Patch Pickin’

Something or someone had been eating Bob's watermelons. Figuring it was more likely someone, or two someones in particular, he stood over a pile of gnawed rinds and spat out seeds and cursed.

'It'll be them Phitzer boys, I spect.' He grumbled to himself, scratching his sweating scalp under his white straw hat.

Now, Bob would never begrudge a child a melon on a hot summer day, but it were manners to ask. And hadn't he told them 'xactly that the time afore, and the time afore that?

'Please and thank you don't cost nothin'.'

It was time to learn them boys a lesson, and Bob knew 'xactly how. He found an old zinc tub in the barn and picked up his hammer, and then he went and sat behind a blackberry bramble to wait. When those Phitzer boys came back to help their selfs to his melons again, Bob would bang the tub and holler, and scare the be-jiggers out of them!

Only they didn't. The day grew longer. And the sun burned hotter. And Bob dozed off. Waking up when the cool of the evening had raised goose-bumps on his bare arms. He waited a half hour more, before he gave up and went back to the house for a bite of supper and a sip of whiskey, telling himself he'd try again later.

The moon was high and bright when Bob crept back to the blackberry bramble. And dress him up and call him Loretta if the pile of gnawed melon rinds weren't higher! Somebody had gone and beat him to it. Somebody who didn't wear no shoes, if'n the footprints in the dust-dry red soil between the rows weren't figments of his 'magination.

That was when he heard it - The soft sweet pickin's of a guitar. Only it didn't sound right. It was too tinny. The kind of twang steel strings might make on a hollow tin. But that weren't possible.

Only one person in all the world ever played a biscuit tin flat-top.

Bob's voice caught at the back of his throat. 'Stumpy?'

'Ain't nobody else,' came the Pan-handle drawl.

'But you're... '

'Dead,' said the ghost of Stanley "Stumpy" Hollers. 'I spect so.'

'Is there really a heaven?' Asked Bob. 'What's it like?'

'There ain't no doors,' said Stumpy. 'No windows, neither. It's all just sunbeams and rainbows. And don't nobody wear shoes. See?'

Stanley wriggled his toes.

Bob hitched his bib-n-braces and scratched his stubbled chin. 'So, your crazy ol' Granny had the right of it?'

'No,' said Stanley sadly, shaking his head and spitting out a watermelon seed he'd been working away at with his tongue. 'But ain't it pretty to think so?'