Everyday at the Lodge I was the brunt of loud, devastating verbal abuse from my Uncle Finley. Both Fin and Marty belittled and embarrassed me in front of everyone. They did that to cover up the fact that they owed me a lot, and they were too selfish and self centered to admit it. The abuse got worse as my guiding skills and abilities improved, and their debt to me increased.
Fin and Marty nicknamed me "nummer", as in ‘numb brained’, because Fin would be yelling and hollering and cussing at me right up in my face and the only way that I could keep from sluggin’ him in his teeth was to sort of block it all out and go numb. Sometimes he’d yell at me to cover up his own blunders and put the blame on me. Like the time he took my brand new Triumph 250 Motorcycle out for a ride and destroyed an engine part because he was showing off in front of everyone by racing down the road at full throttle.
A manufacturer’s sticker on the bike’s speedometer read, "do not drive this motorcycle over 50 miles per hour for the first 500 miles." The bike died on him when he was doing over 70 mph with a mere 71 miles on the odometer.
When the bike died, Fin was passing Harley Libby who was driving his pick up truck with two or three of his sons in it. Fin and Harley were both driving up Rt. 11 towards the Lodge, and that old native Mainer Harley always drove that road at 65-75 miles an hour. Ole’ Harley Libby had stopped and put the bike on the back of his truck and given Fin a ride back to the Lodge. When the truck pulled into the Lodge's driveway, I was out there working in the yard with a shovel in my hand. A few of the hunters came out of the Lodge to help take my broke down motorcycle off the back of the truck, and when Fin saw them coming out of the Lodge he walked over to where I was standing there getting quietly pissed off about him screwing up my brand new motorcycle and that G.D.S.O.B. Finley started chewing me out viciously.
He kept saying "That’s your g**damned motorcycle, and it’s your g**damned fault!!"
At the same time he was quick checking over his shoulder to make sure that Harley, his sons who were with him, and the hunters were watching me get the blame for it all. Loud mouthed Finley Clarke looked like a pigeon peckin' on freshly scattered feed while glancing all around to see what other birds might try to take some from him. It was right f***king soul shattering for me.
I woulda' never hit my Uncle Fin, or any man, upside his head with the shovel I had in my hand at the time, though the thought of doing that did zoom right through the middle of my mind, but that loud mouthed bully never knew how close he was to having me knuckle-punch a few of his teeth out. I just stood there with that shovel's handle in my hands while looking him straight in his face, and feeling numb; as I did I kept glancing from his evasive eyes down to his flapping mouth. He had some bad cavities in his front teeth, which I knew would cause them rotten pegs to break off if I punched him as hard as I was considering doing. Fin was a big man, but I was a hard working young man at the time, and I was in plenty good enough shape to knock him off his feet with one justifiably angry, mighty swing of my fist. It would have made a bad situation worse though, so I kept quiet till he got through acting like a self centered pigeon and walked into the Lodge.
Then I went back to doing his shovel work for him again.
Photography by David Robert Crews
My Triumph 250.
My Triumph 250.
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