TheBanyanTree: My Favorite Cecil Story

[Tom Smith]

Cecil, ol' buddy, thanks for the laughs on this one:

From: ctalley at cyberg8t.com (Cecil Talley)
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 10:31:05 -0800
Subject: Spoon: Short tall tales #2

Setting: Some deer hunters are roughing it in a shack on a big ranch in
South Texas and passing the time with tall tales and friendly insults while
waiting for the season to open.

                                                Would A Texan Lie?

                                                                2.
                                                   The Haunted Cabin


        "How about throwing some chow together, Tom?" suggested Rex
Kimball. "I'm hungry."
        "I second the motion," said Bill Stasey.
        "Okay," Tom agreed, "but you're gonna have to give me some room.
You boys are crowdin' around that stove like 'possums around a dead sheep."

        "Cap," said Rex, "didn't you live in Arkansas when you were a kid?
What did you do for kicks? I mean other than hunt 'possums and chase your
sisters?" Cap Thomas was a gaunt man in his fifties and had been brought up
by foster parents, having known neither his father nor his mother. As a
soldier, he had rescued a child from a burning hut in Viet Nam and had
sustained severe burns over much of his body. His face was severely
scarred, giving him a grotesque appearance but not affecting his sense of
humor.
        "Glad you asked," he said. Following is his yarn:

