The wounded buzzard on c.., p.7
The Wounded Buzzard on Christmas Eve,
p.7
We piled out of the pickup. Slim gathered up a load of wood, went inside, and built a fire in the stove. Then he went outside and came back with the gunnysack. He didn’t take Wallace out of the sack, which was probably a smart idea, but laid him and the sack out in front of the fire.
While Slim wrapped up Sally May and Miss Viola’s presents in grocery sacks, we gathered around the stove and waited to see if Wallace would snap out of it. He didn’t move or make a sound.
The stove warmed up and the chill went out of the house. We waited. Then the gunnysack moved, just a little bit. Then it moved a whole bunch.
Slim stopped wrapping and watched. We all watched. The next thing we knew, the sack was jumping around on the floor and Old Wallace was raising a fuss.
“Let me out of this dad-blamed . . . open up this sack this very minute and let me . . . Junior, where are you, son? They’ve got me locked up in a burlap poke, son, and . . . y’all just better let me out of this sack or I’ll show you how much damage an angry buzzard can do, is what’s fixin’ to happen if y’all don’t.”
Slim laid down his scissors and nodded his head. “I think the patient has pulled through. Now he goes to the calf shed.”
He pulled on his coat and overshoes and carried Wallace, still in the sack, down to the calf shed. Drover, Little Alfred, and I followed. Slim dragged up a couple of bales of prairie hay and made a little bed for the buzzard.
Then he untied the sack and poured Wallace out on the hay. Anybody who had expected Wallace to come out in a sweet and cheerful mood would have been disappointed, because he came out mad—in other words, the same old reprobate buzzard we’d always known.
Slim wanted no part of an angry buzzard, and once he’d dumped Wallace out on the hay he made a quick retreat back to the house to finish wrapping his presents.
Just as he rounded the corner of the house and disappeared from view we heard a thump on the tin roof, and a moment later Junior came flapping and crashing down beside us.
He was grinning from ear to ear, although buzzards don’t exactly have . . . he had a big grin spread from one side of his beak to the other. In other words, he was one happy buzzard.
“Oh P-p-pa, y-you’re alive and s-s-s-s-safe! I was s-s-so w-w-worried and s-s-s-sad!”
He rushed to the old man and wrapped him up in a big hug with his wings.
“Here, git back, what’s all this . . . of course I’m alive and safe, what did you expect, but no thanks at all to these ninnies, they had me tied up in a burlap poke, I liked to have froze to death and suffocated in that thang!”
Junior told him the whole story, about how he’d crashed through the windshield of the pickup and we’d taken pity on him and saved his life, the whole story.
Do you think the old man was grateful? No sir. He didn’t remember any of it.
“Junior, that is without a doubt the most outrageous, ridiculous, windy tale I ever heard. I did not run into no pickup, I have never ever in my whole life been inside a town and never will, and I want to know right this minute how I got this knot on the top of my head!”
“S-s-s-see? Y-you d-d-did run into the p-p-p-p-p-p . . . uh, truck, and that’s h-h-how y-you g-g-g-got the knot, got the knot. And sh-sh-shame on y-you for t-t-talking so m-m-mean to the v-v-v-very ones who s-s-saved your l-l-l-l-l-l-l . . . skin. Sh-shame on y-y-you!”
Wallace’s head rose in the air. “Junior! Did you just say shame on me?”
“Y-y-yeah. And sh-shame on y-y-you again.”
“I thought that’s what you said.”
“It’s g-good m-manners to th-th-thank your f-f-f-friends.”
“Says who?”
“Emily P-p-p-p-post, the g-good m-m-manners l-lady.”
“Son, have I told you lately what I think of Emily Post and her good manners? Listen to this.”
Wallace crossed his wings in front of his chest and scowled and sang a song. Here’s how it went.
A Pox, a Pox on Emily Post
You tell me of this etiquette and of this savoir-faire
But I no speak-a French, son, and I don’t even care.
’Cause God made me a buzzard, uncouth and loud and free,
And all this stuff on etiquette, it cuts no ice with me.
A pox, a pox, on Emily Post,
I thumb my nose at Emily’s ghost,
I’ll never be Miss Emily’s host
She cuts no ice with me.
Now let’s just take a closer look at old Miss Emily’s name.
Post is what they called her, and manners were her game.
Out here they have a use for posts, they plant ’em in the ground.
A barbed wire fence with Emily posts? I’ll pass that word around!
A pox, a pox on Emily Post,
I thumb my nose at Emily’s ghost,
I’ll never be Miss Emily’s host
So pass that word around.
No self-respecting buzzard has time for building couth.
We’ve got no use for manners, and that’s the gospel truth.
So take your please and thank you and stick ’em in your ear.
The Devil can roast Miss Emily Post and I will raise a cheer.
