Weeds in Bloom (11 page)

Guests, ever present, were served first crack at the chicken. White meat. Breast. We youngsters made do with the darker thighs and drumsticks.

Mama always ate a wing.

No amount of persuasion could make her do otherwise, not even after I’d become a grown man, married, seated at her table with my wife, son Christopher, and daughter Anne. My mother ate one chicken wing while Aunt Carrie dutifully gnawed the other. Younger generations dared not
dispute Vermont virtue. A man’s naught but a simpleton if he challenges the New England rigidity of his elders and betters.

In countless ways, Miss Lucy and Miss Carrie were softer than winter bed quilts. Yet by necessity, granite-hard.

They were sisters who lived their entire lives together under one roof, pulling more willingly than a yoke of Holstein oxen. Aunt Carrie was seven years older, and as time took a toll on her teeth, she eventual yielded to partake of the more pliant breast meat. But it took my mother’s influence to break the established pattern.

Years earlier, I’d attempted the impossible by slyly helping myself to both wings, claiming they contained a certain nutrient to improve my (you name it) eyesight, hearing, or virility.

No dice.

The chicken wings were snatched, or eased, from my dinner plate and replaced by generous slabs and slices that appeared whiter than Queen Elizabeth’s bosom.

Following Papa’s death when I was thirteen, Mama’s make-do resolve was made clear to me. Tough times had become even tougher, and the three of us feared losing our little five-acre farm. At mealtime, less and less food graced the kitchen table. Papa’s empty chair completed our emptiness.
Added to this, my plate somehow held more supper than my mother’s or my aunt’s.

We lost our farm to the bank.

On a gray December day, a chilling and merciless north wind seemed to snap our spines as though we were three dead twigs. Mama, Aunt Carrie, and I loaded a few possessions onto a neighbor’s wagon and left our home forever.

Until I reached age seventeen, when I enlisted in the United States Army out of desperation and the assurance there’d be money to mail home, Mama saw that I was fed.

Truly a miracle she survived long enough to comprehend that I’d made my mark and become an author.

About to deliver a speech out west, in the state of Washington, I called home only to learn of Mama’s death: 7 October 1976. Oddly, it was the most humorous talk I ever gave, maybe because it was all for her. A secret tribute. Someone drove me to the Sea-Tac airport, and I flew from there to San Francisco and took a red-eye to New York, where my driver carried me home to Connecticut.

Unwashed, I changed suitcases and drove myself north almost three hundred miles to a tiny Yankee town, arriving barely in time for Mama’s wake.

Silently waiting stood a score of elderly people,
almost all farmers, staring as I charged irreverently through the funeral parlor door. Eyes that met mine spoke more respect for her than for me. Hands that held my hands had been thickened by a lifetime of labor. I was too spent to recall everyone’s name.

There she lay, hands still a shiny red from decades at a sink, ringless fingers folded, wearing a very plain dress and looking like someone’s sugar-haired mom. Mine. Touching her a final time, I remembered how a mother rises upward and into Heaven.

On the wings of a chicken.

H
E WAS UP TO SOMETHING
. B
UT WHAT
?

As I was well hidden in a generous patch of Florida brush, I could watch this man’s unusual activity.

Spying wasn’t my intent.

Learning was.

Hours ago and a mile behind, I’d parked a battered Ford pickup under the high shade of a large live oak. Nowhere near a road. Just a stretch of open Florida outback, griddle-flat and griddle-hot. All I toted was a pistol at my right hip, binoculars, a canteen half filled with spring water that was, probable by now, warmer than I was, plus a pocket notepad and three or four stubby golf pencils.

Moving in closer to take a more intimate look, I now estimated the man’s age on the far side of seventy, twenty years my senior. His hair seemed to be
a wet silver. He was barefoot. No shirt. I’d make a considered guess that he was wearing only a single article of clothing. A bib overall. No longer denim blue but a washboard gray, ragged at the bottom. Knees worn to white. Ditto the two straps that hung on thin shoulders.

Up aboard Old Soup. Florida, 1977.

Using a two-foot stick, he stirred the contents of a keg in circles, sometimes thumping the inside wood. Bending, he looked inside the keg and nodded.

Leaving my shelter, I circled to where I could easily walk directly toward his face and not creep up from behind to startle him. “Howdy,” I said, waving a hand.

Either he didn’t hear or didn’t care to, so I advanced closer and spoke louder.

This time he looked up, squinted, then put down his mixer wand to shade his eyes. He probable noticed my sidearm in its holster, yet he didn’t retreat an inch. Or flinch.

“Hot day,” I told him.

His nod agreed.

Coming to within twenty-five feet of him, I stopped, then unscrewed the black cap of my canteen. Before drinking even a sip, I held the olive-drab-covered U.S. Army canteen toward him, making sure to use my right hand. My left couldn’t draw a gun.

“Thirsty?” I asked as I smiled.

He shook his head.

I drank a warm swallow.

“You the law?”

“No. I write books.”

For a minute he held silent. Poking his stick inside the keg, he stirred three times around, then quit to study at me. “Nope,” he said, “you ain’t the law.”

“How can you tell?”

He spat. “You’ve no belly.” It didn’t make a smart of sense to ask questions about what he was mixing in the wooden keg. None of my business. After knocking back another shot of warm water, I twisted the cap back on and rehung the canteen to my belt. Left hip.

His eyes watched my hands. “Your water’s cooking,” he guessed.

“Sure is.”

“There’s a boil yonder. Cool water. You happen to know exact what a boil is? Or are you city?”

