Thursday, October 01, 2009

The Devil in Uncle Watt

Uncle Watt bit off the head of a big, fat, juicy green tobacco worm, peed on his deaf cousin, and poked mules in the ass with a sharp stick to see ‘em kick. Oh, yes, he was full of the Devil.

“Oh my Lord, he done got the Devil in ‘em bad,” Raffie, an old man who used to work beside him on the farm once told me. As late as this July 2009 one of my aunts, an artist in her 80s, when reminded of Uncle Watt called him “quite a character.”

My Dad told me stories. Raffie told me stories. Even Uncle Aumon told me stories. All of them would shake their heads with bemused dismay and chuckle. They could laugh simply because Uncle Watt was dead. He died young and wasn’t around anymore to torment anyone with all his foolishness. I never got to meet him except maybe as a baby. But I think Dad said “Uncle Watt died before you were born.” I don’t remember what of.

He was a fun-loving guy who apparently was constantly pushing people’s buttons, telling jokes, and playing pranks. He lived life on the wild side. Chased pretty girls but never married. But sometimes people said he was mean.

“Uncle Aumon and Uncle Watt, they were pickin’ tobacco over yonder in what’s now that corn field there,” the storytellers would say and point out into a large plot of cultivated land down there behind the barns toward Little Sandy River. We were on Riverview Dairy Farm, the Bass family farm in Prince Edward County, Virginia. We were in the rolling Piedmont country south of the James River known as Southside Virginia.

It didn’t matter whether the storytellers were my old Uncle Willy, or my Dad, or Raffie, or someone else who knew him as “full of the Devil as all git-out.”

“Uncle Watt and Uncle Aumon were young men back then. They were bent over in the fields pickin’ and pullin’ tobacco. It was hard, hard work.”

I knew Uncle Aumon. Robert Aumon Bass. I grew up with him next-door. He had been deaf since age 12 from a double infection of diphtheria and whooping cough. He retired back to Riverview in 1959, the year I was born. He’d taught at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind in Staunton. He was actually my great-uncle. Aumon was my Daddy’s uncle and my grandfather’s brother. Uncle Aumon was a tall, strong man, one of the Bass six-footers (I wasn’t). Back in his youth Aumon would spend summers working on the farm. Tobacco was a common crop back then used to supplement money made from the dairy.

“Watt, being such a goddamn devil, played a trick on Aumon. He knew Aumon couldn’t hear well and had to see everything to know it. Watt plucked off a tobacco worm, one of those giant green caterpillars.

“Come here!” he shouted at Aumon and waved him over. Watt showed him the giant tobacco worm in his hand. Aumon came over, curious, and peered down through his large glasses at the caterpillar.

“I’m gonna bite this tobacco worm’s head plumb off!” Watt declared. He got ready to do it, too. Put that damn wiggly ass worm in ‘is mouth.

“While he had Aumon lookin’ at that big worm, Watt pulled out his pecker and pissed all over ‘im. Aumon didn’t realize it until he felt all wet. Then Watt jumped away and took off runnin’ hard across the field. Aumon chased him down and beat the shit outa him. Lord a’mighty, that Uncle Watt sure had the Devil in him.”

Another story oft told about Uncle Watt was how he liked to agitate the mules. Loved to watch ‘em kick. While the mule stood in its stall facing the food trough, Watt would lay on his back in the gutter and scoot along till he was under the hind end of the mule. Then he would take a long, sharp stick he had with him and poke that mule in the ass. Every time that mule jumped and kicked, slamming hooves through the air, Watt would just laugh and shout. Freaked that mule out. I don’t understand why that mule simply didn’t piss and shit all over Uncle Watt. Surely he must’ve thought that was a possibility or maybe getting his face stove in was, but apparently none of those deterred him in the least.

Otherwise Uncle Watt remains a mystery. His full name was Watson Emmett Bass, Jr. He was the son of Watson Emmett Bass, Sr. and Sarah Elizabeth “Bettie” Bruce Gates. Watson Sr. was Bettie Bruce’s second husband. She was the widow of William Beverly Gates and thus one of several “bridges” connecting the Bruce, Gates, and Bass farming families in Southside Virginia. He was a half-brother to one of my Bass great-grandmothers. His father was the brother of Robert Emmett Bass. I don’t know when or where he was born or died. Hours spent googling didn’t help much.

Sometimes I feel his presence, the ghost of his cultural meme, kept alive through storytelling. Feel a bit of him somewhere in me, enough that my mother once wrote a poem about me called “Angel or Devil.”

When we die, often all that’s left are stories other people remember. Eventually they all pass on, and the stories grow fuzzy and dim till nothing is left, not the truth, not even the lies.


William Dudley Bass
October 1, 2009



© by William Dudley Bass

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1 Comments:

Blogger Kelly Kyle said...

Great story, William.... it was easy to read and glided through it...wanting more.
Kelly

1:34 PM  

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