Rubber Legs and White Tail-Hairs, page 14
My wife, Bun, and I were strolling along a beach the other day when I suddenly pointed in the direction of her feet and shouted, “Look!” She bounded into the air and performed a series of acrobatics usually associated with persons who have just stepped on a dead mouse with their bare feet. I admit to surprise at Bun’s display of agility, something rarely found in a person of her years and demeanor.
“What! What! What!” she demanded in a voice not unlike the quacking of a startled duck. “What did you point at?”
“Why, nothing less than an absolutely incredible throwing stone, that’s what,” I replied, plucking the projectile from the sands. “Look at the way it fits perfectly the curve of my thumb and finger. Notice the texture, smooth but with just enough surface grain to provide good grip. The aerodynamics of its shape could scarcely be improved upon by aeronautical engineers. This is a throwing rock of rare quality, its equal not likely to be found anytime in the near future. Oh my gosh, there’s another one! And another! Bun! Bun! We’ve struck the mother lode of throwing rocks!”
“Give me one of them,” Bun said, blowing her hair out of her face and tucking her shirttail back in.
“Why?” I said. “There’s nothing here to throw at.”
“Let me be the judge of that!” she snapped.
Ever alert to possible marital pitfalls, I deposited the rocks in a pants pocket, safely out of the reach of persons unfamiliar with the dangers of accidentally discharging a throwing rock.
“Nope,” I said. “Too dangerous. Gosh, that reminds me. I remember back when I was a kid …”
Bun rolled her eyes heavenward. “Please! Please! Spare me!” she cried.
I quickly assayed the area around us and, detecting no signs of threat to our well-being, concluded that Bun was merely a bit distraught from her recent fright. I hurried on with the little tale of my youthful experience with throwing things, hoping to distract her from the unfathomable horror that seemed to hold her in its grip.
As a boy of eight, I simply could not pass up a good throwing rock. I would pick it up, rub the dirt from it with my shirtsleeve, test it for heft and balance, and then deposit it in my pants pocket. At the end of the day, I would return home with my pockets so full of good throwing rocks that my pants would come slouching through the door a good five seconds behind me.
What did I do with the good throwing rocks? Well, I saved them. I never wasted a good throwing rock by throwing it. Naturally, there was some expectation that one day I would come upon a target worthy of being thrown at with a good throwing rock. The problem was that every time I came upon such a target, all my good throwing rocks were stored in a box under my bed and unavailable. So I had to throw at the target with just any old rock that was handy. It was seldom if ever that a good target and a good throwing rock converged on the same point in space and time.
Thus it was that the rock collection under my bed grew and grew, until the floor joists under it creaked ominously, and any round object dropped anywhere in the house rolled in the direction of my bedroom. (I think it had something to do with Einstein’s theory of relativity.) And then one day, I looked under my bed and the rock collection was gone!
“My rock collection’s gone!” I shouted.
“Oh my gosh!” my mother exclaimed. “We must have been burgled! Is anything else missing? The furs, the jewelry, the silver?”
“We don’t have any of that stuff,” I pointed out.
“Thank goodness for that. I guess all the thieves made off with was your rock collection, terrible loss that it is.”
There was something in her tone that aroused suspicion, but of course nothing could be proved.
Wonderful as rocks were to throw, there were things even more satisfying. Once my friend Crazy Eddie Muldoon and I found a nest of chicken eggs in a stump pile. We had no way of knowing how long the eggs had been abandoned by the hen who laid them, until, of course, we fired the first one against a tree. Then we were able to calculate that the eggs had been ripening anywhere from two months to two years. The rotten egg made an explosive pop! when it hit. The egg gunk splattered around the cottonwood and then began a slow slide down the trunk, eating away the bark as it went. The shock wave of poisonous gas arrived a few seconds later, smiting us almost to our knees. The odor was so potent and disgusting and nauseating that we could scarcely believe our good fortune.
“Wow choke!” Crazy Eddie said, wiping tears from his eyes. “This is gag great!”
“Yeah rrretch!” I exclaimed joyfully. “The smell almost gasp blinded me! Neato!”
