his daddy’s name was ennis

Man. Wife. Boy. The Jenkins family lived on top of Toler Mountain. Fifteen miles by road. We managed it in two by climbing straight up and over.

Mr Jenkins was a Holy Roller who brought the message, and a good bit more, every Sunday down at a little church in Buttermilk Junction. Mrs Jenkins made cherry cobbler and nothing else when she wasn’t sitting in the front row of her husband’s church listening to him tell the congregation what they’d done wrong and what he’d done right.

Preacher Jenkins was just he right amount of odd for a man named Ennis. His clothes were tighter than they should have been and he spit shined and coiffed his hair just enough. At the altar he paired excited eyes with thin strained lips and came off looking like a possessed race horse. Ennis Jenkins could look a man to death. If you didn’t fall out in a dead faint from the heat or the spirit or cause it was just what you were suppose to do, then you fell out when he eyeballed you long enough.

He did his job well.

The Jenkins farm was separated from Carl’s property by two limp lines of bobbed wire. When we got there Robert was in the yard.

The only son of a preacher man was a funny looking kid with long, skinny arms and bottle thick glasses. He hung upside down on a tire swing singing an old mountain mourning song.

Dewey stepped across the fence as soon as he heard the words.

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” Dewey said. “Upon my honor, show some respect for the dead for goodness sake!”

Billy and I followed our cousin into the yard. Robert ignored all of us and kept singing.

“Poor boy’s gonna diiiieeeee……”

We took a seat around the tree and waited. Dewey spit and spat for a good five minutes before finally slowing our neighbor down enough to start in.

“Listen,” said Dewey, “I’m only gonna tell you this once, you don’t sing Tom Dooley like that boy.” He then went on about singing from the soul and from the gullet and from a life’s worth of talent.

No one ever accused Dewey of being a music man. Except Dewey. He said he was a connoisseur of the stuff and here’s why: He’d been playing it all his life, for one thing. Around the time he turned four and got his awful ‘boys let me tell you’ tick, he got his first fiddle. For another, he’d been worrying over the strings for years, and last Spring penned our all time favorite hymn, ‘Sittin’ on a Slop Jar’. He started to sing it for Robert.

He stood up straight and began to belt out his latest rendition, with a yeeee-haaawwww at the end. Robert fell off his swing in a dead fit of laughter and Mrs Jenkins came out to see what all the screaming was about.

She asked Dewey his name and wanted to know where he’d heard such a song.

Billy covered his eyes.

I rolled over and laughed into the grass.

Robert held onto his fits.

Dewey stood proud and smiled. “I’m a Payne ma’am. Of the Beartown Paynes. And I wrote it myself thank you.”

Mrs Jenkins was 30 but in her high collar and long skirt she looked like a grandma. An old funny one who couldn’t believe what she was hearing and wouldn’t know how to deal with it even if she did. “Well,” she said, trying to figure out what to say to a boy who wrote songs about chamber pots and modern day man, “maybe you could sing another song. Like Old Rugged Cross or something.”

Dewey grimaced and said he’d sooner not and he’d just keep quiet if it was all the same.

It was.

He danged her under his breath as she went back to the house and then sat down with the rest of us to moan about under appreciated artists and how a man had to chop his ear off if he wanted any respect these days.

Robert waited until the door was good and closed behind his mother and then asked. “What d’you want anyway?”

His face was red. Sweaty. Like someone held a magnifying glass over his head in the noon day sun. I didn’t like looking at him so got straight to the point. “We just come to get a curse. We got five dollars.”

Robert fell back like he’d been slapped in the face. “I could get killed for even talkin’ about this,” he said. His mouth puckered and pinched when he spoke. “It’s powerful magic you’re wanting and it’s dangerous to get.”

Dewey slapped his knee. Like he knew it all along. “Well pin a rose on my ass,” he said, “Danger’s my middle name.”

Sometimes it was Death or Darling or Dennis, depending on who he was speaking to, but most of the time it was Danger.

“Well,” said Robert, “Ya’ll don’t need to worry ’bout it none. I’ll do all the gettin’ this evening. Take your money now and meet you half way down the hill in the morning after I drop off Mrs Toler some food.

Mrs Jenkins made lunch twice a month for the mountain’s seniors. Mrs Toler was as senior as they came – the mountain bore her name.

“I ain’t trustin’ nobody with that kind of money,” said Dewey, stuffing the dollars back in his pocket. “That’s a lot of bucks for a boy that don’t look real honest.”

Robert jumped to his feet. Righteous. Angry. “My daddy didn’t raise no liars.” He’d fight. If he was the fighting kind. He wasn’t. “You give me the money and you’ll see.”

“See, that’s another thing. That ole man of yours……”

“Shut up Dewey!” I grabbed the money from his pocket. “It ain’t but five dollars. We need this.” I tried on the pity and motioned to Billy. He was sitting off to the side trying not to feel too guilty. My brother reeked of pity. “You gonna help us do this or not Dewey Payne?”

He thought about it for a few seconds, then got distracted by a fistful of lightening bugs floating over his shoulder and handed me the money.

“I got a good mind to ask for interest accumulative,” he said. “Since you’re family and your step daddy’s beatin’ you, I’ll let it go this time.”

I thanked him with a grunt and passed the money to Robert. Told him I’d see him in the morning and it had better work or I’d be back to roll his swing down the mountain. He nodded and took off after Dewey.

I smiled at my brother. He was grimacing and twitching and smacking at a thing crawling on his arm.

“That’s spiteful ain’t it?” he said.

“You better not be talking about Carl again. I done told you it’s him or us.” The last thing I needed was for Billy to go chicken and rat us out to mother.

“I ain’t talkin’ about him. I mean them.” He pointed to the two older boys.

They were dancing. Cupping at the sky in big swoops. The bright glow of lightening bug butt sticking to their foreheads like neon war paint.

Billy and I sometimes caught the insects in a jar. Called it a lamp. The bugs never gave off any real light but the glow in the glass still looked real nice. We poked tiny holes in the top, to let the air in. They still died.

“It ain’t spiteful,” I said. “It’s just something to do.”

I hollered to Dewey to “Get on over here,” and said “We gotta get back before Carl gets mad.”

Robert said he’d see us soon, and it was good magic we were getting.

It may have been. We’d never know.

Something happened the next day. It would be months before Sheriff Ed Long figured it out. In the meantime Billy and I didn’t have a curse. Dewey lost his five bucks. And Robert was gone.