Cousin Minn screamed.
And slammed on the brakes. I hit the front seat again.
I looked up into her stunned face. “Louise, what on earth are you doing back there?”
I struggled to a sitting position and climbed over the seat to the front.
“Trying to keep you from getting blown straight to Kingdom Come.” I barked my shin on the long thing that lay beside the door. “Ow!”
“Don’t touch that, Louise! Lordy, I’ll have to take you home. We’ll never make it in time now.”
“No, ma’am. I am not going home unless you are.” Then I realized I was staring down into the double barrels of a shotgun.
“Get back in the back seat.”
“That’s a gun!”
“And it is occupying the front seat. Get in the back, Louise.”
“You don’t have a gun.” I retreated over the back seat while keeping one eye on the twin barrels.
“Indeed I do, although Bertie would have a conniption if she knew I took care of it all these years.” She drove on without checking to see whether there was anyone coming up behind her. Luckily, there wasn’t.
“Is it some kind of antique?” Probably didn’t have a chance in Hades of firing.
“A very fine one and in perfect condition. Did you know that when I was a girl I was a crack shot at skeet and trap?”
My tiny little old Cousin Minn?
“I gave it up after . . . after the First World War.”
Maybe if I got her reminiscing about old times, I could get around to talking her out of this crazy thing we were doing. “Did you lose somebody in the war?”
“Louise, after every big war in which a great many men are killed there is always a generation of women who never marry because there aren’t enough men left. It happened after the Revolution, the War of Northern Aggression, the First World War, and it’s happening now after the Second. Yes, I lost somebody. I had other chances to marry, but they all seemed like settling for somebody less. So I didn’t.”
“Was the gun . . . his?”
“No. It was my brother Sam’s. He died holding it.”
I froze. “Did somebody—you know—shoot him?”
Since time for a kid is relative, I had visions of something like the shootout at the OK Corral, or maybe a duel of honor. Something very grand and romantic, at any rate.
“No. He wasn’t shot. He lived with Bertie and me. He’d been too young for the war, and I suppose that bothered him some because he never seemed like the type to take up hunting. But after my granddaddy left him that shotgun, he took to hunting ducks and geese and I don’t know what all.”
“Was he any good at it?”
“My lands, yes! Except for one thing. He longed, no Pure-D lusted, to bag us a wild turkey to have for Thanksgiving dinner.” She began to laugh softly and shook her head.
Reminiscing hadn’t turned the Hudson for home, but it had certainly slowed her down. She was driving sanely now. That was something, at least.
“Wild turkeys aren’t easy to shoot, Cousin Minn. Even I know that.”
“So did he. He was a wonderful wood carver—that mirror over my dresser is one he carved for me. Every year, he’d swear the new turkey caller he’d carved would be ‘the one.’ He’d cluck on that thing until Bertie’d send him to the basement to practice.”
I could see her head shake in the reflection from the headlights, and I could see she was smiling—a secret smile that I had no part of. I suddenly felt as alone as I had ever felt.
“Year after year, he’d go out in the woods all by himself just before Thanksgiving, and year after year he’d come back at night worn out, filthy dirty and empty-handed, and we’d have to go get us a turkey to serve for Thanksgiving. Everybody in the family laughed about it.”
We turned off the road onto the gravel track we’d followed that afternoon. At night, it was like turning into the mouth of hell, dark and steamy and full of creatures that flitted or scurried away. Cousin Minn had to slow down or wreck the car.
“The last time he went turkey shooting,” she continued, “he didn’t come home at dark the way he usually did. By ten o’clock we were worried sick. He was almost like Bert’s son—she’s twelve years older than I am, and sixteen older than Sam. The weather had turned dreadful—cold and spitting sleet. We organized a search party come dawn. Took until nearly dark to find him.”
“Were you there?”
