How many pictures would it take?
I had, altogether, seven of them and since I was interested in them myself—purely from an artistic viewpoint, of course—I didn’t want to completely deplete the collection.
I offered Harris one picture. It was not the best picture—the best picture I wouldn’t have released if Harris had bitten the wire and hung on with his mouth (something I considered suggesting when I remembered what he had done with the first love of my life)—but it was a good picture: accurate in detail, fundamentally sound as far as composition and educational benefits were concerned, and far reaching in its ability to promote advanced stages of hyperventilation.
“Nope,” he repeated. “I ain’t gonna do it.”
But his refusal was soft. I could sense the weakness in it and I countered. The picture I’d offered, plus one other, the one where it was possible to See It All.
“Well...”
I had him.
“First the rules.”
“What rules?”
“You have to pee right on the wire—not just pass over it—and you have to pee on it long enough to get the surge.” (It was a pulse fencer, not on continuously but pulsing at one-second intervals.) “Otherwise it’s not a deal.”
He thought another minute, studying the wire. “That thing put a sow on her knees...”
I shook my head. “She was off balance. Besides, two of the pictures for your very own—that’s a good swap.”
Yet another minute, then a sigh. “All right. Go get the pictures.”
I ran to the house, took out the two selected pictures, put them under my shirt, and trotted back to the barn where Harris was still standing, looking at the wire.
“I’ve got them.”
“Let me see.”
I raised my shirt and showed him the pictures, lowered it. “So go ahead—pee on it.”
He unbuttoned the fly on his bibs and took his business out, then stood there, frowning.
“What’s the matter?”
“It don’t work. Nothing’s coming out.”
“Push a little.”
“I am. It’s scared. It don’t want to do it.”
“If you don’t pee on the wire, the deal is off,” I reminded him, thinking it would prompt action.
“I know, I know. It just won’t work.” His frown deepened. “It’s like it knows what’s coming and don’t want to do it.”
“Two pictures...”
“I’ll have to lie to it.”
“Lie to what?”
“My business. I’ll just have to lie to it and start peeing over here, then swing it around, make the dumb thing think everything is all right.”
He turned sideways, aimed away from the fence, and in a moment it started.
“So turn,” I said. “Before it’s done.”
“It ain’t that easy. Something in me won’t let it happen...”
“Ahh heck, you’re going to run out.”
“No, I’m holding her back. Here, now...”
He turned slowly until the stream of urine was only inches away from the wire, hung there for a second, then hit the wire.
“There,” he said, “now are you hap—”
He had crossed the wire between pulses, when the electricity wasn’t moving through the wire, and the pulse hit him halfway through the word happy.
Later I would come to know a great deal about electrical things. I would understand that water is an excellent conductor of electrical energy but that urine, with its higher mineral content, is even better and what Harris did amounted to hooking a copper wire from his business to the electric fence.
The results were immediate, and everything I would have hoped for from a standpoint of scientific observation, not to mention revenge.
In a massive galvanic reaction every muscle in Harris’s body convulsively contracted, jerking like a giant spring had tightened inside him.
He went stiff as a poker, then soared up and over backward in a complete flip, arcing a stream that caught the afternoon sun so I swore I could see a rainbow in it.
Nor did the spectacle end when he hit the ground. He landed on his side, both legs pumping, then sprung to his feet, running in tight circles holding himself and hissing:
“Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God-oh...”
All in all it was well worth the investment and when he finally settled, leaning against the barn wall holding his business, panting loudly, I reached under my shirt to give him the two pictures.
It was not to be, and the exact responsibility of who owed whom pictures would plague us the rest of the summer and perhaps does yet.
As I held the pictures toward Harris and he released his groin long enough to reach for them a shadow fell over us and I turned to see Louie standing there.
He reached down with a crooked, filthy hand and took the pictures, held them up to the light, smiled toothlessly, and walked away toward the granary, putting the pictures in the top pocket of his bibs.
“Damn.” Harris spoke quietly and his voice was shaking. “You owe me two pictures.”
“It wasn’t my fault. I held them out to you. Louie took them.”
“They wasn’t halfway.” He hissed like a snake. “They wasn’t even close to halfway.”
“They were over halfway.”
“You liar.”
“I’m not lying. I handed the pictures over to you and you were reaching for them when Louie grabbed them. I did what I was supposed to do.”
“You did?” He sneered, or grimaced in pain, it was hard to tell the difference. “I peed on the wire...”
Later that night, lying in bed in the darkened room, listening to the drone of mosquitoes fighting the screen, I remembered him hitting the wire and started laughing.
“It ain’t funny,” he said from the other bed. “I’m all swoll up. It’s like my business was hit by lightning.”
“It is too funny. You ran in little circles yelling, ‘Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God...’ “ I had to bury my face in the pillow to hold the sound of laughing down so it wouldn’t wake the grown-ups.
For a time there was silence, then he giggled. “I think I saw him.”
“Who?”
“Jesus, you dope. But he wasn’t in no peach tree...”
And still later, when the giggling had subsided and we were nearly asleep, through a half doze I heard him one more time:
“You still owe me two pictures.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You do.”
“Don’t.”
“Do.”
11
In
