, the flabby woman barefoot in her s.h.i.+ny aqua housecoat.
I also got a bead on miss mama bird. She was strutting in slow-motion, away from s.h.i.+rley, cake-walking toward a rank corner of the lot, where the fence sagged and rotten leaves mingled with emu droppings. The bird's great clawed feet found syncopation with the dreamy echo of the drum.
”Hear her a-drummin?” s.h.i.+rley said. ”She's a-drummin fer ya.”
It was only then I realized the sound came thumping from the emu's throat. Just as suddenly, the bird did an about-face and came my way, eyes bulging, drumming up a storm. Her beak was shut, but I saw a steady pulse in her throat, a pulse that matched the spooky rhythm. And she winked at me. I swear on Elvis' jockstrap, she winked at me with the world's longest eyelashes and a hot s.e.xual trill sped over young Shadrack, rus.h.i.+ng up from my Wranglers. The mama emu kept strutting my way and I got naked flashes of D'Wyla, then Ruby Ann, then D'Wyla, then Ruby Ann and D'Wyla together, long nails raking my privates. For a moment there, soaked with odorous sweat I felt nothing but love for those two naked gals and for that emu coming at me. Love and dripping s.e.x and h.o.r.n.y abandon. The emu boogied up to me, bug-eyeing my merchandise, only a fence separating our l.u.s.t as I fumbled in my s.h.i.+rt for a sinus tablet.
”s.h.i.+rley?”
”Perty birdy, perty--my goodness, O.W., git to the point.”
”Where's that ole boy o'yours? Tilden promised me some melons.”
The pretty bird winked again then backed off from me. She was looking lovelier by the minute.
”Well, he's down to the store, or so he says. Help yerself to Daddy's melons. Got too many melons and no hogs to speak of.”
The mama emu tossed her head, petulant and proud, she turned away--swis.h.i.+ng her tail toward Mrs. Critchwald. The rest of the flock scattered across the pen, big emu and baby emu alike, as the barefoot woman pampered her harem queen with soft whispers and juicy tidbits, coaxing the vixen emu from their covey.
We ran the truck up the road to Tilden Critchwald's melon patch. Uncle O. eased his tires down the furrows betwixt sandy banks of watermelon.
”Sandy soil grows em the sweetest. That's why my own thumpers are generally poor, ain't fit to eat, less'n you're a swayback mule. My gumbo grows a mealy melon.”
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