other social climbers, who for the most part act as if cut from the same bolt of khaki cloth—all alike they are—forming a well-oiled machine of excruciatingly boring pretense.
Naturally, there are exceptions and I have friends, along with a mother-in-law, who frequent the country club, and quite a few friends (make that one) in the Junior League, to which I was never invited. Well, Sugahs, no wonder. None of them would be caught dead talking out in full public view with Brewster, yet, in my mind, people are people and if someone’s entertaining, I don’t care if he’s half orangutan.
Give me the weirdoes and kooks. Forget the Junior Leaguers, bless their hearts, for not inviting me to join. Why, I could have brought color and zest and energy into that organization. I could have taught them how to find Kate Spade bags at Goodwill and how to let their hair down and go wild. I might even give them verbal lessons like that Jenna Jameson Mega Huss, who wrote How to Make Love like a Porn Star , only mine would be called, How to Give Old Faithful the Ride of His Life: Even If It’s Only on His Birthday or Christmas .
Which brings me exactly to what Brewster enjoyed—the ride of his life. And, no, it wasn’t provided by me.
For the record, in case he’s still kicking around and comes searching for me, as he did the time the snapping turtle nearly bit off his 11-inch trouser serpent (he says 11 inches, but believe you me, I would NOT know), I’m not living in this country anymore. I’m in Guam. Not really but that’s the information I want Brewster to have in his reddish purple head.
He got mad when I wrote the story about the turtle going after his jibblybob. Guess he was afraid the snapper would prevent him from ever entertaining another girl with his wondrous willy.
But let’s not put the turtle before the horse. First, Brewster’s horse-capades. Later, I’ll tell you about his tango, which led to near bloodshed and dismemberment with the massive-jawed snapping turtle.
Brewster’s not particularly proud of what he did, and it took six months of stopping by his trailer, begging and cajoling to get the full story. He knew that if he told it in bits and pieces, one scene at a time, I’d keep stopping by, being the kind of journalist I was and wanting the full story.
One summer evening as he watered his tomatoes and gravel driveway and doused his brain with beer, it all flowed out like the keg he wished was on his porch instead of the old Sony TV with the picture tube shattered from what appeared to be a man’s booted foot.
Brewster was a former army veteran who likes to tinker with cars and grow his own fruits and marijuana, and that day, while slurring his words, his clouded blue eyes going their separate ways in his cranberry-red head, he uttered, “Ain’t nobody gonna ever forget my ass. I’ll go down in history, just like Rudolph the red-fucking-nose reindeer.”
I was glad my baby girl wasn’t yet two and prayed she’d forget his bad language. It may be a stretch, though, since she seems to pick up bad words faster than a bird can snap up worms.
I’ll never forget how I learned this little lesson. It was after my husband had come home from a late-night gig and our baby girl was up in the middle of the night as usual.
“How’s Daddy’s little darlin’?” Tidy Stu asked, getting smack dab in her face.
“ASS!” she said. “ASS! ASS! ASS!” (What a smart baby I had.) “I’m gonna whup yo ass.”
That’s what Tidy gets for letting a toddler watch Eddie Murphy movies all day instead of Blue’s Clues .
“Try to watch your language, Brewster,” I said, cocking my head toward my child. “She’s like a Pest Strip about catching cuss words and retaining them.”
Brewster grinned, a few dark holes in his mouth where most of the molars had evacuated, and then he started telling the whole story about what had happened in the mid-1980s when he made North Carolina history—on horseback.
“I’ll get to that in a minute,” he said, knowing I was waiting on that full story like a starved animal staring at a caged bowl of raw hamburger. He wanted to tease me with his other tales first. Wanted to tell me his entire life’s story.
I sat on a large rock, ready for his long and winding string of escapades. The conversation turned to his past. Seems he had lots of careers, and before he’d tell me about what happened on that horse he beat around the bush and stalled to keep me hanging on.
“I was an orderly in the army,” he said. “And it was my job to shave up all the vaginas before we’d take out the uteruses.” Oh, my Lord. Here was a MAN talking about va-gee-gees and uteri, if that would be the plural of uterus, but probably not.
I was stunned. “Orderlies can’t take out uteruses.”
“They sure can if there aren’t enough doctors. We were in a war here. Vietnam. It was rough and women wanted them out for this and that reason or another. It was my job to soap them up real good and squirt Betadine all over them and shave them beavers bald. Then, if a doctor could be found, he’d use the salad tongs and pull the thing out.”
I was transfixed, watching him drink, smoke and turn redder by the minute.
“Did you know”—he asked with more seriousness than I’d ever seen him exhibit—“that the uterus is a pear-shaped organ?”
Oh, me. Why couldn’t he just talk about his own organs like all other men fixated on their swelling, bothersome prostates and PSA levels?
After he spoke of yanking uteruses out of suffering women, he bragged about going to Jamaica and working as a naked dancer. He also told me he passed out in the middle of the ocean after scuba diving and lay on top of the water for eleven hours without drowning, even while surrounded by sharks. He’d been hitting the tequila that day.
I didn’t know what to believe, but once he got onto the story about the horse, I checked it out with the police and arresting officer and it all panned out as the gospel truth.
On that famous day in North Carolina history, Brewster woke up hungover as usual and made a breakfast of eggs and Old Milwaukee. Maybe a bit of toast. As the day progressed so did his drinking, and by nightfall this colorful character was ready to go rebel-rousing. Only his mother, who lies and says she’s 42, which is younger by ten years than Brewster is, stood in the road in her housecoat and wouldn’t let him drive one of the many half-broken-down cars scattered about his property.
“You ain’t a’goin nowhere, buddy,” she said, spitting a wad onto the ground. “You’s drunk as a drowned rat and I’ll lay in this road like a suicidal possum, and you’ll have to kill me if you think you’re hitting up the dives and pool halls tonight.”
It all stemmed from beer and loneliness as he sat home that fateful night, clock ticking toward the hour when most brush their teeth and slip on their jammies. Instead of going to bed, where he definitely belonged, he’d gotten a notion to visit a Patton Avenue watering hole, which is real close to downtown Asheville.
“Rather than driving the truck,” he said, “I thought it would be better to saddle up my stallion than drink and drive.”
He saddled up Ol’ Smokey, all right, but it was more of a mule-looking thing than a stallion, though you have to realize all men love to use the word “stallion” every chance they get. “Hey, hon, wanna check out my stallion tonight?” “Oh, baby, my stallion’s been thinking of your sexy body all day.” And so on.
Somehow, a very drunk and staggering Brewster managed to guide the horse down Hooper’s Creek Road. But even in the darkness, he recognized a familiar face coming toward him, moon flowing through her white nightgown and giving her the appearance of an apparition, one of Heaven’s more menacing angels.
“You better get home with that horse before I break me off a switch,” his mother growled, her moonlit face set in that Lord-help-me look mothers of wild boys often wear. I tried to imagine her switching a 52-year-old man.
Brewster ignored his mama, and waved good-bye like the Lone Ranger with a full tank. He figured Ol’