Vibrant Village ™

These stories are in the words of Charles Aloysius Cathcart, known to ‘most everyone here in as Grampa Charlie Loy. Most evenings except Sundays, he occupied a wobbly old straight-back chair in spitting distance of the squat, rusty pot-bellied stove in Homer Henderson’s dry-goods store. They were collected by Mr. Cathcart’s grand-nephew Ernest, who took to hiding in the back room on Thursdays and listenin’. Thursday was only night that his mother left the house after supper. She did her visiting on Thursdays.

The Price of Fame

If you go lookin’ for the name of Purcell Witherspoon over to the post office you’re goin’ t’ go from Miz Walters, that’s Box 480, directly to Hooch Wyatt, his bein’ 481, and you won’t even get a rise out of that new postmaster by askin’ about it. Been nobody by that name here for a long enough time for most folks to forget twice. He got pretty famous there for a while, an’ got unfamous mighty quick. That’s more’n three-quarters of why he left without even closin’ the door, and so late at night even the hoot-owls’d gone to sleep. He had a good enough reason, just ask Doc. It was Doc’s pa’s step-brother Emmett as found the bones first, Purcell took the glory. Lookin’ back, Emmett ended up better off.

Now, the last thing Purcell Witherspoon had any use for was a dry well in the hot middle of August. He could get a bucket of mud any time he wanted, just had to let it down then crank it up, but he couldn’t think up too many good uses for mud, try as he would. Even knowin’ it wouldn’t do half as much good as spittin’ into the wind, every so often he’d go out back and cross all his fingers and what toes he could, and drop that bucket. He kept hopin’ for a splash instead of a splat, but after he missed his bath for three Saturdays, it plain pushed him over the fence between discommoded and disgusted, and the next night he got up in the middle of the night and got a shovel. No sense sleepin’ when your mind is made up, that well was goin’ t’ get a whole lot deeper before it got left alone.

Didn’t take him long to figure out it’d be easier to kick a hole through a tree than to get water when he had t’ climb down, fill up the bucket with mud, climb up, pull up the bucket, dump it out, let it down, and climb back down and fill it up again, so when bein’ altogether cross about missin’ his bath for three Saturdays couldn’t keep him at it, he quit and climbed up, all over mud and near as sweet-smellin’ as a swamp, and sludged over to Emmett’s place and woke him up. Told Emmett he’d get fifty cents for every foot he dug if he was doin’ the diggin’, and a nickel for every bucket he hauled up if he was doin’ the haulin’ and dumpin’.

Emmett wasn’t much for calculatin’ but he convinced himself he was about to put one over on his neighbor Purcell, there couldn’t be all that much to diggin’ and haulin’, so he said it was fine with him and turned over and went back to sleep. Purcell, he saw he hadn’t made it clear enough about doin’ it startin’ right now so he left but he came right back, and woke up Emmett again and gave him the shovel.

They’d got about three feet dug when Purcell, he was doin’ the diggin then, he hit into mud that got so black and smelly he figured it was as good a time as any for Emmett to take over. Emmett climbed down and stuck the shovel in that black stink and instead of a ordinary slobber-suck noise his shovel clanked and stopped. Tried again, same thing. Tried again, harder, same thing, only louder.

Now Emmett was about half as curious as a brick but whatever it was, it wasn’t makin’ that fifty cents any easier t’get, so he bent over and rooted and come up with a black old bone. Put that in the bucket and filled it up the rest of the way.

Purcell’d about given up tryin’ to stay awake, not havin’ had enough sleep to be worth even goin’ to bed to start with, and he was pullin’ and dumpin’ some and noddin’ off some. Half the time it was a close thing was Emmett gonna get that bucket back full or not, and when he dumped out that bone on his foot he let out a holler and ran around the well makin’ a thorough racket. He was clear in his own mind it was a dinosaur finger-bone and no tellin’ how rich he’d get off the rest of ‘em, there must be more like ‘em down there if dinosaurs had bones all through ‘em like his teacher’d said.

Naturally, Purcell ran off and woke up everybody he could think of, had some trouble convincin’ some on account of him not lookin’ all that agreeable, then he got Miz Drummond, she ran the post office and did some newspaperin’ for Thurston Tredway over to Robsonville, he got her to put in Thurston’s paper all about Local Man Finds Proof of Dinosaurs in Coltrane.

When he got back, Emmett had gone home and gone to sleep in the barn, bein’s his ma wouldn’t let him in the house, so he woke up Emmett again and laid into him about stayin’ on the job and would he mind awfully if he’d let Purcell do the diggin’ from now on?

By the time they’d got another four feet Purcell’d found two more bones and had hit water, that made him even madder’n missin’ his bath ‘coz that was the end of the diggin’. He climbed up and started another hole, which put quite a strain on Emmett’s uncuriosity, and it wasn’t two days later when here come Thurston Tredway and four identical brothers, you couldn’t tell ‘em apart but it didn’t matter ‘coz they all said they knew about dinosaurs and Purcell’s bone wasn’t a finger-bone, anybody could tell that. They said it was a foot-bone from a Torontosaurus.

Thurston Treadway made a big story, all about how the find was made and how the other two bones were one, a part of a backbone and one a half of a arm-bone. No tellin’ where the rest of it was. He was mighty impressed with those four brothers. Purcell told him to put in also that he’d part with any two of his bones for six hundred dollars, he’d keep the third. He was countin’ on a handsomer offer than six hundred dollars ‘coz the more some folks can’t have something the more they want it. He never said a word about Emmett findin’ that first bone.

Now, it didn’t take long for Purcell to put up a little fence around that well and charge ten cents to see it. He put up a box to hold the dimes and went back to diggin’ his second hole, didn’t look for any help so it took some time but he was easy in his mind about there bein’ more bones. Folks’d stop and holler down and want to talk, Thurston Tredway kept up with the progress in his paper, and the mayor tried to pass an ordinance that what was ON the ground was the owner’s but what was UNDER it belonged to the town, just like mineral rights. Naturally Purcell didn’t vote for that.

All this diggin’ and newspaperin’ went on long enough to get spread around, and inside of less’n a month Purcell got a letter from the keeper of a big city museum, he wrote Purcell he would be there in three days to come look. It was all Purcell could do to not turn backflips, he could see that six hundred dollars so clear he could almost smell it.

Half the town come out, eleven paid to see the well and one took his dime back sayin’ he could see just as much in his own yard for nothin’. That museum egghead, when he got there he took one look at those bones and excused himself and turned his back, but he couldn’t keep it in and he let out a whoop and bent over and laughed himself near unconscious. Couldn’t say a word until he ran entirely out of breath. This not bein’ what Purcell’ had been expectin’, he had to wait but he got impatient and dumped a bucket of water on the egghead and asked him what was so unbearably amusin’ about a man findin’ a dinosaur bone in his well?

That egghead said, “Those bones would be dinosaur bones if there were butcher shops along with dinosaurs but nobody’s ever tried to convince me there were. Those’re cow bones, probably got dog-snatched twenty, thirty years ago, an’ dropped in. See how the one end’s all chewed? You keep digging that new well, all you’ll get is tired,” is what he said.

Naturally Purcell didn’t ask his opinions on anything else, but he climbed down in his new well and he didn’t dig but he stayed there until everybody got tired and went home, then he collected his dimes and took his clothes and his bones and he didn’t have any good reason to close the door when he left, so he didn’t. He’s probably hopin’ there’s somebody out there who knows a dinosaur bone when he sees one. Never did pay Emmett.