Sketcher by Roland Watson-Grant

painted it himself and put it right at the entrance of our little L of land. It was about two by three foot and it said:
    REPAIR ’EM LIKE BRAND NEW!
KeroGas Stoves, Televisions
CB Radios and Appliances
CALL INSIDE NOW
    Well, the Benets took the sign for target practice. They shot holes through all the letters that had a space to shoot through. Pops stayed up all night paintin’ a new sign and cussin’. He put it up the next day on a piece of ballistic steel that he borrowed when he used to work at that Michoud facility.
    When they couldn’t shoot through that, the Benet boys just went ahead and tore the whole sign down and lay it flat on the ground and threw paint all over it. So Pops said “Hell no” and went across the tracks to talk to them. He told us to wait by the tracks while he walked across with the sign in his hand and the pole draggin’ behind him. The sunflower drapes moved. It was Backhoe Benet. We saw the rifle nozzle pointin’ at Pops. We saw the flash, heard the shot, and saw our Pops jerk backwards when the bullet hit the sign in his hand. Pops was still standing. Backhoe laughed out loud and said, “Jus’ checkin’, Beaumont!” He motioned with the barrel for Pops to leave the bulletproof material out in the yard. “What’s in my yard is mine, includin’ you!”
    The door opened. We saw the dead sunflowers on the mantel, then Pops disappeared and the door shut. Well, we weren’t movin’ until we saw our pops again – and in about three quarters of an hour he came out with the glummestlook on his face. He was carrying a cardboard box with six puppies in it. They were cute little critters. All brown mutts with black mouths. One had a white mark on his right front foot like a sock. We walked alongside Pops. He was walking fast and talkin’ real quiet. We had to jog to keep up.
    â€œMr Benet says these six kids belong to Calvin. Said he doesn’t want mongrels in his yard, and we should keep our dog off his property, or else. You boys’ll have to chain him for a while, y’hear?”
    So it seems Calvin went and got himself entangled with the worst people in the swamp. Calvin, why? Why not at Gladys’, that sweet ol’ widow from further down the tracks? She had girl dogs and she’d keep the pups too. Why not Evin Levine, that hunter guy in the busted-up boathouse who could prob’ly use a couple more mutts in his huntin’? But no, Calvin had to go cavortin’ with Ol’ Medusa Benet, the worst dog possible, even though dogs can behave much better than people sometimes. All in all, that didn’t matter too much. What was real puzzlin’ for me was that I knew my daddy didn’t go face to face with the Benets just to talk to them for forty-five minutes about a shot-up sign or about Calvin knockin’ up their dog. So when everybody was oohing and aahing over the pups, and Frico was sketchin’ them bitin’ his toes, and Calvin was nappin’ on the porch like he had nothin’ to do with all this, I sat down on the floor beside the bed and I wondered: “Everybody sees the puppies Pops brought over... but can’t nobody see the monkey on his back?”

Five
    Well, I don’t think I have to tell you how deflated I was feelin’ after those two laughed at me up in that tree. However, just when I was really low, things got better. Round about that time we went to this Easter Break Baptist youth camp somewhere along the Gulf Coast. It was Harry T’s idea, cos he had joined the Cub Scouts by then and said he knew everythin’ about campin’ and knots and signal fires and morse code and all that stuff. Valerie Beaumont let us go, even though it was such short notice. We sat on a couple of broke TV sets in the back of Pops’ Ford Transit and he dropped us off with our makeshift campin’ gear. Nothin’ fancy. It was me, Frico, Marlon, Belly and