Southern Gothic III - Deliverance
So my cousin Lee (you know, the one whose dog was devoured by his brother's lioness) moved up to the NC/TN mountains after he got out of the Marines. He married a nice mountain girl named Nellie, and took up carpentry, doing cabinetry and other work for all the rich yankees who build houses near the ski resorts up there.
Nellie's dad is named Otis, and he's a failed teetotaler who vacillates between being "saved" and making moonshine runs (Oh, and he got in trouble with the law once for growing a single pot plant in the flowerbed in front of his house. The DEA can't find the drugs pouring over the borders in a flood but they can harass one dissolute mountain man. And not find his still. Whatever, DEA.). But I digress.
Anyway, Otis has a bit of a hairtrigger temper when he's off the wagon, and like all good moonshiners, he's armed. Lee and Nellie have a house on land adjacent to Otis', and there's a creek running along the back of the properties. One night, Lee awoke to this screeching, grinding, crashing noise. Since they don't live near any large highways, this was worthy of notice, so Lee grabbed his rifle and his flashlight and went to investigate.
If you're unfamiliar with this part of the state, there's a large, mobile population of migrant workers that comes through during the summer to work the tomato farms. Most of them are illegal aliens, and very few speak English. What Lee discovered when he went out back was a car full of non-English speaking, drunk, and confused Mexicans. Apparently, they weren't paying attention, and the driver thought that the creek bed was an extension of the unpaved road they'd been driving on. He soon discovered otherwise.
The biggest danger here was not the carload of confused and frightened Mexicans, nor the lone mountaineer with a rifle. The biggest danger was that Otis, having been imbibing a bit himself, would interpret this event as a hostile takeover attempt and react accordingly. So it was without irony or overstatement that Lee trotted back up to the house, got the keys to his truck and told Nellie,"There's a carload of Mexicans in the creek. I'm gonna tow them out before Otis shoots them."
So Lee did, Otis' wrath was averted, and the workers, now very, very sober, drove off. Just another day (or night) in the holler.
Posted by Big Arm Woman at April 21, 2003 09:55 AM