"Cousins"

           School let out the first week of June and my cousins normally spent two to three weeks of the summer at my grandparents’ home. Chris, who Pa called Crisco; Ken, who we called Bubba; and Brian were my Uncle Bobby’s kids. We were almost evenly spaced at two-year intervals. Chris was born in 1962, Bubba in ’64, Brian in ’66 and me in ’68. Their visits were the highlight of my summer, and usually trouble waiting to happen.

            During the day, while Pa worked, Ma looked after us. Success to her meant no doctor bill and no neighbors calling the law. We were allowed to play around the creek and pastures or fish as long as it wasn’t late in the summer when there was work to be done. If they visited late in the summer then a lot of our time was spent shucking corn, breaking beans and chopping cabbage. Even as kids we didn’t mind working. Heck, we were all together and Ma always told us stories. Stories rolled out of her mouth like clover honey off toast, smooth and fluid. We would sit for hours snapping beans on her back porch while she answer endless questions that began, “Ma, when you were a little girl….” She never told us once to go watch television. She never told us we asked too many questions or that we were getting on her nerves. She always had time for us and would talk as long as we were sitting there listening.

            During one particular summer a demon got in us that I can’t explain to this day. When my cousins visited we slept in the guest bedroom of my grandparents’ house—for a little while. At least that is where we would lie down on pallets and plan the night’s mischief. Almost every night we’d sneak out to play in the yard or get into something before returning to the house or sleeping in the yard. Chris, being the only girl, got the other guest room for herself. On this particular night we made some bad choices. We all had BB guns and didn’t particularly like our neighbor. In hindsight we had no reason to dislike the man, other than the fact that we had heard Pa call him Yankee and talk down to him. For some mean reason that I can’t understand to this day, we decided to shoot the windows of his house.

            Bubba and Brian got their shoes on and began to tiptoe out of the house but I was too scared to do it. “Let’s go,” they whispered.  “I’m not going. I’ll watch from here,” I replied, torn between wanting to go and knowing that my Daddy and Pa would beat us half to death if they caught us. So Bubba and Brian snuck out of the house as I watched from the bedroom window. I tried to think of what I’d say if Ma came in to check on us. Pa was in the basement snoring so he would never wake. It was Ma that I feared would hear the door close or notice the lack of whispering from our room just across the hall and suspect something.

            They shot some windows and then crept back into the house. I felt incredible relief when they returned to the room. I don’t know what made us do it, but we did it, despite my momma and daddy telling me, “Don’t chu’ go gettin’ into anything.” We were just being mean boys, I guess.

            It wasn’t long after they returned that a knock came at Pa’s front door. It was the neighbor. After a front porch discussion and a few phone calls my daddy called me home. In reality it was about 300 yards through the old store drive up to my house, but it seemed like miles that night. Daddy met me about halfway down our long driveway. In the moonlight he looked me in the eyes and asked, “Did you boys do it?”

            I was in a tight spot, caught in an internal debate as to who I feared most, my daddy or my cousins, but before I could answer he said, “You know you’d better tell the truth,” and at that I confessed. He sent me to the house and went to assure the neighbor that all damages would be paid for. When he returned he didn’t whip me or even yell; instead he told me I’d done the right thing by telling the truth. More than one lesson was taught that night.

            I feared that my cousins would be mad at me for telling. I looked up to them and wanted their approval. They were the highlight of my summer and I couldn’t imagine them being mad at me. Early the next morning their parents came to pick them up. I didn’t see them until the following summer, but by then time erased any hard feelings from our young minds. All had been forgotten and we never mentioned it again.

            I’ve never forgotten that stressful night that went from snickering with my cousins to sheer terror at the knock of a door. In fact I’ve often thought of that night and tried to emulate my father’s actions as I raise my own children. It was these rudiments of character that formed me as a child and remains in my mind as a governing conscious for my actions today. Even as a forty-year-old man, if the thought to stretch the truth just a little enters my mind I can clearly see my daddy’s patented look and I get back on track rather quickly.

