Stink, stank, stunk…uh, need a word here…the nth-square-to-the-10th-power expression of extreme stinkiness. A word for the gasp, cough, spit, shake-yer-head, blink-yer-eyes, spin, gag, retch, vomit kind of stinkiness. ’Cause that’s what it was.
Don’t know what it is, the word, in Webster’s. So we’ll have to invent one. How ’bout putremonious.
It was downright and has forever more been…putremonious. Would overwhelm all, blister the whitewash on your outhouse wall. If sanctimonious works for extremism in Godliness there, then maybe putremonious does for the Gosh-A-Moses kind of vapor we’re talking about here.
We’ll go with it anyhow. Need be, we’ll polish it out worse as we go.
What the hell was it? Well…I’m gittin’ to that. If’n I ever wanted to herald a warning that might save you misery should you face a similar sitchiation, this is it.
It started that day, 12th of June 1954, when Claude Varner showed up at our back door (neighborly folk an’ famb’ly never used the front door back then) with a green goach hide. I mean it was bile-raw, possibly a smidgen ripe, and not most recently off its bearer. Oh, it was a pearl-bangled billy of a goach hide alright, the kind you rarely see, with long, almost silky black-’n’-white pelage, and Claude had thoughtfully left the head-skin and feet on as well.
“I got ’is goach hide ’ere,” Claude announced, “off’n my pet billy ‘Laz’rus.’ Had that goach 12 yirs. Never butted me but onct, whin I stooped over to git the milk bucket, and the ol’ lady had worn ’is lime green dress to the barn. You see, that goach hated lime green. An’ that time, dammit, he took it out on me. Whopped ’im good fer it too! Never had no more foul truck with ’im res’ of ’is days.
“Well, anyhow,” Claude proceeded, “I got ’is goach hide.”
“Well, we can see that,” Richard blurted, for which I elbowed him in the ribs. Our first for-money customer, an’ Richard off and insults him.
“Well, I got ’is here goach hide,” Claude said again as Richard grunted, like we hadn’ heard it before.
What he meant to say was that he had a goat hide, but you see, when Claude was a knee-britches laddy-buck, he had this long-time blister on his tongue, lasted ’til ’bout the fourth grade. During the course of that tenured affliction, it affected his speech. So that everything that ended with a “t” was rolled into a “ch.” Like “coat,” for instance. A’body’ud come into the front room of his house, an’ the one thing Claude was, was polite, and he’d say “Here, lemme take yer coach, and I’ll hang it on the peg ’here hind the door.”
Claude was impetuous as well, and by the time a’body figured out what he was really tryin’ to say, he was already grabbin’ for it. They say Miss Nell Thornbrigger, the church organist you know, came to visit one Sat’i’dy evenin’, and in the process of grabbin’ for her coat, he grappled one of her girls.
Now Miss Nell had some girls. Twin folk, same as tease in a pod. Like the locals called ’em Ruby and Rachael, and when she walked she kinder waddled, ’n’ it was like a she-brawl ’neath a Pillsbury sack. So Claude’s indiscretion, innocent as it was, couldn’t go unnoticed. She walloped the ever-lovin’ be-Jezus out of ’im, and they say that addled ’im a mite in the headquarters too.
I don’t know, but that’s what they say. Whatever, Claude was never after known as the sharpest fork in the silver drawer.
Anyhow, the blister on his tongue did fin’ly go ’way, but not the “ch,” an’ what’s more, he never got Miss Nell Thornbrigger out of ’is noggin neither.
People say that’s why he started every sentence with “Well.” Subconsciously, they said, he was thinking “Nell,” and proceeding with extraordinary caution.
“Well, I got this here goach hide,” Claude repeated for the fourth time.
I threw a hard look at Richard—my best friend Richard McCombs—’cause I knew what he was thinking, but he better keep his trap shut about it.
“Yer daddy tells me,” Claude continued, “you boys has started a tanning saloon, and I got me a need fer a tannery on ’is goach hide. I want to drape it over the bes’ chair in our frunt ruum. So whin folks come they’ll see we’uz somebody.
“How much?”
“Twelve dollars and fifty-cents,” Richard blurted before we even had time to mull it over.
I’d bring him to terms for that, for though it was true we’uz partners in the Gaddis-McCombs Tannery Establishment, newly wrought a year before, we’uz also bonded as equal partners. I never was partial to the Establishment part of the billing, but had to concede at last to Richard’s endless assertion that it had a kind of uptown ring to it. Given what we were in for, had we known, I wouldn’t have taken it on for any pile of money.
Funny, too, everything seemed to be running in twelves then—the day, the goat, and me—be I’s due to turn 12 that year to, Richard being there already.
“Well, I’ll tel’ ye,” Claude proposed, “I ain’t got hit today, but if you boys kin have it dun in a month, by July 12, when Cousin Grady ’spects to come, I’ll just roll it inter a straight $15.”
“Half-down,” I said importantly this time ’fore Richard could respond. Turned out it was a nell of a lot more important than we knew.
