Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction

Author:James Henderson [Henderson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Broke-Tooth Dog Press
Published: 2010-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Aunt Jean couldn’t find the money that she kept in a knotted piece of pantyhose pinned to the inside of her shirt. She looked for it all of two minutes before deciding I stole it.

Uncle CJ said, “Now, Aunt Jean, maybe you misplaced it. You look in your room?”

Uncertainty in her eyes, she said, “Rock Star stole it. I know he did.” Someone had told her rock star was another name for crackhead. “Make him strip, CJ. I betcha he got it on him. It didn’t get up and walk away.”

Uncle CJ gave me a suspicious look and I said, “You want me to strip, I’ll strip.”

Aunt Jean said, “What’s the holdup? Start peeling em off.”

It was five o’clock in the morning, still dark out. Aunt Jean rarely slept, up all night patrolling the house, talking to herself, conjuring up ways to make my life miserable. She’d taken her stale butt to bed early, and kept her nose where it belonged, she probably wouldn’t have lost her money.

Uncle CJ told her to look for it again. “Ask Beverly to help you when she wakes up. Time for us to go to work.”

In his truck, a new Ford 150, I held his coffee cup as he started the engine. Usually Uncle CJ told me stories as he drove. Today, however, he was quiet. Too quiet. Which meant he was entertaining the lie that I’d stolen Aunt Jean’s money.

A few blocks the dogs ran alongside the truck, barking, darting in and out of the headlight beams, almost but never getting hit. The cattle followed the truck, too, though at a much leisurely pace, in a long strung out line. The sun would be high in the sky by the time they all arrived to the feeding spot where Uncle CJ unloaded a bale of hay.

Uncle CJ drove straight to the big Quonset hut, less than a mile away from the house, where all the machines were kept. One combine, two John Deere tractors, five thrashers, two rear-end loaders, a Nissan forklift, four riding lawn mowers, and five four-wheelers.

Parked on the right side of the building was a 1984 International hooked to an empty flatbed trailer.

Yesterday Uncle CJ sat in the passenger seat as the truck bucked and conked out under my control. “You’ll get the hang of it,” he said. Finally I did, somewhat, jerking the gearshift into fifth, the transmission wailing in pain, the tachometer shooting into the red, and the smell of diesel exhaust drifting into the opened windows. Uncle CJ told me not to worry about running into anything.

“A thousand acres, you can’t hurt anything here,” he said. “Catch another gear.”

A loud pop and then the sound of metal grinding as I shifted to sixth gear. As we rode along at fifteen miles an hour, Uncle CJ told me about his father, Glenn Powell, a wino who didn’t look after his family.

“Wasn’t for your mother and me working day and night, Daddy would’ve lost this farm.”

“What about Aunt Jean? She didn’t work?”

Uncle CJ laughed.

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