Humility
Jonathan Farlow
The following story was inspired by a true account as told to me by Peggy Redding who at the time served as organist in our church. She passed away last year and this story I dedicated to her. I will never forget her kind nature, her love of life and her wonderful sense of humor.
J.F.
I don’t know what it is with some people that they just bring anxiety and bad feelings with them like stink on a skunk. I had a great aunt like that. She’s dead now, yeah, but to hear people talk you would think that she would rise up out of the grave and get you if you said her name too loud or too often. I guess if we were Catholic we’d be crossing ourselves before we dared to mention Aunt Ophelia.
Aunt Ophelia Mann was the iron maiden of Welbourne County. Sure, she did a lot of good for the area.
She was county librarian for more years than Carter had pills and she didn’t work that job because she had to.
There was even a rumor that she gave her salary back to the county. She did it because, as she put it, there were a lot of people walking around with nothing going on between their ears besides a stiff wind and an echo. She believed they would be more productive to the community with a book in their hand than a bottle of whiskey. If they wouldn’t go to church on Sunday they could come to the library during the week.
Other than the library, Aunt Ophelia had an elementary school and the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution named after her. It still seems like every other building in this county has the name Mann scrawled on it somewhere, if not in honor of Ophelia then some other relative. I guess you could say the Manns are sort of a small town’s answer to the Kennedy’s, but the only resemblance between Ophelia and Rose were the thorns.
People loved Aunt Ophelia to her face; well, loved or were scared of her one, but they were quick to stick their tongues out once her back was turned. Of course, the preferred course of action where that woman was concerned, family included, was to avoid her altogether. She had an acid tongue and all the warmth of a boa constrictor. She carried herself like a queen in exile and everybody/everything was under the queen’s dominion. When she drove through town in that new Buick of hers (she got a new one every year) flowers wilted, bird stopped singing, children ran, adults found something else they had to do in the opposite direction and the sun just seemed to get a little darker. At one time she probably had more pull than anyone in the county and, as far as the family was concerned, she was the undisputed matriarch and she controlled the clan like Hitler held Germany.
I guess if there’s anything good about knowing someone like Aunt Ophelia it’s that once in awhile you get to see them brought down a peg or two. Even if the humility only lasts a second or two, it’s fun to watch all the decorum and cold hard exterior get stripped away to reveal that her ladyship is human after all. There was one time that this happened and it has to be my all-time, number one favorite story to tell because it’s funny, it’s true, this is the God’s honest truth here and I saw it. Well, most of it, but best of all, it happened to Aunt Ophelia.
Ophelia lived in a three-story colonial on Wells Creek Boulevard, which is still the more swanky section of Ashewood Falls, that is if a town that size could have a swanky section. Aunt Ophelia never got married; no surprise there. She never had any children so it was just her and her maid, a big black woman named Rachel, living in that big house. Well, one day-it was May, I remember that-oh, about 1961-62 (I know the Bay of Pigs was going on whenever that was; I’m pretty bad with dates) Rachel called Ophelia at the library and told her that there was a snake in the house.
“What kind of snake?” Ophelia asked. I can hear that sharp, snappy voice of her right now. I’m sure she was pissed at being disturbed at work.
“It’s a big ol’ black snake. About as long as me. I saw it out on the screen porch while I was cleaning up out there.”
“Is it still out there?”
“No, ma’am, I sucked it up in the vacuum cleaner.”
“Hold on a second.” Rachel said Ophelia was off the line for a minute or two and she could hear her talking to somebody. Then she came back on. “Did you say that you sucked it up in the vacuum cleaner?”
“Yes, ma’am. I was vacuuming out on the porch and he was under that wicker loveseat that you got out there. I got down there to get under it and saw that thing looking out at me, flickin’ that ol’ tongue. It was all I could do to keep my wits about me, but I did and I stuck that hose up to him and it sucked him up. Then I wheeled the vacuum out into the yard. That’s where it is now. What’d you want me to do about it?”
“Well, I had somebody call J.W. He’ll be there soon and I’m on my way so just finish what you were doing but leave that vacuum cleaner outside. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I count it among many of the blessings that the Lord has bestowed upon me that I was staying with my Uncle Johnny and Great-Uncle J.W. that day. J.W. owned Mann Realty, and Johnny worked there as one of the agents. It was summertime and my mother had to take Grandpa to the doctor in Winston-Salem once a week and I didn’t have anybody else to stay with so I just knocked around the office for a few hours while Mama was gone.
