by
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank God for giving me my dreams and these stories. I would
like to thank my husband for putting up with all of my eccentricities. I would like to
thank my thesis advisor. Dr. Jill Patterson, and my other committee members, Dr.
Stephen Graham Jones and Dr. Wendell Aycock, who gladly read my work. I'd like to
thank my mother-in-law, who made me go back to school, my sweet, story-loving
children, and I'd like to thank God one last fime. He's the boss of me.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
IV. OPENING TOMBS 35
VII. SUNDRY ENCHILADAS 81
Vm. SOUL TRAIN 97
111
INTRODUCTION
And the Rocks Screamed actually began two years ago as a two-page story about a
teenage girl who falls in love during Spring Break in Galveston, Texas. Obviously, the
collection has undergone several changes. I have done so, as well. I suppose I had
several misconceptions about what graduate school would entail, what graduate level
writing would entail, before entering the spring semester of my first year. And after
attending the first six weeks of my graduate writing seminar, I was ready to wring my
classmates' necks (and my own). I was writing religious allegories (and one horrible
religious novel I have since abandoned) in a serious, desperately preachy tone and
expecting members of my audience to cheerfully put up with my disrespectful disregard
for their needs from me, the writer. I naively expected my audience to work for me, to
strive to understand me, instead of pushing myself to work for them, to be perfectly clear
in my message. I also expected the entire world to take my view of God seriously.
Needless to say, my own worldview was causing a great deal of my frustration.
I caught a nasty virus in the seventh week of the writing seminar, the week I was
supposed to turn in my third writing submission. My two previous submissions had been
described by some of my fellow students as "pushy, representative of an entirely invalid
world view, and naive" to say the least. Full of frustration and paranoid from my illness,
I began to write the most ridiculous, pointless story I could think of, the afore-mentioned
teenage coming-of-age tale in Galveston. I will not insult anyone by ever publishing or
even quoting the short atrocity of pride that story was. Even I got sick of it by page two,
so I took an unrecommended dose of Nyquil and went to sleep.
As the Nyquil worked on my virus, God began to work on my heart. He gave me
the first of many dreams, which led to the writing of And the Rocks Screamed. In the
dream I was visiting my grandmother's home in New Mexico, a place I visited often in
my youth. All of my relatives from both sides of my family and even some of my sister-
in-law's relatives had gathered there for a family reunion. It was early spring, and there
were several kittens and puppies running around the yard. Chained to a large Pecan tree
in the middle of Granny's yard, there was a rabid mastiff very much resembling a cross
between the angry Old Yeller, the post-wolf-fight Old Yeller, Clifford the big red dog,
and the mastiff from Turner and Hooch. I watched in horror as this dog broke free of its
chain and tore each of the smaller animals to shreds, consuming ears, intestines, fur and
tails as he went. The yard became a scene of gore rivaling even the grossest horror
movies I have watched from behind my parents' sofa when they thought I was in bed.
More horrifying than the vision, though, was my family's reaction. My
grandmother and all of her friends refused to acknowledge the dog's existence. Even
when the dog broke into my grandmother's house and ate a small cousin, the only
response anyone offered was to close the backdoor after the dog went back outside.
I woke up shaken, almost nauseous from the dream, and as I told my husband
how upsetfing the experience had been, I knew very clearly that God had given me the
dream to write for my third seminar submission, that he had blessed me with a story that
would work for me and my audience. So sick as I was, I got out of bed and wrote
"Dogma." I watched as the dream became a solid story with momentum and theme, and
even though I thought God was slightly nuts, I tumed the story in.
Everyone in the seminar loved "Dogma." Students in my program were making
copies for their friends and reading sections to one another in the hallways between their
offices. "This is the funniest thing I've ever read," one of my peers said, "and it works
better than your other stuff because it's funny. I'm not offended by the message because
it's so funny." And in this comment lies the greatest irony, the greatest humor, behind
the entire collection. I never meant it to be funny.
I'm not saying that "Dogma" isn't hilarious to me or that any of the other stories
aren't fun to read, but all of the dreams which spawned these stories were horrible
nightmares, some of the worst I have ever had in my life. I've never incorporated humor
into my fiction before God sent me terrifying visions in the night, but I couldn't write
about them any other way. If I had even tried to write them with a serious tone, in a
realistic manner, they would have been too real—they are too real to me as they are. So,
in order to distance myself from the dreams enough to write them down, I used humorous
hillbilly magical realism.
The hillbilly setting was comfortable for me to write in because I was raised as a
hillbilly. Most of my family still live in trailers, including my father and mother, in spite
of the fact that my father holds two college degrees and makes over one hundred
thousand dollars a year. We are white-trash folk, and we are proud of it.
The magical realism was more difficult to incorporate into the stories because I
had never read any magical realist texts, not one. In fact, when my professor told me
how well I used magical realism, I had to go and look the term up in a literary textual
dictionary. I had an over-active imagination to lean on and some extremely disturbing
dreams, but I had no tradition at all to lean on until after I had finished half of the
collection. As I was beginning the fifth story, "The Magic Carpet," two of my professors
started lending me magical realist texts. I read Like Water for Chocolate, Phosphor in
Dreamland, Swift as Desire, Orlando, and a few more, and finally, I felt like a member of
a great circle of weirdo's rather than the only one. What I was writing made sense, and
after reading Orlando, I abandoned my fear of trusting my imagination. If a man can live
four centuries and become a woman while maintaining the same essential characteristics
of being an individual, then a nasty old woman can become a dirty old man. A child can
become a man. A dog can become a man. A national railway can abandon its tracks and
become the worst epidemic a region has ever seen. I owe more thanks to Virginia Woolf
than I will ever be able to give. Not that I don't owe a great amount of thanks to Esquivel
and the others, but Woolf validated my insane imaginings and inspired me to believe in
them. She also validated my use of magical realism to convey my ideas. The struggle
women have faced to become accepted members of the writing community is intensified
in a very positive manner in Orlando, and I hope that a similar intensification of the
spiritual turmoil of this world has taken place in my collection. As I said earlier, these
stories are all too real to me, but several individuals in this world ignore the struggles
these stories evince. With the addition of absolutely unbelievable, hyperbolized plots and
character transformations, these situations become harder to explain away, which is the
major strength and purpose behind the genre of magical realism.
I have enjoyed writing And the Rocks Screamed immensely; I am immensely
enjoying being done, as well. It's difficult to write a humorous representation of serious
situations and themes without becoming frustrated with one's audience. I got tired at
times of my friends laughing at a rabid dog tearing Scout's family members apart. I
really got tired of people telling me how funny Satan was when he tried to take over the
Kinneygarden and so many souls. While all of these stories contain humorous lines, their
situations just aren't funny.
So in the end, what I am proud of most in this collection are the very real truths it
evinces, not the jokes I made along the way. That isn't to say that the writing wasn't fun;
I laughed so hard I stopped breathing when I wrote the description of Mabel in "The
Religion Bug." But I've never been more proud of my writing than when Scout
recognizes the beauty of humanity at the end of "Soul Train," or when Uncle Jason stops
in a storm literally raining cats and dogs to plead for a small dog's life. These are my
special moments in the collection, the ones I remember above all others. And perhaps I
remember them best because they were so vivid in my dreams, dreams so full of violent
moments that the rare pauses of humanity in them were blessings to me.
My dreams, especially the ones which became And the Rocks Screamed, have
dramatically changed my life. They've taught me how important dreams are, how
important sharing our dreams with one another has become in our modern world, which
ignores everything fantastic, especially if it is also mundane, and it reminds me of a
communion meditation a very dear brother in Christ offered up some years ago. This
brother. Heavy, supported himself by collecting money for some of the larger drug
dealers in Texas. He has shot more people than I've loved well, he cannot read as well as
my five year old, and he has died to himself because of the dream he shared in that same
communion meditation. I would like to close my introduction to And the Rocks
Screamed by quoting what Heavy said that day (as best as I can remember it), and by
exhorting anyone in the world who's dreaming dreams to share them with as many
people as possible—and soon. Here is what Heavy said:
I had a dream the other night, and God told me to get the word out for
him. 'Lord,' I said, 'I ain't got no idea what you want me to say.' 'Just
open your mouth, Heavy, and I'll get the words out for you,' He said. 'All
you got to do is open your mouth.' Now, with all the bad things I done in
life, I ain't never figured on being the mouth of God, but that the great
thing about God, see. He take all our bad and do good with it. He make it
so it ain't bad no more.
CHAPTER n
DOGMA
Dogma
The Christmas reunion where Uncle Jason's mastiff ate my baby cousin was the
worst.
It were Buck's fault. He left the back door wide open, and the dog run in and
swallowed little Katy whole. The men discussed who would go shoot the dog, but they
got sidetracked and started in talking about how bad the yard looked, and they decided to
weed the flowerbeds and carry off the old hot water heater rusting by the garage.
