Pour Off Road begins as a narrow limestone gravel trail between two lived-in houses that sit almost on the highway, and three miles later, it ends as two grass-filled ruts running into a bluff of mossy, layered sandstone at the edge of a large field of small cedar trees, sage brush, and thorn bushes. In between, it is a rough clay and creek-gravel lane not wide enough for two cars to pass without one of them getting halfway out of the road. The county road graders push the big rocks and creek-gravel from one side to the other about twice a year, so it is considered a county-maintained road, but only kids going down to swim, diddle, and drink cold beer and families who have annual reunions down at the pavilion ever pass on the road much. On the right side of the road headed down toward the swimming hole are good grassy pastures and fescue-heavy hayfields in the floodplains of Turkey Creek. About once a decade, Turkey Creek even rises high enough to cover the road. The people who own this land have built their fences right up to the edge of the road to take advantage of every inch of the rich, loamy soil, so there’s no shoulder to the lane on the creek side. On the other side, the woods are right up against road and so are the steep slopes that climb up to Pilcher Ridge and the Bloomfield Flats. In many places, if you meet somebody, one of you has to back up two, three hundred yards to a wide spot where the other car can get around. Less than two hundred yards from the highway, there is a one-lane, concrete low-water bridge over Brushy Creek in a grove of water elms that is awfully pretty, but there are only two houses the whole rest of the way to the end, and one of those has been abandoned to the mice, owls, and copperheads.
Yes, sir, with the bridges, fences, and woods, it’s a one-way-in, one-way-out road that can be watched from the ridges above and blocked by something as simple as a big truck with a flat tire, a fallen tree, a rock rolled off the hill, or a gate if you happen to have one, and the Pour Off Road just happens to have one.
Just past the deserted house and before a low-water concrete bridge across Turkey Creek itself, somebody put up an iron-pipe gate that swings across the road in a narrow spot between two deep, root-filled washes and that can be locked with a chain. The standing pipes are thick metal, buried deep in the ground and set in concrete so that they can’t be pulled up or run over by any of the mischief makers that abound in that part of the county and who would do such a thing if they could. The crossbar has triangle-shaped reflector signs on both sides of it so that people hauling ass in the twilight or dark on ATV’s don’t clothesline themselves and break their ribs. Don’t laugh. It happens. Somebody was being mighty thoughtful putting up those reflectors. Most people in these parts wouldn’t do it. The crossbar is also held up by a cable that makes it easy to swing open and shut even for a little kid. Somebody sure thought about a lot of things when building that gate, especially as it stays swung open 90% of the time.
Anyhow, usually, this gate is open, but this evening, it was closed, and a large man sat at the business end of it on a four-wheeler with his trucker hat pulled down over his eyes as if he might be asleep, but I knew he had heard us coming from more than a mile away. That’s the way it is in these valleys. Whatcha gonna do?
The man on the four-wheeler went by the name of Jimbo Tuttle, and he was a regular minion of a mean SOB named Ozzie Plimpton. Jimbo was thought to be a tough man, and he might have been or might not of, but few people were liable to test his fighting skills because he stood a full six foot eight inches tall, and, though he had tremendous round gut that looked like he was a hiding half a beach ball up under his tight gray t-shirt, his shoulders were broad, and his beefy arms had the span of a baboon’s. He could probably smack a person upside the head before they got close enough to spit on him. Jimbo had a few other physical oddities that were notable. He had a huge bulbous, red nose that seemed like a huge strawberry set in the middle of his face, his teeth all had gaps between them like a picket fence with knotted yellow planks, and he had a thick bottom lip that moved with his chin and caused a lot of the words that he uttered to begin and end with a “B,” which made me laugh out loud when he walked up to the truck, looked down into it despite its big wheels and lift kit, and addressed Uncle Boog.
“Boob.”
After a couple of cold beers on the way here, I was feeling a bit loopy, and calling Uncle Boog “Boob” was funny, and I couldn’t help it, but when I snorted, they both looked at me like I had farted during the Sunday sermon.
“Jimbo.”
“Whobse bhe kid wib yub?”
“That’s my brother Donnie’s boy. He ain’t no kid. He’s eighteen.”
“Doebsa Donnie knowba he’s hereba?”
“He knows he’s with me. That’s enough.”
When Jimbo lowered his large head into the truck and looked me up and down as he might a horse he was buying, I didn’t feel much like giggling no more.
“Oz won’t like it. He don’t like kids at his fights, especially tonight. Big people coming to see this one. Big wigs from two or three counties. Kids might talk, seein’ them people. No, he won’t like it at all, Boog”
Jimbo’s voice lost its ridiculous bub-bub-bu-ing when he got serious.
“You let me worry about that. I’ll talk to Ozzie. Just open the gate.”
“Oz is already down there with Gopher, gettin’ ready. He runs you off, jes remember, I tol’ you so.”
Uncle Boog nodded and leaned back. Then, a possum grin spread across his face like the sun creeping into the shade. He had thought of something he felt was clever.
“I’ll tell him you said it was okay, Jimbo. He trusts you, don’t he?”
Jimbo gave Uncle Boog a suspicious sideways glance and shook the truck from side-to-side with his big paws on the window opening as he stepped away from it. Nodding his head wearily, he ambled out in front of the truck, grabbed the end of the crossbar, and slowly walked the gate open so that he ended up standing on my side of the truck with his back to me. I could clearly see the outline of a large pistol in the small of his back through his shirt. The barrel was tucked into his blue jeans. What would a man of his size and reputation need with a gun? I didn’t think about then, but I thought about it a lot later. I guess it doesn’t matter.
Anyway, Uncle Boog ground the gears as he shifted up into first gear and the truck lurched forward. He really needed to fix the clutch. When Jimbo was beside my door and next to my rolled down window, Uncle Boog stopped. Jimbo turned to listen.
“Is it true that this fight got throwed together because some Mexicans from Batesville think they’ve got a dog that can beat The Tiger?”
“Yeb.”
“You checkin’ the Mexicans for guns when they come in?”
“I’ll get anything I see. I ain’t friskin’ em. You might wanna stay heeled or get heeled if you ain’t.”
Again, I was amazed how Jimbo could enunciate differently depending on the seriousness of the subject that he was speaking like a stutterer who sings without a stammer.
“I’ve got cold beer in the back.”
“Got a cooler full in the truck. No drinking till I lock the gate at dark.”
“Smokes?”
“Sure.”
“Get him a pack out of the glovebox.”
I opened the glovebox, ripped the end off a fresh carton, pried a pack loose, and handed it out the window to the big, gap-toothed man. Jimbo put the unopened pack straight into his shirt pocket without even looking at it.
“Whaba dooba Iba oweba yub?”
Uncle Boog seemed to think hard about something for a few seconds. I don’t know about what.
“It’s a tip. You’re like the door man, and rich people give tips to the door keepers who let’em go in and out, ‘cept I don’t have any change to spare. I’ve got cigarettes to spare, and that’s all I ‘ve got for ya. I’ll be needin’ my cash to make money tonight. You take care, Jimbo.”
Uncle Boog popped the clutch, goosed the gas pedal, and spun the tires, making a heavy, gray dust cloud squirt into the air and settle like a wispy bedsheet over the road behind us. In the rearview mirror, I saw Jimbo methodically plodding along, swinging the gate back toward closed with his hip and waving the chalky dust away from his face with both of his plate-sized hands.
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