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"I'm a bullroarer. When I snore the thunder shuts its mouth to listen. When I whistle folks jump up and look to see if their ship's come in. I can out-laugh a hyena and out-bray a jackass. When I was two I caught a comet by the tail and shook it til it squealed. When I wink the earth shakes, and if I blinked both eyes at once It'd start the second coming.
"I'm a grand figure of a man. I had rats' nests in my hair but the wolves chased them out. If I drank my fill I'd drain two oceans. The sand on the beach is the ring left from the last time I took a bath. If God had made Eve from one of my ribs she'd have put Adam in his place and made him have the babies."
"Bullroarer" Barlow B.J. Jones was a grand figure of a man. B.J. to his friends, Jones to those that weren't, "Bullroarer" to everybody, and "little Barley" to his mother, there wasn't another man like him in all creation. Even Willie Watkins would have been hard put to weather B.J. Jones. Lucky B.J. never came into town before Willie's bedtime --- the earth couldn't have stood the both of them together. It would have split in two to keep them apart.
B.J., he was a riproarer. When he came into town the earth shook and he was followed by a dust cloud half a mile high. His clothes had to be buried or burned. It took eighty gallons of water and six pounds of soap just to get the topsoil off of him.
B.J. had a bath song. Went like this.
|
Tuesday got a girl named Sue. "Jones," she asked me, "Are you true?" Darlin', Honey, would I lie? Just fill my glass, my tongue's gone dry. I love you like I love a sneeze That clears your nose and shakes your knees. I love you like I love a beer, You keep mine full now, Darlin', hear. I love you like I love a fight That knocks loose teeth stuck in too tight. I love you like I love a snore That tips the bed and rocks the floor. Why Honey Dear this list goes on. I could sing and spoon til we're dead and gone. But Sweetheart let me tell you this, You can have the words, I'll take a kiss. |
B.J. sang and B.J. gambled. The excitement he brought into the Blue Ox was a wonder to behold. And the noise... The creek jumped its banks to listen. Clouds came down to the ground to hear it proper. Why the angels from heaven and the devils from hell would stop their salvation and damnation to hear him out. Not only was B.J. a Bullroarer himself, he brought out the bullroarer in everybody.
Most of the boys looked forward to B.J.'s visits. If you're partial to wind there's something to be said for a hurricane. There were some though that weren't too fond of B.J., Liver Peak being foremost among them. Liver was a scrawny rope wire tangle of a man, like every muscle was an overwound spring waiting to be sprung. Liver thought he had a girlfriend once, until he found her with B.J. in Grey's hayloft. From that day on he swore he'd get even. He'd sit in the darkest corner he could find, brooding all the time, his pinpoint bright eyes trying to burn a hole through B.J.'s back if they could. Liver's real name was Deliverance. Somehow it seemed better shortened up to fit the man.
Liver never went a day without working up his hate for B.J. Jones. When B.J. was away Liver figured out how he'd get even with him. When B.J. was in town he'd start working himself up, and by the time B.J. was good and gone Liver'd be ready to start his getting even with.
There were three others that could be found regular in Liver's corner on B.J. nights. Alex Huddle swore he lost his girlfriend because B.J.'s singing made him tone deaf so when he went to serenade pretty little Louella Sue all he got was an offer from two cats. Treacle Decker never did say why he hated Jones. Just do it and do it right was his way of thinking. Corrie Cobb rounded out the dark corner group. He wasn't the type to hold a grudge, but he imagined them so fast he never had reason to. Every time B.J. came into town Corrie seemed to get himself insulted somehow. But he always forgave B.J. before he left.
One night there were the four of them sitting there in the corner when something clicked inside Liver's head. Somehow he'd gone and got ahead of schedule. He had a plan for getting even with B.J. Jones and there Jones was, still in the room, twice as big as life and ten times as loud. Liver's eyes narrowed down brighter than ever. B.J. reached over to scratch his back. Liver's mouth curled up. He talked in a half whisper.
"Friends," he says, "I got a plan. You all got just as much reason as I got to want to see Jones put in his place. A bigger two-faced lyin' toad never lived. Now it's about time someone got him to eat his words and I figured the way to do it.
"We get him to the graveyard. Ain't nothin' there to pay any mind to except old man Hawker just been laid down to his eternal rest swearin' not a twitch before he breathed his last that no coffin buried under but six feet of dirt would keep him from collectin' on that debt Jones run up for rentin' and buyin' up those fancy hats of his. So we just get Jones down by the graveyard. Meantime I run up by Hawker's, fixin' myself up so as to resemble him what he must look like now buried down there among the worms a week and a half, and set myself up behind his headstone. When Jones gets there up I pop, Hawker dead two weeks demandin' Jones he pay up or I take him down to my new velvet lined countin' house and squeeze it out of him. Jones, he won't talk so big then. We'll get a brag out of it will laugh him out of six counties. And we won't let anyone forget it."
