Euchre Creek by Homer Kizer

Author:Homer Kizer [Kizer, Homer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781468908787
Publisher: Booktango
Published: 2012-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

2.

In the Grange Hall after the wedding, folding chairs and tables, brought from the school last night, are used for the meal, served, with Lenny's sister Alice bossing, by the women of the Boosters' Club. Martha's youngest boy spills his chili on Eddy Poage's daughter Nancy; she may have tripped him. The truth is a little hard to determine. Both children accuse the other of wrongdoing and both mothers insist that their own child stop lying.

Outside, there's no room to park and rains drips from the overlapping slab roof above the fire pit. The rocks that line the pit, some glowing red, explode, sending jagged fragments deep into the coals for future generations to ponder. And Terry moves from side to side, trying to avoid the smoke and drips.

Smoke and steam, bent by the rain, swirl around the fire pit where Leo remembers his dad logging with a pair of Durham bulls yoked together, and remembers the steam donkey that killed Russ Saterlee when it blew up. Lenny says it's too bad that widowmaker got Jess Saterlee—Jess always gave a side of beef to these get-togethers. Willie Brown, who processes singled salmon eggs on halves, says Jess's dad once brought roasted seagull to a potluck, didn't tell what it was until Grandma Hodges, then still a Poage, asked if he'd been feeding his chickens herring. Willie laughs, before complaining about the log truck Lenny sold him, the one with solid rubber tires that exploded from gas pockets around rocks. Lenny says that was thirty-five years ago, and Elmer tells about a dance at Cannon Beach, the dance floor the top of an old-growth stump twenty-one feet across. Leo says he remembers the dance, that being the summer he fell the fir that took three 10-foot misery whips brazed together to reach across its center. And rain drips from the slabs, sizzles on still-hot rocks, and rises.

Six o'clock, the food gone, the wives with small children gather belongings, coats and hats, baby bottles and dirty diapers. Martha's arranged a babysitter for her kids; so while the tables are put up and a record player set up, she kisses them good-night, then freshens her makeup.

Grandma Hodges takes her punch bowl home, telling Alice before she leaves that if there's fighting, it'll be the fault of that no-account Vern Jakobson, imagine, donating a keg of beer just to make their menfolk sin. And though there's still free beer to drink, Steele wants to go. Teabo, saying, "For a city fella, you're all right," has him in a one-arm bearhug. Steele slips away from the Breed, and looks for Vicki, who dances to the first record with Blackie. Before he can cut in, Olf shakes his hand, and damn near wrings his arm off, congratulating him, saying, "You done okay." Benny Poage now shares a bottle in a brown bag with Teabo. Eddie dances with Ray's wife, Nils with Blackie's, and Martha cozies up to Sam, her brother-in-law.

It won't be long before Blackie does some serious drinking.

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