While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.
*****
“There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.”
———Chinua Achebe
——--Things Fall Apart
Our house filled up with uncles when I was a kid. It was confusing. Dad only had one brother, and Mama didn’t have any, but somehow I had enough uncles—all named Youlyingbastard—to fill up the living room. Or was it the kitchen. Between hollering, smoking, and cussing, my uncles would laugh so hard they knocked over tumblers of whatever it was that gave them stinky breath when they belched.
Cigarette smoke floated around the room like a cloud, fighting for space with the hot sticky air coming in through the open windows.
I could sit for hours listening to my uncles’ stories, trying to memorize them, so I could use them if I needed to make somebody laugh. But with all the knee-slapping and name calling, it was hard to catch all the details.
Like when somebody was waving their arms and yelling about the time that fool shot a hole in the fishing boat. After I went to bed, I wondered why they took a gun fishing, and did a gun really fit into a tackle box? So I paid closer attention when that story came around again. And I think maybe it was duck hunting when that fool shot a hole in the boat. Another time, after they shot a pheasant out of the sky, they sent that fool to retrieve the body, like he was one of the hound dogs. That’s what you did with a fool you didn’t want to come with you in the first place.
Before I could figure out if he came back with the pheasant or they left him behind, they were talking about Mamma Fannie walking across the Market Street Bridge (I guess she’d left her horse and buggy at home) the night a stranger came at her saying “I’m gonna get me some black … " something about a cat; it didn’t make any sense to me. Mamma Fannie said, “Come and get it.” She pulled out her gun, and that fool jumped off the bridge. After I went to bed it occurred to me Mamma Fannie lived before any of the uncles in the living room were even born. That fool survived the jump and then time-traveled to the future to mess up my uncles’ hunting trips.
*****
“There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.”
———Chinua Achebe
——--Things Fall Apart
Our house filled up with uncles when I was a kid. It was confusing. Dad only had one brother, and Mama didn’t have any, but somehow I had enough uncles—all named Youlyingbastard—to fill up the living room. Or was it the kitchen. Between hollering, smoking, and cussing, my uncles would laugh so hard they knocked over tumblers of whatever it was that gave them stinky breath when they belched.
Cigarette smoke floated around the room like a cloud, fighting for space with the hot sticky air coming in through the open windows.
I could sit for hours listening to my uncles’ stories, trying to memorize them, so I could use them if I needed to make somebody laugh. But with all the knee-slapping and name calling, it was hard to catch all the details.
Like when somebody was waving their arms and yelling about the time that fool shot a hole in the fishing boat. After I went to bed, I wondered why they took a gun fishing, and did a gun really fit into a tackle box? So I paid closer attention when that story came around again. And I think maybe it was duck hunting when that fool shot a hole in the boat. Another time, after they shot a pheasant out of the sky, they sent that fool to retrieve the body, like he was one of the hound dogs. That’s what you did with a fool you didn’t want to come with you in the first place.
Before I could figure out if he came back with the pheasant or they left him behind, they were talking about Mamma Fannie walking across the Market Street Bridge (I guess she’d left her horse and buggy at home) the night a stranger came at her saying “I’m gonna get me some black … " something about a cat; it didn’t make any sense to me. Mamma Fannie said, “Come and get it.” She pulled out her gun, and that fool jumped off the bridge. After I went to bed it occurred to me Mamma Fannie lived before any of the uncles in the living room were even born. That fool survived the jump and then time-traveled to the future to mess up my uncles’ hunting trips.
RSS Feed