(part 2)Living with Carmon, I began to learn firsthand that many sources of protein come from animals, in one form or another. I even adjusted to eliminating the middleman. The one thing I never got used to was the cleaning. We established quite early in our marriage that I would cook – and even eat – almost anything he could hunt or catch. What I would not do was clean it. That agreement worked well for most game.
Unfortunately, birds presented a unique problem not covered by our agreement. In order to pluck the birds, Carmon had to dunk them into a large pot of boiling water. There are no words in human language to describe the smell. He tried to minimize the odor by placing the kettle of water on a kitchen chair on the porch. It helped, but not much. I remember one particular batch of birds on a Saturday afternoon. I caught one whiff through an open window and spent the rest of the day on my knees in front of the toilet. The only redeeming factor from that experience was that we didn’t need any expensive medical testing to confirm what we’d already suspected. I was definitely pregnant.
~ ~
~
Andy Griffith once said, “First babies
lurk.” He could have been describing my
eldest. I suspect most women, like me,
found the last few weeks of pregnancy to be longer than all the previous months
combined. I was big. I was awkward. I couldn’t sit or stand without help. I couldn’t sleep. I mean, where do you put your other
leg? And still the baby “lurked.”
It wasn’t easy for Carmon, either. In those days, dads didn’t take Lamaze classes with their wives. They weren’t allowed in delivery rooms or even labor rooms in most cases. Childbirth was a secret part of a woman’s world and from just after conception until about age two, the whole thing was a mystical sorority from which men were excluded. That may have explained his regression to a childhood behavior that almost landed him in jail.
Every night for a week, we had gone to
bed thinking “tonight’s got to be the night.” Every morning we woke up knowing
it hadn’t been. By the time the weekend
arrived, Carmon was about to drive me crazy.
In desperation, I suggested that he invite another of his high school
friends to the apartment for the evening.
I was too uncomfortable to go anywhere.
The two men spent the evening reminiscing – reliving every hunting season since they were 12 – while Lynn and I talked babies. That was when Carmon had his brilliant idea. In his boredom over the weeks of waiting, he had made himself what he called a flipper – a homemade slingshot. He and his buddy decided they would take the flipper and go hunt for pigeons under the Mill Avenue Bridge in Tempe. I thought it sounded like a truly idiotic idea and Lynn went into a panic. She was terrified that I would go into labor and have that baby right there in the living room before they could get home. I reassured her that from what I understood about the process, it didn’t happen quite that fast, but I was irritated with Carmon nonetheless.
An hour went by, then two. Around midnight, as I was about to file a missing persons report, Carmon and his buddy came in the door. A Tempe policeman had stopped them and had nearly arrested them on suspicion of heaven-only-knows-what. He just couldn’t believe that two grown men would be under the Mill Avenue Bridge in the middle of the night doing nothing more than hunting pigeons with a slingshot. Can you imagine? But I’ve got to give the policeman his due: He didn’t know Carmon as I knew him!
© Gebara Education,
2001. No portion of this book may be
copied by any method without the express written permission of the author. Picture of pigeon-pot-pie from www.honest-food.net.
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