Roger

Roger stopped by to see my uncle today. He arrived around 3 p.m. in a dusty blue pickup truck. I watched him creep up the drive from the mailbox to our farmhouse. A full five minutes passed before he honked the horn announcing his arrival.

Roger stepped out of the cab as I walked outside to greet him. He tugged at the brim of his baseball cap and called out, “I’m here to see Cletus.”

“He died,” I snapped back, surprised.

Roger didn’t move for a minute and then exclaimed, “Oh, man. When was this?” He took off the ball cap and wiped his brow.

“About 15 years ago,” I said. But my response didn’t seem to register.

“I knew Mike, too.,” Roger continued, referring to my great uncle Mike, who died in 1972.

“You live around here?” I asked.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Name’s Roger. I live about a half mile up the road.”

Roger’s speech was a bit slurred and when he walked toward me it was with a noticeable limp. He stood six feet tall and sported a scruffy brown beard that covered most of his ruddy complexion. He had the belly of a beer drinker and accented his bulge with a t-shirt one size too tight.

“Would you like to come in and sit down for a bit, Roger?” I asked, suspecting my mother would not approve.

“You have any beer?” he responded. “I had a couple in town. At the Dead Rabbit. Met a foreign gal there. Might have been Russian.”

“I think I have a beer in the fridge,” I said, leading him into the kitchen.

After Roger took a seat I searched the refrigerator and came up with a Coors Light. “I hope this is ok,” I said as Roger popped the top and took a long drink.

“So, Roger,” I began, sitting opposite him at the kitchen table. “Are you a farmer?”

“Naw,” he said. “I hunt a little. Trap some.” Roger paused. “Well, I used to. But that was before Rufus shot me.”

“That must have been horrible,” I said, hoping he would tell me more.

“It was a freak accident,” Roger explained. “The police reported it that way, anyway.”

I got Roger another beer. He settled back into the kitchen chair, took off the ball cap and set it on the table.

“I’d been hunting quail,” Roger told me. “I was loading up the truck. I put my 12-gauge across the seat and called my bird dog to get in.”

“I went around to the driver’s side and the damned dog was in my seat,” Roger continued. “I yelled at him to get out of the way. I was hungry and the Cardinals game was starting.”

“That’s when it happened,” Roger said, looking directly into my eyes. “Rufus stepped on the trigger and sent 27 pellets into my right butt cheek.”

“I heard a boom, saw smoke and thought, ‘Aw, shit,’ Roger said. “Scared the piss outta Rufus. Literally.”

“I was able to dial 911 on my cell, and the cops came eventually,” Roger told me. “Seemed like forever, though.”

Roger took a couple more sips of beer. “I forgave him,” he said. “Rufus,” he explained, as if I didn’t know who he meant.

“The police. They didn’t arrest him,” Roger said. “But they put in the report he didn’t have a hunting license.”

“Damned dog,” Roger said. Then he yawned.