“Well…dun!” Claude agreed. Handing me the goach hide, he fished his wallet and change purse out of his striped overalls, and surrendered the duty due.
“We’ll be started on this one straight away,” Richard said, grabbing the skin and heading for the basement of my house, which was fleshing and picklery central.
Claude left grinning, us promising agreeable terms and notable priority as we were.
Now, it wasn’t like we were still peeing spraddle-legged at the tanning vat. By then we could cock our leg with most anybody. We’d done fox hides and ’coon hides ’n’ squirrel skins, beaver hides you had to soak in a de-greaser furst, rabbit skins, a cow hide or two, snake skins of all descriptions for belts an’ hatbands, a bobcat hide, even a skunk peel. All to a fare-th’-well. What’s more, a nanny deer hide, which wadn’ easy to come by those days.
Like most youngsters our vintage and persuasion, we’d matriculated at the Northwestern School of Taxidermy, finely finishing every lesson in their books, and had the deer heads on the wall to prove it.
But Claude Varner’s goach hide confounded the professorial whole of it.
Fleshing it down was no problem; a little smelly, but Richard had that done and the skin off the board time I got there. I remarked on it: “A smidgen ripe, but plumb pretty.” We’d made up a fresh pickle-bath just two days before, so that was no setback neither. But after we’d soaked it four days goin’ toward a week, and the pickle soured green, the hide ’bout the same, the caution flags were flappin’ in the breeze. It wasn’t putremonious yet, but it was sure hell offensively odiferous.
“We need more acid,” Richard thought.
So we sweetened the brine, went another four or five days, and by then, big greasy clots o’ black hair were floatin’ to the top of the crock, and Mama was hollerin’ down from the head of the stairs, “Michael, what in the name of Satan and Samantha is that rotten smell you got comin’ from down there? It’s so they-awful it’s bucklin’ the floorboards.
“You know now Quinton Caviness jus’ ’cross the holler is a sanitarian with the Randolph health department. If the wind changes west, he’s gonna condemn this whol’ end o’ Asheboro, an’ I can’t sell no more lemon pies again never! Have you thought of that? Well…you’d better.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“I got to go home,” Richard said.
“You ain’t neither. You got to help me figure out what to do now.
“What’d we do wrong?”
“Be-danged if I know,” Richard said, “but we ain’t never takin’ on no goach hide ag’in neither.
“Maybe if we fished it out, threw it in the tanning mix a spell o’ days, then pulled it through a rope several times, and oiled it down proper,” he mumbled wishfully, “it’d come right.”
“OK,” I agreed, “but you git to do the fishin.”
So Richard got a stick, ’n’ lifted it out, and once it hit the open air, it was so gagairious we were coughin’ an’ staggerin’. Mama had three-dozen gardenia bushes in the yard, an’ they were bloomin’ their hearts out, heavenly fragrance that it was. Heaven met Hell, and it didn’t begin to dent even the top layer of the stench.
By then, the goach had crossed the border. It was putremonious.
“Grab thet end of it,” Richard ordered four days later, chokin’ as he said it, “I’ll git the othur, an’ we’ll pull it over the rope ’til it’s dryin’a little, then lather on a rich smatherin’ o’ oil.”
“That’ll be Sunday week,” I said.
“Don’t matter,” he vowed, “we got to do it er else.”
“Else what?”
“We got to give Claude Varner his $7.50 back, an’ tol’ ’im we done ruined his prize goach hide.”
“Laz’rus,” I said.
“Well, John, Paul, the Corinthinums, whatever,” Richard stammered, “this one ain’t risin’ ag’in.”
Two days of rope pullin’ later, Mama was at the head of the stairs amore, “Lacy Vuncannon jus’ phoned frum down the street, sed she’s callin’ the head man at the sewage plant. He’s got a badge, you know. Your daddy’s gonna have a gold-gabblin’ duck fit. There goes his deaconry at the Furs’ Bap’ist church.”
“Well,” Richard declared, drawin’ out the W-e-l-l, “looks like we got it to do.
“You got Claude’s number?”
“No,” I said, “but he sure well’s gonna have ours.”
Put it off long’s I could, but July 11th, 12 years old almost and shakin’ like a beech leaf in a winter gale, I rang up Claude, and stuttered through the foreplay of an explanation, Richard list’nin’ by my ear motionin’ instructions….
But Claude cut us off.
“Well, boys, hit’s alright. Happens I’s a leetle shoat on change rat now anyhow, an’ listen…turns out Cousin Grady ain’t comin’ater all, ’n’ I owe Miss Nell Thornbrigger a kindness, see, frum a ways back anyhow. So you jus’ run that goach hide rite on over there to Miss Nell, be sure ’n’ tell her hit’s frum me. It’ll be jus’ rite there on her parlor ruum floor.
“An’ if Miss Nell iz happy with hit, I’ll settle up with ye th’ veri furst time I kin, ’n’ throw in three dollars extry.”