BUT NOW AM FOUND

Stourley Hews bought the only turn of the century farmhouse left in Alma. All others burnt down long ago or stood field like great cracker fossils, nothing to hide without windows and doors. Long boards burned black by sun. Rusted roofs shattered by weather and time. Soutrley’s was the old Bold place on past the cement plant put in five years ago. Out past great stretch of flooded timber and marsh. It set up deep in pecan grove he aint tend to. Still could see it off road through weave of trees. Its red paint now mostly chipped down to wood and the roof tin brown as dipspit. Those pecan trees overrun with squirrels and crows. Stourley loved it. He eat inside with all the damn windows open and listen to the nuts fallin. Sound like hail poundin the ground most times.

First to tell him about Buice Bold legend. He aint believe me of course. Member him set there with his big you-fulla-shit face on. But it’s all damn true. Buice come from damn blueblood of moon cookers. He did time for it. Not like he was careful. But he never stopped cookin and he never stopped sellin. By time he married Shelia Waits, he aint but far wrong in the head. He and Shelia have seven youngins.

Buice get to where he aint talk at all. He only sung Amazing Grace front to back over and over again. Shelia tell him if he aint shut it finally she gone kill him.

One night, worst lightnin storm we ever have in Alma, she shot him through the hand with a deer rifle. Buice reckon it a warning shot till she shot him through the gut. We gone out there, lightnin tearin jagged ass cross the sky, trees struck and fallin, and there Buice running through the grove covered in blood, like someone dipped him head to toe, only his thin yellow eyes set out its slick. Shelia standin right there in the house with the rifle. Water pourin out the roof splashin into washtubs and Mason jars put down all over the floors. Like they aint even have a roof. She look at me and say, Pray that sumbitch fixin to be fit for his pinebox. If he aint, he wish he goddam were.

He aint and wouldn't press charges so Sheila eventually kill him with a goddamn butcher knife. Shoulda seen the defensive wounds on the crazy bastard. She took off most his fingers before she finally buried the blade square in the middle of his face.

All his youngins died off in queer ways. Drownins. Lightnin strikes. Heart stroke. One afternoon Sheila walk up to highway 16 and step in front of an 18 wheeler. Tore her in half and trampled her thin as newsprint. Damn near had to scrape her off the blacktop. It was that damn bad.

Nearly everything was broke in that house when Stourley move in. Lights worked partly. Squirrels chew up what wiring there was. He got to where he worked by candlelight or use oil lamps. No name manual typewriter set on a cardtable out on the porch. Kept it greased with car oil and blew it out now and again with air house at Travers Tire. Roof leaked too. Leaked something awful. Stourley set buckets and Mason Jars all round the house. Sometimes when it get rainin real heavy it sound like the roof was gone fall in. You’d get just as wet inside as you would out. It was that bad.

One time last spring he have me over for a nip and we set there in the den looking at them big winders killin off a bottle of Old Crow and here come the rain something awful an I'll be damned if I aint heard Amazin Grace sung like it miles off, like it come from a church choir loud and true, the kind of singin that rattle winders, and then I known it was just one voice and not many and that it were Buice singin in that bored ass way like he recitin somethin he care nothin about. I known Stourley hear it, but he get up and start talkin all loud so as to drown it out and here came the rain from the ceiling like we aint got a roof over our heads at all.