DEVIL’S DEN NOVELLA

David and the Zundappes

A Novella

By

Dennis and Leilani Wilds

copyright 2012

all right reserved

David had a favorite mental pastime and that was to imagine standing between two mirrors and wonder at the never ending reflections of himself receding into infinity.  Which David was the real one anyway?  On the other hand, was anything real?  Was tonight real, and if so, then why had he fallen backwards into the red dirt outside the Furrmen compound holding the shoe of a grown man known as “The Baby”?  The sun had set an hour earlier and mixed with the smells of cooking beans, something like burning rags and just a hint of skunk odor, David could smell the scent of the surrounding pine trees of Buzzard Creek, Oklahoma.  With family two thousand miles away in Squires Camp, California, my older brother had come home to get away from a little trouble back in Stratford where some bicycles had come up missing.  It was a mild Indian Summer evening and David missed his family.  He had been longing for two years to come back to the family farm but not under these circumstances.  Home, he now understood was where family was, and his family was fragmented.  He was alone and how he came to be holding the Baby’s brogan shoe this night will require some explaining going back to times even before David was born, or for that matter before Baby, Myrtle In The Bushes, Eldridge, Billy, Candido and the rest of the Furrmen ever founded the Zundappe compound in Buzzard Creek.  For now, these real people were just shadows on the tent wall illuminated by the kerosene lamps.  In the Midwest, where whole towns emptied and populations undulated with the seasonal crops, a certain segment of this human flotsam settled in the backwoods of Mc Curtain County Oklahoma and David was temporarily going to be a part of important human history whether he wanted it or not.  He had been adopted and accepted by the Zundappers of Buzzard Creek and it wasn’t all that bad to tell you the truth.

Having previously alluded to the Zundappers, I guess now is a good time to explain how an ancient European religious order found its way to twentieth century Oklahoma.  The credit goes to a Swiss Zundappe missionary named Roy Eugene Fermin, maybe the hardest working Zundapper of all time.  Roy believed in work and all the good it could bring you and it is ironic that in time his sect came to embrace the exact opposite of this philosophy.  By the time Roy, or Brother Fermin, as he called himself, had worked his way westward across the states he was tired and ready to settle down and Buzzard Creek seemed to have all the makings of a new world.  There was the year round creek, woods for building, and a never ending supply of WWI military surplus tents to be had.  The local Okies were so distracted by the chronically depressed economy that Brother Fermin’s arrival attracted little attention.  The local sheriff, Walter Irons declared Roy harmless after one cursory visit and Buzzard Creek’s population grew by one.

Brother Roy E. Fermin

Brother Roy Eugene Fermin stood on the red clay hill overlooking Buzzard Creek, his new homestead.  It was 1939 and he was far removed from his native Bavarian Forest Zundappe home.  All he owned was in the back of the Model T Ford and it wasn’t much.  The smell of fall was in the air as Brother Fermin took in the vista of one hundred and sixty bottomland acres of loblolly pines, red and white oak, and a few fingers of gold and red stands of pecan and walnut trees hugging the banks of Buzzard Creek in the very southeastern corner of Mc Curtain County, Oklahoma.  A woodsman by trade, Brother Fermin was, at thirty years of age, in the best physical condition of his life and he knew he would need every woodsman’s skill his brothers in Germany had taught him.  However, his greatest strength was in his conviction to succeed and to do so in an honest and humble manner befitting his Zundappe Order.  He had come to America in peace and with the intention of building his own sect of Zundappe, thereby spreading his knowledge and passion for honesty and generosity to this strange and beautiful wooded land. Today he would set up camp and begin his mission tomorrow.

Now I don’t know much more than this about Fermin and what I do know has been related to me by my Uncle Waldo, the county sheriff in Fermin’s time.  One old picture showed Fermin to be of medium build with deep set green eyes, and high cheekbones and dark brown curly hair and a full beard.  County records and census searches show no mention of a man named Fermin or any of the other assorted characters you will get to know shortly for these boys and men of the Fermin Sect came and went like the waters that ran from Buzzard Creek into Little River and then on to Red River down thru Arkansas and finally into the Mississippi River to New Orleans.  And you know that was the time of the Great Depression when self sufficiency was the key to survival and the help of others was the difference between eating and going hungry.

The day after arriving at his new homestead Brother Roy began to clear a home site on a low hill overlooking his woods.  His plan was to have shelter by winter and enough firewood to make it til spring.  By then he would have cleared a garden patch and finished a modest frame home high enough off the ground to stay dry in the rainy part of the year.  Roy bought a team of mules to drag the timber he felled to the site and jacked the rear axle of his Model T Ford off the ground to accommodate the belt drive for his portable sawmill.  In short order he had a solid foundation for his one room building and erected a WWI tent on the wood floor.  With shelter against the elements Roy continued to clear his land and lay in dry firewood from fallen trees until he had a good six months supply.  By December Brother Roy had replaced the tent with a real roof and had side walls up too.  Using the sawdust from his mill he insulated the walls and his wood stove kept the nights warm and then the snow turned his compound white.  Now all he had to do was wait for spring and plant his garden.  Roy was making a little money by milling for some of his neighbors in Buzzard Creek but mostly he was bartering for staples like corn and canned goods.  Roy could sell some of his hand hewn oak rail road ties in Valiant as well as some fence posts so he developed a good rapport with his city neighbors.  The way Roy saw things, he would be well positioned to open his Zundappe Compound by summer if his luck and health held out, and why wouldn’t it?  No one had ever seen such a hard working ascetic or self sufficient man in those parts for a long time.  He came to be known for speaking only the truth and delivering good on his word in dealing with others.  He was already teaching others about his Zundappe philosophy by his daily actions.  His life was complete enough, or so he thought when Candido Ceasar Chavez Rio Seco showed up looking for work Christmas day, 1939.

Brother Roy surveyed Candido trying not to laugh but he had been to a world’s fair and a goat roping contest and never had he seen a funnier sight than the one standing in front of him that snowy afternoon.  Poor Candido, and I am using the word poor in the purest sense of the word, was wearing and carrying everything he owned.  Candido had on Texas brand cowboy boots with pointed toes and inlaid leather eagles on the sides.  Above his boots he was wearing full cut brown wool dress pants so big on him that he needed horsehair rope suspenders to pull the waistband up under his arm pits.  Roy figured he the poor boy could crawl in and out of the chest high zipper to dress himself.  The cuffs were tied tight around Candido’s boots so whatever they were stuffed with couldn’t fall out the bottoms, and there was plenty room for extra clothes to fit in the ballooning legs of his pants.  Denim jeans and flannel shirts hid under this outer layer dress suit, concealed again by a dress coat far too big for the little man.  The coat tails hung down past Candido’s knees and the shoulders were padded by a bedroll draped over his little Mayan shoulders.  Yep, Candido was Mexican Indian, and he was from Sinaloa, Old Mexico and he had been born into a family of goat herders.  Somewhere along his way, he found a felt fedora into which he slipped a wild turkey feather into the headband.

“What’s that you wearing boy?” Brother Roy asked, making the word “boy” come out hard sounding.

“A zoot” Candido said.

“Azoot?” said Fermin.

“No, ahh zoooot!” repeated the little Indian man.

“Looks like some big man’s suit.” Replied Fermin.

“Yeah, a big zoot, like I say.” Agreed Candido.

So the kid was wearing a zoot suit he was saying, whatever a zoot suit was figured Roy.  He was still funnier than hell looking with that skinny neck sticking up out of the collar and the hat hiding most of that Mayan forehead.  For a short while the man and the boy just stood there grinning and surveying each other til Candido asked, “Got work for me?”

“Maybe, what can you do?”

“Cook, hunt, dig, fix, chop, plant, pick cotton, fish, skin…I work hard for sure…. You no like; you no pay…ok   bueno?” the little man asserted with great confidence.

With that and a handshake, Candido became the first American Zundapper but it was Brother Roy who was going to be the student most of the year or so that Candido lived at the compound.

Now if you know my stories you know they are mostly about people I have known or learned about from my folks.  Some of these were good people and some not so good.  But every now and then I have brushed with greatness and, hands down, I’m telling you now that Candido Rio Seco stands alone at the top of the pile when it comes down to integrity and honor. I’m going to say that Candido is the greatest little man, or any size man I have ever known and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.  To get to know Candido was a learning experience in patience, perseverance and a serious style of confident humor.  He spoke Calo’, something like Spanglish with ancient Spanish and Indian mixed in and he continued to expand his vocabulary every day as he worked on the train tracks as a Trajero on his way from Ciudad Juarez thru El Chuco or El Paso as he headed northwest thru Texas toward the Oklahoma panhandle.  He was, in short, the original Pachuco and he had little or no intention of staying very long in Oklahoma.  It was winter and he had to hole up somewhere til the spring planting season when he would follow the crops west toward California.  His highway was the railway these days but for shelter and food, Candido figured he could help Brother Roy finish clearing some of the homestead for the next three or four months.  By spring, the two had cleared a well drained twenty acre plot for corn and cotton but Candido took it on himself to fence off a small truck garden near the banks of Buzzard Creek where he planted a few seeds of a mysterious plant that his grandmother, an Indian Cunandera or herbalist healer, had given him.  Candido convinced Roy to expand his milling business to include an ethanol still and by midsummer Roy was selling fence posts, railroad ties, milled hardwood, and small amounts of medicinal ethanol to the locals in Valiant and Idabel.  By late summer Candido harvested some of his special herbs and introduced Brother Roy to the medicinal aspects of one herb in particular, the one grown from his grandmother’s seeds.  This could be smoked in a pipe or consumed in cornbread inducing a curious state of relaxation.  Brother Roy named it “Relaxol” (patent pending) and added it to the products he marked in town.

Relaxol, more than ethanol, created more interest in the Zundappe compound and gradually a few travelers found their way to Buzzard Creek.  By summer’s end Roy had a good fifteen or so converts living and working on his homestead milling lumber and working the cotton and corn. There was Baby, aka the baby talking motherfucker, Myrtle (in the bushes), Candido, Eldridge, and Timmy the sniffer in the beginning.  Each new convert was issued a six foot cotton sack of their wear with neck and arm holes.  On the backs of the sacks Roy marked one large “X”, the purpose of which was a reminder that as a Zundapper you had a new identity and a new future.  The gates to the Zundappe compound were two large timber X’s planted in the red clay dirt.  As a Zundapper you were encouraged to work hard and abstain from lying or untruthful practices.  Roy taught that a person was only as good as his word and his work ethic.  Now it sounded simple but so many of his new students were damaged goods and human flotsam and they carried their own psychological baggage with them from their old lives.  Their stay in Buzzard Creek would often be mentally and physically therapeutic, allowing them to leave as healed and changed charismatics, more prepared for the world than when they arrived.  That’s how it worked out for Myrtle anyway.

Myrlte in the Bushes

From where Myrtle sat on her bale of hay she dispassionately watched the parade of Okies, mostly grown men and a few women, shuffle by on the other side of the rusty bars gawking and laughing and insinuating at her.  The crowd of idiots amused her as much as she amused them.  If only they knew what she knew, boy howdy they would be surprised.  She had her secret and their one thin dime didn’t come close to buying it today or tomorrow when she would have left Valiant to perform in Idabel.  To them Myrtle was billed as a wild woman, a Catahoula Cajun Cutie from Bayou Larouche, Louisiana.  Her boss gave her the coconut brassiere and the grass skirt but the alligator leather pumps were hers and she languidly reclined and pouted wearing the hemp colored coarse wig and red lipstick and rouge, batting her eyes at the young boys who were the most gullible.  Myrtle was as mixed a metaphor as they came and she could smell the tiger piss odor that lingered from the last occupant of the carnival cage wagon she performed in nowadays.  Yep, it had come down to working for a travelling carnival in Southeastern Oklahoma and little Richard Simonde wondered how it had all come to this.  He was a he/she with no home or promise of a better life, pretending to be an aboriginal female captured down in Louisiana running with the Louisiana Leopard Dogs in Catahoula Parish.