"That'll cheer the women folk up," Uncle Bob said. "Look how sad they is." He
frowned as he watched Granny and the aunts and cousins weeping over the empty infant
car seat.
"Uncle Bob." I tugged on his red-checkered sleeve and put my little feet up on his
work boots. "Maybe we oughta do something about the dog."
"Hell, Scout, that old dog don't mean no harm. Jason'll tie him to the tree so he
can't come up in here no more, but I think we done had enough death around this place
for one day. Just let it lie, son."
"Buck let him in . . . " I said, but Uncle Bob had already taken off through the
back door.
Buck kicked me in the shins. "Stupid tattier. What'd you go and do that for?
Nobody's mad no more." He pointed in the living room, where the women were all
crooning over Aunt Tillie's new baby, Saul, saying how they weren't gonna let nothing
happen to this littie angel.
8
For the most part, nothing ever did happen to Saiil. He grew quick—I guess from
all the extra mothering he got from the aunts and cousins and Granny—so that after the
Christmas reunion, Saul was four years old by Easter. He was a strong little boy; he could
mn as fast as he grew, and even though he was only four, he was almost as tall as me and
Buck, who were more than two whole years older than he was.
Saul got a puppy for Easter that year. Him being four, his parents thought he was
ready for the responsibihty, and they was right. All day long before coming to Granny's
for the Easter feast, Saul fed that dog and scooped its poop. He taught it to leave off
digging in flowerbeds and such. He spent every waking moment of Easter with that dog,
loving it like Timmy loved Lassie. And boy, was he mad when Uncle Jason's mastiff
chewed its stomach out.
It was the strangest thing to see. There were all these puppies and kittens what
was given as Easter presents to one cousin or another. And as the families showed up for
Easter lunch at Granny's, they tossed the kitties and pups into the back yard. The whole
time. Uncle Jason's mastiff was a'waiting by the door to catch them in his mouth and
chew them up. There'd be a long, fluffy tail here, a marmaduke ear there, and fur—lots of
fur—everywhere. All that bloody fur went to drying to the ground, turning brown in the
hot sun, smelling like tuna fish right where we were supposed to have our Easter egg hunt
after lunch. And with that mess out there, the aunts and uncles kept tossing more baby
animals in the backyard to get chewed up.
Some of the cousins complained a little, but Uncle Bob shooed them into the front
yard. "You kids are so picky," he said. "Uncle Jason's mastiff is just a'playing with those
critters. He needs some Easter frolicking, too. And so what if'n he eats a few? He gots to
eat something."
"That's right," Aunt Tillie said as she went to throw Saul's new pup out there.
He screamed and screamed. "Can't you see those dead animals out there? Uncle
Jason's dog ate 'em, and he's gonna eat my new puppy, too! Please don't throw him out
there." He grabbed her dress and sat on Granny's dining room floor, trying to keep his
mamma from reaching the back door. When she'd drug him through the whole dining
room, he spread his legs like a cheerleader jumping in the air and propped one foot up on
each side of the kitchen door frame.
"No, Mamma! Please don't put my puppy out there."
Aunt Tillie kicked a littie, knocking one of Saul's legs off the frame. "Don't
worry, Saul. Nothing's gonna happen to your littie pup. That old dog's done eaten so
many, he clearly ain't got room for more."
Tillie tossed the pup out the back door and scuttled off to the living room. Saul sat
right by the back door, his face glued to the metal screen, weeping and moaning as Uncle
Jason's dog chewed his littie puppy's midsection to bits. "I told her please." Saul looked
up at me, his big blue eyes striped with red lines and puffed from mourning his dog.
10
I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out a mini Hershey bar. "Buck and I found
the Easter candy stashed in Uncle Bob's car trunk. We ate a bunch right then, but I saved
this one for later. It ain't much, but you can have h."
Saul ceased his crying and took the candy from my hand. "Thanks, Scout." He
opened the back door a crack and threw the chocolate bar at Uncle Jason's dog.
"What'd you go and do that for?"
"Mamma said chocolate's poisonous to dogs."
"Well, yeah, dummy, but you gotta give them a whole bunch for h to work."
"How much is left in Uncle Bob's car?"
"None now. He come and got it when he caught me and Buck eating it. He took it
off to put it in plastic eggs for the hunt."
"Oh." Saul turned back toward the door, watching Uncle Jason's dog try to hack
up the foil wrapper from my candy bar.
None of the grownups seemed very interested in carting away the carnage from
Granny's back yard after Easter lunch. They agreed to hand the candy over in equal
amounts to each of us, and none of us complained after Uncle Bob said, "And if'n you
don't like it, you can clean up the yard yourselves. Those pets was y'all's responsibility,
anyhow."
We took our candy quietly and went out the front yard to eat it. Some of the older
girls hid their eggs for the baby cousins to find. Buck and Saul and I sat on the porch to
eat ours.
"Is this enough chocolate to kill a dog. Scout?"
"I doubt it, Saul. Maybe if you put mine and Buck's in with yours, but we ain't
gonna get no more until Halloween, and I don't wanna waste mine on no dog. How about
you. Buck?"
"Oh." Saul nibbled on his candy.
"Hell!" Buck kicked a loose piece of the porch cement into the flowerbed below.
"I don't see why they let Uncle Jason's dog hang around after all it's done. I mean, that
dog has eaten more Christmas turkeys than we have, and it's always trying to snatch
someone's baby. Look at them dead pups and kitties in the back yard."
"Yeah," I popped a handful of peanut McfeM's into my mouth. "I remember when
it ate Katy. Everyone was up in arms at first, and Uncle Bob said the men should draw
straws for who would kill it, but then they got on about the hot water heater and who'd
get to keep the deposit money from the recyclers."
"Yep. Uncle Bob said it was his truck, it was his bucks." Buck pried another piece
of cement off the porch and tossed it down the walkway. "Somebody should have killed
that dog. Then we could've had our Easter hunt."
"And my puppy would still be alive." Saul was sitting against the house, his knees
drawn up to his chest. "I hate Uncle Jason's mastiff."
"Yep." I popped another handful of Mc&M's into my mouth. Most of the boy
cousins started taking a daily swim in the fishing pond down the way, while the girls
12
went about the yard picking flowers and playing love games with their Barbies. All of
Granny's Easter lilies withered up to the sounds of daily splashing, and the front yard
became an itchy field of early summer daffodils. Saul and Buck got up in May; they
were tired of waiting on me to go fishing with them, but I wanted to stay on the porch for
a bit and watch over things while I ate my Easter horde.
I had a heap on my mind, like what bonehead invented Barbies, anyhow, and why
Saul kept growing so dern quick. He grew like one of Aunt Lynell's casseroles. On
Monday, it was macaroni and cheese. By Tuesday it growed into a mess of chilli mac,
and by Wednesday it maked itself into southwestern surprise. If she ever give it till
Friday, it growed into a moldy science project, and Uncle Steve made her throw it out.
Young Saul grew like that all summer. By June he started giving Buck piggyback
rides to the fishing pond instead of the other way around. On Buck's birthday, Saul
carried him down there and tossed him in as his present.
Saul got his driver's license on the third of July, having reached the legal age in
time for the big holiday. To celebrate, he drove us out to the fireworks stand where the
three of us got as many Black Cats and M-60's as we had money for. We shot them off
the whole day long until Saul's mamma sent Saul's daddy and Uncle Bob to beat us or
shut us up or both. They told Saul to drive us over to the fallow field on Uncle Steve's
place and let us go nuts out there.
13
We piled into the front seat of Saul's old Impala and took off for the field. Buck
kept the cigarette lighter hot for me, and I lit Black Cats all the way, throwing them as far
across the ditch as I could as Saul drove the rusted, two-tone Impala.
There were several blown-up firecrackers and jumping jacks out on Uncle Steve's
field already. Someone had shot off a bunch of roman candles and bottie rockets, too, and
left the shells behind. Saul picked the big stuff up while Buck and I lit our M-60's. He
made a big pile out of the roman candles, sort of like a campfire, and then he put Black
Cats and M-60's all over it. He broke his plastic cigarette lighter and poured the fluid
over the whole thing, stepped back, and threw a lit Black Cat into the heaping mess,
exploding the pile in a giant hullabaloo.
"That was cool." I sat down near the rubble, sniffing the bumed-up gunpowder on
the breeze.
"It was all right." Saul smiled and sat next to me, pulling me into his lap. He
pinned me under one of his legs and held my arms with one hand while he tickled me all
over.
"Put me down, you turd!"
Buck jumped on Saul's back and started to tickle him. We rolled around,
wrestiing each other until we fell on our backs laughing.
"Saul?" I asked.
"Yep?"