We then set out to find targets of sufficient quality on which to expend our deadly ammunition. We blasted a few stumps, which seemed to shudder in revulsion upon impact. We defaced a large rock, probably for the remainder of its life. None of these targets, however, seemed truly deserving of being hit by such fine projectiles as rotten eggs. We looked around. Several of the Muldoon cows stared at us malevolently from the pasture. The thought crossed my mind that—But Crazy Eddie looked knowingly at me.
“No, we’d better not,” he said, his voice tense from unaccustomed restraint. “My pa probably wouldn’t like it.”
“How about just one cow?” I said.
“Okay.”
One of the nice things about Eddie was his willingness to compromise. But before we could execute our plan, the cows somehow got wind of it and galloped off.
“Hey, I know,” Eddie exclaimed. “We only got six eggs left. You take three and I’ll take three, and we’ll play war. I’ll hide over there in the woodlot, see, and you attack my position.”
I stared at Crazy Eddie in disbelief. In all the years I had known him, he had come up with a lot of stupid and dangerous ideas, but this one … this one … Why, it was absolutely brilliant!
“Yeah!” I said. “Let’s do it!”
As it turned out, I had the opportunity to charge Eddie’s position only once. Crouching low, I ran along using some high brush for cover. Then I snapped a twig under my feet, and Eddie fired at the sound. An egg whizzed by my head and struck a limb three feet to my rear. The blast of odor lifted me off my feet and slammed me to the ground. I staggered out of the woodlot and collapsed behind a pile of brush, trying to collect my senses, although my sense of smell now seemed pretty well shot.
As I lay there recovering, I heard footsteps. Eddie! He was charging me! I snatched up an egg in my throwing hand and peeked over the brush pile. Much to my relief, I discovered that the footsteps weren’t those of Eddie but his father. Mr. Muldoon stopped to fill his pipe, resting his double-bitted ax on the ground. I saw him sniff the air, turning his head this way and that, then holding his tobacco pouch to his nose and sniffing it. He shook his head, lit his pipe, put the ax on his shoulder, and strolled into the woodlot. I heard one of his big boots snap a twig.
Poor Eddie, I thought. If only Mr. Muldoon weren’t carrying that double-bitted ax! I really didn’t want to see this. Since I was already halfway home, however, it was highly unlikely I would.
I was somewhat surprised to see Eddie the next day, alive and in one piece. He said he had survived the disaster pretty well, considering, and figured that within a week or two he would be able to sit on hard surfaces again. He estimated it would be at least that long before his mother let his father back in the house, and in the meantime Eddie was enjoying the peace and quiet while he had the chance. His father, he said, got on his nerves a lot.
Certainly nothing was more exciting to throw than rotten eggs, but dirt clods probably came in second in providing a satisfying throw. I think it must be at least twenty-five or thirty years since I’ve seen a really fine dirt clod, but when I was a kid we had trillions of them around. The road in front of the house, where we got the car stuck all the time in the spring, provided a sufficient supply of clods to last me all summer. The ruts would dry out and cake off into fine dirt clods, just the right size for throwing. The summer sun would bake them even harder. You could pick up one of these dirt clods and fire it at a tree, and it would explode into dust with a wonderfully satisfying WHOP!
One summer we had a chicken named Herbie, who was indistinguishable from all the other chickens, except he had a talent for getting out of the pen and digging in my mother’s vegetable garden. One of the few chores I had consisted of running Herbie out of the garden. To do this, I would lob dirt-clod mortar rounds at him. Herbie would take off running as soon as he saw me, his neck stretched out and his feet churning like mad, and all around him the mortar shells would be going off, WHOP! WHOP! WHOP! I don’t know if Herbie enjoyed the game as much as I did, but he continued to escape from the pen and raid the garden, so he must not have minded too much. Your average chicken leads a pretty dull life.
That summer my rich Aunt Alice came to visit from back east. My mother was particularly apprehensive about her visit, because, Mom said, Aunt Alice was a wealthy and genteel lady and unaccustomed to some of the rough ways of Westerners. Alice apparently held the opinion that gunplay still enjoyed a lot of popularity in our part of the country and that human life hereabouts was generally regarded as cheap.