“Heaven’s no, child! You think those men would have let a woman tag along in the woods? It’s not as though I hadn’t grown up in them and knew them better than my backyard.” She shook her head. “Men!” We bumped along much slower than we had earlier. The branches brushed the open windows like arms reaching in to snatch us.
I had stopped noticing where we were. “Was he hurt? Did the gun go off or something?”
She closed her eyes. “I didn’t see him, of course, but the sheriff said he was sitting propped against a big pin oak with that old shotgun across his knees and the biggest gobbler they’d ever seen lying dead beside him.”
“But what happened to him?”
“Heart attack, they said. He was only thirty-three, but they say when the heart goes early, it goes hard. I like to think his burst with pure joy after he shot that turkey.” She sniffled.
“I’ve never even seen a picture of him.”
“Bertie destroyed all she could find, she was so angry at him—but I hid a few she doesn’t know about.”
“Like the gun?”
“In the very back of my chifforobe where nobody could find it.”
We pulled to a stop, and Cousin Minn began to back and turn the Hudson around in a space barely big enough for it. I could see her hands straining on the wheel. This was long before power steering and she was a very small woman.
When at last she got the car positioned so that it faced the road, she let out a big sigh, turned off the ignition and shifted around so she could look into my face.
“My brother Sam was the dearest, sweetest, kindest boy. Everybody loved him. Always a smile. And funny! He could keep us in stitches. He’s the one that played the piano in the living room. Kept it tuned perfectly.” She cut the lights, and we sat in the sudden darkness while around us the katydids racketed and the night birds called. “Your mother says you’re worried about my immortal soul because I don’t go to church,” she said.
Oh, fine. My mother always did have a big mouth. I started to answer, but she stopped me.
“Maybe this isn’t the time to tell you all this, but could be it’s the only time we’ll have.”
As her words sunk in, I began to shiver.
“Back at the house after Sam’s funeral, the preacher found me on the back porch and told me he was real sorry about Sam. He said God ‘visited’ his heart attack on him because he’d gone hunting on Sunday instead of coming to church like a good Christian. He said Sam was no doubt burning in hell.”
“But that’s awful!”
In the faint glimmer of moonlight that came in through the windshield, I could see that her eyes were hard and dry.
“I told him my brother was as fine a Christian as ever lived, and that he was a good deal closer to God out in His woods than he was listening to one of that preacher’s mean-spirited sermons. I refuse to believe in a God who would condemn his child for something any human father would forgive. Then I did something terrible, Louise. I slapped him. I’ve never been back to church since. Remember this, Louise, whatever happens tonight. God does not turn his back on his children.”
She opened the car door. “Stay here now. I mean it.” She walked around to the passenger side of the car, opened the door and pulled out the shotgun. She checked to see that it was fully loaded, then reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a box of shells and dropped half a dozen into the pocket of her house dress. “Louise, can you drive a car?”
“You know I can. I been driving my daddy’s old truck on the farm since I was nine and he had to hold me o
n the seat in front of him.”
“I am leaving the keys in the ignition. If you should hear the sound of gunfire, I want you to drive this car out of here, find the nearest policeman and bring him back.”
“No ma’am. I’m coming too.”
“Louise, you are not.” She turned around and walked off with the shotgun in the crook of her arm. She was a little old lady walking into a nest of God knew what sort of men, like Daniel into the lion’s den, and with about as much fear.
I was scared enough for both of us. I had learned too much about my Cousin Minn tonight to let her go now just when I was truly coming to value her as a real person. Besides, I was terrified in that car by myself. I climbed out and followed her at a discreet distance so she wouldn’t hear me.
I could see the lights dancing in that clearing and hear the drunken shouts of the men fifty yards before we reached the area around the cockpit. Cousin Minn stood quietly behind a clump of wild laurel, and I stood behind another while I prayed that the copperheads were asleep tonight.
There were only four men lounging around the pit in the old beat up chairs. The headlights of half a dozen automobiles that were lined up around the edge lighted the pit itself. The woods on the other side had looked impenetrable, but there obviously was some way through.
