"Aw shoot, son. The world ain't gonna end just 'kuz you got woman problems," he told his nephew, but it just didn't do the trick.
"My world ended, I'm gonna go get a rope and find me a tree to swang from."
"No yer not, Bo. Come off it. Whatcha really gonna do?"
"Well, I thought about maybe going over to that psychic lady's trailer and seein' if she can't make me a potion or something."
"Betty Sue? You mean that lady with the big sign out in her front yard says she'll read your tare-rot cards?"
"Uncle," Bo just snickered, "ain't you got no sense in your head, Jessie? It's not tare-rot. It's tare-rote cards."
"Boy, don't sass me!" Jessie said. "Sides, she ain't got no cards can work for you. She only knows how to read them city-boy cards, come from some far off foreign country. Like France or Massachusetts. I can read your future better than she can any ol' day!"
"You done flipped yer lid, Uncle," Bo declared. "You ain't got no psychic intoo-witchin. You just an ol' country turd who sits on his ol' rocker and whittles ducks all day."
"Aint' got no psychic stuff in me, you say? Shoot, I'll go get MY cards," the old man said. Bo was beside himself. Did his uncle really know how to read them tare-rote cards or was he shittin' him? He waited to find out, till his unc came in with a little bittly tackle box, from which he opened and took out a deck of cards, sure 'nuff, all tied together with a dirty rubber band.
"What are those s'posed to be?" he asked.
"Those foreigner cards can't read no for-chin for us normal people. We ain't got ourselves all pierced and tattooed, and we don't sing them weird Chinese songs where everyone sounds like bad plumbin'. Naw, these here are my Redneck Tare-rote cards!"
"Redneck Tare-rote? Well, I'll be! You eat too many paint chips or somethin'?"
Uncle Jessie didn't bother to answer the young boy. He just started shufflin' and told him to cut them into three stacks. Then Jessie picked 'em up again and started layin' 'em out, one by one.
"Alright, boy. This first card tells you what the matter is." He laid one down and Bo could see what it was.
"Hey, whatcoo think you tryin' to tell me?" He got all flustered up.
"I ain't tellin' you nuttin. It's the cards." The card had a total idiot drivin' around in an old Gremlin, just about to go over a cliff. "The first card is THE PLUM FOOL. And that's probably what yer problem is. You just go off and do stupid shit and don't bother askin' her if she don't like it none."
"Why you take that back, you old geezer!"
"Hey, watch whatcher callin' me. I know you went and blew all yer money on a new tractor when she'd told you to save it all up for the prom. Then you couldn't rent a suit and you had to take her in your only pair of jeans that ain't got no holes in 'em."
Bo had to admit, he had a point. "Well," he said, "I reckon. What else do they say?"
"Well yer next card is gonna tell you what crosses ya. In other words, what really gets yer goat." He could see the boy didn't understand, so he just laid it on out there. "It's
the THREE OF POCKETKNIVES.
You see how they're all stuck in that big red heart? You've got
a broken heart.""Well shoot, I already told you that," Bo said.
Uncle Jessie just looked at 'em funny and said,"Hush up! Can't you see the cards know what your problem is? Don't interrupt me no more. Now this next card here's gonna tell you what's goin on in that noggin of yers." He sat another card down and it showed a big ol Egyptian guy driving in a mighty truck. "Your next card's THE 18 WHEELER. This tells me that you're all worried about where yer tryin' to get to and beatin' everyone else down that road that ya don't care none about who ya hurt along the way." (Most of them yankee decks call this card THE CHARIOT.)
"Shoot," Bo said. "First ya got me drivin a Gremlin, now I'm in a big ass truck! I say I'm makin some progress!"
"That's my point. You don't listen none. You gots to stop worryin' about where you tryin' to get to and look at where ya are! Look, yer next card's your past, or some dumbass thing you used to do that gotcha into this mess. It's called the ACE OF 2X4'S."
"The what?" he asked.
"You know, two by fours. See, the aces are beginin's, and 2x4's are s'posed to be about intelligence and stuff. You started out bein' real smart and all. Why we used to say you had a lot of potential. But I think somewhere along the way you got dropped on the head or somethin', cuz you just ain't got no sense anymore."
"Well will I ever get smarter?" he wanted to know.
"Well, let's see. This next card's what you can probably be if ya worked hard enough." He turned it over and saw a big ol' boy standin' next to an open hood of a car. He was wearin' a white shirt with some red overalls. On a table next to 'em was a mug of beer, a great buzzsaw layin flat, a screwdriver, and the guy was holdin' up a big ass wrench with is right hand. "It's THE MECHANIC. You're pretty good at lookin' at radiators, ain't ya?"