Richard was a woman in a man’s body and he was ok with that if only everyone else would just leave him alone.  Small and wiry, he made a homely girl and thankfully, his beard was light enough to require little shaving.  He had left home willingly headed for California to work in the movies where his Shirley Temple curly hair might get the attention of an agent. He had signed on with the travelling medicine show in Arkansas and was headed toward El Paso eventually and life was pretty easy as long as he continued to fool the Okies in front of him tonight and thankfully, the night was almost over with two lingering big Okies staring at him for about their third dime tour.  Igard and Woodford Baker, brothers from over at Polecat Creek, were fascinated by Myrtle and they suspected something very different was going on with her.  Emboldened by grain alcohol and with the pent up energy of hardworking, rawboned young farmers, these two man boys were in agreement that they had to know what was under that coconut brassiere that Myrtle kept adjusting over there as she lolled back and forth on those bales of hay.  For her part, little Richard was getting a little nervous since the wagon didn’t have a back door and these two jug heads were looking a little too menacing this evening and the flimsy wooden bars between the three of them were just for show anyway.  Woodford began prying at bottom of the bars and soon had lifted them from the wooden wagon floor, allowing the smaller Igard to slip into Richards cage sideways bring him within five feet of her causing Richard to sit up straight on her bale.  “Go on Igard now and git them coconuts” Woodford announced from his side of the remaining bars.  Up until now no words had been exchanged by any of the three lone occupants of the tiger cage so Richard summoned her most feminine voice and warned Igard “y’all better git on outta here rat now fore I scream”.  “Let’s see whuts under them nuts Myrtle” said Igard as he stepped forward and reached his cotton pickin hand toward Richard.  This brought Richard to her feet on top of her bale and she knew she was in trouble with Woodford squeezing sideways thru the space in the bars bringing him side to side with his little brother Igard.  Now what actually happened next no one really knows exactly because all three participants gave different stories to Sherriff Irons later on. When the screaming, hair snatching, kicking and mayhem ended Igard had the coconuts and Woodford had a broken nose and Myrtle had lost her red wig and her secrets.  Uncle Waldo, the sheriff declared the event a minor altercation and sent the Baker boys back toward Polecat Creek and Myrtle opted not to press the matter and left on his own in the opposite direction with all of his belongings in a floral carped bag.  The next morning Myrtle happened on the Zundappe gate and was accepted unconditionally by the brothers.

Baby I Was Born This Way

Lady Gaga

I ask you to think of your most embarrassing moments in life. Now hold that thought and imagine collecting a lifetime of embarrassing emotions and condense those uncomfortable feelings into just one second in time. What I am asking you to do is to distill a lifetime of discomfort into its pure essence. Now imagine every second of every day ruled by this one emotion and you will know how Baby endured his every day. That’s what it feels like to be painfully shy as a young man with a speech impediment. I told you before how Baby was tongue tied with the cingulum or something or other that Dr. Clarkson called it holding Baby’s tongue down to the floor of his mouth trapping and changing “s’s” into “t’s” and “r’s” into “w’s”. Talking like that may be ok for a three or four year old but Baby never grew out of his baby talking phase and by eight or so he was reluctant to open his mouth in front of strangers. The grins and laughter his speech elicited became daily punishment for talking. He turned shy and quiet. He read and studied and avoided the normal socialization a young boy needed. Baby had no friends. The poor boy couldn’t even say his name Oral without it coming out “Owa”. Before you get to feeling too sorrowful for this kid there is something else you need to know about him. He was a literary prodigy and the one book he mastered was the Holy Bible. By “prodigy” I mean Baby’s reading and memory skills were prodigious, maybe even a little on the genius side. Baby absorbed and remembered everything he read and stored it for later on and this “later on” would be a glorious time in his life as I will soon explain. Oh, by the way, Baby’s dad was an evangelist with a tent revival circuit in Southern Oklahoma so Baby was home schooled in church doings. He suffered through Bible sermons four days out of every week all year long. I can just imagine Baby sitting in the front row of the church tent wearing his little blue clip on tie and blue cufflinks in his starched white shirt and blue jeans soaking in his dad’s sermons quietly grading their biblical accuracy, knowing better than his dad what the Bible really said while just keeping his mouth shut. Baby dreamed of one day getting up there on that stage and blasting out the biblical message inflating that tent with the Truth. Baby had things to say and he dreamed of being heard. But he was going to need the help of the Zundappers to be complete and whole.

As time went on and Baby entered adolescence he became more withdrawn and outwardly sullen, refusing to talk unless directly confronted. Keeping his nose buried in his Bible Baby had the apparent look of an overly zealous student, even during meals and his folks soon learned to just leave him alone in his quiet solitude. All this time Baby wanted to talk and he had lots to say but every time he worked up the nerve and took a deep breath prepared to share his thoughts, his words stopped in his throat and just sat there clogging his airway. This just hurt. His rib cage would ache and he developed indigestion. Baby went on into young adulthood tense and irascible. He would curse under his breath and head off alone where he would talk to himself out loud and practice elocution as he had taught himself from his readings at the small town public libraries. Nothing seemed to help his diction or his frame of mind. Baby’s attitude was sour like his stomach. Just one look at this tense young man was enough to make you want to leave him be. His body language shouted “Leave me alone!” His question for God was “Why was I born this way?” The least slight would send Baby off into an epithet filled tirade earning him the nickname “That Baby Talkin Motherfucker” among the revival’s entourage of laborers.

Baby’s family was a working family and Baby did his part in setting up camp raising the tent and breaking it down again. Two hundred folding chairs needed unloading and setting up each Wednesday and reloading again each Monday. Tuesday was a travelling day. The Robbins’ Evangelical Healing Revival, as Baby’s dad called it was an institution in Southern Oklahoma and if you wanted to see the lame healed and tongue talking, then this was the show for you. To supplement the donation take there was the Bible sales that Baby took over as he matured. Weekdays through Saturdays would find Baby parked in front of the public library or town square at a folding table with a stack of new Bibles and a sign asking for whatever donation the locals could spare. This left Baby ample time to read and study the books from the libraries too. Baby had to admit to himself that, all in all, the Bible was a bit depressing compared to world literature and he found a favorite author in Clemmens. This writer could make him laugh and he needed a little humor to get through the days. The newspapers were talking about a war in Europe in this summer of 1940 and a charismatic named Adolph Hitler. His dad believed this was the Anti Christ predicted in the Bible Book of Revelations and began to preach this in his sermons, drawing more and more sick and lame onto the stage for the post sermon healing sessions and testimonials. That was the part of the show the locals really came to see in the first place. There were the regular participants each time with Baby’s dad needing two strong assistants to stand behind each supplicant to catch their backwards fall when the full force of Jesus travelled from Daddy’s hand to the recipient’s forehead with invisible energy. This bolt of salvation and healing was accompanied by the pronouncement of “Sweet Jesus save this sinner!” and Baby learned to predict which of these sinners were the ones to collapse backwards into his waiting arms. The Sunday evening schedule never varied with Baby’s mom opening the meeting with an organ recital and a couple hymns with the hundred or so attendees. Reverend Robbins would then proceed with a full sermon reminding the audience to beware of the impending end of days and the final judgment. Asking if they were ready if that happened that night, the Reverend would close in prayer. That was the cue for Mama to play a processional on the organ while Reverend Robbins asked any and all to approach the stage for testimonials and or cures. All manner of lame and sick might choose to ask God through the Reverend for forgiveness and healing and what followed was often good theater. There were a few sinners that would travel with the show for the season and Baby learned just what to expect from these, but some of the first timers from the local population could bring unpredictable energy to these healings and Baby had to watch out for them and the rollers in particular. When all the dust settled Baby would pass the donation plates hoping the audience would reward his family with coins and the occasional dollar bills.

At sunrise on Monday, the packing would begin while the Reverend made his rounds to the local ministers to thank them for any and all referrals and saying good bye ‘til next year. And as I said, Tuesday was a travel day again.

Saturday, July 4^th, 1940 found Baby standing in his family trailer in front of the broken half mirror hanging from the back of the flimsy door separating the small bedroom from the rest of the trailer. He had the full head of hair of a twenty year old and the beginnings of whiskers on his chin. Baby liked the way he looked in the mirror as he adjusted his tie around the collar of his white shirt. He was already a bit taller than his dad and he had the green eyes of his mother. Yep, he was good looking all right and he decided he would wear his light colored suit today due to the summer heat. If he left now he would find a shaded spot in front of the Valliant, Oklahoma public library to set up his table and sign. Baby figured on a good flow of people for the Independence Day parade and hoped to sell a few Bibles too. On stepping out of the trailer Baby noted the red morning sky, a beautiful sunrise. The cicadas were beginning to buzz in the trees and bushes around the revival tent site. The air was still and muggy. The morning felt portentous and ominous. It had been cloudy in the afternoons lately but no rain yet. The Midwest was in a drought and the farmers needed rain badly. The ground was dry and hard and the oak tent pegs barely held the ropes supporting the revival tent. Baby headed off to the general store and bought a Rocky Road candy bar and a Royal Crown Cola from the ice barrel. This would be his breakfast. Sure enough the street in front of the library was busy with cars and the occasional team of mules pulling buckboards and carriages, some with bunting draped across the front ends. Baby set up his folding table and easel poster board and proceeded into the library to browse for a good picture book. The Collier’ World Book was always a good bet but today a biography of Will Rogers caught his eye and he checked it out for the day. Back outside he settled down in his folding chair and buried his nose in the pages of photos and text, occasionally looking up at the growing crowd. People watching was a fairly good pastime and Baby had become good at guessing personalities from body language. Like Will Rogers, Baby was an optimist about people finding more to like than dislike about the general public. Unlike Rogers, he would not go so far as to say he had never met a person he did not like. There was evil in the world out there and Baby learned to recognize this when he saw it in a person.

Baby’s suit coat was a bit snug in the shoulders and it was warming up now so he slipped it off and draped it over the back of the wooden folding chair. Loosening his collar and tie, he rolled his sleeves up and returned his attention to his book for the day and began in on his breakfast before the Rocky Road began to melt. As long as he didn’t have to talk much today he would be perfectly content to let life happen around him under the shade of the library trees. Returning to his book he mused at the photos of Will Rogers and that large nose and goofy grin and clown hat which were Roger’s trademarks. Reading between the lines, Baby figured Rogers as a classic self promoter but not a charlatan. There was no argument that Rogers was the most well known Okie in modern times and his popularity survived him even five years past his death. Like Baby, Rogers had some Cherokee blood but Baby actually had the high cheekbones and black hair to show for it.

Baby glanced up to see an old Model T truck pull up in front of the Valliant General Mercantile Store. The front end of the black truck was all factory but the back end was home made into a flat bed truck. From the front and back a curious group of characters wearing what looked like cotton sacks with “X’s” on their backs emptied onto the gravel street. The driver appeared to be in charge giving hand and arm directions to his crew as they headed off into Valliant in all directions. When the leader closed the driver’s side door there was a large white “X” painted on its side. Baby was used to seeing some unusual characters come into his dad’s tent in these backwater towns but, even by those standards, these fellas were a bit beyond odd. Baby noticed two of the smaller ones headed in his general direction. Like the other X men they were shoeless and had long hair and whiskers but their cotton sacks were clean and white. The shoulder straps had been cut off and were tied around their waists like sashes. At about five foot five or six the one of the left was dark skinned and probably Mexican or Indian. The other had blonde naturally curly hair and light skin and a fairly pleasant countenance and pale blue eyes and a thin light beard. Saying something to his dark friend, the blonde X man veered off toward the library front door while the Mexican X man strolled over next to Baby’s Bible concession and plopped down cross legged in the shade about eight feet off to Baby’s right. All the while the crowds began to thicken on the sidewalks and in the street of Valliant in preparation for the annual parade. The street sounds and the general hubbub of people talking and kids playing were transforming the quiet Saturday morning into a vibrant scene. Baby was aware of a general festive air building in Valliant and he glanced down again at the Rogers biography. Distracted by the arrival of the X men, Baby hadn’t noticed the approach of another character. First Baby was aware of a shadow created by the visitor to his stand; then the stench hit Baby. Looking up Baby saw a menacing figure of a man a little under six feet wearing tattered coveralls over a filth stained long handle shirt.

Old man Israel was what everyone called him. At about sixty years of age, Israel lived around Buzzard Creek next to the Zundappe homestead. His first wife had died during childbirth and the five kids from that family were grown and gone but Israel somehow had found a woman stupid enough to marry him again and he now had another four children growing up on his small rundown farm. Little more than beggars, Israel’s wife and kids supported their impoverished life style by hiring out to other farms as laborers. The locals made sure the wife and kids didn’t starve while Israel devoted his time to carousing and his whisky still.

