Stories from a Kentucky Boy

AuthorHouse

Chapter One

I suppose my friends and I were like most preteen boys growing up in a small southern town in the fifties. We all wanted to be cowboys. All it took was a mop handle or carefully chosen branch off a tree, and you had a good horse. Add a ten-gallon hat, a cap pistol or two, and a good piece of rope, and you were all set. Of course, I always had to be a little different from the other guys.

They all wanted to be some white-hat hero with a palomino horse. Everybody wanted to be Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Tom Mix, or the Lone Ranger. Well, that run-of-the-mill stuff wasn't for me. No, sir! I wanted to be Lash LaRue, the good guy who never used his gun. Nope, old Lash didn't need a gun. He'd just flick out his thirty-foot-long bullwhip and disarm any bad guy within two counties. If he happened to miss one, his partner Gabby Hayes would ride the desperadoes back until Lash came to help. Lash was also a man of fashion after my heart. He wore only black clothes with, of course, a lot of silver tacking attached around. His hat, shirt, pants, and boots—even his horse—were as black as coal. When Lash walked in the sun, he was a coal mine pit with diamonds flashing in it.

Well, I digressed a bit there. All that stuff about my hero Lash and other cowboys doesn't have a damned thing to do with this story. Oh yeah, I guess it does just a little. Being a good cowboy, you didn't go anywhere without your lasso. A boy can find a lot of uses for a lasso. You never knew when you might need to rope a raging bull, pull a drowning damsel from a swollen river, or leash a stray dog to take home with you.

Anyhow, here I was on an early Friday morning with little to do when my best friend Jim showed up.

"Hey, Ken," he said.

"Let's go to the fillin' station and get some cigarettes then go up to the cabin and smoke."

"Good idea," I said. "Mama hasn't turned her back all morning, so I couldn't sneak one of hers out. Which way we goin'?"

Which way we were going was an important question. Walking to the filling station was not a saunter down to the end of the block (as if we had blocks in Lynch, Kentucky). We could take the long way. It was an easy four-mile walk. You went down the holler (hollow for those of you who may not be familiar with mountain vernacular) to the main valley for a mile and then hung a left. It was an easy three miles the rest of the way. The short way was a harder walk but only two miles long. You just cut up over the mountain and down the other side—almost a straight shot. Of course, there were a couple of creeks to navigate, and you might have to do in a timber rattler or two on the way. I didn't mind the rattlers so much. They made a noise, and they were slow. It was them sneaky ass, fast-as-lightening copperheads that I hated. Anyhow, snakes are another story or two. I better not stray from this one.

So, Jim and I, being full of youthful energy, decided the short route was right at that time. I made sure my lasso was properly looped on my gun belt, and the whip I'd made out of a kindling stick and piece of rawhide was on my other side. We started up the mountain trail, and I heard the last thing I wanted to hear.

My little brother Don was yelling: "Hey, Ken, I wanna go with you."

Damn, I did not want that little pipsqueak tagging along. He'd tell Mama I was smoking.

"No," I said. "Me and Jim are going alone this time."

"I can go too. Mama told you to watch me," Don retorted with stubbornness.

"Not a chance," I said. "You stay here this time."

I started on up the trail and saw the little shit run into the house. Of course, you know what was next. Mama was on the steps yelling at me.

"Kenley, take your brother with you. Robert Kenley, did you hear me? Answer me, or I'll bust your ass when you get home, and Dad will too."

"Okay," I answered, and we waited for Don to catch up to us.

"I told you so," the little shit laughed.

Only self-preservation kept me from punching his lights out while Mama was still watching.

"Don't follow us, Don. We don't want you along this time," I said. "Go play with your buddy Jerry."

"No," he said. "Mama said I could come." That was it. All the way to the top of the mountain I told him to go back, and he refused.

We came to the resting spot at the top of the mountain. It was a nice place. Big hundred-year-old oak and beech trees were shading a little spring that seeped out of the soil. There were a few nice sitting rocks, but you'd better check around them for those low bellies before you sat. All God's creatures liked that cool spot, and the snakes would lurk under the rocks in hopes of ambushing a hapless rodent.

Don wandered over to the spring.

"What are we gonna do?" Jim whispered.

"Let's grab his ass and tie him to the beech tree," I said. "We'll let him loose when we come back."

See, I told you a young boy had a thousand uses for that lasso he carried around. So we grabbed Donnie Wayne and tied his ass up good to the beech tree and took off down the far side of the mountain.

I don't know how we went so brain dead. Somehow, being rid of Don made us forget all about him. We bought some smokes—a big can of them that had a hundred in it. If I remember right, the can was red, the brand was Cavaliers, and there was a picture of a swashbuckler on the side. The best thing was they were the first real long cigarettes—a good extra half inch over the other brands. For some reason, we went back the easy, long route and then up on the other side of the mountain to the log shanty we had built that year. We built a new shanty every year out of young poplar trees that we cut with an ax.

