Helton winced. “Aw, son, now we don’t wanna hear ’bout none’a that—”
“—and sometimes my daddy’d come in and then he’d—”
“That’s enough, Trucker. Just you run on home now,” Helton insisted, and then, after a polite if not crude farewell, the boy was gone.
“Jesus,” Helton muttered.
Dumar’s face was all lit up. “Come on, Paw! Let’s see what’s in the package!”
Helton whipped out his Buck knife and zipped it through the clear packing tape. He opened the box, looked inside, and withdrew…
“Another package,” he muttered.
Sure enough, there was another box inside the first box, but this one had—
“What’s all that writin’ on the box, Unc Helton?” inquired Micky-Mack.
“Yeah,” Dumar said, “I cain’t read for dick, but you can, Paw. What’s all the black letters say?”
Helton put on an ancient pair of spectacles and, squinting at the box, slowly recited: “M-a-g-n-a-v-o-x…p-o-r-t-a-b-l-e…d-v-d… p-l-a-y-e-r…” He blinked. “What the hail’s that?”
“Aw, shit, Unc,” “Micky-Mack enthused. “I know what it is,” and then he opened up the second box and pulled out a small, sleek device, whose lid amazingly flipped open.
“I’se think I heard of ’em myself,” Dumar speculated.
Helton frowned. “Well I ain’t never heard’a no such thing.”
“Aw, yeah!” Micky-Mack placed the player on a handmade table and showed the others how there was a viewing screen inside that flipped up lid. “See, it’s fer watchin’ movies!”
Helton eyed the strange machine. “Movies? Ya mean like the movin’-picture show?”
“Yeah!”
“Shee-it, I only been to one movin’-picture show in my life. Was back when I was a little kid and some fella named Eisenhower were president.”
“What was the movie, Paw?” asked Dumar.
“Some silly shit ’bout giant octopusses or some such attackin’ underwater boats. 20,000 Weeds Under The Sea’re somethin’ like that. Didn’t much care for it.”
“Unc, things have changed in these times,” Micky-Mack went on, inspecting the machine. “Now they got these really cool modern movies made in this fancy place called Hollywood. See, I know this ’cos—‘member Crud Tooley? Just a few months ago he come back from the Army, from fightin’ these people they call towelheads in the Eye-Rack, and, see, I hadn’t seen him in years but one day I were walkin’ in town and I see him and he says, ‘Hey, Micky-Mack! I’m back! Let’s go to my place ’cos my sister’s havin’ a up against the waller!’ so I say, ‘Hey, Crud, good to see ya but—shee-it—what’s a up against the waller?’ and he say, ‘Come on up the house and you’ll see,’ so I go with him and, see, it cost ever-body a dollar to go to this up against the waller; Crud, he say his sister has ’em all the time. So when I gets there we go down the basement and I’ll be danged if there weren’t twenty fellas down there, ever-one from Old Man Halm to Mr. Winslow the school principal, and the Larkin Boys—all five of ’em—and that bald-headed fella I hear plays the organ at church, oh, and—”
“Micky-Mack!” Helton raised his voice. “Get to the dang point!”
“Uh, well, shore, Unc. Anyway, what this up against the waller was, see, was Crud’s sister Tulip—she look kind’a funny ’cos her eyes are crooked, and Crud, he tolt me it’s ’cos their mama drunk a lot’a ‘shine when she were pregnant—but anyway, we all give Tulip our buck and then all twenty of us line up against the wall and drop our pants and—I ain’t kiddin’ ya—Tulip got down on her knees and sucked each’n every one of us off. Swallowed ever-thang, too, even my big nut. And ya wanna know the funniest part? Tulip even charged her own brother a buck!”
Helton gaped. “Micky-Mack. You run yer damn mouth more’n Mckellen’s kid. What the fuck’s a 13-year-old girl blowin’ a basement full’a rednecks got to do with this damn thingamajig that come from the package?”
“Oh, well, that’s right, I was gonna tell ya that,” Micky-Mack admitted to a diversion of topics. “It was Crud, he brung one back from the Iraq and tolt me all about it. Ya watch movies on it. Movies that ya can buy in the big-city stores, and, shee-it, now that I think of it, it’s a right kick in the ass for Tulip to charge her own brother for a blowjob when it’s been him paying the property taxes on the house!”
Helton sat down and sighed. “Son. You can probably tell I’m in bad spirits right now. My grandson’s missin’, my daughter-in-law just hanged herself, and today I find out Hall Sladder stolt all’a my moonshine. Now I got this fuckin’ package from some fella named Paulie I never heard of, and I got this fuckin’ machine sittin’ here and as bad as I wanna know what it is, you’re bendin’ our ears ’bout Crud Tooler’s sister chargin’ him a buck for a fuckin’ blowjob. I don’t wanna know about that”—he pointed aggravatedly toward the machine—“I wanna know about that.”
“Does kind’a suck, Paw, that Crud should have to pay even though he been the one payin’ for the house his sister lives in,” Dumar pointed out but then he paused. “A’course, Tulip, she give a dandy blowjob—I got me one off’a her a couple years ago—so’s I guess if Crud don’t like it, he can blow his own self,” and then he and Micky-Mack howled laughter and high-fived.
Helton’s large, bearded face came down into his hands; he bellowed, ‘WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT DAMN MACHINE!”
Dumar and Micky-Mack straightened right up when they saw how out of sorts Helton had become. “Calm down, Paw,” Dumar said.
“And the machine?” Micky-mack stepped in. “It’s like I was sayin’, it plays movies. It’s kind’a like that thing we had a while back—the tv—only this don’t show shows, it shows movies. And these machines are a right ‘spensive, Unc Helton, so this friend’a yers, this Paulie fella, he’s a damn fine friend fer sendin’ you such a snazzy gift.”
Helton remained in this quandary. Who on earth would send him something like this, some new-fangled doohicky he had no use for? “So, what? We gonna watch a movie now?”
Micky-mack stalled. “Uhhhh…well…now that I think on it… It’s the movies themselves are the dvd’s—they’se these round things ’bout the size of a beer coaster at Crossroads, only a little bigger, and they’re really smart-lookin’, see, they’re all shiny’n silvery, and believe it or not, a whole dang movie fits on one of ’em. All ya do is stick it in this slot on the machine but…” Micky-Mack’s befuddlement was clear. “Don’t look like this friend’a yours Paulie sent ya any movies to go with the machine. Unless…” The 20-year-old finnicked with the machine and—presto!—a small drawer, like magic, automatically slid out. In the drawer lay something quite similar to what Micky-Mack had just described.
“Well, how ya like that, Unc Helton! Your pal Paulie already put a movie inside!” Micky-Mack studied the buttons on the machine. “Now, give me a sec while I’se figure this out.”
“Aw, fuck, boy,” Helton continued to complain, because he didn’t have much liking for modern contraptions. Likely as not, they were more trouble than they were worth. “And, shee-it. If’n this blasted thing’s like that ole teller-vision we had, then it must run on the blammed electricity. I gotta haul out the blammed generator?”