So, the two of us are standing on the big flat rock a looking out over the dark pool of water that’s glowing like a lamp on the top because of the big ol’ full moon, and Uncle Boog toes out of his cowboy boots, reaches down and jerks his socks off his feet, and then he starts pulling his britches off and his underwear with them so that he is bare-assed. I begin to worry that he’s been struck a blow in the head that even his hard noggin couldn’t bear. Hell, I had never even seen him without a shirt before tonight. Now, I’m a seeing his white ass and everything else. I looked around with my own cheeks tingling, embarrassed for him standing nude in the moonlight that was hardly less bright than dawn or twilight. People were still milling around the pavilion and walking between or leaning on the cars parked around the edges of the sandy area. No telling how many were looking that way, and he’s naked as the day he was born. He eased down into the water not seeming to notice or care about the temperature of the water. It probably was chilly being spring fed like it is, but he didn’t seem too fazed if it was. He stopped wading in further when he was waist-deep and began splashing the dried blood and blood-matted dirt off his face and body with handfuls of clear creek water. He called back to me without turning my direction.
“Run on up to the truck and get some shirts out from behind the seat. There may be a towel or two somewhere in the cab. Get in the back under the camper and find an ice bag without holes in it, there at least five or six of ‘em back there, and put a few handfuls of ice in it for an ice pack. I don’t want water, just ice cubes. And, Dewey Lynne, don’t find no more trouble. I don’t think I can take up your slack anymore tonight. I’m about done.”
I did what I was told. I saw people here and there looking at me and looking at Uncle Boog. I couldn’t tell if they thought we were friends or enemies, good or bad, heroes or villains, but they were watching us both, so I put my head down or looked straight ahead to avoid any eye contact. As I got closer to the truck, I heard some wailing and caterwauling back in the direction of the pavilion, and without thinking, I stopped and turned to see what all this new commotion was all about. Four men were carrying the Mexican Victor Sanchez, one each at the arms and legs, and the wicked Felina was a holding his head in her hands, a screeching and a crying like somebody was pulling her toenail off with a pair of pliers. I rounded the back corner of Uncle Boog’s truck to the passenger side where I was mostly out of their sight, and I turned to see if I could glimpse whether Sanchez was alive or not. The entourage came into my full sight just before they got to the door of the Caddie, and when they got right by the door, they put Sanchez’s feet down, and he stood with the help of a man at each arm. He was mighty unsteady but seemed like he was supporting his own weight. Someone opened the car door, and he spun slowly, ducked, and fell into the car out of my sight. It looked like he would live, and, ever so briefly, I was glad that he would. He shouldn’t have to die for anything that had happened that night.
Felina shut the door on the car and as she did, she looked up straight toward me with a glare of hatred like a house cat that had just been popped with a fly swat. Her face was black and dirty with the stains of tears and eye makeup. She looked like what some old folks call a “haint.” I’m not sure exactly what that is, but it is what she looked like, and I didn’t feel the slightest bit sorry for her. I wanted to shout out, “This all your fault. I had nothing to do with this. You did it all.” But I didn’t say anything. I hope she got what she wanted. Come to think of it, no, I’m glad that she got what she deserved.
Well, I searched around all over the cab of Uncle Boog’s truck for decently clean cloths of any kind. All the shirts behind the seat were stiff with sweat, dirt, and whatever makes cloth rigid and smell like a mop bucket, but a couple of towels shoved up under the front of the seat weren’t in bad shape, so I shook the dirt and dust out of them and folded them up. I found a plastic ice bag in the back that held water, and I put enough ice cubes to make a good ice pack for Uncle Boog’s head or face or wherever he wanted to put it. The two towels weren’t much, but they were something and the best I could do, so I headed back to the creek with them and the ice bag.