BOOGER ISRAEL AND RASSELIN’ WITH ANGELS

Old man Israel was what everyone called him.  At about sixty years of age, Israel lived on Buzzard Creek next to the Zundappe homestead.  His first wife had died during childbirth and the five kids from that family were grown and gone but Israel somehow had found a woman stupid enough to marry him again and he now had another four children growing up on his small rundown farm.  Little more than beggars, Israel’s wife and kids supported their impoverished lifestyle by hiring out to other farms as laborers.  The locals made sure the wife and kids didn’t starve while Israel devoted his time to carousing and his whisky still.  Ironically and at odds to his lifestyle, Israel considered himself a man of the Lord and preached his version of the Gospel drunk or sober to whomever would stand still and listen.  Israel could and would disrupt local church services with his long drawn out testimonials, even going at odds with the presiding ministers.  Israel’s lack of personal hygiene earned him the nickname of Booger but you didn’t want him to hear you call him that.  Foot washings were seldom advertised for fear Booger Israel would show up with his rusty, stinking dogs.  When Booger was overcome with the Holy Spirit the church services were generally considered over and the women and children left the building.  Booger would commence with what he called “rasseling with angels” when he started to roll and talk tongues.  Even the ministers privately called Booger a first class asshole and considered him dangerous.  His wife and kids considered Booger evil and lived in fear of him.  So when Baby looked up and into Booger Israel’s slightly unfocused eyes, he instinctively went on guard physically.  From Booger’s sockless brogans to his patched bib overalls and his tobacco stained teeth Baby surveyed the worst of Mc Curtain County’s humanity.  Even Valliant denied being associated with Booger considering Booger a Buzzard Creek creature, dreading the occasions he showed up in town.

“You know what the Bible sez?” Booger growled at Baby.

Before he could think to answer Booger’s rhetorical question, Baby got a whiff of Booger’s whisky laced halitosis and recoiled back in his chair.

“The Bible sez, all you sinners be damned and gonna burn in hell for eternity!” Booger announced loud enough for the Mexican X man and others to hear.  Specks of chewing tobacco spittle rained down on the card table in front of Baby.  Instinctively, Little Caesar went on guard.  He knew a dangerous man when he saw one so he chose to sit still where he was as long as Booger didn’t notice him off to Baby’s side.

Right then a familiar sound caught Booger’s attention near the library’s front door.  It was a baby crying and he knew that irritating sound well.  It was his daughter Delphia’s one year old kid, Levester sitting in an old black four wheeled buggy.  She had pushed the run down buggy from Buzzard Creek early this morning and the old rusted chrome wheels were missing pieces of the black rubber tread.  The bonnet was torn and patched with a piece of tarp to shade the tired child.  Delphia was about sixteen years old and she was barefoot and wearing an old faded print dress that belonged to her mama.  She had dishwater blonde home cut hair parted on one side with a rusty bobby pin holding her bangs up and off to the side a little.  She had brown eyes and a splash of freckles across her nose and a perpetual sad expression to her mouth.  She had hoped to avoid Booger today but as luck would have it Levester’s bawling gave her away.

Seeing his daughter, Booger hollered “What the hell you doin in town?  Told you to stay home, didn’t I?” Before she could answer, Booger added,

“Come over here when I’m talking to you stupid!”

Delphia stiffened and pushed the buggy in his direction while Booger took a few steps toward her and grabbed the front end of the beat up buggy and shook it saying,

“For Christ’s sake, when’s the last time you changed that little bastard’s diaper!  He stinks worse than a hobo’s ass!”  This made Levester cry even louder prompting Delphia to reach down and pick him up rocking him to console and quiet the now obviously scared one year old.

“I told you to stay home so git on home now and take that screaming kid with you!”

With that Booger reached over and yanked Delphia’s hair and slapped her on the side of her head.

With no further thought to his daughter, Booger turned his attention back to Baby and the Bible stand knowing he now had the full attention of everyone within fifty feet of him.  Right about then the blonde X man sauntered out of the library oblivious to the tension out on the library lawn and noticed Delphia and the baby who were both whimpering.  Instinctively, the feminine side of the X man showed itself as he went over to console the mama and her child.

“What’s the matter, you little cutie?”  Myrtle cooed at Levester before noticing the leaking diaper and the smell.  “Oooh, looks like someone needs a new diap….”  Myrtle started to say as he felt the full force of Booger’s shoe hit is butt sending him forward into the buggy and down on the grass.

“Looks like someone needs to mind his own God damned business!”  Booger snarled at the blonde X man who was in the process of getting up and trying to figure out whom or what had just kicked him like a mule.  Booger was instantly on Myrtle now and had him by the hair with his left hand and smacked him open handed with his right.

“Jezebelles, bastard babies, and now Sodom and Gomorrah all in one morning!”  Getting ready to give the little queer a good beating, Booger brought his right hand up preparing to hit Myrtle again when Little Caesar, the Mexican X man sprung up off his feet and from somewhere produced a seven inch switch blade and launched himself at Booger.  Holding the first five inches of blade in his hand, Little Caesar gigged Booger near the rear pocket of his coveralls with the exposed two inches of his blade.  What he wanted was to get the big redneck off his friend and this it did bringing Booger’s fist to a stop and causing the old man to release Myrtle’s hair from his left hand.  Turning around, the old man felt his ass stinging and noticed the knife in the little Mexican X man’s hand.  Little Caesar was by now back about ten feet from Booger and he held the fully exposed blade in his open palm off to his side so the old man could see the entire knife.  He wanted the old man to know what he was in for if it came down to a full fight.

“You son of a bitch!  You done cut me!”  Booger said reaching inside the back of his coveralls feeling the warm blood on his fingers.  Little Caesar said nothing and his slight crouch and wide footed stance said he was not running and prepared for whatever the old man wanted to do.

“You cotton sacked son of a bitch are gonna wish you never left Mexico when I get through with you……”  Booger seethed as he stepped back to Baby’s table and grabbed one of its legs and ripped the leg, hinge and all from the table top, scattering the Bibles on the lawn.  Little Caesar

had figured on the old man being a coward needing a weapon, but that was ok because Little Caesar didn’t plan on a fair fight either.  Caesar grew up fighting in Sinaloa and actually looked forward to dropping the old man but he would have rather not had an audience if it came down to that. The way he looked at the world, there were good folks, bad folks, and everyone in between who were only half alive in their soulless worlds.  Baby and Myrtle were good, Booger was beyond bad, and Delphia was a nothing as far as he could tell.  As for the baby Levester, he had a suspicion he would turn out more like the Boogers in the world, as cruel and judgmental as that sounded.  As for himself, Caesar felt like a good person who had to constantly deal with people like Booger from the time he crossed over into El Paso and began to work for white folks.  While Booger stood there blustering, Caesar worked out his plan.  If worse came to worse he would quickly dispense with this Philistine pendejo and borrow Brother Roy’s Model T to put some distance between himself and Valiant.  Taking his chances with the local law was not a good option in Caesar’s experience with gringo justice.  Yep, he had picked his targets on Booger and the rest depended on Boogers first move.  Either the left chest under the armpit around the third or fourth rib, or high up on the inside of the groin would be Caesars first strikes and which one depended on Booger’s style of fight.  Caesar would wait for the first swing and either go in quick up high or down low before Booger could rewind with his bludgeon.  A quick stick and twist in either place and all Caesar had to do was back out and wait for the old man to slump, either sucking air and bleeding from a hole in the chest or just a fast arterial bleed from the big artery in the groin.  By the time Booger knew what had happened Caesar would have the X truck headed north out of town before Sheriff Irons could turn his hounds loose.  Caesar would have preferred to handle Booger off in the woods with no witnesses where he would have enjoyed playing tic tac toe on this ass hole’s face with the blade before the real whittling began, but he had to make it look self defense here in front of the Saturday crowd and give the old man the first swing with his weapon.  So that’s how they stood ever so briefly facing each other with a good crowd all around.

“Just hold it right there Israel!” A voice of authority boomed from the street.  Heading straight for Booger was Sheriff Irons making big strides.  At six foot and three or more inches, the big man dressed in a khaki uniform and wearing the badge of Mc Curtain County Sheriff, Waldo Irons strode toward Booger with a purpose.  He had been keeping an eye on the old man since his deputy Amos Slaybaugh had alerted him of Booger’s drunken arrival into Valliant from Buzzard Creek that morning.  Sheriff Irons’ job was to enforce the anti liquor statutes of his county and this involved breaking up the occasional still here and there but for every still eliminated there were two or more left in operation.  Even Waldo liked a sip now and then and if he was to remain in good standing with the Fraternal Order of the Odd Fellows, of which he was a member, he was obligated to look the other way now and then when it came to certain stills.  Waldo, after all was an elected official and the next election was less than a year away.  Sheriff Waldo and Booger had a long history involving Booger’s Buzzard Creek stills and various other infractions of the local laws.  He suspected most of Booger’s problems stemmed from the poor quality of his whisky, which Booger used solely for his own consumption.

“Put the stick down now, Israel, I mean right now I said.” Waldo ordered again as he approached within twenty feet of the two combatants.  By now, Caesar’s knife was out of sight and he was edging backwards away from Booger.

“He done stuck me from behind Sherriff!” Booger protested, still gripping the table leg with it pointed toward Caesar.

“Gimme that damn stick.” Waldo said wrenching the leg from Booger’s right fist.  “You know not to come to town drunk, causing trouble.  I saw the whole thing from the beginning Israel and if you don’t head home right now, and I mean right now, I’ll arrest your ass and keep you for a week or two in jail til Judge Williams comes to town.”

“What about him?” Booger whined looking around for the now gone Caesar.

“I’ll take care of him too Israel, so git on home now, and for God’s sake take a swim in the creek on the way home.  You stink to high heaven.  Use lye soap or something and wash them clothes too.  People can’t stand to be around you for the smell Israel.”

Knowing not to press it with Sheriff Irons, the old man turned to survey the small crowd he had drawn and noticed Delphia disappearing around the side of the library with little Levester in the buggy.  Looking straight at Baby standing in front of the three legged table and scattered Bibles, Booger growled “I ain’t finished talkin to you either.”

“Git.” Ordered Sheriff Irons to Booger’s back grabbing the suspenders of Booger’s overalls and pulling him back from Baby and wheeling him around toward the street in one motion. With that the old man turned toward main street and proceeded to stumble off in the direction from which he came into town.

With that, Sheriff Irons turned to Baby, handing him the leg to his table and said “My advice to you, and you too” glancing over at Myrtle, “is to steer clear of Israel for the next few days.  And tell your Mexican friend I want to talk to him today or he’ll spend a few days in jail.”

“Yes sir.” Replied Baby while Myrtle nodded in the affirmative off to the side.  Looking around the crowd and taking a mental note of witnesses Waldo returned his attention to the growing line of people lining the street waiting for the parade.  His job today would be to prevent more of this type of foolishness in Valliant while presiding over the rest of Mc Curtain County with only two deputies to help him.  In the meantime, Caesar had circled around the back of the library and ran across Delphia changing Levester’s fouled diaper.  She had found a water spigot at the side of the building and was holding the kids butt under the stream of water with the kid continuously crying and snotting.

“Thanks for the help with daddy.”  Delphia said acknowledging Caesars approach.

“He malo that man.  I no like heem.  I like to make him go away for good.”  Caesar said noting the red welt on Delphia’s face and an older bruise on her arm above the elbow.

“Daddy is mean enough when he’s not drunk, but when he drinks he gets this way.  The Sherriff has warned him before and even put him in jail in Idabel for a month last year but he still beats on us at home.  I hate him.  If’n I told the Sheriff all the stuff Daddy done to me and my sisters he would put him in jail for ever.  I wish I could cut his heart out.” Delphia began to sob now as she placed the whining boy back in his buggy and turned to rinsing the diaper under the spigot.  “And if I was you I’d watch out now that you done cut him cause he’ll come for you with his gun.  He’ll wait til the sheriff ain’t around so watch yourself.”

“Maybe he the one to worry.”  Observed Caesar under his breath, taking a few steps around the corner of the library, looking to see where Myrtle had gone.  “Looks like they getting ready for the parade out there.”  He said to Delphia over his shoulder.  “You gonna stay and watch?”  He asked her while he rinsed the blade off with water from the spigot.

“I guess.  Can’t go home now til Daddy sobers up.  With that Delphia produced a bottle of paregoric from the buggy and poured a tablespoon into Levester’s crying mouth, causing the boy to slurp and cough a little.  Delphia took a good sip from the bottle before replacing the cork.  “That usually settles him on down, and me too.”  Delphia said as she turned the buggy around and followed Caesar back toward the front lawn of the library where Baby and Myrtle were replacing the wobbly leg under the Bible table.  The crowd Booger had drawn had dissipated leaving Delphia, Levester, Caesar, Myrtle and Baby mostly alone in the shade on the lawn.  “Thanks Caesar.  I thought the old man was gonna skull me for sure.” Myrtle said.  “All I done was to say ‘Hi’ to the baby and he started whomping on me.  The Sheriff run him off and told him not to come back.  I think he’s skeerd of the Sheriff.  By the way, the Sheriff wants to talk to you too fore we go on home tonight.”

