The Red Flannel Rag

laurel bushes. Randy cut strips from old inner tubes and made a pouch from a piece of

leather. I held onto the slingshot stick while he tied the inner tube around it and attached

the pouch. We took our slingshots and knocked a beer can from his house to mine and back

on long summer evenings. We talked about fishing, hunting and problems he was having

with his girlfriends as we slowly shot the beer can along the gravel road. He would place a

little rock in front of my bare toe and ask me to hold still while he shot it away with his

slingshot or sometimes a .22 rifle. I stood quite still, totally trusting his aim. He never

touched my toe.

Randy always had a set of boxing gloves around the house, and he used me as a

sparring partner. Several times I remember waking u p on Aunt Goldie’s downstairs bed

with Randy tapping my face to wake me up. He had hit me a bit too hard and knocked me

out cold. Again, I liked him so much, I didn’t mind.

One day during my twelfth year we were in Aunt Goldie’s washhouse, and he asked

me if I knew how to kiss my boyfriend. I told him I didn’t have a boyfriend, therefore, I

didn’t know how to kiss. He asked me to show him how I would hold my lips if a boyfriend

ever kissed me. I puckered up like a child would kiss its’ mother on the cheek. He said, “No,

that’s not how you kiss your boyfriend.” So he parted his lips and had me to part mine.

Then he laid a kiss on me. He said, “Now get out of here and don’t say I never taught you

anything.”

Randy taught me how to make bows and arrows. He told me that a hickory tree

branch made the best bow, so off we went to the edge of the pasture where we knew a big

hickory tree was growing next to the fence. We found a nice long straight branch and cut it

to the length I needed. He took the branch and bent it into the shape of a bow. He wedged

it between the tree and the fence post. He said: “Hickory will bend the way you want it

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