When Clint and I first married, we lived in a little run down house just a mile or so from where we live now. It was right on the highway. It’s strange to drive past it now, so many memories. One of my good friends lives there and often I’ll pop by for one reason or another and stand in the kitchen that still has my clock radio under the cabinet and walls still painted the peach I picked out so long ago. Trevor was 2 when I painted most of the house and I was hugely pregnant with Tara . Trevor wanted to paint with me, so I got an old cardboard box, dragged it to the center of the room, and poured him a coffee can full of paint and handed him a paintbrush and he would set about painting the box, working diligently. He did such a good job, I really should have let him paint the WALL instead of the box. Trevor says he remembers thinking to himself “I’ve got to get this box painted before daddy comes home!”
But before all that…the first year, there was no money for paint or new flooring. The house was livable, but when I look back at old pictures, I’m stunned at the condition. I was so poor growing up, I guess living in an old house with cabinets that the doors wouldn’t even close or linoleum with holes in it was ok. As long as I could clean it, I didn’t mind. Clint also had some nephews…Raymond, Kelly…Raymond was 6 months younger than me and Kelly was 3 years younger. I was 18 at the time, but functioned as Raymond’s mom. He moved in with us a week after we got married and finished his senior year of school. Kelly stayed with us about half the time, shuttling from his mom and dad’s to our house to get to basketball practice or games or just to hang out with Raymond and play basketball. I became “mom” or something like it, a role I was born to play. Just ask my younger brother and sisters.
I worked as a nurse’s aide in the little hospital in Booneville. Clint and I had married that September of ’88 and I usually got home about . I pulled up this particular day to see Kelly, all 6 feet of him, dressed in Clint’s overalls. Clint is 5’6”. Kelly was tall and lanky, with dark hair and blue eyes, and the overalls hit him about mid shin. His bare feet stuck out and he was shirtless. He was sitting in an old rowboat in the front yard, skinning a pile of squirrels he had shot that day. There had to be 20 or so and he had just gotten started. His gun was still propped on the side of the rowboat. I hollered “need some help?” and he thought that a grand idea, so I ran in and put a pair of overalls on. I didn’t have any old shoes, so I stayed barefoot, too. At the time, I weighed 100 pounds soaking wet and was so pale, you could practically see thru me. I was my own x-ray, I liked to joke.
So Kelly sat on one end of the rowboat on that fine fall day, the sun dropping lower, a chill starting in the air. He got a big dip of skoal, which I frowned at. He smiled a big smile across the boat and with the skoal in his teeth said “Aunt Lichea, don’t say NOTHIN’” I said NOTHIN’ and he picked up a squirrel and cut around the base of its tail. I grabbed the tail and he grabbed the squirrel and with one swift, sure move, we pulled the skin off. I carefully put the naked rodent that I wouldn’t eat if you PAID me into a bowl. Then we grabbed the next one and did it again.
At this point, Kelly and I were covered in a fine spray of blood and fur. Our fingers were dark with blood. We were about half way done, when we saw a car slow down and turn into the driveway. I didn’t recognize the car, but realized when the suited man stepped out…he was selling something. I had a skinned squirrel in my hand, and Kelly was just cutting around the tail of another one. We stared at the man and he stared at us, sitting in the rowboat in the yard, two teenagers covered in carnage and gore.
He announced he was selling vacuum cleaners and offered to demonstrate one in my living room, smoothly telling me that I would get 3 nights free in Branson if I would allow him to do this and recommend 5 friends he could visit. I looked down at my bare feet, dirty and covered in squirrel bits and blood. I looked across at Kelly, shirtless and shoeless. I started to tell the man that this wasn’t a good time, but thank you! I was still holding the naked squirrel by the tail as I started to form the words.
That’s when Kelly stood up in the rowboat, showing his bare shins and feet. The overalls were so small on him, he only had one side fastened, the other still hanging down his back. He spit a HUGE stream of tobacco toward the man, who stood staring at us, mouth agape. Kelly held the bloody, dead body of a squirrel he had shot in the head toward the man and said in the most southern accent imaginable “Y’ALL WANT SOME SQUIRREL??”
Mr. Vacuum Cleaner Salesman quietly, wordlessly turned and put the vacuum back into the back seat. He gave us one last look as he got into his car. I sat, naked squirrel in hand, as he SCREECHED out of the driveway.
Kelly sat down and handed me my part of the squirrel to pull. After we pulled a couple more skins off, Kelly looked at me and grinned, tobacco all in his teeth, squirrel blood flecked on his face.
“Guess he didn’t want no squirrel.” he stated.
Clint came home a few minutes later, completely nonplussed by the fact we were sitting in a rowboat in the front yard skinning squirrels. He thanked me for helping Kelly and we carried the squirrel inside, where Clint and Kelly cooked a few of them, asking me to make gravy to go with it. I took my shower first and by then it was time for me to make the gravy. Kelly told Clint the story of the vacuum salesman and we laughed at what must have gone through his mind. I know to this day, that this salesman probably tells this story of being in Arkansas
“Y’all want some squirrel?” he said.
This reminds me of my best friend growing up, Ray Noblin... thanks for takine me "home" for a few minutes, Lichea!!
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