That’s where David found everyone on returning to the truck to get more Relaxol.  My brother had come to town with Brother Roy and more of the Zundappers.  His job was to make the rounds to the growing list of Relaxol subscribers in Valliant while Roy and the rest delivered the ethanol and tried to keep up with the increasing demand for the Zundappers’ high quality medicinals.

“I saw my Uncle Waldo over there and he was asking more bout you Caesar.  Wants to talk to you fore you go home tonite.” David said to Caeser.

“I don tink so.” Said Caesar back to no one in particular.

THE PSYCHADELIC PARADE

For the past two months David had been on a working vacation with the Zundappers in Buzzard Creek.  His mom had sent him back to Oklahoma after getting in trouble with the authorities in Stratford, California.  The plan was for his Uncle Moe, the labor contractor to deliver David to his Aunt Nellie Baker’s home over in Polecat Creek, a couple miles from Buzzard Creek and his former home near Buzzard Creek.  Uncle Moe Irons, Nellie’s brother, and David’s mom’s brother also, was one of those larger than life people some families produce.  Like his brother Waldo Irons, Moe was well over six feet tall and smarter than you might expect from someone with a little less than eight years of grade school.  Moe was a born business man, having learned how to wheel and deal from his dad who owned a country store and a ferry on Little River, a few miles north of Valliant.  After inheriting the store and ferry, Moe had built up the two businesses and rented them out while starting a rodeo stock ranch between Valliant and Wright city.  He raised some cotton and bred bulls, horses and goats for the summer rodeos of Mc Curtain County.  By the late 1930’s, Moe had branched out into farm labor contracting, delivering cotton pickers from Arkansas and Oklahoma to the San Joaquin Valley of California.  Each summer, Moe would buy and old school bus or two and recruit locals to relocate to California in time for the fall cotton picking season.  Having just delivered forty or so poor broke souls at the beginning of the summer to weed cotton, or chop cotton as it was called, Moe returned for the rodeo season and David’s mom asked him to deliver David to his Aunt Nellie’s for the duration of the summer and bring him back in time for the fall picking and school after that.

Soon after being dropped off at the Baker farm, David was assigned the job of cutting and stacking firewood for the farmhouse, barn, and his Uncle Emil’s whisky still.  David was as good a worker as he wanted to be so he took on the job of hitching up the old farm mare to a buckboard after breakfast each morning and headed out to the woods of Buzzard Creek.  That’s how David met Little Caesar one morning near the Zundapp compound.

That particular morning, Caesar, dressed in his cotton sack, emerged from the woods in front of David’s rig holding a slingshot in one hand and an eight foot long dead diamond back rattler in his other hand.

“Whoa sally.” Said David to his mare, pulling the buckboard to a stop in the red clay road.  Surveying the curious little Mexican-Indian, David said nothing and just stared at Caesar until Caesar said “Buenos dias.”

“Good morning, mister.  You kill that thing with a bean flip?”  David said to Caesar.

“Si.” Replied Caesar, holding the snake out in front of him so David could get a better view.  Sally raised her head, flared her nostrils and backed up a step seeing the snake’s motion.

“Hide that thing.  You’re spookin Sally.”  David half shouted to Caesar, prompting Caesar to lower the dead rattler and swing it out of sight behind his body.

“Sorry.” Says Caesar, looking more proud than sorry, and grinning a little.

“You must be one of the Furrmen I heard about.”  David said to Caesar.

“I’m Candido Caesar Chavez Rioseco.  Don know nuttin bout no Furrmen.  I work for Mr. Firman.  That what you mean?  We from the Zundapp farm over there.”  Said Caesar, pointing with the slingshot in the direction of the woods lining Buzzard Creek.  “Wanna come see?  I gonna skin this snake for dinner tonite.”

“O K, I guess.” Said David  “Hop in and we’ll ride if you show me the way.”

With that Caesar swung the rattler into the back of the empty buckboard and stepped on the spokes of the front wheel and up into the buckboard seat next to David, pointing ahead to the right in the direction of a path off toward the creek about a quarter mile in the distance.  David watched as Caesar produced a lead ball from the pouch tied to his belt and reloaded his slingshot by placing the quarter inch shot in the cradle of the sling and wrapped a rubberband around the leather.  David made a mental note to incorporate this trick in his bean flip shooting style.  This Caesar had figured out how to pre load a bean flip.  Pretty smart feller, indeed.  In short order David reined the mare through a break in the woods and into a sizeable clearing with a small cabin overlooking about a half acre garden plot.  This apparently was the main entrance to the compound.  The corn was about four feet tall and the tomato vines were blooming with small yellow flowers.  Melon and squash vines spread out from several mounds and were in full bloom with larger trumpet like blooms.  This was the Furrmen compound Aunt Nellie had talked to David about without having ever seen it herself.  The church crowd was abuzz about what went on there with grown men wearing cotton sacks and not shaving.  What David saw was clean, neat and orderly with a few cotton sack wearing workers gardening and milling boards off to one side of the house.  The house itself had a full porch around it with a good covering and a smoke stack from the center of its roof.  A few chickens roamed the yard and some pigs were in a pen next to a small barn about a hundred yards down hill toward the edge of the woods.

“That Mr. Firman over there.” Said Caesar gesturing in the direction of a man running a saw attached the rear axle of a Model T truck.

“He da Zundapp.”  Said Caesar to David.

“The what?” Said David.

“Da bossman.”  Said Caesar.  “He own the farm and lumber yard.  I’m in charge of the garden and the Relaxol.  Myrtle over there runs the still.”  Said Caesar pointing toward a smallish, curly headed fellow tending to a spotless copper whisky still up hill from the house, well away from the trees in its own small clearing with a small wood shed nearby.

“How much do you get paid for working here?” Said David.

“No pay.  We trade.  You work you get food and bed.  We share when we sell railroad ties and lumber, medicine and Relaxol in town.”

“What medicine?”

“Whisky, medicine, the same thing.”

“Does Uncle Waldo know you sell whisky?

“No sell to heem.  Free for heem.  Says ees the bes he had ever.  Not malo pizon like some.  Make you blind, ciego, no see.  Not our medicine whisky.  Myrtle veery careful.  Watch close.”

“Don’t look like no girl to me.”

“Ees reel name ees Richard but he used to work in a carnival and dressed like a wild woman in grass dress and weeg and call heemself ‘Mrytle-in-the bushes’.  From Loozeeana.  Ees a Cajun or sumten.  A wild woman,  ouweee.” Caesar finished before dissolving into laughter, making David grin.  “He make medicine and I grow Relaxol.”

“So he’s the one who broke my cousin Woodford’s nose?”

“Don know bout that.  All I know is Myrtle’s medicine is muy bueno and sells good in town and the Doctor Clarkson uses it all the time for his doctorin’ too.  The doctor buys my Relaxol too.”

“You keep talking Relaxol.  What’s Relaxol anyways?”

“Dat’s what da Zundapp named it.  Ees from Mexico.  Ees a bush you eat or smoke.  Any way makes you calm and happy and a leetle hungry.  Doctor Clarkson geeves it to sick people to make them feel better, get better, eat when they no wonna eat.  The Doctor comes over and smokes it sumtime too.  I feex in cornbread and tortillas and sell in town at general store.  Don taste bad either.  Come on, time to skeen snake and cook.”

With that, Caesar pulled out something metal from a pouch hanging from his rope belt and with a flick of his wrist snapped out a long sharp blade.  Walking back to the buckboard he tied the snakes head to one of the side boards and began a long, expert slice down the length of the rattler’s belly exposing the entrails.

“What kind of a knife is that?” said David as Caesar began to dissect the entrails from the pinkish white snake meat.  Making a circular cut at the neck level Caesar then began to pull and tease the skin from the back and sides of the serpent keeping the entire skin intact.  This he set aside, explaining to David he would make a belt and hat band eventually out of the reticulated skin.  The head, he said was good medicine when dried and the eight buttons he handed to David for a present.  Wiping his blade clean, he now answered David’s original question.

“Ees a switchblade knife.  You see.” Closing and then clicking it open in front of David’s face.

“Can I try that?”  David said, taking the knife and carefully closing and then pushing the concealed button again to snap it open again admiringly.

“Cut im up in leetle pieces like dis.”  Caesar said to David holding his thumb and index finger about three inches apart.  While David began to dice the snake, spine and all, Caesar headed off toward the garden and returned with a glazed pan and scooped the meat into the pan.  From there David followed Caesar up the hill toward the house up the steps into a meticulously cleaned kitchen where a Black fellow wearing horn rimmed glasses was stirring a pot of beans over the pot bellied stove.  Caesar introduced his coworker as Malcolm and then David watched as Caesar dropped some lard in a skillet and proceeded to cook the snake meat til it browned on all sides.  From a large sifter like shaker, Caeser sprinkled what smelled like pepper, salt and some other exotic smelling seasonings into the pan while Malcolm nodded his culinary approval.

“Whattya tink, Brother Malcolm?”  Caesar said to his fellow cook.

“Ahhmm thinking maybe some cayenne too and onions.”  Said Malcolm, bending over the skillet sniffing the aromas approvingly.

“Go on then and put em with the beans while I go check the garden.”  Replied Caesar as he and David returned to the compound yard and headed into the garden.

“So you killed that snake with the bean flip?  How many shots did it take and how close were you?”

“Jus one shot an I got close but not so close he could reach me.  He was in a coil so I aimed for his head.  One shot keel him but he can still bite after dead so I hold his head down with a stick and grab ees tail and crack heem like a wheep.”  Caesar explained with a whip like gesture over his head.  “We eat good tonight.  Makes bean and cornbread taste much better.”

“Hey Caesar!” came a voice by the house.  “Give me a hand over here with this tie.”  It was Brother Roy Fermin calling at Caesar so Caesar turned back in the direction of the

House with David following and approached the man he had been referring to as “Da Zundapp”.

“Who you got there Caesar?”  Roy asked.

“Ahm David Wilds.  We used to live around here a couple years ago.”

“You the folks that moved to California?” Roy said

“Yessir.”

“That your rig?” Roy said looking toward the mare and the wagon.

“Yessir, well, no sir.  It belongs to my Uncle Emil Baker who I live with this summer.  I’m cutting firewood for em til I go on back to California this fall.”

“Well, if its wood you want, we’re clearing about ten acres over there.” Roy said pointing toward the hog pen area.  “You can have all that you want if you help dig out the stumps.  Think that old mare can pull anything besides that buckboard?”

“Sure can, sir.  My uncle won’t mind if I bring back a load of firewood every day.”

With that, Caesar, Malcolm, Roy, Myrtle and the rest of the Zundappers came to know my brother that summer and he came to know the meaning of hard work and friendship.  By the middle of that summer of 1940 David had figured out what Zundapp was and it was simply hard work, delivering on your word and trips into Valliant every Saturday to make deliveries of Relaxol and medicinal spirits.  Sundays were spent at home with Aunt Nellie and Uncle Emil and his five cousins, the Baker boys.  There was no escaping church at Mt. Zion but Sunday supper more than made up for the torture of the long drawn out sermons.  Meanwhile, the wood shed had overflowed and another stack of firewood was building next to it, dwarfing the shed itself.  The Baker house would be warm for several winters to come it looked like.  Aunt Nellie pumped David for information on the Zundappers and from what he told her she grudgingly approved of David’s association with them, after all, they were better neighbors than Booger Israel and his lot, folks David was soon to have plenty of dealings with.

This brings us back to Rodeo Saturday in Valliant where the Sheriff had sent Booger packing and the excitement of the Fourth of July Wright City Rodeo Parade was due to visit Main Street, Valiant in less than an hour.  The Wright City Rodeo was the best rodeo in Mc Curtain County and was held in Wright City a few miles beyond Valliant on the red clay banks of Little River.  To publicize the rodeo, Valliant and Idabel were treated to a mid day parade of rodeo stock and performers and contestants as a preamble to the afternoon events held in Wright City.  Uncle Moe Irons was the premier rodeo stock contractor and his cowboys and cowgirls and stock made up the bulk of the parade.  Today was the premier event of the year for the locals bringing people in their cars, trucks and buggies from miles around.  The odors of outdoor cooking, barbeque and the buzz of the cicadas transformed Valliant into a vibrant community and Baby and his new friends had the coolest seats in town.  Cumulus clouds were building in the west and the air was still and muggy.  The atmosphere was portentious in every sense of the word.  Baby set the book aside and soaked in the human and natural energy swirling all around him.

