The Hunting Club membership was gathered around the large round corner table in Doreen’s 24 HR Eat Gas Now Cafe, talking about Texas and the changes we’ve seen throughout our lifetimes.
Wrong Willie took a sip of scalding coffee and carefully aligned the thick mug back on the ring it made on the table.
“When I was growing up, there were some folks down around Corsicana who talked so fast I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and they were kinfolk.”
Woodrow smoothed his gray beard.
“I know what you mean, but out in far East Texas, I have friends who talk so slow and country, it sounds like they’re movie actors pretending to be from out there. They use y’ont to, I declare, and a’ite. I always laugh when I’m watching what they call reality TV and when some of us Texans are talking, they have subtitles.”
We laughed, bringing a frown from Doreen back behind the counter who was afraid we were having too much fun.
I held up my coffee mug so she could see I needed a refill, but she ignored me, as usual. I wished Trixie was there. She’d come a-runnin’.
“I just remembered, a friend of mine sent me a review of my novel that came out a year ago and the reviewer said I was using way too many local idioms and trying too hard to be southern.”
I took a swallow of cool coffee and held it up again for Doreen. A damp towel flew in our direction and I knew she’d seen me.
“Anyway, I was just writing the way we speak. That’s all. Used to be when we heard someone talking, we knew where they came from. East Texas, West Texas…”
“But not from West, Texas,” Jerry Wayne interrupted.
Woodrow agreed.
“Exactly. We know West is a town, but it’s in Central Texas, but those folks out in the Big Bend region talk different.”
A couple sitting in the booth that backed up to us under the window overheard and the guy frowned.
“Where’s West?”
“That way.” I pointed.
“But that’s not where he pointed.” The guy was talking about me.
“I was pointing south. Down 35.”
The woman shook her blond head.
“This is all confusing.”
“Not to us.” Willie grinned. “But I can tell you one thing about Texas and accents, now that Rev and the War Department bought their place outside of Paris, his country accent is a little thicker.”
The man’s wife smiled.
“You’re from Paris. I love the French.”
“Wrong Paris,” Wrong Willie said.
“Oh, I didn’t know there was one in this state.”
“You haven’t been here long, then.” Woodrow saluted her with his mug, splashing a little over the rim. “Where you from?”
“California.”
“Well, it’s a little different around here. But back to Rev’s place, you’d love it. We’ve all been out there and you don’t see too many houses with pools that wrap around three sides.”
The stranger’s eyes widened in surprise. He spread his hands apart in the air.
“How big is your lot?”
“We have a country place.” I held my hands close together. “A few feet less than fifty acres.”
“And a giant pool! I bet it’s fun to swim around a house.”
Willie frowned.
“Well, I guess you could swim…”
I broke in.
“We usually take the boat from one side to the other.”
The man and woman exchanged looks of wonder. She twisted around to give me a good looking over.
“You don’t dress like I would expect.”
“Boating shoes?” I was just kidding, but she nodded.
“Yeah, but you’re wearing that camouflage shirt and I saw your boots when you came in.” She puckered her lips and pronounced it “boooots.” She stuck a foot out. “I’m wearing my boooots.”
They were blue, long and pointy enough to curl like elf shoes, and the tops looked like psychedelic throw-up. I wanted to say, “if that’s what you call them,” but I didn’t.
“They look a little bit like boots.”
Jerry Wayne, who’d been thinking quietly during the exchange, spoke up.
“I think you guys have the wrong idea. Rev’s cabin is a place kinda in the woods and what they’re talking about isn’t a swimming pool, it’s muddy and full of fish.”
“You should have someone shock it and clear the water.”
Once again I forgot I was talking to out-of-towners.
“We had some old boys come out and shock it a few months ago to give us a fish count.”
She made a disgusted face.
“How could you let the pool get so dirty?”
Jerry Wayne waved both hands.
“No, it’s not that kind. We call them pools here, but other people call them ponds.”
“That sounds like the biggest goldfish pond in the world.”
The four of us looked at each other for help. Woodrow finally summed it up.
“Do you know what a tank is?”
“One of those round metal things we saw beside windmills when we drove here from L.A.?”
“No. If Rev had cattle, and he doesn’t because there isn’t a strand of wire around the place, that’s where they’d drink. Get it?”
“Kinda.” The guy nodded. “But why do you have so many acres if you don’t have cattle? I thought all Texans had cattle and horses.”
Woodrow struggled to maintain his composure. A tic formed at the corner of his mouth.
“Folks like us just want a place out in the woods away from everyone.”
“You can’t get away from everyone,” the woman said with authority.
We sighed and nodded and went back to talking about change and the fact that we were too old for what the world was throwing at us.
Reavis Z. Wortham is an award-winning novelist and outdoor writer with family ties to Lamar County. He is the author of “The Texas Job.”
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