Liver's idea caught on like honey on a bee. Treacle, Alex, and Corrie couldn't have agreed to it more if they'd thought it up themselves, which in five minutes they were sure they did. Treacle and Alex set to get Jones to the graveyard while Corrie went off with Liver to help him get ready for Hawker's resurrection.
Liver and Corrie slipped out the front door with their collars up and their hats low. If B.J. had been the suspecting type he'd have suspected for sure. Since he wasn't, he didn't, and he ordered another beer. B.J. never had any use for catching trouble before it came. That would take all the fun out of it.
Alex and Treacle had a hard time trying to figure how to fill out their part of the plan. Wasn't either of them had said so much as a word to Jones in a year and a half. The longer they waited the more they expected B.J. had them smoked out. Alex was about ready to give it all up but Treacle never would give up on anything once he started it. He set Alex down to another beer so they could work out a plan of attack.
Meanwhile Liver and Corrie were busy breaking into Hawker's store to get the clothes Liver would need to play his part proper. Corrie wasn't so sure about breaking in. He figured it wasn't so far from the cemetary that if he decided he believed in ghosts Hawker's just might come strolling by to check out how the old place was doing without him.
"Liver," he said. "You figure it's all right to do this? I mean, it doesn't seem right somehow."
Liver looked up from the window he was trying to pry open. "Nothin' wrong with borrowin' a dead man's clothes, just as long as he ain't wearin' 'em. God Almighty, this window's tight."
Liver had a four foot long bar pried under the window, but it wouldn't budge. They hung on that bar with their feet kicked up behind them so they wouldn't touch the ground and still that window wouldn't move an inch. Pretty soon Corrie was trying to balance himself horseback style on the end of the bar while Liver got ready to jump off onto it from a box he'd piled on top of the rain barrel. Liver jumped. The box fell one way and the rain barrel tipped the other. Liver hit the bar and fell into the water from the barrel and Corrie found himself hanging upside down from the bar with his nose about four inches from Liver's.
"
" Corrie pulled his hat on tighter so it wouldn't fall off.
"Hang it all. Get down from there and help me up."
"
but I don't see how we can get in now."
"I'll think of something. The door's shut up tighter'n a virgin's petticoats. Hawker always saw to that door. Tighter than a bank. Hate to get a suit someplace else. Won't seem quite proper without one of Hawker's own. Well, it can't be helped. Let's get going. We don't have all day."
Corrie was giving Liver a hand up when there was a noise behind them. The door swung open. Corrie dropeed Liver and started in the other direction.
"Get back here. We can get that suit now."
"I don't like the looks of this Liver. Let's get a suit someplace else."
"Don't be a fool. We've got to get a suit Jones will know for Hawker's. I swear we'll put a scare into him he'll never forget."
"But the door. It was locked before."
"I just didn't try it hard enough. The wind blew it open, that's all."
"I don't feel any wind."
"I do. Now come on!"
Back at the Blue Ox things were going fine. Treacle was buying and B.J. was drinking. Alex was doing was doing what a bucket does with a pump. He was filling himself up.
"Louella Sue was my girl. You know I really loved her. All she wanted was a man who could sing to her and play the piano. Did you know I was tone deaf? Listen. Do, re, mi, you... Let's sing. You know it was your fault Louella Sue ran off with that piano man. He wasn't tone deaf. Did you know I was tone deaf?"
If they'd been alone Treacle would have strangled Alex for sure.
It was two hours later and Alex was crying into B.J.'s shoulder about how he lost his Jew's harp when he was only five years old and how he'd never have lost Louella Sue if he'd only had it long enough to learn how to play it. Jones was sober as ever. Treacle was beginning to think he'd never get out when Alex got sick. His face turned white and his eyes crossed three ways at once. Next thing he was crashing toward the back room.
Quarter of an hour later he came out. He looked out across the room and tilted his head like he was trying to decide if one of the walls should ought to be the floor. Then he passed out on a table. Treacle saw his chance.
"Mr. Jones," he says. "Looks like Alex is sick. He ought not to be layed out here on a table. Could you see fit to help me get him home?"
If B.J. Jones was anything, he was a man who stuck by the men he drank with. If Alex needed some locomotive assistance B.J. wouldn't grudge the walk. B.J. under one arm and Treacle under the other, they carried him out the door.
