Word: peg
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Peg lives off the main highway, a two-lane, black-top affair. A rutty dirt road leads to his gate and a sign warning off all trespassers not on foot. From a parked green Capri, the two flat-landers later seen by the source stared at us in a not altogether pleasant manner, and they were big and ugly and smelt sort of funny so I gave the biggest and ugliest of them--a bulging, pale fish-eyed creature with sweated-back hair and a dim-witted, monotone voice--a warm beer. He smiled...
...Peg was on the ground by his tub, searching for its plug, his aluminum construction hat glinting in the bulging evening-got-up-in-drag-as-afternoon sky. Ruddy bearded and freckled all over and pale where his clothes would have been, he said the tub would soon be filled. His kids screamed about with the ducks and geese--silently, Peanut, his youngest daughter, tottered out of the outhouse trailing her pants about her ankles. Bridget and Jenny collected rocks. Daniel was happy and we were all a little drunk and the day was bright, never-ending, clear, pleasing...
...didn't. And the tub filled up with some Californians and New Zealanders who had never seen a twist-off cap and everyone except Gay (out catching rabbits with Rosebud. Peg's elder daughter) leaned back against the side of the tub, sticking their feet in towards the pipe that bubbled from its center, letting the water seep above their stomachs and shoulders and higher still as Peg spun his stories and we were all quiet and sucked in and pushed out, in the steamy mineral water steamy breath...
Light hung: the Sawtooths blazing orange and gold as Daniel raced at the dark Blitzes and Peg pointed over his shoulder to some ridge beyond which he had shot something or other and maybe even his leg, partially lost with a spent magnum cartridge. Pegleg spoke of how his Thompson sub-machine gun laid down such a pretty pattern when he went target shooting: of how some cowboys, who had come around one night with their girls and their guns and told everyone to put on their clothes because they were embarassing their girls, had high-tailed...
...light: everything faded and the Sawtooths curved about us and we curved about Pegleg. He kept right on talking: showing his tricks to Bridget and Jenny, hanging a whirlpool device on the pool's ladder. Bridget and Jenny would grab the ladder, around the device, and Peg would grab their ankles and stretch them out flat, spreading their legs a bit, and they would giggle and Peg would spread a bit more and ask if it didn't feel damn good. Peg's wife appeared from nowhere and he told her to get some moonshine and homemade wine...