Just Folks

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JERRY ENGLER
Uncle Art had a terrible tragedy in his life. He had accidentally killed his wife, the love of his life.

He had been walking down the stairs with his shotgun one fall to join a friend hunting. The shotgun discharged, with the blast angling through the plaster wall to catch her full in the chest as she stood in the dining room.

Arthur held her. He cried. Following the practices of those days, he prepared the body for burial himself-with some help from mothers, sisters and aunts.

Then he was alone-alone on the farm his parents had provided for them to live on. All he had were memories of the way she talked, the way she walked, the goals they had together.

But rather than sink into the gray mist of depression, Arthur worked long hours, went to every social event and told tales. His tales were humorous, and Art especially liked to tell them to young people-more often than not the boys who ended up working the broad croplands and hayfields with him. They were the boys who walked, and rode horses over the rolling grasslands to get cattle.

They were also the boys who said, “Oh, Uncle Art, not another story.”

Art’s stories were as dependable as the south wind in summer. Sanity lay in the tension between sadness and happiness. It was good to have the saving remembrances of boyhood and fun rather than sinking into blackness.

Boys liked toilet humor, and so did Arthur. Boys and adults both liked subtle humor, and so did Arthur. Uncle Art’s ready smile, thick eyebrows raised over sparkling blue eyes, and long blinking eyelashes wreathed by roughly combed white hair under a straw hat were synonymous with humor ready to burst forth among the people where he lived.

Forty years after his wife’s passing, Arthur clung to the Percheron horses he had always raised while the farming operations around changed to larger and larger tractors. He did have a tractor, but horses liked him, and he liked horses. Most of all, he liked one of his nephews or grand nephews sending over one of their sons to work for him-a new little boy coming to his place for his first job for someone other than his parents.

So it was that 10-year-old Paul was brought over to Uncle Art’s one frosty fall morning to help scoop manure from Percheron stalls. The short, blonde boy walked into a kitchen that was surprisingly neat after decades of bachelor use. Uncle Art took off a slipper to pull a long boot over his ankle, eyes twinkling while the boy looked around the room.

“You’re ready to go to work then are you, Paul?”

“Yes, Uncle Art.”

“Are you pretty strong? You look strong, good looking too. This is hard work, you know.”

“I know. I’m stronger than my brother.”

“Good, good-and you wore good shoes, too. Have you ever scooped out a barn?”

“I’ve helped clean a chicken house.”

“Good, good-it’s a lot the same. You know how to use a shovel then.”

“Yes, sir, Uncle Art.”

“Come on, come on then. This old yellow hound is my dog, Goldie. You can pat her if you want. Just be careful of her back end. I swear I didn’t know you could hurt a hound tying it by the back end to bawb for coons in the creek, but it’s healed up nice hasn’t it? I’ll have to tell you about that sometime.

“Now, we got to take these mares out to the lot so we can work their stalls. This big, old gray dappled mare here, Polly-think you can sidle up along her there to take hold of her halter, and tie this lead rope on, or do you need some help?”

“I’ve held our mare while Dad harnesses her.”

“I’ll help you this first time. Just lay your hands on her like this while we go up alongside her. She isn’t stomping at you-just a fly. Look at those big old feet she’s got, old hooves must be a foot across. When you come back, look to see what she might have squished during the night. Once I found two tom cats, twisted flat together like noodles, that had been fighting when they got under her hoof. I got 50 cents for them as a wall hanging, but that’s another story.

“You’re tall, about as tall as her leg. See, you tie the rope to her halter like this, just a simple slip knot. Now you do it…like this…like this. Look at that, she sniffed you once, and your hair’s all blowed backward.

“Back, Polly, back. Now, Paul, you open the gate to that lot over there, and lead her right through. Take the rope off the halter, and turn her loose. Make sure the gate’s tied shut when you come out. Stay away from her back end. If she goes, I don’t want to have to dig you out. That happened with the last boy that worked here, and he wasn’t worth his pay after that.

“When you’ve done that, the mare in the next stall is Molly. See, they’re a matched team, both gray dappled. You tie Molly’s halter just like you did Polly’s, and take her to the same lot while I get the wheel barrows. Don’t let Polly out, and make sure the gate’s tied shut. Don’t get near that lot down there where that big, black horse is looking at us. That’s the stud, Bartholomew. And what else are you going to make sure of?”

“Stay away from her back end, Uncle Art?” asked Paul, raising his eyes toward the back of the big draft horse high above him.

“That’s right, we don’t want any burials here.”

They dug, scooped and raked the caked manure and straw from the stalls, filling the wheelbarrows to roll them outside where the tractor could load a pile to a spreader. Then Art leaned on his scoop a moment.

“Now, Paul, did I ever tell you what I did to my neighbor’s bull?”

“No, Uncle Art.”

“Well, one time I sold the horse I was riding. Made some good money, but I had to walk home. Along about halfway home, I realized I wouldn’t have to walk so far if I cut across my neighbor’s pasture, a good half-mile across. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, Uncle Art, makes sense. I do that sometimes when we go to school.”