"Do you remember when Buck used to give you piggyback rides?"
14
"Yep."
"Do you remember in May, when you was my age?"
"Yep."
"Do you remember Easter, when you was younger than us?
"Not a day goes by I don't remember Easter, Scout. I ain't never, not as long as I
live, gonna forget Easter."
"Me, neither. You was just a littie thing back then, and now you're big as
Superman."
Buck said, "It's like God's been raining Miracle Grow down from Heaven, right
on top of your head." Buck rolled over onto his belly and looked over at Saul. "You
gonna take Scout and me to the town fireworks show tonight?"
"No. Uncle Bob's taking y'all."
Buck whined and hit the ground with his fist. "How come not you?"
"I got a date."
"Woo woo!" I poked Saul in the side. "Who with?"
"Betty Simms."
"Yep."
"I can remember when she come over with Kelly Jo last winter and would rock
you to sleep. I think she changed your poopie diapers once."
15
"Shut up, turdwad." Saul jumped on me and pounded my chest with his middle
knuckle. "She ain't never seen me in my diapers."
"How would you know?" I kicked him in the butt until he got off me. "You was
just a baby then."
"Well, I don't wanna hear no more about it. Come on." Saul hauled us both off
the ground and drove us home.
Saul was a little younger than Betty Simms, which none of the aunts liked at all,
but those love birds dated for the rest of the summer, and by the middle of August, Saul
was older than Betty anyway, so the aunts quit complaining.
In September, Betty's mamma said they could get married if they wanted and
come work a plot of land on their farm. Betty and Saul set a date in mid-October, to have
time for the planning, and they also figured Saul'd have long enough to turn twenty-five
by mid-October and be able to rent a nice car for their honeymoon.
As the wedding approached, all of our relatives began to show up at Granny's
house to help out. The men were sent outside to haul off any unseemly debris from the
yard, and the aunts stuffed themselves into Granny's kitchen to start cooking. They put
up jellies and canned green beans first, then they baked some briskets with barbecue
sauce. Of course they baked a mess of yeast rolls and fixed up several bowls of potato
salad and rancho beans, not to mention all the pies and Jell-0 salads. The girl cousins
were put in charge of babysitting during the baking marathon, and Buck and I was made
responsible for the church folding chairs for the reception. We had to take them out of
16
Uncle Jason's pickup and carry them into Granny's living room, putting them wherever
there was room between couches and chairs and bookshelves.
The living room looked awful by the time Buck and I had crammed the folding
chairs into it, like nothing ever seen in one of the home decor magazines in the hidden
cabinet of Granny's coffee table. The whole house looked crammed in on itself, with no
more room for anj^thing else, least wise, not a gang of people.
The night before the wedding, the bakery delivered a giant, eight-layer chocolate
cake with littie figures of Saul and Betty on top. Granny got her lace tablecloth out and
laid it on the kitchen table. She put the big old cake in the middle and some little spoons
and plates around it with stacks of cloth napkins here and there. Then she told us kids to
cut out for the night so we wouldn't put our fingers in that cake.
The aunts took us to church the next morning and got us dressed up for what they
kept calling "the big day." The boys had suits with socks and ties, and the girls wore
pantyhose and hair bows.
"My mamma just gave cousin Evie and cousin Jane baskets full of roses, and she
told them they could throw them all over the floor as they walked up to the preacher."
Buck stomped his foot and scratched where the Sears tag of his shirt was rubbing the
back of his neck. "Why don't we get to throw nothing?"
"Yeah," I said. "Throwing things ain't for girls, no how. They should've made the
girls light all those candles, and we could throw the flowers. They can't throw far enough
to hit nobody with 'em."
17
"Yeah. This whole thing don't make no sense." Buck plopped down in a pew and
punched at the cushion. "First we gotta put on these suits, like it matters what we're
wearing, and then we gotta watch the girls throwing junk about, while we do sissy stuff."
"At least we're finally getting to light a fire at church without getting beat for it."
"Yep. It'd be nice if Saul was doing it with us, though, like on the Fourth of July."
"I know," I said. "He don't care no more about fishing and lighting fires. He used
to like the things we like, but now all he likes is playing with Betty and doing grown-up
stuff."
Buck's mamma came and got us then, and made us go light the altar candles.
After that we had to sit down in the first pew next to Saul's parents. Through the whole
wedding, the women plumb balled and leaned close to the men, who looked worse off
from the wedding sermon than they ever did from normal church.
After the preacher ended the service, we loaded into each other's pickups and
RV's and went to Granny's house for the reception. Betty and Saul stood at one end of
the living room while everybody else walked by and shook their hands. Then Aunt Tillie
said it was time to throw the bouquet. All the women headed for the back yard, where
there was room to fight over the flowers.
"No," Saul said. "I don't want them going out there with Uncle Jason's mastiff."
"Calm down, hon." Aunt Tillie put her hand on Saul's chest. "Uncle Jason went
out this morning and tied him to the tree."
"I still don't like it. That dog will break free and . . ."
18
From the yard everyone heard five bridesmaids screaming out blood. Saul and
Uncle Bob and everybody else ran to the back door. There were the bridesmaids, big
spots of blood splattered on their dresses, and Uncle Jason's mastiff, a tattered line of
rope hanging from his neck, a piece of wedding dress hanging from his mouth.
"He ate all of her," one of the bridesmaids whimpered.
Saul screamed, and the veins in his neck and forehead popped out. He grabbed the
dog by its collar and shook it all about. "Spit her out! Spit her out!"
The dog's jaw wouldn't budge.
"Well, if you're hungry, we'll feed ya," he yowled. Saul ran into the kitchen and
took the chocolate wedding cake into the backyard. He chased down Uncle Jason's dog
and forced it on the ground. He took handfuls of the cake and stuffed them into the dog's
mouth, one after another, until the entire cake was gone. Saul staggered away, muttering
curses through his tears.
Uncle Jason's mastiff fell down, dead.
"What'd you go and do that for?" Uncle Bob grabbed Saul by the lapels of his
tuxedo. "That dog never done you no harm. It may have done some wrong in the past,
like eating Katy, but it were a dog. It didn't know no better."
"Didn't know no better? Didn't do no harm?" Saul stared back at Uncle Bob. He
took Uncle Bob's hands and pulled them off his lapels. He looked over at me and Buck,
and then he tumed and walked out through the back gate. I couldn't see around the
bridesmaids to tell whether he looked back or not.
19
"Fine." Uncle Bob spit and wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve. "Let him go. He
never was no good, no how. Always growing so fast his mamma and daddy couldn't keep
clothes on him, always changing so quick you couldn't keep up. Let him go. Crazy dog
killer."
Uncle Bob carted us into the house, pushing the soiled bridesmaids in the
direction of the bathroom. He took me and Buck off to one side to gave us a talking to.
"Now, don't you go upsetting the women with more talk about this. They went to
a lot of trouble making that fine heap of food, and Granny even set out her cloth napkins.
So, we're gonna enjoy this here day together, and eat a good meal as a family. No more
talk about it, ya hear?"
"We hear."
Nobody in the family talked about Saul after that. Granny and the aunts cleaned
up the reception, and Betty's parents paid the coroner to cut her out of Uncle Jason's dog
and wash that chocolate cake out of her hair, so she could have a decent funeral. They
felt terrible for cutting up Uncle Jason's mastiff on Betty's account, so they got him a
new one to keep in Granny's still rotten fish smelling back yard. It's not been as ill-
mannered as the first one. Least ways, it ain't eaten any babies or brides as of yet, but I'm
keeping a close eye on that littie dog, and Buck and I are saving up chocolate, just in
case.
20
The Religion Bug
Cousin Kelly Jo took it real hard when Uncle Jason's mastiff ate her best friend.
Uncle Steve felt real poorly for her, too. "That dog done caused a raucous, but it
weren't right of Cousin Saul to go busting up the nuptial festivities by killing the poor
thing."
"Yep," Granny agreed. "Us women folk put on a nice spread, and not a one of the
family felt much up to eating with that dog laying dead in the yard."
"Granny?" I tugged on Granny's dress. "KeUy Jo gone be alright again, ain't
she?"
Granny smiled down at me. "Oh, sure. Scout. It's just that all her tragedy coming
at one time done got her riled up."
Just a few days before the wedding, Kelly Jo had dumped her second husband—
the one what smelled like the floor under Aunt Lynell's fridge—and then poor Betty got
swallered, and the two big events coming so close together left her wide open for a bite
from what Granny called the religion bug.
