Pullet Stories from Greenbrier (1984)

PULLET STORIES FROM GREENBRIER by RICHARD HAGUE How To Catch A Turtle Myrtle Mays sat on a sycamore stump by the creek and the ice snapped in the sunlight. He was making a turtle line out of lengths of old twine, braiding them till he had a single rope half an inch thick that was so stiff he could hold a foot of it straight out like a stick. When he was finished, he reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a pay envelope and dumped a huge hook onto the dirt between his feet. It was a good two inches between barb and shank, and black, like a bent harpoon. "Not now," he said, "but in a month or two I'll get him." "That woman Heeber Bings had down here last week," he said. "She was a nice one. You see this here hook'll catch in his throat and there won't be no spitting it out. Dead frog's the bait, or rank carp, a fist-ball of it. Let her lay on the bottom all night. Sleep good then come to work. Course I'm partial to them white-haired ones with brown eyes and big breasts. Got to have strong legs. Got to shut up when they ought to. Then what you do is get in the creek and follow the line and find out where he's holed up, if he ain't bled to death or drownded yet. Then all you do is dig him out. Nothing special. Ain't nothing but a big meat-potato with a hard peel 79 and a mean mouth. Now the tail's tough but it'll cook down just all right. But she was a nice one. Make a man feel like a man, I bet. Ain't nothing better but that a woman like that might cook Heeber up some turtle now and then." MjTtle Mays looked up and grinned. He ran the ridges of his thumb across the barb of the hook. "That there," he said, "...that there'd be what I called good." Science "You know what's the best meal a person could eat?" Mr. Piatt leaned forward in his chair on the porch of his store and peeled the paper off a Reese's bar. He took a big bite and chewed slowly, staring at the boy. Across the road a flock of purple martins circled around the high box. "I mean the wholesomest meal a person could eat." "No," the boy said. "But I bet you got the answer." "You knew that, did you?" Mr. Piatt said, not smiling. "By God, you're a sharp bird." Lern Barnes stood at the doorway and stuffed a wad of Beech Nut in his jaw, and carefully re-wrapped the paper of tobacco. He spit in a paper cup he held ih his hand. "TeU him, Berl," he said. "Go ahead." "Why, the bestest meal you can eat is a peanut butter andjelly sandwich and a bottle of Coke." Mr. Piatt sat back in his chair. Then the boy said, "Yeah? But I heard once that Coke rots you inside, on account of all the acid in it. The stuff that makes the bubbles." "It ain't so," Mr. Piatt said. "And I'll tell you why. Two, three years ago, me and Wiley Reed decided we'd try that one out. So we got us a ten-penny nail and a piece of Armour baloney and we tied them to a string, each one. Then we took two bottles of Coke from the cooling case, uncapped them, and slung that baloney and nail into the bottles and re-sealed them with a capping machine. Kept them in the cooling case eight months, so's everybody could see them. Then Wiley, he ate that baloney one night, and I drove that nail into a four-by-four. Nobody died and the nail held. It's a fact. Lem'll tell you. Ain't that a fact, Lem?" "Straight up," Lem Barnes said. "Plain scientific." "Now you might not believe it," Mr. Piatt said. "But if a man was to have a...