volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

fisherman trying to land a fish too heavy for his line. If he says
the wrong thing, then Old Guy’s door will snap closed like a rich
dude’s wallet, and all those eighty or ninety deadbolts will sing
their prison song.
He decides to play along.
“Oh, yeah?”
A nose bob.
“Yep. You know.”
Roy nods in time with the bobbing nose.
“I. Do.”
Long silence.
Had it worked?
Had Roy hoodwinked Old Guy into thinking he knows?
Roy asks,
“So. What’s yours?”
The gnarled nose stops woolgathering and pivots to stare at
Roy.
“What d’you mean, what’s mine?”
Roy’s eyebrows hike up his forehead.
“I mean. Your name.”
“Oh.”
The nose thinks.
sniff
“That was back in ’31.”
Roy scrambles to keep up.
“What was?”
sniff
“Th’ Sons, of course.”
Fresh confusion furrows Roy’s brow.
Between the turmoil of his befuddlement, and the tendency of
his nature, he stumbles. Against his better judgment, he blurts
out—
“What’re the Sons?”
Old Guy’s nose—previously bobbing, sometimes
woolgathering, always listening and thinking—jerks back inside
its home.
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY 1