Just Melanie

We crept through the high brome in the pasture, stealthily moving to hide our presence. As the sun beat down on our tanned faces, we were careful to hold low our bamboo fishing poles, and to make sure none of the hooks fell out of our pockets.
We were on a mission — to get to the best fishing spot in our rural neighborhood. But there was a major obstacle to overcome . . . getting there was harder than catching the fish.
“Turn around, see if she’s on the step, watching for us,” whispered my young brother, Terry, while my even younger brother, Steve’s eyes twinkled with mischief and terror at the same time.
As my heart beat wildly, I turned around and looked at the yellow house to the north.
“She’s not there,” I whispered back.
“We just have to get over the hill,” Terry said.
And as we started moving through the weeds and the sand burr patches — we heard the familiar blood-curdling yell.
“You kids get off my property! Right now! Get out of here, you rotten little kids!”
And there was the vision we’d been hoping to avoid. A cranky, mean old woman with one leg, a big cane, and a shrub of gray, ratty, long hair that seemed to stand on end, as if she were Medusa. She’d stand on the steps at the door of the house, and yell until the cows came home about how she was going to “whip us good” and call the sheriff’s department. 
We were had. We’d been caught, by the infamous “Texas Aggie.”
At that point, it was like the dogs had been released from the prison gates — there was nothing we could do but run. Oh sure, we got caught more often than not, trying to get to the pristine fishing hole on her and her husband, Frankie’s property. But it was always so worth the challenge — like I said, getting there was half the battle and really, half the fun.
Poor, old, decrepit Frankie and Texas Aggie were our neighbors down the road — they lived in a secluded area just two miles or so from our farm. No one went near them — they had been deemed anti-social by the family adults and us kids deemed her to be a scary entity that was real, although maybe some of our fantasy was fueled by wild stories from Grandpa and Dad.
But to look at her — in all her anger, as she yelled at us from the porch — it was like visiting the haunted house at the carnival. I don’t really remember how the name Texas Aggie started — it had something to do with the fact that her hair was so tangled, wild and big, “it looked like a Texas Tumbleweed” (not that any of us had ever been to Texas).
She had few teeth (I’d heard, because we never got that close to really see), and for whatever reason, she had only one leg. Why, I have no idea — but she was still able to get around pretty well. I was told that she was in a wheelchair inside the house — but when it came to chasing us kids away, she was able to hop around quite nicely with that giant cane (which according to legend was made of a long, petrified piece of anatomy from a very gifted bull).
Knowing all that, I’m not sure why we would run so hard to get away. She obviously couldn’t keep up with us . . . with the “bull cane” and all. Yet, we’d run until our little legs were moving faster than our bodies could keep up with, and we’d roll ourselves into the ditches, elbows over ankles.
Days would pass and we’d be compelled to head out on the adventure again — to see if we could sneak to their beautiful pond to fish. If you could get there, the fish were easier game than Texas Aggie’s eagle eye. The sad part was that no one got to use it, and the two of them never even took advantage of what they had.
That’s probably because they hated each other so much. We’d hear the adults tell stories about what poor, old, decrepit Frankie and Texas Aggie had supposedly done to one another in recent days — and then sometimes, Grandpa Andy would lure us in with his tales.
I’m not sure if they were true or not — but they were so bizarre, that I can’t believe Andy could have been that creative or crafty. Everyone knew that Texas Aggie only loved one thing on this earth — it was a parrot in a cage that she’d had for years. Grandpa spun a tale of intrigue, as he told us kids how Texas Aggie was in her wheelchair, nagging at poor, old, decrepit Frankie. He couldn’t take anymore, Grandpa said, so he stole her cane and hid it away, making her stuck in her chair.
“But she wouldn’t stop yelling at him, and wouldn’t stop yelling at him,” Grandpa told us, as we listened with eyes wide and minds filled with anticipation. “And then, well, it wasn’t pretty.”
“What?” we’d ask, wondering what poor, old, decrepit Frankie could have possibly done to Texas Aggie.
“He grabbed his gun,” Grandpa would say, while I gasped. Did he shoot old Texas Aggie?
“Nope, but he did aim and he pulled the trigger,” Grandpa would say, reenacting the gesture with precision, as he closed one eye and pretended to get ready to shoot the make-believe firearm.
“Boom!” he yelled, while we jumped. “And then it was all over.”
We waited for more information.
“He turned the shotgun on that darn, squawking bird of hers, and Texas Aggie was left with nothing but feathers and swear words,” he’d say, reaching for his pipe.
“No way!” we’d yelp. “And then what?”
“Well, old Texas Aggie just got meaner and meaner. She cursed him and said she’d make the rest of his life miserable, and he’d wish he’d been the parrot instead,” Grandpa said. “That’s when Frankie started taking the tractor to the other farm every day.”
At least I knew that part of the story was true. Every day, like clockwork, twice a day, you could hear the putt-putt-putt-putt of the old John Deere coming down the road as Frankie drove a top speed of three miles per hour to “the other farm” I guess he owned somewhere south of there. You could see and hear him coming from two miles away, the tractor popping and banging. It seemed to take hours for him to pass . . . and it was hours later when he went back the same way he had come. And doing it twice a day . . . well, that’s pretty much all poor, old, decrepit Frankie would get done each and every day in the autumn of his life — with the exception of downing an occasional bottle of hooch that he’d empty and throw in the west ditch.  
Frankie’s parade was something you could count on — when you saw him go by the first time, that meant Mom would be done with chores pretty soon and you better have yours done in the house before she got there. And if you saw Frankie go by in the afternoon, that meant the mail delivery would be in about five minutes.
Frankie and Texas Aggie were a mystery to us kids. They were those folks that no one really understood and the ones around whom intriguing tales were spun. He was poor, old, decrepit Frankie — confined to an ancient John Deere tractor (and his old blue pickup) because he couldn’t bear to go home. And Texas Aggie was the mean old lady with the giant, gray tumbleweed of hair that chased us kids away from her beautiful lake that got no enjoyment.
Years went by, we got older and weren’t nearly as intrigued with the two. Texas Aggie eventually passed on and poor, old, decrepit Frankie was given the gift of a few years of life in peace and quiet. He had his old dog — and two of them would spend their days in a haze of hooch and what-would-have-beens. I later heard that Frankie and the dog were actually found frozen to death, at the bottom of a deep ditch, in his blue pickup, just miles from our place. No one really knew what happened for sure.
But all I know is that those two characters played a role in a bunch of young kids’ lives — and they didn’t even know it. They didn’t know they provided hours of fantastical speculation, that she became the “scary lady in the haunted house” most kids only read about in books. She was the reason we ran so fast through those pastures, holding onto our little bamboo poles for dear life. He was the reason we wondered what was in those brown bottles he threw in the west ditch every day, and we pondered why he could only drive that tractor three miles per hour.
What a pair. But that’s what made the old farm neighborhood interesting — people like poor, old, decrepit Frankie and Texas Aggie.