Kelly Jo and me started driving into town in Uncle Steve's msted blue Impala
every Sunday after the big events to attend services at the New Holy Ghost Temple of
Evangelical Ecumenical Brotherly Communal Love in Christ Jesus, where every
denomination of believers could come together to practice religion in unity. And they
practiced that unity well. Every one of the Baptists was united. Every one of the
Pentacostals was united. Even the First United Methodists and Southern Methodists was
22
real united. When the Pentacostals went to speaking in tongues, the Baptists thought they
was possessed by Satan and tried to deliver them of evil spirits. When the
Nondenominationals went dancing about in the aisles, all the Church of Christ folks was
powerful affected and had to leave afore they was damned to hell for accepting false
doctrines. And when the Catholics brung in their Virgin Mary, ain't a non-Catholic in
the place been pleased.
To make the believers more united, the church elders separated the denominations
up into their own sections, where they was all allowed to practice religion they own way
without ununiting everybody else. And the elders put in a separate giving basket for each
section, so there'd be no cross-denominational mixing of funds.
The Temple's fellowship meals was real doozies, too. Each denomination brung
heaps of food—fried chicken, mashed taters, rancho beans, devil eggs, Jell-O salad, and
just about every kind of sundry desert a body likes. But all them different denominations
was full opposed to sharing their vitals one to another. If'n a Baptist tried to eat off the
Adventist table, there was like to be a holy war fought with forks and spoons over the
issue. I made friendly with the Baptists on account of them having the best taters and
gravy, but poor Kelly Jo thunk it wrong to choose one group over the other, and so none
of the groups looked highly on her eating their food horde without being a bonafide
member of they kind.
All the brotherhood wanted Kelly Jo to make up her mind, and they all wanted her
to pick them over the other denominations, her being so pretty and young, and yet
23
growed up beyond her years on account of her multiple divorces. She made friends with
Norville Rogers, the youth pastor for the Baptists, who'd once served as part of a top-
notch traveling detective agency, until he found religion, and Kelly Jo got in well with
the Temple's financier, a Pentacostal known as Miss Mabel.
Old Mabel were a fat heap of woman. She had two eyes, but neither one of them
were ever looking the same way at once, like one of the them weren't her own and it
were still rolling about, looking for where it rightiy belonged. She were one hairy cuss,
too, except for the top of her head, and she were full bald there. Kelly Jo figured them
hairs on Mabel's head must have growed down instead of up, choking up her brain and
turning her powerful mean. Then they come out her chin and made her powerful ugly.
My Mamma always said that's what Leah from the Bible looked like. They say she had
weak eyes, but Mamma said that were just a nice way of saying it made a body feel weak
in the eyes to look at her.
Old Mabel took Kelly Jo under wing and even hired her as her personal assistant
at the Temple. She trained Kelly Jo in the ways of Temple finance, which Kelly Jo took
to most natural. On Sundays, after all the worshipers left the sanctuary for their weekly
Temple-wide fellowship meal, Kelly would collect all the offering plates and carry them
up to old Mabel's office, where she and Mabel would mix the cash horde from all the
plates together on Mabel's desk for counting. The Baptists often took to pranking the
Church of Christ's plate, throwing spoonfuls of baked beans in with the money, and part
of cousin KeUy Jo's job were to clean up such shenanigans. Minus beans, all the
24
offerings would then go into the Temple's account, to which only Mabel herself had
access. She alone decided which programs received funding and which pastors got paid,
and she mled harshly, training her floating eye on any and every body what wanted
money from the fund.
Mabel also kept that eye trained on young Kelly Jo; she often had Cousin Kelly
sit in her chair and count the money herself, while old Mabel stood in the comer, looking
on, smoking a fat man-cigar, smiling and moaning to herself like she was eating a
hamburger buffet. The old financier jealously guarded young Kelly Jo's time, keeping
her from volunteering on any other church committee or with any other employee. And
her scheming worked well until Norville Rogers got serious.
Norville come home with me and Kelly Jo one month to the day after she started
work in Mabel's office. He said that in spite of Kelly Jo's multiple divorces and other
unsundry life experiences, she qualified as a bonafide member of his youth group, her
only being eighteen, and he needed to know her better if he were gonna minister properly
to her needs. So Kelly Jo bmng Norville back to Granny's house for Sunday lunch to
acquaint him with herself and her kin.
Granny put on a spread for Pastor Norville like it were Christmas dinner. She
baked the spring pig in canned pineapple and brown sugar, mixed with some of dead
Pappy's hooch, and she brought up some of her whole canned green beans from the cellar
to bake with whipped butter cream and mushrooms. There was a whole mess of rolls and
five pies for desert: pecan, apple, caramel apple, pumpkin, and lemon meringue. And it
25
were a good thing that Granny done made so much food, cause that young pastor put a
heap away. Me and poor Buck didn't even get none of it. We had to mn down to Uncle
Steve's house and eat the nasty funk what Aunt Lynell had planned for her table.
When we come back to Granny's, she said that pastor done eat everything. "He
stacked all that food between two slices of bread and shoved the whole mess down his
throat in one bite—didn't even chew or nothing."
"I hope he choked." Buck kicked the side of Granny's table.
Granny pulled his ear hard and swatted his butt. "Don't you curse the pastor, you
littie bastard! Get the hell home fore God strikes you dead in my dining room where you
stand!"
Buck mn to the front door and hollered back, "I wouldn't be no worse off, if'n He
did. You made me eat at Aunt LyneU's, Granny. Hell cain't be no worse than that
woman's food!"
"You just get on home," Granny hollered after him. She plopped into her chair at
the head of the dining table and laughed in that shut-mouth kind of way grownups do.
"What'd Lynell feed y'all. Scout?"
"She made us eat broccoli Jell-0 again."
"With the peas in it?"
"Yep. And it weren't even fresh, h were leftover broccoli Jell-0."
"How that girl ever come out of my house cooking like that I'll never know."
Granny wiped her forehead with her dress sleeve and went back to the kitchen. "Well,
26
I'll bake y'all another pie. While it's a'cooking, you can make the trip into town with
Kelly Jo to take Pastor to his car."
I mn out the house to catch Buck with the news of the pie, but Kelly Jo was just
up for leaving, so I headed out with her and cut Buck back for later.
We drove Norville to the New Holy Ghost Temple of Evangelical Ecumenical
Brotherly Communal Love in Christ Jesus' parking lot to get his van, and when Kelly Jo
pulled the Impala up in the slot next to Norville's, he leaned over and smooched her dead
on the mouth.
"If you cook half as good as your Granny, I've half a mind to make an honest
woman of you, Kelly Jo."
"I been a honest woman twice already, Norville, and I ain't had much success at
it. My first husband were way too friendly with all of my cousins, and my second
husband turned out to be a distant cousin. I think I had enough of being an honest
woman."
Norville's crazy dog jumped up in Kelly Jo's face just then, looking just too much
like Uncle Jason's dead mastiff, and sent her off into a screaming fit that high near broke
the Impala's windows out. Norville got the big, brown dog and put him back in his van,
and Kelly Jo pulled me out the car, away from the rigmarole.
"I want to see if Miss Mabel needs any help in her office." Kelly Jo dragged me
up the Temple's steps, my feet swinging as we went.
27
We went up the stairs to Mabel's office, where she were standing quiet-like,
staring out into her atrium. Old Mabel had funded a program years ago to build an
upstairs atrium right next to her office where she could walk out over the roof of the
Temple and smell the roses and the trees. She were staring out the wide big doors, the
fanciest glass bam doors I'd ever seen, and she had her arms crossed over her saggy
chest, each of her hands clasping a handful of excess underarm baggage.
"Miss Mabel, I come up to see if you needed anything." Kelly Jo motioned for
me to go sit on an old velvet sofa resting on the linoleum floor at the side of the room.
Kelly Jo went to stand by Mabel. She put a hand on Mabel's arm, but the old financier
pushed it off.
"What I need is for you to stay away from riffraff. I saw you kiss that boy, Kelly
Jo, that Baptist boy."
"Oh, Miss Mabel, he kissed me. Like I said . . . " Kelly Jo placed a kind,
daughterly hand on Mabel's flabby back. "Like I said. Miss Mabel, I done had my fill of
men. They all stink or drink or both, and I don't want no more of neither. I just want to
find what's tme."
Mabel stared out over her atrium. A storm were moving in from the North, and
black clouds fluttered quickly about in the wind, like all the empty Wal-mart bags in
Uncle Steve's fallow field. They shifted positions faster than Old Mabel's eye.
"This storm will be a doozy." Mabel patted Kelly Jo's arm.
28
"Yep. But it's still a ways off. We might could step out into the atrium for a bit
before it comes upon us."
Mabel agreed, and Kelly Jo called me off the couch to step into the atrium. She
held Mabel's hand on one side and mine on the other. We all stood there holding hands,
watching the clouds come in. Small drops of rain come fairly soon, and a wind colder
than Uncle Jason's new swamp cooler pushed them into our faces.
"Maybe we should go back in." Kelly Jo tugged at Mabel's hand.
