We run in circles in the huge
front yard. Our fingers clutch at the bright pinpricks of light that buzz
around us. "Hey, I got one!" Andy yells. Gary grabs a jar and
quickly unscrews the lid and Andy drops the bug inside. Gary claps the lid
back on and we all stare as the little bug flies inside the jar, his body
lightin' up in a warm, golden glow. It's our favorite thing to do on these
hot summer evenin's. Catch lightnin' bugs. My cousins might be
Yankees from Maryland, but they're as redneck as any of my friends from
school. I decide that I really do like havin' them for my
kin.
We all run with the jar to
show Mama and Aunt Vernie. All the grownups are on Granddad's front
porch. I hear and see more bugs buzzin' and hittin' against the light bulb
right by his front door. Uncle Gene and Uncle Woody and Uncle Buster are all
clustered around Uncle Gene's car. Uncle Gene has a new station
wagon. It seems to me every summer when he comes he has a new station
wagon. The back is full of boxes and stuff. He's from Tennessee and
when him and Aunt Rena come they have to bring a bunch of stuff with them and
they always take a bunch of stuff back. That's just their
way.
We like Uncle Gene and Aunt
Rena. They always give us those long sticks of candy. Sometimes peppermint.
Sometimes horehound. Sometimes cinnamon. Sometimes my favorite,
butterscotch. He brings it from the mountains in Tennessee. I wonder
if they only make candy like that in the mountains. We just have plain ole
round peppermint and such as that here. I like those long sticks better
cause you can lick ‘em for the longest time. It's a mess when you get down
to the bit left in your fingers though. You lick and lick and lick but
still your fingers are sticky. That's when Aunt Louise comes along with a
washrag and wipes us all off. She cain't stand for a kid to be
dirty. That's just her way.
Aunt Louise is the oldest of
the sisters. She's pretty quiet. She has soft brown eyes and
whenever one of us is hurt, she's the one we run to cause we know she'll baby
us. She always says, "Bless it's little heart," and hugs us and kisses
us. She's real gentle. When she laughs it's a soft little
laugh. Not a big belly laugh like Uncle Gene. I like to hear Mama
tell about when Aunt Louise was little and she ate a worm. None of us can
imagine Aunt Louise gettin' dirty or playin' with worms. But Mama says it
happened so I guess it did. She said Aunt Louise came up to her Mama one day and
had part of a worm hangin' out of her mouth. She'd eaten the other
part. I guess eatin' worms when you're little makes you quiet when you're
growed up. But I still like her, even if she did eat a worm.
Aunt Louise is married to
Uncle Buster. He's real tall. I don't know any other men that tall.
And he has white hair. He's kinda quiet too unless you get him around
Uncle Woody. Uncle Buster's real name is George but I ain't never heard
anybody call him that. He drives this big brown Ford LTD with leather
seats. It smells good in his car, like new. He drove us to town one
day and all of a sudden he had to hit the brakes real hard. We all slid
off the back seat of that LTD cause those new leather seats were slippery.
Me and my sister were laughin' but Mama's and Aunt Louise's eyes were wide cause
they were scared. Aunt Louise said, "Buster?" In a voice I'd never
heard her use before. After a minute she and Mama started smilin' and
helped us up from the floor of the car. Aunt Louise and Uncle Buster
never, ever, ever fight. And whenever he needs a drink or his plate fixed
for supper she jumps right up and fixes it. I don't know that I'd do
that. But she likes it. And he likes it. So I guess it don't hurt
nothin'.
Aunt Vernie is the middle
sister. Her real name's LaVerne. She has red hair and big
boobies. Uncle Woody, her husband, is always grabbin' her boobies.
When he does she giggles and blushes and pushes his hands away and looks at us
kids. She tells him to behave but he never does. He likes gettin'
her flustered. I think it's funny. Uncle Woody will always grab Aunt
Louise and Mama and give them big lip kisses to fluster them too. He
chases me and my sister and my cousin Cindy and kisses us too. We like him
to chase us but we don't know much about kissin' yet so I'm not sure if I like
it when he catches us. Uncle Woody just laughs and chases us anyway and
then lip kisses and tickles the women to make them blush and giggle. Uncle
Woody likes to make people laugh. That's just his way.