“Ahm getting hungry.”  Myrtle interrupted, looking around at Caesar, David and Delphia.  “Anybody wont BBQ?”

“They got a stand over by the general store in back.” David said.

“BBQ sounds good to me.  How bout you guys?” Caesar said in the direction of Baby and Delphia.

“I geth I could eat thom.”  Baby replied turning his head in the direction of Delphia who was sitting cross-legged next to Levester’s buggy gently rocking it with her hand.

“Don got no money.” Said Delphia back to Baby.

“I do. I’ll buy you lunth.” Baby said to Delphia.  “In fack, if thomeone wanths ta geth em, I’ll pay for thome thodas thoo while I thay here with my bibeths.” At that point, baby pulled some change from his pocket and laid it on the table.

“We got cornbread in the truck.  David, go get the bread and me and Myrtle will get the BBQ.  Be rat back.”  Caesar announced standing up and motioning to Myrtle.  Myrtle counted heads and took enough change from the table to buy five sodas.

“You didn’t have to go an buy me no food.  Ah’m ok.”  Delphia said to Baby now that they were left alone on the library lawn.

“Thath okay.  I wanted thoo.  You goth to be hungry if you ain’t ate thinth thith morning.”  Baby said, surprised at how easily he found it to talk to this pretty little stranger.  He actually felt sorry for her if she indeed had to live with the likes of Booger.  Still he was shy and reluctant to strike up more of a conversation so he just let it go at that after Delphia said

“Thank you.  By the way, my name’s Delphia.  What’s yours?”

“Owa.  Owa Wobbins.”  Baby answered.

“You say ‘Oral Robbins’?”

“Yeth mam.”

“I ain’t but sixteen.  No need to call me ‘maam’.”  Delphia replied with a disarming grin making Baby blush.  He had never had a girl friend and Delphia was naturally pretty and, for some reason today, he found it fairly easy to talk to her with the embarrassment of his lisp.

“We, my folkh run the tent wevivah.  Gonna be buthy thonith I think with all these folkth in thown.”  You gonna thay for the wevival?”

“May have to.  Don wanna go home any time soon and deal with Daddy.”

“Good.  I’ll thave you a good theet up fronth if thoo wanth.”

“Maybe.  That might be ok.”  Delphia said turning to the slightly calmer Levester and lifting the child out of the buggy and placing him on the grass in front of her.  The kid looked all about and began to crawl away from her prompting Delphia to stand and patiently follow the boy as he crawled a few feet toward the street away from the library.  Yep, she was certainly pretty and feminine in a simple way and Baby didn’t mind just watching her from his seat at his table.  As he surveyed the scene on the street Baby saw David returning with a cardboard box in his hands.  David had retrieved some cornbread from the X truck and Caesar and Mrytle appeared from down the street in the direction that Booger had minutes before head off out of town.  Myrtle had five Royal Crown Cola bottles in his arms and these he carefully set down in front of Baby on the wobbly bible table while Caesar placed a couple grease stained brown paper bags and some paper plates next to the sodas

.

“Leth me move thith stuff outh of tha way.”  Baby said as he placed the pamphlets and Bibles down on the grass under the table while Myrtle began to dish out ribs and bread onto the plates.

“Mith Delphia, here ith thom bah be koo and thome thoda.”  Baby called to Delphia who, in turn, picked up Levester and returned to the shade next the buggy.  Sitting cross legged with Levester between her legs in front of her, Delphia accepted a soda and plate while David, Caesar and Myrtle, in turns filled their plates and found a cool place to sit and eat.  Baby waited his turn and bowed his head and said a brief silent grace over his plate and soda sitting there at his table.  Only Delphia seemed to notice this display of manners and felt a little guilty of her lack of manners.  Baby didn’t seem to notice since his eyes were closed.

For the next ten or fifteen there wasn’t much conversation while all enjoyed the BBQ, including little Levester who managed to consume the better part of a slice of cornbread sopped in BBQ sauce.  In fairly short order, all the paper plates were licked clean, the paper bags were empty and the soda pop bottles were empty and six stomachs were full.

“That thure was thom gooth cornbread.” Said Baby.  “Who mathe it?”

“Caesar makes it.  It’s called Relaxol bread and it’s his secret recipe.”

“What do you mean ‘Welathol’?” Baby asked.

“You tell em Caesar.  Said Myrtle again.

“Brother Roy calls it that since I add some of my grandmother’s herbs to it.  I brought them from my home in Mexico.  We raise all our food and spices over at the Zundapp farm.  I’m in charge of the garden and Myrtle here makes the spirits.  Every Friday I bake all day and come Saturday we come to town to make our deliveries.  Baked all night so it is fresh today.  You like?”

“Yeth thir ah do.  Beth bread ah ever had.  How bout thu, Delphia?”

“Shore was good.  Kinda like my mama’s craklin bread, only better.  Never had pop with lunch either.  Thank you very much.  Levester shore ate good too.  Now he’s thirsty so excuse me.”

With that, Delphia picked up Levester and walked over behind a tree and sat down to breast feed the one year old.

“Can I have the pop bottles to turn back in for the deposit?”  David asked no one in particular.

When no one said anything, David collected the five bottles and trotted off toward the general store.

“Feel any thin different yet?”  Said Myrtle to Baby.

“Whath to you mean, thifferent?”  Baby said back.

“We don call it Relaxol for nothing, you know.”  Myrtle said stretching his legs out and placing his clasped hands behind his head on the grass.

“Maybe a wittle theepy, ah geth.  But that thwas a wot of food for the middle of the day.  Ah could take a nap pretty eathy.  Look yonder at them clouds.  Lookth like rain to me.”

By now the sky was full of cumulus clouds, blocking out the sun, cooling down Valliant a good ten degrees.  Baby was feeling considerably more relaxed like Myrtle said he would so he rolled up his coat for a pillow and laid down between the stroller and his table and pondered the coming weather front above.  As he looked up he glanced off to his left and saw Delphia leaning up against the shade tree with her back to it, holding Levester to her chest with the one year old’s legs across her lap.  She had pulled the top of her unbuttoned dress down over her one shoulder so the kid could breast feed discreetly away from the crowd on the street.  Baby found himself absently staring at the two, noting again how pretty this young woman was when Delphia pulled her son away from her exposed breast.  Levester’s thirst was quenched and he was falling asleep in his mama’s lap.  Now Baby had never seen a woman’s breast since he was a child and he just stared at Delphia’s for the brief moment it took her to notice his stare.  Looking back at Baby their eyes met and Delphia hesitated a moment before pulling the dress back up.  Baby’s face flushed and he quickly averted his eyes back to the clouds above.

“Here comes the parade!”  Yelled Myrtle.  “And look who’s leading it.

From around the corner turning onto the main street the Valliant School band, led by a prancing David, marched out into the middle of the road to the beat of snare drums and one bass drum.  David was a good twenty feet ahead of the majorette, an Indian girl wearing a squaw’s dress, white cowgirl boots, a full feather head dress and twirling a chrome baton.  David was high steppin with his chest pushed out and his head back, bean flip in hand like a staff, keeping time with the march rhythm laid down by the band behind him.  Myrtle and Caesar laughed and howled at this making Baby sit up straight and laugh himself.  The grinning Delphia rejoined the group and placed the sleeping Levester in his buggy and sat down next to Baby and laughed out loud at the comical sight of a kid in overalls pretending to be a drum major in front of the two-hundred or so townsfolk on Main Street.   When the band had progressed alongside the library lawn, David peeled off and did a cartwheel onto the lawn and flopped down between Caesar and Myrtle, laughing himself.  The band began with a rousing rendition of “Anchors Aweigh” prompting some of the veterans in the crowd to salute the band.  The music seemed to surround Baby like no music had ever sounded before.  He swore he could see the colors of the music as it enveloped him there on the lawn.  He glanced sideways at Delphia and saw her swaying her head left and right with the beat too.  Behind the band Moe Irons’ contingent of cowboys carried the Oklahoma and United States’ flags on horseback.  Following the flag bearers about a hundred feet back, the Moe Irons Rodeo Stock truck chugged by with the biggest brindle colored Brahman bull Baby had ever seen penned up in the stake bed.  David hollered out, “That’s Dah-no-mite, my uncle Moe’s brimmer bull who ain’t never been rode yet!”

That was no exaggeration either, since no one had ever successfully ridden Dynamite the full eight seconds rodeo rules required.  At close to two thousand pounds, Dynamite stood relatively still in the moving stake bed truck, turning his head sideways to lazily look at the passing crowd of people.  Dynamite’s skin was smooth with loose wrinkles here and there.  On top of the bull’s massive shoulders a mass of muscle and gristle marked Dynamite as one hundred percent Brahman Zulu bovine.  His massive floppy ears drooped lazily past his cheeks behind his large brown eyes which were protected by long upper lid lashes.  Dynamite had thick horns which curved slightly upward for their foot and a half lengths ending in straight blunt tips, below his chin hung a foot long dewlap of loose skin.   If Dynamite was broad at the shoulders, he was narrow at the hips, with apparently no extra fat to be found on his massive frame.  His overall demeanor was calm and Baby swore that the bull looked directly into his eyes briefly and he wondered what it would be like to sit atop of Dynamite with one hand holding the horsehair rope at the Wright City Rodeo.  He could have asked the Negro cowboy riding an Appaloosa twirling a lariat behind the truck.  That was Mike Mansfield, Moe’s number one cowboy at the stock ranch over on Little River.  Mike was famous in rodeo circles for a stunt he performed at the beginning of each rodeo.  He would dress up as a grandma in a granny dress and large bonnet and sit atop Dynamite in a rocking chair tied to Dynamite’s back.  When the bull chute opened releasing the bull out into the arena, Mike was lucky to last two seconds before getting airborne before the howling crowd.  An ordinary man couldn’t have pulled that stunt off each weekend but Mike was an athlete of considerable skill and as soon as he hit the dirt he was adept at finding his feet and heading for the fence while the rodeo clowns lured Dynamite off in the other direction.

Following the truck one cowgirl on foot led a small flock of goats tethered together with a rope.  These were Uncle Moe’s goat roping stock and the lead goat was a Billy wearing a shirt and a tie.  Delphia said under her breath, “There goes Booger now.  Looks just like him.”  Her sarcastic tone caught Baby’s attention.  With that, Delphia stood up and reached into the buggy for the paregoric bottle and spoon.  Adeptly she ladled a spoonful into the drowsy Levester’s mouth, followed by a good swig from the bottle for herself.  She was determined to enjoy the parade without Levester’s crying.  Returning to her place next to Baby, Delphia sat back down almost touching the young preacher boy, shoulder to shoulder with him.

Behind Mike, Moe’s two rodeo clowns were on foot pushing two colorful wooden barrels back and forth in the street.  One of the two, wearing high water pants with red suspenders and a bull’s eye sewn to the trap door of his coveralls, hopped up on his barrel and began to walk it down the street making exaggerated balancing motions with his arms to the delight of the kids in the crowd.  At one point he gestured in Dynamite’s direction and then at the bull’s eye on his butt while he swayed his rear end back and forth in a mocking motion of false bravado.  In an instant David had his bean flip out and said to Caesar, “Whattya wanna bet I can hit him from here?”

“No way Jose.” Said Caesar to David prompting David to let loose with a wild shot at the clown.

Without a second’s hesitation, Caesar had his slingshot out and in a quicksilver motion drew a bead on the clown and let loose a preloaded lead shot hitting the clown’s ass dead center on the target.  It had to hurt because the clown’s feet flew up in front of him causing him to land on his butt on the rolling barrel and tumble off backward onto his head in the street in front of Uncle Moe and Moe’s buckskin horse named Buck.  As if he had a spring in his ass, the clown was instantly on his feet and turned to scan the crowd in the direction of the shot.  It had happened so fast that the amazed David stood there next to Caesar with his exposed bean flip and locked eyes with the clown.  Taking a couple steps toward David the clown pointed his finger at the shooter and started to say something when Uncle Moe, atop Buck hollered at him to get back up on the barrel and get back in the parade.  Moe then turned to David and gave him a disproving stare from high up on his horse before turning his head back in the direction of the parade hiding a grin and stifling a laugh.

“You in beeg trouble now David.  That clown’s gonna get you for shootin heem.  He saw you do it.”  Caesar said laughing.

“You the one who did it Caesar!”

“Naw, we all saw you do it, right Myrtle?”

