Chapter 3

“Hey Jake. I’m gonna hafta be a little late this mornin’. Sorry.”

“How late, Johnny? You know this job is already behind and if we don’t git her closed up before that next storm gits hyere, we in trouble. How late you gonna be?”

“Looks like about three days, Jake. I shore am sorry.”

“That ain’t late, Johnny. That’s absent and it could kill us. How come yer late?”

“Well, I wuz wurried ‘bout the job goin’ over schedule, so I wint over thar las’ night to see if that there hurricane did too much damage. Whin I got to the top of the building, I could see that the hurricane had knocked down some bricks off the top. So I rigged up a beam and a pulley at the top of the building and hoisted up a couple of barrels of bricks.

When I had fixed the building, there was a lot of bricks left over, so I hoisted the barrel back up again and tied the line off at the bottom and then went up and filled the barrel with the extra bricks. Then, I went to the bottom and untied the rope, but it got away from me.

That’s whir I made my big mistake, the barrel of bricks was heavier than I was and before I knode it, the barrel started down, jerking me off the ground. I decided to hang on and halfway up, I met the barrel coming down ... and it damn near knocked my shoulder off.

When I got to the top, I banged my head on the beam and got my fingers jammed in the pulley! When the barrel hit the ground, it busted the bottom out and let all the bricks fall out. Now I was heavier than the barrel and it yanked my hand out of the pulley and started down again, faster’n hell!

Halfway down, I met that damn barrel coming up and it cut the shit out of my shins!

When I hit the ground, I landed on the bricks and they cut me all to hell and gone and damn near broke my laigs.

I reckon I jus’ lost it then, because I let go of the damn rope! That damn old barrel come down on my head and put me in this here hospital!

I’ll git there as soon as they let me loose from here.”

JC learned a poem at school that day and shared it with his friends.

Was it you who did the pushing,
left the stains upon the cushion,
footprints on the dashboard upside-down?
Was it you, whose sly wood pecker
got in my daughter Rebecker?
if it was you, you better leave this town
Response:
Yes, was I who did the pushing,
left the stains upon the cushion,
footprints on the dashboard upside-down.
But, since I got in your daughter
I’ve had trouble passing water,
so I guess we’re even all around

JC’s friend, Buzz, invited him to come spend the night. Buzz’s mother had him and an older brother by a previous husband and a toddler with her new husband. This meant that JC joined Buzz and the older brother on the floor of the front room, sleeping on pallets. A pallet was just a quilt or two on the hard floor, but there was only one bed and that was for Buzz’s mother and her husband.

The little kid got up early and thought it would be a good idea to wake up the boys by hitting them in the head with a stick of stove wood. He didn’t hit JC, but he got Buzz pretty good, over the ear. It was bleeding a little. JC was a little hazy on the details, but the incident quickly degenerated into a screaming match between the mother and her new husband.

JC never saw a tit before, but Buzz’s stepdaddy grabbed his wife’s nightgown and ripped it off of her, giving JC a good look. He was stunned. Then, Buzz’s older brother run and got the shotgun and challenged his stepdaddy with it. “You cain’t treat my mother that way”, he yelled, sticking the barrel of the shotgun in his stepdaddy;s face.

The old man just grabbed the shotgun and bent the barrel 90 degrees over his leg. JC was amazed that anybody could do that. The old man threw the worthless gun at the kid and told him, “Shoot me with that, you little bastard”, and stomped out of the house.

The kid ran out the back door with the gun and stuck the barrel between the steps. JC soon realized that he intended to straighten the barrel, then use the gun to shoot the old man. It scared hell out of JC, to watch this because he figured the gun would blow up in the kid’s face and would most likely kill him. He tried to stop him, but couldn’t.

As soon as the barrel was fairly straight, the kid took off out the front door and pulled down on the old man who was maybe 100 yards away, walking to work.

JC just knew that gun was going to blow up in the kid’s face, but he held his breath as the gun went off. Amazingly, the gun did not blow up, but the old man was far enough away that the shotgun pellets didn’t slow him down. He just went on to work.

While all that was going on, the mules got out of the pasture and had to be rounded up before the boys could go to school. When JC got to school, the teacher asked him why the insides of his overhawls was so black and dirty. He had been so upset about things and having to ride the mules bareback that had not realized how terribly dirty they were.

JC decided he would not be spending the night with Buzz any more.

(True story.)

JC’s next neighbor, down the road a piece was named Tommy Jack. Very few of the people he knew used two names. The people in Hollywood thought everybody in the South was named Billy Bob and shit like that. They also thought Southerners said “crick” instead of “creek”. They were just full of shit. Maybe they talked like that in Texas, but Texas was not part of the South. Texas was way out west.

After JC grew up, he learned that the people in California don’t know the difference between Texas and the South. If they hear a southern accent, they automatically think you’re from Texas. They don’t realize that Dallas is halfway across the country from Atlanta. On the other hand, a lot of southerners think somebody from L.A. might know somebody from San Francisco, not realizing that they are 400 miles apart.