{"id":17510,"date":"2009-10-01T16:26:55","date_gmt":"2009-10-01T21:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=17510"},"modified":"2014-10-21T16:38:17","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T21:38:17","slug":"what-the-faulkner-presents-adventures-with-pinecone-by-charles-hale-from-tlv-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/what-the-faulkner-presents-adventures-with-pinecone-by-charles-hale-from-tlv-90\/","title":{"rendered":"“What the Faulkner Presents: Adventures with Pinecone” by Charles Hale (From TLV #90)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pinecone90MIC\"<\/a>Sheila was sitting on the couch next to me when the phone rang. We had been reading Bukowski and Cummings poems to each other. She was in the middle of a poem about a man fighting someone for spraying his dog with a hose when I saw that it was Pinecone calling. Sheila had told me earlier in the week that their father had moved out of the house and that divorce proceeding had started. Lawyers had been hired.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHey dude, are you rubbing on my sisters boobies right now?\u201d I just shook my head and looked over at Sheila who had closed the book of poetry. Pinecone had told me once before that he preferred to talk on the phone from inside his closet. I didn\u2019t understand it but I\u2019m not of a mind to change a little boy of his habits; especially when his dad just moved out.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you doing today?\u201d I asked and watched Sheila walk into the other room. Pinecone started listing all the things he had eaten that day. I wasn\u2019t sure if he was having a contest with somebody or had been underfed for a week, but he started with two hotdogs for breakfast, then some Poptarts and potato chips. Pinecone said he took a break from eating for an hour or so and watched TV but then had a grilled cheese sandwich, a glass of milk, and a bowl of ice cream. It was 2:30 in the afternoon and I wondered how long it would be before he vomited.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCan you come in the morning?\u201d Pinecone asked after he finished talking about food. \u201cYeah man, I\u2019ll come by. What do you have in mind?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJust be here early, like 6 am, and wear camo if you\u2019ve got it.\u201d Pinecone said and hung up all of a sudden like someone had just offered him some chicken fingers with BBQ sauce. When I got off the phone I told Sheila what her brother had said and throughout the rest of the evening she kept smiling at me like she knew something I didn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the kid wasn\u2019t losing his father there would be no way I would wake up as early as I did for him. After his eating escapades of the day before I was hoping he would have a stash of sausage and biscuits waiting for me but instead Pinecone was standing in the driveway with a bow and arrow when I pulled up to the curb in front of his parents\u2019 house. Before I could get both feet out of the car and onto the ground I heard Pinecone running up to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCheck it out, dude, check it out,\u201d Pinecone excitedly said. He shoved a laminated pass with a string attached to it in my face. It looked like a backstage pass for a Rolling Stones concert or something, slick and brightly colored. Then it dawned on me why Pinecone was having me come over to his house so early. Pinecone\u2019s bow was too big for him to pull back and lock into position, but he had the pass and wanted me to do the shooting. His father had left the pass behind and since today was the only day that the 20 chosen hunters could shoot deer inside the city limits, Pinecone decided that the pass shouldn\u2019t go to waste.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once we got inside Pinecone\u2019s house I tried to explain to him that I had never shot a bow and even if we did kill one I would have no idea what to do with it. But, after I was handed a cold piece of cheese toast, Pinecone sternly informed me that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I ate my cheese toast as slowly as possible all the while hoping that something would happen so I didn\u2019t have to take this boy, who was about to lose his father, hunting. \u201cBesides,\u201d Pinecone said. \u201cMy birthday is coming up and there\u2019s nothing I want except a dead deer.\u201d I promised Pinecone we would hang out for his birthday, do something fun, but there was no way I could talk him out of a hunting trip to Avent Park.<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess our conversation got a little loud because I heard the toilet flush and someone walking down the stairs. When I turned to look I saw Sheila appear in the hallway. She was looking sexy in flannel pajamas and smiled at the two of us. Then she started laughing and asked me if I had read the paper yesterday. I told her I hadn\u2019t and then she told Pinecone to go wash the mud he had smeared on his face off.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSomething went wrong with the paperwork,\u201d Sheila said. \u201cThe state revoked the permits. The deer are just going to keep eating rich people\u2019s plants. Charles, I can\u2019t believe you were going to do that. I love Bambi, don\u2019t you love me?\u201d\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

–<\/span>
\nThis is part 9. To read part 8, click here.\u00a0<\/a><\/span>
\nThis article was originally printed in The Local Voice #90 (published October 1, 2009).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sheila was sitting on the couch next to me when the phone rang. We had been reading Bukowski<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":17471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/PineconeFEAT1.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}