Smashing Snails and a Bloated Body

Yeah, I know I already blogged today.

As the blog is titled however, during the typing of the first, I was reminded of a story. The story itself is a non sequitor to the previous post this morning and the reader of both will never understand what it was that helped me regurgitate this memory because I can't and it's my memory.

In my life I have seen a number of corpses. The first of my memory was that of my Grandfather Yarberry. I was 9 when he died and he was 63; pretty young by today's standards. He had led a libertine life, however, where wine played a much larger role than did women or song although they both occupied full stanzas in his raucous ballad of life.

I believe it was 4 years later, when I was 13, that I saw my second dead body. It was not nearly as pretty as Grandpa after the Lampasas mortician had prettied him up.

It was the summer of my 15th year of life. We were living at that time in Copperas Cove, Texas, in a tract ranch on the outskirts of town in a subdivision with other houses that looked almost the same. Behind my house there was nothing but central Texas prairie full of all the things boys of my age in Texas find fascinating. I killed a number of rattlesnakes there, including one that had invaded our backyard after my pet guinea pig which was housed at my mother's mandate in a shaded cage near the back entrance to the garage. In retrospect, I should have let the rattler have his way with the little fellow as, just a few days later, he died a horrible death because I had forgotten to fill his water dish and move his cage into the garage and out of the sun. I killed a pet rat in a similar way a couple of years earlier while we were living in Hawaii. After the guinea pig, I gave up rodentia as pets.

There were lizards of many variaties with the famed Horned Toad as this boy's favorite. We called them "Horny Toads" however, innocent of the sexual implications of that particular nickname.A little over a mile from the back of our chain-link fence was a farm pond chock full of Blue Gills and Bullheads. Almost everyday during the summer, I would take my fishing rod and my dog Chris, a canteen and a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich and make the hike to catch a stringer of gills for my mother to either cook for dinner that evening or freeze for future fish fries. There was no bait store nearby nor was there money for worms; and with the ground too dry anywhere near the surface to support life for a worm, I found an alternative bait what was both abundant and free... snails.I would gather dozens of them during the hike from the stems of weeds and off the ground as they traveled toward whereever it is that snails go when the sun gets too hot. Pond-side, I would smash their shells with a rock and attach their fleshing bodies to the hook. The Blue Gills loved them.

This nearly daily ritual was more than just a fishing trip for me. It gave me an opportunity to excape my mother's "episodes" with mental illness and, from time to time, chores what were not part of my assigned list but represented my mother's queenly control over her children.Years later, after I had grown and gone, my mother was diagnosed as manic-depressive. I think they call it bi-polar now. That summer, however, she was just great one week and demonically evil the next. The only way I could cope with the inconsistency of it was to escape whenever I could.

On one particularly hot Monday morning, after not fishing on either Saturday because of family stuff and Sunday because of God's stuff, I opened the back gate of the fence and, with Chris, headed to the pond, capturing snails along the way.A few yards, maybe 50, from the pond, I began to smell something awful.

The aroma of dead things was not unusual in the summer in a Texas prairie. Things were always dying... but little things. Little things that had fallen victim to coyotes or foxes which, after eating their fill, left the carcasses for the turkey buzzards and the red ants. The smell that morning, however, was worse.

A few steps further I found the source of the stench. It was a dead man, bloated by the heat and surrounded by pecking vultures.I don't remember many details nor did I ever hear the story of who, what, when, why and where. I do remember his skin being almost black but not because he was an African American, but because of the sun in Texas in the heart of the summer.

I ran home fishless and told my mother who called my father who told her to call the police. I thought for sure I would be called upon to lead the posse to the body but all they asked me to do was point. And it wasn't a real posse; just two local cops. From the security of my back yard I watched a pick-up truck owned by one of the departments; fire or police, I never knew which, drive toward the pond.

I know there was no way they could miss the body. It stunk too much and the buzzards too loud and numerous.

While I never learned any details, I made a story that aged well as I recounted them to my friends. It is likely the poor fellow was some drunk who lost his way and then his life but in my tale he was a the target of a mob henchman who had crossed the Big Boss and paid dearly for his disloyalty; the mob, of course, having and huge contingency in Copperas Cove, Texas.

My pals pretended to believe me.

The call of the pond overwhelmed my fear after a week or so and I returned to my sacraments of smashing snails and hooking Blue Gills and avoiding, wheneve possible, the dark side of the mom.

My celebrity didn't last longer than the summer and by the time school started in September, only John Kinman and me ever talked about it; and he was just being polite.

Within a few weeks of starting school my father received orders for Vietnam and we packed up and moved to Michigan to wait for him. This was 1965, long before the Tet Offensive but not before American soldiers were sacrificing their lives for a cause that would eventually be lost. 60,000 Americans died in that "crazy Asian war" with another million-plus in total deaths. My father saw a portion of those and it changed him and not for the better. The next dead bodies I saw were on my mission in Guatemala and El Salvador where death was common and often public. After my mission it was probably my Nana's. I was older and married when she died and more prepared for a viewing.

While there were likely a few others between whose names I don't remember, the next one of importance was that of my father who, like my grandpa, died at 63. Shortly before he died, he was grizzled by a long illness and hard-eyed from the anger he lived with. He was mean to his family during the last weeks, hoping, I think - I hope - to make his eventual passing easier on us. He was long-bearded and bible-clutching to the end. The morticians in Kalamazoo gave the pre-Vietnam dad back to us.

In the casket he looked at peace, finally.