Days of Uncle Ernest - Chesapeake City and the World – Maggie, Chapter 7

Days of Uncle Ernest -

Chesapeake City and the World – Maggie, Chapter 7

After Uncle Ernest raised his bottle like a bugler to take a long, grateful swig, he grinned down at me and went on with his story. “With the sound of the cheering crowd ringing in our ears, we strolled on down the street, and after a while came upon a crowd of people in the market place. When we walked through the area people started cheering José and pleaded with him to give a little speech. When he agreed, somebody turned a crate upside down and lifted José up onto it.

“José then began talking about all kinds of things, much of which I missed because Maggie kept blowing in my ear and tickling me as we stood there arm-in-arm, snuggling away. I did hear him say something about the idea of a nose for a nose and an ear for a ear not being such a good idea (which went way over my head, Moose), but at that point some wild, maniac jumped  up on the crate with him and slapped José hard on the cheek. The guy was filthy dirty, with his hair shooting out in all directions and his eyes blazing with insanity. Now, what do you think José did when that mad man slapped him?”

“Why, he decked him. Right, Unk?”

“Nope. José didn’t blink an eye; he turned and presented the other cheek so that guy could smack him again, which he did, even harder. We all jumped the wild guy then, every member of José’s club. But he was strong as a bull and kept screaming, ‘José, you dirty rat, you have come to destroy us.’

“The other guys had him by the arms and legs and I had him in a sleeper hold. And then, as he kicked, twitched, and struggled, I thought of what to do. All through school and even as an adult, I had been very hyperactive, so I always carried a bottle of tranquilizers that the doc had given me to control myself. I reached into the pocket of my fatigue pants with my free hand, got the bottle, and somehow managed to grab a handful of the pills, which I forced down the idiot’s throat, holding my hand forcefully over his foaming, slobbering mouth.

“In the meantime José had been commanding: ‘Heal! Heal! Come out of him evil spirits! Heal! Heal!’ Gradually, after some scuffling, the guy settled down, leaving Matt with a bloody nose, Jimmy with a dislocated thumb, and José with two red cheeks. Then the wild guy became completely normal and started sobbing and thanking José for healing him. After José finished his speech, as we made our way through the crowd to continue our walk, everyone clapped and cheered José like mad. Moose, you’d have thought the Babe had just homered to win the World Series.”

As soon as Uncle Ernest took off for the house again, I ran to my bike and, leaping in the air, mounted it from the rear, as the cowboys did with their horses. Almost falling, I flipped up the kick stand with my left foot, zipped across the lane, past the plum tree, and pulled up to the flat stone step at the entrance to our corn crib. I went in and began turning the handle of Pop’s corn sheller. It’s still there, Nina, remind me to show it to you sometime.

The handle turned a heavy wheel, about two feet in diameter, which removed the kernels from the cob, flipping the cobs in the air to the right and dropping the kernels into a bucket underneath. Shelling corn required the strength of an adult, but I enjoyed grabbing the handle with both hands, spinning it with all of my strength, and then letting go to hear it whirl to a gradual, whining stop.

To the left of the corn crib was the stump of a large, long-dead osage tree, with a hole in the middle that extended from the flat surface to the gnarled roots at its base. When chicken dinner was planned, Pop would come out of the chicken house holding a couple of squawking fryers by their legs in his left hand and a hatchet in his right. He’d lay their necks on the stump and with two whacks lop their heads off. Sometimes, though, when his aim was off, he’d smack one of them right between the eyes and have to take another stroke.

He’d toss the headless chickens on the grass and for the next five minutes they would prance around haphazardly with diminishing vigor, hopping headless around the yard like congressmen on the campaign trail. When their death dance dwindled to a few twitches, Pop would dunk them into near-boiling water, pick off the feathers, singe off the fine hair-like remains ( phew, what an odor), gut them, and put them in the icebox.

Pop would use the hatchet head to push the chopped heads into the stump’s hole. The heads tumbled to the bottom and provided a tasty meal for the rats. We always had a few families of rats living under the stump or in burrows under the corn crib. At the time, we had Trixie, a little mean-spirited rat terrier.

One day I was out there with Trixie watching Pop’s decapitations, when, all of a sudden, a rat as big as Trixie ran from under the corn crib. He scurried towards the chicken house in a fairly wide arc, and, quick as a flash, Trixie cut him off, in a straight line from next to me to the rat. I couldn’t believe Trixie’s quickness, Nina. He had the rat in his mouth, biting and shaking the life out of him. The rat bared his teeth and fought back, but in a few seconds he was doomed.

I remember another thing that happened one afternoon after lunch, the day before Uncle Ernest arrived for the weekend. I was driving Pop crazy by begging for a pony. “Pop, I want a pony; please buy me a pony, Pop.” I followed him to the corn crib, begging him over and over again about 200 times.

He shelled some corn into the bucket and scattered the kernels across the grass. Then, as I pleaded constantly, he hurled the bucket at me, nailing me on the leg. Believe me, Nina, it really hurt, but it shut me up in a hurry. It was the only time in my life that Pop ever hurt me, but it sure was justified.

Hearing Uncle Ernest call, “Hey there, Moose,” I cycled on back to listen to more of his story. When I got there, though, he was dressed for a night of partying and had already started strolling down our dusty lane towards town. I rode my bike next to him until we reached the last telephone pole, and then I spun around in the dirt, causing dust to fly up and blow back onto my bare legs. “When can I hear the rest of that José story, Unk?” I called after him.

“Tomorrow, maybe, if you behave yourself in the meantime,” he called back as he made his turn towards town. So I spun on back, set my bike against the house and, noticing that darkness was about to smother out the light, pulled open that screen door once again, hoping that there would be a decent show on the radio before I had to hit the hay.   [To be continued Friday, 10/09/2012]