When I was twelve-years-old, my family visited my grandfather’s WWII buddy’s family in Crowley, Louisiana. It was a large loving and generous family living together on their land in the middle of a bayou filled with crawdads, mud, rice fields and crazy Cajuns.
The only member of their family that I related to was a thirteen-year-old named Charlie who had dreams of escaping this Deliverance-like atmosphere.
Charlie, my brother Chris, and I were taking refuge from the hot, balmy, bayou weather inside the air-conditioned trailer. Charlie’s grandmother, “Ma” was watching Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker on The PTL Club. We were in the kitchen exhausted from riding Charlie’s three-wheeler all day in the Louisiana sun. Miraculously, none of us got injured from our reckless excursions that was void of any adult supervision. Somehow we had managed to land the ATV vertically on the back two tires without any casualties and got stranded for an hour in the middle of a snake, tick, and alligator-infested swamp because we had flooded the carburetor. Even though it was a child’s dream of blithe excitement, I was counting the days until we got leave this “paradise”. I felt that our luck was going to run out and Chris and I would be six feet under the ground soon.
The person I feared the most was Jerry. Which was sad because he truly was harmless but harmless in the same way Lennie from Of Mice and Men was harmless.
Jerry was 27 year-old man who was about 6’4” 240 pounds with a mind of a seven-year-old child and had a high-pitched voice that matched his mind.
Jerry entered the house with a stack of circular blades that were held with one of his bear-paw sized hands.
Jerry cheerfully asked, “Anybody wanna go out back and throw some saw blades in some trees?”
Since my ten-year-old little brother Chris had an affinity for throwing stars, his eyes lit They became fixated on the saw blades and he became entranced like a pyromaniac staring at a flame. He stood up with slowly and started to walk toward Jerry with a dumb-struck grin of sailor under the spell of a Siren.
Charlie made eye contact with me and nonchalantly said, “You don’t wanna do that.”
I grabbed Chris’s arm and said, “Thanks Jerry but it’s too hot out there and Mom wants us to wash up supper.”
“Alright but I just gotta fresh pack of blades. Ain’t a rusty one in the bunch”, Jerry answered.
The next morning Charlie and I were eating biscuits and gravy, a delightful indigenous meal. Jerry comes in from outside with what appears to be a Philips head screwdriver and a whetstone (a knife sharpener). Extremely focused, he methodically scraping the screwdriver back and forth.
Charlie looks annoyed and said, “What tha hell you doin’, Jerry?”
“Sharpenin’ a screwdriver. What does it look like I’m doin’?”, he said matter-of-factly.
Charlie eternally antagonizing Jerry responded, “You don’t know how sharpen anything.”
“I do too!” Jerry yelled.
“Shit, you probably are makin’ it duller.” Charlie said snidely.
“This is the sharpest screwdriver you’ve ever seen!” Jerry screamed. Pointing the screwdriver-turned-ice pick at both of our faces. My eyes crossed as I followed the point. My face was frozen with look of a person suffering with constipation. I felt like I was staring a snake about to strike.
Jerry then looked at me and asked me, “You think this screwdriver is sharp?”
I answered honestly, “Yes! Jerry, that is the sharpest screwdriver I have ever seen. You are the most awesome screwdriver sharpener I have ever met!”
He seemed genuinely pleased by my response and stopped pointing the ice pick at me.
I let out a deep breath and suck in a lung full of air. I realized I had not breathed since Jerry started wave his homemade weapon.
I had neutralized the situation but dipshit Charlie chimed in, “It ain’t that sharp.”
Jerry the exploded and said, “I bet it go clean through my leg!”
“That shit wouldn’t go through your jeans.”
“Oh yeah!” he said defiantly and pounded the screwdriver into his thigh. It sounded like someone stepping into a mud puddle. My mind wanted me to run but my body was frozen. I sat there with my mouth open trying not to pass out. I thought it was over but Jerry smirked at Charlie, pulled it out and blasted into his leg one more time for good measure to show Charlie that it was sharp enough for multiple piecing.
Without missing a beat, Charlie casually said, “I guess I was wrong.”
Clearly the “winner” in the argument, Jerry proudly said, “I guess you was.”
{ 0 comments… add one now }