As soon as I headed that way, I wondered if Uncle Boog was still in the water or whether he had walked out, once again exposing his private parts to all the world still, but there was no one left around to see, and he was still in the water. However, standing on the rock was a gigantic shadow of a figure, and when I saw the dark outline, I froze in my tracks. Jimbo Tuttle was standing there on the flat rock where Uncle Boog’s clothes and boots were a facing Uncle Boog, and he had something in his hand that looked to be the pistol that he had been flashing since the fight began. He was talking. I could hear his voice, but I couldn’t hear the words that he was saying and there was none of his “bubba-bubbing,” so I knew he was talking serious. I thought about going back to the truck and getting the deer rifle, a trusty thirty ought six, and sneaking up in the edge of the woods behind a tree and putting a sight on him in case he pointed that pistol threateningly at Uncle Boog. I was at the point where I might shoot a man to make sure that my Uncle Boog stayed alive. I was thinking along those lines of brave when I also considered whether Gopher Lewis might be watching all of us from some vantage of higher ground, and he might be waiting for me or somebody else to do something. That sort of took away my momentary flirtation with great courage. I decided that it would be best to go ahead and walk on over to Jimbo without arms or threat of arms and see what was really happening. Here’s the conversation that I caught as I strolled up with my hands full of two towels and ice bag.
“I’m putting your money right here on the rock by your britches. It’s all there, but I ain’t counting it out. Listen to me good, Boog. Ozzie says he don’t want to see you no more, not at a poker game, not at a dogfight, not at the sale barn, not anywhere. He’d just as soon have you killed as see you again. I have my orders, you understand, nothing personal.”
Jimbo heard me come up behind him, and he added as an afterthought without even turning his head toward me.
“Ozzie didn’t say it, boy, but I don’t imagine he would care to set eyes on you again either. You and Boog are connected in his mind, and you both seem to carry around a jinx that he don’t care to have in his presence.”
Uncle Boog was done washing by the time Jimbo was through with his admonishment, and he swim-walked to the edge of the water and came out and shook like dog. He was naked and facing me and Jimbo. He strode confidently toward to Jimbo with his shoulders square and his shriveled thing a dangling and a wiggling as plain as day, and he walked right up against the much bigger and taller man with his nose almost touching the other man’s chin. Jimbo turned his head down and to the side as if he were ashamed to be viewing the front side of a naked man or to have naked man part’s so close to his body. I don’t think Jimbo was afraid of Uncle Boog, but Uncle Boog was clearly the man in charge of the situation. He never raised his voice nor touched Jimbo with any part of his body, but there was suppressed rage in what he said that seemed like it might burn poor Jimbo to a crisp.
“You tell Ozzie for me. He’s got nothing that I want anymore, nothing. I already took everything that I wanted. You hear me? He’s not tellin’ me what I can or can’t do. He better stay outta my sight. You tell him that exactly. He’s got nothing I want that I haven’t already taken.”
Twenty minutes later, Uncle Boog and I were about halfway between the Pour Off and Highway 9 on the Turkey Creek Road. We were coming up on a deep rutted wash in the road where the water ran off the ridge and scratched several gouges in the red clay and gravel of the lane. Uncle Boog was trying to pull the gear shift down into second gear to slow up for the washboard-like patch of road, but the clutch was too far gone to downshift when the truck was moving, so the transmission ground with a metallic growl and kept kicking the gear shift up into Uncle Boog’s hand. He wrestled with the stick a few times and then let the shifter ease back up into third gear with a lurch. When we hit the series of shallow ditches in the road at 25 mph, we both bounced, shook, and tried to catch cigarette packages and lighters that flew all around the cab. I noticed that the movement caused him to wince in pain. He was hurting.
By the green light of the dash radio, I could see the open wound where Uncle Boog’s head had hit the pallets. The skin was gapped open and showing the white skull bone beneath so that it looked like he had a third eye with no iris or pupil above his ear a looking straight at me. Somehow, while I was gathering up shirts and towels, he had stopped it from bleeding. I figured he would Super Glue the skin back together when he got to wherever he was going this early morning. He used Super Glue instead of stitches, said it scarred less. I don’t know about that, but he didn’t have a lot of scars on his body, so maybe he was right. I had no idea where he was going after he dropped me off. He was probably staying with some woman or the other that I didn’t know about. He never struggled to find somebody willing to take him in and take care of him for a month or two. I think he noticed my studying on things and decided that he needed to talk.
