SAMPIE'S SQUIRREL

PART TWO

I do believe I had told you about Sampie's squirrel, well, I do recall telling you he had some critters, and his favorite was his squirrel, he named her Elsinore, after his Granny, he had loved his granny. Like his granny, his squirrel, Elsinore went as "Elsie." That squirrel loved him some Sampie. If Sampie was home, inside or out, Elsie would find him, and sit on his shoulder...the squirrel, Elsie, not his granny. Sampie was a fool for that squirrel now, and like ole Sampie hisself, could afford to miss a meal.

It was right comical the way Elsie rode on his shoulder as he went about his day, she mastered the art of shoulder-riding right off and could use her claws to hold on, but never once clawed him. She knew how to shift herself and her weight, to be always with him at home. It put me in mind of those Olympic ice skater couples doin' a routine, but with Elsie doing most of the work, if I was the judge of their routine, I would give her a 9, and Sampie, a 5.6.

Our town has some fine folks, and like towns the world-over, we have a true "butt-ass," here and there, as Preacher Sutton's boy, Nimrod Earl, called our first grade teacher, Ole Lady Newsome, after she called him down for talking. Ole Lady Newsome sent a note home with Nimrod Earl, to let his Pa know what he had done, so he would tear the boy's butt up with his belt. Ole Lady Newsome was a good judge of character, according to herself, and she 'spected that Preacher Sutton, an old hardshell Baptist, was a true man of God, if ever she had seen one.

She trusted he would burn the boy's butt with his belt. That belt was a biggun, as the Reverend weighed every bit of two hundred and seventy-five pounds, and she gauged his wife topped that by a good twenty pounds. When she got home and ate her supper of a chicken pot pie and a sweet potato, Ole Lady Newsome wished she was a fly on the wall at the Sutton household that evening to see Nimrod Earl get his just deserts.

After school, Nimrod Earl slunked into his house, all slope-shouldered and put upon, as only a first grader could, when delivering an edict that would send him to the guillotine. Nimrod Earl had no clue what a guillotine was, but if he did, he would agree that he felt as if he was to be acquainted with one after supper. He could have blessed his mama's heart for the good fried porkchop, rice and gravy, with buttermilk biscuits, supper she made because it was the old self-righteous rabble-rouser's favorite.

If his Pa was happy, he might even spare Nimrod Earl to live for another day. When he handed it over to him, he had dread circulating in his veins. His Pa opened the envelope, read it, folded it, and placed it in his shirt pocket. He made no mention of it, his face was a classic poker face, it gave no inkling of how Nimrod Earl would be put to death, none at all. He looked over at his wife, then to his boy and told him to get his bath and go to bed early.

As his noggin hit his Donald Duck pillow, his tiny mind was filled with a hundred questions...well, Nimrod Earl could only have put together maybe three, questions, and for him, that was pushing it. As Ole Lady Newsome had her half-cup of hot tea with lemon at bedtime and rubbed Watkins Liniment on her bony chest, as usual, she drifted off right easy, trying to picture Nimrod Earl's Pa tearing his tail up, it had been a right good day, for which she stopped going to sleep for just a minute to thank Go for.

When Rev. Sutton and his wife June Bug were sitting on the bed, backs to each other as they brushed their bare feet against the other to knock the sand off, the Rev. handed the note across to his wife telling her to read it. She asked him if he was going to whip him in the morning. The preacher started laughing as quietly as he could, and told her no, he couldn't whip the boy for speaking truth and besides that he told her, you can't whip a youngun and laugh at the same time, it ain't fittin.'

They both got tickled, and laughing together, led to other things, and that was when Nimrod Earl's little sister-to-be, Sarah Lou was uhm, well, you know...yeah, "started," yep started is a good word for "it."