“Simon Laramore! Even his name sounds rich,” Clem Perkins had said more times than he could count on his two hands. Clem wasn’t educated, but everyone in and around Eubanks in the 1940s liked and respected him. He was friendly to all, and generous with the crops he raised on his small farm along a branch—more like a twig—of the Little Tennessee River. He and his sweet wife, Mary Ann, were always there when somebody needed a helping hand. The only thing Clem steered clear of when he went to town was the snake-handlers’ church. He “didn’t hold with no snake handlin’” and wouldn’t go near the place. After the one time, that is.
One Sunday night in summer he’d slipped into a back pew to see for himself what went on in there. What he saw were snakes sure enough—live ones—in boxes under the front pews. Word around Monroe County was that the snakes were never taken out of their boxes if there was an unbeliever amongst the congregation. Well, those folks must have thought Clem was a believer, because out came the snakes. Not garden snakes, no sir. Real serpents—rattlesnakes and water moccasins! The next day Clem told his friend, Mort Williams, “Them things was a-rattlin’ and a-hissin’ their own kind o’ music! Folks was holdin’ them vipers,” he added, his eyes bulging like Easter eggs.
Mort was confused. “You mean in their hands?”
“How do you think they was holdin’ ’em? ’Tween their legs?”
Mort chuckled and spit tobacco on the ground, narrowly missing his own foot.
Dinner was served mid-day, so the sun was still up when Clem and Mary Ann took their daily walk around the twelve acres Clem had inherited from his daddy and granddaddy before him. And, as they did every day, they chose a different spot to sit and rest. This time they sat near the creek.
Mary Ann took off her shoes and dangled her feet in the clear water. The sun made her wet toenails sparkle. Clem loved his wife more than anything; and, even though she was a bit “chunky,” he thought she was the prettiest woman in all of Monroe County. He often wished he’d been able to give her a better life, at least some extra money now and then so she could get all gussied up for church like Sarah Laramore did. “What’re you thinkin’ about, Clem?” Mary Ann asked with a shy smile. “Oh, just thinkin’ about how everything sparkles,” Clem answered. “The water, your toenails … you.” He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. Mary Ann laughed and pushed her toes down into the soft mud. “Oh, Clem, look!” She pointed to the tops of her feet where tiny colorful stones—some no bigger than her smallest toenail—mingled with the clinging mud. “They’re like the ones we found last summer in the well. Remember?”
Who could forget? The cover to the old abandoned well had broken during a rain storm; and the next day their beloved little dog, Scooter, had fallen in. Fortunately, Clem found him in time. As Mary Ann gently rinsed the mud from Scooter’s fur, the little stones settled to the bottom of the wash tub. She lifted them out with a strainer and spread them on a towel to dry. In the morning she put them in a jelly jar and set it on the kitchen windowsill where the sun could make the stones sparkle. The jar had been there ever since.
Now on the riverbank a year later, Mary Ann scooped the mud off the tops of her feet and carefully rinsed it away, catching the new stones in her hands. “Wouldn’t they look nice in the bottom of a fishbowl?” “You’d need a big fishbowl for all these here,” Clem said, gathering them into his shirttail.
“Do you s’pose someday we could get one, Clem? And some goldfish?”
Her excitement was evident; and by the time they reached the back porch, Clem had made up his mind that Mary Ann was going to get her fishbowl and goldfish even if he had to sell his carving knife. The smile on her face was worth everything to him. “Let’s go down to the general store tomorrow and see if Mr. Laramore has a fishbowl,” he said.
~~~
Mary Ann looked up at Simon Laramore and smiled proudly. “Aren’t they pretty?”
He held the jar close to his face. “Hmmm. Pretty, indeed.” Laramore reached under the counter, retrieved a magnifying glass, and spread the stones on a white napkin. Then he held the glass over them and peered through it, saying, “Hmmm” and “Umm” several times. Finally he asked, “Where’d you get these, Mrs. Perkins?”
“Back home on the farm. Some along the creek and some in our old well.”
“Umm.” Again, he peered through his magnifier.
“So, do you have a big fishbowl, Mr. Laramore?”
He put the glass down and smiled broadly at Mary Ann. “I can order just what you need, little lady. It’s called an aquarium.”
“Is it … expensive?” Mary Ann asked.
“I’ll give you a special price, I promise.”
Mary Ann sighed in relief. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Laramore! And we’ll need some goldfish!”
“I’ll order them.” He was still smiling as he put the stones back into the jar and returned it to Mary Ann. “Always delighted to please a customer!”
~~~
Simon Laramore could hardly wait to call his son, Howard, in Knoxville. Young Howard had completed two years of college and had a good job working in a big-city bank. As soon as the phone call went through, an excited Laramore began telling his son about Mary Ann’s stones.
Howard couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Slow down, Dad! You mean like the ones that were discovered up near Pigeon Forge?” he asked.
“Yes!” Laramore answered. “Those idiots are sitting on a damn lode! Those stones are rubies!”
“Are you going to tell them?”
“Hell, no!”
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