Chapter 8: Put a Bullseye on Your Forehead, Why Dontcha?

We got to meet the family last night. My husband and I were having a glass of wine on our back porch, and the Ambrosia Clan was congregated around a firepit in their yard, smoking and drinking. I'll admit it now: I was drawn to them like Jane Goodall to a heap of chimpanzees. I wanted Ambrosia to bother us last night. Of course, she did. There's so much to tell, but I think I'll focus on H.H.BIL for today. What a gem.

H.H.BIL is really named Bo, and he's not nearly as hairy as I'd thought. He's just really sun-damaged and extensively tattooed, so he looks hairy from afar. Bo wears his beard in a tight little braid about the size of a cigarette butt, and his jeans are so tight that he actually has "camel toes." I didn't know men could get those, but indeed, photo documentation of said phenomenon can be viewed here.

After introductions, my husband says, "So, Bo, you're from Mobile?" pronouncing Mobile like mobil. "Mo-BEEL," Bo corrects, in the most horrifically phlegmy boy-I-could-cut-you voice. "It ain't goin' no-weres."

We all settle into our chairs and the Ambrosia Clan returns to their conversation about tequila (of course) and whether one should eat the worm. I can't tell if Bo is recommending it or warning everyone away from it. "I ate one of them dang things in a bottle of Mezcal," he says. "The guy tol' me to tip the bottle up, stick mah tongue in it, and wait til I felt that worm, then quick pull it out, bite dan on it -- don't chew it -- just bite dan and split it in half, then swallow 'em. Bo, I tell you hhhwat! I was drunk for two days. There was a parade goin' on -- donkeys, mules, all that -- and I jumped on toppa one uh them mules, and I was ridin' him like a bull. They was Messicans all 'round there, all of 'em with knives, jis runnin' after me and that crazy mule. Good thang that mule could run!"

He's a pretty funny guy, really. We are laughing and having a rather good time hearing him talk about his motorcycle crashes, his blind and one-armed moonshining uncle, and his brushes with inbreeding. ("Picked a gal up from a bar and brought her home one night, and bo, I'se glad we talked a bit b'fore we done sumpin'. Turned out she was mah cousin.") But at some point in the evening, as I'm once again helping Ambrosia remember the word for "you know, them people that got both stuff down there -- them homophites or whatever you called 'em," I realize that Bo is sharing with my husband his stories from Vietnam, and he's definitely not laughing anymore. "Now, I ain't racist," he says (which assures me he is), "but we got so many of them dang Vietnamese in Mo-BEEL anymore, they're roonin' the shrimpin' for our own kind." Reflections of the fire dance in his piercing blue eyes, and he grows somber, rueful, talking of the jungle, of hot murky swamps, and of Vietnamese riverboat refugees, so desperate for escape that they gave all their food to their boat captain and themselves ate only cocaine. "I served mah country," he finally husks out. "I did mah time. I was glad when mah [Navy] SEALs team came back."

It being Memorial Day weekend and all, I am so moved at this point that I'm ready to come home and put a final apologetic installment in this blog, to commit to leaving these poor people be. But then my husband, a former member of one of the military's more elite fighting forces, as well as a guy nobody would ever guess was a former member of one of the military's more elite fighting forces, says, "Which team were you with?"

"Huh?" Bo says. "That's what we called ourselves -- a team."

My husband knows this, but Bo has no inkling my husband would know this, because my husband looks more like the white-bread architect that he is now than the sharp-shooting Green Beret he used to be. My husband drinks with his pinky sticking up like a little old lady having her tea, for cripes sake. He likes to cook and garden. He also knows that there are relatively few SEALs teams and that these teams are named with numbers. "No," he continues. "I mean, which team? One? Two?"

"Huh? Um, oh, yeah," says Bo, clearing his throat and starting to knead the braid on his chin with his big meaty frankfurter fingers. "That's it. One-two." He looks like a deer caught in headlights, but an angry deer -- the sort that might, instead of turning tail and heading for high ground, jump through your windshield and ram his antlers into your major organs. I'm actually embarassed for him, and freaking out a little that my husband, kicked back in his khaki shorts, his bent pinky poking daintily up from the stem of his glass of Chianti, is calling this Hell's Angel on his B.S.

"You gonna watch the race tomorrow?" Ambrosia asks my husband from across the firepit. We don't watch NASCAR, and Ambrosia knows that. "Oh, wait, you don't like that. I forgot." Eyeballs widen all around and there is laughter of disbelief, as if we've just announced we are actually Mormon missionaries, come to save their souls. I start laughing, too. I always start laughing when I'm nervous. "Oh, honey, you should go put on your shirt," I say. Taking a swig of his Chianti, he shoots me a don't-go-there look that doesn't register with me in time.

"What shirt?" Ambrosia asks.

"Oh, it's this shirt I bought for him," last year, I laugh. "It says, 'Too dumb for opera. Too smart for NASCAR.'"

Do I have a death wish? Why not just stand up and scream, "Harley and Davidson were homosexual lovers! Dale Earnhardt deserved to die!" The angry deer swipes his hoof over the dirt beneath his body, and I wonder what on earth we are doing here. I'm sure no Jane Goodall, am I?