“Shore did, I saw you do it David.  That clown’s gonna come fer you.” Myrtle said, laughing himself.  Baby and Delphia chimed in with amusement, making David’s face turn red.

This was exactly why David stayed away from the Relaxol and medicinal spirits.  They made folks act stupid and do stupid things and laugh at the least little thing that happened.  Looking over at Baby and Delphia lying on the grass chuckling, and back at his two Zundappe friends doing the same, David decided to follow the parade on down the street to watch the band some more.

Trotting on over to the street, David passed by Uncle Moe who hollered ahead to Mike “Hey Mike, one of your little Billies got loose…rope em.”  Without hesitation, Mike spun his appaloosa around and headed toward David who had played this game before.  Grinning big, David, who happened to like the attention, ran past Mike with his arms up over his head leaning forward waiting for the lariat which gently settled over his arms and head.  Grabbing the loop of rope with both hands and holding it around his waist, he waited for Mike’s roping horse to stop and take up the slack.  By the time this happened Mike had dallied the rope around the saddle horn and was off his horse and followed the rope to the captured goat-child who feigned an alarmed struggle at the end of the lariat.

It just so happened that right about then the paregoric and Relaxol cornbread took full hold of Delphia’s young brain and her whole world shrank down to a movie screen sized field of vision featuring David, Mike and Mike’s horse, and Uncle Moe, who entered from stage left on Buck.

For the rest of her life Delphia would savor this one act play in her memory and this is how she saw the rest of the parade:

Moe enters on Buck, a giant of a horse and beautiful buckskin to boot.  Moe said to Mike, “Ah’ll take that kid.” Prompting Mike to pick David up and swing him up onto Buck behind the passing Moe.  David was laughing and grinning to beat all.  Mike remounts his horse, re-coiling his lariat and resumes his place in the parade.  Delphia is aware of the ground shaking from the weight of the horses trotting past no more than ten feet away in front of her and Baby.  Buck is just the most amazing animal Delphia ever set eyes on.  He is absolutely regal with his deerskin color and black points.  His mane is cropped close resembling a Mohawk and he has a white blaze above his black nose and he has white boot markings on his rear fetlocks.  Moe sits atop on a parade saddle with silver latigos, holding braided roping reins.  Buck is wearing a hackamore with silver buckles.  Moe is in charge but Buck’s eyes say something different to Delphia.  Involuntarily, Delphia reaches out toward Buck with one outstretched hand, overcome with admiration for this beautiful equine specimen.  Moe knows everyone is watching so he puts Buck through his paces accelerating across the lawn before reining him in bringing Buck to a sudden stop, so sudden that Buck’s haunches lower to the grass as his hooves dig divots out of the lawn.  Moe backs Buck up as if he was taking up slack on a roped steer then spins Buck back around and gallops him back to the parade route with David holding on tight on the back.  Delphia shifts her colorific gaze up to Moe now.  Moe has on Texas style boots which match Buck’s color, tan with black toes.  Moe has on khaki pants and a long sleeve white shirt under a buckskin vest.  The effect is understated cowboy elegance and the outfit is topped off with a white cowboy hat pulled down close to Moe’s big ears.  Moe appears to be about the same age as Booger but that is where all resemblances end between the two men.  Moe is from a different world than Delphia.  Delphia is at a loss to even imagine this world of affluence and mental health.  Her world is upside down and insane by comparison over on Buzzard Creek.  Crazy thoughts enter Delphia’s mind.  Could she run off and live with Moe’s family and ride horses every day?  How long would it take to get the stink of Booger and Buzzard Creek out of her nostrils?  Would every day be as wonderful as this afternoon’s parade?  Then Moe, Buck, David and the cowboys were gone.  Was the movie over?  Nope, here comes the rest of the parade now.

Vaguely aware of the sleeping Levester off on her left and Baby sitting next to her on the grass on her right, Delphia focused her stare on a truck- pulled parade float turning the corner onto Main Street.  The banner said “The Queen and her Court” and standing atop some hay bales were three pretty girls, all brunettes, wearing ankle length “A” line white dresses with diagonal sashes across their chests identifying them as the Queen and Princesses of the Mc Curtain County Watermelon Festival.  The queen had a floral crown giving her a distinctive angelic look.  Arranged all around the base of their hay bale pedestals were rows of green striped melons.  Delphia said to Baby, “They shore are perty, ain’t they?”

“Not nearwy as pretty as wu.”  Baby blurted out, making both of them blush.  Inadvertently, Delphia touched her hair with her right hand, making sure the bobby pin was still holding her bangs off to the side.  No one had ever commented favorably on her personal looks before except in her dreams, and to have a good looking green-eyed young man in nice clothes say so in such innocent terms, well Delphia returned the compliment with a shy sideways smile back at Baby.  The rest of the parade passed by over the next few minutes while the boy and girl sat in content silence, experiencing the most wonderful afternoon to date in each of their short lives.  A good time was being had by all…………

THE ECSTASY OF SAINT DELPHIA

What was left of the puny parade passed on by the library for the next five minutes or so and the small crowd on the lawn dissolved into the street and dispersed into down town Valliant.  The sounds of the band continued from the central square bandstand where an impromptu concert entertained listeners for another thirty minutes until the band’s repertoire ran out, leaving only the sound of cicadas again from the bushes around the library lawn.  Baby and Delphia were left alone by now as Caesar and Myrtle loaded up into the “X” truck preparing to finish their deliveries.  Caesar turned the truck around and stopped on the near side of Main Street and Myrtle jumped out and walked over to Baby and Delphia, handing them a paper sack.  Myrtle said “These two loaves of Relaxol bread are left over so why don’t you two take them.  Otherwise they will just go to waste.”  Baby and Delphia thanked Myrtle who climbed back into the front seat of the Model T while Caesar ground the gears and putted off down the street leaving a cloud of black smoke trailing behind.

“Just wissen to them bugs.  Must be millions of em out there.  They call them thicaias ah think.”

“Yeah.  We got em over at Buzzard Creek too.  They buzz all nite if it’s real hot.  Nuthin shuts em up.” Replied Delphia.  With that said, the boy and the girl just lay there next to each other enveloped by sounds and smells and watched the clouds darken overhead.  For some reason neither could fathom, everything around them was more aromatic and colorful and wonderful.  For the moment, everything was peaceful and tangible.  Baby imagined he could reach up and touch the thunderheads above while Delphia raised her head up and watched her toes with sheer fascination.  For no reason, the girl giggled at her own feet, realizing that somewhere during the day she had abandoned the only pair of shoes she had.

“Ahm thill a wittle hungry.  How bout wu?”  Baby said to Delphia as he opened the paper bag and broke off a piece of cornbread.

Now Delphia had never known a day when she had had enough to eat seeing as how Booger was such a poor provider, so she reflexively answered “A little.”

Baby handed the quarter loaf piece to her and got him another and they settled in to quietly eat the Zundappe concoction lying there on the library lawn as more storm clouds built in the southwest horizon totally blocking the late afternoon sun.  The bread had sugar added giving it a sweet taste and occasionally she tasted a kernel of corn in it.  Yet it had a certain tang to it that she could not identify and figured that must be the Relaxol Myrtle kept talking about.  Each mouthful begged for another.  Still fascinated by her bare feet, Delphia spread her legs apart wide enough to look beyond her toes out onto the street at the occasional passerby.  By the time she had finished the bread she was very relaxed and a little sleepy, the effects of the paregoric she figured.  The odors of the clover grass and the horse droppings in the street wafted over her, along with the sweet smell of jasmine, or maybe honeysuckle.  She could still hear the reverberations of the parade band in her head as she hummed the tune of “Anchors Aweigh” over and over again under her breath.  She was very aware of the presence of Baby and she enjoyed his vague musty body odor in a private sensuous way.  In her mind, Delphia played over again the scene of David and Buck and Moe.

This whole event fascinated her for some strange reason and she finally figured out why as she lay there lost in the scents, sounds and relaxation.  She admitted to herself, that seeing a child and grownups interact in an overtly and totally fun game, demonstrating trust and kindness to each other, as David and his uncle had today, well, she had never experienced this type of joy in her family.  Delphia proceeded to imagine that was her being roped and paid attention to earlier in the day and that was her uncle on his beautiful buckskin horse who carried her off down the parade route in her own vicarious adventure.  Then she imagined herself on the float with the queen and her princesses wearing a clean white dress and her own fresh floral wreath with pin curled hair.  Delphia realized that this was the closest thing to celebrating a holiday she could remember.  Birthdays came and went with Christmas and Easter passing uncelebrated in her home in Buzzard Creek.  This was the Fourth of July and it was making up for all the lost opportunities in her life.  Delphia felt absolutely at peace in her own little world and she regressed into a child like frame of mind and soaked in the collective atmosphere of happiness in the moment right there in downtown Valliant.  Delphia the pure innocent once again, at least for today with no thought of tomorrow or yesterday.

Feeling suddenly so very sleepy Delphia lay on her back in the grass and allowed her eyes to close.  She invited sleep, feeling that a short nap would help before making the dreaded return back home.  Rain was coming and the roads would be muddy if she waited too long, but just a short nap first.  Somewhere people were setting off firecrackers in town and further in the distance thunder rolled in the heavens.  A cool breeze touched the soles of her feet and lifted the hem of her dress slightly.  Reflexively, Delphia held the dress down against her knees and opened her eyes slightly.  She was surprised to see that the clouds had dropped very low and the horizon was green with an ominous dark look to it.  Glancing to her right, Baby was gone and to her left she saw Levester’s buggy sitting quietly where she left it.  The streets were empty.  She was alone for now and she stared upward at the descending blanket of thunderheads which had begun to drape over the buildings of Valliant. She reached up and touched them.  They were soft and downy and she grabbed two hands full of the clouds and pulled them down onto her body.  They were warm and moist and seemed to dissolve upon touching her.  She tasted them and they were sweet like cotton candy.  Delphia noticed that her two feet protruded through the sweet blanket as she lay there eating her heavenly dessert.  Again the strains of music rose from the street and Delphia raised her head to look beyond her feet toward the empty Main Street blanketed in misty clouds.  Her eyes met with a vision she was unprepared for.  The parade was coming back down the street keeping time to the strains of circus organ calliope music.  Buck was leading the show, this time without tack and Uncle Moe.   He was prancing and Delphia swore he was laughing.  Buck looked at Delphia and reared up on his rear legs and walked to the beat of the music, prompting Delphia to break into applause.

Immediately behind Buck the goats were back pulling a sleigh carrying six, maybe seven pigmy goats jammed in together.  The goats all wore children’s clothing, and in place of horns, they had either roman candles or sparklers protruding.  Turning their heads from side to side they lit up the library lawn with fire balls and showers of glittering specks of fire.  Behind the sleigh a marching band made up of walking watermelons with tubas, cornstalks playing flutes and sunflowers beating drums paraded past the goats that, by now had veered off onto the lawn and were approaching Delphia’s spot on the lawn.  Forming a circle around her, the goats illuminated the sky around Delphia and she could feel the occasional fireball drop around her and some fell on top of her.  Each time one of the balls landed on her it felt oddly pleasant in spite of a gentle burning sensation.  The falling sparkles from the kids’ sparklers showered Delphia’s bare thighs and ankles and feet like tiny pin prick deaths to her exposed skin.  This too she liked.  She felt strange and exhilarated by this new type of foreign pain.  It scared her some but she welcomed it at the same time, wanting it to continue.  The sensation built until her body was overcome by pleasure and contentment.  Wanting it to continue forever, Delphia felt herself floating off the grass in the storm clouds looking down on the library lawn and Levester’s buggy.  All worries and concerns were transcended as she levitated, defying gravity and worldly bonds.  Above her the sky had cleared and millions of stars sparkled down in her direction.  Delphia experienced the sensation of falling up into the heavens, away from earth.  By taking in deep cleansing breaths Delphia found that she could fly now and soon Valliant was vanishing behind her as she flew away from the storm clouds and followed Buzzard Creek as it wound its way toward home.  Down below Delphia spotted the Zundappe compound with its orderly buildings and tents and garden.  Off to the left she could make out her own cabin with its sagging roof of spotty shingles and corrugated iron sheeting.  Her family’s own pathetic garden was wilted and sparse.  Delphia had to push back at the sadness welling up inside her stomach on seeing how she lived down there.  Then she saw herself in her yard standing alone looking up at her.  Delphia’s floating disembodied mind and spirit cried out for her earthly twin to leave Buzzard Creek and put as much distance from that life and Booger as she could.  Feeling herself sinking back to earth, Delphia inhaled deeply again and felt a strong wind now pushing her skyward past the red clay hills around her homestead and back into the clouds as she followed the lowering sun over mountains and above the birds beyond Oklahoma over deep canyons and more foreign mountains until, after a while, the clouds parted revealing palm trees and an ocean with waves breaking in front of the setting sun, now sinking toward the sea.  White stucco buildings and red tile roofs stretched for miles in each direction along the white sandy beaches bordered by green expanses of lawns.  Neon lights illuminated a wooden pier and a Ferris wheel with sea foam green and coral hues as a roller coaster jutted out into the surf while calliope music floated upwards toward her.  Willing her body to descend now, Delphia floated down into the breaking surf and let the cool waves break around her ankles and knees, feeling the sand recede from under her feet with each retreating wave.  Soon the tops of her feet were covered by the wet sand as she watched the sun disappear over the horizon leaving a black carpet dotted with brilliant stars over head.  Delphia made the decision to stay here and never leave this heavenly beach city.