I was out back in the little gravel parking lot playing in the dirt when Johnny and J.W. came out and headed for J.W.’s Cadillac. Johnny was already laughing and asked me if I wanted to come, that we might have some excitement. I was game. I remember being bored stiff so I would have probably gone to a funeral if anybody had asked me.
Rachel met us in the driveway and to that point I still didn’t know what was going on.
“You seen that snake again?” J.W. asked.
“No, sir, I just sucked him up in the vacuum cleaner and drug it out into the backyard and I’m not getting near that thing until you get him out.” Johnny started chuckling again and he looked at me and winked. Now that I was let in as to the details I had to start laughing too. You could just feel it in the air that something funny was going to happen.
Rachel led us around back and sure enough there was the vacuum cleaner sitting out on the grass. It was one of those models with the torpedo shaped body and the hose coming out of one end. Aunt Ophelia was standing a good ways away from it looking at it with that cold analytical stare that she always gave her problems.
“See anything of that snake?” asked J.W. kind of startling Ophelia and she took a couple of steps back before she gained that iron clad demeanor that she was known for. “No, I haven’t. I don’t know if there is one in there or not.”
“Oh, there’s one in there all right,” Rachel broke in from where she was standing a few steps behind Ophelia. “And if you all want to get a look at him you go right ahead.” J.W. and Johnny went over to the vacuum and started fiddling with it. I started after them. I wasn’t afraid of snakes; I had caught several in the woods behind our house, but Rachel grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me back to her. “No, you stand over here with me.” J.W. and Johnny opened the vacuum, took out the bag, looked inside the canister and then emptied the bag out onto an old sheet that Rachel used when she raked leaves. They went through the contents, which amounted to mostly dust and hair, and looked in the bag. At this point that I was getting a little disappointed and I could tell that Ophelia was getting a little of her nerve back because she was snapping at Rachel.
“Are you sure there’s a snake in there? You know, I bet you saw the electrical cord going to that lamp on the end table.”
“Does a lamp cord move? Does it flick its tongue at you? No, Ma’am, it don’t. It was a snake and he’s in that vacuum cleaner. I saw it myself. That slimy little tail go up the tube.”
“Well,” was all that Ophelia could say at the moment which, in her way of talking, meant you could be right but I’m too pigheaded to admit it. J.W. and Johnny went on to take the hose off, stretch it out and each of them looked through it and couldn’t see anything but daylight at the other end.
“Ladies, I don’t see any snake,” said J.W. and he stood there beside the dismantled vacuum cleaner with his hands on his hips, shaking his head.
“I didn’t think so,” said Ophelia. “Rachel, you fool, sometimes I wonder if you have any sense at all. There is no snake in the vacuum cleaner.”
“There is too a snake. I saw.....”Ophelia held up a hand and turned away toward her brother while Rachel was in mid-sentence. I could see that Rachel was getting mad, her eyes got big and her neck and chins were kind of blowing out like a bullfrog.
“You want us to put this back together?” J.W. asked and started to stoop over and pick up the vacuum.
“No, let her get it,” Ophelia flung a hand over her shoulder towards Rachel. “I guess she’ll suck up a possum or something like that next.”
“I am telling you I saw a snake,” Rachel was saying as I was following J.W. and Johnny back to the car.
Rachel would tell us later what went on between her and Ophelia from that point. She said that Aunt Ophelia went inside to get her pocketbook and Rachel started putting the vacuum back together. Ophelia came out as Rachel was snapping the hose into the exhaust valve rather than the intake and said something to the effect of; “I’m going back to the library now and I don’t want you to bother me or J.W. again with such nonsense....”
“No, Ma’am!” Rachel said she pointed her finger at Ophelia and told her to stand right there on the sidewalk. Rachel had been with Ophelia so long I guess that she was one of the few people who could talk to her like that. “You stand right there. I’m going to show you that there is a snake in this here vacuum.” Ophelia stopped right there and stood with her arms crossed while Rachel ran a cord onto the porch and plugged it in. Then she went back, picked up the hose, pointed it in Ophelia’s direction and hit the switch. The snake shot out of the end of the hose and flew through the air spinning like an Australian bola. It hit Ophelia in the neck, wound itself around her three or four times and then sort of hung there and writhed like Satan’s necktie. Rachel said that Aunt Ophelia screamed something that she wouldn’t repeat if her life depended on it. Then she took off around the house, leaving her wig in a maple tree, and headed down the driveway toward the street, making strides that would have qualified her for the Rome Olympics a year or two before.
