Them Bee's They Done Saved Dickie's Soul

Jonathan Farlow

Now Dickie loved honey. He would eat honey on biscuits for breakfast. He'd eat it with dinner, then supper and then he'd have a spoonful just before he went to bed. He said it helped him sleep. He'd eat it comb and all. I expect that he would've licked a beehive clean if he ever had the chance.

Well, on this day that I'm speaking of Dickie was runnin' a still back in the woods beside this good size creek that ran through his property. It was Ade Pyrtle who first put Dickie onto a wild beehive that he saw on the way there. Ade had showed up to buy some shine and after he paid for it he just sat down on a stump and started tilting his head back right there. That's when he brought up the beehive and that got Dickie's attention. See, Dickie had about a dozen of his own, but he always said that wild honey was a lot better that the honey that he got from tame bees. He left Ade and Donnie Brough there with the still, headed home and got into his bee-keeping garb.

The hive wasn't hard to find. It was down in the hollow of a great big oak tree and took up most of the bottom part of the trunk. Dickie walked right up to that hive with a netting over his head underneath his hat. He was wearing an old thick overcoat, work gloves and had tied his sleeves and the legs of his britches closed with string. He had it all taken care of and he waded into that hive with a big pot and a spoon to scoop out the honey. The only problem was that he was wearing these ratty looking old overalls and they had a pretty good sized hole in them just and inch or two south of his crotch.

About that time the Sheriff, Charlie Spears, and his deputy Jerry Bell were taking a short cut down an old logging road that ran through Dickie place. They took this way pretty often because they though that if they got lucky they might catch Dickie brewing up a batch of moonshine. They must of had their rabbit's foot with them because Dickie walked out into the road right in front of them.

Dickie had a real high pitched voice and was squealing like a little girl when they found him. He was still in that beekeeper's get up and was dancing around on his tiptoes, flailing his arms and moving his legs like he was trying to clap with his knees. The way Charlie described it to me one time it sounded like something that Elvis Presley would do a few years later.

The bee's were still swarming all around him and the sheriff caught a stinger on the end of his nose for the trouble of grabbing Dickie and getting him to a creek that ran alongside the road. They led him right into the water, got the hat, the net, the gloves and the coat off. Got his overalls down and were able to splash away the rest of those bees. They had just gotten him back on shore, and calmed him down when they started hearing somebody singing "In the Sweet By and By" real loud and off key like, just through this thicket running along the creek bank. The Sheriff and Jerry flanked Dickie to keep him from getting loose and they followed the sound of Ade's singing right to that still. They would have gotten a jump on Ade and Donnie if Dickie hadn't of hollered in that old squeak of his,

"Y'all run! The law's here!"

He yelled out and Donnie took off running and knocked over what mash that they had already bottled. Well, at the sight of all that whiskey seeping into the ground, Ade jumped off his stump and started sucking it off the leaves rather that let it get away. The sheriff took off after Brough, and Jerry handcuffed Dickie to this little sapling close by there and followed along behind them. They figured Ade was no trouble; he wasn't going nowhere in the shape he was in so they just left him there licking the ground.

They caught up with Donnie in just a few minutes. He had stepped in a stump hole and twisted his ankle, and as they expected Ade wasn't any problem. When they got back to the still he was asleep on the ground with bits of leaves and mud on his face. But it was over an hour before they caught Dickie; cause when they got back to that little tree he had been tied to he was gone and every limb on that tree was trimmed down to just a couple of inches long. Dickie had climbed the tree, breaking limbs off as he went and went up and over with his hands still cuffed. Then he took off and run before the sheriff and Jerry got back.

It was about this time that Dickie's wife Xantippe was having a church meeting at her and Dickie's house to discuss her poor beloved husband and his misguided soul. She had the Preacher there from Calvary Baptist and those old biddies who sat with her on the front row every Sunday and she was crying and blubbering. She had her head on one of them's shoulder and they were all patting her on the back and trying to console her, but the more they said they more and the louder she hollered.