A pox, a pox on Emily Post,
I thumb my nose at Emily’s ghost,
I’ll never be Miss Emily’s host
And I will raise a cheer.
When he’d finished the song, Old Man Wallace seemed right proud of himself. “There! So take your please and thank you and stick ’em in your ear.”
Junior looked at me and shrugged. “H-h-he sure h-hates to s-s-say th-th-thank you, d-d-don’t he?”
“So it seems, Junior, but that’s okay. Nobody around here cares what he thinks anyway.”
“See?” yelled Wallace. “I knew they didn’t really care, it was all just a big show!”
Junior’s head swung back to the old man. “P-p-pa?”
“What!”
“Sh-sh-shut u-u-up.”
The old buzzard’s beak fell open, and the rest of us stared at Junior. By George, it had taken him a lot of years to get those two simple words out of his beak, but he’d finally done it.
Well, maybe Old Man Wallace didn’t have anything to be thankful for, but I did. Heck, I had four good legs, two ears, two eyes, and a tail. I was out of the wind and the snow. I had friends. I had enough Co-op dog food to keep myself running.
And besides all that, it was Christmas Eve—the only Christmas Eve we were going to have that year. It would have been a real shame to let the evening pass without us singing at least one Christmas carol.
So, before we all broke up and went our separate ways, I proposed that we do just that.
And you know what? We did, me and Junior and Drover and Little Alfred. Old Man Wallace refused to sing, which was okay because too many buzzards can ruin a Christmas carol.
Well, it was a great occasion and pretty outstanding singing too. When we were done, Junior said they needed to get back to their roost.
“Well, Junior, it was fun. Good-bye and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.”
“Th-thanks, and M-m-merry Christmas to y-y-you t-t-too.”
“Thanks, Junior. And Merry Christmas to you too, Wallace, even though you don’t deserve it.”
“That’s right and I’m proud of it, Christmas is just for ninnies and children, and my last word on the subject is phooey on Christmas. Good-bye and good riddance.”
And with that, they flew away into the snowy sky. Seemed to me that we had us a pretty swell ending for the story, and as they say, all’s swell that ends swell, so let’s just quit.
Further Reading
Have you read all of Hank’s adventures?
1 The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog
2 The Further Adventures of Hank the Cowdog
3 It’s a Dog’s Life
4 Murder in the Middle Pasture
5 Faded Love
6 Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
7 The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob
8 The Case of the One-Eyed Killer Stud Horse
9 The Case of the Halloween Ghost
10 Every Dog Has His Day
11 Lost in the Dark Unchanted Forest
12 The Case of the Fiddle-Playing Fox
13 The Wounded Buzzard on Christmas Eve
14 Hank the Cowdog and Monkey Business
15 The Case of the Missing Cat
16 Lost in the Blinded Blizzard
17 The Case of the Car-Barkaholic Dog
18 The Case of the Hooking Bull
19 The Case of the Midnight Rustler
20 The Phantom in the Mirror
21 The Case of the Vampire Cat
22 The Case of the Double Bumblebee Sting
23 Moonlight Madness
24 The Case of the Black-Hooded Hangmans
25 The Case of the Swirling Killer Tornado
26 The Case of the Kidnapped Collie
27 The Case of the Night-Stalking Bone Monster
28 The Mopwater Files
29 The Case of the Vampire Vacuum Sweeper
30 The Case of the Haystack Kitties
31 The Case of the Vanishing Fishhook
32 The Garbage Monster from Outer Space
33 The Case of the Measled Cowboy
34 Slim’s Good-bye
35 The Case of the Saddle House Robbery
36 The Case of the Raging Rottweiler
37 The Case of the Deadly Ha-Ha Game
38 The Fling
39 The Secret Laundry Monster Files
40 The Case of the Missing Bird Dog
41 The Case of the Shipwrecked Tree
42 The Case of the Burrowing Robot
43 The Case of the Twisted Kitty
44 The Dungeon of Doom
45 The Case of the Falling Sky
46 The Case of the Tricky Trap
47 The Case of the Tender Cheeping Chickies
48 The Case of the Monkey Burglar
49 The Case of the Booby-Trapped Pickup
50 The Case of the Most Ancient Bone
51 The Case of the Blazing Sky
52 The Quest for the Great White Quail
53 Drover’s Secret Life
54 The Case of the Dinosaur Birds
55 The Case of the Secret Weapon
56 The Case of the Coyote Invasion
57 The Disappearance of Drover
58 The Case of the Mysterious Voice
About the Author and Illustrator
John R. Erickson, a former cowboy, has written numerous books for both children and adults and is best known for his acclaimed Hank the Cowdog series. He lives and works on his ranch in Perryton, Texas, with his family.
Gerald L. Holmes has illustrated numerous cartoons and textbooks in addition to the Hank the Cowdog series. He lives in Perryton, Texas.
John R. Erickson, The Wounded Buzzard on Christmas Eve
