Again to Carthage by John L Parker

Author:John L Parker [Parker, John L]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2010-09-28T04:00:00+00:00

25

Sort of Home Again

AMAZINGLY, HIS GRANDMOTHER didn’t try to make him eat anything.

“Lee and them’s up at the Poutin’ House and I expect you’ll want to go see what they’re up to,” she said, grinning for once, happy to see him back.

“What’s going on?” He put his bags down by the table, and sat down, stretching his legs out. It was getting toward late morning and she wasn’t cooking.

“I don’t have no eye-dee. Just go on upair when you’re ready and see. Do you want a cold drink or some tea?”

“Yes, ma’am, but I’ll get it. You sit.”

The car was no good for the wagon road up into the pasture, so he rode the Vincent and was surprised to see both his uncles’ pickup trucks, along with another one he didn’t recognize. That’s when he noticed the power line. The noise of the motorcycle brought them out.

“Well, well,” said Lee, holstering his framing hammer. The other two had nailing aprons on.

“This here’s Bobby Turner,” said his uncle Neal, indicating with a hammer. “Married to Shirley? Juanita’s boy?” The man was in his forties.

After shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries and the basic genealogical data, Cassidy looked back and forth between his obviously pleased uncles.

“Would somebody mind telling me just what in the hell pardon my French is going on here?” Cassidy couldn’t help smiling back, so contagious was their barely suppressed satisfaction.

“Come on and see for y’self,” Lee said, stamping mud off his cowboy boots on the dry boards of the porch.

Cassidy couldn’t believe what they’d done. A storage room in the back was now a more or less modern bathroom, with an old claw-footed tub and a brand-new toilet. A sink was attached to a freshly Sheetrocked wall. Cassidy was amazed when he turned on the cold-water tap and water actually flowed.

“But how …” He was flabbergasted.

“Got the well on a pump now,” Lee said. “You don’t have hot yet, but you will after we get the heater in. You’ll have it in the kitchen too, but we don’t have the fixtures in yet. But at least you’ve got a real sink, ’stead of that old tub. You’re on septic, of course, but you won’t have to be raising goose bumps on your heinie makin’ midnight trips to the throne room.”

“This is just amazing. But what possessed you all …”

“Oh, we’ve been talking about doing it for years, get some real use out of the place. Nobody has ever wanted to tear it down exactly, but nobody had much interest in doing anything with it either, so it was just nice to have an excuse to get cracking on it,” said Lee.

“And you won’t have to use that old pump handle, unless you want to leave it for atmosphere,” said Neal.

“Oh, most definitely. This is … I mean, it’s just …”

“But you haven’t noticed the best part,” Neal said, flicking a light switch off and on.

“Oh, of course I did. It was the first thing I noticed. I mean, I

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