Issue 22 - 1992

Blue Lick
Chris Offutt
Coe Review • Issue 22
The funny-talked lady gave me a ten page test that like to
drove me blind marking in little circles no bigger than a baby catfish
eye. When I was done, she said I was precocious. Then she called
me a poor dear and I got mad on account of Daddy telling me never
to let nobody say we were poor. He said to fight them if they did. I
put my dukes up and she saw how mad I was and asked me whatever
for in that funny-talked way of hers.
I told her straight out, and she said, “I don’t mean poor like
that, there’s other ways.” She just set and looked at me, real pale like
she never got out much. On her back was a new flannel shirt, still yet
with the folding marks not wore out. She wore red-laced shiny boots
and jeans. I’d never seen a woman wear blue jeans before unless it
was somebody’s granny but she wasn’t that old. I put my fists back
down.
She kept looking at me like I was some kind of black snake
that you ain’t supposed to kill or the rats will eat you out. If you see
one you just watch that old snake to make sure it don’t get too close.
My Daddy said he went and chopped a black snake in half when he
was little, and his own Daddy tied him to a bucket and lowered him
down a well over killing it. Daddy seen stars and it full day. Down
below it was blacker than a cow’s insides and the brick well-walls
were slick as snot on a glass doorknob. He said they’ve got glass
ones down to the courthouse. Daddy ought to know because he’s
been there plenty, which is why I took them precocious tests
anyhow.
She wasn’t a state lady and she wasn’t from town. She was
some kind of lady from off that got sent here over me and my
brother, who can’t talk plain. He can’t say his Rs or his Ls, and
there’s some sounds he don’t even know. I’m the one to understand
him most. He ain’t precocious. What he is, is a singer, singing made
up stuff. Daddy calls him Little Elvis.
That lady, she went and reached her hand over mine and it
was the smoothest thing, smoother than a horse’s nose hole, which
is pure soft. She held my hand like you do a frog when you’re fixing
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