God's Little Acre

from Uncle Albert's notebook (cahier)

So this is the kind of thing he does, Ted. Someone, anyone, mentions Erskine Caldwell to him, just in passing, and he decides he has to reread God's Little Acre, which he's sure he has but he doesn't, though he does have Tobacco Road. But it's not Tobacco Road that he wants to read, not that he remembers much of either of them, characters or plot. But he does remember, he says, how they felt, and it is God's Little Acre he wants to read again. Because someone mentioned Caldwell to him. In passing.
         So he finds a copy online somewhere, and he shuts himself away for an afternoon and an evening.

In between, at supper, he asks me if I knew Erskine Caldwell, and when I ask "How could I have?" he says he doesn't know but "You've known a lot of people." I shrug. I have, but no one more famous than the police chief of Paradise, Michigan. But he's thinking of the picture he's going to get his alter ego mel ball to make, me with Caldwell.

"What did you think of the book?" I ask him.
          "It's funny about these books I've read before, even the ones I bought for under two bucks in the seventies and eighties. I remember every word as soon as I read it again, but I never know what's going to happen next."
          He is the sweetest guy, but he's absolutely nuts. Or, not absolutely, not dangerously. As I said, he is "sweet." But his brain was set in his head or, I think, at some point it was reset - I don't remember his being an odd kid . . . . In any case, it's now askew. The hemispheres are out of line.
          "What's it about, the book?" I ask him.
          "Three things, at least: looking  for gold where there is none, shooting people who might be getting in your way, and religion." Then he paused. He was thinking. "No four: oral sex."
          He looked away and looked back again. "Cunnilingus." Once more he paused. " Why does that word sound so nasty?" he half-sang under his breath, turning away again, heading into the next room, probably thinking that anyone that might have had his picture "taken" with Erskine Caldwell wouldn't catch the reference.
                                                                                         12/15/23