Mom put on an elaborate welcoming dinner for Alice, and we all sat around trying our best to act couth. In the middle of dinner, my sister, the Troll, went out to the well house for another jar of buttermilk. Upon returning, she reported disgustedly, “Herbie’s out in the backyard again.”
“Oh good,” I said, sliding my chair back from the table. “I’ll go have a little fun with him. Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
“Oh, you have someone to play with way out here in the country,” Aunt Alice said, smiling. “That’s nice. I’ve always been partial to the name Herbert.”
“Herbie’s just a chicken,” the Troll said.
Aunt Alice laughed genteelly. “My dear, don’t be so quick to judge others. What we sometimes perceive to be cowardice often turns out to be wisdom.”
Aunt Alice had a peculiar way of talking, so we all just smiled and tried not to look puzzled.
I excused myself and stepped out to the back porch. Herbie saw me immediately and made a dash for cover, his neck stretched out to its limit. Seeing I had only time for one shot, I snatched up a clod and, rather than mortaring it, rifled it at him, leading his beak by about six feet. Much to my astonishment, and probably even more to the chicken’s, the sunbaked clod detonated right on Herbie’s head. The chicken skidded along the ground in a cloud of clod dust, finally coming to a stop, with not so much as a feather twitching. I shrugged and walked back into the house, dusting off my hands.
“Guess what,” I announced. “I just killed Herbie.”
Aunt Alice’s forkful of mashed potatoes stopped halfway to her mouth. “Wha—? Oh, I see, you’re making a jest.”
“Nope,” I said. “I killed him deader than a doorknob.”
“Are you sure?” Mom asked, buttering a roll. Do-it-yourself execution of chickens was a routine activity around our place, and not one to arouse much interest.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said. “I hit him in the head with a dirt clod. He didn’t even twitch.”
“My gawwww … !” Aunt Alice said, turning whiter than her mashed potatoes.
I thought she must have a soft spot for chickens and decided to change the subject. “Boy, is it ever hot out!”
“Well, if you ask me,” the Troll said, “it served Herbie right to get killed.”
Aunt Alice’s fork clattered into her dish, and Mom, too, noticed that she seemed ill, her eyes wild and blinking, her lips quivering as if she had unexpectedly found herself amid a band of cold-blooded killers.
“Enough talk about killing,” Mom said. “This certainly isn’t very pleasant dinner conversation. Alice, let me freshen that coffee for you, and then I’ll serve the pie. Fresh huckleberry with homemade vanilla ice cream! Doesn’t that sound good?”
Aunt Alice’s head made a little jerking motion.
Reluctant to let go of the topic, the Troll asked, “You gonna bury Herbie?”
“B-bury?” Aunt Alice said.
“Naw,” I said. “I thought I’d just chuck him on the manure pile.”
“Enough!” Mom ordered. “Now go wash your hands before you eat your pie. You’ll give Aunt Alice the impression we’re nothing but a bunch of savages out here in the West. Right, Alice?”
“N-n-n-,” Aunt Alice said.
About then, Herbie staggered by the living room window all goggled-eyed and grinning stupidly, which is about the only way a chicken can grin.
“Look, you didn’t kill him after all,” the Troll yelled. “Herbie’s still alive!”
Aunt Alice gave a little jump and stared at the chicken. After a moment she whispered, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” although I wasn’t aware that any of us had done her any particular favors.
Aunt Alice left a few days later, cutting short her visit by a week. She was a nice lady, if a little strange, but we weren’t sad to see her go. We’d had about all the couth we could stand for one summer.
By the time Bun and I had finished our stroll on the beach, I had managed to collect a sizable arsenal of fine throwing stones. When we got back to our cabin, Bun still nursed a raging fit of feminism, merely because I had offered the opinion that women are incapable of appreciating the fine art of throwing stuff.
“Cramming all those dumb rocks in your pockets!” she raged. “That’s the most infantile exhibition of macho … and your new pants, too … what about your new pants! Just tell me that! What about your new pants?”
