I – ‘I Remember’
I.
I remember my father-in-law saying how ‘the crick’s full of shit, so why the hell do you want to go walking through it, stirring it all up.’ I didn’t look to stir up that old man, I didn’t even look to step on in his creek, but now it’s all comin’ back up around to the surface, muck and all.
I married myself into a big ole’ farm family, you know the one where they all look the same; brown eyes, brown hair and you can’t tell one from the next. Quiet of course, but ready and willing to give a guy a hard-time when it was sure called for. Some were still farming, the rest of ‘em weren’t. Steady everyday living until another shindig came around. Christmas every year at Grandma’s, when those crazy aunts’ gave gifts of fruitcake that were soon pawned off to those who could stand looking at it. It was only then that you saw those uncles, cousins, and other relations that you just looked at wondering if you were the only sane one in the whole darn family.
Now, back to this here tale I’m about to spin, time is a wasting. Good, ole’ Uncle Jones lived up near the north-side of rural Edgewood on an 8 ¼ acre plot back there by that farm that Fred Goedken’s boy, oh what’s his name, now makes a living at. That whole place up there was getting pretty run down with age and all, but what the hell can you expect from him. The man never had no wife and so no real heirs in waitin’ to take it on over. Some of us figured he was next to married to that land, which was never much to look at anyhow, and as he once said, neither is an old and cursed woman. Without that woman around, he got used to the vegetable tending, weedin’, and all that winter canning that needed to be done to make it through the seasons here. A man has got to eat I say, otherwise he might just be lookin’ for a woman to have around.
I remember now lookin’ back, he drove a rusted-out good for nothin’ ‘63 Rambler, with plates tacked on from ’64 or so, which was about as run down as he was, but hell it still turned itself on over, ‘god-damn reliable enough for where he was headed’ he always said with that grin of his, which was just to sit with the other old sacks over black coffee up at the feed mill, that one that didn’t burn a few years back up over there north of town.
He was pretty damn sharp and all, even if he was 82 years young last spring. 28 if you’d ask him. Couldn’t even complain about his health and all, just about the government taxing him and everything else that got em’. His days were pretty darn full still, but there was usually a few minutes each night to sit in that broken-down rocker of his and read by that cracked-glass hurricane lamp from the old Bockenstedt Auction he held onto. Sat there alone most nights I’d say, licking his finger every once in awhile to turn those pages of that there Bible of his, never left his side, sure was devoted to some of it.
Now his place up there was just like all the other odd farms around; with a couple of old leaky sheds, a little bit of gravel here and there, and a whole mess of weeds, thicker than molasses. Heck, the last time we were up there that one red tool-shed was darn-near stripped bare, hardly a thing left for the birds to sit on, he sure didn’t say why, just something about this vision of his, must be near blind I guessed. He was kind of your run of the mill backwardly carpenter, which is to say he didn’t have the knack to make much of anything, let alone anything near square. It was all just thrown together with a little spit and a whole lot of shit. If you ran out of both he’d say, then you were screwed.
Nothing had really changed when we finally went out there after he missed Christmas that last year. When we went lookin’ around, there was just this winged-contraption of his in the back-half of the field down in the crick-ditch where the pigweeds, horse thistle, and itch-weed grew. Uncle Jones wasn’t anywhere around, nowhere to be found, in fact even I couldn’t make sense of it. He left darn-near all his earthly processions just laying around, even packed his suitcase and all, it just don’t make much sense. A couple of near-by locals and that younger sheriff looked for him, but those dogs of his kept on staying with that craft after all that trouble.
There wasn’t much for looks after that. No inheritance to squabble over; just a few ledgers, some worn-out tools, his Bible, and that damn Rambler. We held an auction this past fall, and sold off the land to the county, and the junk to the rest of the squawkers, which settled up those coffee debts. I decided it was best if I kept hold of a few things, for awhile anyhow, so you’d believe in this here story. I wouldn’t want you to call me a liar and all.