"Oh, I don't know what I'd do without Dickie! Oh the thought of his being cast into that lake of fire. It just breaks my heart!"

"Don't worry, dear," said one of the women. "Dickie's not a bad sort." She was lying but she wanted to make her friend feel better. "I mean how bad can he b?." Then just like it was planned that way Dickie came flying in the front door still in handcuffs.

As they say in the movies the jig was up for Dickie at that point because Xantippie thought that was her Christian duty, there was probably a little spite along with it, to turn in her own husband. She lead the sheriff and Jerry to this little room in back of the barn. And there he was, still cuffed, pants down and rubbing wet tobacco on his legs to sooth those bee stings. Behind him was about thirty or forty gallons of moonshine stacked against one wall.

The judge didn't sentence Dickie to jail time they never did. Although this time Dickie wouldn't of minded if they had. In fact he would have probably taken hanging over the sentence that they did pass down. They sent him home to his wife. Which as it turns out worked better torture could've.

Dickie did clean up his act. He didn't make anymore shine and he led Charlie Spears to all the other still sites so he could tear them down. He showed him where all his stashes were as well so it could be all be poured out. He was baptized that following Sunday and starting then he was at church front row center along side Xantippe who hooked her arm in his and stuck out her chest out so far that her buttons about popped.

Dickie did sleep most of the time, but he was there. One time he fell asleep and started snoring like steam engine. Xantippe took one of those pointy elbows of hers and jabbed him real hard in the ribs. He stood up right in the middle of the sermon and yelled out, "Y'all run the law's coming!" We do all stray. Jesus lost his temper once so what chance do the rest of have. Dickie got it through his mind to cut down this old dead maple that they had on their place. See, it was leaning over Dickie's beehives and he wanted to cut it down before it iced or stormed again or a big wind blew that tree over and smashed them. The problem was that the tree leaned so much that anyway he cut it, it was going to fall on those hives. So what he did was he climbed up into the top of that tree and fastened a wire up there. Then he came down and sawed most of the way through the trunk, chopped through the roots that were showing there, got that tree nice and wobbly then he tied the other end of that wire to his wrist and started pulling. What he had a mind to do was pull the tree toward him and then step aside and let it fall, and it would have worked if that tree would've fell that way. Which it didn't. What happened was Dickie pulled it toward him and loosed the tree enough to fall, but when he stopped to get a better foothold the lean of the tree started it falling in the other direction and it sort've drug Dickie along with it. He was able to keep on his feet and run along with it for a little while, but when he tried to jump the stump, he hooked his foot on the edge of it and went airborne from there. He hit that tree's trunk, belly chest and face and slid about half way up it. First thing he saw when he raised his head was that the top of the tree had taken out everyone of those beehives; they were no more than a pile of toothpicks. You know, Dickie hurt himself pretty bad: Broke his nose, knocked out a couple of teeth, cracked a rib, and that wire made a deep cut in his wrist. He's lucky it didn't cut through a vein or he'd a bled to death. His arm was dislocated real bad and it kind of hung beside him like a wet rag as he climbed down off of that tree and pulled the wire loose. Like I said, he was hurt real bad but he wasn't feeling a bit of it; he was madder than the bees that were swarming around in the top of that tree. He started kicking that tree and punching it with his good hand until he broke a bone in that hand and cracked open his knuckles; and, boy, was he cussin. He was cussin a blue streak. Xantippie had come running when she heard the tree fall, but when she heard what Dickie was saying she didn't care about the tree, the beehives, or the shape that Dickie was in. She stomped up behind him, grabbed him by the galluses of his overalls, whirled him around and started giving him through the country.

"Dickie Dunn, you are a Christian man! You have been baptized and brought into the Lord's church and here you are using that kind of language! You promised you would straighten up and fly right! You……" Dickie stuck a finger in her face and shut her right up. His face looked like hamburger with these two white, wild eyes looking out at her. He moved his mouth like a catfish but it was a good minute before he said anything and when he did blood sprayed all over the front of her dress.