IT TAKES PLACE IN THE DEEP SOUTH OF AMERICA AND AN ORDINARY CARD GAME SAVES THE DAY. |
The Jenkins Boy BY FREDERICK J. MORALES "I hear tell of the Ned Jenkins Boy,you know the boy that darn near always went out star gazing." "Well he's still doin' it to this day",the passerby replied." Ever since his sister committed suicide and darn near hardly anybody quite understood." "He hasn't stop staring up at the sky all day yet that I know of." I said. "That there cycle of his is really something else!" said Jacob. "That's about all he was really worth, " I won that bet he made that he could beat me at cards any day of the week." I replied,sitting on the front porch of my house as Jacob stood out there in front. "I'd a hated to be in his shoes after his daddy found out he lost that bet." Jacob said."Ned junior had it coming to him, I replied." " How all did it happen?" Jacob asked. Everyone knew everyone in Appalachia, I guess it would be different in the Rockies, I thought. Everybody in the small mountain community of Holler Creek had watched Ned senior ride into town so long ago,like he owned the place and on a pure Morgan thoroughbred horse, that everybody wanted for their very own on because they only had quarter horses. "The Jenkins boy had lost that horse in a card game, but had won a twelve hundred cubic centimeter Harley Davidson motorcycle,got kicked in the back side and thrown out of his house by his dad and in the dark hours of the early morning,before the Sun had risen,almost five years ago. All anybody could hear for miles was Ned Jenkins yelling at his boy until almost dawn that morning." I said. After the seventy-four Harley went into its sort of final approach, everything was quiet again. The whole mountain knew the Jenkins was back. The loud noise of the engine had awakened Holler Creek and Jacob was calling on me to get some answers. I had been hearing him come up the mountain road for almost an hour when I ran out and stood on the porch of my old shack, to get a look at Ned Jenkins junior after five years,but it was too dark and the forest blocked my vision. "From what I understand his daddy had also walked on the wild side when he was an youngin' I continued to tell Jacob. There was still so much more that remained a mystery about the Jenkins. The family had originated from the upper crust of this nation,Ned's dad was born in Washington D.C. and moved to Holler Creek,married a cajun queen, he had brought along with him in a brand new station wagon but the marriage was doomed to failure from what Ned junior told at the card table. A few years later after the Jenkins boy was born,they had a little girl named Manhattan and she fell out of that tall oak tree near Blind pass and died. You heard wrong Jacob, she didn't kill herself,that there was an accident ten year ago." I continued. Ned's dad always called him boy no matter how old he got, I thought,try to remember what happened five years ago. Ned senior was a soldier in the second world war,went broke trying to support his wife and son after Malisa died.I guess me and the Jenkins boy should have drank a whole more of that white lightening growing up together,I might have understood him better, I thought. "Now Ned junior is back from that shooting war in Vietnam and he's the spitting image of his dad. I ran into his dad the other day and he said "that turkey shoot in Europe was a whole lot better than the one in Asia. Jacob laughed." Everybody talks about everybody in Holler Creek and no one bothers anyone unless the gossip gets out of hand. but this story I was telling Jacob,had to be told because the Jenkins boy used to be the bully of Holler Creek and not anyone could ever beat him at anything, until I beat him at cards. "Ned and I got to drinking whiskey and carrying one weekend and we got around to playing cards when he made the bet. We started oh! with five card stud,then seven card and poker and he won each hand. there was no dealing from an inside straight on because he would be watching me like a hawk until we got around to playing Black Jack. After we drank the bottle of whiskey from his daddy's cabinet he up and said "dealers choice,all or nothing." He dealt me two cards and then himself, the closest hand to twenty -one would win the horse he said. The moment of truth had arrived he turned over his two cards and I counted nineteen,then turned over my two cards and he saw a ten and an eleven of hearts." The End |