A houseboat. Finegan Fine

The Kudzu King says,

. . Been our salvation. Like taters. And the

leaves too. That’s fer supper. Kind’a plain but

steady. I still miss biscuits ‘n gravy. Dream

on that.

129

A dairy cow is lead past on her way to being milked. The Kudzu King

says,

. . About ate all them cows. . . Ate everything

in sight. But BillyBob took a stand when they

came for his prize bull. Said they’d have ta

take him first. Good thing too. We still got

milk for the kids.

The Kudzu King flashes Finegan a grin.

BillyBob lived like a king on stud fees too,

fer awhile. Had saved the last damn bull.

Them cows pasture in the kudzu patch too.

Finegan asks,

No downside, eh?

The Kudzu King responds.

Um . . A patch of this stuff can be home to

snakes and vermin. Can’t see ‘um. I’ll show you

after breakfast. We’ll go on patrol.

Joey comes up with a plate filled with what looks like mashed potatoes

and a glass of milk for Finegan, while the girl helping with breakfast

brings the same for the Kudzu King. While the Kudzu King is stuffing

his face, Finegan poses another burning curiosity question, waving his

fork in the direction of the crushed car piles.

How’d you come to be living up high. I mean . .

you didn’t drive ‘em up there.

The Kudzu King looks up through his eyebrows and swallows, pausing in

his ravenous eating, waving his fork in that direction too as he

explains.

We saw the waters a’risin. An the kudzu eating

the trees. Them cranes still had some gas in

130

‘em, so we lifted the hulks waitin to be

crushed.

Returning to his mashed potatoes again, he gives a final wave of his

fork and a glance toward the car piles.

We got the air. And the snakes don’t bother us

cause the vermin don’t live there. Nothing to

eat.

The Kudzu King swings his fork toward the woods behind them.

They like the woods. The rats eat the bugs and

the snakes eat the rats and bugs don’t live on

metal.

The Kudzu King shakes his head while he returns to stuffing his mouth.

That’s where we’d be, if’en it twern’t for the

car piles. Hell of a place. I’ll show you right

after breakfast here.

______________________________

The Kudzu King and several other men are ready for patrol. They are

carrying knives, machetes, an ax, a boomerang, and a length of chain –

any weapons they can find. One of the men has a large empty net thrown

over his shoulder. Another carries a couple shovels. And yet another

carries the sling used to bring the kudzu tubers to the breakfast

table. Finegan walks up armed with the houseboat club. She asks,

Are we going to war?

The Kudzu King says,

That about says it.

An outdoor school is being conducted behind the men. The schoolmarm has

a chalkboard to the side and is writing words down, having the children

recite the words and discuss their meaning. Joey is sitting among the

children who range in age from 3 to 15. The schoolmarm has written

“sympathy” on the board. All the children say “sympathy” in unison. He

asks,

Who can tell me what this means?

The schoolmarm nods at one of the older children. The student says,

It means feeling what the other person feels.

The schoolmarm says,

Very good! Sympathy has a similar sound to

another word, which is . .

One of the younger children leaps up with the answer, hand in the air.

Empathy!

The schoolmarm writes the word “empathy” on the board and under this

the word “pathos”.

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Excellent! They both have the same root –

pathy, sympathy, empathy, or from the Greek

word pathos. Pathos is pity or suffering. See

how we can often figure out what a word means

by knowing a common root?

The patrol is marching off toward the kudzu forest, the sound of