“Well, I’m a walkin’ along when I see the neighbor’s cows and his big white-faced bull walking into the trees ahead. Well, I think I don’t want to walk right into that bull, so I steer around a couple of other trees so I don’t get next to him, and what do you think?”

“I don’t know, Uncle Art.”

“Well, that bull steps out from the trees right in front of me when I think he’s across the way there, and he’s got great big old curved horns. I says to him, ‘So, how did you get there, bull,’ and he shakes his big old head at me.

“Well, I didn’t want any confrontation, so I stepped through the fence behind me into the corn field to avoid him. I did tell you there was a fence there, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t, Uncle Art.”

“Well, of course there was, or he might have got me right then. Anyway, I was gettin’ just pretty tired after crawling through the big stalks in that cornfield, some of them 5 inches through, and it was all hot, buggy and sticky. You ever crawled through a cornfield?”

“Yes, I have, Uncle Art. Helped shuck, and Dad makes us hoe.”

“Then you know what I mean. I get to the other side, crawl through the fence, and start walking toward the next grove of trees. Well, by golly, who do you think stepped out of those trees just as I was getting there?”

“The bull?”

“Darn right, shaking those big old horns at me, snorting and pawing the ground. I was just about terrified. It was pretty obvious the bugger was stalking me. I had to crawl right up the tree to get away from him, and he was banging the trunk, shakin’ the whole tree terrible. I did tell you there was an oak tree to climb right behind me, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t, Uncle Art.”

“Well, of course there was, or he might have gotten me right then. He’d lay there under that tree, and sometimes he’d go to snoring. But when I start climbing down, I’d see one of his big old red eyes half open watching me. I was gettin’ more terrified and petrified all the time. It got dark, and I was awful sleepy and tired. You ever tried to sleep in a tree with a bull under you?”

“No, ain’t ever tried that, Uncle Art.”

“Well, I was clear out of ideas how to handle the situation when a hoot owl flew into the top of the tree to have himself a mouse meal. I climbed higher, kind of sneaky like, against the trunk until I grabbed that hoot owl by the legs, and he hollers ‘Hoot.’

“The bull jumps up just as I slide down the tree where I throw that big hoot owl right into his face. Wouldn’t you know, I was lucky enough the owl fastened his claws right into the bull’s nose, and they commence a terrible fight while I run away. Guess that was the first bull I ever saw to give a hoot about anything.

“I ran home fast as I could go, and got my rifle. Then I ran back to that pasture, and there’s the bull waiting for me on the other side of the fence with owl bashed all over his face. That could have been me, you know. So I shoot that bull, drops him right there. Then I ran home to call the neighbor.

“I said, ‘Neighbor, your bull tried to kill me when I walked across your pasture, so I went back, and I killed him. You better come butcher him so he doesn’t go to waste.’ Well, the neighbor said he hadn’t planned on butchering anything right then, but blamed if I wasn’t right to shoot the bull, so if I would do the butchering, I could have a share of the meat. Matter of fact, we’re having some of that bull meat for dinner.

“It took me a long time to butcher that bull out, he was so big. I had to take my knives over there, start out on his big old head. The middle part of him was the best. I even laid his old tail out, and sliced it up to make stew meat. Then I got to the end of it. You understand that, don’t you?”

“The end of what, Uncle Art?”

“Why, the end of the tale, that’s it, boy. Are you ready for dinner now?”

In the kitchen, Uncle Art heated pans of vegetables and potatoes on the stove, and fried some big hunks of beef. Then he got a plate down from the cupboard, took a spoon, and carefully laid a tiny portion of each food on it.

“Come on, Paul, follow me out to the porch with this plate. Did you see my old hound dog, Goldie, follow us back to the house? Hope she didn’t die. We had the same thing for breakfast. Ah, here she is. Here, Goldie, come here girl. Come and get it. What do you think, Paul, looks like she kind of likes what we’re going to eat, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, she does, Uncle Art,” said Paul, smiling and getting into the routine. “Guess we ought to be able to eat it too, huh?”

“Well, it’s good, it’s looking good. But we got to wait a minute. If she doesn’t turn around to lick herself to get the taste out of her mouth, it’s fit for us too.”

The afternoon went much the same way-quickly, more horses, more stalls, with more tales, and a break for a mid-afternoon lunch of course shared by Goldie.

Even when he was an adult, Paul shared a smile with his brothers whenever the name of Uncle Art was mentioned.

As for Arthur, after Paul left, he ate supper, cleaned up, and read a book for a while. Then he put on his hat and coat to go out into the black night to sit in the wooden lawn chair, Goldie sitting at his feet, staring up at the moon and depth of stars that showed brightly crisp. A horse must have caught his scent because there was a brief whinny from the barn.

Arthur and his wife once did this together-sat in the yard watching the stars. The stars were timeless in their watch over the ages, and now so many years had gone by.

A small tear slid from one of Arthur’s eyes. It was always good to have a new boy come over.

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