Breakfasts With Vernon

Raisin' Up Catfish: Forty

The first time Vernon let me keep his truck overnight, he told me to pick him up the next morning, in front of his house at ten of five.

“Ten of five sharp,” he said!

Nervous about being late, I showed up at twenty of, figuring I'd wait outside in the truck till he was ready. But somewhere in what must surely be one of its finer chapters, the delightful and complicated book of Southern Hospitality dictated to Patsy Lou Rasmusson, Vernon's pretty, young wife, that she could not possibly leave me outside in the dark while her porcine husband sat hunched over the breakfast table stuffing his face. She waved from the doorway and yoo-hooed me in the second morning for a hot mug of coffee and a honey bun while Vernon finished his meager breakfast: three eggs, grits, a fried ham steak, coffee and fresh-baked biscuits smothered in cane syrup.

After a few days of this treatment, I sensed Vernon was coming to appreciate the extra few minutes my presence afforded him, as well as the captive audience, a development which pleased me immensely, for I too had come to want each delightful aspect of these morning sessions to continue, though for reasons of my own.

Sitting there inside their homey little trailer with a chipped mug of steaming coffee in my callused hands, I tried not to be too obvious as I studied the plump, nightgowned figure of Vernon’s cute little wife bustling about in the kitchen from the hormone-enraged corner of my eye. I snuck what direct peeks I could not resist of her half-veiled form, occasionally running straight into her smiling eyes. Sheesh!

Once I’d been caught, oops, I mostly I kept my eyes either trained on Vernon's food-filled face, pictures in the hunting magazine he was inevitably reading aloud from, or the criss-cross pattern of their waxed linoleum floor.

I worried myself tighter than a fiddle string then trying not to replay Vernon's innumerable, juicy descriptions of Patsy Lou when she leaned over to warm my coffee in her nighty. She smelled soft and earthy, like sleep, with just a trace of yesterday's perfume. Her round face and her momma’s pretty nose retained that innocent, heavy-eyed look of someone just awakened, and I could see why Vernon worshipped her so. As Bone's youngest daughter, she had obviously inherited his green eyes and sugary smile, but Vernon's daily replays of their forenight's musky ecstasies convinced me she was heir to something more of Bone's as well. My mind fairly raced.

During heated inner battles, I reasoned that she was probably still in her nighty because she intended to snuggle back into bed once Vernon left for work, a vision I adored for the tingly rush of blood it inspired in my lower regions.

Finally, after several mornings of sipping coffee with a hard-on, I had to confront the delicious question of why this confident, dreamy creature never bothered to put on a robe, and then embarrassed myself by discovering the hope that she was aware of the dilemma it created for me and taking some pleasure in it.

Aware or not, her sleepy-eyed performance made it damned hard to get up and leave that warm kitchen in thin cotton work pants without exposing every sweet thought I had been thinking. So I forced myself, during those final few minutes of each visit, while Vernon polished off his enormous breakfast to really scrutinize whatever new hunting article or rifle he was blathering on about, focusing with all my might against my steamy temptations to lust. Truth was, I never heard or cared a whit about what Vernon was reading into the otherwise, electric air. I forced myself to focus simply because I couldn't risk a good-bye peek at the wondrous half-truths young, Mrs. Rasmusson’s nightgown revealed.

It was wonderful, really! Sweet, guilty tortures suffered joyfully and without complaint. Morning after morning, while Vernon belched and chewed, farted and read aloud: Field and Stream, Guns and Ammo, Outdoor Life, I sat in his tidy kitchen, enjoying hot coffee, thin nighties and snippets of delicious fantasy. His daily stories of Patsy's sexual artistry had always made me blush and sweat, but add to that mix, these fragrant, visual pantomimes of her half-veiled body before me, and ….Jeezus!

I thought I’d bust a vein. Or maybe an inseam.

Vernon didn’t have a clue, poor sap! He blindly assumed I was following right along as he read aloud. Doubtful he could even imagine otherwise. I mean it was Field and Stream after all.

Patsy knew though, and she knew that I knew. Best of all, with all that ‘knowing’ going on, nothing ever changed. Apparently, the little lady liked an appreciative audience.

---

When I was fifteen I lived in a boarding house in Mississippi during the summer and worked, seventy and more hours each week …on a catfish farm where I earned just a dollar an hour. The work was honest, if the circumstances surrounding it were not. My mother was dating the fish farm’s married owner. His wife wrote and signed my paychecks every week. He knew I knew. I knew he knew. I was both liability and oddity, a hard worker trying like hell to be worthy of my paycheck rather than the nuisance brat of some fancy piece of tail.

It was complicated.

Though some of the more vulnerable chapters are only available to paying subscribers there are nearly twenty from this unfolding collection, which are not behind the paywall. To find them, please click on Raisin’ Up Catfish in the menu bar at the top of my Substack home page. If you’d like to read all of them posted up so far and those yet to come, please consider becoming a paying subscriber.