by W.H. Harrod
~Outhouse Blues
Winter in a country boy’s life is usually a time rife with opportunity. Contrary to what warm weather lovers might think, a lot is still going on. The school year is in full swing, most of the farming is finished allowing older children so often shanghaied for forced farm labor in the fall by opportunistic adult relatives to come out of hiding. New shoes are broken in, basketball skills, having been sharpened up out behind the barn during the summer in anticipation of the coming year, are on display in gyms all over the county, wood chopping jobs are plentiful; all the politicking is over, meaning politicians will once again stop their trucks to throw a rock at a kid suspected of filching their blackberries or whose momma and daddy had voted for some country bumpkin called Ole Floyd, Ole Skeeter, Ole Wilbur, or Ole Junior.
After a few years, most of the people who decided to run for local office had heard about Heywood’s rather desultory mannerisms and tended to shy away lest they get caught trying to wring his neck for tearing down their ubiquitous political signs.
Heywood usually had no real preference as to which individual held a particular office, excepting that of the local dog catcher. Heywood, along with about every other kid in town, despised all dog catchers. That pretty much held true for truancy officers also. Those people, Heywood believed, were in a separate class of totally unnecessary mouth breathers altogether. However, the most woeful, hellish, dreadful, and outright loathed individuals to be avoided at all costs in the late fall or early winter were those who imposed upon kids to help them move their most foul and odoriferous outhouses.
It’s one thing to ask a kid to mow a yard for practically nothing but a sack of stale cookies or a jar of some vegetable your momma already had a hundred of at home, but to hijack a kid with their folks’ permission to move an outhouse that has been in the same place for two whole years is well beyond the pale. Most country kids learned to stay alert during that particular time of year. Any kid who caught wind of those looking as if they were getting ready to do the dirty deed was foresworn to inform his peers upon threat of being totally ostracized and, or worse, finding a couple of ripe cow turds in his gym locker.
With all this in mind, Heywood casually went about his business one unusually cold Saturday morning. An unexpected cold front had come through causing many of the smaller ponds to freeze over. This gave young country boys reason to be gleeful for more than one reason. A frozen pond meant building a big bond fire out in the middle of their newest temporary playground. Even better than that, it meant an opportunity to show their great displeasure to those closed-minded farmers who would not allow the local youngsters anywhere near some of their ponds.
If the recalcitrant, selfish farmer, had pigs, the task became easy. The youngsters got a sack full of unhusked ears of corn of any variety and calmly and quietly slipped up close to the pond in question to distribute a few of the ears upon the frozen surface of the soon to be Pigs on Ice Capades venue. Then they just sat back and enjoyed the show.
Those dumb critters fell for the same scam every time. No matter that one, two, or even three of a passel of pigs had already ventured out upon the frozen surface expecting an easy lunch only to find themselves flopping around unable to stand up, all the while more pigs waited to join them. To be safe, the young lads always set up escape routes. Irate farmers with a large part of their pig population floundering upon a frozen surface sometimes got downright nasty.
Occasionally a slow moving kid got caught and had to pay a heavy price. The penalty was always the same: go out and slop the aggrieved farmer’s pigs for a week plus promise to stay far away from Heywood.
Heywood was thoroughly enjoying this one particular day until he saw one of the young lads running up to the group with news that the preacher was out scouring the town’s back roads in a very suspicious way. Heywood knew this could mean only one thing. It was outhouse moving day. His legs went weak as he recalled all those previous times he’d been subjected to that singularly repulsive task. He also knew that he only had minutes to make his move before the preacher, after a few inquiries, found out their location.
Heywood and his companions, also subject to being conscripted as many local families were in fear of having any part of the preacher’s wrath inflicted upon them if they did not willingly volunteer their children, had a plan.
“To the Cliffs,” Heywood yelled. “To the Cliffs,” he yelled again as he leapt to his feet heading off at a dead run towards the far horizon.
Several of the seasoned veterans immediately followed Heywood’s lead and were fast on his heels. The rest of the youngsters, the ones who had never before had the experience of being commandeered for such odious work, as moving another person’s outhouse, simply stood in place yelling for their mommies and daddies.
Heywood surely felt sad for those that tarried, but that’s the way the world worked. He’d heard something about some scientist calling events like this “evolutionary.” Heywood preferred what one fuzzy-faced scientist said when he referred to human life as the “survival of the fittest.” The slower footed group of youngsters would either learn a terrible lesson and grow from it, or, possibly, they would become extinct, whatever that meant. Heywood had a notion it had to do with smelling real bad.
Anyway, the group that got away kept going all out until they were well past the Boggy Holler Road before they slowed or thought about looking back. The safety of a familiar grove of old growth forest loomed just ahead. This meant they were real close to having made a clean getaway. Whoever caught them now would not do it with a passenger vehicle or pickup truck. This was honest to goodness hills and hollers country. If you were looking for someone, you better be on foot or, even better, on a mule.
A short time later, having disappeared into the safety of the dense woods, an air of jubilance came over the group. They were saved. No standing around a big stinking to the high heavens putrid hole this year. No retching at the sight of two whole years of human waste. No apologizing to your nose and eyes for subjecting them to a sight that no child should ever have to see. Life was good again. The wicked “Witch of the East” was dead, or maybe it was the warlock of the west? But who cared, whoever it was died. Let the frolicking begin.
The Cliffs was the local kids’ name for a parcel of land located southwest of town on the back eighty of one of the long established farm family’s acreage. Word was, the current occupants (still believed by some old-timers to be the offspring of carpetbaggers) got hold of the land right after the Civil War which some folks also said was still going on in parts of rural Kentucky.
