Chapter 30

The next morning it was time to treat the chigger bites. I'd mostly avoided chiggers up to that point, somehow, though boots and high socks and long pants are no defense, but the long night spying on the meeting at the Howell place had made me chigger bait in a big way.

Chiggers are tiny little bugs that burrow under the skin, leaving a red spot. They create an infernal itch, and they're the bane of the south. Down in Enterprise they erected a monument to the boll weevil, because the weevil's destructive habits broke the area loose from its one-crop fixation on cotton and gave them diversified farming. No one will ever build a monument to chiggers, except perhaps for some wilderness fanatic who figures that the little critters keep people out of places that ought to stay wild.

The best treatment for chiggers is fingernail polish. I prefer the clear variety, though under my jeans and boots no one's going to see the dabs I put on the chigger bites – I could use all sorts of colors and shades if I felt like it and no one would know. You just put a little bit of polish on each chigger bite, and not only does it suffocate the chiggers, but it's the only thing I know of that will end the itching. Perhaps it's psychosomatic, though it's an effect I didn't expect the first time I tried it. I learned the trick from a guy in Red Hawk, Oklahoma, where I first encountered chiggers, and I've sworn by it ever since. When I moved to New Mexico I was able to get rid of my bottle of fingernail polish, but once I started visiting Alabama every year I found it worth the small cost to have one handy.

When the polish had dried – on Cecelia's legs as well, for no one's immune to chiggers – I put on my pants and a shirt, tucking it in since I wasn't exhausted anymore. Downstairs Mama was cooking – I could smell it as soon as I opened the bedroom door – and though I don't eat breakfast I was ready for something. Cecelia and I trooped down the stairs and found that we had company. Instead of the kitchen table Daddy was sitting at the one in the dining room, Darlia also, and along with them several people whose faces I vaguely remembered – and one whose face I knew right off.

"Sweet Leaf!" I said, grinning.

"Hey, Cousin Darvin," she said. "You know my family."

Now their faces were falling into place. "Yeah, more or less." I shook hands all around, as did Cecelia. We all sat down, and Mama served us hash browns and sausage, biscuits and gravy – good old fashioned farm cooking, as I call it. I saw Cecelia glance at me with a slight smile on her face as I ate – she knows my position on breakfast, and very likely would twit me about it later. Just then, though, I was too busy feeding my face to worry about it.

When we were all done, Daddy headed out the back door, to do what I didn't know, but I knew he'd find something. He'd sooner work than sit down. The men in Sweet Leaf's family went out with him, though they didn't quite manage to pull off the farm family look they were trying for. Mama, Cecelia, and the women in the family headed for the kitchen – and Darlia and Sweet Leaf stayed with me.

I looked at both of them and had one of those wild surmises, though I'm neither Cortez nor Balboa ... although in my mind I recalled that Balboa's name wasn't actually Balboa. But the correct names of Spanish explorers wasn't the question, so I said, "Why don't we all go out on the porch?"

Sweet Leaf nodded, and she and Darlia followed me as I went. I sat down in the porch swing, Darlia to my right, and Sweet Leaf sat down in Daddy's chair to my left. "Darlia says you should tell me the coon hunt story," she said.

I looked at her. I guessed that this was just an opening move – she hadn't maneuvered this just so she could hear an old Jerry Clower routine. But I like that story, so I went ahead with it.

"Well, there was this guy named John Eubanks over in the Mississippi Delta who loved coon huntin', along with all his friends. An' John, instead o' shootin' up in the tree to get the coon down at the end o' the thing, would climb up there and knock it down himself." I could hear myself beginning to sound a bit southern as I spoke. For some reason the coon hunt story doesn't sound right without at least a touch of southern accent.

"Well, there come a night when John an' his buddies was out huntin' coon, an' the hounds sure 'nough treed one. Everyone followed the sound o' the dogs, an' found 'em all gathered round a good ol' tree just bayin' up a storm. They got the dogs calmed down, an' John commenced to climb up the tree." I knew that I was leaving out stuff that Clower had put in, forgetting it rather than omitting it deliberately, but he'd had years to perfect the story and its delivery, and I'm not all that much of a storyteller.

"Well, John got up into the tree, an' there was not a coon, but a mountain lion – what some call painters, or panthers, or pumas. I'm from the west an' I learned to call 'em mountain lions. Anyway this lion looked at John, and commenced to smile. John didn't have much choice – that lion took out after him, and it was all he could do to keep hisself in one piece. The squallin' an' spittin' an' hollerin' was frightful.

"Down below one of the men said, 'Knock 'im down, John!'

"John hollered back, 'Woo, shoot this thang!'

"'Knock 'im down, John, ' his buddy said.

"They wasn't much for a minute but screechin' an' hollerin, ' an' then John said again, 'Shoot this thang!'

"Someone else down on the ground said, 'Just knock 'im down, John!'

"John hollered back, 'Come on, shoot this thang!'

"'But John, ' someone said, 'we're afraid we might hit you.'

"An' John said, 'I don't care, just shoot this thang – one of us has got to get some relief!'"