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| Saint Sebastian River Bridge [Click image to call up all published instalments] |
Wednesday,
July 19, 1922,
continued
“Mister Middleton here says you’re still in the market for a parcel of lumber, that right?”
Skeeter just nodded and took a swig from the bottle.
“Well, we can sell you that lumber at a good price, and we need to trade for a few things too, if you’ve a mind. We need a still, and if I recall y’all have the beginnin’s around here somewheres, that there storage can y’ took with you last time, if y’ still have it.”
Skeeter nodded and gurgled rum. Harlan was beginning to hit it pretty hard too, but neither seemed any the worse for it. Willis’s voice creaked like an old door hinge. “Gonna need more’n ’at. Good ’shine.”
Red agreed, encouraged, and as Skeeter looked on and finished the bottle, he and Harlan made plans for a slow but steady supply of lumber, to order, for Skeeter’s kid’s new homes, two new barns, forty-three feed troughs, fifty-two water troughs, and about thirty-five miles of two-slat fence and the poles to hold the slats.
To Red’s amazement, this last order by itself amounted, according to his calculations, to around twenty-five thousand fence posts and maybe twice that in planks an inch thick and eight to nine feet long. That alone would cost a good twenty thousand or more, and he and Guy stood to take most of that to the bank. This wasn’t a job for him and a crippled brother. This was a contract fit to build a lumber company on.
If he had his ciphers right, just off his head, he figured they were talking about something like eighty-six thousand dollars, over a period of some three years.
Red had a thought, and asked, “None a’ your grown boys do this kind of work?”
Skeeter shook his head, and Harlan explained. “They’s all runnin’ down range cattle, trappin’ hogs, huntin’ ’gators or fishin’. Lotta money to make, they ain’t got th’ time, and nairy a saw-man amongst ’em.”
The shadow of the Ashleys hung heavily over his every move |
“Now, I got plans for a still big enough for what we need, right here.”
Skeeter took the flimsy dressmaker’s paper, felt of it and looked at Red a little sideways.
“It’s Miss Jenny’s, the seamstress from Senegal’s,” Red explained quickly.
Skeeter’s chin went up and he grinned. “M’s J’ny. Mm mm.” An old windmill on Red’s brother T.W.’s farm up the panhandle had creaked in the listless summer breezes just like that. Willis suddenly crinkled the paper against his little upturned piggy nose and sniffed, then stomped the floor, dragging his foot back across the boards. He stuck his nose in the air and took big, loud snuffles of the air above his head, then let out a loud braying squeal. It was a perfect imitation of a stud horse when he has found the mare in heat.
Harlan haw-hawed and pounded the table, Ma shook her head, and Skeeter pulled a stout flask from under his coat and took a prodigious slash.
“Gat dang it Skeeter,” Harlan yelled, “y’gonna come here an’ guzzle up my ’shine then keep y’own to y’self? Give me that throat soaker!”
The friends again went into their complicated slapping fight, hands flying, to juggle the bottle one way or the other. As before, Harlan prevailed, and tossed back a quarter of the fat jug before Skeeter could grab it back. He slammed it down with a single “Haw-haw!”
Harlan Middleton then turned on Red Dedge. “Skeeter says, this h’yere’s a mighty big still for what y’all’er talkin’ about.”
They had, to Red’s eye-witness knowledge, not discussed the plans in Skeeter’s fat hands at all; they hadn’t been in his hands more than three minutes, and the two had been horsing around and drinking the whole time.
Harlan’s beady, rodential eyes bored into him, missing nothing, clearly expecting some lie or another.
Red took a deep breath |
The two swamp rats stared at him, their mouths hanging open. No dishes clattered in the sink; a clock tick-ticked in another room; cicadas sang in the darkening trees. Middleton and Willis turned to each other, their faces still in shock. Harlan Middleton slapped Skeeter Willis on the shoulder, and even that beefy man tilted a little, now smiling drunkenly.
“Haw haw haw, didn’t I tell you he ’as a pistol?”
Skeeter slowly subsided his wheezing, lubricating it liberally with good John Ashley ’shine.
“One other thing, I need a truck. I got a good solid 1916 Model T sedan, not too many miles and the transmission bands are good. I’d like t’ trade. What about the truck out in the barn? You have any mind to tradin’ it?”
Middleton shook his head. “Nahh, that ol’ thang, she’s not good fer much these days but just puttin’ around. Skeeter, ain’t you got that spare truck, now Manuelito’s out th’ house an’ fishin fer a livin’?”
Skeeter nodded, said “Eyeh,” his voice grating like a broken brake shoe.
If it was a wheel bearing, Red thought, he could re-pack it with grease and it’d be good as new.
Harlan snatched the bottle from Skeeter, who fumbled trying to snatch it back. The dregs went down Harlan’s throat as Skeeter wheezed some more.
“Skeeter here’s got a 1918 Dodge G-10, what they call a light repair truck, with a ex-tended bed, just the thing you need. Have ta’ come up with a little cash money t’ make up the differ’nce, fer that an’ the still materials. You got any cash money, son?”
