He was Wesley Thompson's uncle. Wesley (who
stood 6' 10") was a good friend in high school so I heard the story when
it happened. The uncle's name was Caleb and he was one of those Norwegian
bachelor farmers Garrison Keller talks about all the time except that Caleb was
a redneck bachelor farmer. He lived alone about a half mile from his next-door
neighbor and had a reputation even among the other farmers in the area for
having a set of social skills significantly less well developed than what one
would except to find in, for example, a barn owl. He was a creature of habit,
so much so that you would probably call it OCD. He always wore a pair of one
galosh over-all. Some say he only had one pair and ,therefore, never needed to waste time going laundry. I cannot confirm
this. It has been pointed out that he raised hogs and was none too careful
about hygienic conditions in their one large pen. He was very good about
pumping plenty of water out in and keeping the hogs well feed and was
apparently considered a good and considerate master by hogs who thrived under
his care and had no complaint. But Caleb never saw the need to pump anything
back out. Some say that the result was living proof that hogs will happily
wallow in anything that is kept wet and cool, which is what Caleb always
assumed, perhaps because their standard of hygiene so closely matched his own
that Caleb saw no reason to believe that his hogs were any more fastidious than
he was.
There was an odor that was hard
enough to ignore that his next-door neighbors, a family who had worked the same
land since the civil war, talked seriously about the possibility of relocation.
But, honestly, even they, being closest to the source, could not say for
certain what exactly made a shift in the wind that put them dead center
down-wind from the Thompson place so memorable. A gas station a little further
down the road did close down but they were corporate-owned and had only been
there a year or two. Folks assumed that the decision to buy land and build
there was made on a day when the Thompson place was upwind of a strong breeze.
A farmer about a mile down the road, who traveled around the country working
construction when he was younger, always claimed that this was obvious and
cited it as proof that the "big bosses" never listen to a damn thing
the people doing the actual work involved in building anything try to tell
them.
Anyway''''. Caleb always began
his day by smoking a Swisher Sweet cigar while he sat in his out-house waiting
for his morning call of nature to be answered. Caleb never saw the need to
waste money on in-door plumbing or to pump shit, human or hog, out of a place
where it was not bothering anyone. An odd thing about Methane gas is that it is
heaver than air. If you really did want to make the closest thing to a lead
balloon that you could manage, you would fill it with Methane. If you put shit
in a pit and leave it there long enough, it eventually turns to Methane and
stays put right where the original shit was dumped.
Caleb, being a creature of habit,
had begun his day with exactly the same ritual every morning for the last
thirty years, without ever having the slightest problem that would have alerted
him to any danger involved in continuing to do as he had done all his adult
life. He would light his Swisher Sweet, step in the privy (French for
"private place", explaining the term "privy council"), drop
his one galosh overalls and smoke contentedly while he waited patiently for the
welcome relief that had always quickly come before, just as it did once more on
this occasion. Caleb would then toss the un-smoked portion of his Swisher Sweet
into the hole he uncovered in rising, pull up his one galosh overalls and give
the hogs their breakfast. How could Caleb have known that today was the day, thirty
years in the making, when an ever larger and thicker earth-bound cloud of
Methane gas had finally achieved critical mass, making the introduction of his
still-lighted Swisher Sweet most unfortunate.
Caleb went out in a blaze of
glory that broke a window or two next door and was buried in a closed casket
for painfully obvious reasons. The hogs survived their master by only a day
before being declared unfit for human consumption and sent to join Caleb in
whatever version of heaven would seem heaven to them all given their unique
habits and deeply treasured pleasures. I heard of all this and had to say
something to Wesley. This was the only time in my life when I have had to offer
condolences while carefully avoiding even the hint of a smirk. Wesley responded
by inviting me to go ahead and laugh since no one, not even Caleb's immediate
family, could help but notice how appropriate to the character of the man and
his manner of life his passing had been. He died as he had lived and, besides,
had not suffered at the end for any longer than it takes several sticks of
dynamite to remove a troublesome stump from a field.
