Luke Browne pushed his long legs out in front of him and kicked the pot-bellied stove door closed. He looked across the room at Outhouse Jake Bucannan, then leaned back in the loose-jointed chair, shifting his weight so as not to threaten his perch beyond its remaining strength.

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            “Harley tells me you boys went fishin’ down Hazel Creek last week. You catch somethin’, or was you just sportin’?”

            “We was fishin’, Luke. Caught us a mess of trout. Didn’t we, Mike?”

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           “Sure did.” Little Mike Higdon leaned against the rough wall of the cabin, then back-slid down it to sit on the floor. “They was a sportin’ feller up above the Cascades, and we fished near him for a time, but we could tell by the way he looked he weren’t from round here.”

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            Little Mike bent his knees to serve as a resting place for his arms. “Had one of them fancy wide-brimmed straw hats on, and stuck all around it was some odd fishhooks with little bits of thread a-hangin’ on to ‘em. Said they was flies. Didn’t look like no flies I’d ever seen, but hell, I’m just a old Hazel Creek boy.”

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            Jake opened the front door and spat. “Made a point of tellin’ us he tied them flies all by hisself. Said it was his hobby.” He closed the door and turned to face his friends. “What you reckon a hobby is, anyhow?”

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            Luke leaned his head back and sucked something from his teeth with a loud smack. “A hobby, you bumpkins, is somethin’ a city feller does to take his mind off all the hard work he does. Like paintin’ pictures. That’s a hobby. So’s playin’ games. And readin’ books. Them’s all hobbies.”

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            “Oh, I get it,” Little Mike said. “City folks’ hobby is fishin’, mountain man’s hobby is huntin’ bear!”

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            “Don’t be stupid,” Jake said. “Everybody knows bear huntin’ ain’t no hobby. Hit’s a way of life.”

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            “So, Outhouse, what was you usin’for bait?” asked Luke.

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            “We was fishin’ with corn, and I’ll thank you to stop callin’ me Outhouse.”

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            Little Mike looked over at Luke. “Why’s it do you reckon we all use names like Outhouse and Humpback amongst ourselves? Here’s Jake, madder’n a wet cat, all because of a name. Hit don’t make no sense a-tall, you think about it.”

           

            Luke pulled his wool shirt out of his pants and loosened his belt. “I knew a feller once, lived over on Forney Creek. Wasn’t born there, but his folks settled there when he was just a boy.”

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            The door opened. Harley Hall stepped into the room as Luke went on with his tale and without a word, sat down next to Little Mike and folded his long arms behind his head.

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            “So this Forney Creek boy, Johnson was his name, he was about as local as a man can get without actually being born there. He hunts like a Forney Creek man. He fishes like a Forney Creek man. He walks, talks, and thinks like a Forney Creek man.”

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            Outhouse pulled his boots off. Luke stopped talking and fanned the air with one hand. “Jesus, where your feet been, son?”

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            Harley laughed. “Maybe we ought to call him Stinkfoot ‘stead of Outhouse.”

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            “Hold your water,” Outhouse said. “My feet ain’t no worse’n yours.”

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            “That’s just the point of the story,” Luke said. “Listen and hit’ll all come clear.

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            “Now this Johnson feller, He done his best to fit in, Even married a Forney Creek woman. In time they produced six young’uns and ever’ one had the Forney Creek look. You know – ugly as a mud fence daubed with tadpoles. So this ol’ boy Johnson figures he’s prime for a ugly nickname, but them local boys never hung one on him like they do everbody else. You know how that works: Charley Watson becomes ‘Likker Pellagry’ Johnson. ‘Lick’ Watson, for short.

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             “And that fat feller lived up near High Rocks, he was ‘White Sop’ Barnes,” Harley said.

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            “Remember old ‘Tizz’Chisholm?” Little Mike said. “Real name’s Joseph, but he wheezes when he talks, so folks took to calling him ‘Phthysic’ Joe. And after a spell, when nobody could spit out such a name as that, he become just plain ‘Tizz’.”

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            Luke got up,, opened the door of the pot-bellied stove, and threw a stick of wood on the fire. “Now some of them Forney Creek boys hated their ugly nicknames just like you, Outhouse. It was a constant reminder of somethin’ they was lackin’ in body or mind, or maybe somethin’ real stupid they done whilst they was in the throes of a wild drunk. But after a time some of ‘em figured out they got them ugly names because their friends liked them so much.

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            “Johnson got to feelin’ so bad about it, he asked his friends why they never gave him no ugly nickname and they told him that although he was a pleasure to be with and could be counted on for everything from settin’ up with the sick to treein’ a varmint in the ground, he just purely warn’t no local boy. It mattered not that he’d lived on Forney Creek all his life, worked and played on Forney Creek all his life. He’d not been born there, and that was that.

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            “So Johnson figured if he couldn’t get no ugly nickname on Forney Creek, there was other places to live, so he hauled his family across the mountain and settled on Hazel Creek below the Cascades.”

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            Luke raised a bushy eyebrow. “Now, Lester Calhoun—all you’ns know Lester, don’t you? Farms that bottomland just below Proctor Creek? Well, when Lester’s son Dillard talks, sound comes half out his mouth and half out his nose. You got to be around him a while to appreciate him in spite of his affliction. Now, when he was just a little feller, Dillard had the hardest time with the ‘eff’ sound. Farm become harm. Food become hewd. And Forney Creek become Horney Creek. So Old Lester Calhoun commenced to callin’ this feller Johnson from Forney Creek, Horny the Johnson.”

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            Little Mike shook his head. “Man with a name like that comes to visit, you hide your womenfolk.”

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            “Ever time somebody’d call him that, Johnson would blush so bad folks thought he’d caught the pneumonie fever,” Luke said. “But don’t think he weren’t secretly pleased. He’d been accepted by his new friends on Hazel Creek, and there he stayed.” Luke pointed a long finger. “You get it, Jake?”

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            “I reckon so. But I still don’t like it. Can we see about supper now? I’m hungry enough to eat my socks.”

 

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