We hadn’t gotten far. J.W. was pulling out of the driveway when this fellow that did some work for him rode by on a scooter. I don’t know the guy’s real name but everybody called him Slobber and back then he was sort of the village idiot of Ashewood Falls. He rode that scooter, a liquor cycle Daddy used to call them, and when he was riding, summer and winter, he wore a leather biker’s jacket and a World War II Nazi helmet. You could still see part of the swastika on the side and there was an old faded sticker of Frankenstein on the back.
J.W. honked the horn and Slobber pulled his scooter along side the car so J.W. could tell him of a few houses that he could clean and fix up if he needed any extra money. Slobber said that he did and that he would meet them back at the office when Aunt Ophelia ran by and headed down the street.
“Was that Ophelia?” J.W. asked, staring at the old lady tearing down across the asphalt. “Yeah, it was,” answered Johnny choking back a grin. “And boy she’s pickin’ ’em up and puttin’ ‘em down.” While we were watching her go, rooted to the spot by the sight, Slobber started up his scooter and took off after her.
By the time that J.W. got the Caddie started and turned around in the street Ophelia and Slobber were a good ways down Well’s Creek Boulevard. Slobber had caught up with Aunt Ophelia, but he wasn’t trying to stop her like we thought. He was riding right behind her with his wheels almost touching the back of her feet while she ran and he was leaning over the handle bars grabbing at her skirt tails.
“Gonna gitcha!” We could hearing him yelling when we got up beside them and Johnny rolled the window down.
“Is that that snake around her neck?” he asked.
“Gonna gitcha!”
“What’s that damn fool……Slobber stop that!” J.W. yelled out at him. Slobber looked our way, gave a grin that looked more at home on the snake and kept on going.
“Gonna gitcha!” At that point I didn’t see what happened; I only heard it because I had rolled off into the floorboard and doubled over laughing. “Gonna gitcha!”
“Slobber, you won’t work for me again if you don’t stop that and get that snake off of her neck!” I guess the threat of losing what employment he had got through to Slobber because he sped up and pulled along side Aunt Ophelia, grabbed her by the arm and got her stopped. When I looked out the car window again, J.W. and Johnny had hold of Aunt Ophelia by each arm and Slobber had unwound the snake from around her neck. When they let her go she started running again and when J.W. and Johnny took off after her, Slobber threw the snake into this western style saddlebag that he had on the scooter and rode off. They caught up with Aunt Ophelia a few yards down the road where she had finally stopped and was washing her neck in Fred Jenkin’s fish pond.
They got Ophelia back into the house and Rachel gave her a whiskey and put her to bed. On the way back to the office J.W. jumped all over Johnny for laughing so; all I could do was to hide my face behind a copy of The Old North State that was in the backseat and do my best to giggle so J.W. couldn’t hear me.
What I wanted to know was what happened to the snake and I got my answer a week later. Mama had to go to Winston again so I was staying with Uncle Johnny at the office and they had sent me down the street to the Dog and Shake to get lunch for everybody. I saw Slobber’s scooter parked on the street and, as I was going into the D & S, he was coming out. I wasn’t going to say anything. I didn’t really know Slobber and he was kind of crazy, but I had to ask him what he did with that snake. “You wanna see what I been doing with that snake? Come over here and I’ll show you.” I followed him over to his scooter and stood back a little ways as he set his drink down on the seat and opened one of the saddlebags. He pulled a pretty nice, patent leather women’s pocket book out of that bag and then he pulled that same black snake out of the one on the other side. Then he opened the pocketbook, put the snake inside and clasped it shut. “Now wait for me over beside the D & S and we’ll have some fun!” I hid in the little alley beside the restaurant and watched as Slobber ran out into the middle of the street, set the pocketbook down right on the yellow line and ran back. “Now when somebody opens that pocketbook it’s not gonna be money they find.” We hid there and waited. Slobber was hunkered down behind me and he was breathing on the back of my neck. His breath smelled like a chili-dog with onions and the rest of him smelled like B.O. and gasoline, but I did my best to hold my breath and laugh at the same time. Imagine how my heart lifted when Aunt Ophelia’s brand new Buick pulled to a stop beside that pocketbook.
