Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

Well, I didn’t know if the Goobers lived in the next township or if they were the name of a foreign power. All I knew was, they weren’t good. If they’d’ve been good my grandfather would sure’ve never’ve mentioned them. Nobody ever heard him threaten to put me with some family which would dress me right and keep me clean and feed me decent, that’s for sure. He’d even threatened once to feed me to the hogs — not our hogs, we never kept hogs, it would’ve been too much of a work to slop them — but there were plenty of hogs kept in the town — and everybody knew that hogs have been known to eat children, though of course not of my size and age, just babies, but I didn’t know that then.

“What’re Goobers?” I asked after a little while. Maybe they could’ve been a kind of animal, I thought, but in a minute I realized no they couldn’t, animals couldn’t buy anything, they had to be people. Maybe the Goobers was their name — like we were the Harknesses.

“You’ll wish you never come to know,” was his answer. He made his mean little eyes all small, then he opened them so wide that the whites showed all around and the red under lids. “That’s what you’ll wish! When I sell you to the Goobers! Which I’ll do by the Ever-Living Lord of Heaven and Earth…” He never went to church or said a prayer, mind you and he didn’t finish, just sucked in his scabby lower lip and nodded at me.

Maybe they were another kind of Authorities. State, maybe, instead of County. Mr. Smith, Chief Goober of the State…? And of course his helpers. Anyway, whatever it was they might want to buy me for, it couldn’t be good. I knew that. But I wanted to know more. So I asked Rodney Sloat. He wasn’t a friend of mine, I had no friends, but he was a non-enemy at least, and he was known to read books.

“Rodney, is there any such a thing as Goobers?”

He nodded his head. “They live in holes in the ground,” he said.

It must’ve been about ten years ago that all of a sudden it came to me that what he must’ve been thinking of was, of course, gophers —and I spilled my coffee all over myself and scalded my legs. All that time it was a mystery what he had in mind. But right just then, when he told me they lived in holes in the ground, it never occurred to me that this was the thing he meant. They lived in holes in the ground! Oh, this was worse than anything ever imagined.

The old dog saw how he’d gotten to me, and it was like the smell of blood. He never let up. It was, Do this, Do that, Don’t you dast do this or that, or I’ll sell you to the Goobers, sure as I’m alive… And I went about in fear of my life, almost, because although he’d never said that the Goobers would kill me — or even harm me — why, how did I know they wouldn’t? They lived in holes in the ground , didn’t they?

The old man didn’t have any friends any more than I had friends, but he had cronies, which was more than I had. One of them was a big ruined old hulk of a man with a long fat face all sunken in the middle and white stubble on it, but two little clumps of black eyebrow like curled-up caterpillars. And his name was Barlow Brook. Never just Barlow and never Brook or Mr. Brook.

I broke a plate.

“Got the dropsy,” said Barlow Brook.

Grandfather went into his song and dance. “Barlow Brook, the Boy is a torment to me by day and by night.”

“Take the hide off of him.”

“I swear, Boy, my patience is running out. There’s a show-down coming, do you hear me, Boy? It’s coming to that. I won’t whip you like Barlow Brook says, nooo. I’m too soft-hearted for that. But I warn you, Boy, and I call Barlow Brook to my witness, unless you mend your ways and mighty quick, I will sell you to the Goobers.”

Barlow Brook hooked open the door of the cold old dusty wood stove with his foot and spit into it. “George Wolf used to talk about the Goobers.” He reached himself a hunk of bread and one of our six hundred cans of bacon grease and smeared it on with his fingers and gobbled at it.

“George Wolf,” said my grandfather. “He was a bad one.”

“Bad as they come. Used to talk about the Goobers. Remember that girl at George Wolf’s?”

“Sassy girl?”

“Sassy as they come. You can’t make me, used to say. You ain’t my father, used to say. Ain’t even married to my mother. Try to catch her, he would. Couldn’t do it. Take care, he’d tell her. The Goobers will get hold of you one a these days.” Bread crumbs, greasy bread crumbs, coming out of his mouth, but I never missed a word, thick as he was speaking, about the sassy girl at George Wolf’s.

Barlow Brook washed down his dinner from the smoky-looking bottle, didn’t wipe it or his mouth either.

“She says to him, there ain’t no such of a thing as any Goobers. Goobers is peanuts, she says to him. George Wolf, he told her. That’s why they call’m Goobers, he says, they look like that. Only not so small. Not near so small. Got wrinkled old shells on. Dirty yellow colored. Even sometimes a couple of hairs. Watch out, sassy. They’ll git ahold of you. George Wolf.”

Barlow Brook put his moldering shoes up to the kerosene stove.

“You hear, now, Boy,” said my grandfather, smirking at me.

I swallowed. I asked what, what happened to the sassy girl at George Wolf’s. A quick, secret look passed between those two evil old men. Some thing had happened to her, I knew that. I know it now. And I’ve got my own idea as to what. But, then… When Barlow Brook said, “Came and got her ,” I had no idea except for sure that the Goobers were the they .

You can be sure that I did my best not to break any more plates. I fetched and I carried. When my grandfather said “Come here, Boy,” I came a running. But he was a bully, and there is no satisfying of bullies. He knew I was in mortal terror of being sold to the Goobers and he never let up. There were hickory trees back in the thicket and one day he sent me to get some nuts. I didn’t mind at all and I went quick.

And I came back quick. There was a bad family by the name of Warbank lived outside of town, so bad that even my grandfather didn’t want anything to do with them. They were meaner than he was and they had a bunch of big yellow dogs meaner than they were. When I got to the hickory trees with my bucket, there was Ding Warbank and Cut Warbank with their own buckets, and their dogs.

“You get the Hell out of here,” said Ding.

“It ain’ your thicket,” I said.

“Get him,” said Cut. The dogs came after me and I ran. One of them got hold of my pants and it came away in his teeth. Behind me, Cut called them back.

“We better not see you here again,” yelled Ding.

My grandfather took on fierce. No trashy Warbanks, he yelled, were going to tell him he couldn’t have nuts from “his own” thicket.

“You go on back there,” he ordered. “Go on, now.”

I didn’t move.

“Go on , I tell you! Go on, go on, go on! You want me to sell you to the Goobers?”

Oh, I was afraid of that, all right. I was afraid of the Goobers. But I’d never really seen any. And I had seen those Warbanks’ yellow dogs, felt their white shiny teeth pulling that bite out of my pants legs. And I wouldn’t go.

He yelled and he raged. Then, all of a sudden, he quit. “All right, Boy,” he said. “All right, then. I am through warning you. In one hour’s time, as I live and as my name’s Dade Harkness, in one hour’s time I swear that I will sell you to the Goobers. Now git out my sight — but don’t you leave the yard!”

What he figured on, I guess, was that the Warbanks would be gone by then and I’d rush out and get his old hickory nuts and then he’d pardon me…for the time being.