        Me and Jasper Carbuncle growed up together back in Peagoober,
Arkansas, and when we was kids we spent a lot of time down on the creek or
just rambling through the woods. Sometimes we would knock wasp nests out of
trees.
        Jasper had a kind of scientific mind and liked to do a lot of
experimenting. Some of our experiments had to do with insects with milder
tempers than wasps have. If they did get mad at us they didn't have the
equipment to fight back like wasps do. We used a lot of bugs of one kind or
another in our little projects. Maybe y'all never heard of a June bug, but
it is a big beetle that likes to fly more than crawl.
        We would catch some and tie strings to their hind legs and let them
fly like little balloons while we held the ends of the strings. Then
sometimes we would clip their wings a little at a time to see how short the
wings had to be before they couldn't fly no more.
        Other times we would catch big black bugs that lived in holes in
the ground and pull off their legs on one side and watch them go around in
circles. All this, mind you, was in the interest of science. We wanted to
measure their degree of intelligence by seeing if they could figure out a
way to get back into their holes in the ground.
Years later we talked about this and agreed it was a cruel thing to do. I
mean, that's just no way to treat a bug. Heck, if you're gonna pull half
the legs off a bug, the least you can do is guide it back in its hole.
        When Jasper got out of high school he developed a warped mind and
went on to college. I never could understand his twisted way of thinking.
The way I see it, the more you study, the more you learn. The more you
learn, the more you know. The more you know, the more you forget. And the
more you forget, the less you know. Just a dad-gum waste of time.
        But Jasper was hard-headed and wouldn't listen to my sound advice.
Now the pore old guy is stuck with a big fine house in Beverly Hills and
three expensive cars. I think he also bought himself a big luxury yacht,
and now he can't keep up with all the beautiful women hanging around
begging for dates. That would drive me crazy.
        I think all that education screwed up his mind even more than that.
He got so he didn't even believe in ghosts no more. One time when he was in
his second or third year of college he came home on vacation, and I
happened to mention a haunted house up in the mountains of the north woods.
The north woods was about ten miles north of where we lived.
        They say if you stay in the old deserted cabin at night a ghost
will appear and remind you of all your sins before turning you into a
termite and setting you down on a petrified log in Arizona. I told that to
Jasper, and he actually accused me of being gullible for believing it. He
even said I was superstitious. Can you imagine anybody dumb enough to doubt
that there is any such thing as a ghost?
        He even went so far as to declare that education and enlightenment
are the direct opposites of superstitious beliefs. Boy, he had really gone
off his rocker! Like a know-it-all he started giving me a lecture about
people who believe in ghosts.
"Ghosts," he said, "exist only in caliginous minds because of fear and the
ignorance of the laws of nature."
        Now that was a real revelation to me. I mean, I just hadn't
realized my mind  was calisinous.
        "When one becomes cognizant of the immutable laws that govern the
universe," he went on, "he also becomes aware that all phenomena, no matter
how seemingly contrary to those laws, actually are explainable in terms in
perfect harmony with said laws, although the logical explanation thereof
may not be readily apparent. The point is that every occurrence has a
perfectly plausible and logical explanation and is the result of natural
law in operation. Otherwise it would be totally impossible."
        He sort of had me going there, and I had to agree. "Yeah, and if it
is totally impossible," I said, "it probably won't happen." Which proves
that just because he had some education didn't mean he could out logic me.
        "Exactly," he sez. "I'm gratified that you now realize that ghosts
are merely figments of ignorant people's fertile imaginations."
        "Hold on there," I sez. "Just a dad-gum minute. I don't realize no
sich a thing. Who is to say that ghosts ain't one of them there phenomenas
that ain't readily apparent?"
        "Don't be absurd, Cap," Jasper sez. "If there were ghosts, they
would be manifestations of the supernatural. Otherwise they would not be
ghosts, and as we have seen, the supernatural simply does not exist."
        "Just the same," I sez, "I wouldn't want to spend a night up there
in that cabin."
        Like I said, Jasper can be kind of hard headed. "I would not be
apprehensive in the least. If there is danger there it is most assuredly
not due to dead people. It's the live ones that pose a threat."
        "Okay, O Wise One," I sez. "If you ain't a-skeered suppose you just
mosey up there and spend the night."
        "If I do spend the night there and no misfortune befalls me, will
you believe me?"
        "Sure, unless you are turned into a termite and won't admit it."
        "Now, Cap," he sez with just a hint of a sneer, "can't you see just
how absurd that is? Why don't you marshal your courage and accompany me?"
        "Well," I sez, "now that you put it that way, I'll do even better
than that. I'll go with you."
        So we put a few supplies together and hiked up to that there shack
in the mountains. We got there about an hour before dark and gathered some
dry wood for the old fireplace. The cabin had not been lived in since
Mother Nature was a virgin, and spider webs hung from the beams and
rafters. Now, I know some people call 'em cobwebs, but I ain't never seen a
cob spin a web. Anyhow, pack rats had got in there and left their sticks
and litter in the corners of the room.
        We cleaned up the place a little bit and got a fire going so we
could brew our tea and keep warm while we et our sandwiches. Then we spread
our sleeping bags on the floor and just sat there munching, sipping and
talking about ghosts that don't exist.
        "I hope this little adventure will lay to rest forever your stone
age notions," Jasper sez. "I think it's high time you discard all those
primitive concepts and emerge into the enlightened age of science and
civilization."
        "Yeah-uh-yes, I reckon-uh-suppose you are correct," I
sez-uh-responded, showing him that I can also use words of culture and
refinement.
        We went on talking about how there ain't no-I mean how ghosts do
not exist except in caliginous minds. We talked so long about it that I was
beginning to believe some of it myself. Then the fire died down and it
commenced to get dark and cold, so we decided to turn in for the night.
        We cocooned ourselves in our sleeping bags, and pretty soon we was
snoring. I ain't saying we was sleeping, just snoring. Maybe Jasper really
was asleep. I don't know. Me, I was putting on a little act. Every time I
told my body to relax, some part of it would say, "Hey, you relax. I'm
standing guard."
        Along about what I figured was close to midnight, I began getting
drowsy and dang near dozed off in spite of myself. That's when I seen this
eerie glow moving around in the room. It was just a green light floating
around in the pitch dark. Visions of black bugs with half of their legs
pulled off flashed through my caliginous mind. I didn't give it much
thought at the time, the time being about a tenth of a second. I mean, how
much thought can you give anything in a tenth of a second when running
thirty miles an hour up a steep hill and zipped up in a sleeping bag? And
as if that wasn't bad enough, I kept bumping into Jasper.
        A couple of days later I got to thinking we ought to go back up
there some bright sunny day and fix them two big holes we had made in the
wall when we left in a kind of a hurry. I mentioned it to Jasper, and he
mulled it over for a tenth of a second and said no.
        He made me swear with my hand placed on a stack of ghost stories
that I would never open my yap to a soul about the caper, but I didn't say
nothing about not telling it to people. Anyhow, I'm just a natural born
blabbermouth and never could be trusted to keep a secret.