"No, you go on in, hon. I'm going to enjoy the rain for a spell." She ran her hand
up and down Kelly Jo's arm. "I almost feel I could have the desires of my heart right
now, out here in my atrium."
Kelly Jo went a step back from Mabel's cmsty touch. Kelly Jo's first husband
always made her itchy with his fancy talk of desires. "I better take the boy in. His
Granny'11 kill me if I get him sick."
Kelly Jo turned and pulled me toward the door. We stepped into the office and
turned around to shut them bam doors what Kelly Jo called "French" when the first of the
hail hit the roof, sounding like one thousand cherry pits being spit at the side of Uncle
Jason's tin trailer all at once. Kelly Jo hollered for Mabel to come on in from the rain,
but that mean old crow danced about, celebrating as the chunks of ice bashed her head.
The hail stmck old Mabel right on the pointy backside of her head, parting the
only hair she had and the scalp what held it all in one shot. But instead of blood, short
shocks of silver locks shot out through the wound. As those shocks come through the
29
skin on Mabel's head, big chunks of flesh from all over Miss Mabel come peeling off and
falling to the atrium's floor. The hail was knocking old Mabel right off of herself. She
lost her second chin, her flabby underarms, the corns off her toes. All the nasty, flabby
chunks of Mabel come washing off in the storm, until all that were left of old Miss Mabel
were a naked man.
Other than the lingering hunks of old Mabel, which still hung to his feet and hind
parts, he weren't near so hard to look at as before. The new Mr. Mabel sloughed off the
rest of old Mabel and stretched his naked body against the mighty storm.
"Baptized!" he yelled. "Baptized a new creation!" He mn in from the rain and
grabbed Kelly Jo round the waist.
She pushed him off and scampered behind his desk. "Get off from me, you dirty
old man, get off!
Old new Mabel mn around the desk, trying to catch hold of Kelly Jo, and as he
mn, his wet feet slipped on the green linoleum. His hand come down on a silver letter
nail what punched clean through his wrist and shot a mess of blood out everywhere.
"Oh, my God!" Kelly Jo grabbed the phone, and then Mabel grabbed her.
He took the phone and hung it on the cradle. "I'm fine, honey. I just want to
spend some time with you."
I saw the grimy look in that naked old man's eyes, and I kicked him square in his
bare balls. Kelly Jo and I mn out the door while he lay on the floor in his first cmmple,
bleeding all over the floor and feeling that sick pain come up in his gut.
30
Kelly Jo mn down the stairs, pulling me behind her, and crossed the giant
sanctuary, mnning to the main foyer where the elders were meeting to discuss the
constmction of the Temple's own golf course.
The elders all looked up at us when we mn in; we was full covered in Mr.
Mabel's man blood, and shook up something terrible. No sooner had we caught our
breath, than Mr. Mabel hisself come strolling into the foyer, still as naked as he could be.
"Well, hello, Mabel. How are things going upstairs?" Elder Bob reached a hand
out for Mabel to shake. Mabel's blood pumped up and down with the shake, spurting out
all over that elder's Sunday suit.
"Swell, Bob, swell. The golf course funds have all been raised, so things should
work out fine."
"Excellent." Elder Stan smiled like Uncle Steve when Aunt Lynell asks if he
wants to eat at Granny's for dinner instead of at home.
"Our only problem," Mabel grabbed Kelly Jo's hand, "is how I'm going to get
this littie lady to make an honest man of me." More blood spooged out on Kelly Jo's
dress and shoes.
All the elders laughed and slapped their knees. "Why, Mabel, you old dog! Just
like you to go chasing after some young thing. Well good luck to you both."
Kelly Jo threw off Mabel's hand and popped elder Bob in the shoulder with the
back of her hand. "Don't you see the gapping wound in Mabel's wrist? Shouldn't
someone call 911? Mabel needs help."
31
All the elders laughed again as blood shot like fountain water out of Mabel's
wrist, splattering the wall and chairs and floor of the foyer. They laughed and laughed,
and Mabel laughed, too. Until he fell down dead on the floor. The elders kept on
laughing, and all of a sudden, as I watched them whooping it up in the foyer of that
church, ain't none of them had no clothes on at all. They was every one of them naked as
dead Mabel, laughing and shaking and leering at Kelly Jo.
"Each and every one of y'all's just a dirty old man," I yelled. I smacked the
nearest elder in the ribs. "Y'all been trying to get whatever you can out of Kelly Jo since
we come up in this place. Norville got food, Mabel got help in the office and almost
something more, and all y'all just waiting in line for your chance, too. Well, you ain't
getting your chance now!" I pushed Kelly Jo to the door, and we went for the Impala as
fast as our legs would go.
Norville, still corralling that mangy mutt of his in the parking lot, stopped us at
the car and tried to plant another kiss on Kelly Jo. She popped him good in the ribs with
her elbow and cussed him up one side the parking lot and down the other.
"How dare you speak to me in the Temple parking lot like that! This is holy
ground!"
"Holy as shit! You people are all nuts. Here I am, plumb drenched in dead
Mabel's blood, and you're trying to get romantic. I'm close to dying in there, and all you
want to do is get a littie loving off of me. Well, screw all of y'all!" Kelly Jo opened the
32
car door and pushed me through to the passenger's side. She sat down and held me still
so I'd quit sliding about in Mabel's blood long enough to strap in.
"I'm sorry you feel this way, Kelly Jo. We'd all love for you to stay at the
Temple, where we can minister to you. We really care about you."
"You don't."
"We do."
"You don't, or you would have never done none of this to me." With that, Kelly
Jo pulled away from Norville Rogers and the New Holy Ghost Temple of Evangelical
Ecumenical Brotherly Communal Love in Christ Jesus and headed back out to Granny's.
"Granny's ain't where I need to be. Scout, but it's heads and shoulders above the Temple.
At least at Granny's I can get some food."
"Yeah. They put on a spread real regular, makes Granny's lunches look like
snacks, but between Norville's eating all the food and Mabel's working you to the bone,
ain't neither of us got fed once up in that place."
Kelly Jo nodded her head. "I got a lot of nothing at the Temple, and I'm full up
of that."
"How you get full of nothing?"
"Well, at the temple, they got a way of shoving it in, so it pushes everything good
out, and I'm fed up of it."
"So you been cured of your religion bug?"
"Oh, hell yeah. They done vaccinated me."
33
Kelly Jo come to Granny's that night and helped me and Buck eat our pie.
Granny told her how Buck cussed the Pastor right in the house, and Kelly Jo told us, at
least where she was concerned, we could both cuss the Pastor all we wanted—and
anyone else from the New Holy Ghost Temple of Evangelical Ecumenical Brotherly
Communal Love in Christ Jesus. And we took her up on it, least ways, so long as Granny
weren't near enough to get hold of our ears.
f
34
Opening Tombs
The week after Uncle Jason's mastiff ate Betty Simms at her wedding reception
and then died of chocolate bridal cake poisoning, Betty's parents come and give Uncle
Jason a new dog. Betty's folks felt plumb awful about the dog's dying on their daughter's
account, so they got Uncle Jason a new mastiff from a discount pet peddler, and Uncle
Jason called it Tombs. Tombs was white, which ain't quite natural for a Mastiff, and he
smelled like an Easter egg what don't get found until July, which ain't natural for any
dog. From the day Betty's ma and pa bmng that dog to Granny's farm, it weren't right.
For one thing, it rarely went about. It laid under Granny's pecan tree from sun up to sun
down, and if'n it needed to poop at any time, it lazy-like rolled over to the same spot
behind the pecan tree and added a load to its little pile. It would only eat if Uncle Jason
plunked its head right into a bowl of food, and even then it were the food moving itself
into the dog's mouth instead of the dog eating bites on purpose.
Granny never took to Uncle Jason's new dog. "I ain't never had a critter on my
place what smelled so rank," Granny said one day while she and Uncle Jason carted in
groceries from the store. Granny sat her bags down and slumped into a chair, mbbing her
knees like they was babies' heads.
"Tombs ain't ask to be born stinky. Ma. It ain't his fault." Uncle Jason slammed
two brown bags down on the old, white dining table.
36
"h ain't his fault, but h sure as hell is his problem." Granny rooted through the
sacks and pulled out a huge can of Lysol. She went through the kitchen to the back yard
and soaked Uncle Jason's dog with a blanket of spray.
"Damn it, Ma! That stuff'U kill him." Uncle Jason grabbed the Lysol out of
Granny's hand.
"That dog is half dead already. You might as well take him out and bury him now.
Nothing with a stink like that can live long. Tombs is rotting from the inside out."
Uncle Jason put his hand on Granny's shoulder and looked her hard in the eye. "I
ain't one to give up on defenseless critters, Ma, and you know it."
