medlum come home

False starts. Water under life’s bridge. So then, a little more dipping into my personal archaeology. My very soggy personal archaeology.

I do dig the bit about the old guy and the wandering eye and the pine cones, though.

Circa 2004, maybe.

Medlum Come Home

The faded red Pinto sputtered to a halt in the dry worn tracks of earth, sweatering old Blackie in road dirt. The dog, at three legs, lurched off, sneezing in fits, blinking that one watery eye. A tousled heap of straw-colored hair blossomed then from the derelict car’s driver’s side window, the smile like sliced watermelon, with even rows of fat white seeds.

Dust continued redistributing atop Uncle Gene, hunched beside the driveway with his bulging paper sack of pine cones. He leaned in through the gritty haze to get a good look at that considerable smile, those picket-fence teeth. He grunted. “Yer the boy what done that thing,” Uncle Gene observed. We could hear his wheezy proclamation from where we stood, crowding the far corner of the porch in lives of peerless inactivity.

“Yessir,” conceded the driver. The Pinto’s engine coughed one last time, trailing off in a trembling groan. “I believe you might just have my number there.”

Uncle Gene remained in his forward position as if carved that way, adjusting with his free hand the backside of his denim overalls, bunched then to one side. He was as big around as a nickel. In dog years, he was long dead. No one was quite sure whose uncle he was.

“Whatcha mean to do now?” he demanded.

“Wellsir, I was thinking I might just get out of the car. If that’d be OK.”

“Hmm-hmmph,” the old man grumbled. He turned to face the lot of us, fixing us with that protruding right eye as his left one casually wandered north, spying in its travels a truant pine cone cradled in the azaleas, just past their bloom. “Still full of piss and vinegar,” he spat, easing in on the sneaky cone as if surprise were to be a factor. “Reckless,” Uncle Gene spat. “Bad blood … ringleader … authorities no goddamn … an intolerable …” He walked like a crab on the legs of a spider, that wandering left eye setting its path anew for the spindly secrets in his head.

The lanky stranger extricated himself from the car, leaning on the hood and flexing one knee a few times before ambling toward us, long of limb and lean, like bacon. He stopped just shy of the crumbling porch, folding his arms loosely across his chest, considering us. We all cut glances at each other. We weren’t really much to consider.

“Boys,” the man finally said. Which about covered it, I guess.

Tucker, standing to my left, leaned out to have a better look at the stranger, peering through the tangled web of scratches that passed for his glasses, the same pair since he was about twenty. “Why, you’re … ” It wasn’t altogether a bad start for Tucker, though we all knew it couldn’t last.

“No, you’re not,” Tucker concluded, after a fashion. “I mean, ya ca-couldn’t be, right? There’s just no way. You’re not. Ab-ab-solutely. Not. Are ya?”

“Yeah,” said the grinning man in front of us. “In fact, I am.”

“I nuh-knew it!” Tucker said.

Medlum had come home.

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