We (several Beach Author Network authors) were at a recent event last weekend (North Myrtle Beach Tent Sale) and while things were slow, we started chatting it up because that's what we do. Somehow the subject got around to funeral arrangements. Various BAN members shared how theirs was already planned, one even said he wanted his ashes placed in shotgun shells and shot across his favorite land. I was sort of challenged to write a story about it because my buds know my brain works like that. So here is the opening, unedited and proofed but just tossing it out there; might work its way into a novel, might not. What do you think? 

Guns and Ashes

Hardy Bovine did things his way, in his timeframe; mattered not to him whether you liked it, agreed with it or chastised him for doing it. Well, those who chastised him only did it one time. Hardy had a not so tactful way of telling you it wasn’t really any of your damn business what he did, what he thought or how he acted.  In his words, ‘he didn’t need no man or woman telling him what’fer when it came right down to his business or his opinions.’ He spoke his mind, called them like he saw them and if he didn’t like it nobody was going to convince him otherwise. Call him colorful. Call him an obscene foul mouthed old coot or even worse if you felt real froggy and ready to get your butt kicked. Yeah, that’s right. Hardy Bovine never shied away from a good fight, verbal ones and just plain scuffling in the dirt. Never pick a fight with a pig in the mud. You’ll come up on the short end so says Hardy.

Rite of passage, Hardy would spout it to anyone what wanted to listen. Hell, he would speak his mind whether you wanted to hear him out or not. This here day, second Tuesday of August, he was two months and three days from seeing his ninetieth year of being above dirt, and he was still as healthy as a plow mule and almost as stubborn. He had plenty of smarts between his ears; hadn’t got him none of that Old Timer’s sickness like some of his old buddies, not that he could recall anyway. Hardy still dipped snuff, drank his fair share of George Dickel Whisky, green label, 90 proof, preferred, and hankered now and then for a little poke over at Miss Lottie’s that catered to a man’s needs, one that is with a stash of green in his billfold. Paying for it suited Hardy just fine; no courtship and no ties once it was done. He sure didn’t need no live in cook and maid making his life miserable. He could take care of that just fine and still hunt, fish, drink and gamble without no gospel spewing woman putting up a fuss and raising a ruckus.

Yes sir’ree Bob, Hardy Bovine was his own man. He wasn’t handsome, but who was at his age? His face left no doubt to those who looked upon it that he had been rode hard and put up wet. He had earned ever wrinkle and every scar fair and square. He had the stories to back up most of them and after putting away a pint of George green label his tongue loosened up a tad and he would lay claim to all his conquests, his brawls and back breaking labor that landed him to where he stood today. Hardy wasn’t a believer in taking handouts. He always gave an honest day’s work for what was owed him. It just right down pissed him off to see folks taking advantage of a free ride, thinking that they was entitled to food stamps and unemployment checks, acting all pitiful and poor and broken down. ‘Get off your lazy ass and find a job’ he would fuss. Jobs are out there for the taking if you’re not sorry and worthless like a pile of green blowfly invested horse manure.  

Hardy was man’s man, stout, no sagging chicken wings under his arms and he got around without the help of a cane or walker like most his age. He spat in father’s times face, refusing to be just the next old fart shuffling along, biding his time until the Grim Reaper laid claim to his rickety old bones. Hell fire and full of piss and vinegar, that was Hardy Bovine to a tee. Rough around the edges, manners lacking, living life to the fullest as he would often say, ‘got know way of know when it your time to cash it in, punch the ticket, get life’s pink slip, so you damn sure better make the best of it. Holding back was for wussies, except he didn’t always keep that comment so clean, especially after a little green label kicked in. One thing about Hardy Bovine, he was the same way all the time, not one to pretend to be somebody he wasn’t and sure hell wasn’t to put on window dressing to suit the crowd. Like him or not, he was genuine to the flesh and bone.

August days, dog days what some called them could get pert near unbearable in the low country of Carolina. Didn’t make no mind to ole Hardy though; living in Ridgeville, about 35 miles north west of Charleston and a stones throw from Monks Corner where he had been born into to this world. Ridgeville was known for the Lieber Correctional Institution, the states depository for those sentenced to death. Hardy had a fondness for the penitentiary having worked as a guard in Columbia’s Broad River Correctional Institution  

Hardy took pride in his prison job while there, his face being about the last one those being put to death laid eyes on before the electrical juice fried their worthless good for nothing, Godforsaken souls. Hardy didn’t have much tolerance when it came to lawbreakers, especially those murderous scoundrels responsible for innocent law abiding peoples’ deaths. Cop killers just made him want to be the one what volunteered pulling the power lever. He likened his role to that of them guards in that Green Mile movie. Tom Hanks, now that was a fine actor in his book. Hardy liked catching those Bosom Buddy reruns. As cantankerous as Hardy Bovine might be, he wasn’t a law breaker by nature. Sure, he colored outside the lines when it came to gambling, womanizing and drinking but by his view, none of these vices hurt anybody and surely didn’t get nary a person killed or raped or robbed. Fighting and tussling came natural but he drew the line when it came to maiming or murdering.

Yep, in two months and three days he would for sure reach another milestone by some folks reckoning but to Hardy it would be just another day like any other day in his life. He might smoke him a cigar and sip some George Dickel but otherwise it would just come and go with no fanfare, no cake, and no damn candles to huff and puff until extinguished.  Hell, a cake, if he actually had one, would be declared a fire hazard if loaded up with his life time worth of little wax candles. He wasn’t that much into sweets anyway other than having him a slice of Widow Jenkins’s homemade nanner put’tin every now and then.  Just thinking about hers made his mouth moisten up and if he didn’t get his mind off of it he’d be slobbering like an old rabies invested red fox. He sure didn’t want to get caught looking like Gabriel Turner, his ole hunting buddy, what had landed in the old folks’ home, bedridden,  wearing those depends and drooling like a three month all chap, bless his heart. Widow woman Jenkins had taken a fancy to him, always wooing him and wanted him to show her favors. He’d save his favors for  down at Miss Lottie’s where the woman folk were young and rounded in all the right places; not shaped like the Liberty Bell, eighty three year olds and horny like Widow Jenkins. He’d do without first.

The position of the shadows on his front porch told him it must be nearly four o’clock, the summer daylight more than half gone. It was still hot a blue blazes but a man ain’t really healthy if he ain’t bleeding ignorant oil. That’s what Hardy called senseless sweating, bleeding ignorant oil. His daddy, Big John Bovine, rest his sorry soul, had always called it that, saying ‘boy, if you got no better sense than to stay out there under that blazing hot sun and bleed ignorant oil, then you best not bring your stinky self to my supper table without running a rag through it.” Ole Hardy broke out into a grin recalling those long gone times with Daddy John. Today just seemed to be one of those days where his mind just wondered about aimlessly from one subject to another. Sometimes he just couldn’t help it. Might be that the Old Timer’s disease, might be sneaking up on him; forgetting what happened an hour ago but remembering crap that had long been buried in his head. Well, didn’t much matter one way or the other; it was his mind to do what he wanted with it. He didn’t have to answer to nobody but Hardy Bovine and he maker above.