When the harridan was a girl she got lost in the great wilderness, her mamma forgetting that she hadn’t returned home from school. She stayed lost in the great wilderness for 27½ days and nights. When she returned home her mamma said ‘…your father’s shirts need a good scrubbing’. The harridan’s mamma spat an oyster of blood at her daughter, black with consumption and goose fat, and kicked the dog up side the head. ‘Get to it girl, before I do the same to you’. The dog scud beneath the kitchen table and lay flat against the floorboards, tail quivered between its legs. Her great-great grandmamma lived until she was 127½, missing her 128th year by six months. She ate Quaker Oats out of a teacup with blue and yellow cornflowers, sieving raw goats milk on top through a hankie, rebuking anyone who laid a claim to proper culinary manners and pasteurization. Her great-grandmamma sold straightened barn nails from a curbside booth built from tin cans and roofers’ tar. She ate Episcopalian Oats from an old kitchen drawer, sousing the oats with prune juice and rock salt.
She didn’t like her mamma all that much, her da neither, thinking them both corn-stupid for spending all their savings on a busted up thrasher that never started. She learned to ‘kick the dog’, as her granddad called it, and spent her free time making throw rugs from bulrushes and axel grease. ‘…you ain’t gunna amownt ta a hill of beans’ her mamma said, ‘…on account a your dumber than a post digger’. The day after the harridan found her way clear of the wilderness she bought a straight razor and taught herself how to whittled shoehorns out of done fence posts; hiding behind the corn-barn, where no one ever went on account of there weren’t no corn to be found, she made enough purse-money to buy a subscription to a magazine that explained in pictures and words how to make a hearty living from Pop-siècle placemats and jug-board potholders. One day her sister found her behind the corn-barn sizing posts and tolled on her, her da sizing her within an inch of her life. After she ran away her sister bundled up her straight razor and all the done post she could carry and hid them behind the sorghum-barn, promising herself that one day she’d make a hearty living from Pop-siècle placemats and jug-board potholders.
Go on and believe what you like, but what I’m tolling you is the honest to goodness truth; I wouldn’t toll a lie even if it meant I could be the King a England. I got so many tongues I could speak with that’d make your head spin off your shoulders, and that, I’m tolling you, is the damn truth of the matter, cross my heart. My mamma said I wouldn’t amount to a half-a-hill of beans, but I sure enough showed her; I can eat a dozen tins of the fuckers without breaking a sweat. What’s his name, he seen me eat a whole pig’s head, ears and all, then ask for a second helping. Dumb fuckers are thicker than corn meal and molasses. My own mamma never much liked her mamma, giving her the ‘kick the dog’ whenever she fell like it; now you got a respect a woman like that, even if she’s your mamma. That cunt Witness toll my da I steeled some of his pamphlets, even when he knew it was a bald-faced lie. So as a lesson my da belted me up with the stick that held the porch window open, tolling me that if I ever got caught stealing again he’d make sure I walked like a cripple. If it wasn’t for that man with the bunch of hats I’d be walking like a cripple, sure as I'm standing.
She didn’t like her mamma all that much, her da neither, thinking them both corn-stupid for spending all their savings on a busted up thrasher that never started. She learned to ‘kick the dog’, as her granddad called it, and spent her free time making throw rugs from bulrushes and axel grease. ‘…you ain’t gunna amownt ta a hill of beans’ her mamma said, ‘…on account a your dumber than a post digger’. The day after the harridan found her way clear of the wilderness she bought a straight razor and taught herself how to whittled shoehorns out of done fence posts; hiding behind the corn-barn, where no one ever went on account of there weren’t no corn to be found, she made enough purse-money to buy a subscription to a magazine that explained in pictures and words how to make a hearty living from Pop-siècle placemats and jug-board potholders. One day her sister found her behind the corn-barn sizing posts and tolled on her, her da sizing her within an inch of her life. After she ran away her sister bundled up her straight razor and all the done post she could carry and hid them behind the sorghum-barn, promising herself that one day she’d make a hearty living from Pop-siècle placemats and jug-board potholders.
Go on and believe what you like, but what I’m tolling you is the honest to goodness truth; I wouldn’t toll a lie even if it meant I could be the King a England. I got so many tongues I could speak with that’d make your head spin off your shoulders, and that, I’m tolling you, is the damn truth of the matter, cross my heart. My mamma said I wouldn’t amount to a half-a-hill of beans, but I sure enough showed her; I can eat a dozen tins of the fuckers without breaking a sweat. What’s his name, he seen me eat a whole pig’s head, ears and all, then ask for a second helping. Dumb fuckers are thicker than corn meal and molasses. My own mamma never much liked her mamma, giving her the ‘kick the dog’ whenever she fell like it; now you got a respect a woman like that, even if she’s your mamma. That cunt Witness toll my da I steeled some of his pamphlets, even when he knew it was a bald-faced lie. So as a lesson my da belted me up with the stick that held the porch window open, tolling me that if I ever got caught stealing again he’d make sure I walked like a cripple. If it wasn’t for that man with the bunch of hats I’d be walking like a cripple, sure as I'm standing.
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