Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories Read Online Free PDF

brother had just gone in for his fumigation, when suddenly and without warning:
    BLAM!
    The kitchen door flew open. It had been left ajar just a crack to let the air come in to cool the ham.
    I rushed to the kitchen just in time to see 4293 blue-ticked Bumpus hounds roar through the screen door in a great, roiling mob. The leader of the pack—the one that almost got the old man every day—leaped high onto the table and grabbed the butt end of the ham in his enormous slavering jaws.
    The rest of the hounds—squealing, yapping, panting, rolling over one another in a frenzy of madness—pounded out the kitchen door after Big Red, trailing brown sugar and pineapple slices behind him. They were in and out in less than five seconds. The screen door hung on one hinge, its screen ripped and torn and dripping with gravy. Out they went. Pow, just like that.
    â€œHOLY CHRIST!” The old man leaped out of his chair.
    â€œTHE HAM! THE HAM! THOSE GODDAMN DOGS! THE HAM!!”
    He fell heavily over the footrest as he struggled to get into the kitchen, his voice a high-pitched scream of disbelief and rage. My mother just stood in the dining room, her face blank and staring, two aluminum hair curlers still in place. I ran through the kitchen, following my old man out to the back porch.
    The snarling mob had rolled across the back yard and was now battling it out next to the garage, yipping andsquealing with excitement. Occasionally, one of them would be hurled out of the pack, flipping over backward in the air, to kind heavily amid the barrel staves and sardine cans. Instantly, he would be back in the fray, biting and tearing at whatever moved.
    The ham didn’t last eight seconds. Old Grandpa Bumpus and a dozen other Bumpuses stuck their heads out of various windows, to see what all the yowling was about. Without pausing to aim, he reared back and spit a great big gob of tobacco juice—a new long-distance record-right into the middle of the pack. It was a direct hit on our ham—or what was left of it.
    He whooped wildly, wattles reddening with joy, spraying tobacco juice in all directions, while Cletus, his dim-witted grandson, yelled from the basement door:
    â€œGAHDAMN, GRAN’PAW, LOOKA THEM HOUN’S GO! LOOKA THEM OL’ BOYS GO! HOT DAMN!!”
    Delbert, meanwhile, circled around the roaring inferno, urging them on, kicking dogs that had given up back into the fray. Suddenly, he looked up at where I was hiding, a sadistic grin on his face, his hair hanging low. Our eyes met significantly for a fleeting instant and then he went back to kicking. A paralyzing fear gripped me. I remembered! That time I threw him out at first! Was this what he meant? Was
I
responsible for this tragedy? Oh, God, no! I slunk back into the shadows.
    Bumpus women, their lank hair streaming down over their red necks, cackled fiendishly. Emil Bumpus, who had been asleep under the front porch, came reeling out, trailing his jug of white lightning. He took one look
    and practically passed out, wheezing and harrumphing and gurgling with hilarity.
    My old man just stood stock-still on the back porch for a long moment, and then he blew his stack. I had never seen him do anything before that came near what he did now. We kept bottles on the back porch to be returned to the grocery store. He readied down and grabbed a milk bottle. His face white with rage, he wound up mightily and, with a sweeping, sidearm motion, hurled the bottle against the side of the Bumpus house with a deafening crash.
    Grandpa Bumpus stopped in mid-spit, a big juicy gob hanging down over his chin. Emil dropped his jug to the ground, eyes lighting up with joy. This was back home for Emil. He was in his element. Turning around as if to run for his shotgun, he paused when he saw the old man standing there unmoving—radiating the clearest and most beautiful rage I’d ever seen in my life.
    I cowered next to the railing on the back porch. Even the dogs