***

            Pa was a good man, but he had a powerful vice. Like many Southern men, he drank corn liquor in a mason jar from time to time, but he saw the bottom of countless pints of Evan Williams Kentucky bourbon, to which he became a slave. He called it his “medicine” and it was purchased at the drugstore. The nearest drugstore was ten miles from our house, in Calhoun. Pa took me with him to buy his whiskey, but as we passed under I-75, he would have me crouch down in the floorboard of the truck so that no one, in particular my daddy, could see me when he bought the whiskey. Once we passed back under I-75, I could return to my seat.

            By the time I was old enough to ride shotgun he put me in the driver’s seat. I guess I was about ten years old when he said, “You want to learn to drive?” At first, I drove him to the wood yard in Ranger where we collected scraps from the lumber yard to burn in his woodstove, but as my skills improved my freedom on the roads expanded. I drove to Chatsworth and to the edge of the Calhoun city limits regularly. I’d sit right out on the edge of the seat, barely able to reach the gas and brake.  “Watch the lines,” he said, as we eased along at no more than thirty miles per hour.  “Keep it in the center of your lane,” he’d demand.

            He was always hot. In winter, no matter how cold, he’d roll his window down.  “Pa, can you roll the window up? I’m cold,” I asked on a trip to the bank in Chatsworth. I could hardly drive from shaking so bad.“You need to put more clothes on when you come with me,” was his way of saying no. When my cousins visited they each took turns at the wheel as well. He bought a Toyota pickup one year and it gave him a lot of mechanical problems. He hated that truck. He called it the “Tody-damnyote.” He took the maintenance woes as a personal attack by  the Japanese, almost as offensive as the bombing of Pearl Harbor in his eyes.  Typically, my cousins and I waited until Pa’s “medicine” kicked in and he was sound asleep. Then we’d ease down into the basement and wake him to a degree of  semi-consciousness and ask if we could camp out in the yard. He and Ma knew we had a tendency to “get into things,” so Pa would never consent sober, yet once he was asleep he tended to approve. Ma rarely overruled him.

            Once outside, the games were on and, being the youngest, I usually got the short end of the stick. One warm summer night Bubba gave me a pair of his boxer underwear and ordered me to put them on. My instructions were to stand by the road and moon the first car to drive by. This seemed like something I could do to get their approval and it wouldn’t hurt anybody. We scouted out the best location and plotted an escape route for use once the deed was done. I nervously stood by the road in front of the store as Bubba and Brian lay in a surveillance position in the nearby bushes.

            I saw the headlights in the distance and prepared myself. It was a long nervous wait because you could see a car’s headlights from Lawrence Moss’s house, a mile away. As the car neared I prepared to lower the boxers and bare my skinny white backside. I was tempted to run, but the fear of my older cousins forced me to remain in place and dutifully carry out the mission. The car was upon me. At the last moment I dropped the boxers, wagged my rear end from side to side, and as soon as the car was past I began to run.

            It was at this point that I heard the terrifying sound of tires screeching on asphalt. The driver had locked his breaks down and was coming after me. My heart rate began to climb rapidly as I sprinted for Pa’s cornfield. As I ran I noticed Brian at my side giggling and grinning. We went about four rows deep into the corn and lay flat on the ground.

            By this time the driver had pulled into my momma’s store and was looking for me. He walked to the back of the store which overlooked the large garden and yelled. He knew we couldn’t have gone far and he was right. We lay trembling only a few yards in front of him. We didn’t move a muscle or make a peep, but I was sure that my telltale heart would give me away. Finally, he left and Bubba gave me a pat on the back for a job well done. It felt wonderful to gain the approval of my older cousin. Many years later my dear friend Eric Putnam would tell me a story about driving home late one night and getting mooned by a little boy in front of my momma’s store. I smiled and said, “I wonder who’d do such a thing.”