Be that as it may, the place was great as far as every local country boy who ever visited the Cliffs was concerned. There was a spring-fed creek that ran for about a half mile through a little holler flanked on both sides by almost sheer cliffs with tall trees blessed with hanging vines galore. Plus, down towards the end of the holler, beavers had strategically gnawed down several trees that fell across the creek in such a way that a clear pool of water was made ready for all intrepid skinny dippers.
The always clear water was not only cold, but knee-knockin’ cold. If you jumped in at any time, other than during the heat of the summer, you better have a fire going first otherwise your knees would knock themselves silly.
Overtime, the little group hauled, carried, toted, and rolled various supplies to their wilderness playground. Back under a cliff they dug a big hole and in it, wrapped up in a big tarp, was an old dull ax that one industrious lad found lying along a gravel road, a couple of water pails, a big box of matches they purchased using all their ready cash, a couple of broken shovels that still worked fine as far as the group was concerned, and, maybe most important, some dry old newspapers for starting a fire which often was an absolute necessity as they were going to be cavorting alongside a creek where someone was bound to get wet. These and other miscellaneous items had, on more than one occasion, saved their collective rear ends.
While Heywood started to get the essentials toge
ther to start a fire, he heard the unmistakable sound of young boys frolicking nearby. Seems a few of the group were already starting to celebrate their recent near tragic conscription into the preacher’s outhouse detail. Usually Heywood would holler at them to come back and help him ready things for the day, but for some reason, he decided to let the younger members of the group enjoy their special moment. All too soon, he figured, they would begin to learn some of the more uncomfortable truths about life, such as: there actually might not be a Santa Clause and that even the story about the storks bringing all the new babies was looking very iffy. Also there was a significant amount of information suggesting that Superman can’t actually fly or even jump over a building, if one could believe it. Heywood sometimes felt the pressure of being older and having learned these uncomfortable truths. Someday, regrettably, he realized he would have to pass those truths onto the younger lads in the group. Something else he disliked about the idea of getting older - always having to bust some snot-nosed kid’s bubble about the facts of life, and the most glaring fact as far as he was concerned to date was that life seemed to get a little harder and more serious each year.
About the time Heywood felt that the fire he’d started was burning well enough to allow him to venture out and inform his companions that a warm fire awaited them whenever they got chilled and felt the need for some warmth, he heard a screech the likes of which he had heard only a few times before. Danger was approaching.
Running away from the fire towards the creek where his fellow escapees were up to a minute ago frolicking, a horrible thought came to Heywood’s mind. The preacher must have found out where they were and followed them. But how could he know about this place? he wondered as he neared the pool.
No sooner did he reach the creek than he spotted all the cowering young lads pointing and screeching towards an ominous figure sitting on the back of a mule atop the far cliff. His suspicions were correct, for sitting astride a mule was none other than the preacher. Even from as far away as Heywood was, the glowering countenance of the devil personified struck fear into his heart.
Heywood harbored the fleeting notion that he had a chance of making a getaway. Maybe all his young friends would have to pay the ultimate price for their foolishness. Was it his fault that they let down their guard too soon? Heywood knew of other hideouts even farther into the woods. He could play this game all day long. Ain’t no stupid mule going to keep up with Heywood when Heywood’s on the run. This proposed tactic came crashing down as soon as Heywood turned towards the planned getaway route. For waiting no more than thirty yards away, right in the middle of his hoped for getaway route was none other than the property owner himself and never a bigger smile did Heywood ever recollect seeing before or after.
“Dang,” said Heywood aloud. “This sure enough looks to be a conspiracy to me.”
A short time afterwards, once the fire had been safely extinguished, the entire motley group of thoroughly confused and dispirited youngsters began marching back along the same path that had earlier brought them to their supposed secret hideout. Heywood marched at the head of the group, right behind the landowner. Back at the rear of the bedraggled column sat the preacher atop a mule, smiling as if judgment day awaited Heywood and his hang-dog-faced fellow indentured servants. He remembered back to one of the preacher’s more animated sermons wherein he’d gone on and on about the Israelites being led into captivity by that old Pharaoh fella. He knew exactly how they must have felt. Thinking about it some more, he determined he’d rather pile rocks on top one another, anytime, than cover up the preacher’s stinking to the high heavens outhouse hole.
Heywood was not one to dwell for long on the temporary failures that laid themselves upon the shoulders of spirited lads most everywhere. This was a setback for sure. No use trying to sugar coat it. Filling in an odiferous festering hole of human waste just because you were unlucky enough to be kinfolk to a bible-thumpin’, indoor plumbing shunning, tool of a vengeful God never would pass muster in future years when it came time to put together an employment résumé. Heywood knew there was an opportunity here for him to learn something that would serve him in the future.
Lo and behold, it came to him not five minutes later. Turning around to look back to where the preacher still brought up the rear of the totally dispirited column, Heywood could not help but smile. The preacher, having been watching Heywood’s every step all along the way from the cliffs, went to full alert status expecting another of Heywood’s tricks.
Heywood only laughed at the effect his smallest move had on that giant of a man. Turning back around, Heywood’s stride became a little more erect. If the preacher, still watching Heywood’s every movement and expecting more deviousness, wanted to get into a snit waiting for something to happen so soon, he would be in for a long wait.
Heywood determined he would take his time to effect a plan to repay the preacher for imposing himself into Heywood’s sacred private time. Sure, Heywood would help the preacher move his old outhouse, and he would be as the soul of grateful nephews everywhere, eager to pitch in to help one of his kinfolk. All the while he did this, he would also be thinking how interesting it might become for the preacher if somehow a really, really mad bunch of wasps, nest and all, found themselves relocated to the nether regions of the nastiest part of said outhouse, awaiting some unexpected individual to waltz in, lift up the lid, sit down, and smile in relief for all of about ten seconds until Heywood’s newest little friends said hello in a most very special way.
