Grampa's Secret Weapon
By Bob Liddil
It
was a matter of general agreement amongst The Old Folks. The Kid was too
young to own a BB rifle. Despite the fact that it had been a Daisy
Christmas for neighbor kids, Cooter, Bobby, and Mike, January found The
Kid completely weaponless with no available explanation to his friends
other than a somewhat lame, "They won't let me have one."While the terrible trio roamed the neighborhood, stalking every living, moving creature that had the misfortune not to be nocturnal, The Kid stayed uncharacteristically near his own yard, preferring to play quietly on the porch or in the pecan tree the family shared with the neighbors.
The Grandfather had a sense about such things. Unbeknownst to The Kid, he had actually voted in favor of a Red Ryder BB Rifle. The more conservative Grandmother and Aunt insisted that the $14.95 BB gun money would be much better spent on jeans, which admittedly, The Kid would grow out of almost immediately, but would also be a far step in the direction of replacing the raggedy togs he'd brought with him from Indiana on the Greyhound when he first arrived.
After New Year's, The Grandfather struck a compromise. Three evenings in a row, he sat on the porch whittling. This, of course, took place after the women went inside. It was his chewing and spitting time. When the Mail Pouch envelope came out, that was the signal for Grandmother and Aunt Hazel to retreat. They were strict Holy Rollers and didn't abide such as chewing, or BB guns, or actually very much of anything else, if one asked The Kid’s opinion.
The Grandfather whittled and chewed and spit, sometimes with The Kid there, and sometimes in The Kid’s absence - due to schoolwork or chores brought about from one infringement or another of the rules laid out by the women to control the behavior of rowdy boys.
On the third day, The Kid noticed a distinctive shape taking form in the old man's hands. Stout and strong at the bottom, forming a "Y" as it branched off in two directions, the object of all that whittling began to look suspiciously like something for The Kid.
"Whatcha makin', Grandpa?" The Kid asked curiously, keeping a careful distance, having been warned by The Aunt, who had painted a vivid picture of a little boy who'd gotten his arm cut off at the elbow by a pocket knife, and who had been subsequently nicknamed 'Stubby."
The old man looked around, and then spit into the Maxwell House can he kept for such purposes and said, "Can you keep a secret, boy?"
"Sure I can," The Kid replied.
"It's a slingshot," The Grandfather said softly, with a wink of conspiracy. Then he confirmed The Kid’s fondest wish. "It's for you," the old man continued, and produced a torn sheet of rough sandpaper, which he handed to The Kid.
"Would you like to help?"
It’s true that Red Ryder BB rifles can take your breath away. They can set a cat to yowling, a dog to yapping, or make that neat sound when fired against the tin siding of an old shack in the woods, where The Kid was never supposed to play or even get near. But a Red Ryder was store bought. Owning one did not allow for sitting on the porch and spitting into a Maxwell House Can - even though The Kid never did take up Mail Pouch, he could spit with the best. Nor did it involve sanding a fine whittled tree branch into a slingshot of such beauty as to earn a compliment from the old man, himself.
"Well done, son," the Grandfather told The Kid. At that moment, The Kid could've hugged the elderly whittler forever. Years into the future, beyond his ability to see, he would very much regret not having done so.
It was the finest slingshot ever made. It had a triple turn of rubber band tightly wound around each fork and a genuine leather strap for holding the projectile. When it was done, the boy and the old man walked down the railroad tracks that ran through Milltown, following them almost all the way to the river, to where the smoothest stones were to be found alongside a little brook they both knew about. By suppertime, The Kid was better armed than any of his friends and ready to do personal combat with whatever villains might be poised to attack.
Come Saturday morning, Cooter, Bobby and Mike were outside The Kid’s bedroom window, hollering for him to join them. Amidst much muttering by the women folk about not sitting down for breakfast, he wolfed down two jellied pieces of toast and a full glass of orange juice, before bursting out the door in a tap dance of dashing feet. He let the door slam behind him, which he would pay for later, but for the moment, he was free and running with the wind.
That Saturday, Cooter's bottle collection became enemy hand grenades perched on the fence out by the old tin shack. Targeted by Red Ryder sharpshooters, the more vulnerable ones, the whiskey and milk bottles, began to disintegrate. But the three Pepsi bottles, dubbed "potato mashers" due to their similarity to German grenades of the same name, were impervious. BB’s bounced off, ricocheting in all directions.
The Kid was a passive observer in all this, his slingshot tucked away inside his jacket, along with the bag of stones collected the previous day. When it became obvious that the Pepsi bottles were not going to yield to the attack, The Kid drew out Grampa's secret weapon.
It was a good effect. The eyes of his friends widened in surprise when they first saw it.
"Omygawd!" said Cooter, profanely. "Where'd you get that?"
But The Kid said nothing. He selected a stone from the leather pouch the old man had given him, spat a wad of imaginary tobacco juice on the ground, drew back, and let it fly.
The pebble impacted with a satisfying "THUNK" against the rightmost Pepsi bottle, taking the neck right off the body and sending shards flying in all directions.
Instantly, the terrible trio pumped the offending bottle full of BB’s. In its weakened condition, the bottle succumbed and collapsed in a shattered heap at the foot of the fence.
For the rest of the day, nothing inanimate was safe. Bottles, old washing machines, and even the Atlantic Coastline 4:00 freight coming across the Congaree to deliver boxcars (which make an excellent noise when hit by rocks or BB’s), were fair targets.
The sun had almost set by the time The Kid showed up at home. He'd skipped lunch. He was twenty minutes late for supper. He was covered in dried mud, head to toe, suggesting a lot of climbing on the clay banks that paralleled the railroad tracks. His face was dirty, and he smelled like dead cat - though having been told so, he pointed out that they had in fact been nowhere near anything dead all day. That is, except for a trash pile in the woods out behind the Methodist Church, which, come to think of it did stink a little.
He was ordered into the bath tub, "and do it now!" by The Grandmother, whose nose offended easily, and whose appreciation for muddy clothes, especially muddy Christmas clothes, was well demonstrated. Exasperated, she also shouted, "Use a towel!" at him as he ran naked from his room to the bathroom on the opposite end of the hallway. Then, realizing that she'd given him more latitude than was wise, she amended, "after you wash.…" But by then, he was already playing Captain Savage, Master of the Submarine Service, in a tub full of very soapy water.
That night, in his prayers, The Kid asked God specifically to bless The Grandfather, who knew how to make neat things, and The Grandmother, whose cherry pie – despite orders to remove it - was still partially on his face, and Aunt Hazel, as an afterthought, since he still didn't know her very well.
The slingshot went under his pillow, where for reasons he never understood, none of The Old Folks ever looked, except when he lost a tooth.
Sleep wasn't long in coming after that and dreams followed shortly thereafter.