"Suit yourself." Granny tumed back to the kitchen and made for the soiled dishes
in the sink. "No good son of a bitch never paid no mind to nobody else, no how."
Uncle Jason and Granny got into it over that dog every day for the next full year.
The pup never grew at all, never changed, and neither did the two of them, always
fussing and hollering at each other about Tombs.
About that time I started dreaming nights about the camp in Colorado where dead
Pappy used to take us after harvest were over. Mayhaps it were all Granny and Uncle
Jason's fighting what made me miss my Pappy, or mayhaps it were just Pappy missing
me, but I were thankful of the dreams, whatever the reason was for them coming to me.
In all the dreams they was a fine stream there full of all sundry kinds of fishes, not like
the pike on Granny's farm at all. Ain't one of the fish in my dream-stream had them
nasty fish teeth. Me and Pappy was catching three of four good fish a night, frying them
37
up with taters and onions in Granny's cast iron skillet and eating the whole mess right on
the bank of the stream. Then the dreams would go fishy, and me and Pappy would go
flying through the mountains of Colorado like two undipped geese, soaring up into the
clouds until Granny made me wake up and toss new gravel into the chicken coops.
While I was chucking gravel at the hens, a state officer for forcing kids into
school come and made his way into the farmhouse. I took my time tossing more gravel
in than them chickens needed until the feller come out again and left, and when I made it
back to the house. Granny was tearing into Uncle Jason again.
"Tombs got to go, son. He's stinking the whole farm up with his rot. Did you see
how that copper what come for young Scout looked at us? Like we was a'making that
powerful stink. Now, you deal with that there pup, or so help me, I will." Granny
teetered off on her ancient, unbending knees and slammed the door to her bedroom.
"Don't you lay not one hand on that dog. Ma!" Uncle Jason popped the top of the
dining table with his fist, and all the unpacked groceries rattled in their bags.
"I don't think she heard you. Uncle Jason," I said, pulling on his shirtsleeve.
"Granny's good ear don't work no more, and she done slammed the door before you
hollered at her."
Uncle Jason wiped his nose on his sleeve. "She heard me, all right. Scout. She just
weren't listening." He tore out the house, stomping with all the agitation of Godzilla
himself.
38
I got my sixty-four pack of crayons and my Spiderman color book and sat under
the table to wait things out. The short band weatherman gave portend of a mighty storm
blowing in from the North, and if'n the rheumatoid in Granny's knees was telling tme, he
were right.
Low mmbles began to sound off in the distance about the time Granny come out
of her bedroom. She was hauling an old oak shoebox what one of her "courtiers," who
come after Pappy died, bmng her to keep her shoes in. Granny ain't had no shoes at the
time, but the old box stmck her fancy, and she reckoned to buy a pair for storing in it. She
dmg that box through the dining room, through the kitchen, and out the back door and
into the grassless dirt heap of the backyard.
I got up from under the table to take a gander at what she were up to, but she were
off in the bam by then, tossing things about and making one rackety hullabaloo.
"What y'all doing out there. Granny?" I yelled.
"Get your ass back in the house," Granny screamed. "Never you mind what I'm
up to; or if'n you're feeling curious, you come on out here, and I'll give you what for."
I ran back under the table, lest my butt be turned blue for a week, and listened to
the dastardly sounds of the approaching storm.
Granny come back in just as I was coloring the last of Spiderman's red man-
pantyhose. She toted the rest of the groceries from the table to the kitchen and put them
away, leaving the Spam and taters out for dinner. All the time she was putting things
away, and also while she got the dinner going. Granny were cussing up one doozy of a
39
storm in her kitchen. Black clouds come pouring out her mouth, spewing tiny lightning
bolts and quiet littie booms of thunder. They collected all over the kitchen, dropping itty
bitty spots of rain all over the cabinets and floor, keeping me under the table, afeared of
the butt whooping Granny might give now.
Uncle Jason come in with Buck and a huge gust of wind just as Granny was
putting dinner on the table.
"Something smells good," Buck said, sniffing the fried Spam in the air.
"Yeah." Uncle Jason moved into the kitchen. "Too good. There's no stinky dog
smell. Ma." He put his hand on Granny's shoulder and turned her from the stove. "Why
ain't there no stinky dog smell. Ma?"
Granny popped Uncle Jason in the front of his head with her silver spatula. "Why
d'ya think, boy? I told you I weren't gonna put up with that reek no more." She popped
him again across his cheek. "And don't you never put your hands on me. You'll bring
your dead Pappy back from the grave to take you off to yours." She tumed back to the
stove.
"Ma, what'd you do with him?"
"I buried him. In the back yard. In my wood shoe box."
Jason yelled at Granny then, spitting a cloudy storm of his own into the heart of
the kitchen. "You buried my dog alive? Who the hell do you think you are?"
"I'm the boss round here, that's who I am. And I weren't leaving that critter out
there to rot no more. He needed planting."
40
"Darn if you ain't the stubboraest woman alive. Ma. No wonder Pappy died so
young. Hell, he probably ain't died at all. You probably done planted him alive, too."
Granny slapped Uncle Jason clean across his face when he said that. "Get you out
of my house."
"Damn it, I will. I gotta find my dog. I don't leave my littie'uns to die. Ma, not
like you." Uncle Jason flew out the back door faster than Superman hisself.
Buck and I chased after him, watching as the giant storm descended upon the
farm. Tornados come spinning across Granny's farm, pulling up the stately oaks like an
angry mamma pulls up her kid what's been pulling out his privates in church. Them trees
was flying all about, circling the yard as we headed out to hunt for the buried pup.
The rain come in while we was walking the perimeter of the backyard. A foul
wind come blowing out from the kitchen door, pushing us against the wind wall, where
all the broke-down cars from the ages had been stacked to keep the yard from blowing
away in bad weather. Granny was standing at the back door, shooing the kitchen storm
out into the yard. The clouds grew bigger than the barn in the larger space of the
backyard, and they floated high above the farm, joining the sinister edges of the great
storm from the north. As the drops of rain from the kitchen storm mixed in with the ones
falling out of Heaven, they formed watermelon-sized splashes, which broke up all over
the ground.
"h's like the angels are dropping holy-water balloons on us," Buck said.
41
"Damn!" Uncle Jason pulled us close, yelling over the storm. "We'll never find
where Granny done buried him if'n this rain keeps up. h's settiing all the dirt."
"We gotta splh up," Buck said. "We can cover more ground that a'way."
I took the west side of the yard, skirting the place where Uncle Jason's first
mastiff ate up Betty Simms. As I rounded the swing set, one of the angels up in Heaven
got creative with his balloon and let drop a tiny dog on my head. A blue beagle smarts
something awful when it pegs a feller in the noggin. By the time I recovered from the
blow, it were raining cats and dogs all over Granny's farm. A kitty red as a Pizza Hut
roof lit on Buck, tearing a long strip of his shirt clean off as it fell to the ground, landing
in a heap of other fallen felines.
Uncle Jason scanned the yard, now covered a good two feet deep in critters.
"Uncle Jason," Buck yelled. "We ain't never gonna find him under all these other
ones. We gotta get inside."
"No! No, I ain't going inside." Uncle Jason bent to the ground then and started
shoveling them cats and dogs with his bare hands. He tunneled through to the center of
the yard. "I ain't giving up on my dog."
Buck and I tunneled through from where we was and met up at the pecan tree
where Uncle Jason used to tie his first mastiff. The water was standing high under the
tree, forcing the littie kitties and puppies to swim off for higher ground.
"He's gotta be down here." Uncle Jason cupped his hands and dug into the wet
dirt under the water at the foot of the tree. He dug up handfuls of mud and flung them
42
across the yard, screaming the whole time, making more noise himself than all the
tornados, cats, and dogs put together.
"Not my dog!" he yelled, and just then his hand chopped into Granny's wooden
shoe box. "Woo hoo!" he screamed. Buck and I helped him dig the box back out from the
earth. We ran with it into the bam, pulling the great doors closed behind us to block out
all the new critters trying to come in from the rain storm what bmng them.
Uncle Jason unlatched Granny's box and lifted the lid. He made an awful whining
sound, like if he was a sick pup himself, and he lifted the tiny white mastiff out of its
coffin.
"He ain't breathing." Uncle Jason patted the little dog's head as tears come down
his face. He shook the poor fellow every so often and begged it, "Please, please don't be
dead."
The littie mastiff made no answer. His tiny head flopped around in terrible circles,
way too wide for his neck to allow.
When Uncle Jason left off his grieving, Buck put a hand on his arm. "Do you
reckon we should plant him again?"
"Not yet. I ain't give up hope yet."
"Uncle Jason, he ain't gonna get no better now." Buck patted his arm. "He's
dead."
"You ain't the one to decide on such things. We leave him be for now."