So Jim and I spent the rest of the day up there. We smoked to our heart's content; raided a garden for corn, tomatoes, and a cantaloupe for lunch; and spun yarns and dreams all day. We didn't even think about going home until close to suppertime, and nary a thought of Don on the other side of the mountain entered our brains.

We went home, and I hadn't been there long when Dad came home from the mines. Mama was getting supper on the table. I think it was a law that supper had to be on the table and ready to eat within five minutes after Dad got home. Anyhow, everyone took his or her place waiting for the grace. It didn't happen right away. I looked at Dad and saw a puzzled look on his face, like he was trying to remember something. Then he lifted his finger and began counting around the table and the hog trough. The hog trough was a bar along the side of the far wall, and all the kids under twelve sat on stools there at meals. After a minute, his light came on. "Where's Don?" he said.

Oh my God!

Have you ever felt your stomach turn inside out? Have you ever had a dark cloud of doom roll through your soul, and you know you have met the Grim Reaper? Oh, yes. Death was imminent, and it was going to be very painful.

Somehow I managed to croak out a few words as I kept my stomach lining pushed down out of my throat.

"He went up on the hill to check out a new apple tree," I said. "He probably lost track of time. I know where it is. I'll go fetch him." Then I took off like a Fourth of July bottle rocket.

I literally clawed my way up that mountain. The visions I had were all catastrophic. A bear or a pack of wolves had attacked Don. It didn't matter that Daniel Boone shot the last wild wolf seen in Kentucky in 1810, and the last bear we had seen was in a cage when we visited the Smokey Mountains. I also thought a whole den of rattlers might have attacked him. Up that mountain I scurried and raced to the beech tree.

Thank God, Don was safe. He was a little bit frazzled but safe. He had managed to work his way into a sitting position at the base of the tree. The lasso was, thanks to my knot-tying ability, still secure. There were tear tracks down his dirty little face and mucus running all the way down his chin, but he was safe. Well, there was one knot on his forehead where a skeeter had lunched on him.

"Don," I said. "Please don't tell on me. You can have all my treasures."

And I had some treasures. I had a baseball Hank Aaron had hit for a home run at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. I had some Cuban cigars. And I had one real treasure—a 1954 issue of Playboy magazine that was priceless. My God, it had a centerfold of a gorgeous woman, and she was wearing nothing but a nightie, panties, and high heels. It was shameless. Why, you could see the shadows of her boobs through that nightie.

"Okay," he said. "Just let me loose, but I don't want the cigars."

Good old Don—he was a chewer not a smoker. So I got the rope loose and began coiling up my lasso. The little shit took off running down the mountain.

"Wait 'til I tell Dad," he yelled over his shoulder. "He'll bust your ass every day for a week."

That did it. Right then I made the decision to become a hermit mountain man and live in the hills for the rest of my life. I lasted until about ten o'clock that night. Finally, the little footsteps of rodents in the leaves, the hooting horned owl, and other sounds of unknown origins got to me. I walked back down the mountain and sneaked over to the apple tree beside the house. All the boys slept in one room upstairs, and the tree made an easy ladder to climb up and go through the window. So up I went. I was as stealthy as a big cat stalking through the jungle. Into that window I slipped and stepped on Dad.

"Kinda thought you'd be coming home this way, Boy," I heard him growl. "Let's go out on the back porch. I've got something there for you."

Needless to say, what he had out there for me was the worst ass busting in my life. It was not that I didn't deserve it, you understand. It was just that the fault of the entire incident was solely on the shoulders of that little shit brother of mine. I spent the better part of Saturday and Sunday thinking before I hatched a plan of revenge.

Monday was wash day at my house. Mother would get off her deathbed to wash clothes if it was Monday morning. It was my job to help by feeding the clothes through that old wringer on the washer. I had a many black-and-blue fingernails when I didn't get my hands out of the way quick enough. Anyhow, that Monday morning, as I have been all my life, I was up at around four in the morning. I went and delivered my papers and had me a cigarette while I did it. This time, though, I didn't throw the butt away. I carefully put the fire out and carried it back home with me. Then I went out to the piles of clothes we were all supposed to put out on Sunday night so they'd be there for Mama on Monday morning. I got one of Don's shirts out of his pile and stuffed that cigarette butt in there. Now, Mama was the mother of five boys. She always checked every pocket of every article of clothing before she put it in the wash. Sweet revenge was coming on a bright Monday morning! Woo-hoo!

"Donald Wayne Elliott," I heard her scream, "get your ass out here on this porch right now. What is this?" she asked, holding that cigarette butt under his nose.

"A cigarette," Don said.

"What the hell is it doing in your shirt pocket?" she asked. "Are you saving it for later?"

"I don't know," Don whimpered.

Oh God, please don't let me laugh out loud, I prayed silently.

