Days of Uncle Ernest - Chesapeake City and the World – José, Chapter 5

Days of Uncle Ernest -

Chesapeake City and the World – José, Chapter 5

“Yes, indeed, just thinking about that Doomsday Dinner wine makes me want to refill my glass. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” So Uncle Ernest left me again, and I walked around to the back of our house to check the flowers by the rain barrel. I gazed across to the back of our North Field, full of saplings, briar bushes, and scrub pines. Then I took in the tall pines to the right, which marked the beginning of our deep woods. And do you know, Nina, that’s exactly where I got those poor baby crows when I got to be a few years older.

It's a sad story; let me tell you about it. One evening, after supper, Pop was reading the paper, when out of the blue he looked over his glasses at me and drawled, “Here’s a man who says he’ll pay two dollars apiece for fledgling crows. They’re a lot of crazy people in this world, Boy.” Lying in bed that early, summer night, as the whippoorwills called out their sad complaints, I remembered that I had seen a couple of crows flying in and out of one of the tall pines a little beyond our field.

The next morning, before school, I walked out there and, sure enough, near the top and visible from within the woods only, was a fair-sized nest. I came directly home from school that afternoon, got one of Pop’s burlap feed bags from the corn crib, and shinnied up that tree (not an easy task, even for a kid—and, Nina, if you ever try to climb a pine tree you’ll know why).

Reaching the nest, I found myself looking down at three motionless baby crows, hunkered down as far as they could get in the bottom of their nest. All the while—on the way up the tree, as I grabbed them one at a time and stuffed them into that bag and on the way back down—Mom and Dad were beside themselves with anger. Flying around and around, coming close but not too close and squawking their heads off, they made me feel pretty uncomfortable.

But safe on the ground, I ran back to the yard and put them in one of Pop’s small chicken coops. Well, the first thing I did was to slit their tongues about a half inch, right up the middle, with one of Pop’s single-edged razor blades. Then I started feeding them cream with an eye dropper. I talked to them and played with them a lot, and would you believe that within a few days they were tame as could be, and in a week and a half they were calling me to feed them and play with them.

Their voices were almost human sounding, and so loud in the early morning that they woke everybody up. Nina, they made an awful racket. I wish now that I had kept them as pets, but instead I rode into Postell’s store and called the guy who had put the ad in the paper. The next day he drove up our lane in a broken-down pickup truck, put them into a small chicken crate, and counted out six one dollar bills into my hands. That was a lot of money for a kid, and I don’t even remember what I spent it on.

The next day I was one sad kid; I sure missed those young crows, my three buddies. To this day, Nina, I wish I had kept them and taught them how to talk. Then Uncle Ernest returned, so I went back and sat beside him and just swung quietly for a while. “Well, what happened next, Unk? Was Jud gone for good?”

“Yep, and everything was fine for about half an hour. We laid into that capon, and just as I was leaning back and rubbing my belly after the cherry pie, ice cream, and coffee, Jud came stomping in with about twenty armed soldiers. He walked right up to José, said, ‘Ohhhh, lover,’ and kissed him right on the mouth. As soon as the soldiers saw that they apprehended José and started dragging him out of the hall. Then Pete jumped the soldier holding José and lopped off his ear with his straight razor.

“The poor guy winced in pain, and while José pointed at the wound, yelling ‘Heal, heal,’ I caught the Guinea hen that I had seen snap up that ear before it hit the ground. I snatched it out of her beak and stuck it back on, clean as a whistle, with a flesh-colored Band-Aid that I had in my fatigue pants. Those soldiers could care less about a little old ear, though, Moose, because they surrounded us thirteen and drew their swords.

“The leader pointed at José and said, ‘Do you all know this man?’ To my astonishment, every club member said they didn’t. I stuck my chest out and yelled, ‘I sure know him, you buggers; he’s my main man, José.’ At this, the soldiers dragged the two of us out and threw us in a paddy wagon and locked the door. They took us to the base of a high hill. Then they made José and me, along with a couple of grungy-looking captives, carry crossed four-by-four posts all the way to the top of that steep hill. Each of us had to lift up our cross and follow José. I looked up at José, who was struggling as much as I was, and said, ‘Geez, José, these danged things are heavy.’

“ ‘You bet they are, Ern,’ José said, ‘but if we hadn't done all of those leg squats with weights this trudge would be a lot harder.’

“ ‘I told you the squats and push-ups would come in handy some day; I reckon these posts must weigh 150 pounds.’ The two other guys fell behind so the soldiers whipped the crap out of them till they caught up. Then they gave José and me a few licks just for the fun of it.” [To be continued Friday, 10/26/2012]