43
Uncle Jason laid the pup across his legs and kept a hand on its back. "We best all
get some rest now. We'll have to wah and see."
I nuzzled in by Uncle Jason's less muddy leg and went straight to sleep. I
dreamed again that night of Pappy and the camp in Colorado. Things wasn't right,
though, inside our camp. We had pitched our green tent in the usual spot, and just as we
hammered the last stake to the ground, a great storm moved in over the mountains. We
went for our tent, but some pranker had padlocked the zipper shut, so we run up to the
camp bath houses.
A couple from Humble, Texas, was waiting for us when we come in from the
rain. They give us a dead dog.
"He ain't much, but he's meant to be yours."
"Ain't he a littie dead?" my Pappy asked.
"Oh, sure," said the man from Humble. "But that dead part peels right off. He'll
be a whole new dog underneath—just you see."
My Pappy pulled out his fishing knife and slit that little pup's gut. Sure enough,
out popped a healthy, fat, playful littie dog, black as Granny's cast iron skillet hanging
over the stove.
"Pappy!" I yelled. "That feller from Texas were right!" I patted the dog's head.
"That's a good dog, sure enough."
Pappy smiled in agreement and patted my head with his big, calloused hand.
"I guess I better wake up now and tell Uncle Jason he were right not to give up."
44
"h were fine."
I hugged Pappy around the knees. "It's sure nice to see you."
"Good to be seen, boy. Good to be seen. Oh, and tell your Uncle Jason he were
right to fight for that pup's life. Granny done left too many critters out in the night to
die."
I woke before Pappy had time to catch hold of me and tickle my arm-pitters the
way he used to before he died. Uncle Jason was still holding the dead pup in his lap, and I
woke him right out of his dream to tell him mine.
"Uncle Jason! I done had a vision of Dead Pappy, and he told me we could gut
your dog."
Uncle Jason moved back from me as if my breath smelled like Granny's fake
teeth when she forgets to soak them in Pappy's hooch. "What in hell you saying, boy?"
"Uncle Jason." I grabbed him round the collar and shook his head all about.
"There's a living dog inside of this dead one. You just gotta cut it out."
Uncle Jason frowned at me, one eyebrow up, one eyebrow down.
"I swear it. Uncle Jason. Dead Pappy showed me in my dream. Now, gut that
dog!"
Uncle Jason pulled out his skinning blade, and after a TV commercial's worth of
hesitating, he flayed that mutt. Just like with Dead Pappy, a healthy black pup come
45
bubbling out of the dead white one, prancing, howling, chewing and everything. It were
just like a real live dog should be.
"Well, hell," Buck said, sitting up from his sleep, "if'n y'all could have done that,
how come you didn't do it a year ago and save us all that stink?"
"Don't be thick. Buck." I patted the dog's head as he mn around my legs. "We
didn't know to knife the sucker until Pappy said so."
Buck jumped up and knocked me down on my back. "Ain't no scrawny cousin of
mine nor nobody else gonna call me thick."
Uncle Jason busted us apart. "Come on, boys. I gotta make good with Granny for
spitting storms at her last night."
"Well, she shouldn't have planted your dog. Pappy said so."
"Pappy said?" Uncle Jason looked over and touched my arm.
"Yep. He said you was right to fight Granny about it cause she done left too many
littie'uns out to die."
"Well, hell and tarnation. Scout. Don't that beat all?"
"Now you all being thick," Buck said. "Granny been onry all our lives."
"That's the whole point," Uncle Jason said. "That old crow what's my mamma
done left me out in a rain storm when I's half smaller than Scout here is now. She said
she figure if I made it through, then I was worth something, and if'n I didn't, then who
wanted me, anyway. I just ain't heard Pappy's take on it till now. Still—" Uncle Jason
picked up his healthy new pup "—aint no point in staying riled up about a done deal."
46
We all went back to the house, scooting pups and kitties left over from the storm
out the way. Granny were a heap less mad, and all the thunder clouds was gone from
inside the house.
"Look what we got. Granny!" I held Uncle Jason's new black dog up for her to
see.
"Well, I'll be. Is this one of them critters what fell from the sky?"
"No, Granny. That's Tombs, the one what you planted."
"Sure enough. See boys?" Granny held the dog up and kissed his whiskered
cheek. "All he needed was a good planting to help him grow. Ain't no stink on that dog
no more."
Uncle Jason moved to take the dog from Granny. "Here, Ma, I'll take him out to
the back yard, where he goes."
Granny pulled the dog to her chest. "Nope. This ain't no back yard dog, son. This
one is something special."
"Just like Uncle Jason," I said.
"Hmm?" Granny tumed to me, all the wrinkles on her face bending out instead of
in as she waited for me to explain myself.
"Tombs come through the storm, just like Uncle Jason, where you left them both
to die, and they both done it with no help from you."
"Why, you littie smart ass!" Granny grabbed her broom and smacked me and
swept me out of the room all in one move.
47
Granny let Tombs stay in the house from them on. She bmng a bowl out the
pantry and set it by the back door, keeping it filled with all sorts of sundry vittles for
Uncle Jason's little dog. I had been suspicious of that dog when it first come home, on
account of it being a mastiff, and on account of Uncle Jason's first mastiff eating so many
folks. And when Tombs seemed to be aiming for death, I figured he'd neither come to
evil nor good. But now I watch that dog playing in the house, learning to help Granny
with all her chores, and I'm not so sure. That dog even been vacuuming the floor. They
ain't much he won't do to help Granny out. And I find myself wondering if'n Tombs is a
mastiff at all. Mayhaps he ain't even no dog.
48
ABOMINATIONS
49
50
Abominations
Me and Buck got stuck into school the year before Granny got hitched to Chester
Middlemouth. The state feller for forcing kids into school come and dmg us off to town
to begin our formal learning, us being well past the required age for heading to school.
We begun in the Kinneygarden, with Miss Graham as our teacher. And from the very
start, me and Buck knowed that that woman was from the devil. She hated each and
every child in that class, especially us, cause we was so old, and she were always doing
hateful things to the group. First off, she ain't had no patience for kids what didn't know
their letters yet. We was all to read and write from day one, and we had weekly science
reports where we was to tell the whole class about a certain animal from the
encyclopedia. One girl in our class had done a fine report on penguins, what live in the
southmost part of the world, and on the day afore our reports was due, she gone out of
class with hers, for to take it home and recopy, and a mighty gust of wind took it right
from her hand and blowed it all over the farmers' market highway down the road from
the school. Miss Graham seen the whole thing, and what she done about it was to make
that young gal mn out there with mac tmcks and speeding city folks coming through and
pick up every piece of her report. Then Miss Graham give her detention for the whole
next month for littering so. She give the girl a poorly grade to boot.
Miss Graham were foul, sure enough. She set up parent-teacher conferences in
the late fall to discuss problem students and how to beat them into shapely learners. She
51
called me to her desk when it were my turn to sign up for a time slot, and she smacked
me dead in the forehead with her mler when I said I ain't got no folks.
"Course you have folks. Scout. How else could you be here?"
I mbbed my forehead and tried not to let any crying out. "I had folks, sure
enough, a mamma, at least, but we done lost her years ago, and I stay with my granny."
"Is your granny your guardian?" she asked.
I ain't rightiy knowed what a guardian was, and when I said so, she smacked me
again.
"A guardian is the person who cares for you, who makes sure you're tucked in at
night and such."
"Well, my Uncle Jason's dog Tombs does all that, but I don't think he'd come up
here for a conference with no teacher."
Smack again. "Who makes you dinner, boy?"
"Granny." I couldn't help the crying now.
"Get her up here, then."
"I don't think she'll come. She ain't keen on learning, and she's got a hurtful
dislike of townfolks, too."
Miss Graham frowned down at me, her eyes squinting so tight I couldn't see not a
bit of them. "You give me a name to put down here for conference, or so help me boy,
I'll send you off for a whooping in the principal's office."
52
"Kelly Jo, she's my grown-up cousin." I spit it out as fast as I could, not wanting
a whooping from no man. Not even Uncle Steve ever beat me, only Granny and Kelly Jo
and Aunt Lynell, and if Buck was telling tme about the powerful meanness of a man
beating verses a woman beating, I weren't about to get beat by the principal if I could
help it.
So the day before Thanksgiving break began, me and Buck come to town with
Kelly Jo and Uncle Steve for conferencing over our troubles. Now, they call it a parent-
teacher conference, but really, it's just a parent talking-to, cause ain't no words edgewise
given to the parent—or guardian—in regards to what the teacher says. About me and
Buck, Miss Graham said a heap. We was dumb, we was dirty, we was ignorant, we was
illiterate, we was unworthy of the education system God give to us. Uncle Steve thanked
her kindly for her nice words about us boys. He only wanted to take us back to his farm
afore Miss Graham could say no more. But Kelly Jo ain't took kindly to Miss Graham's
words.
