Skunk Hunt Read Online Free PDF

pleased Skunk that his
ancestors had contributed to the rolls of dead and dismembered
Yankees. The only reason the McPhersons had been able to hold onto
the Oregon Hill house was because it was as seedy and dilapidated
as everyone else's, and real estate developers were busy elsewhere.
But when the university up the road began to expand, property
values exploded. White trash was gradually supplanted by student
trash.
    As a species, the McPherson's were not world
travelers. In fact, almost entire generations had slumped and
dissolved on their front porches in alcoholic hazes that wavered
between wrath and conviviality. Skunk was equally disinclined to
move on. Despite the rising property tax, and the fact that the
people we saw from our porch were increasingly alien, we doggedly
held onto the Pine Street residence. Whenever Dad went to prison,
the IRS and city tax collector would begin hounding Mom. We faced
eviction from a house that had been paid for in full almost a
hundred years ago.
    "We're like the Indians," Mom once moaned.
"They're going to stick us on a reservation."
    I thought it was a valid analogy. We've
become more discreet about how we displace unwanted tribes. We
might not indulge in a happy hour of genocide anymore, or weep
crocodile tears of remorse as we take over the vacant land, but the
practice is still pretty much in place.
    Mom was gonging us to the need to find paying
jobs. After a lot of lazy harrumphing, I began swimming through the
dismal swamp of help-wanteds. Which turned out, in my case, to be
not much more than a leaky birdbath. I had graduated from high
school, meaning I possessed no special skills beyond being a pest.
I started at the 7/11 and worked my way down. After spending a
couple of years scraping out toilets at the bus terminal and
improving my social and reading skills by perusing the anti-drug
messages on urinal screens, I leapt up the scale to popcorn
concessionaire at the Science Museum. I was thoughtful enough to
wash my hands before taking the job.
    Jeremy's contribution to the household kitty
consisted of a variety of burgled homes and small businesses. He
didn't do badly, but it has to be admitted that he didn't accrue
any benefits, unless you included free education at Powhatan's
prison school.
    Barbara did infinitely better than the rest
of us combined, finding remuneration at the Shockhoe Slip
Gentleman's Club PFZ (Panty Free Zone), where she was a danseuse
whose specialty was pole dancing and being underage. The 451st man
to stuff bills down her g-string included a marriage proposal, and
she found him hunk enough to accept. I met him once or twice and he
seemed as serious about matrimony as other men a notch above my
social stratum (he actually enjoyed working at a steady,
good-paying job). They went down to Greensville, where his parents
lived, to tie the knot. After that, all communication stopped.
    Mom's death a few years later was quick and
merciful. She shot herself in the bedroom. That might seem a pretty
conclusive commentary on the miseries of life, but I didn't find
out until later there was more to her death than met the eye. We
kids were either at school or busy skipping it when this took
place. We never saw the body. Actually, we saw nothing at all, not
even a trace of blood. We came home to a Skunk who was completely
dry-eyed. I thought later she might have hung on longer had she
known that, ten years down the road, Skunk too would meet death by
gunshot.
    The mental stability of anyone who chose to
live alone in the same house with Skunk McPherson could be
legitimately challenged. But unlike everyone else in my family, I
had never been plagued by demons. I had a practical side, though,
and pure essence of practicality is always ugly. One of Dad's
cronies was Winny Marteen, another of the few remaining Oregon
Hillers whose bloodline included some double-entry genetics. I
suspect there was some inbreeding in the McPherson past, too, which
is reason enough to pass