"Shoot, I thought I was. But
old Herbert down at the Pep Boys told me I gotta learn some more
before he'd hire me.""Well get off yer duff and start learnin', you lazy couch p'tater. Whatta ya want to do with the rest of yer life, sack groceries at the Food Lion?"
"Alright! I'll get over there and start watchin' 'em. Jesus H. Christ, old man!"
"Don't you go takin' our Lord's name in vain, you little whippersnapper. Now the next card's gonna tell you what's gonna happen in your future." He turned it over and Bo saw a beautiful blond chick with a full rack. She was pointin' to some letters while a big wheel was spinnin'. "It's the WHEEL OF FORTUNE," Jessie told him.
"I'm gonna go on the Wheel of Fortune show?" Bo asked.
"No, no no, you ain't got enough sense to get on that show," Jessie said. "You'd probably ask to buy a vowel and then choose a dubbayoo. You see how this card came out all upside-down?"
"What's that mean, Uncle?" Bo asked.
"It means you gonna lose all you got. You gonna go broke. And you ain't got much, so that ain't gonna be no big change."
"Oh Jesus! I mean," he caught himself. "Am I really gonna be busted? What happens to me?"
"Well let's see. The next card is where you at now." He sat it down and saw a pair of scales, held up by an old man that looked familiar.
"Aint' that-" Bo started to ask.
"That's right! Your next card is JUDGE WOPPNER. But lookie here, it's all upside-down too. That tells me that you gonna lose some case. Probbly some ol' Yankee lawyer's gonna take all yer money from ya."
"Why? What I do?"
"With you? Ain't no tellin'. Let's look at yer next card and see. This one's gonna tell me what's been up between you and other people." He flipped it over and there was a big woman just sprawled out on a couch, wearing a huge white housedress. She had on a crown, and she was watchin Jerry Spring and all them daytime TV shows that women like to watch. Like "All My Chillens" and Another Trailer Park."
"Good Gawd! What's
that supposed to be?" Bo asked."That there card is THE TRAILER QUEEN. It's the card of motherhood. You didn't go and knock Peggy Lee up, did ya?"
Bo was suddenly 'fraid. "Oh no!" he said.
"You ain't been forgettin' to use them rubbers like I taught ya, have you boy?"
"No sir, I mean-"
"Well, ain't ya or what?"
"Well," he stuttered, "I didn't have one the other night, so I took my last fifty cents and went to the Stuckey's to get one from the machine."
"So you had one on, didn't ya?"
"It took my damened money!"
"Oh, Bo. What in the hell did you go an' do that for?"
"Well I used a sock."
"A sock? Oh my Lord, you been smokin' that wacky weed again. A sock ain't gonna do ya no good, boy!"
"Well I didn't know!"
"That's cuz you're a plum fool, like I said. Look, we gots two more cards to go, and I ain't gonna miss the beginnin' of that Nascar today. So let's hurry it up."
"What's the next card mean?"
"Now you just hold your horses. I'm tryin' to remember. I think it's what you're 'fraid of bein' when you grow up. Somethin' like that." He turned the next card over
and
saw and old man wanderin' lost in the night. He was leanin' on
a can and he had a huge flashlight in his hand. "It's THE
OLD FART," Jessie said. "You're scared of getting' old
and not knowin' where the hell you're headin'. I don't know why.
It should be what you're used to.""Just tell me that last card."
"Alright. It's," he didn't like what he saw on the table in front of him.
"The Farm? My last card's
called The Farm?" And indeed that's what it said. It had
a shriveled up old guy swingin a sickle and cutting stuff down.
The closer Bo looked the scarder he became. It was the thirteenth
card of the Major Arkanny, and that was a bad thing. "Hey,
that guy's-""Yep. It's a skeleton. It's a bad card. That last one's tellin' you overall what you should do, I think. And this ain't good."
"Why's it called THE FARM, Uncle Jessie?"
"Cuz you're gonna buy it."
"I'm gonna buy a farm?"
"No, you dipshit. You gonna buy THE farm!"
"Oh my Lord, Jessie? What am I gonna do?"
"My guess? Stay away from Peggy Lee's daddy. I hear he got him one of those new buckshot rifles with that laser dommahicky on it. I'd get the hell outta town b'fore she gets one of them home tests and finds out the rabbit died!"
SMITTEN YOUNG'ENS,
and THE WATER TOWER, where your sister's name was painted by some
idiot, and you gotta go out and paint over it to defend her honor.