"I think Buck and Scout is fine boys. Sure, they like mischief, like all boys, but
they is always ready to lend aid about the farm, and they take cussings from Granny like
nobody else."
Miss Graham stood from her big oak desk, mler in hand, and launched at Kelly
Jo. "If you aren't the whole thing wrong with these boys!" Miss Graham rared back to
smack Kelly Jo. Kelly Jo done her fair share of bar fighting while she was hitched to
53
husband number one, though, and she took that Kinneygarden teacher down with no
trouble at all.
"Ain't no uppity Kinneygarden teacher going to beat on me, nohow." Kelly Jo
told me and Buck to wait outside while she hogtied the teacher and taught her a thing or
two about treating country folk with respect. She come out of the classroom a full hour
later and proclaimed that we wasn't going to have no more trouble from Miss Graham.
And for the most part, we ain't had no more trouble with Miss Graham. When we
come back from Thanksgiving break, she ain't took no notice of us at all. Me and Buck
could come to class or not, we could sleep in class or not, and no matter what we done,
she pretended we weren't there.
She were a heap busy, too, with mnning the school Christmas pageant, which was
to be her own rendition of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. She had folks from all around
making costumes and props and singing her new versions of all the holiday classics. It
was at this time that Satan attacked the Kinneygarden.
Satan be a wiley feller, and he knowed that especially at Christmas time when aU
folks come together to worship the baby Jesus, he wasn't going to do no good mnning
about the halls in a red devil suit, pitchfork in hand. So he come in the disguise of the
Abominable Snow Monster from Rudolph. All the teachers kept paying fine
compliments to Miss Graham on her "automated snow monster" what come up and down
the halls on its own, and Miss Graham, never being one to pass up opportunity for fine
words, ain't told tme about never having made the creature herself.
54
But Buck seen Satan for who he was from the first day he come prowling about
the Kinneygarden. Satan would go about in his white, hairy suit, and he'd wait for some
sweet Kinneygardener to come and pet him, and then swoop! He'd suck that
Kinneygardener up and secret it away to his hideout down in the basement. Buck's need
to tell folks about Satan's schemes was what bmng us more trouble from Miss Graham.
Miss Graham ain't liked Buck telling folks that her Abominable Snow Monster
were the devil and an eater of souls. She ain't liked it at all. She took to punishing Buck
sorrowful often over the matter, sending him marching off to the principal's office every
time he bmng up either Satan or the Abominable Snow Monster. Buck took all them
beatings in stride, though, certain that he had to try and stop Satan somehow afore he
destroyed all the children in the Kinneygarden, me and Buck included. Them kids was
going missing at a frightening rate. We'd all of us be in PE class, playing dodge ball, and
the kid with the ball would turn to peg his least-liked classmate, and the kid'd be gone.
Plumb gone. In piano class while we was rehearsing for the big Christmas show, we'd
come to the part of a song where only the gal with the highest voice was to sing, and
they'd be dead silence. She'd be gone. And as them kids all got took by Satan, ain't
nobody made a fuss. Not one parent or teacher or even the principal noticed cause they
was all in the throws of helping Miss Graham prepare for the Christmas show. But me
and Buck noticed, and with so many kids disappearing here and not returning there, we
made preparations to do spiritual warfare on Satan.
55
We stole one picket from each fence we passed on the way to school and went to
sharpening their points during recess. We kept them hid in our lockers until we could get
enough, and then we'd go down to the basement and attack Satan. Unfortunately, Miss
Graham found our stash and marched us both off to the principal's office for a licking.
I waited in the secretary's office while Buck got his pops, and with the smacking
sound of each one, I became more afeared of my own whooping. Trying hard not to let
the secretary see my fearful woes, I sat on my hands and swung my legs back and forth in
the tall chair. And then the principal called me in. Seeing Buck come out of that office
mbbing his butt ain't cheered me at all, and I hardly could keep to my feet as I made the
long hike into the principal's office.
He made me to sit in a chair and explain why I was getting a whooping in my own
words.
"Miss Graham is a damn fool is why we's getting these whoopings."
The principal weren't a large man at all, but he began to grow when I told him my
reason for my whooping. He grew out over his desk, heaving a massive chest and
mightier arms than any of my uncles ever had, arms that near filled up the whole room.
They ripped through his shirt like the Incredible Hulk's, and they was nasty, covered in
hair like what grows on Aunt Debra's chin and smelling like the dung heap behind the
bam.
56
"You dare cuss to the principal?" And with that, one of those mighty arms come
from behind the desk with a paddle of unreal size, all holy and with an evil demon face
painted on the front. He swung that paddle and smacked me right on my thigh.
"Holy Shit! What you done that for?" I screamed. I grabbed my thigh and
hopped about the room trying not to cry.
"Cuss again?" The principal let go another swing.
I ducked under the chair to miss that one. "You keep that damned paddle away
from me, you son of a bitch. I ain't taking another beating of that kind, not even if you is
the principal."
I mn out the office just then and headed for my locker. I was going to clear out of
that nuthouse afore they had another chance to get hold of me. But to get to my locker, I
had to pass Miss Graham's class, and when she seen me fly by, she come out the room,
hollering about how I better come right back this instant.
"This instant and you can both kiss my ass," I hollered, and I ain't looked back at
all. I went mnning to my locker, grabbed my frog, Eddie, and my Captain America
lunchbox and made for home. I told Granny what the principal done to me, and his
paddle done left a purple bmise as big as my whole thigh to back my story up, so she said
I ain't never had to go back if I didn't want to. The next day the school sent a letter what
said I couldn't come back even if I wanted to, so by all accounts it was a done deal. My
formal education was complete.
57
Granny didn't want Uncle Steve and Aunt Lynell to let Buck go back neither, but
Buck was powerful determined to keep watch over the Kinneygarden, and couldn't no
one, not even me, persuade him to give the whole bunch up for a lost cause.
"You got bmised, too?" I asked him the first day he went without me.
"Yep."
"Yep."
"Why for?"
"I'm going after Satan in his lair, but I got to put off these childish things first.
Ain't the place of a child to do warfare on Satan."
And with that. Buck grabbed a zipper out the inside of his belly button and
unzipped it over his head and around his backside. Buck zipped himself right off, and
when he flung hisself across Granny's beat-up back yard, he was a man. He was a full
Buck taller than before, and he had whiskers on his face what made Uncle Longshanks
look as cleanshaved as a girl. Buck had some mighty fine duds, too, decked out all in
black like some cat burglar. "I reckon I'm as ready as I'll ever be," he said, and afore I
could put in another word to him, he were headed off to school.
"Oh, and Scout," Buck hollered from down the road.
"What?"
58
"If I don't come home tonight, you tell Kelly Jo what's been going on with Satan,
and she'U know what to do." Then he tumed back to the road and was gone.
That night Kelly Jo had her annual pre-Christmas slumber party for all the girl
cousins. They'd stay up all night together in Granny's spare room making decorations
and stockings and presents for the baby cousins, and they'd eat all the food in Granny's
house. Them gals done ate the whole kitchen up one year when they mn out of food,
having eaten even the last sack of flour—right out of the bag. They gone so plumb wild
that by the end of the night. Granny's favorite cat was missing for good, they weren't no
siding left on the outside of the house, and they was bite-sized patches chewed right out
of granny's living room carpet. Uncle Steve had to come and build Granny a whole new
kitchen after that year and buy a new stove and fridge, to boot. Granny said the girls
couldn't pull such shenanigans no more in her kitchen, that when the food was gone, they
was too. So Kelly Jo put them all on strict rations of one kitchen raid per hour, and only
one shelf of the pantry per raid.
Usually I went to Uncle Steve and Aunt Lynell's house when Kelly Jo had her
shindig and slept in Buck's room with him, but I weren't leaving Granny's that night
until I seen a sign of Buck coming down the road.
What I seen instead of Buck sent me mnning into Granny's house and into the
spare room full of girls in their skivvies faster than Kelly Jo could tell me to get out. As
the sun went down, I sat on Granny's fence to the fallow fidd awaiting for Buck to come
home, and when the air were light enough for me to still see myself but not clearly see
59
what body was coming down the path, a body come down the path. I knowed it weren't
Buck from the start, cause it were on four legs instead of two, and I knowed it weren't
Uncle Jason's dog Tombs, for it were as big as the bam. When it come close enough that
it were only one field away from me, I seen it for what it was. It were the ghost of Uncle
Jason's mastiff, the one what ate baby Katy out of her carrier, the one what ate Betty
Simms on her wedding day, and the same one what my cousin Saul killed on that same
day, Betty Simms being his bride and all.
It were coming down the path at a mighty pace, heading