Of course it was just a coincidence that the way Treacle took passed by the graveyard. And it was another one that the quickest way to get Alex home was to take a short cut right through the middle of it, right by old man Hawker's grave. They opened the iron gate. The squeak from the rusty hinges woke Alex up and gave him a note to sing on. "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest..." floated over the tombstones. This even made Treacle a little nervous, but Jones payed it no mind as they carried Alex into the shadows.
Liver and Corrie were there waiting. They'd come in through a hole in the bushes so that if Jones was early they wouldn't run into him at the gate. By the time their heads poked out of the branches on the cemetary side of the hedge Corrie'd just about made up his mind that he did believe in ghosts, and he even fancied he'd seen a few of them out of the corners of his eyes.
"Liver. You sure old man Hawker won't mind?"
"Mind? He's dead and gone. Nothin' to mind."
"About his suit I mean. You sure we needed to mess it all up like that?"
They'd done for Hawker's suit what mold and slime couldn't have done in a month underground.
"We had to. The suit didn't look proper the way it was. I wouldn't fit my face at all."
Liver was done up real good. Damp rot and worm tracks. It would have made a dead man proud.
All the same, Corrie didn't feel quite right. He felt like if he had eyes in the back of his head he'd be seeing things that'd make him wish he didn't. An owl swooped down after a mouse in the leaves and Corrie almost fainted. Liver jammed his toe on a white rock and started to swear, before he got the notion that the rock was grinning at him. It got so they were walking shoulder to shoulder. Two steps more and they would have been holding hands.
One step. Two steps... There was a crash fit to wake the dead. Corrie looked to his right and Liver was gone. No Liver! Corrie fell down on the ground all ready to dig a hole and hide. Then it came to him just what it was that was down there and he jumped up looking for a tree to climb.
"What was that?"
"Quiet!" Liver crawled out from underneath a pile of dead branches. "I tripped over a branch and it knocked over that headstone there. Don't cut loose in your britches. Damn! I twisted my ankle. Help me up will you? Hawker's grave is just over this way."
"You sure we should go through with this?"
"Sure I'm sure. Now, come on."
Wasn't more than twelve steps to Hawker's stone from where they were and once they reached it it didn't take Corrie more than two minutes to settle himself behind it and worry himself to sleep. Liver just sat and waited, his eyes burning, shining stone still among the lights of the fireflies.
The squeak of the gate opening almost sent Corrie packing. Liver had to wrestle him down to keep him from bolting. The sound of Alex's, "Yo, ho, ho," filtered through the gravestones.
"It's them you jelly livered son of a chicken."
"Mmphg?" Liver had his hand over Corrie's mouth.
"Now be quiet and get that flash powder ready. That'll give Jones a scare. Hawker come to collect straight from the fire and brimstone of his eternal damnation. You got a match?"
Corrie nodded and struck it.
"Ouch!"
"Not now you dummy."
"I burnt my finger."
"I think I see them coming. It's them all right. Ready? Here they are ----- Now!"
Right as Liver whispered, "Now!" Corrie touched off the powder and Liver jumped out from behind the headstone. There was a flash and a cloud of smoke. Liver rose up his arms, but before he could get out a word there was another flash and a burning. Smoke that covered the whole graveyard. Brimstone smell that couldn't have come from a barrel of flash powder. Treacle turned to whisper, "Once was enough you idiot," but he never go the words out. There, right out of the grave in front of him, rose an apparition the likes of which would have put the fear of God into Old Nick himself. Old man Hawker rose from the grave it was. Plain as life.
Corrie jolted up, his eyes opened wide. He decided then and there that he did believe in ghosts and the best place for him to be was where they weren't, which is where he got himself to as quick as his legs would move him. Alex stopped singing when Treacle let go of him to sit on a tree stump. Liver stood stock still, bolted to the ground. He couldn't even blink. Hawker towered over them all, like he was being seen though a dirty magnifying glass. All but B.J. Only B.J. seemed on a level with him.
Hawker's voice rose up like a whisper out of a well, caught and blown away in the wind. Softer than seed pods blowing in the street. Louder than thunder.
"What's all this foolishness going on here? Can't a man rest in peace without some fool raising hell by his headstone?"
To tell the truth, Liver'd done a good job making himself up to look like Hawker. The wormwork was just right, only on Hawker it looked more natural. Hawker had on a half suit, the kind cut out in back to save material, and no pants. He might have looked comical in his underwear but no one was laughing.