“It’s kind of unusual for you to be quiet for so long, Dewey Lynne. What are you thinking? You wanna stop and get a cold beer?”
“Nah, probably not more than three or four hours, and I’ll be out at Chuck’s hauling hay. If he smells beer on my breath, especially on a Sunday, he’ll not have me back out as his place.”
“Well, you’re never this quiet for this long unless something’s on your mind. Speak your mind or forever hold your peace.”
“I was just thinking that it shouldn’t be like that. People oughtn’t do that kind of thing, making dogs fight like that…”
And I paused for a minute trying to make sense of something that I knew made none to Uncle Boog at all. I could see the doubt and consternation in his face.
“Especially when some of them, like those mutts, don’t stand a chance. They ought to have at least a chance.”
“Your better check your head gear, nephew. Somebody’s done thumped your gourd hard enough that all the sense was knocked out of it. Dogs are gonna fight and will fight to the death over food, lady dogs, or territory. They’ll kill one another ‘cause one pissed on a bush where he shouldn’t have. They don’t need people to make’em do it. You remember last winter when one of Otis Barnes’ dairy calves had his guts ripped out and eaten, but it was left alive? Those mutts put in the pen tonight were the pack of curs that did that. You think they deserve to live? You think they deserve a chance? They ripped that calf’s guts out and left it alive. What chance did they give that helpless calf? Why you wanna have pity on some animal like that? They kill everything they run across, and they don’t ever feel pity. Bad shit happens Dewey Lynne. You can’t stop it. Bad shit, crazy shit, evil shit, it happens to you or happens for you. You’ve got to be prepared, be one step ahead of it. Like Sanchez knew he was gonna end up in a fight tonight. He brought that crazy slut along with him ‘cause he knew that she would tempt someone into a fight with him. That’s what they do. They cause bad things to happen and believe they can stay one step ahead. Problem is he didn’t know that he would run into a man who was as ready, willing, and able as he was. He hadn’t planned for that. That’s why he lost. Listen to me now, you be ready. You be one step ahead. You make the bad shit that happens work in your favor, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”
As young and foolish as I was then, I took Uncle Boog’s words as if they were coming out of the mouth of Jesus standing on the side of Mount Eremos looking across the Sea of Galilee, and I don’t make that comparison lightly. You see, I don’t have much more to say about Uncle Boog, but I’m telling you this story because I believed his words, I took them to heart, and I started living those words, “Make the bad shit work in your favor, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life,” and, as it turns out, he was right. What he didn’t tell me is that living those words destroys your soul. They push you right on down the steep slopes of hell where I’m a standing and telling you this story right now.
This is my last story about Uncle Boog. We spent the rest of that summer hanging out together some, but when I went back to school for my senior year, my friend groups changed, and I got serious about a girl, and, well, Uncle Boog couldn’t be a part of my life with the changes that happened. Two years after this event, Uncle Boog was doing something at a sawmill. I’m sure he wasn’t working. Sawmilling is hard work no matter what part of it you’re doing. Anyway, whatever he was doing at the sawmill, a log pile rolled down on him and up on his leg and hip, and he became disabled though he gets around fine as far as I can tell. He started drawing a government dole check, and that has seemed to suit him just fine. I guess that he was right about the bad shit happening and never working another day in a way that he hadn’t thought of when he told me that in his truck that night.
Anyway, Uncle Boog never came to see me while I was in prison. He never wrote or had any communication with me. I don’t hold that against him. Most of my family except for my brothers stayed away, so he was one of a big crowd. We see each other at family get-togethers, and we slap one another on the back and make small talk. I reckon he would probably do most anything for me if I asked, and I would for him too, but I don’t think either of us will ever ask because, well, there’s a gap, a chasm, something between us that men like us don’t want to have to share or be reminded of. I have told you the story now, but Uncle Boog and I have never mentioned the night of the dogfight to one another in thirty-something years. You would have thought that experience would have bound us up as tight as ticks. It didn’t, but whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do?