Uncle Gene has backed his new
station wagon into Granddad's yard right up almost onto the porch, and they open
the doors and turn on the radio. He's brought his Jerry Clower 8-track
tapes again. And for a while we all stop and listen to Jerry tell a
joke. My cousins don't fully appreciate Jerry Clower cause they ain't from
the south. But I do. I laugh along with the grownups cause I
understand. I hear Uncle Gene laugh and I watch him. He has short
brown hair cut like a little boy's and the buttons on his shirt are always
strained at the buttonholes. His big belly dances and his brown eyes light
up when he laughs. He has a funny laugh. It's kind of a kee-hee-hee or
somethin' like that.
Uncle Woody goes to get
another beer. Mama disapproves of this but because it's Uncle Woody we
tolerate it. He's the funniest man we all know. He's always tellin'
jokes. Some of them are dirty. Mama always tells me and my sister that she
don't like dirty jokes, but she laughs when Uncle Woody tells ‘em so I think
she's just tryin' to teach us a lesson or somethin'. Whenever he tells a
dirty joke us kids act like we're not listenin'. After he finishes the
punchline, Mama and Aunt Vernie and Aunt Louise all giggle and blush. Then
they all huddle together and whisper about the men. Their feet make slight
scrapin' noises on the wooden porch and the swing chains creak as they swing
back and forth, three sisters actin' like schoolgirls again.
Uncle Woody pops the top on
his beer and us kids all try to get the pop-top. We're makin' a curtain of
them by bendin' and puttin' ‘em together. This is somethin' my northern cousins
taught me. I think it's cool. Nobody else down here has a pop-top
curtain. I can smell the beer. It smells sour to me but Uncle Woody
seems to like the way it tastes. Him and Uncle Buster get louder and
louder as they try to out-joke each other. Uncle Gene just sits back and lets
his belly shake and his eyes twinkle as he listens to the others.
Aunt Rena sits on the porch in
a rockin' chair and rocks, shakin' her head at the lot of ‘em. But her
eyes twinkle too so I know she's not really mad. She just acts like
it. Sometimes she'll get up and dance, playin' around and showin'
off. She know an old dance called the Charleston. She reminds me of
those flappers from the twenties. Her hair is even cut short in a bob and dyed
black. She likes to wear long necklaces with beads or fake gold. And
big bead clip-on earrings. When she takes those off her ears are red and
she rubs them. I think it must hurt to try to be beautiful like she
does. She is always puttin' on her make-up. She calls it rouge. She
has these bright red spots on her cheeks. And she likes red lipstick
too. She wears more make-up than Mama or my other aunts. She puts it
on at the dinner table too. I'm not sure if I like that but I guess it
don't really hurt nothin'.
Mama's the baby of the
bunch. Mama's got black hair that she teases into a beehive hairdo.
She sprays it with so much hairspray that if you lift one little hair you lift
it all. Me and my sister like to do that but it bugs Mama so we don't do
it much. Mama's the only one who actually stayed at home to live close to
Granddad after she got married. She's pretty quiet too. She teaches
school. Second grade. Her and Aunt Louise talk about school stuff
sometimes cause Aunt Louise teaches too. Mama's always tryin' to keep
busy. Guess she feels it's her place to be hostess since she's the one who lives
here. She's always runnin' to the kitchen to get more tea or
somethin'. And her sisters follow right along behind, in and out of the
old log house, shuttin' the screen door behind them carefully. They don't
let it slam like us kids do.
And in the middle of it all
sits Granddad. He's in his rockin' chair with his bare feet propped up
against the post. Us kids like to feel that post. It's worn plumb
smooth from his feet bein' propped up on it. He sits there all day long,
just watchin' things. He waves at the cars that go by on the dirt
road. He waves at the paper-man and at the mailman. He might be old
but his bright blue eyes don't miss a thing. Me and my sister put on shows
for him in the front yard. We get behind the two cedar bushes and get
ready. Then we jump out from between them and we sing and dance and he
claps and claps and cheers. Sometimes it seems like he's a part of the
porch itself cause he sits there so much. But when you think about it,
when you sit on the front porch you don't miss anything that happens.
Maybe that's why he sits there. To see everything that goes on.
That's just his way.
I hear Gary and Andy holler for me as they grab the jar and run back out into the darkness just beyond the front porch light. I jump up to follow them. We run in circles in the huge front yard. Our fingers clutch at the bright pinpricks of light that buzz around us. Maybe I'll be the one lucky enough to catch the next lightnin' bug.
