Issue 22 - 1992

Coe Review • Issue 22
Because Little Elvis wanted to be a man, I took him out to
the White House and we hung our feet down through the hole. He
sung, “We’re stinking our feet like old dead meat,” over and over.
Mud-daubers had tunnelled a nest in a high corner and I seen them
but it was too late. They landed on Little Elvis’s head and started
biting and he tried to run, but forgot he was stinking his feet and fell
down through the hole. He grabbed hold of my legs. Then the muddaubers
were on me and I was screaming and Granny come out and
said later she’d thought one of us had an eye poked out from all the
hollering. She saw me half down the toilet hole and took me by the
arm like I was laundry. Granny worked past me to snatch Little Elvis
by the hair and haul him up, his head one red bump from muddauber
bites and his feet stinking all the way past his knees. Granny
about busted the White House roof off laughing. She said Daddy fell
in once when he was a boy, and Little Elvis thought that made it ok.
“In here?” he said. “Daddy fell in here?”
“No it was a different place,” Granny said.
What they did back then was move the White House when
the hole filled up and she said Daddy’s old hole was over where the
turnips were growing now. Little Elvis got the idea that Daddy’s feet
stunk from turnips. He stomped them all summer, not leaving none
to eat, and groundhogs got the mush. He’d lay in the dirt and sing,
“Daddy’s feet don’t get burn up cause he mashed them in a turnip.”
The only way of keeping him out of the garden was tying him to the
door but Granny’s hands were too stiff and twisty for making good
knots. I turned him loose every day.
We called Granny the fuck-you-bitch to her face because she
locked us outside till dark and made us take our clothes off and
hosed us down before we could eat supper. We weren’t allowed to
wear anything in the house because of the dirt. All summer our shirt
and pants laid outside till morning. Sometimes we found Daddy
laying out there, too. His head hurt so bad he had me to water him
with the hose. Little Elvis would grin and sniff at Daddy’s boots so
he’d know man-smell against the time he was one. Daddy said we
were a damn sure pair of stand up boys.
When the sun moved over the ridge, he crawled to shade and
along noon he’d light a cigarette and talk to us. “Shoot to kill,” he
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