Note from the author: Returning from a long and arduous journey rarely leaves me in the mood to write, and sex usually uses up my creative energy. But once in a while, the unthinkable occurs. A writing leakage bursts forth like a bottle of cheap bubbly shaken by a braying and guffawing ass. “Aged to perfection,” he shouts as he sends cork and cage careening off walls, ceilings, and refrigerator with a calculated accuracy for someone’s eye. I duck in terror, protecting various important organs in my head and otherwise . . .
Agnes Stovewright is 52. She loves her children, both grown and overgrown. She protects them from the evils of the world with stories from her youth in the Ozarks, sage advice, and a castle-wall-thick cloud of reefer smoke. In a fit of particular inspiration, she told her semi-dependents the following tragic tale.
“Back when I was a little girl, before the war,” – Agnes refers to any time more than five minutes ago as ‘before the war’, no one knows why, or which war – “there was a family that lived on Hog Holler Hill. They were the Edwardses, and they had the cutest little baby girl that reminded me of Antigone.”
“The cat?” inquired her twenty-year-old son.
“Your cat. The one that got hit by that mean old car. But the oldest Edwardses boy, Jeremiah Edwardses, was a sight to behold. That boy cut a path in the crowd when he was walking, but he was never as handsome as my baby boy. I’m not gonna pass judgment on your father. He can’t stand up to that kind of comparison. Jeremiah Edwardses could grind your daddy into a handful of cornmeal, and eat pancakes with his other hand.”
By this time, Agnes has finished rolling the first of several rather neat, if a little thin, joints. She sits propped up in bed on a buttress of pillows and pillow like objects. One of the latter is likely to be a cat, of which she has many. They seem to have an innate ability to find danger, but it comes in a different form from the standard rocking chair. Their collective doom is to find Agnes’ recently vacated warm spot on her pillow ziggurat, lay down on it, and then be thoroughly smothered until tooth or claw find flesh. In this particular telling of the story, it is Puck who at this point makes his desperate break for air, but usually it is Othello.
“Sorry, kitty. It’s OK, you just stay here with Mama. So Jeremiah Edwardses was needless to say, the apple of a few girls’ eyes, mine included. I sang in the choir at church, and every Sunday I’d be watching him. He always sat with Ma and Pa Edwardses in the second row on the left side. I’d stare at his and imagine what he looked like naked, our lives together, what our children would look like, and what he looked like naked. I always spent church services saying prayers, so no one really noticed when I started praying to God for a chance to see that boy as the Lord had Made him. Well, there was this one deaf old lady who could lip-read, but I figured if she was there, I just wouldn’t guess about the details. I mean, the Lord already knew, and I didn’t want that old lady to think I did too.
“Jeremiah Edwardses had a friend named Ed Edwardses Jr., no relation. Ed’s family lived by Hog Waller Creek, and everyone knew that the best swimming hole in town was on Ed Edwardses Sr.’s farm. I’m pretty sure that I was the only one who knew about the best swimming hole watching spot, in some bushes on the Wilmington’s property. Well, there was this one deaf old lady who could lip-read, but don’t get me started on that again. I’d been praying for two years for Jeremiah Edwardses and Ed Edwardses Jr. to become friends, but the Lord works by his own clock. When he saw fit to answer my prayer, I danced and sang until I thought it a sin. I waited till summertime, then I took to sitting in the Wilmington’s bushes every day, waiting for the Lord to answer the rest of my prayer. The day he finally did, I learned just how mysterious the ways He works in really can be. I had been napping a little, and when I turned my blurry eyes to the water, I saw the man of my dreams in all his glory. He was tall and rippling, and between his legs was all my curiosity could have hoped for. Then I blinked, and I realized that Jeremiah Edwardses was on the far bank, scratching his own tool belt. To be quite honest, I wouldn’t have thought that a boy that big and strong would have any use for such a little old thing, but he seemed to enjoy the scratching well enough. I looked right back to Ed Edwardses Jr., no relation, who I’d always thought was just a little gawky and funny looking. I realized that day just how wrong I had been all those years in the church choir, and that’s how I met your father.”
“Dad’s name is Stovewright,” her daughter casually mentions. “That story has nothing to do with Dad.”
“That’s right. What I meant to say was that’s how I wrapped the pickup around that telephone pole.”
After a short pause, her son interjects matter-of-factly: “You said you were wasted on tequila and Quaaludes.”
“And there’s your lesson. Don’t drink.”
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