My Aunt was busy dying awhile back, and it fell to me to keep watch. Dead people really do not require much attention really, just a hand squeeze, prayer and making sure their lips are not too dry.
Along about 10 o'clock, right as the sun she opened her eyes and I inquired of her how things were going. She seemed quite chipper really for someone dying, and she talked of things not too interesting in small talk, and then started in on a story about her dad, who I never knew.
She was saying how much he loved to hunt ducks down on the sound for the Cans in the big rafts during a blow. How he would drive his old Chevy all night if he got the hint that the wind was going to bring in the worst of it from their little New York.
He heard once that the Pintails were in flocks in Texas that darkened the skies come wintertime, and with his little brother, Henry they drove down there one January for a shoot along the Rio Grande.
They never came back and I never really knew why as no one ever spoke about those things as dead was dead.
She started talking about my uncle Will, in how he ventured down there when the police told us that no trace of them had ever been found, and how the Texas Rangers were investigating, but how they could not find anything out either.
That was big country them years. Years when the citrus trees were just coming into planting and other things making it all look tropical.
Told me how Will had got a job on that King Ranch, which was bigger than most eastern states and who God Himself had to get permission to walk across it.
That was the jist of it all, in Will was down there, and how Grandfather the next year was there, and hauled Auntie who was around 10 then with my mother who was 12.
She said Grandfather had made a point to buy one of those new Winchester rifles with a glass on top to see through and how she could still remember that big yellow W on the box in that Texas morning sun.
Will and Gerhardt, the older brother, had gone with, and she said she remembered the speech Grandfather gave them in how the girls would wait with him on this side of the fence and how they boys would go in a spell, and start a fire, make a racket and then come back to that pond which was on this side of the fence.
She mentioned her dad's pipe tin being there. A red one, and she remembered Grandfather getting tears in his eyes as he picked it up, and handed it to her, and told the two of them to keep still.
There were lot's of ducks and she heard the uncles shooting and then seen that smoke from the fire Grandfather had told them to light, and pretty soon they high tailed it back across that fence and started another fire and were just blasting at ducks, but few fell.
Grandfather told the girls to keep down as he pointed to a dust cloud coming toward them, and in time it was three horses with some Mexicans with big hats on, who were crawling under that fence and coming toward the uncles.
Them years on the King Ranch there was only their law in Texas, and they hired the Mexicans to keep everyone off their land.
Grandfather pulled out his rifle and sighted it she said, and it was loud when it went off, and the smoke was something that smelled good.
She looked and saw one of the Mexicans kicking and the others looking around, and Grandfather shot again, and another one started kicking.
The third one was firing a bit, but his bullets were kicking up sand about half way there, and the uncles were hunkered down just watching things, as Grandfather fired again and that third Mexican was kicking.
They all walked over there, and it was long walks she said with sand in her shoes. The Mexicans were all laid out, and one had guts poking out of his shirt.
Grandfather asked Will if those were the ones, and Will said they were, in they rode that fence and were the ones he heard tell had that watch, which Will fished around and pulled out of the pocket of the one who had a red kercheif on his neck.
It was her dads.
They buried them there and finished it off really nice so you could not see the place at all.
The five of them walked back and it was dark by the time they got to the car, and they drove all night until the next day, until Grandfather said, "They were out of that damned south".
I always wondered about that watch and why it was so important for them to give it to me.
Strange thing about stories that dead folks tell when out of their heads. Strange thing indeed.
agtG
