A bunch of us was down at Loafers Glory the other day. It was half-time and we were trying to think of something to pass the time until the second half started. Hank Craven was watching the TV from his usual stool behind the cash register. Somebody whispered, "Hey, ever hear Hank get started on old Nelson Tucker? Funny as hell."
So one of us said, "Say Hank, we was wondering ... do you remember Nelson Tucker that used to live around here?"
Hank pushed his greasy cap back on his head. "Nelson Tucker? I remember Nelson, all right. I reckon he was one of the wildest varmints t'ever crawl out of these hills. Let me go over here and get a CoCola before I get started on him. That stove's got it hot as a chimney corner in here. Will one of you boys open the door? New Testament's what some called him. He was probly getting up toward seventy when he bought him this used hearse and took to driving it up and down the highway all the time. Hooked up some kind a bullhorn or loudspeaker on top of it so he could say what was on his mind. And he had a whole brainful of other people's sins on his mind. I think having a head full of that kind a thing is what was driving him crazy. Ever once in awhile he'd come flying down the road with that loudspeaker going like God A'mighty: 'Thou shalt not commit adultery. You know who you are and He knows who you are.' He didn't ever call any names, just left it real general so the guilt could thin out a little and ooze into ever crack. He'd call out different sins too so everybody'd have something to listen for. When he came flying by the kids'd run th'ough the lawns and holler, 'Whoa Nellie!' Sometimes when he run out a things to say he'd light out singing. He couldn't sing worth a lick in the best a times and something about how fast he was driving made his songs waver up and down and blow all over the place. You couldn't tell what he was singing. He'd start out on 'The Old Ship of Zion' but it came out 'The Old Shit is Dyin'. Sounded like a harelip singin through a sireen. Course now this was after he got done marrying all them women. He was getting a little older and a whole lot uglier and they wouldn't look at him any more. I reckon that third one didn't stay with him six months."
One of us said, "Now how about the second one, Hank? Sara Teague? Is it true she threw a meat cleaver at him and it lodged in a tree trunk?"
"Some say that. But the best I know that ain't exactly what happened. You all remember Clarence Caudill, used to be the mailman on Route 2? Well he was settin there at the mailbox the day that boy a hern, Woody, got back from Vietnam and kicked Nelson outta the house. The funny thing about it is Nelson's the one run him off to Vietnam in the first place. You see when he left he was just a big kid, but when he come back I reckon living th'ough the Marines not to mention the damn Vietcong turned him into the stoutest young fella y'ever see, and he wasn't about to stand for anybody floutin his momma, much less Nelson. So he walked in on Nelson arguing with Sara bout some bill he wasn't going help her pay and grabbed him by the shirt and pants and pitched him out in the yard. I tell you that boy was one solid muscle, straight as a board. Nelson was trying to scramble back on his feet when Woody hauled off and kicked him with these big old soldier boots he had on and sent him sprawling. Then out come Sara on the porch crying and screaming. Clarence, he was still settin there at the mailbox, and they say he didn't know if she was trying to get the boy to stop or egging him on. So he give Nelson one more kick for good measure and then backed off and yelled never to come back in his momma's house again."
"Hank, you got any opinion why just about everybody despised Nelson?"
"For one, he was real good to tell you what was wrong about you and right about him. That always makes everybody fall in love with you. Some say he was always like that, but some say he got like that after that first wife run off and his boy got killed in Normandy. Then with Sara and Woody, well he was just living off a her. His momma give most of her land to Carl, then Nelson sold his part of it cause he thought he had to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and couldn't get no church to send him. So he didn't have much of his own by then except a car and his clothes. And he treated that boy something awful they say before he left for the Marines. So you can't say he didn't have a good beatin coming to him. Kinda funny when you think about him spraddled out on that lawn. Still, like Clarence said, it made his heart sore to see a human being get kicked like that. Like a damn dog."
"Somebody told me Sara fired a shotgun in the tree over his head and the leaves went scattering all around him like a flock of crows in a cornfield."
Hank laughed. "That'd be something to see. And I heard that told on him before too. To tell the truth, I don't know for a fact which happened. But they say he got in that old trap of a Corvair of his'n and tore outta the driveway and never did show his face there again. He always drove like a nut. You know I was telling you a minute ago bout that hearse he had when he was preaching on the highway. Well he kept driving that thing around a year or two I guess till one night he ran off the shoulder of the road and flipped it over the bank of Cooley's Creek over on 229. Wiley Church was driving by a little later and said he heard a loud rumbling noise and slowed down and pulled off the road to see what it was. Nelson didn't know he still had that loudspeaker on and he was cussing up a storm. Wiley couldn't see him for all the bushes and the dark and all and didn't know anything about Nelson and his loudspeaker. Wiley had this little timid voice but it'd break sometimes and go from high to low in the middle of a sentence. So he called out, "Is anybody DOWN THERE?" Nellie blew up and bellowed through his bullhorn: "Anybody my ass. Shit on you boy. Get me outta this hole or I'll broadcast your sins all over this county." It boomed out so loud Wiley took off for his car as hard as he could go and Nelson had to sit down there another forty-five minutes before somebody else came by and got him out of the creek."
"What ever happened to Nelson, Hank?"
"Beats the hell out of me. That's about the last I know of Nelson Tucker, and that's been ten year ago at least. He didn't preach any more after they fished him out of that creek. It was like he knowed he'd done been beat by life and may as well go ahead and shut up. They say he moved off to the other side of the county and finally went plumb off the deep end but I don't know. Place is gettin bigger these days and it's hard to keep up with folks."
Fiction: Holier
Than Thou | Main Map
Theory: Origins of this episode
Initial release: October 19, 1995
Last update: June 30, 1996