The Braggert

Jim Thomas was a braggart, and could talk your ear off. He was so full of verbal lather it’ed fill a shaving mug. Wind him up on a subject, and he could brag on and on. He just wouldn’t shut up. If you said you had ten head a cattle ready for sale, why he’d say he had twenty. If you said you had the fastest horse in the county, his was fastest in the state. If you said you’d walked all the way up Pike’s Pike, he’d say he crawled up and never rested. You knew he was fabricating, and he knew you knew, but it didn’t make no difference.

One Sunday morning after church I set to go fishing with my friend Tom Bryers. Driving up to his ranch house I could see he was headin’ for the barn. I walked over to greet him, and saw Tom had a cow hitched to a corral board.

“How’s it goin’, Tom?”

“Pretty good. Cows got some grub worm sores I gotta’ lance. We kin take off after I do that an’ take care of a couple other things.” There’s always something needs to be done, or fixed, when your in the ranch business.

If you didn’t know, grub worms are the larvae of bomb flies that travel through cattle’s hair. They borrow into skin, then head for the back of the cow. A sore develops as the larvae grows, full of green puss. You have to stand aside when you cut and squeeze as the contents can fly about ten feet. Tom opened his razor sharp knife.

Jim pulled up in his pickup and climbed down. “Hey, fella’s what’s up?” Jim yelled as he shuffled towards us from his pickup.

“Man here he comes,” Tom said under his breath. “I hope he don’t wanna’ go fishin’ with us.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that guy‘s as full of wind as a bull at corn time. Don‘t know how we‘ll get rid a’ him.”

”You fixin’ to lance that sore?” Jim said when he walked up.

“Naw,” Tom answered, “I’m fixin’ to skin this cow. What does it look like I’m doin’?”

Jim ignored the question, “I had a cow one time had a sore twice that size…”

“Yeah,” I interrupted, “an’ I suppose you had to use a chain saw to lance it?”

“Almost. Say, what you guys up to today?”

“We’re goin’ fishing.” Tom said, and realizing he’d said the wrong thing turned and proceeded to do the surgery. He brought the knife up to lance the thing…

“Hey, if’n it’s all right kin I get my rod an’ come along. I was fishin’ last week and come up with a trout. Yeah, took me twenty minutes to land that sucker. An’ it weighed fi…”

Tom cut into the sore and squeezed. Jim, standing directly behind us, mouth wide open, didn’t get to finish his brag. He gagged, spit on the ground; turning he ran for the ranch house. Twisting the knob of the garden hose next to the house he washed his mouth out, over, and over, again, and again.

I helped Tom finish his other chores, and the three of us took off for the lake. We sat an’ every once in awhile Tom an’ I would think of the incident at the barn and chuckle. We never got a bite. Jim didn’t speak much.