Two men were down on their hands and knees in the pit itself. One was holding a rooster while the other fitted long steel spikes onto his legs. I couldn’t tell whether we were looking at Henry or not.
Apparently Cousin Minn had no doubts. She stepped from the shelter of her tree and racked a shell into the chamber of her shotgun. If you’ve ever heard that sound once in your life you’ll never mistake it again. Obviously these men had more than a nodding acquaintance with the sound. All six froze, then two of the men in the chairs shaded their eyes to try to see into the shadows.
“What the hell?”
“I have come to reclaim my property,” Cousin Minn said in a voice that might sound steady to the men in that pit but came across as pretty shaky to me.
“Your property?” The largest man who had taken up most of the sofa began to stand.
“Sit still, please. And keep your hands where I can see them. Preferably locked behind your head .”
“Hell, it’s some little old lady. Lady, you shoot that thing, you gonna be flat on your tee-hinie in the bushes.”
The gun boomed. I jumped a good six feet straight up.
When I opened my eyes, Cousin Minn still stood at the edge of the circle, but now the gun rested against her shoulder and was aimed straight down into that pit.
“I cannot prevent your continuing this abominable fight another night in another location,” Cousin Minn said. “But not here and not now. Bring me the property you stole from my yard this morning, and I will leave you in peace, though I think you all deserve to be strung up for what you are doing.”
I could see things were about to turn mean. From the clink of bottles we’d heard, they’d been drinking, and here was this little old person threatening to string them up.
And all for a stupid bird.
“This gun is fully loaded with buckshot and on full choke. I doubt that I’ll hit Henry if I fire at you, but I would prefer he die an honorable death at my hands than in your ring torn to bits.”
“Hey, lady,” the man holding Henry said, “This here’s a bird born to fight. We just giving him what he needs. He ain’t no panty-waist chicken for no old lady’s pet.” He spat into the dirt.
“I am well aware of his fighting capabilities,” she said.
I looked at her in surprise.
“He tore apart a large copperhead that was poised to strike at my knee when I was gardening. He is a hero and deserves to be treated as one. Now, please bring him carefully and gently to me. Louise, you pick him up and carry him to the car.”
I had no idea when she’d realized I was there. I didn’t think she would have fired the gun if she’d known, but I’d apparently given myself away somehow.
“Hell I will,” the man said.
With the second shot, however, he moved.
He put Henry down some six feet from Cousin Minn and backed up while I ran down, snatched up the traumatized bird, and lit out for the car.
By the time Cousin Minn reached the car, I had it running and the lights on. Henry sat like a lord on the back seat.
Cousin Minn tossed the shotgun in the back seat beside Henry, shoved me over to the passenger side and floored the poor Hudson.
“I don’t think they’ll come after us, Louise, but you never know.”
Actually, I suspected they were having a good laugh at our expense. Laughing was the only way they could get their manhood back intact. Even I knew that much about men. By the time they told this tale a dozen times, they’d have taken pity on the poor little soul who just wanted her stupid old chicken back.
Fine with me. I didn’t want them plotting vengeance.
The minute we got back to the safe streets of Mossy Creek we both broke out in gales of laughter. Henry even essayed a weak crow, although it was a long way from daybreak.
We snuck Henry onto the back porch, moved a grumpy hen from her nesting box to share with one of her sisters for the night, and installed Henry in her place with fresh water and grain. He went to sleep at once while Cousin Minn stroked his feathers.
Sneaking ourselves in wasn’t nearly as easy, but somehow we managed. Cousin Minn locked the shotgun in the Hudson’s trunk. She would move it back to her chifforobe after Aunt Bertie left for work in the morning.
The clock on my bedside table said twelve-thirty. I crawled into bed with no thought for chiggers, mosquitoes, or brushing my teeth. I knew I was filthy, but it didn’t seem to matter.