"The hell, you say," she screamed as she started flogging his ass with the switch, which was always handy. "You think this is bad? You just wait 'til your dad gets home!"

Pickin' Blackberries

My brother Don and I were like most brothers. We would fight like cats and dogs, but woe unto him who might assail one of us. The other would be in the fray protecting faster than a duck on a wounded June bug. You would never get in a fight with just one of us when the other was around. I pulled things on Don like tying him up on a mountain and forgetting him for an entire day. He would bring a big onion to the bed we shared and eat it like an apple, knowing that I hated onions. Still and all, we loved each other as brothers, and we each think of the other today as a best friend.

We get together as often as possible just to spend time with each other. However, there are two events every year that are sacred times for us. One of those is hunting deer the first weekend in November each year. Two other brothers join us for that, and we have a great time together. We laugh, reminisce, and pull pranks on each other. The other time we meet up is a weekend in midsummer when the blackberries are ripe. There is enchantment surrounding those big, juicy blackberries that grow in the high mountains of eastern Kentucky. They are sweet with nature's nectar and bring with that a tartness that tantalizes the tongue. A lot of them never make it to the buckets when Don and I are picking, but we do manage to get a few gallons home for jam and cobblers.

It's a hard wait wanting that first blackberry cobbler to come out of the oven. The aroma of it baking wafts into your pores, and your mouth waters like a slow mountain spring. A scorched tongue is inevitable when you finally get some, but there's always a glass of ice-cold milk to soothe that. When you eat that, you know there is a God in heaven, and he is smiling on you.

So here we are. Don and I are both past sixty now. We met for the annual berry pick last July. He had been scouting the woods since the blackberries had bloomed in late April and knew where the big ones grew. He had found a patch of berries like I had never seen. They were growing at the top of an embankment that rose about twenty feet up from a dirt road. The bank was steep, but you could maintain your balance and pick berries. Boy, could you ever pick a bunch too. Those vines were rooted at the top but trailed down the embankment over half way. There were so many big, thumb-sized berries on them that they looked like black bananas hanging down.

We put a big cooler about halfway down the length of the patch; Don went to one end, and I went to the other. We each had gallon buckets that we would fill and then empty into the cooler as we worked toward each other. I had emptied two buckets and was working on my third. Above my head hung the biggest blackberries I had ever seen, and they were just inches out of my reach. Trying to creep up and gain footing on the bank, I inched forward. My hand was in the air, and I only needed two more inches. I looked down to see where I could place my foot for that last little boost that would put me in blackberry heaven.

Oh my God!

Eighteen inches from my foot was the biggest, fattest, ugliest timber rattler I had ever encountered. That bad boy meant business too. He was coiled to strike with his head reared back and his tongue flicking out to test the air, just waiting for me to make one more move toward him. I could tell he had been eating well, because that big, thick body was rippling with muscles that looked like the huge forearm of a champion weight lifter. It just does not do it justice to say I froze in my tracks. I became like the pure marble of a master's classic statue. My hand was still raised in search of another berry, and my feet and legs were stuck to the ground like hundred-year-old oaks rooted in virgin soil. So there I stood when Don came to empty his bucket of thumb-sized blackberries.

He looked up at me frozen in time. His jaw was bulged out with a large wad of Red Man chewing tobacco, and he put a hand on his hip.

"Brother," he said as he spat out a brown stream of tobacco juice. "You going to stand there like the Statue of Liberty, or you gonna help me pick these berries?"

Now, I'm a fairly intelligent person. I know a lot about snakes and such. One of the facts I know about snakes is that they are deaf. That didn't make one damned bit of difference to me.

"Snake," I said in a whisper as I dared let my eyebrows and gaze move downward only to see that snake still reared back with its tongue flicking.

"What?" asked Don.

"Snake dammit," I whispered as loud as I dared and once again arched my eyebrows down. He moved a little closer and looked beyond my knee.

"Yep, rattler," he said as he switched that wad of tobacco from one cheek to the other and spat another big stream on the road.

"Do something, you little shit," I whispered as loud as I dared again. By now my muscles were beginning to tremble, and I just knew that snake was going to strike any minute.

He just stood there and looked at the snake again. "Looks about five and a half feet to me," he said. "A fine specimen he is too. Look how fat he is. I'd say he's been eatin' pretty damn good."

I did a quick calculation. A rattlesnake can strike out two-thirds the length of its body. It was eighteen inches from my leg, coiled tightly, and was five and a half feet long. Yep, he could sure as hell bury those fangs in me if he decided to reach out and touch someone.

"Do something," I whispered a little louder again, eyeing the broken broomstick Don clutched against the bucket in his other hand. He just rolled that tobacco back to the original cheek, spat that ugly brown stream again, and said, "Remember that time you left my ass tied up on the mountain?"

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Stories from a Kentucky Boyby R. Kenley Elliott Copyright © 2012 by R. Kenley Elliott. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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