I knew. “Yes, it’s a very young spring. You’ll find a boiler in a forest, at a quiet place, among trees. Usual in shallow water, indicating that someday a spring might be gushering up there.” I shrugged. “That’s all I know.”

There were questions I wanted to pose to this old gentleman, but didn’t. So far, all I’d asked was whether or not he was thirsty, a gesture more courteous than probing. Right now I was on his turf. The nearer an animal to its nest or lair, the tougher it’ll scrap. So I wasn’t fixing to crowd him or inquire more, figuring that the early questions rightfully ought to be his.

“Well, if you come around here-parts to sell me a book, you’re wasting air.”

Perhaps, in his way, he was implying that he couldn’t read, without actually confessing.

“I knowed somebody was nearby,” he said. “The dog whined to tell me. You been here a spell.”

Glancing about, I saw no dog.

“She be lame. But her nose ain’t. She’s to the shack, guarding our dooryard. Don’t walk too good no more. Gimpy-legged. Can’t see neither. But smell? She’ll scent a bug through a bunghole.” He pointed back toward a stand of pine. “From yonder, she smelt
you.”

His pride made me like him. An aging man proud of an aging dog. In a way, he was bragging about her.

“She’s a redbone.” He sighed. “Lordy knows, I don’t got me a whole bit to boast, but she be the best hunter hound that ever treed a coon, or tracked a possum.”

“I’d like to meet her.”

“Already she’s met up you.” Straining, the old fellow tried to heft up the keg, and failed. “Dang,” he said, “it’s too much.”

Slowly, I approached him. “Just maybe the two of us might handle it. Where’s it go?”

“Over yonder.”

As I’m six foot four and well over two hundred pounds, farm-raised and iron-pumped, I could have easily hoisted the keg to a shoulder. But there was no reason to show off to shame him. Seniors deserve respect. Together, we lifted it. I let him steer.

“Here,” he said.

After we grounded the keg and tilted it, dumping the mysterious elixir into a blanket of brown pine needles, he sprinkled a few needles over the lumpy mess to mask it.

Straightening up, he said, “They’ll come smell.”

“Who?”

“Young tuskers.”

“If a tusker comes, do you try to capture it?”

To my surprise, he shook his head.

“He’ll be prowling. He eats and he goes. But ever time, I dump the acorn mash closer to my pen. Eat and go. Eat some more. But final, he’ll eat free mash and tarry. Then me and my hound’ll both chomp on pork.”

A tusker is a wild Florida pig. I’d seen plenty. No animal on earth is tougher, or more ornery. Even armed with a pistol, I wouldn’t want to face one. Some mature boars balance over five hundred pound. If you doubt, read
Nine Man Tree
.

“I’ll tame ’em,” he said.

I had to ask a short question: “How?”

Lifting the empty keg, he said, “It’s sour corny mash laced with acorns. A pig can’t pass it by. They’ll turn lazy on free found. So shiftless and fat-backed they’ll not root for theyselves no longer. I git ’em so dumb they’ll depend to me. Once they do, they’re bacon.

“Pigs think it’s charity,” he added. “Ain’t. It’s volunteer slavery.”

Extending a hand to him, I said, “My name is Peck. Friends call me Rob.”

We shook. His hand was harder than a gator claw, hooking around mine with a surprising strength.

“Nocker. Ed Nocker.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Nocker.”

“Yeah,” he said, “it sure is.” He cracked his first grin. “You want to greet my bitch?”

“If it’s okay with her.”

As we walked, Mr. Nocker carried the empty keg above his hip, on its side. The weight of his arm seemed to tote it suspended, without any hand to hold it. His walk was unsteady, as though every step was arthritic agony. Sometimes he would moan. Or grunt.

Into the pines, we came to a small gray shack in a clearing, behind a prone dog.

“Jewel. Her name is Jewel.”

The redbone hound was lying in a tiny cloud of shade. Raising her chin from her paws, ears up, she stared at us through the snowy eyes of wintry blindness, nostrils flaring, thirsting for information. At the mention of her name, a tail wagged once and then stilled.

“Best you don’t touch her,” he warned. “Unless
you intend to give up picking a banjo.”

“I won’t.”

“Later, she’ll up herself and stretch for a while. Then allow her to come to you. After she does, you can love her and scratch her neck to all content.” Mr. Nocker bent to stroke her head. “Good dog. We got company, Jewel. So favor us a mite with manners. Hear?”

He went inside. Mr. Nocker didn’t ask me to enter his shack. Just as well, as I doubted that there would be room for two. My eye judged it to be about ten foot square, and even less than a ten-foot cube. A low roof, and flat. Reappearing, he carried a leathery object, one that seemed to be under construction, yet solidly built.

“It’s near finish.”

He handed it to me. Taking it, I was surprised at its mass. Hefty. But sturdy and artistically crafted. Quite smooth. Some leather is so cold. This was cozy.

“Mule collar,” he told me.

“You keep a mule?”

He didn’t answer. Perhaps because my question was, in retrospect, more than a bit silly. Why else would he be fashioning a mule’s tack? Certainly not for Jewel.

Mr. Nocker cooked.

We ate outdoors on a bench. Controlling both
caution and curiosity, I gagged down what he served me, chewing it with gritted teeth, swallowing as my craw earned a medal for valor. Scraping the bent tin plate with my fork, I thanked him.

“Good supper,” I said, raking a sleeve across my mouth and waiting for Ed to explain, after the fact, our menu.

He didn’t. But from the taste still haunting my mouth, I guessed possum. This, I decided, was real research, the kind that no author could uncover in a library, absorbed not into the brain but down the gullet.