This girl woman from Oklahoma tasted the ocean salt on her lips feeling her feet sink deeper into the sand while the pull of each wave tickled the soles of her feet as more sand eroded away under her soles.  Delphia was pleasantly aware of the sandy sea water washing between her bare toes.  The humidity here was fresh unlike the stifling Midwestern humidity she was used to.  The sunset had turned a burnished red on the western horizon and the cloudless sky now was painted celadon changing to darker hues of blue then into violet and purple higher up in the sky until a velvety blackness dotted with billions of stars marked the beginning of the heavens and beyond.  Delphia felt clean and at peace and she bent down and washed the last vestiges of Oklahoma red clay dust from her hands, legs and arms and then her face too.  From behind the gentle screams of rollercoaster riders and sound of the steel wheels of the coaster cars bumping along the tracks along the serpentine wooden structure reminded Delphia she was not alone here in paradise.  In time the blues and reds of the horizon gave way to total darkness and Delphia bent her neck back and stared upwards at the moonless, star filled sky.  These human sounds rose up an octave and gradually grew into a high pitched hissing sound reminiscent of the cicada noise of her home on Buzzard Creek.  A few stars disappeared, and then more until part of the sky was starless and blacker than Delphia could even imagine and the hissing increased over her.  By now Delphia’s feet were held fast at the ankles by the cool sand and she tried to move but she was held in place while this dark starless presence hovered above her menacingly.  As the pitch black entity descended over her, Delphia realized that it was made up of millions of ebony cicadas threatening to suffocate her in a singular and sinister blanket.  With only her arms free, Delphia brushed at the cicadas but soon enough she was enveloped and trapped while the sand, like cold strong hands held her in place.  Unable to breathe, Delphia cried out for help as the weight of her tormenter pushed her back into the rising surf.  “Go away!  Leave me alone!  Get off me!  I hate you!” Delphia wanted to scream but the words were trapped in her chest while only moans and cries came out of her mouth.  Turning her head left and right she saw the stars on either side of the sky as she slowly submerged into the foamy waves.  Someone had hold of her arms now and she opened her eyes to see Baby leaning over her with an alarmed look on his face and holding sparklers in his left hand while he shook her shoulder with his free hand.

“Wake up Mith Delphia.  You’re having a bad dweem.  Ah got theeth sparklerth for Levester coth he wath cwahing but you wath having a nighthmare ah think.”  Baby said to Delphia who had been laying on her back thrashing her arms and feet, revealing her flour sack underwear which had ‘XXX Brand’ printed on the fabric.

Disoriented, Delphia looked around to the familiar library lawn and over at Levester crying at her from over the edge of the buggy, then back again at the kneeling Baby with the fizzling sparklers in his hand.  She felt sweaty but grateful to be awake and alive again in Valliant.  Sitting up, she straightened her dress and felt for the bobbi-pin in her hair which was gone.

“How long was I asleep?”  She asked Baby.

“Bout an hour.” He said.  “Bout time to head on over to the wevival.  It’s getting dark and thartin to wain.”

Feeling a few sprinkles on her face, Delphia surveyed the sky and knew it was a bit late to head home with weather coming on.

“Delphia!  We been lookin all over fer you girl!  You’re in enough trouble with your daddy already for leaving the house today!  “Have you even fed Levester today?”

Delphia looked toward the street to see her mama and little sister striding across the lawn toward her.  They looked upset with her, but that was nothing new.  Her mama was dressed plain with straight brown hair, looking a very old thirty-five years of age.  Delphia’s little sister wore a dirty smock of a dress and was barefoot.  That was Arleta and she was seven.  Arleta ran over to Levester’s buggy and looked inside at her sniveling little brother, announcing to her mama, “He’s ok Mama, but he’s got a wet diaper on.”

When Booger stormed home earlier in the afternoon, cursing and kicking the already beat up furniture around their cabin, Geraldine, Delphia’s mama made the hasty decision to put some distance between her and her abusive husband.  Geraldine’s two teenage boys Josephus and Tyjungus left on their own without being prompted, leaving Arleta alone with her mother and the ranting Booger.  Before leaving, Geraldine put a bowl of pinto beans on the wooden kitchen table and some biscuits and half an onion next to it, knowing full well Israel was probably hungry.

The pattern to these frequent episodes of violent behavior was that Booger would get drunk, get abusive, hungry, and then tired and fall to sleep if given enough to eat.  Hoping this would settle him down, Geraldine grabbed Arleta by the arm and headed out of the front door of their cabin, hearing Booger yell from behind her, “That girl of yourn is hanging out in town with them Zoondap bastards and one of em stabbed me with a knife.  You better git her on back here rat now fore I fix her and that little bastard of hers fer good!  Ahm gonna shoot me some Zoondoppers soon as ah git mah gun too!”

Geraldine quickened her steps on hearing the part about the gun, knowing Booger truly did hate the Zundappers and may well carry through on his threats.  Booger had had a few run-ins with Brother Roy over fishing rights on Buzzard creek, and so far these had led only to bad words exchanged.  Booger had poached a pig that had strayed onto his property from the Zundappe farm last spring and that is when the bad blood arose.  Voicing his suspicions to Sheriff Waldo, Roy was cautioned by the Sheriff to be careful of Booger who had a history of violent disputes with his neighbors.  It seems that Waldo Irons was about the only person in the county that Booger worried about.  Waldo looked the other way as long as Booger refrained from anything stronger than verbal threats.  Waldo even ignored Booger’s worthless still, knowing Booger was too greedy to share his whisky and everyone else knew better than to drink the dangerous and poor quality spirits.

JUST TOUCH ME BABY OR KISSED BY AN IDIOT

To truly understand what follows with Baby and Delphia, let me fill you in on Baby’s parents.  Baby’s daddy, Daniel Robbins married Baby’s mama, Leila Dinah Holsberg, maybe the smartest and prettiest girl in Oklahoma.  Danny certainly married up as they say.

The first time Leila ever laid eyes on her future husband was the summer of 1917 and she called him an idiot.  Danny was born on February 1, 1900 near Broken Bow, Oklahoma, and that’s where he may well have stayed had he not had to good fortune to find summer work in Tulsa when he was seventeen.  Leila was almost three years older than Danny and she lived in Tulsa with her Dad, a minister and an osteopath, and her mom, a music teacher.  Danny got a summer job farming with his aunt and uncle who had a dairy outside of Tulsa, and on some afternoons his job was to make the milk run into town with a buckboard of milk cans to the Sooner Creamery.  This took Danny right by Leila’s house and that is where she and her mama were sitting on the porch that summer afternoon when she saw Danny round the corner standing, that’s right, standing on the back end of an old draft horse pulling a wagon full of milk cans behind him.  From Danny’s point of view, that style of riding made more sense than absorbing the jolts of the bumpy dirt road sitting back there on the wooden buckboard seat.  Wearing a straw hat and cut off coveralls and no shirt, Danny held the reins in his hands while balancing on the undulating equine hips while the old horse seemed to enjoy the boy’s ballast.  And on top of this, the little show off was singing “Oh My Darling Clementine” loud enough to get the attention of Leila’s mama who commented that the boy did have a fair singing voice.  Danny glanced to his left and waved at the two women sitting about fifty feet away.  He waved at them and greeted them with a “Morning ladies” and then he struck a pose with his right hand holding the reins out in front of him and his left arm and leg stretched out behind, grinning big.

“Would you look at that showoff?”  Leila said.

“That’s Mercury he’s doing, Leila.  He’s posing for you like the warrior Mercury.  Remember the statue of Mercury?” Leila’s mama said back while giving a wave back at Danny from the porch.

“That boy wouldn’t recognize Mercury if one bit him on the behind.”  Leila replied without knowing that, indeed, Danny knew exactly who and what he was posing as.  You see, he had seen the book “The World in One Thousand Pictures” and had remembered very well the photo of the bronze sculpture of Mercury, especially the wings on the statues ankles depicting fleetness of foot.  Danny figured he was going Mercury one better by balancing on one foot on the back of a moving mount.  The women up there on the porch were witnessing performance art at its highest level from his point of view.  Speaking of points of view, his view of the houses on his left and the cattails rising from the bar ditch on his right, augmented by the cool summer smells of back yard gardens and rose gardens, well the world looked great from high up on the horses rear that morning.

Little did Leila know it then, but everything she would ever need to know about her future husband she had revealed to her right then and there.  Danny would remain as straightforward and uncomplicated and imaginative his entire life.  Where others would ask “why”, Danny would likely ask “why not?”  The man would live his entire life dedicated to work and family while somehow keeping his head in the clouds.  Incapable of embarrassment, Danny did not seek out attention so much as he remained unfazed by being the center of attention.  Life came very natural to Danny and it was impossible not to like him as Leila would come to appreciate in due time.

The next time Leila would see Danny would be the following Sunday where his mom had placed him next to her in her Dad’s church choir.  Knowing Danny’s aunt and uncle, her mom had specifically requested his attendance at church where the choir could use another tenor.

As a singer, Danny was fair, but as a performer you couldn’t take your eyes off him.  He had that presence on stage that few had and Leila found herself unable to ignore the boy.  Far from liking Danny, Leila tolerated him for the rest of the summer while, somehow, he kept showing up at her house for Sunday supper.  That’s because her folks liked the kid and his up personality was downright entertaining.  If there was humor to be found, Danny found it, and you never knew what would come out of his mouth when you asked him to say grace.  He was a toastmaster and a born orator.  Quite the opposite, Leila was the silent thinker type and she chose her words yesterday for what she needed to say tomorrow.  Polite to a fault, Leila even tolerated Danny sitting next to her on the piano bench on Sunday afternoons when she would entertain the family.  Leila inherited her musical talent from her mama, and as a pianist, she was very good.  If it had words, Danny would sing while she played, and “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” was one of their favorites and he could be counted on to come up with humorous phrases between stanzas, like “Howdy maam” and “Whoa boy”.  By summer’s end, Danny was infatuated with his choir mate and he asked Leila to walk him to the train station the day he left for home.  He told Leila he had something special to give her before he left and he would give it to her at the station.  Out of curiosity, Leila walked the mile or so downtown with Danny that morning and waited patiently with him as the “All aboard” call sounded.  All out of small talk, Leila asked Danny what it was he wanted her to have.  With that Danny said “This.” As he grabbed her with both hands over her ears and pulled her face to his and kissed her big right on the lips.  Before Leila could regain her composure Danny grabbed his bag and turned and bounded up the steps onto the train as it began to pull from the platform.  Aghast, red faced and furious all at the same time, Leila was speechless as she watched charisma boy disappear down the tracks grinning back at her.  Dumbfounded, Leila burned with infuriation off and on the rest of the year, just waiting for the next time she saw the presumptuous little idiot so she could chastise him for his forwardness.  What could he be thinking anyway?  For Danny’s part, it just was the natural thing to do.  He had feelings for the girl.

When the next summer came and passed, Leila was disappointed not to have the opportunity to set the boy straight.  She was also just a little interested to see Danny again for he had his good and humorous side.  Happening onto his aunt in town the next summer, she inquired if Danny was coming back to work at the dairy.  Danny’s aunt said she thought he was playing baseball and thinking about college, but she wasn’t for sure.  Trying not to look disappointed, Leila asked his aunt to pass along her regards and let it go at that.  It would be a crying shame if he never returned and she missed out on the opportunity to straighten Danny out but good.  She would just have to wait and mentally perfect her sermon to him til the time came.  By fall, Leila found herself in her regular seat in the front row, far right at church singing an old familiar hymn whose words went “…nearer our hearts and thine”, when a slightly familiar, but albeit more baritone voice from behind chimed in “.. and her shoes were number niiiiiine…”.  Turning around to her right she saw Danny sitting behind her grinning like a possum.  At first she hardly recognized him as he had grown a good four inches taller and gained about forty pounds and had the beginnings of whiskers on his chin, but those green eyes and that irrepressible smile and attitude shone through.  It was Danny all right and he silently rounded the pew and edged in next to her and reached around her with his left arm and reached over and held her songbook and hand in his right.  She turned as red as a beet and sat there fuming as they both finished the hymn together.  Looking up at her mom on the pump organ, Leila was infuriated to see he mama smiling back at her with a knowing look.  Leila was the only person she knew that had so far resisted the charisma of Danny and she vowed to continue to battle his will to the end.  You can’t just smack a girl on the lips and get away with it.  He was going to pay, and today was the day.

