The Posse

Abstract

THE POSSE /Fred Chappell WORD OF Uncle Luden's visit came in the form of a postcard from Reno, Nevada, with his loose purple scrawl: Make plenty that good cornbred, IPe be there soon. He signed both names, Luden Sorrells. My grandmother didn't allow me to examine the postcard because it was a photograph of dancing girls naughtily clad. Johnson Gibbs, the eighteen-year-old orphan boy who had come to live and work on our farm, sneaked it out for me and we looked at it for a long time behind the corncrib, but I was disappointed. A long line of girls taken from a distance and all the important details blurred. "1 can't see anything," I complained. He grinned. "You sure you know what to look for?" Though the photograph was disappointing, the message was glorious news. My father nudged Johnson's elbow. "We're going to eat fine now. Uncle Luden is the prodigal son. Any fatted calf in the neighborhood, his days are numbered." "Prodigal son how?" Johnson asked. "Just like in the Bible," my father said. "Uncle Luden will lie down with the swine. Or anything else handy." The farm work that had got the best of us until Johnson showed up to help had disgusted Uncle Luden early in his career. My mother's brother had little of her sunny but long-suffering patience. In the back alfalfa fields he had found a dilapidated old hay wagon and had worked it over until it looked sturdy and bright and something like new. On his sixteenth birthday he sold the wagon to a gullible neighbor, bought a second-hand motorcycle, and sped off to California in a cloud of gravel and a hail of loose bolts. In the golden land of opportunity he hauled down a job that paid actual cash money, greenback dollars that were as scarce as kangaroos to us on our scratchankle mountain farm. Now and again he would send my grandmother a check representing some of these fabled entities, and he sent other presents too. I once got a nifty cap pistol, for instance, and my grandmother had received that box of fancy candies which had been the occasion of what she called "a lavish of tomfool." "He seems like a right good feller," Johnson said. "He was born a generous man and I reckon he's set to stay one, unless he took a notion to sober up," my father said and added: "But that's not likely." The Missouri Review · 127 "Say he's a drinking man?" "Yes, but not the kind you'll generally see. In fact, Uncle Luden is a different sort altogether. I want you to see how he does, Johnson, sniffing the breeze and chewing his ole mustache and patrolling the female gender." "Kind of a ladies' man too, is he?" "Oh, my word." "I'm all wound up to meet him," Johnson said. "Looks like he'll be here in a day or two." "He'll be here when you see him," my father said. "1 wouldn't set my calendar by him." "Is he bringing his pistol?" I asked. "I expect he'll bring whatever mischief he can pack on a motorcycle." "Carries a pistol, does he?" Johnson asked. "I hope he ain't no kind of desperado." "Now you got it," my father said. "When Uncle Luden walks the street, strong men tremble and women squeal. If you're feeling faint of heart, you'd better hide out in the woods till he gets gone." "No sirreebob. I got to see this gentleman. I'd rather see him than Santy Claus." A week passed before he arrived, and not on a motorcycle, but in a tall red panel truck. He had outfitted it to live in on the way from Los Angeles, and though his dark little quarters held a variety of interesting odors and other surprises, I was let down he hadn't roared in on the motorcycle. I wanted to learn that machine so that when it was my turn to escape to California, I'd have no difficulty. Just crank her up and boil away into the...