Weathersby's Honor

Weathersby's Honor

These roads ain’t what they used to be. Remember when it took half a day to get out here. Usually having to fix a couple of flat tires, wench yourself out of the mud, and hope no one took you for a government man. Good things time have changed. Now you can break the law in plain sight and people don’t even look twice. Not like it was back when I was a kid. People knew what sticking together meant. And if you didn’t, well, you didn’t need worry about it for long.

“You Jerome Weathersby?”

“Who’s askin?”

It always began that way back then when I’d ride along with my Granddad. You was never sure, who you was talkin to.  No one trusted anyone, especially one they didn’t know. So they had kind of a dance they did until they could figure the other guy out. Grandpa was a lawyer. Don’t know if he really was, or just said he was, but then nobody cared, so what harm could it do. 

The day I went with him, he was goin to give the Weathersby’s some good news. Their uncle Hezekiah had been killed during a bank robbery. They weren’t sure if he was doin the robbing or if he was just there, either way he ended up getting shot and that is why we was headin out to the Weathersby homestead.

Hezekiah Weathersby was what we used to call a jack of all trades, and a master of none. He dabbled in this, that, and the other thing. No one knew exactly what he did, but he had a nice home, one of the first cars, in Bentonville, and a wife a few people had died for, before and after she was married, or so the story was told.

Amy Weathersby his wife had been struck by lightning on several occasions and wasn’t altogether right. She’d take to doing the most unusual of things at the most unusual times of the year. She’d put up the Christmas tree in July and shoot off fireworks at Christmas.  No one seemed to mind as there wasn’t a lot to do in the long winters and she kind of liven up the place. Then one day, I think they said it was New Year’s Day, or close enough to it, and she got it in her head to go for a swim in Jackson’s pond. Well that was not a good idea.

She’d been missing a couple of days, when someone saw after the thaw, what they thought was a duck wearing a bonnet sitting on the pond. Couple of the boys went out to see, like I said things were pretty slow in the winter, and they find Amy, not breathing of course, but standing straight up like she was stuck in the mud, still wearing her plaid bonnet she was so fond of. Given to her by Hezekiah the previous Christmas. They say she never took it off, winter or summer. Must have been mighty uncomfortable, but then love has been knowin to make you suffer.

Hezekiah and Jerome were what was called a mixed pair, kind of like Aces and Eights, but less notorious. It was claimed because they was born on the same day, and that Hezekiah ended up Hezekiah instead of his rightful name Jerome, because Jerome had been a few hours first and Granddaddy Jerome’s name was up for grabs, it went to the first who took it. Thus the feud began. It had nothing to do with the boys much. Hezekiah hated his name, same as Jerome hated his, but the folks refused to budge and let them exchange, so they was stuck. 

The took on nicknames, like Pork Chop and Kindlin, but they didn’t stick, and it came to be Hezekiah moved to town, some thirty miles away as the crow flies, some twenty by road. It was kind of a holler joke as they was prone to moonshine and the crows was kind of partial to the left-over dregs from the still the pigs didn’t eat. All in all a fund time was had, and things quieted down after Hezekiah moved away and married Amy his cousin. There weren’t a lot of choices in them days what with disease, murder, and the like, so you was kind of confined to not far from where you was at. The two families pretended they didn't know each other. Hezekiah spelled his name Weatherbee, so no one would know he was related to that bunch of yahoos.

Anyway we go out to tell Jerome about Hezekiah’s passin and they is having one big party celebrating Big Reds victory over Duncanville’s, Devil May Care, a fightin chicken of wide repute. Apparently Big Red had been trained by Jerome who was knowin for his devious tactics, the Cadaverous Frog type kind of thing. But no one could ever really prove what was suspected and was certainly knowin to be true, that he had a way of slippin around the rules. Anyway, they was celebrating when Gramps and me got there. Shootin in the air, shootin at just about anything that looked like it was moving or about to. Dang near hit Gramps and believe they would have tried again had he not shot back, just missin Big Red, and scarin the hens off into the darkness where the foxes liked to hide until everyone went to bed.

So after Jerome and Gramps stop dancing, Gramps tells him about Hezekiah and how because May had preceded him, and the no-good kids run off and joined the war and didn’t come back, he was the rightful heir. Jerome wanted to know of what, as he and none of the others believed the stories about Hezekiah, and his money getting ways. So Gramps says he’ll be right back, and he goes to the car and comes back with his satchel he used for lawyering type things and pulls out these papers that needed signin.

Jerome, he can’t write, and he’s still bubblin with questions about what all this was goin to cost him. He trusted, truth be knowin, not even himself when it came to money. There was talk years back that one of his kind was taken off to jail for nonsupport, which no one knew what that meant, so it must have been bad. Ever since then, he was the most suspicious of the Weathersby’s. 

So Gramps tells him Hezekiah left twelve thousand dollars in gold coins and fifty thousand in confederate money. All Jerome had to do, was sign the papers saying he’d give Hezekiah back his rightful name, even if he claimed he didn't know him.

It came to be known that Jerome’s folks had kind of lied about the time of the birth, and so misrepresented their claim to the name Jerome.

Well, Jerome knew it was a lot of money, but he also knew what his folks had done in the face of grave adversity, had they been found out. So he was stuck in a conundrum he couldn’t neither figure out, or even know how to spell. So after careful consideration and several rounds of elixir, he decided he’d do it, but he’d like to modify it just a touch. Well Gramps was one of those guys who liked a good ending as well as the next and couldn’t wait to hear this one.

Jerome said because he couldn’t dishonor the reputation of his cheatin parents, even though they did wrong, he’d take the name Hezekiah, but he was keepin the Jerome as his middle name, bein as he never got around to gettin one. He said Hezekiah could have his name Jerome chiseled on his tomb stone if it would make him feel better, but couldn’t help but wonderin what Amy would think when she come back to visit.

Gramps thought it was the best conundrum reciprocity he’d ever witnessed, and told Jerome if he’d sign the paper, the gold was his, and his name would get changed at the courthouse to Hezekiah Jerome Weathersby, first thing in the mornin. They shook hands and Gramps and me left before the party got to goin where we couldn’t leave. Lots of parties back then were like that, you could check in, but you couldn’t leave.

Some fella years later made a song about the Weathersby’s and their parties. Jerome never got to use his new name. Someone thought the party jug was empty, and throwed it into the fire. It exploded and piece of the jug found Hezekiah Jerome Weathersby.

One of the kids was so ashamed of the way his grandparents had deceived the family, they took the gold, and in the middle of the night headed for California. They say she bought a Hotel out there where movie stars who had changed their names, came to stay and reminisce about old times when they felt like they was somebody.

True story; Weathersby’s honor!