Leila usually passed the time during her dad’s sermons by daydreaming about this and that, but today she was unusually focused on what she had to say to Danny once church was over.  As soon as she heard “Amen” from the congregation she turned toward Danny who was already on his feet headed toward her dad and mama.  She watched as the three greeted each other cordially.  Her mama gestured to Leila to join them so she approached the three feeling almost like an outsider the way they were carrying on.  Her folks were unmistakably thrilled to see Danny again and they immediately invited him for supper.  That wasn’t in Leila’s plan but she politely acquiesced and agreed that they could catch up on old things then.  Leila excused herself, feeing hardly missed as she mingled with the rest of the congregation, including her usual suitors who bored her for the most part.  Occasionally, Leila would catch Danny grinning her way from across the church while he met and greeted likewise.  As usual, he was a big hit but this time some of the older girls had made their moves in his direction.  The more Danny bathed in welcome adulation from all, the more the whole scene irritated Leila.  Charisma Boy had become a Charisma Man and she even wondered if he remembered their last meeting over a year ago.  It took seemingly forever before the congregation spilled over onto the lawn of the church and Danny found his way back to Leila who was again with her parents visiting with a young couple who were planning their wedding the next spring.  The bride-to-be was carrying on about what music and flowers she wanted at her wedding and her young man was trying to show interest when Danny arrived next to them and caught the eye of the young woman.  It was disgusting to Leila how the young woman responded to Danny’s arrival.  She actually ignored her future husband in favor of Danny’s small talk while Danny, in turn, seemed oblivious to his effect on the opposite sex.  Excusing herself, she grabbed Danny’s arm and led him off away from the throng.

As soon as Danny and Leila were off on their own Danny said “Ahm going to college over at Tulsa Baptist” this fall.  “Got a scholarship to play ball on account of my friend Jimmy Thorpe who they recruited this summer.”

“What do you mean ‘Play ball?” Leila asked briefly distracted by this new information.

“Yep, Jimmy’s pretty good at football and since I’m his best blocker, he said they had to take me to or he would go somewhere else.  We played summer basket ball and baseball for Broken Bow Ford this summer and I earned some pretty good money, so here I am.”

This boy or man was full of surprises it seemed and again, Leila felt herself figuratively and literally being carried along in the conversation and soon thereafter he had her sitting on his folded coat on the crossbar of his bike headed off to the university to show her his new home away from home.  By the end of the two mile or so bike ride Leila had actually relaxed somewhat and admittedly was enjoying the ride sitting there with Danny’s arms around her as they both held the handle bars.  She could smell his body and it wasn’t unpleasant.  For his part, Danny could smell Leila’s hair as they rode along the streets of Tulsa and he looked forward to much more time with his girl in the coming year.

Having crossed through the older part of Tulsa, Danny turned the bike onto the campus of Tulsa Baptist University and passed the old brick buildings of the administration building, dormitories and pulled up by the athletic field house.  Leaving the bike leaning against a tree on the front lawn, Danny led Leila into the field house where indoor sports like basket ball were played.  Danny searched the closets til he found a basket ball and proceeded to demonstrate dribbling and shooting to Leila who found herself laughing at herself as she lofted the ball well short of the basket at first.  For his part, Danny seemed quite at home dribbling with either hand and lofting successful lay ups and hook shots into the basket.  Assigning Leila the job of guarding him, they both dissolved into laughter as she swatted at where the ball had been seconds before while Danny ran circles around her.  In due time, when Leila was sufficiently out of breath, Danny showed Leila through the corridor out of the field house across the lawn and through a tunnel which opened up onto the outdoor athletic fields.  As they stopped on the cinder running tract Leila got her first glimpse of where she would watch many football games where Danny earned his scholarship over the next two years.  The track encircled the football field with its goal posts and chalk marked yard lines.  On the periphery of the football field, and between it and the track there were various saw dust pits and cross bars and smaller running tracks.  These, explained Danny were part of the decathlon event.  This was Danny’s specialty she learned and he proceeded to outline the rules of the ten stage decathlon.  The javelin, shot-put, long and high jumps were pretty straightforward, but then came Danny’s explanation of the hop, skip and jump.  Failing to adequately define this stage, he tried to demonstrate the curious combination of steps which yielded a measurable distance.  This evoked more than a little laughter from Leila who asked just what the point of it all was.  Try as he may, Danny wasn’t able to convince Leila that the hopping and skipping and jumping belonged with the rest of the nine stages, so Danny abandoned the course and took Leila under the chin up bars.

“Watch this.” Danny said as he leaped up and grabbed the bar with his palms facing away from is front as he hung from the cross bar a good eighteen inches off the grass.  Being careful of his style so as to impress Leila, Danny performed about ten perfect chin ups before dropping back onto the grass facing Leila.

“Now it’s your turn.”  Danny said as he lifted Leila by the waist upward before she could protest.

Reflexively, Leila grabbed the bar and just hung here looking up and then down.

“Go on; pull yourself up til your chin is over the bar.”  Danny encouraged her.

As hard as she tried, even resorting to kicking her legs, Leila’s best was about three quarters of a chin up before relaxing her arms and hanging limp from the bar.

“I’ve got you.”  Danny said as he reached up and grabbed Leila’s waist and felt her release her hands.  Just to show off a little, Danny held her over his head a couple seconds before slowly lowering Leila down.  Leila leaned forward and grabbed Danny’s shoulders on the way down.

What happened next was unexpected by both and, in many ways, defined their feelings for each other for the rest of their lives.  As Leila sunk down their bodies touched and they found themselves facing each other in an innocent embrace, her with her arms around his neck and his hands on her waist.  Leila felt oddly excited, but comfortable in Danny’s embrace and she looked into his green eyes for a long moment as they quietly held each other close.

“I’ve missed you Leila.”  Danny said after a couple seconds, watching a little smile appear on his girl’s lips.

“You could have written.” Leila quietly replied as she stepped back a half pace, releasing Danny from her arms, and replacing the smile with a frown.

“Yeah, I know.  But you had to know I was coming back, Didn’t you?

More small talk followed as they slowly retraced their steps back through the feed house and onto the bike for a slow ride back home.  But, as they retraced their ride, they hardly spoke.

Leila leaned back against Danny’s arms and chest and he rode with the side of his face against the back of her head, inhaling her feminine vanilla scent.

For the rest of his life, Danny would savor this memory of their first real touch.  In his mind, this was the beginning of everything that followed in their lives.  Her touch was wonderful and calming and many times later in life when he came to bed tired of a long day of exhausting work he would ask his wife, “Just touch me.”  That would be all he needed for complete and utter relaxation and immediate sleep.  “Just touch me.” defined his total trust in Leila.  Her touch formed a bond between the two evoking unspoken communication at times when both were too tired to even talk.

On arrival back at Leila’s house, the two found Leila’s mama, Hazel, in the kitchen preparing one of her scrumptious suppers.  Danny left Leila there helping her Mother to join her dad in the living room where he was listening to the radio news about the latest congressional debates on prohibition of alcohol with a glass of wine sitting beside him on the end table.

“Think they’ll pass that new law Dr. Holzberg?”  Danny asked.

“Won’t make much difference if they do son.”  Was the reverend’s answer.

“Why’s that?”

“People have been drinking alcohol since the beginning of time and no man’s law will stop em.”

“But that would be breaking the law wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe man’s law, but not God’s laws.  Besides, a little wine is good for you if you practice moderation.  Thins the blood and clears the mind of the day’s troubles.  A proven fact.”

“You know, my dad makes stills and sells medical ethanol to the local hospitals.  They buy his stills and ethanol on account of its purity.  For the life of me, I can’t understand how someone would drink that stuff. The one time I tried it burned my throat bad.”

“So, what’s your plan Danny?”

“I was thinking about the ministry Dr. Holzberg.”

“That so?”

“Yes sir.  I think I would like to do what you do and have my own church someday.”

“You’ll need more than a congregation to pay the bills.  My osteopathy degree paid for this house and that piano.  We’d starve if we lived off the church donations.”

“I was thinking a big church.  In fact I had a dream about having a church so big it didn’t even have walls.  I’d like a church the size of Oklahoma someday.”

“Had you been drinking some of your dad’s sprits before this dream?” Dr. Holsberg said to Danny with a grin.

“No sir.”

“Well, if it’s preachin you’re up to then you sure as well better study the Bible because half the preachers in Oklahoma don’t know more than a precious few verses.  Buckle down in school and learn your lessons well because preachin is just like arguing and the best arguer will usually win over the congregation.  Some of what’s in the Bible is pretty far out there for the common man, like the Book of Revelations.  A friend of mine, Chief Tyjungus over on the Osage Reservation told me that when he read Revelations it was almost word for word the same as one of his vision quests under the influence of Peyote cactus buttons.”

“What are you two so talking about so serious?”  Mrs. Holsberg asked as she entered the dining room with a platter of chicken.

“Nothing serious.  Just religion and politics.”  Dr Holsberg replied.

“Good.  Let’s have supper then.  Fried chicken and mashed potatoes and save room for cobbler too.”

Leila entered the room with more food and soon the four were sitting around the dining table where Dr. Holsberg asked Danny to bless the meal.  Ordinarily Danny would come up with something clever and well word crafted for such an occasion, but that night the grace was short and contrite and delivered in a perfunctory and distracted manner.  Leila wondered what Danny had on his mind as he was uncharacteristically quiet for most of the meal, leaving it up to Leila to recount for her mama and dad the events of that afternoon and her tour of the university.

After supper, Leila’s mama asked Leila to play some of her new music she had learned over the past few months in music school.  Expecting more of the popular tunes like “Green Grow the Lilacs” and such, Danny was surprised to hear Mozart and Beethoven for the first time in his life.  Danny sat on the edge of the piano bench next to his girl and watch with wonder at the delicate style Leila had developed.

“Play “Claro de Luna’ for us Leila.”  Dr. Holsberg requested.

Mesmerized by the beauty of the classical piece, Danny experienced, for the first time, doubts of his worthiness of this beautiful and amazing young woman.  After another piano concerto, Leila’s folks stood and excused themselves for the evening and Danny left Leila to say goodnight while she began a minuet piece.  Glancing occasionally over at the three across the parlor, she could see Danny quietly telling her parents something as they stood there with rapt attention.  At one point, Leila thought she saw her mama wipe a tear from her cheek and gave Danny a hug with her dad shaking Danny’s hand and touching Danny’s left shoulder with the other hand.

When left alone, Danny returned to Leila’s side as she began to play “Fer Elise”.  From the first time Danny heard this heavenly melody, he considered “Fer Elise” their own special music.  He watched Leila’s right hand sweep across the keyboard delicately releasing the notes from the old grand piano, as her right hand countered with the lower and seemingly more masculine notes.  Whoever this Beethoven was, he understood the feelings of a man’s loving feelings for his woman.  When the last notes of the piece dissolved in the quiet atmosphere of the parlor, Danny quietly said to Leila, “Let’s go out on the porch.  I’ve something to say to you.”

Walking out onto the front porch, Danny followed Leila over to the swing and sat next to her for a few moments.  Just as he prepared to say something, Leila said “Danny, I’ve been meaning to say something to you all day and it’s this.  Danny, before you kissed me last year, didn’t it ever occur to you to ask me first?  You have to ask a girl about something like that before you just kiss her.”

“You’re right.”  Danny said as he slipped off the swing and dropped to one knee in front of Leila and said “That’s why I want to ask you to marry me.”

Now the rest of Danny and Leila’s story remains for some other time, but suffice it to say, Twenty odd years later, Reverend Danny Robbins and his beautiful wife, Leila found themselves sitting outside, under a tent awning having dinner with their son, Oral, and a pretty young girl named Delphia.  Over the years, their love for each other had matured but they recognized a hint of their past feelings for each other in the two youngsters sitting across the table from them, even if the two kids didn’t know it themselves quite yet.