As I snuggled down under the single sheet, Cousin Minn scratched at my door and opened it. She wore her dimity nightdress, and her long braid hung over her shoulder.
She sat on the edge of my bed and hugged me. “What you did tonight was foolish, Louise. You might have been hurt.”
“Me, foolish? Cousin Minn, you could have gotten us killed.”
“Oh, no. Those men wouldn’t hurt an old lady like me.” I saw her grin. Downright wicked. I shook my head.
“But, Louise, this must stay between us. You must never, ever, ever tell anyone, not a single living soul, not even your mother and father, about all this. Do you promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Good. I love you, Louise.” She kissed my forehead.
I felt the tears spill. “I love you too, Cousin Minn. I didn’t know Henry saved you from a copperhead.”
“Oh, yes. A big one.” She stood and walked to the door.
“Cousin Minn?” I whispered. She stopped with her hand on the knob and turned to look at me. “What happened to the turkey?”
She grinned. “Bertie said we ought to throw the awful thing away, but I wouldn’t have it. If Sam died for that turkey, the least we could do was to eat it. So we did. For Thanksgiving. Best I ever had. Go to sleep now.”
* * * *
“Cousin Minn left me the shotgun in her will,” I said many decades later at the reunion party, “and when I went to get it out of her chifforobe, I found beside it a brown paper bag, and inside, carefully wrapped in yellowing tissue paper, were half a dozen turkey feathers. I still have those, too. Just not on the mantelpiece.”
“Did you ever tell anybody?” Martha asked.
“My husband, of course. He wanted to know why I had that old shotgun. Nobody else knew about it as long as Cousin Minn, Aunt Bertie, and Henry were alive. Of course, they’re long dead now. But in my dreams, sometimes I see Cousin Minn digging in the heavenly pansies while her brother Sam sits whittling near her.” I raised moist eyes to a framed photograph of a rooster among the fine portraits on my living room wall.
Reunions, as some people say, are times of tearful joy. Not to mention faithful roosters. “And beside her Henry keeps watch, in case a celestial copperhead should ma
nage to slither under the pearly gates.”
The Mossy Creek Gazette
215 Main Street • Mossy Creek, Georgia
From the Desk of Katie Bell, Business Manager
Dear Vick:
The big news in town this week is the arrival of a new cook. His name’s Win Allen, and he’s setting up his catering business in time for the fall reunion. My sources who’ve sampled his food tell me he’ll give Mama’s a run for her money.
But there’s room for a lot of new restaurants in Mossy Creek. Creekites love to eat. They eat home cooking, they eat soul food, they eat fancy food. They wash their meals down with iced tea and hot coffee, cold beer and good wine, brand liquor and homemade moonshine, and the clearest, coldest, purest water from Mossy Creek. And then they eat some more. If we could just get Michael Conners to serve cornbeef and cabbage or shepherd pie at the pub, we’d have international cuisine.
In the meantime, we’ve taken a liking to Win Allen. After all, a stranger bearing good food isn’t a stranger for long in Mossy Creek.
Katie
WIN ALLEN
WIN ALLEN
And his Alter Ego, Bubba Rice
Katie, I’m not sure you really want my thoughts on reunions. You see, planning and attending the big Allen Reunion is a blood sport in my family. It’s a one-day gauntlet of memory, manners and masochism. God help you if you run out of food. The buffet is the only thing keeping the Allen clan from killing each other because it gives us something to do with our hands.
I’ve never seen a more diverse group of folks from the same basic genetic pool in my life. Why we torture ourselves with this show-and-tell of our lives each year is beyond me.
Oh! And if you sample Aunt Minnie’s fried chicken, you’d better grab a leg from Aunt Tilly as well. They keep score. I’m not lying. There are generally more than seventy assorted relatives at our reunion each year. Those ladies keep track of every single food selection. At reunions, I think of myself as Switzerland and do my best to stay out of the war.
Reunion at Mossy Creek Page 24