Red Dedge, who’d never had more than a couple hundred bucks in his hand in his life, had suddenly grown a pair of big ears listening for anything that might threaten his new-found riches. He had no intention of telling anyone just how much he had. Even Guy didn’t know. Especially not Guy, he thought, his teeth tight. His eyes narrowed.
“How much cash money we talkin’ about?” Middleton and Skeeter looked at each other for a second or two.
Although he couldn’t have sworn to it in court, Red thought that Willis gave a tiny nod. Harlan looked back to Red Dedge, while it seemed to Red Ma Middleton held her breath. “I reckon about five hun’nert oughtta do it.”
Ma let out a tiny sigh most people would have missed and turned back to the dishes. Red let out a breath too, one he hadn’t known he was holding. Five hundred was a damn good price for what he was getting; had the two tried to gouge him, it would have gone badly for the rest of their dealings. He didn’t need that. He needed someone out here he could trust, and Middleton and Willis seemed to be just the ticket.
Guy was an artist with the machinery |
The men agreed that he would pay them the five hundred when he got the truck, and count on them for the copper, which went a long way the other direction for building trust.
Skeeter creaked at Harlan for a second who then said, “Yeah, don’t’cha wanna ride to th’ Junction and git th’ truck, swap ’em out tonight?” As if Skeeter had spoken in entire sentences.
“Much obliged, sir, I appreciate it, but I need to put some meat in the tree this evenin’, and that little palmetto head over by th’ Mudfish looks real promisin’ fer a pork dinner. Thought maybe tomorrow we could meet up, swap the truck and car, and I’d need to go t’ the Junction to get some gas.”
Willis nodded approval, but Middleton was offended. “Why son, you think Ma’s gonna let you walk outta here empty-handed, you got another think comin’. She won’t hear of it; hell, you won’t have the strength to carry a extry dang squirrel home.”
Skeeter grinned, pointed a finger and cocked his head at Red, plainly saying got ya there.
Ma knew goodbyes when she heard them, and appeared with a burlap sack with only about five pounds of goods. “I heard what’cha said, son, so I packed it light. I know you want t’ get you that hog, show yore girl y’ c’n provide.”
Red tried to say Jenny wasn’t his girl, but Ma just kept on. “I’ll send more along when the boys come with the truck. Now you got some coffee in there, I hope you men had the sense to bring something to cook with?”
Red assured her that they had, but she screwed her eyebrows around and said, almost to herself, “That’s right, brought a woman along, at least they won’t get lost blunderin’ around in the dark…”
Red Dedge’s hackles wanted to rise up a bit at that. Clearly she was of the opinion, like most country women, that men could barely take care of themselves, in spite of running farms, logging operations, hunting, fishing, building entire railroads or whatever. But the feeling he got from her was warm, as if one of his own aunts was sending him off to market with “vittles” for a “growing boy who needed his strength.”
He thanked her kindly, touching his forehead in lieu of his hat, which had stayed respectfully in his hands the entire visit.
“Anyway,” Ma continued, “got some sugar, flour, a pound’a dry beans and a slab of salt pork to cook ’em with. A loaf a’ bread, watch you don’t go squashin’ it. Some sweets in there for your ah, lady friend, some Lydia Pinkham’s pills, some Carter’s Pills for you fellas inf’n y’need ’em.”
Red tried to explain that Jenny was Guy’s girl, but she wasn’t hearin’ none of it.
“Just you get on out there son, ’fore these old men talk yer ears off an’ get y’ too drunk t’ go home at all.”
Red thanked her again, shook hands with the men, and would have shaken with Ma Middleton but she spread her arms and hugged him like family.
She then turned him down the little hall to the front door while the men finished Skeeter’s flask of rum. She stepped out on the porch with him.
The cicadas still sang their daytime song, but the sun was down, a red stain in the west. Mosquitoes whined around their heads, and the crickets were tuning up for the evening’s performance.
“I hope you un’erstand what just happened in there,” |
Red nodded. “Yes ma’am, we just made a heck of a deal for a mess of timber and a goodly amount’a white lightnin’.”
But she was shaking her head. “Then no, you don’t understand. Y’all boys didn’t just ‘make an impression’ on Pa and Skeeter Willis. They was highly impressed, which don’t come cheap or often from either one. With the price they give you for the trade an’ all, looks like they done took you boys to raise. You stay honest and be on their side, they’ll stand by you when times get troubled. And anythyin’ t’do with them Ashleys is bound to be trouble, come soon or come late, I reckon.”
Red allowed as how he also reckoned that very thing.
“So, you boys stay safe, and look out for that gal with you. I know she’s no shrinkin’ violet, but she’s still a woman. We c’n be…sensitive.”
Red promised he would take care to do all she said, and took his leave.
| Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens |
Roger, you use numerous expressions for heavy drinking by a lot of your characters (Merriam-Webster lists
ReplyDeletedrinking, gulping, guzzling, hoisting, imbibing, knocking back, pounding (down), quaffing, sipping, slugging (down), slurping, supping, swigging, swilling, tossing (down or off),
most of which you seem to employ). I find it very hard to believe that so many people (mostly men) drank so much! I trust that you are fully justified in representing them so…or are you exaggerating this for emphasis?