Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life (16 page)

“Whew! I’m tired,” Chief said the next night. “I think I’ll head on to bed early tonight. You know, I’m so tired I bet I’ll sleep like a rock.”

Chief set his alarm clock for midnight. But when, at the sound of the alarm, he crept out of bed, Pinkie was still in his—sound asleep and snoring. Yet the next morning? Fresh ashes in the teepee again.

Confound it! Outwitted by a fourteen-year-old kid. Just wasn’t right.

Then Chief came up with a surefire plan. That night, once Pinkie was asleep, or at least pretending to sleep, Chief crept out of bed, put on his shoes, and slipped out the back door. He padded around to the front yard, unfastened the leather-laced flap of the teepee, and let himself in. When Pinkie snuck in to smoke, he would be waiting.

Chief got a bit sleepy, waiting in the tent, and dozed off. When he woke up an hour later, he was disoriented and startled from a dream in which he was falling. It took a few seconds for him to get his bearings, but when he did, he heard footsteps on the other side of the teepee.

The flap lifted and a sneaker-clad foot stepped inside.

Chief sat frozen in his spot.

Another sneaker-clad foot. Then, surprisingly, four more. In the dark, the feet were all Chief could see. Six in all. Not only was Pinkie sneaking out here to smoke, he was meeting other teen hoodlums too! Chief heard whispers, but it was still too dark to see who the voices belonged to. He managed to stay still, to bide his time, but it wasn’t easy!

Finally, matches were lit, and after several attempts, so were cigarettes. Three of them. Then coughs, low voices, and nervous laughter.

Enough. Trembling with anger, Chief stood up, turned on his flashlight, and shined it into the faces of Pinkie and his cohorts. Except it wasn’t Pinkie at all. The smoking trio turned out to be Jessica Martin, Marcie Billingsly, and Alicia Turner—sputtering, terrified fifth graders who only last month had been treated to fry bread on this very spot.

When the light hit their eyes, the three girls froze; then they screamed, dropped their cigarettes and matches, and nearly brought the teepee down as they scrambled over each other in their hurry to get out.

“Wait! Stop!” Chief was so surprised to see the little girls that he could barely get the words out.

“Uncle Bill? Are you in here?” It was Pinkie. Sleeping in the front room only a few feet from the teepee, Pinkie had been awakened by the commotion and now stood blinded by the flashlight Chief shone in his eyes. “Uncle Bill! What’s going on? There’s smoke in here!” Pinkie stepped inside and began stomping at a flaming rug onto which the girls had dropped their cigarettes.

“Gracious!” said Chief, so shocked that he stood rooted to the floor. Asthmatic, he was already coughing and wheezing from the smoke.

“Uncle Bill, get out of here.” Pinkie shoved him toward the door. “Go on! Get out!”

Chief managed to stumble out the door, but not before inhaling enough smoke to cause him to fall to his knees, gasping for breath.

Pinkie stayed in the teepee long enough to stomp out the fire, then joined Chief outside. “Uncle Bill? Are you okay? Should I call 911?”

Chief, who couldn’t speak, shook his head no.

So Pinkie helped him into a lawn chair instead.

“Lean back, Uncle Bill. Breath real slow.” Without being asked, Pinkie ran inside the house and brought out Chief’s inhaler.

“Thank you,” Chief gasped. He took two puffs. Within a couple of minutes, he was still coughing, but his breathing had slowed. In ten minutes, he was all right.

“Son,” Chief said after he’d settled down, “you were something tonight—putting out the fire, helping me get out. Getting me this.” He held up his inhaler. “That was quick thinking. Most kids—lands, Pinkie—most
adults
would have panicked. Where did you get such a cool head?”

Embarrassed, Pinkie looked away. “I dunno. Scouts, I guess.”

“Boy Scouts?”

“Yeah. Been in ’em since I was a kid. They teach you a lot. You know. Fire safety. First aid. That kind of stuff.”

Chief couldn’t help himself. “They let you be in Scouts with your, your . . . ”

Pinkie put his hand to his ear. “You mean these? Oh, I don’t wear ’em. Scoutmaster says he knows they don’t mean anything, but not everybody understands things that way. When I do stuff with Scouts, I take ’em out. It’s no big deal.”

Suddenly, painfully, Chief could see that it was not.

I
F YOU EVER ARE IN
E
LLA
L
OUISE
,
don’t miss stopping by Chief’s museum. He’s made a lot of improvements in the past several years. The teepee no longer stands alone in his front yard. Now the structure is the focal point of a painstakingly authentic Indian household scene, complete with appropriate transplanted native plants, tools, hunting implements, and a clay oven that really bakes. Seeing
the teepee is an interesting, educational experience, and
one that I enjoy every time I visit.

You should know that Chief didn’t do all this by himself. There’s no way that he could have. When visitors marvel at the detail of the Indian scene, Chief is quick to explain that his nephew, Pinkie, an Eagle Scout, comes every summer, all the way from New York, to help him out.

