Fingerlings

I didn’t hate Uncle Buddy. He wasn’t better or worse than the rest of my daddy’s family. I don’t know if Uncle Buddy was kin or not, but it didn’t matter. I don’t know how old he was, younger than my daddy and not as young as Mama.

Anybody you called Aunt or Uncle First Name was to be trusted more than those you called Mr. or Mrs. Somebody.

Mama was allowed to name us girls and she called us after her favorite flowers. Lilac. Lily. Rose. And poor little Sweet Pea. None of my brothers were called by their real first names. Ever. My brothers were: Junior, Bucket-head, and Picker.

As I was saying, Uncle Buddy was okay for the most part and it seems part of an uncle’s job to tease his nieces. Anyway, the index finger of his right hand was snapped or cut off right above the first knuckle. Every holiday dinner, whether the first knuckle is the one closest to the palm of the hand or to the end of the finger was subject for debate. Whichever, it freaked me out. He’d sneak up behind me and wiggle that stub on my neck, or under my arm, on my ribs and anyplace that was ticklish. He’d hold me down and stubble me until I cried. Daddy said Uncle Buddy was just teasing me, and if I didn’t stop acting the fool he’d stick me in the root cellar with the fingerlings.

The only thing as repulsive as Uncle Buddy’s finger were those potatoes. My brothers and sisters liked to play with them, draw faces on them and make whole families. All fingerling crops produce some odd shaped potatoes that look mostly like knobby fingers with eyes. On Uncle Buddy’s farm, weird shaped tubers were more the norm than the exception. My brothers weren’t unaware of my morbid disgust of Uncle Buddy’s stub or the fingerlings. They’d chase me, corner me, poke and rub those spuds on me. They stuck the biggest ones in their underwear and had ‘who’s got the biggest slong’ contests.

What happened to Uncle Buddy’s finger was a parable, like stories in the Bible, everybody knows they’re only part true, but you pretend to believe because they’re life lessons. So, the story went that when Uncle Buddy was a little boy, he was showing off holding his firecrackers longer than the other kids. One blew his finger off and it never grew back right.

The year I turned eleven, I gave it weight for consideration and came up with a plan I figured might just put an end to his niggling me with that nasty finger. My brothers never bothered to chase after a firecracker that failed to explode. I started collecting the ones that didn’t go off and saving the ones with the longest wicks.

Girls grow up fast around here. My mama married Daddy two weeks shy of her fifteenth birthday. I borrowed mama’s lipstick to blush up my cheeks and lips, took the toilet paper rollers out of my hair and brushed it until it was shiny and floated around my face, put on a tight pair of last summers shorts and a tank top.

Uncle Buddy parked his new El Camino in the far corner of our yard. I waltzed toward him looking as happy as I knew how, turning side to side, hands behind my back.

“Hey, Uncle Buddy.”

He licked his lips, I could see drops of saliva in his mustache and knew he wanted to slobber mouth kiss me. Lots of relatives think they can plant one right on your mouth up ’til the day after your wedding’. It might have been what Mama called my over-reactive imagination but it seemed to me his hands and fingers were twitching in anticipation of ‘the tickle’. Not today. Not ever again if I could help it.

“Goodness, Sugar. You done growed a foot since last time I was here. Your daddy better start watching after you, the boys be coming round here like bees around a hive.”

I giggled and took a step toward him. “Close your eyes and put your hands out, Uncle Buddy. I got something for you.”

Buddy chuckled, closed his eyes and put his hands out palms up. I dropped the lit firecrackers stuck in gobs of Crisco on his palms. “Guess what?”

Then I ran like hell.

I ran until I got a stitch in my side, slowed it down, jogged until I saw the trees of Granite Falls Forest ahead. I could rest there while I figured out what to do next. Why didn’t I think about ’next’ before this?

I heard Daddy’s old Studebaker truck behind me, the distinctive thump-ka-thump of a rear tire, and slowed to an easy trot.

“Hey, Daddy. Hey Uncle Buddy.” The truck idled along beside me coughing billows of greasy smoke. I smiled and gave a little wave. “I needed a walk.”

“Yup.” Daddy said. “Well, get in now.” He pulled the truck to the side of the road in front of me, got out and spit on the ground.

He grabbed my upper arm and pushed me up onto the seat between him and Uncle Buddy. I guess the firecrackers burned Buddy good. Men don’t cry out where we live and fat tears were squeezing out the corners of his eyes. His hands were wrapped in lard and gauze.

“I was just teasing, Uncle Buddy. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Girls got no right to tease a growed man, Lilac,” Daddy said. Daddy turned onto a dirt road and we drove a mile or so and stopped at what might have once been a milking barn. He pulled me out of the truck and into the building. Couple of three leg stools, tack hanging outside the stalls, a few bales of straw. Dust motes rode the sunlight pouring down through the loft gate.

“Take off your drawers, Girl.”

“I’m too big to spank, Pa. I already got the curse.”

“We’ll see. Take off them drawers and bend on over that bale.”

He spanked me with the palm of his hand and I pretended it hurt something awful, though it didn’t really hurt at all. He stopped and said, “Too bad about them bandages, Buddy. I’d let you give her a couple-a licks.”

Daddy ran his hand softly over my bum cheeks, squeezing them like peaches; gave a couple of slap-slaps – snap on the right – snap on the left - loud as a rifle crack. “I used to wonder why God made girl-children, they mostly useless,” he said. “Don’t know what get into Lilac, she usually a good un.

Get your clothes on, Missy. This be the last time you get off easy. Don’t you forget it.”

Uncle Buddy got a goofy looking smile on his face and started turning his hat round and round in his hands. “Do I call you Mr. Gunderson now or do I still just say Gus? I’d like to start calling on Lilac, Sir.”

“Her ma might take some convincing, son. She pretty hard-over on the girls not stepping out ’til they pass thirteen.”

“Maybe you mention I be willing to give you the conveyance on that bull I bought up Kansas City last year.”

Daddy spit on the ground and looked off in the direction the sun would soon set, just to let Buddy know the offer wasn’t sweet enough.

“An, I let your missus pick one of my prime milk cows for herself. If that be all right with you.” Buddy slid his arm around me and poked me in the ribs with his stub.