One summer evening when I had just turned seventeen, between my junior and senior year in high school, Uncle Boog pulled up in the yard in his big blue Ford four-wheel drive truck with white spoke rims and a camper shell, and he hollered up at me in the house. I was watching some TV show. I don’t remember what. I heard him through the open window because we didn’t have air condition, so I turned the TV off, slipped on my old tennis shoes without bothering to tie them, walked down the tall, rail-less steps of our Jim Walter-built house, and sauntered across the packed dirt yard over to his truck, grabbed ahold of the chrome bar of the extended mirror, leaned back, and waited to hear what he was up to and how much trouble it was likely to get me into.
“You want to go a dogfight down at the Pour Off?”
His question was punctuated heavily after “Off” with a solid stream of tobacco juice spit that splattered in the dust next to the tennis shoe on my right foot. He hadn’t tried to hit my foot, but he hadn’t tried to miss it neither.
“You got any cold beer?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
“What am I supposed to tell Dad if he asks me where I’ve been?”
“Tell him we helped Mr. Barnes get his chicken house ready for the catchers, and they didn’t show up, so we had to catch the chickens, and it took all night short-handed as we were.”
I had to think about this for a few seconds. Daddy wouldn’t believe me if I said Uncle Boog worked all night.
“You sure the Barnes’s chickens are going out tonight?”
I already knew full well that it didn’t matter, and he had no idea.
“How the hell should I know? Do I look like the local gawddamned agri reporter?”
Somehow, his sass was not meant to be the slightest bit condescending. I might have asked a stupid question, but Uncle Boog knew I was not thinking stupid. He could tell that I was formulating an alibi, one that might work for him as well as me. I was always much better at avoiding self-incrimination than he was, so he stayed quiet and let me have a minute.
“All right. Let me go in and get some stuff.”
“What? Panties and a tampon?”
Now, he was mocking me because he could see the hem-hawing all over my face. I couldn’t figure how long it might be before Mr. Barnes and Daddy ran into each other at a local gas station, grocery store, or coffee shop and then whether Daddy might ask about the Barnes’ chickens going out. That was a concern that might call me to accounts later. Uncle Boog, of course, didn’t care. He had ways he could avoid Daddy, which I did not.
“No, just let me tell somebody.”
About that time, my youngest brother Chad came out to see what Uncle Boog’s truck was doing parked in the front yard. Both of my younger brothers were suspicious of Uncle Boog’s activities and never did quite cotton to him like I did. They were the smart ones as far as that goes. I hollered out.
“Hey! Tell Dad I went to catch chickens at the Barnes’s with Uncle Boog. We’ll be running the lights and feeders up and catching both houses, so it’ll be sunup when we get back.”
Chad looked puzzled.
“Uncle Boog’s catching chickens?”
He was skeptical because everybody, even a ten-year-old, knew that Uncle Boog was allergic to any kind of hard work, but his question gave me a good idea of how to get my story straight so that even Daddy would believe it on the surface. I was pretty clever when it came to laying out false pretenses. Maybe, I should have become a lawyer instead of a criminal.
“No, he’s just gonna drive me there and sleep in his truck until we’re done. Then, he’ll bring me home.”
Having devised and planted the seeds of my ruse carefully, I ran around the front of the running truck, pulled on the door that squeaked like a choked rat when it opened, and, since there wasn’t a step up on the passenger side, I hauled myself up into the seat by grabbing the fold-down sissy handle on the inside roof.
“It’s about time for Mom and Dad to be coming home from work, so let’s wait until we turn off on Monahan Road to get a cold beer. I’d hate for them to meet us on the highway and wave us down and me have beer on my breath.”
He grinned and winked at me, appreciating my ability to think ahead about how to escape traps before I was in them. He wanted to be that way, too, but I was always like a wily fox to his dumb ol’ hound. Anyhow, still a grinning and looking goofy with his cheek swole out full of leaf tobacco, he pulled the stick shift down into reverse with a wrenching grind because the clutch didn’t work like it was supposed to though it could have easily been fixed, and we headed out for the deep woods down on the south end of Turkey Creek to a place called the Pour Off to witness something I had never even thought about people putting on—a dogfight. Oh, I’d seen plenty happen as a natural fact, but the idea that somebody might plan one and other people might want to watch it, well, that was new and unusual to the young and naïve me. What was not the least bit out of the ordinary was that Uncle Boog had a cooler full of cold beer and a glove box full of name brand cigarettes and other tobacco products. We could have been going to watch a fuzzy caterpillar stampede, and it wouldn’t have made a difference to me. Whatcha gonna do?
****Whatcha gonna do? Well, the author of this story, who is definitely and sincerely NOT the narrator, is going to take a break for the Christmas holiday weekend. I will probably post Part 6 on Monday or maybe Tuesday. I hope that all of you are enjoying this serialized story. Please tell me in the message board at the bottom of the page (At least that is where I see it.) how you think it is working and what you do or don't like about the story.
I wish everyone the Merriest of Christmases and the Happiest of Holidays with friends, family, and loved ones. Be healthy! Be safe! And if you have time while on the holiday vacation from work, read my whole blog!
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