Fine boy, that Pinkie is. Yes, sir. Fine boy—earrings and all.

10

S
CARED
C
ROW

C
ROW
B
UXLEY LIKED TO PICK PECANS
.
He enjoyed the whole process of cracking their shells, prying out the meat, and—lacking a pie-baking wife—eating them out of hand. Somewhat of an expert on the wiles of nature, Crow could predict by the shell thickness of this year’s
crop that Ella Louise was in for an unusually early fall
and first frost.

Some folks scoffed at Crow’s weather forecasting abilities. When they did, he pointed out that if this year’s hardy pecan shells didn’t appear convincing enough, the dense coats worn by his yard’s nut-loving gang of squirrels should be proof enough for anyone.

So sure was Crow of his prediction that at the end of August, when Dinty Moore beef stew, tapioca pudding mix, and Martha White yellow cornmeal went on sale, he laid in a heavy supply of each. Crow knew that nothing hit the spot on a chilly day like stew and cornbread, topped off with tapioca pudding. He also timed the planting of his fall garden so as to complete his harvest early.

Unwilling to let anyone be caught unprepared, Crow did his best to convince his neighbors that they should do the same. But August turned out to be unusually hot, with temperatures staying in the one hundreds for more than a week in a row, and few folks heeded his warnings. By the first of September, things hadn’t cooled down much, but Crow was undeterred; he began working at getting his garden ready for winter.

His neighbor down the road, Bessie Bishop, who had been widowed just about a year ago, detoured into his garden on her morning walk. “Harvesting your greens and your squash already?” she asked. “Hardly big enough to cook, are they?”

“Not aiming to lose ’em. In the cold. You know.” Crow, kneeling between the rows, just hated the way he talked around Bessie. Lately, his voice tended to squeak, and on occasion he could hardly get his words out. “Gonna come an early frost. Hard one.”

“Early frost? Crow!” She put her hand on her hip in a way that Crow thought was so cute. “Almanac says we’re not likely to get a freeze until middle of November. You’re squandering a good part of your growing season.”

“You ought to be getting your vegetables picked too. Be a shame to lose what you’ve been working on all summer.”

Crow suddenly realized that from his position on his knees he could see a good three inches of Bessie’s slip. White. Two rows of lace. Embarrassed, he looked down and said gruffly, “If you need any help, let me know.”

C
ROW’S PREDICTION
turned out to be correct. By the tenth of October the air had taken on a chilly feel, which was early for a Southern climate such as Ella Louise. Then began almost a full week of cold, drizzly rain.

And then came Crow’s predicted hard freeze. Overnight, the temperature dropped so quickly that his neighbors woke up to the sounds of their cats howling to come in and to the sight of yesterday’s green gardens turned shriveled, dark, and slimy.

“Told you.” Crow couldn’t resist niggling Bessie as he helped her salvage what little she could of her tomatoes. “Signs were everywhere. Plain as the scab on a first-grader’s knee.”

“If you’ll quit that gloating, I might be talked into frying us up some of these underripes.”

“That sounds pretty good.” Crow feigned nonchalance. “Hand them ’maters over and I’ll wash them off under the outside hydrant so as to keep your kitchen sink clean.”

“Nice of you.”

Over their shared supper, Bessie and Crow discussed what plans they had for the upcoming week.

“Granddaughter’s coming Wednesday,” said Crow.

“One that’s expecting a baby?” asked Bessie.

“Uh-huh. Angie. And she already knows that the baby’s gonna be a little boy.”

“How nice for her. Don’t they already have two girls?”

“Yep. With those two, we didn’t know what we were getting, but this time Angie went and had herself analyzed.”

Suddenly Crow was overcome with embarrassment. He looked at his plate and tried to figure out how to undo what he had just done. What had come over him, to bring up female matters in mixed company? He knew better. He’d certainly been raised better. Hearing Angie speak about things so matter-of-fact caused him to let down his guard. Young folks these days didn’t think nothing about talking about anything with anyone.

“Bessie, I didn’t mean . . . ”

“Was it an ultrasound or an amnio?” she asked.

“Pardon me?”

“Well, if it was an ultrasound, sometimes those are wrong. But an amnio, well, that test is almost a sure thing.”

Crow didn’t know which test it was, but he did know that he was ready to talk about something else. “Bessie, could I trouble you for a toothpick?”

Bessie got up to get him one from where she kept them on the windowsill above the sink. Staring out the window, she observed, “Gonna be lots of leaves this year. They’re already starting to fall. I tell you, raking leaves is one job I could do without. Makes my hay fever act up. And all that bending and stooping—my lower back aches just thinking about it. I dread doing it every year.”

“Really? I don’t mind raking so much.” Crow sat up straighter in his chair. He could be her knight in shining armor—or at least her yard man. “Soon as I get mine all done up, I’ll come take care of yours. I imagine I can have ’em raked and bagged in a morning, and you can make me some lunch. Deal?”

That sounded like a deal to Bessie.