Catamounts

The crops on Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm were desperately in need of rain. On a Thursday night, Mother Nature blessed us with one thunderstorm after another, and we awoke to find water in the middles. Dad was so happy that he paid us off on Friday morning, and told us not to return to work until Monday.

Jaybird, my boyhood best friend and mentor, offered to take my cousin Ralph and me fishing. We teenage boys pitched a tent in his yard on Friday night, knowing the old black man, a master yarn spinner, would tell us some terrifying tales as we sat around the campfire. I envied Ralph. He was an athletic Adonis, over six-feet tall, with what girls called “come hither” cobalt blue eyes, perfectly straight teeth, and thick, raven-black, curly hair they couldn’t resist running their fingers through. My ninety-pound-weakling frame reached a little over five feet. I had big lips — the kind Jaybird called “dumplin’ coolers” —crooked teeth, and “run thither” eyes.

---

Ralph’s mother, Miss Lila, coddled him … let him sleep late, gave him money, bought him fine clothes, and assigned him no chores. My mother, Miss Lena, bounced me out of bed at daylight, never gave me a cent I didn’t earn, and assigned chores that included feeding the chickens, gathering the eggs, chopping the garden, mowing the yard, trimming the hedges, and washing her car. As we rigged fishing poles and dug night crawlers from Jaybird’s compost pile, I tried to set aside my envy of Ralph and enjoy myself, but couldn’t. He made me feel inadequate, insignificant, un-athletic, and just plain ugly. After listening to Jaybird’s stories about catamounts (his word for cougars), we settled down for the night. At least Ralph did. I could hear his rhythmic, restful breathing, while I lay wide-awake, cringing and trembling, certain a killer cougar was outside the tent. Finally, dawn broke, and with it the wafting smell of eggs and bacon, cathead biscuits, and Jaybird’s wonderful coffee. I headed for the breakfast table, leaving Ralph in deep sleep. Jaybird always kept peppers — jalapenos, cayennes, and blistering habaneros, the hottest of all — on the table, and ate them with every meal. He gave me a morning hug, sat a coffee mug before me, and one for Ralph. “Guess I’ll have to drag that sleepy-head out of bed,” he said. I knew Ralph would reach for the coffee as soon as he came to the table, so, seduced by Satan, I halved a habanero and rubbed his mug’s rim with it. As soon as he sat down, Ralph reached for the mug. One sip and he catapulted in capsaicin catalepsy. His blue eyes turned cherry red and bulged from their sockets, as if staring at the Grim Reaper. In one fluid movement, he vaulted toward the door and bolted homeward. “I’ll swunnee, what you reckon’s wrong wid dat boy?” Jaybird asked. Delighting in my diabolic deed, I said, “Don’t know. He looked like he saw some catamounts.”