Only once did a smile light the grim face. "One day Cynthie and me was
busy here and Ben's pet pig followed him up here when he brought us a
snack to eat. The pig snooted around and found the place where we had
dumped the leavin's of the mash after we had took off the brine. Well,
sir, that pig just nat'erly gorged itself and directly it was tipsy as
fiddlesticks. I never saw such antic was out of a critter in my life. It
reeled to and fro and squealed and grunted and went round and round
tryin' to ketch its own tail. Finally it rolled down the hill. Ben
packed it back up again and it reeled around, its feet tangled and it
rolled down again. Kept that up till it got sober. Its eyes rolled back
in its head, it sunk down in a grassy spot over yonder and slept till
dark. It follered at Ben's heels meek as a lamb when we went down the
hill that night. That pig was too sick to eat or even sniff a nubbin of
corn for two whole days, just laid and groaned. 'Now, Ben,' says Cynthie
to our boy, 'you see what comes of gettin' tipsy.' And Ben Foley learnt
a lesson off the pig and never did take a dram too much."
Again Jorde's eyes sought the neglected grave far off. He looped back to
the story of his son. "Everything was peaceable here, though we did miss
Cynthie powerful after she died. But me and Ben made on the best we
could. We had a living from our whiskey. Then come Effie! That woman
nat'erly tore up the whole place. She kept gougin' Ben for more cash
money." Jorde pointed a condemning finger toward a ravine. "There's a
half dozen washtubs rustin' away under there."
A part of a zinc tub protruded from the brush heap. "One day," Jorde
continued, "unbeknown to Ben's wife, Effie, I snuck off up here away
from that Jezebel though she had talked no end about me being too old to
climb the mountain. 'You'll get a stroke, Jorde,' she'd warn me. 'You
best sit here in the cool, or feed the chickens or the hogs.' Effie was
ever finding something for me to do if I offered a word about comin' up
here to see how Ben was getting on. That made me curious. So I snuck off
from the house and come up here one day." Jorde's eyes turned toward the
ground. "When I come up on Ben I couldn't believe my own eyes. My boy
had a fire goin' not under just one but a half dozen tubs! What's left
of them are over yonder." He jerked a thumb toward the brush covered
ravine. "My boy Ben was stirring around not with the wood fork like he
had been learnt, but with a shovel!" Jorde lifted scandalized eyes. "A
rusty shovel, at that! He was talking in a big way to his helper--a
strange man to me. I come to find out he was a friend of Effie's from
Cartersville."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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