“What about them?” I said. “We’ve only been home a few seconds. My pants will be along any time now.”
Letter to Santa
Dear Santa:
For some time now, I have been in correspondence with one of your subordinates, a Mr. Elf Watson, Vice-President, Hunting and Fishing Gifts. As you are aware, most inquiries to your firm are now answered by computer. Thus it was with some relief that I finally received a reply from a real person, namely Elf Watson—assuming, of course, Mr. Watson is a person. (I confess my ignorance as to which species elves belong, if any.)
In the beginning of our rather lengthy correspondence, Mr Watson impressed me as an amiable and ingratiating chap, and we soon arrived at a first-name basis. As time passed, however, Elf became increasingly surly and, in my opinion, even somewhat irrational. In his most recent letter to me, he lowered himself to outright insults, inquiring sarcastically, “What’s a grown man like you doing writing letters to Santa for, anyway?” I am sure you don’t approve of such belligerence shown toward your clientele by your employees and will take appropriate disciplinary action.
After my unhappy experience with Elf Watson, I decided to take my problem directly to the top, namely yourself. (I trust that by writing “personal” on the envelope, I have ensured that this letter will elude the computer and make its way to your desk.) Let me say, first of all, that I have generally been well pleased with my Christmas gifts for the past thirty or forty years, although there have been a few problems.
The insulated waders you brought me last Christmas were several sizes too small, prompting my children to laugh hysterically when I tried them on and my wife, Bun, to comment dryly that I looked like a roasted wiener about to burst its skin. I can understand how you and the elves might enjoy playing a little joke from time to time, but in the future I would appreciate a more serious attitude when it comes to filling my gift order.
You also made a minor error last Christmas in giving my wife a nice little side-by-side 20-gauge shotgun, since she doesn’t hunt. But don’t concern yourself about it. As I told Bun, even Santa can slip up on occasion, and there is no reason to hold a grudge against you. I think she is starting to come around, but I might suggest that this year, instead of entering through the chimney, perhaps you should just sling our presents on the porch as you go by. Okay?
Also, when I said I wanted fish scales for Christmas, I meant an instrument on which to weigh fish. Either there was a communications breakdown or Elf was pulling another of his practical jokes. True, Bun had a good laugh over the look on my face when I opened the package, but she stopped laughing when she had to vacuum the fish scales out of a shag carpet. So when you sling our presents on the porch, don’t go “Ho, ho ho” or any of that stuff, and you’ll probably be all right. It might be well to press the pedal to the metal on old Dancer and Prancer, even though Bun still isn’t much of a wing shot.
But now to my point of contention with Elf. The Christmas in question was that of 1941. As you may recall—and I hope your memory’s better than Elf’s—I was six years old at the time and living with my folks in a small log cabin in a remote valley of the Rocky Mountains. The Great Depression was over by then, as I’ve since learned, but nobody had told my parents. They thought we were still poor. My father kept saying things like, “Well, it can’t get any worse than this,” and then it would get worse. “Now I know we have hit rock bottom,” he would say, only to have the bottom drop out from under us once again. I had grown quite accustomed to my father’s optimistic pronouncements and didn’t pay much attention to them.
Then one December day over our breakfast gruel, he muttered something so ominous and frightening I forgot what I was doing and actually placed some of the gruel in my mouth.
“Pickings have got so slim,” Dad said, “I kind of doubt whether Santa Claus will even be able to afford to show up this year. I expect he’s busted just like the rest of us.”
“Choke, petewweee, gag!” I said. “Wha—? What did you say?”
Dad repeated himself, staring at me glumly through the gruel steam. “But what the heck,” he said, “you have lots of other Christmases ahead of you. You’ll make up for it later. No presents one Christmas ain’t gonna knock a big hole in your life, I guess.”
Not knock a big hole in my life? It would kick down all four walls of it, that’s what it would do, no presents for Christmas! If Santa Claus thought he could weasel out on me just because times were hard, he had another think coming. Why, I’d … I’d … Actually, there was nothing I could do, as you, Mr. Claus, are well aware. I probably could have given up believing in you, but I was only enraged, not crazy.
