way off up the hill and laid down under a bush.
Well, not the only one. Uncle Sagamore seemed to be comfortable enough too. He stretched a little and scratched one leg with the big toenail on his other foot, and moved his tobacco into the other cheek.
“The Vision?” he says. “Oh, Finley seen it one night about four years ago, as near as I can recollect. Me and Bessie was asleep in the front room when he come a-tearin’ through the house in his nightshirt like somebody’d jabbed him in the butt with a bull nettle and says as how this Vision had told him he’d better not lose no time because the end of the world was due any minute. So he runs out in the back yard with a pinch bar and starts tearin’ down the hen house to get boards to make this boat with. It was only about two o’clock in the morning, and there was a regular damn madhouse with all them chickens squawkin’ and tryin’ to figure out what’s goin’ on, and Bessie yellin’ at Finley to go on back to bed. I didn’t get hardly no rest at all.”
Four
“And he’s been building her ever since?” Pop asked.
“Off and on,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Dependin’ on the supply of boards. After he used up the hen house and the shed I used to keep the truck in, he started to tear down the house, but we finally got him talked out of that. So then he starts driftin’ around to the neighbors, pickin’ up any boards that wasn’t nailed down too tight. He tore down Marvin Jimerson’s hawg pen so many times Marvin finally got a court order agin him and says if he has to chase them hawgs one more time he’s comin’ up here and shoot Finley right in the tail with a charge of rock salt, he don’t care if Finley did used to be a preacher and was the one that baptized Miz Jimerson. Says come to think of it, she takened the pneumonia when he baptized her anyhow.”
Pop was looking down the hill. “Kinda leaky for a boat, ain’t she?” he asked. “You can see all the way through her in places.”
“Oh, that’s on account of the privies,” Uncle Sagamore says. “He’s got seven of ‘em in there now, if I ain’t lost count. You see, every time Bessie leaves me, Finley rushes out there with his pinch bar and starts tarin’ the privy apart before she’s out of sight. He gets the planks all nailed into his boat, and about that time Bessie gets over her sull an’ comes home, and I got to build a new one.”
“Bessie leaves you?” Pop asked. “Is she gone now?”
“Oh, sure,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Been gone a week last Sunday. She’ll be back in about twelve days now. Last couple of years she’s been stayin’ away three weeks each time. Before that she always came home in ten days.”
“How’s that?” Pop asked.
Uncle Sagamore scratched his leg with his toenail again and started to pucker up his lips like he was going to sail out some more tobacco juice. Booger and Otis watched him and kind of pulled back on each side like sliding doors opening. He didn’t spit for a minute and they relaxed and straightened up a little, and then he spit and they had to jerk back real fast.
“Well, it’s like this,” Uncle Sagamore says.
“Every once in a while, maybe twice a year, Bessie gets all galled under the britchin’ about something and starts faunchin’ around here sayin’ she’s takened all she can take, she just ain’t goin’ to put up with me no longer, ain’t nobody could live with me. Usually over some triflin’ little thing that don’t amount to a hill of beans, like I won’t wash my feet or something, but she gets all swole up like a snakebit pup and says she’s leavin’ me for good this time. So she packs her suitcase and gets her egg money and walks down to Jimerson’s which is on the party line and calls Bud Watkins that runs the taxi in town, and Bud comes after her. She gets on the bus and goes down to Glencove to stay with her Cousin Viola, the one that married Vergil Talley.
“Well, I don’t know if you recollect Cousin Viola, but you can’t take too much of her at one time. She’s kind of delicate and refined, only she’s got this rumblin’ in