Bucket-Mouth Brute

Ophelia O’Dell owned a cattle ranch near Dad’s Mississippi Delta Farm. Known by all as Miz O, she was as ill-tempered as she was ugly. With one crabby finger, she’d slide her spectacles down her nose, knit her eyebrows, stab folks clean through with stiletto, steel-gray eyes, squinch up her cheeks, and purse her lips, as if the person she stared at stank. She was fullback big, stingier than Scrooge, and richer than Croesus, having inherited half the county when her husband gave up the ghost after quaking in fear of his battleaxe bride for what to him must have seemed an eternity.

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One day she pulled up in front of Jaybird’s house in her Cadillac, honked the horn, and scowled impatiently while waiting for the old black man, my boyhood best friend and mentor, to come see what she wanted. “Jaybird, my arthritis is acting up and I can’t check on my cows as often as I need to. If you and Junior will check on them once a week, y’all can fish my ponds while you’re out there.”
 On our first trip to the ranch, I flung one of my favorite lures out into a pond. Instantly the water exploded, and a huge bass tail-walked across the surface. “Git the net, Jaybird! This trophy monster is going on my bedroom wall.” Soon, the bass began to tire, and Jaybird waded out to net him. Suddenly, he rocketed clear of the surface, glared at us, and flung the lure.

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On our next trip, I was determined to catch that big, bad, bucket-mouth brute. Miz O and her daughter Jasmine, a churlish, corpulent clone of her dam, were picnicking under a shade tree. We asked to use a boat she kept in the pond.

“Sho’,” she said, “and while you’re out there, fetch my pole. I think a turtle drug it off. We got tard of fishin’, so we stuck our poles in the mud.”

Jaybird paddled out, and I grabbed the pole. Snickering at her primitive tackle, I thought … a turtle is all she’d ever catch with this twenty-foot cane, forty-pound line, and an apple-sized bobber.

Hand over hand, I pulled until the pole purloiner broke the surface. My blood froze — instead of a turtle, I was looking dead in the eyes of the big, bad, bucket-mouth brute. Jaybird swooped the net under him. “Got you now, you ole moss-backed monster,” I whooped. “On the wall you’re a-goin’.”
 When I showed him to Miz O and commented on what a beautiful mount he’d be on my wall, she belched, threw a chicken bone in the pond, and said, “Dress him.”

“Surely you aren’t gonna eat this trophy!” I gasped.

“My pond, my pole, my fish — gonna be my supper,” she snarled.

At least she gave me his head. From my bedroom wall, it shoots me a mean stare every day, putting me in mind of Miz O. But, at least I finally caught that big, bad, bucket-mouth brute.


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