huffing and puffing and sweating like a studhorse, when sure enough it come onto a rain, just a light sprinkle at first. He told himself not to hurry because getting the davenport across that ledge had to be done carefully, but by the time he’d rigged his ropes and tied them proper and was ready to swing the davenport across, it had commenced to rain pretty steady and he sure hated his mother’s davenport getting drenched like that. In his impatience he climbed aboard the davenport and rode it as it swung across the ledge, and he grabbed aholt of a tree trunk on the other side, telling himself what a smart boy he was to have devised that system of ropes for getting the davenport beyond that ledge…although if it hadn’t worked he and the davenport both would have crashed a hundred feet down to the earth below.
Getting the davenport the rest of the way through the forest was fairly easy and he cleared the front door of the Madewell house just as thunder crashed and a real toad-strangling downpour hit. He righted the davenport into its place in the living room, and admired it there for a long moment before he went to shut the front door and just as he did a flash of lightning illuminated a creature dashing into Madewell’s shop out across the way. The open-ended shed was the place where Madewell had rived his staves and assembled his barrels and buckets and piggins and churns, and it had a little forge in it for the metal bands. That creature wasn’t no wild beast of the woods. Damned if it wasn’t old Bitch, sure looked like. He wasn’t going out in this downpour to investigate. If she took a notion to come on to the house, he’d be nice to her. He wondered if maybe she’d never really left but had just been hanging around here waiting for him.
Sog made himself another Jack D and sat on the davenport and enjoyed it. The davenport was wet but not too wet, and it would dry off. It was going to be real comfy a-sitting here with his truelove, and he could hardly wait to do it. After all this work, there were just two things left: holding the yard sale Saturday, and finding some way to take possession of his truelove. He wished he knew her name, so he could think of her by name instead of just “truelove.” He knew her last name, which was on their mailbox: Kerr. He hoped she would have a real nice first name. He sure didn’t have a very good one hisself, although his grandpap had explained to him that Sugrue, which was his grandpap’s family name, was a distinguished Irish name that went all the way back to the Irish Siocfhraidh, meaning victory and peace. Kids in school had started calling him Sog in the first grade, although the teacher called him Sugrue all the way through the eighth. He didn’t mind, except Sog sounded a little like soggy, which everything was getting in this downpour. He had told his second wife, Arlene, to call him Sugrue instead of Sog, but she had preferred to call him Daddy, though of course they never had any children, and she was just a overgrown child herself, which was probably what had drawn him to her in the first place. Every bit of thirty-five when she’d married him, she was just a little bitty old slip of a girl, flat-chested and baby-faced. She could have passed for ten or less. Most people thought she was his daughter, or even his granddaughter, for heavensakes. But she sure wasn’t innocent. Nor sweet. Nor fresh. She’d had a fairly wild past that he never learned all the particulars of, but he suspected she might even have been a whore at one time. He’d rescued her from a guy who beat her and was now serving time at Cummins. Worst of all about Arlene, compared with a genuine girlchild, was that she wouldn’t mind him; he never could tell her what to do, and she was headstrong and did as she pleased. Arlene hadn’t lasted as long as Fina before she commenced complaining that he simply couldn’t hold out long enough for her. She had a fancy name for it that she taunted
Getting the davenport the rest of the way through the forest was fairly easy and he cleared the front door of the Madewell house just as thunder crashed and a real toad-strangling downpour hit. He righted the davenport into its place in the living room, and admired it there for a long moment before he went to shut the front door and just as he did a flash of lightning illuminated a creature dashing into Madewell’s shop out across the way. The open-ended shed was the place where Madewell had rived his staves and assembled his barrels and buckets and piggins and churns, and it had a little forge in it for the metal bands. That creature wasn’t no wild beast of the woods. Damned if it wasn’t old Bitch, sure looked like. He wasn’t going out in this downpour to investigate. If she took a notion to come on to the house, he’d be nice to her. He wondered if maybe she’d never really left but had just been hanging around here waiting for him.
Sog made himself another Jack D and sat on the davenport and enjoyed it. The davenport was wet but not too wet, and it would dry off. It was going to be real comfy a-sitting here with his truelove, and he could hardly wait to do it. After all this work, there were just two things left: holding the yard sale Saturday, and finding some way to take possession of his truelove. He wished he knew her name, so he could think of her by name instead of just “truelove.” He knew her last name, which was on their mailbox: Kerr. He hoped she would have a real nice first name. He sure didn’t have a very good one hisself, although his grandpap had explained to him that Sugrue, which was his grandpap’s family name, was a distinguished Irish name that went all the way back to the Irish Siocfhraidh, meaning victory and peace. Kids in school had started calling him Sog in the first grade, although the teacher called him Sugrue all the way through the eighth. He didn’t mind, except Sog sounded a little like soggy, which everything was getting in this downpour. He had told his second wife, Arlene, to call him Sugrue instead of Sog, but she had preferred to call him Daddy, though of course they never had any children, and she was just a overgrown child herself, which was probably what had drawn him to her in the first place. Every bit of thirty-five when she’d married him, she was just a little bitty old slip of a girl, flat-chested and baby-faced. She could have passed for ten or less. Most people thought she was his daughter, or even his granddaughter, for heavensakes. But she sure wasn’t innocent. Nor sweet. Nor fresh. She’d had a fairly wild past that he never learned all the particulars of, but he suspected she might even have been a whore at one time. He’d rescued her from a guy who beat her and was now serving time at Cummins. Worst of all about Arlene, compared with a genuine girlchild, was that she wouldn’t mind him; he never could tell her what to do, and she was headstrong and did as she pleased. Arlene hadn’t lasted as long as Fina before she commenced complaining that he simply couldn’t hold out long enough for her. She had a fancy name for it that she taunted
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