Leech

They look around as I cross the porch and dip the gourd into the water bucket and drink.

"Where's Jule?" Pa says When I was a boy, I first learned how much better water tastes when it has set a while in a cedar bucket Warmish cool With a faint taste like the hot July wind and cedar trees smells It has to set at least six hours and be drunk from a gourd Water should never be drunk from metal And at night it is better still I used to lie on the pallet in the hall Waiting until I could hear them all asleep So I could get up and go back to the bucket It would be black, the shelf black The still surface of the water a round orifice in nothingness Where before I stirred it awake with the dipper I could see maybe a star or two in the bucket And maybe in the dipper a star or two before I drank After that I was bigger, older And then I would wait until they all went to sleep So I could lie with my shirt tail up Hearing them asleep Feeling myself without touching myself Feeling the cool silence blowing upon my parts And wondering if Cash was yonder in the darkness doing it too Had been doing it perhaps for the last two years Before I could have wanted to or could have Pa's feet are badly splayed His toes cramped and bent and warped With no toenail at all on his little toes From working so hard in the wet in homemade shoes When he was a boy Beside his chair his brogans sit They look as though they had been hacked with a blunt axe out of pig iron Vernon has been to town I have never seen him go to town in overalls His wife, they say She taught school too once I fling the dipper dregs to the ground and wipe my mouth on my sleeve It is going to rain before morning Maybe before dark Down to the barn, I say Harnessing the team Down there fooling with that horse He will go on through the barn into the pasture The horse will not be in sight He is up there among the pine seedlings in the cool Jule whistles once and shrill The horse snorts Then Jule sees him Glinting for a gaudy instant among the blue shadows Jule whistles again The horse comes dropping down the slope Stiff-legged His ears cocking and flicking His mismatched eyes rolling And fetches up twenty feet away Broadside on Watching Jule over his shoulder in an attitude kittenish and alert Come here, sir, Jule says He moves Moving that quick His coat bunching Tongues swirling like so many flames With tossing mane and tail and rolling eye The horse makes another short curvetting rush And stops again Feet bunched Watching Jule Jule walks steadily toward him His hands at his sides Save for Jule's legs They are like two figures carved for a tableau Savage in the sun When Jule can almost touch him The horse stands on his hind legs and slashes down at Jule Then Jule is enclosed by a glittering maze of hooves As by an illusion of wings Among them, beneath the upreared chest He moves with the flashing limberness of a snake For an instant Before the jerk comes onto his arms He sees his whole body earth-free Horizontal Whipping snake limber Until he finds the horse's nostrils and touches earth again Then they are rigid Motionless Terrific The horse back thrust on stiffened quivering legs With lowered head Jule with dug heels Shutting off the horse's wind with one hand With the other patting the horse's neck in short strokes Myriad and caressing Cursing the horse with obscene ferocity They stand in rigid terrific hiatus The horse trembling and groaning Then Jule is on the horse's back He flows upward in a stooping swirl Like the lash of a whip His body in midair shaped to the horse For another moment the horse stands Spraddled with lowered head Before it bursts into motion They descend the hill In a series of spine-jolting jumps Jule high Leech-like on the withers To the fence Where the horse bunches to a scuttering halt again Well, Jule says You can quit now if you got a plenty Inside the barn Jule slides running to the ground before the horse stops The horse enters the stall Jule following Without looking back the horse kicks at him Slamming a single hoof into the wall With a pistol-like report Jule kicks him in the stomach The horse arches his neck back Crop-toothed Jule strikes him across the face with his fist And slides onto the trough And mounts upon it Clinging to the hay rack he lowers his head And peers out across the stall tops And through the doorway The path is empty From here he cannot even hear Cash sawing He reaches up and drags down hay In hurried armfuls And crams it into the rack Eat, he says Get the goddamn stuff out of sight while you got a chance You pussled-gutted bastard You sweet son of a bitch He says Jule.

It's because he stays out there right under the window, hammering and sawing on that goddamn box where she's got to see him, where every breath she draws is full of his knocking and sawing, where she can see him saying, see, see what a good one I am making for you.

I told him to go somewhere else.

Here I must detain you a little to do honor to the memory of a man to whom I had in many instances been a friend, and who on this occasion demonstrated his sensibility of it in a degree worthy of a much higher rank.

His name was Leech, the company's smith, as well as clerk of the parish.

This man had made his escape when the Moors entered the fort, and returned just as it was dark to tell me he had provided a boat, and would ensure my escape, if I would follow him through a passage few were acquainted with, and by which he had then entered.

This might easily have been accomplished, as the guard put over us took but very slight notice of us.

all right uh note down that you have three leeches in a vial

How do I spell leeches? L-E-E-C-H?

Yeah.

E-S? Leeches? Or just that? Yeah,

Margo joined back in with her siblings as they learned some cooking skills of how to make some delicious mud puppy food.

Do you know what their favorite food to eat is? Leeches.

Ew.

Oh, do you know what a leech is? Oh, they're kind of like an underwater slug that sucks on your blood.

And now I'm going to go wash my hands.

Now on to the class Hirudinea, the leeches, a lot of which are parasitic and, you know, eat blood and other bodily fluids.

The synapomorphy of leeches are their powerful suckers.

They've got them on both ends of their bodies, the posterior one being used to anchor itself, while the anterior one that surrounds its mouth attaches to its host.

Now, that being said, I did flirt with a D- because, you know, it's not the worst Roger Corman movie we've watched.

I think, off the top of my head, that particular award would go to Attack of the Giant Leeches because...

At least this movie had a couple of moments where I was mildly, and I mean mildly, amused.

Whereas my memory of Attack of the Giant Leeches, it was just absolutely dreadful from start to finish.

I mean, so cheap.

I mean, made this movie look like a Hollywood production.

And maybe we can get away from Roger Corman for a little bit.

I did want to point out, I was just looking now since I've started doing Letterboxd, some Corman movies that we've done for the podcast where he was either the producer or executive producer.

That's something.

Anyway, for now, eh? Spy? Do good things with Leech? Sure.

Why not?

i'll break the news

But you start to see these fish reveal themselves again, and that's when you can really start to capitalize on them.

Um, other lakes maybe they're not such weed-dependent lakes like Leech Lake or Mille Lacs, uh, lakes like that where the walleyes go out-- they're out in the basin during that hot summertime, uh, bite and, and like we're seeing now with this warmer summer especially on Mille Lacs where there's fish kinda scattered all over, but there's a ton of fish out in the basin.

There's a lotta bait out in the basin.

As surface temperatures start to drop, those fish will then push in towards the shoreline.

I use them up there in Canada.

Um, I use them on Lake of the Woods on the south shore.

Uh, jigging wraps on Mille Lacs, on Leech.

You know, y- you could just go down the list, all the way down to these small bodies of water where you're finding fish on midlake humps, off the edge.