The youngest of my brothers was an instigator. He always looked like he was up to something and wore that Cheshire Cat grin. He could make me mad quicker than a chicken on a June bug. What was so unnerving was that he grinned the whole time. I will admit that I often threatened him bodily harm. The only thing was, I couldn’t catch him. Oh, I chased him plenty, but he would only taunt and tease even more. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t catch him or I would have been locked up at the age of nine.
He always managed to talk me into not telling on him when he did something bad. One day we were out playing. Off to the side of our yard was a small hill covered with broom straw and rabbit tobacco that overlooked the old railroad bed. He looked at me and grinned his usual evil grin. He reached into his pocket and out came a corncob pipe. Mama would not approve! He continued to grin and said, “Don’t tell.” As usual I said, “I won’t.” He stuffed the pipe with rabbit tobacco, pulled out a match, lit it, and proceeded to smoke that weed. True to my word, I didn’t tell on him. Well, at least not then.
Years later, we all sat down for supper one night. We started reminiscing about some of the places we had lived. Everyone was sharing stories. My brother was the subject of many of those stories. I then told of the time he smoked rabbit tobacco in his corncob pipe. He grinned and said, “You weren’t supposed to tell!” He didn’t even get in trouble!