"Now who have we got here? B.J. Jones. Is that one of my hats you're wearing? Alex looks a little under the weather. Are you sure he's all right? Wasn't that Corrie Cobb that ran off? Not very polite. And Treacle. Treacle Decker. You know I went to school with your mother Alice. She's just six plots down. If you've got the time she'd appreciate the visit. And who is this all done up so handsome? Why that's one of my suits! Liver Peak, what have you done to my suit? Never mind. I'll see to you later.
"Well Jones. I reckon if I had my books here I'd be able to put you down for a whoppin' thirty-two dollars and twenty-four cents, plus the hat on your head. Now do you pay up or do I take you to court?"
B.J. curled his mustache and grinned.
"Now Hawker, you know the only time I ever skipped paying is when I didn't have the money to do it. Is it my fault that whenever I got to your store my pockets were empty? Cash flows through me like rocks through a window. Crash! It's all gone. What I don't eat I gamble. What I don't gamble I drink. And what I don't drink I... contribute--- to ladies such as appreciate a contributing man. I wouldn't cheat a man. I pay my debts, or forget 'em."
"Jones!"
"Don't worry Hawker. I got cash. Here I was in town special to pay you and you'd went and died on me. But seeing as you're here right now why don't you take the hat and the money. Don't mind marking it off your books. I'll trust you for it."
"B.J. Jones. You are a true gentleman."
B.J. counted out the money and handed it over to Hawker. Then he put the hat on Hawker's head.
"Hawker, that hat suits you fine. But it'd look better with a full suit of clothes underneath it, if you catch my meaning."
"B.J. Jones, I follow you exactly."
All at once Hawker's suit looked baggy on Liver.
"Now Liver. Just what do you think you're doing in one of my suits?"
Liver's eyes slipped back and forth looking for a quick way out.
"Now don't you get any ideas about running off with my suit. I can stop you if I have to. B.J., how do you think that suit would look with this hat?"
"Just fine Hawker. Just fine."
"Well then Liver, I think I want my suit back."
Liver backed up a step.
"I won't."
"Treacle. I know you never did believe in ghosts, but do you think you could see your way to helping B.J. get that suit off of Liver? Think of it as restoring the lost dignity to a dead man." Hawker's underwear had red spots. "For your mother?"
Treacle stood up. "Why not? It don't fit him anyway."
Liver backed up some more. "I won't. I won't let you."
He didn't have time to run. Even Alex helped. Wasn't half a twitch berfore they had him stripped stem to stern, nothing left but his bright red long johns.
B.J. handed the suit to Hawker.
"Much obliged B.J. Excuse me a minute."
He stepped behind his headstone.
"Now, how's that?"
Stepping out from behind the stone Hawker looked magnificent. Corrie and Liver'd done up the suit just perfect. And B.J.'s hat topped it off just right. Hawker was fit for a black tie dead man's ball.
"Here Liver." Hawker felt grand. "You want my old suit? Half a coat, a shirt, and no pants isn't much, but it's better that nothing."
Liver only growled and stumped off toward the gate.
"What's the matter with him? How would he like it if they buried him without his pants on? It's embarrassing. There are ladies buried here too you know."
"Well B.J., if you're ever by this way again look me up. Treacle, you really ought to pay a call on your mother. And both of you, get him home, he looks like he's going to be sick all over my flowers! You know, ever since I been dead I feel twenty years younger. You ought to try it."
With that old man Hawker sank into the ground, and the glow that had lit up the graveyard ever since he came up out of his grave disappeared. B.J. and Treacle got a hold of Alex's arms and started off again on Treacle's short cut. It was almost dawn.
Next night the Blue Ox was jumping. B.J. was in high form. The higher he got the lower Liver got. He was back in his corner, all alone, already figuring out a new way to get even. Treacle wouldn't set with a man that went for walks at four in the morning in his underwear. Alex and Corrie were at the bar. Whenever Corrie turned his head Alex would down his beer just like that. Had Corrie convinced there was a ghost right there in the Blue Ox. A thirsty one.
B.J., he was cooking.
"I'm a Bullroarer. Take the best dozen looking, strongest, fastest, meanest, sweetest men in all creation and I'm every one of them. I can out-lie a lawyer and out-damn a devil. I got a son in every city and a daughter in every farm from here to anyplace you care to mention. When they made up the word honest it was me they had in mind. I can run up an honest debt quicker than six legislatures put together. Run 'em up and pay 'em off. Why just last night I went looking beyond the grave to settle an account. Called old man Hawker out of his eternal rest just to pay him the thirty-two dollars I owed him for renting his fancy hats. I took him a new suit. There's ladies buried down there too you know. Even dead men call me a true gentleman."
Liver shivered.
Gregg Writes
Blue Ox Stories
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